Sunday, September 13, 2020

What's Changed?

There are advantages to being old.

One is that you were there when some of the history younger folk talk about was taking place. It’s easier to understand and appreciate changes that have occurred during your lifetime. You have a lot more information to work with.

Take for example our Vietnam saga and its subsequent impact on American politics and our nation’s security.

In my recently published memoir, Joint Ventures, I write about spending time in Vietnam as a young Army officer between March 1962 and March 1963. US involvement in the fighting at that point was limited. In an administrative role, I was not in grave danger, but I did realize we faced a serious challenge. When I left the military in spring 1963 and began a journalistic career, I tried to inform the public about Vietnam, but Americans were not yet tuned in.

Things started to change after the 1964 election. Primary focus in that contest was on civil rights. Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 initiated the shift in the Solid South from Democratic to Republican. It was ironic since a higher percentage of GOP members of congress had voted for the act than Democratic members.

As for Vietnam, LBJ was the candidate of reason in that race. Although disturbed by Barry Goldwater’s remarks about how to use the military in Vietnam, I voted for him. I still hoped it possible to introduce party competition into South Carolina; less optimistic about that today.

Only a few months after the election, Johnson began escalation. In February 1965, bombing of North Vietnam began and in March, two US Marine battalions landed at Danang. At the end of 1965 there were 200,000 US servicemen in Vietnam.

In fall of 1964, inspired by my experiences in Vietnam, I began graduate study at USC Columbia in international studies. What I learned made me skeptical about LBJ’s course of action. Did our national interest in Vietnam justify the allocation of the required resources?

Over the next few years, I vacillated between journalism and academia as career possibilities. Rejecting a Yale fellowship to study Vietnam in spring 1966, I returned to television news. When invited to participate in a Taiwan research project in summer 1967, I switched again. Fortuitously, WBTW agreed to send me and a camera to Vietnam to interview Carolina servicemen in the warzone. What I saw and heard confirmed my skepticism about our goals.

Serious setbacks continued to plague us in Vietnam over the next six months. Despite the persistent buildup of US military forces, the Viet Cong and its patron North Vietnam were gaining ground. In 1967 an average of 31 Americans servicemen were killed every day.

The Tet Offensive in January 1968 was the decisive blow. Eventually, the surprise attack against cities and small towns in Vietnam was beaten back, but confidence in a US military victory was dashed. During 1968 US military forces suffered almost 17,000 deaths, an average of 46 per day.

Throughout the escalation of our military involvement in Vietnam, I noted the willingness of Democratic US senators to challenge policies of a Democratic president. Two Democratic senators, Wayne Morse (OR) and Ernest Gruening (AK) even opposed the modest Gulf of Tonkin resolution. In 1966 Democratic Sen. William Fulbright (AR), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, held hearings on US policies in Asia, inviting respected scholars to share their expertise regarding the wisdom of LBJ’s strategy.

By winter of 1968, two Democratic US senators, Eugene McCarthy (MN) and Robert Kennedy (NY) were contesting LBJ’s re-election. Their challenge likely factored into Johnson’s decision to withdraw his re-election bid. At the time US personnel deaths had reached approximately 30,000.

The courage of those senators willing to take on a president of their own party impressed me. LBJ was a formidable politician. His domestic policies had been well received, especially by the traditional Democratic coalition formed under FDR. That there were senators who would put their own political future on the line to confront LBJ spoke highly of their character.

I am reminded of the courage those Democratic senators demonstrated when I consider our current circumstances. America has been traumatized for nearly a year now by a raging pandemic. The country is approaching 200,000 lives lost in less than a year, our economy had been brought to a standstill, our schools and higher education institutions crippled, and our health care system overwhelmed. More than 30 million jobs have been lost.

The president has admitted deliberately misleading the American people about the dangers of the pandemic. Yet he has done little to organize and lead a coherent response to the threat. Whatever his motives, he has failed to protect the nation’s health and prosperity.

Inexplicably, among the Republicans serving in the US Senate only Mitt Romney has dared to criticize the president’s performance. His voice was easily drowned out when his colleagues rallied to the president’s defense after evidence revealed the nation’s chief executive had used the powers of his office to seek personal political advantage. The president’s response to that support has been to wreak vengeance against any dissidents within the administration.

Following the lead of Senate Majority Leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell (KY), GOP senators have doubled down on their support of the president by refusing to provide meaningful relief to Americans currently suffering serious economic distress because of the pandemic. Unconcerned earlier about the impact on the nation’s deficit of a $1.5 trillion tax cut for corporations and rich individuals, Republicans in the US Senate have suddenly discovered the need for fiscal restraint.

