Practicing History

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  I visualize the “large organizing idea” as one of those iron chain mats pulled behind by a tractor to smooth over a plowed field. I see the professor climbing up on the tractor seat and away he goes, pulling behind his large organizing idea over the bumps and furrows of history until he has smoothed it out to a nice, neat, organized surface—in other words, into a system.

  The human being—you, I, or Napoleon—is unreliable as a scientific factor. In combination of personality, circumstance, and historical moment, each man is a package of variables impossible to duplicate. His birth, his parents, his siblings, his food, his home, his school, his economic and social status, his first job, his first girl, and the variables inherent in all of these, make up that mysterious compendium, personality—which then combines with another set of variables: country, climate, time, and historical circumstance. Is it likely, then, that all these elements will meet again in their exact proportions to reproduce a Moses, or Hitler, or De Gaulle, or for that matter Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who killed Kennedy?

  So long as man remains the Unknowable Variable—and I see no immediate prospect of his ever being pinned down in every facet of his infinite variety—I do not see how his actions can be usefully programmed and quantified. The eager electronic optimists will go on chopping up man’s past behavior into the thousands of little definable segments which they call Input, and the machine will whirr and buzz and flash its lights and in no time at all give back Output. But will Output be dependable? I would lay ten to one that history will pay no more attention to Output than it did to Karl Marx. It will still need historians. Electronics will have its uses, but it will not, I am confident, transform historians into button-pushers or history into a system.

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  Address, Chicago Historical Society, October 1966.

  Vietnam

  When, Why, and How to Get Out

  I SHOULD LIKE TO OFFER a number of propositions. One, we are fighting a war in Asia for an objective no one can define. If it is to make the world safe from aggression, that is a slogan, not a possibility. If it is to contain communism, that is not to be accomplished by destroying the society where the containment is being tried out. If it is to keep Asia open to our access and enterprise, that is an aim which, as formulated by John Hay in the “Open Door” principle, is one of the basic doctrines of American foreign policy; but it always had a twin, “Do not get involved in a land war in Asia.” We are trying to maintain the one by violating the other.

  Further propositions: The situation in South Vietnam, as regards “freedom from aggression” and democratic institutions, not to mention the general welfare of the people, is worse off than it was before the U.S. moved in. The affairs and reputation of the U.S. itself have steadily deteriorated since our military involvement began. Control of the war and of the policy perpetuating it is in the hands of a President who has locked himself on course and, whether from personal pride or failure to comprehend what is happening, is unwilling to deviate, adjust, or alter direction. One keeps waiting for signs that this is not so—that Mr. Johnson may after all have an ear open to the sounds of history—but no signs appear. By now it seems an absolute that the President is unable to alter course; ergo that the war will not be terminated nor will we get out of it without a change of administration.

  Why not termination by victory? Because militarily it is axiomatic that a belligerent cannot win a war without gaining the initiative and taking the offensive, thereby either destroying the enemy’s armed forces or cutting them off definitively from their source of supply. For reasons with which everyone is familiar we cannot engage in an all-out offensive. Nor, without virtually forcing Russia or China or both to retaliate, thus precipitating a world war, can we get around the back of North Vietnam to cut its line of communications. Commendably enough, the President has recognized this and has resisted, up to now at least, whatever pressure may be exerted on him either by soldiers understandably frustrated in their profession or by narrow-brained hawks of the “let’s-finish-them-off” school.

  Precluded from the all-out offensive, we are fighting the most costly and cruelly destructive of all conflicts—a war of attrition. No one has wanted to resurrect that phrase of evil memory from World War I, but it might as well be made explicit. The strategy is futile, in the first place, because the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong are fighting for their country and for a cause and therefore have a stronger motive for enduring than we have, besides resting on the material support of Russia and China. It is indefensible in the second place because it is destroying the land and welfare and lives of the people we are supposed to be fighting for.

  Yet we persist, with escalation our only answer, as the generals of 1914–18 persisted in the progressive slaughter of the Western front, where the commanders stumbled forward in the old ruts, not questioning whether to assault the front again but only where along its wall to bang their heads. Johnson is General Sir Douglas Haig—with a significant difference: that whereas Haig’s limitless capacity for throwing away lives was ultimately restrained by civilian control, Johnson is the civilian control. His is the last word—except for the electorate.

  In 1914–18 the Allies won the war of attrition in the end only because of the accretion of a new belligerent, the U.S. In the present case it is plain from the evidence that we are not winning—even if we knew what, in this war, constitutes winning, which is not clear to anyone. On February 23 the Wall Street Journal, which is not committed to any position except one of hardheaded realism, acknowledged that “the logic of the battlefield” suggests that the U.S. could be “forced out of an untenable position” and that this country should “be prepared for the bitter taste of a defeat beyond America’s power to prevent.”

