Wars in Iraq and Vietnam (1): the China connection

Historian Walter LaFeber

I'm going to try to make a few posts on the book Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam: Or, How Not to Learn from the Past (2007), Lloyd Gardner and Marilyn Young, eds. One of the essays composing the book is by Walter LaFeber, the "Cold War revisionist" historian that I've been quoting recently from one of his own books. His essay is called "Zelig in U.S. Foreign Relations: The Roles of China in the American Post-9/11 World".

What does China have to do with the Iraq War, you may ask? Obviously, China was a part of the justification for the Vietnam War, a justification which shifted remarkably over the time of direct American involvement. In the early 1960s, China was seen as part of monolithic international Communism headed by the Politburo in Moscow. China had already begun having a major split with the Soviet Union, but the significance of that was not fully appreciated by policymakers, in no small part because the McCarthy Red Scare had run a number of the most qualified Asia experts out of the government.

Later, as the Soviet-Chinese split became publicly obvious, then containing China became in itself one of the justifications for the war. But even when Nixon and Kissinger established a new strategic relationship with China, the Vietnam War continued.

LaFeber's main point is to emphasize how the neoconservatives tried to set up China as the justification of their militarized foreign policy before 9/11 gave them the excuse to make the Great Islamic Caliphate Conspiracy the justification for that approach.

He also emphasizes how the "culture war" rejection of the anti-Vietnam War movement was a major motivation in the minds of many neocons in the 1990s:

American observers with illusions and too little historical perspective began to talk about the developments in the 1990s - a U.S. military budget greater than the next twenty such budgets in the world combined, the amoeba-like spread of the American computer domination of global communications, President Clinton's virtual eradication of the huge U.S. governmental debt - as simply the preface to making the post-2000 years another American Century, to be dominated by what columnist Charles Krauthammer called the Washington-based "unipolar power." This new American Century appeared to be especially in hand because, as President George H.W. Bush announced in 1991 with the defeat of Iraq in the First Gulf War, Americans had finally "kicked" the ghost of Vietnam. They once again seemed willing to commit their lives to the use of armed force. Much of the heavier kicking was done by the growing neoconservative movement, which included Krauthammer and Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. The neoconservatives, who believed in, among other tenets, basing policies on the willing use of ever larger U.S. military power, the all-out defense of Israel, and the spreading of American democratic principles around the globe, had begun in the 1960s-1970s as an angry, gut-driven reaction to the U.S. failure in Vietnam. The neocons possessed a visceral dislike of the antiwar movement (especially on college campuses), which they blamed for undermining the war effort. (my emphasis)

And China became their favorite bogeyman to justify a huge political, economic and psychological investment:

China now served the all-important purpose of replacing the Soviet Union as an enemy, or at least a potential enemy. It had to, for there seemed to be no other threat that could serve as justification for massive U.S. military budgets and the more than 700 bases Americans had established around the globe to contain a now nonexistent Soviet Union. As China had been conceived in Washington during the 1970s as the card to be played against the Soviets, in the 19905 it was conceived [by the neocons] as the card that would replace the Soviets. What the Vietnam War had helped create, the supposed end of the "Vietnam syndrome" would now re-create as a suitable armed threat, at least potentially, to justify the U.S. military budgets for containing the Chinese. (my emphasis)

Some of milestones of the neocon pressure campaign are now fairly well known: the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance prepared by Paul Wolfowitz as part of Dick Cheney's Defense Department.

Although China was the larger bogeyman, most of the neocons were obsessed in the 1990s with overthrowing Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. But they also wrongly assumed that such a thing could be accomplished relatively simply and cheaply. Prior to the coming of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), they needed a bigger threat than Iraq to justify their worldwide policies. As LaFeber explains it:

In April 2001, a U.S. EP-3 reconnaissance plane, flying one of many American missions close to China's border, collided with a Chinese fighter plane that had been tailing it. The fighter crashed, and the pilot was never found. The EP-3 managed to land on China's Hainan Island and the twenty-four crew members were captured. A major crisis loomed as Chinese officials refused to pay attention to Washington's calls and demands, while conservative voices urged a get-tough policy. Led by Secretary of State Colin Powell, the Bush administration managed to work out wording about the United States being "very sorry" (not the full apology demanded by Beijing), and the crew was released. Conservatives and especially neoconservatives, led by William Kristol, blistered Powell and Bush for what they termed a "national humiliation." U.S.-China relations seemed well on the way to at least a mini-Cold War.

Then came 9/11. As Bush embarked in October 2001 on a war in Afghanistan to destroy al-Qaeda terrorist bases, and then in March 2003 in Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime, China slid down the U.S. priority list. This deemphasis of the Chinese did not mean, however, that they were ignored. To the contrary: as Bush's presidency moved well into its second term, the Chinese had become a major and unsettlingly effective opponent of the United States. (my emphasis)

LaFeber notes that the actual challenge of China to US positions in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and even in Latin America were more diplomatic and economic than military. And, therefore,

... the Bush administration grew less competent in dealing with the threat because the neoconservatives, who so largely shaped the administration's, and especially the president's assumptions, had emphasized military power - not diplomatic or economic power - as the trump card in international politics.

LaFeber's analysis is a reminder that foreign policy is shaped not only by responses to the actions of foreign nations but also to internal Americans imperatives, both political and economic.

He closes with the warning that as US relations with China continue to evolve, American policymakers need to achieve a more realistic picture of China and not make it an morphing "Zelig" that can be shaped in the American image of it to serve a seemingly endless variety of purposes: "As [American] officials simply hoped for the best, the Chinese Zelig continued to assume various forms for Americans, few of which the Americans seemed to understand."

Tags: china, iraq war, vietnam war, walter lafeber