Comment on Mueller: Interests, Burdens, and Persistence: Asymmetrics between Washington and Hanoi

The war in Southeast Asia was a competition in resolve between the United States (with its clients in Saigon) and the Vietnamese Communists. In the preceding article John Mueller presents a fine analysis of half of this competition. The worst that could be said is that the result is a bit like the sound of one hand clapping. It is hard to appreciate fully the question of the Communists' breaking point without more explicitly considering America's. My critique, therefore, is marginally supplementary more than contradictory. Mueller's point-that the Communists absorbed great losses in pursuit of a goal that was not vital to national survival-may undervalue North Vietnam's stake in unifying the country. The mystique of union always makes civil wars more brutal and less susceptible to resolution short of complete victory by one side than wars between separate states. If North Vietnam conceived the south as a separate entity it wanted to acquire, rather than as part of itself that it wanted to get back, it might indeed have decided it would rather switch than fight, once it felt the weight of American power. In reality, the goal of unification may have been close to absolute, rather than a relative interest that would decline in proportion to pain. Given the tremendous disparity in the power of the contestants, the key to Hanoi's ultimate success, and the reason Washington reached the breaking point first, must lie in the asymmetry of stakes. U.S. interests were relative. In terms of Realpolitik, American involvement was driven by the containment doctrine, but in this regard Southeast Asia was a tertiary theater. Only the defense of Europe could provoke unlimited American commitment. In terms of idealistic motives, Washington wanted to make Vietnam safe for democracy, but years of paternalistic attempts to create strength and stability in Saigon's governing capacity failed to overcome the fatal fissiparous weakness in the political culture