Book Reviews: 1. Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam 2. Flags of Our Fathers 3. Guardians of Empire 4. All the Laws But One

• Author: Major Francis Dymond
• Pages: 06

220 MILITARY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 168

CHOOSING WAR: THE LOST CHANCE FOR PEACE AND THE ESCALATION OF WAR IN VIETNAM1

REVIEWED BY MAJOR FRANCIS DYMOND2

To argue that American leaders could have withdrawn or had the opportunity to begin disengagement from Vietnam at various stages is not sufficient. Of course, they could choose, but that does not mean they possessed real choice.3

Frederick Logevall introduces previously unreviewed evidence and offers an historical interpretation of it in the latest round of arguments against America's 1965 escalation to war in Vietnam.4 Logevall, who was born in the early 1960's, rebuts the common current view that the United States lacked the "real choice" necessary to disengage from military intervention. Logevall uncovered a plethora of primary sources-including international diplomatic documents and recently declassified U.S. records-to paint a clear and damning picture of both ambivalent and "pig-headed" U.S. decision-making concerning Vietnam. His conversational style, combined with his original assessment of the international diplomatic and domestic political climate of the era, add significant weight to his argument that America could have negotiated disengagement during what Logevall calls "the Long 1964."5 But in rebutting the inevitability doctrine, he distorts his work by alleging that America's leaders committed immoral or criminal acts when they squandered such opportunities.

The portrait of "the Long 1964" is skillfully drawn through logical chronological segments of the period beginning 29 August 1963 and end-

ing in July 1965. Starting briefly from 1954, Logevall sets out a measured tale of interaction among the key international participants (South and North Vietnam, France, Britain, Canada, Russia, and China), the domestic political participants (primarily key policy- and law-makers), and the media. 29 August 1963 was a critical turning point, he argues, as it represents the point when French President General Charles de Gaulle elevated Vietnam to the political front burner for President John F. Kennedy, Jr. For a variety of reasons, de Gaulle "believed that a major crisis threatened in Vietnam."6 He became one of a growing number of protagonists questioning the use of military force to resolve the Vietnam problem.

The level of difficulty for achieving political and military success in South Vietnam then rose quickly. Consequently, both Presidents Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson confronted waning support for and general challenges to the U.S. military policy. Against this backdrop, Logevall exemplifies the historian by elucidating three key themes connecting these challenges.7 First, Logevall demonstrates how fluid the global and domestic political positions were regarding any particular means or method of stopping communist aggression in Southeast Asia. Second, he paints a sympathetic but shameful picture of the ambivalent and rigid thinking of America's leaders that drove their political maneuvering on Vietnam. In particular, Logevall patiently displays subtle shifts in these leaders' standards for success as they became more desperate to shore up successively weaker South Vietnamese governments.8 Third, Logevall faults his protagonists and-minimally-the Ho Chi Minh government for failing to successfully urge Kennedy and Johnson to consider some kind of negotiated settlement by presenting viable peaceful solutions.

In under 400 pages, Logevall artfully weaves these themes into a summary of eighteen months worth of international and domestic diplomatic, political, media, research, personal, and deliberative documents. For example, he intimates a level of certainty in the meaning of events through frequent inferences and conversational phrases. Likewise, his use of a droll sense of humor, a pleasant side effect of his personal motivation behind the work, highlights the absurdity we can now see in the politicking behind U.S. policy-making. The reader can even detect an effective level of sarcasm to this end. Logevall effectively applies all three techniques when describing Washington's efforts to decry the lack of west-

ern support for its Vietnam policies in mid-1964 and its reaction to British hints of fostering negotiations.9 He observes that Washington did not view these matters as reasons to examine the fundamentals of America's objectives, but, rather, as representative of "merely another problem to be addressed" in carrying out the "single-minded"10 military policy. When Washington accused de Gaulle and the American media "Cassandras" of conspiring to cause these problems, Logevall retorts that such a "belief was erroneous, of course-the British and Canadians, for example, were coming to their interpretations on their own, thank you-but it was wrong."11

