Washington Rules_ America's Path to Permanent War - Andrew J. Bacevich [57]
By 1980, Vietnam’s relevance to policy had all but vanished, with both political parties tacitly agreeing to airbrush the episode out of existence. The Republican Party platform of that year, a forty-three-page document compiled to support former governor Ronald Reagan’s challenge to incumbent president Jimmy Carter, contained not a single reference to the Vietnam War. The platform did, however, signal the party’s adherence to the preexisting national security consensus. To “hearten and fortify the love of freedom everywhere in the world; and to achieve a secure environment in the world in which freedom, democracy, and justice may flourish”—this was America’s calling, one that required the United States to “reach the position of military superiority that the American people demand.” Amid much bashing of President Carter’s performance, the GOP made clear its commitment to a definition of American global assertiveness unaffected by the events of Vietnam.33
Not surprisingly, the Democratic Party platform of that same year offered a different take on Carter’s record. Yet when it came to national security policy, Democrats and Republicans occupied the same page. The Democratic platform contained but a single cryptic reference to “a tragic war in Asia.” Apart from promising to study the effects of Agent Orange and to support “the construction of a memorial in the nation’s capital to those who died in service to their country in Southeast Asia,” the Democrats did not trouble themselves to reflect on the causes, consequences, or implications of that tragedy. When it came to national security policy, Democrats—intent on refuting the charge that theirs had become the cut-and-run party—wanted it known that their views did not differ appreciably from their rivals’. America’s purpose was “to be a beacon of liberty,” employing American power and American ideals “as a means of shaping not only a more secure, but also a more decent world.”
The drafters of the Democratic platform made it clear that power meant military power. “America’s military strength is and must be unsurpassed,” they asserted. Yet unsurpassed was not good enough and Democrats vowed to “strengthen the military security of the United States” even further by increasing the level of Pentagon spending—a promise on which Carter and members of his party had, in fact, already begun to make good.
The point of citing these two documents is not to suggest that they represent serious statements of policy. The drafting of platforms is an exercise in political posturing. Yet this quadrennial compendium of grand aspirations and ponderous clichés does testify to the prevailing national mood, as interpreted by the political class. By 1980, both major parties had concluded that Vietnam was best forgotten while the energetic reassertion of American global leadership, backed by plentiful supplies of firepower, had once more become the order of the day.
Running to depose Carter, candidate Reagan described the American misadventure in Southeast Asia as a “noble cause,” adding, “For too long we have lived with the Vietnam syndrome.”34 Reagan’s election in November sealed the triumph of Vietnam revisionism. A mere five years after the fall of Saigon, antiwar or anti-interventionist views had once again been consigned to the fringes of American politics.
As events soon demonstrated, Anthony Lake need not have fretted about the United States seeking to avoid wars by staying out of them. During the 1980s, opportunities to “nip wars in the bud” by committing U.S. forces to Beirut, Grenada, Libya, and Central America and in the waters of the Persian Gulf proved legion. If Vietnam had induced a reluctance to act, that reluctance faded remarkably quickly.
In search of historical analogies to justify this renewed activism, Reagan and his successors ignored Vietnam in favor of Munich. “Neville Chamberlain thought of peace as a vague policy in the 1930s,” Reagan remarked in a 1983