The Vietnam war is a struggle which still raises controversy almost 4 decades later, and has significance to all Americans. The ‘spectre’ of Vietnam has recently been revived, as it has been summoned up as a parable for the current Iraq war by many commentators. They see frightening similarities between the endless struggle against an elusive enemy in the rice paddies of Vietnam, and the similar struggle taking place in the cities of Iraq.

Regardless of the validity of this comparison, it seems that recent books dealing with the Iraq war cannot help themselves from referencing Vietnam, and often in a superficial manner. Yet though many draw the comparison, there are many who say it is not apt, that the wars and the situations are too different.

This was all in mind when I picked up a copy of In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam by Robert McNamara. McNamara was, of course, the US Secretary of Defence from 1961 to 1968, during the beginning and escalation of the Vietnam War. I had encountered his work previously when I saw the exceptional film “Fog of War, lessons from the life of Robert McNamara”, a movie I would recommend to anyone.

The book was written in 1995, and in a sense the title is misleading: it is not a history of the Vietnam war as much as a history of the life of McNamara during the early years of the war. The details of the conflict themselves appear only where they were influenced by McNamara, or when they caused a change in policy or a new debate. If you are looking for a narrative or explanation of the events of Vietnam, this might not be the right book for you. Or at least, you should old off on reading this until after you have read another text to familiarize yourself with the basics of the struggle in South-east Asia.

The book starts with a brief biography of McNamara and his life leading up to his becoming president of Ford, and then leaving shortly after this appointment to take up the position of Secretary of Defence under President John F. Kennedy. It then begins a detailed, behind-the-scenes analysis of the decisions and personalities that created, or better to say could not avoid, the situation in Vietnam. According to McNamara, with the exception of a few hawks, everyone knew that escalation in Vietnam was an imperfect solution with potentially disastrous repercussions, but nobody could come up with a feasible alternative which would not be worse. The book is not self-exculpatory: McNamara defends himself against some accusations, while openly admitting fault in others. He is particularly recognisant of his inability to question some of the basic principles upon which decisions were being made, such as the assertion that is Vietnam fell, all of South-east Asia would fall as well: an argument often used by those in favour of escalation, but never properly explored. Certainly there was a threat of Communist movements, primarily backed by the Chinese, threatening other states in the area, but the extent of the threat, especially faced with significant international reverses to Chinese prestige in the early 1960s, was never determined. Thus decisions were taken based on this and several other commonly accepted ‘truths’, which later turned out to be partially or entirely false.

Mcnamara blames this partly on the confusion caused by a complicated international setting (There were crises in Berlin, Eastern Europe and the Middle East at the time) but also partly on an inexplicable lack of judgement faced with these supposed ‘truths’.

“Such ill-founded judgments were accepted without debate by the Kennedy administration, as they had been by its Democratic and Republican predecessors. We failed to analyze our assumptions critically, then or later. The foundations of our decision making were gravely flawed.” (McNamara, pg 33)

The other problem facing the US administration was near-complete helplessness facing an ineffective regime in Saigon, which was eventually toppled and replaced with a rapid succession of even less effective regimes. The US government new early on that final success in Vietnam would rest on the shoulders of the South Vietnamese Government and military, but when local success seemed impossible, the only answer seemed to be to bolster it with an ever increasing number of American trainers, equipment, bombers, and finally combat troops. Vietnam was one huge example of ‘mission creep’ where the initial objectives, supporting the South Vietnamese, eventually turned into persecuting the war on their behalf.

Finally, there was a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the North Vietnamese state, and the South Vietnamese Vietcong they supported. It was assumed that the VC were entirely a communist insurgency, when in fact they were largely nationalistic. It was also assumed that the North could be ‘discouraged’ from equipping, and later actively supporting the VC through bombing campaigns. This flawed assumption is particularly startling from McNamara, who was heavily involved in plotting the WW2 bombing campaigns against Japan, and saw first hand that even massive bombing failed to break the morale of the Japanese Empire. Again, a series of assumptions were made about Vietnam, about the South Vietnamese government, about the VC and about the NVA: and these assumptions were either never really challenged, or they were challenged too late. It seems the US administrations (for there were three that dealt with the war) were victims of their own public line, assuming that their public statements about the war had to be true, and little effort was spent actually confirming them. Worse still, as the book shows, when independent sources of government advisors DID challenge these assertions, and pointed out the reality of the situation, they were either ignored or dismissed as being biased or unrealistic.

The book gives a clear, well documented analysis of the interior debates and discussions that led to the tragedy of Vietnam. It is presented in a careful and very clear manner, identifying biases and pointing out the mistakes made, even if they were the fault of the author. My first conclusion is that this is an excellent book, and I would highly recommend it to any historian of the era, or any Political Scientist who wanted to understand how small assumptions could lead to great mistakes even with the best of intentions.

My second conclusion refers back to my introductory paragraph. At the end of the book, McNamara lays out in a list the errors which led to the tragedy of Vietnam: the miscalculations and steps that were not taken which could have prevented the war from going as badly as it did. When I read these ‘lessons’, I was temporarily stunned, and had to go back and check the year in which the book was written, I could scarcely believe it was written before the start of the current Gulf war.

I do not with to weaken this review with partisan opinions which belong to myself alone, but I will say this. Read the ‘lessons’ of Vietnam as written by McNamara with the current Iraq war in mind, and I think you will be astonished. To my possibly biased eye, it seemed that literally every single lesson was NOT learned; that the exact same mistakes were repeated; and that the list could just as easily be transposed to the ongoing Iraq war as a current list of grievous errors. I do not wish to put words in the mouth of McNamara, and it is entirely possible that he might not agree with my assessment. But when you read it, see for yourself, and ask yourself if these lessons were truly learned. One way or another, we can all hope that they will be paid attention to in the future.