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Which Way the Trolley: America’s Hot Wars During the Cold War, Part 2

William De Arteaga — Fri, 27 Jan 2017 23:13:51 +0000

In Part 2 of “Which Way the Trolley: America’s Hot Wars During the Cold War,” William De Arteaga continues to challenge assumptions and asks if the Korean and Vietnam Wars could have been Just Wars.

Read Part 1 of “Which Way the Trolley”

The Indochina Wars

1886 map of Indochina, from the Scottish Geographical Journal.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

The First Indochina war (1946-1954) began right after the end of WWII as the French tried to reclaim their Empire in Indochina (Laos, Cambodian and Vietnam) after having ceded it to the Japanese. French forces quickly regained control over most of the area. Indo-Chinese nationalists, led by Ho Chi Ming, did not like the idea much and began a guerrilla resistance. This moved from guerrilla warfare into a combined guerilla and set-piece battles after the Chinese Communists triumphed over their Nationalist enemies and arrived at the Chinese-Vietnam border (1949). Chinese and Soviet supplies and weapons, including artillery and anti-aircraft guns flowed south to the Viet Minh Communist army.[1]

The French Army fought with determination, while slowing losing home support. The French had several major victories, but the Viet Minh were persistent and won a major battle at a crossroads called Dien-Bien Phu (1954). After that, a newly elected French socialist government negotiated a peace. In that settlement France left Indochina, with South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia under local, non-Communist rule, and the North ruled by the Communist Viet Minh.

The treaty allowed the civilian population of Vietnam to go to the area they deemed best, and this resulted in a mass migration of several million Vietnamese Catholics fleeing from the North and into South Vietnam. They did so fearing Communist persecution, which had already been fierce against Catholics in Communist China.

The Communist Viet Minh capture the French headquarters after the Battle of Dien-Bien Phu.

After the division of North and South Vietnam the Emperor of South Vietnam was overthrown by a coup engineered by his own premier, Ngo Dinh Diem. He was Catholic and ruled the majority Buddhist country autocratically and with the Catholics as his base of support. Unfortunately, his regime was allied with the land-holding class, and would not further land reform (as happened in China). These factors ultimately created major difficulties when warfare resumed.

What the American public calls the Vietnam War should really be called the Second Indochina War, because it was fought not only in Vietnam, but in also Cambodia and Laos. American Green Berets and CIA backed groups struggled in Cambodia and Laos against the increasingly well-armed Communist armies in those nations.[2] Under President Nixon, the US Army made an incursion into Cambodia to destroy supply bases that were feeding Viet Cong forces.

The Communist cadres which had remained in place in every town and village in South Vietnam since the partition rose up in insurgency in 1960. President Kennedy, who had suffered a defeat in his handling of the Cuban Bay of Pigs invasion, did not want to lose another country to Communism under his watch, and sent in advisors to help stiffen and support the South Vietnamese Army.

Kennedy was continuing the Truman-Eisenhower policy of the containment of Communism. He was much junior to both Truman and Eisenhower, but shared with both the belief that opposition to Communism was a duty. His inaugural address (January 20, 1960) was a graceful, poetic expression of American anti-Communism and its sense of crusade that had earlier been proclaimed by President Truman.

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans – born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage – and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose and foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.[3]

After Kennedy’s assassination, President Johnson continued this policy. He increased the number of advisors and quantity of materials supplied to the South Vietnamese. But the Communist Viet Cong insurgents and the North Vietnamese continued to gain the upper hand. Like Truman before him, Johnson was forced to a decision to either see another country fall into Communist hands or intervene directly with American ground units. He chose to intervene. Also like Truman, he chose not to declare war, but relied on the American public’s strong anti-Communist sentiments to support the war.