  I doubt if that suggestion has ever before been made in our history, but now that someone has been bold enough to say it, the prospect need not be—outside the closed mind of the White House circle—unthinkable. The integrity of neither our territory nor our political system would be affected. It would mean humiliation (which might conceivably be good for us) but not disaster. It would encourage communism, which is the penalty we would have to pay. Although bad business, this is not the fatal catastrophe that some pretend. The theory that if Vietnam goes “they all go” is not impressive. North Vietnam has certainly exhibited a fierce enough spirit of independence to warrant the expectation that it will not be sucked into the Chinese orbit. If China has not become the tool of Russia, why should North Vietnam become the tool of China? To be swallowed by China is a shared fear of the nations of Asia. It is more probable that a strong, independent Vietnam, communist or not, would be a buffer against China rather than an avenue of Chinese expansion.

  Failing military victory, can the war be terminated by negotiation? It seems unlikely. With the various Vietnamese parties to the struggle bitterly irreconcilable and the problem compounded by U.S. prestige being bound up in it, the chance of useful negotiation is poor, if not nil. Quarrels over which nations go to war are rarely settled by negotiation. Korea was a rare exception, and though Mr. Truman was a more flexible and more reasonable man than Mr. Johnson, even that case required a new occupant of the White House. In the present case, as long as it is in Russia’s interest to keep us bleeding and bogged down in Asia, which is to say to keep North Vietnam fighting, and as long as the prospect of gaining control of the whole country remains open to Hanoi, there seems small reason our opponents should be ready to negotiate a settlement that would be acceptable to us—unless it were some face-saving arrangement enabling us to remove ourselves, leaving the field, after an interval, ultimately to them. If they negotiated on that basis, in order to stop the bombing and slaughter and gain a breathing spell, what is to stop a movement of “national liberation” from rising again?

  The answer is “nothing”—and that is the crux. Where will and motive and energy and ability to resist aggression are not present it cannot be synthetically induced, nor substituted for, nor can the country in questio
n be propped up from outside. Our support of South Vietnam is like Russia’s in Egypt: endless and limitless because without us they have no strength. Nor will it ever develop as long as a massive foreign presence is maintained in their midst, willing to undertake their task for them.

  We must continue to exert our effort at the pressure points of communism but only where it can be operative in support of clients able, ready, and motivated to defend their own way of life. It should not be spent on quicksands. Our attempt, under a “Let George (or Uncle Sam) do it” policy, to control the destinies of Asia is self-defeating—and doomed. It is neo-colonialism. It is against history.

  What then can be done? One way of stopping wars, so far only imposed on small nations, is by the cease-fire order of the international community. If enough nations were interested in bringing about peace, there is no valid reason why the U.N. should not energize itself to issue a cease-fire order addressed to both Vietnams as well as to the U.S. This would give Mr. Johnson an out which he might be wise enough (though it is not a good bet) to accept, if arranged before election day.

  Failing that, another course is open. The U.S. could say with dignity and honesty that we had fulfilled our commitment to South Vietnam by giving all the support at our command in money, arms, and the lives of our citizens; that from here on we plan to withdraw our men at a given rate, say fifty thousand a month, with the parting suggestion that their places be filled by those nations with more immediate interest in the area—for instance, Japan, Australia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and whoever else is sufficiently concerned. If the capacity in them is lacking, then the effort in which we are now engaged is purposeless anyway and should, if we can summon the necessary courage and common sense, be closed down.

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  Newsday, March 8, 1968.

  Coalition in Vietnam—Not Worth One More Life

  IF THE GOAL of coalition government still lies behind the conditions on which the Nixon administration is prepared to make its exit from Vietnam, there can be no foreseeable exit. We have been pursuing this goal (whether from conviction or for public consumption one cannot say) for four years. As recently as Mr. Kissinger’s last visit to Paris he carried with him, as he told the press, “a plan for coalition.” On what basis of reasonable expectation? Between erstwhile enemies in a civil conflict, the only form of coalition that can occur is that which results when a snake swallows a rabbit. One side or another must be eventually engorged.

  How can there be compromise over a division so fundamental that it requires recourse to war? Could the South and North have agreed to stop fighting after Gettysburg and form a joint government? Or Robespierre share power with Louis XVI? Or Generalissimo Franco settle into coalition with Loyalists after the Spanish Civil War? Our own experience in Asia is a nearer guide.

  We pursued coalition doggedly and deludedly between the Nationalists and Communists in China in the years 1944–7 only to end in failure, in the defeat of our war aims in Asia, and in the final collapse of America’s client.