Many years have passed since the US ended its involvement in the Vietnam war. Democratic US senators were vital to bringing about that needed policy change. Responding to the current pandemic, which has already killed more than three times as many Americans as the Vietnam war, requires similar courage. The question is where are the courageous US senators in the GOP willing to challenge the errant president of their party?

Thursday, September 3, 2020

Broader Focus Needed in Campaigns

The presidential campaigns are cranking up in earnest, but the issues being discussed are too narrowly focused. Overcoming the pandemic and addressing racial unrest are clearly important challenges, but there are other problems that deserve attention.

Donald Trump is maybe the worst US president in modern times, and Joe Biden is not everybody’s first choice. But the election should be about more than the personalities of the candidates. Their views on a broad array of critical issues need to be carefully scrutinized.

Major attention must be given to the issue of the nation’s foreign policy because few of the challenges the country faces can resolved unilaterally. Unfortunately, America’s relations with the rest of world today are almost uniformly bad, and their future trajectory does not look any better.

Robert M. Gates, a former secretary of defense and director of the Central Intelligence Agency, has recently published an unfavorable assessment of US foreign policy in the post-Cold War period. In his book entitled, Exercise of Power, Gates claims that when the Cold War ended “the United States dominated the world militarily, economically, politically, and culturally---in every dimension of power. Not since the apogee of the Roman Empire had one country been in that position.”

But things have not gone well for the United States since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

A member of the National Security Council in four administrations, Gates places part of the blame on the failure of both executive and Congressional leaders “to recognize, resource, and use the arsenal of nonmilitary assets that proved of critical importance in the long contest with the Soviet Union.” He contends that “our place in the world…will depend for certain on a strong military but also on reimagining and rebuilding those nonmilitary tools.”

Among the nonmilitary tools Gates cites are trade, development and humanitarian assistance, cyber, and strategic communications. The last he describes as essential to our ability to capitalize on the successes resulting from exercise of the other instruments of power. Cyber warfare he labels as the most powerful weapon in a nation’s arsenal today, allowing the perpetrator to inflict great damage on military and civilian infrastructure while maintaining deniability.

As for America’s economic power, Gates is concerned that trade and other economic tools are being deployed principally in a punitive manner. Sanctions are never successful without broad international cooperation. Tariffs are more likely to cause damage to domestic producers than they are to change foreign behavior. 

China is seen by Gates as the major threat to American interests. Impressed with China’s accomplishments, he calls it “a multidimensional power eager to challenge the US in every sphere.” Since both sides apparently recognize military conflict between the two would be horrendous, the competition is likely to be conducted with largely nonmilitary tools, and China has been far more diligent about enhancing these instruments of power than has the US over the last twenty-five or thirty years. Managing our relationship with China will require a willingness to work with an international coalition.

Critical of budget cuts that have been imposed on the US State Department and other areas of civilian expertise relative to our foreign policy objectives, Gates also faults the failure to tap the talent available at America’s colleges and universities for economic and political development assistance. He suggests as well that it is a mistake to allocate so much aid money to the Defense Department instead of to other nonmilitary agencies

Although a Republican, Gates is bipartisan in his criticism. The errors he writes about have occurred under Democratic and Republican administrations. He is not interested in assigning blame. Instead, Gates urges the crafting of a comprehensive foreign policy strategy less reliant on military force and more innovative in the deployment of the country’s nonmilitary instruments of power.

Clearly, the capacity to develop and implement an effective foreign policy must be a major requirement in 2020. It is fortunate that both major party candidates this year have a known record relative to their skills in setting priorities, managing government and conducting international communications and negotiations, so it is possible to have a reasonable understanding of what may be expected from each.

Furthermore, the analyses contained in Exercise of Power can be useful for voters trying to determine how well a candidate can meet the overall responsibilities of the American presidency in these stressful times. Overcoming the pandemic will ultimately require an orderly strategy, inspirational leadership and a willingness to work with other interested parties. The same is true in addressing the racial unrest in America. Recognition of previous mistakes is necessary, but neither fear nor denial will be useful in moving us towards reconciliation.

What it boils down to is which candidate has the knowledge and temperament to appreciate the complexities of the world; which candidate is willing to and capable of working collaboratively with the diverse personalities that have an interest in addressing our common problems; and which candidate is capable of inspiring confidence in our collective efforts?