Which Way the Trolley: America’s Hot Wars During the Cold War, Part 1

William De Arteaga — Tue, 06 Dec 2016 22:58:37 +0000

Introduction

This article is a spiritual and historical reflection on the two American wars of the Cold War, Korea and Vietnam. Many younger American readers may not be aware that the British successfully fought a Communist insurgency in Malaya (1948-1960) and the French fought the First Indochina War against Communist insurgents from 1948-1953 (described below) – all part of the not-so Cold War that I have not the space to adequately acknowledge in this essay. I will also deal with the difficult moral issue of civilian casualties in wartime, whether accidental or intentional.

For the sake of transparency, let me state that this is written from the perspective of Christian Just War theology that goes back to St. Augustine, and ultimately to St. Paul’s understanding of the state in Romans 13. Christian Just War theory was masterfully articulated by the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in the 1930s and extremely influential in the period under discussion (see below). For a more recent articulation of the Just War theory one should consult Nigel Biggar’s work, In Defense of War. [1]

In this essay I take a positive view that the hot wars of America’s Cold War were Just Wars. I do not apologize for, or disguise this viewpoint. I believe within a few decades, and as the history of the Twentieth Century becomes clearer, the American role in these wars will be viewed more positively then they are now.

What reason might we have, then, to choose just war over not-war [pacifism]? One reason is this: that human experience teaches that wickedness, unpunished, tends to wax. Sometimes, of course, wrongdoers are so shamed by defenceless innocence that they renounce their wrongdoing. But history suggests at most this is rare, and at least cannot be relied on. It is highly doubtful, it seems to me, that Gandhi would have embarrassed and softened Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the Interahamwe, Ratko Mladic, or Saddam Hussein. Violent domination can be a powerful addiction, and judging not only by SS fanatics but also by civilian policeman who committed mass murder in Poland and the USSR as members of the Einsatzgruppen, human beings are quite capable of hardening themselves against compassion. Their wickedness is excited, not sickened, by impunity. … That is why effective retribution [war] is so important (Nigel Biggar, In Defense of War, pp. 330-331).

In the Twentieth Century, American governments did three things that were both positive and helpful for mankind. First, America fought wars that were mostly for the benefit of others. Of course self-interest was important, but the majority of the benefit was for the freedom and survival of others. One of our smaller wars, the air campaign and intervention in the former Yugoslavia, had absolutely no self-interest involved, and was entered into to prevent the massacre of the Muslim minority by the Serb majority.[2] On its two major wars, America could have remained neutral in both. Our entry into World War I was opposed by many, including most Pentecostal Believers who were almost universally pacifists. Two decades later many persons believed it would be foolish to involve ourselves in opposing Hitler. The American hero and aviator, Charles Lindbergh, advocated this position and many believed him.

But in historical perspective, both wars were important in countering the attempt of Germany and its racist expansionism from becoming the predominant power in Europe and then on the planet. In World War I, Imperial Germany had not yet morphed into the vulgar and Pagan manifestation of Hitler’s Nazism. But the seeds were there, as in its Germanic contempt for the Slavic peoples. This disdain dated as far back as the Middle Ages and the Teutonic Knights. It was manifested in the treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1917 when Germany triumphed over Russia. (The treaty was annulled one year later with the defeat of Germany by the Allied powers). The definitive countering of Germanic imperialism took place at high cost to Americans in World War II. Not waging that war might well have resulted in a disaster for the whole of mankind.

Second, a major, and indeed unprecedented event, was in the positive and merciful occupation of Germany, Italy, and Japan. In these countries the military was disbanded, war criminals prosecuted and some executed (after generally fair trials).[3] The population was treated with respect and without vengeance, and democracy and economic recovery stimulated. Under the Marshall Plan, large amounts of American money was spent as seed money to aid in the reconstruction of our devastated European allies as well as our former enemies. This was a manifestation of Christian ethics on a global political scale. There was also self-interest, as by 1948 it was obvious that Soviet Communism would be an adversary and a restored Germany and Japan could be assets. But that does not negate the Christian and sacrificial elements of these policies.