Letters.

A Necessary Defense

Most readers of NR were probably as astonished as I was to find that H. R. McMaster, in his review of my book Vietnam: The Necessary War ("Weekend Warrior," Sept. 13), attacks me--from the left! Like the anti-Cold War Left, McMaster plays down the significance of the wars in Indochina as proxy struggles in the Cold War: "Evidence now available shows that the imperative to contain Communism was indeed an important factor in Vietnam policy . . ." An important factor? Here, as in his book Dereliction of Duty, McMaster uncritically parrots the anti-Cold War Left's line that the Vietnam War was the tragic result of the partisan machinations of sinister American presidents and aides. Even worse, McMaster complains that I do not rely, as he did in his book, on left-wing academics like Lloyd C. Gardner. Indeed I don't--for the same reason that I don't rely on Noam Chomsky as a guide to U.S. Cold War policy.

Not content to boost leftist academics, Mr. McMaster claims I defend another bogey of the isolationist Left, the imperial presidency: "Lind, however, feels that, in matters of war, the people should grant effective carte blanche to one leader: the president." What I really say is that conditional declarations of war, allowing but not forcing the president to wage war, are more effective tools of U.S. coercive diplomacy than general declarations. "In this scenario," according to Mr. McMaster, "there would be no democratic debate over the most momentous decisions a nation can face, those involving life and death." On the contrary--I favor a congressional debate, but believe that it should come well in advance of possible hostilities. The Gulf War, in which Mr. McMaster served with great distinction, was authorized by a conditional declaration permitting President Bush to refrain from unleashing the U.S. military if Saddam Hussein met U.S./U.N. demands by the January 15 deadline. Under Mr. McMaster's peculiar theory, when the deadline passed Bush should have been forced to go back to Congress for yet another debate and yet another resolution.

Mr. McMaster professes shock at my argument that "merely preserving national credibility can provide the necessary justification for going to war. This is so even in the absence of a commitment to achieving tangible goals or producing an outcome consistent with clearly defined American interests." But preserving America's military credibility, in a zero-sum struggle against the Soviet empire for global primacy, was a tangible goal and a clearly defined American interest. As I show in my book, both President Truman and the Joint Chiefs agreed that Korea was of little intrinsic value to the U.S.; the Korean War, like the Vietnam War later, was fought primarily to prove that the U.S. was a credible alliance leader. My view of the importance of U.S. military credibility is shared by, among others, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a former POW in Vietnam: "It seems to me obvious on the face of it that after two separate American presidents warned Milosevic that the United States would not tolerate Serb aggression against Kosovo, and after President Clinton twice delivered ultimatums to Milosevic to come to terms or else, that the failure to make good on those threats would devastate our credibility everywhere."

"For Lind, fighting and dying are ends in themselves"--this is Mr. McMaster's caricature of my argument that sometimes a retreat without a show of force can be more devastating to a nation's military reputation than a less-than-fatal defeat. History supports my contention. The U.S. suffered major defeats in the War of 1812--but succeeded in convincing Britain and other powers that they would pay a price in any future confrontation. Despite China's huge losses in the Korean War, Mao was convinced that he had proven to both enemies and allies that China was a significant power--and he was right, as Washington's fear of provoking all-out war with China during the later Vietnam War proved.

On page four of the same issue of NR in which my book is reviewed, readers learn that 22 prominent conservatives, including those well-known "weekend warriors" William F. Buckley Jr. and William Kristol, call on the Clinton administration to "declare unambiguously that it will come to Taiwan's defense in the event of an attack or a blockade . . . " If the U.S. is, or should be, prepared to defend South Korea and Taiwan today to defend America's credibility as the leading East Asian military power, in the absence of a global great-power struggle, then why wasn't it all the more important to prevent U.S. allies in South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos from being violently overthrown by dependents of the Soviet Union and Maoist China at the height of the third world war?

Michael Lind Washington, D.C.