  The argument for coalition at that time seemed compelling, if not to professional observers in the field, at least to policy-makers in the capital who, following the law of their kind, evolve policy to fit a picture in their heads rather than to fit the situation. The basic premise and stated war aim of our effort in the Far East in World War II was a strong, stable, united China on our side after the war, to fill the vacuum that would be left by the defeat of Japan and maintain the peace and stability of Asia in the post-war world. The long-threatened outbreak of civil war in China would nullify that objective. To avert such an outcome, as well as for other short-term military reasons, coalition between the two fiercely inimical parties in China was, as we saw it, imperative. It seemed obtainable because both sides professed to want it and agreed to negotiate.

  The Communists’ desire was genuine because they intended to use coalition as a base from which to expand and were confident they could make it a stage on the way to national power, and also because as a participant in legal government they could receive American arms. For exactly these reasons Chiang Kai-shek had no intention whatever of opening his government to the camel’s nose, but under American pressure he had to play the game of negotiations because his already failing regime was dependent on American arms and other aid. Like any bargainer determined to avoid a fulfillment without overtly taking the negative, Chiang proposed terms unacceptable to the other side, in this case his control of the Communist armed forces. Equally unprepared to commit suicide, the Communists in their turn proposed terms and safeguards unacceptable to Chiang.

  With the U.S. as anxious broker, demands and concessions, deadlocks and renewals continued for two and a half years, past the end of World War II, with the dispatch by President Truman of the outstanding American figure of the war, General George Marshall, as mediator. He persisted for a year, but as mediator the U.S. was in the end unavailing, having restricted its options in advance all to one side. Although in one moment of transitory agreement Chiang and Mao were photographed across a table raising their glasses to each other with cordial smiles of an old hate, there never was a real possibility of the two camps reaching mutually acceptable terms, since the survival of one necessarily meant the demise of the other.

  As General Stilwell observed, wryly watching the progress of the Marshall mission, “George can’t walk on water.” If George could not, can we expect more of Le Duc Tho, President Nixon, or Henry Kissinger?

  Coalition, despite its support by a variety of doves, has never been more than a fragile front to permit us to withdraw with what the Nixon administration calls “honor,” a word used to fill the absence of any other rationale. As such it is not worth the spending of one more life. To walk out of Vietnam might still be done with dignity. Let us forgo for a little while further talk of honor.

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  New York Times, May 26, 1972.

  The Citizen Versus the Military

  THE RELATION OF THE CIVILIAN CITIZEN to the military is a subject usually productive of instant emotion and very little rational thinking. Peace-minded people seem to disapprove study of the soldier, on the theory that if starved of attention he will eventually vanish. That is unlikely. Militarism is simply the organized form of natural aggression. The same people who march to protest in the afternoon will stand in line that evening to see the latest in sadistic movies and thoroughly enjoy themselves watching blood and pain, murder, torture, and rape.

  To register one’s dissent from the war in Vietnam by expressing disgust for the military and turning one’s back on whatever shape the military wears is a natural impulse. But the error of that war, together with two other developments—the newly acquired permanence of the military role in our society and the shift to an all-volunteer force—are powerful, urgent reasons why more enlightened and better-educated citizens should not turn their backs and not abdicate their responsibility for controlling military policies.

  Earlier in this century the French writer Julien Benda elaborated his thesis of “the treason of the intellectuals.” He accused them of betraying the life of the mind and the realm of reason by descending into the arena of political, social, and national passions. Now we have a treason of the intellectuals in reverse. While military-industrial and military-political interests penetrate all policy-making and add their weight to every political decision, the enlightened citizen refuses his participation, climbs out of the arena, and leaves control to the professionals of war.

  Let us look at the facts of the case.

  Contrary to the general impression, nuclear firepower, because it is too lethal to use, has reduced, not enlarged, the scope of war, with the secondary and rather sinister result that while unlimited war is out, limited war is in, not as a last resort in the old-fashioned way, but as the regular, on-going support of policy.

  This development means that the military arm will be used more for political and ideological ends than in the past, and that because of chronic commitment and t
he self-multiplying business of deterrence and a global strategy of preparedness for two and a half wars—or whatever is this week’s figure—the technological, industrial, and governmental foundations for this enterprise have become so gigantic, extended, and pervasive that they affect every act of government and consequently all our lives.

  We now maintain two thousand military bases in thirty-three countries and have Military Assistance Advisory groups functioning in fifty countries and disbursing arms and aid amounting to nearly $4 billion a year. To furnish these programs in addition to the war in Vietnam and the regular armed forces of the United States, there are defense plants or installations in 363 out of the 435 congressional districts in this country—in five-sixths of the total.