Presidents Kennedy and Johnson played successive leading roles in deciding to stick with the military solution, roles commonly ascribed to the other key participants: Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy. Logevall portrays the two leading actors as men who avoided fundamental analysis of the situation in favor of short-term political preservation.12

Kennedy "like many politicians . . . liked to put off difficult decisions for as long as possible,"13 and wanted to avoid stirring the issue either internationally or domestically before his reelection. This played out in three ways during his tenure. First, Kennedy failed to take sides with the ruling Ngo brothers, for fear of signaling endorsement of their appeasement with the communists; conversely, he failed to openly support a military coup against them, for fear that he appear too hawkish in advancing a more vigorous prosecution of the war.14 Second, Logevall describes Kennedy's "complete rejection of exploring the possibilities for a political solution to the conflict" and his consequent work to quell de Gaulle's and the United Nations Secretary General's efforts to initiate peace talks.15 Last, Kennedy refused to change the military advisor strategy in South Vietnam, except to apply inconspicuous "selective pressures" on South Vietnamese leaders to win and then steadily increase America's commitment of advisors from about 3,000 in 1961 to over 16,000 at the time of his assassination.16

When Johnson succeeded Kennedy a year before the 1964 election, he too faced the dilemma of defeating (or, at least not losing to) the co

munists in South Vietnam without changing the policy he aided in creating.17 But with an impending socio-political collapse in South Vietnam, he would desperately escalate to war fifteen months later. Logevall portrays Johnson as a man with a simplistic and limited foreign policy mindset who attempted to forestall criticism and military defeat with traditional political intimidation tactics and increasingly more aggressive military tactics.

Specifically, Logevall argues that Johnson's use of these tactics in 1963 and 1964 helped him to win election. Johnson used old-fashioned dirty American politics to defeat his hawkish opponent, Barry Goldwater. He combined campaign statements against expansions of American involvement in the conflict with flag-waving retaliations against North Vietnam for its provoked attacks on U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.18 Then, for the three months after his election, Johnson fell into the best settlement position of all U.S. presidents. Unfortunately, Johnson refused to reexamine Vietnam. He grew incensed at growing criticism of his anti-communist convictions and the growing disinterest and political discord among South Vietnamese. He covered up his worries about Vietnam and secretly predicted war despite assurances that he would adhere to his pre-election statements against war. After letting the biggest pool of political capital in American history slip through his fingers, internal South Vietnamese dysfunction in late spring of 1965 forced Johnson to put into action his aids' secret plans19 for escalation.

Logevall portrays Kennedy's and Johnson's intellectual rigidity and defensiveness with a level of detail that makes this aspect of his historical rendering compelling. Also complete are his accounts of Rusk, McNamara, Bundy, and their other deputies, who he portrays as cow-towing, political hacks overseeing institutions that were equally rigid in upholding the "simple-minded" ideology. But Logevall's effort to paint a picture of immoral or criminal deceit that drove a nation into an unnecessary war20 for personal gain is undermined by the primacy he gives to dirty politics as a motive for action. Logevall gives no or only cursory consideration to other possible motives. He makes light use of other evidence

bearing on assessments of geo-strategic, legal, ideological, or military factors.

Logevall immediately stumbles in his account by unnecessarily offer-ing-and confusing-his anti-war protagonists' mantra as the ultimate interpretation of the period: "That the American decision for war was the wrong decision is today taken as axiomatic by a large majority of both lay observers and scholars, [Logevall] included, who see the U.S. intervention as, at best, a failure and a mistake, at worst a crime."21 For, in the end, "there was no good reason why" soldiers continued to be asked to kill and be killed there.22 Logevall taints his interpretation of the period with this premise.

His most important personal reason for publishing this work was to discover "why [the two leaders chose] war?"23 Of course, because Logevall begins with the conclusion that the war was wrong, he is compelled to find immoral or criminal motives. His ultimate answer is that Kennedy, Johnson and their key deputies each sought to uphold their personal credibility and that each reluctant step toward escalation was measured by the effect the step would have on their respective egos and legacies. To this end, he erroneously quotes recent Vietnam...