Dereliction of Duty (Book Review/ Why It Is Relevant Today)

The Constitution of the United States of America

Article 1, Section 1. All legislative Powers heron granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

Section 8. The Congress shall have Power To…provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States;…To declare War...

This is the means by which the United States goes to war, or it use to be. The president proceeds before Congress with a formal declaration and outlines the justification for war. In doing so, the constitutional theory of ‘checks and balances’ is carried out, since the president is the commander and chief. The last time Congress formally declared war was in 1941 bringing America into World War II. Since that time, Congress and the President has agreed to resolutions authorizing the use of military force. These resolutions have continued to shape U.S. military policy through appropriations and oversight. Since the President of the United States is the Commander and Chief, he or she directs the military involvement during the life of the resolution. Because these are ‘resolutions’ and not a declared war, presidents are careful not to call them, well what they really are, ‘war.’ Instead, they are called, ‘conflicts.’

On August 7, 1964, the United States Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. This joint resolution of Congress (H.J. RES 1145) gave President Lyndon Johnson authority to increase U.S. involvement in the war between North and South Vietnam₁. This was the beginning of the Vietnam Conflict and it would last until 1975.

The Vietnam Conflict was a turning point in America’s resolve to becoming the world’s police force. We had just fought three years in Korea (June 25, 1950 to July 27, 1953) to a stalemate. The Korean Conflict cost 36,516 American lives and over 100,000 wounded American servicemen. The conflict was settled where we started, the 38th parallel. As we continued to send men and material to Vietnam, we never learned the lesson from the Korean Conflict. Or did we? We fought to a stalemate in Korea so we could claim we won, or achieved our objective. We stopped communist aggression.

I have read a lot of books on Vietnam, from soldiers’ experiences, to the history of that illogical war. Yet, no one explains this war, and the lead up to the war, better than Lt. General H.R. McMaster₂ in his book, Dereliction of Duty. Lt. General McMaster’s analysis is spot on crazy accurate, and its contents should be reviewed today before going off to war, or excuse me a conflict.

As North Vietnam continued to provide weapons and material to the Viet Cong₃ in South Vietnam, America made a decision. We were going to stop North Vietnam from taking control of South Vietnam. If we could hold back the North Vietnamese from taking over South Vietnam, we fulfilled our goal. We stopped communist aggression, just like we did in Korea. Although we made the decision to become involved in Vietnam, and that decision involved U.S. troops, we did not know how to achieve that goal.

McMaster reaches back to the administration of President Eisenhower and the end of the Korean Conflict as a preamble to the Vietnam Conflict. He reviews the administration of President Kennedy and how he neutralized the power of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and the defense department. When Kennedy picked Robert McNamara to be his Secretary of Defense, Kennedy was not only picking a ‘yes’ man but someone who shared the same goals and methods of achieving those goals. McNamara proved his loyalty to Kennedy during the Bay of Pigs crisis. It was because of the Bay of Pigs that Kennedy vowed he could not trust the military or the JCS. Kennedy then structured his cabinet in which McNamara and his brother Robert Kennedy had his upmost confidence. On October 1, 1962, Kennedy installed Army Chief of Staff Lt. General Maxwell Davenport Taylor as Chairman of the JCS. Kennedy liked Taylor’s argument that, “massive retaliation be supplemented with a military doctrine of ‘flexible response'”(p. 10). Taylor and McNamara shared the same basic philosophy and both believed the Pentagon needed reform.

Regardless of military reform or trust in his cabinet, Kennedy made it clear that South Vietnam had to fight its own war. Kennedy was willing to send military ‘advisers’ into South Vietnam, even mount covert operations in North Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. However, a line was drawn on sending U.S. combat units. There would be “no boots on the ground” in Southeast Asia under a Kennedy administration.₄ However, presidential administrations change and no administration changed faster than that of John F. Kennedy. On November 22, 1963, the Kennedy administration, because of an assassin’s bullet(s), ceased to exist, and Lyndon Johnson found himself Commander and Chief.

One of Johnson’s first decisions as President was to keep Robert Kennedy as Attorney General and Robert McNamara as Secretary of Defense. Robert Kennedy was Johnson’s thorn and to retain him as Attorney General meant keeping an eye on him. However, McNamara was different as McMaster highlights in the book. McNamara was a numbers man. McMaster mentions McNamara “used line charts to depict change over time in the counterinsurgency effort in Vietnam. He tracked the numbers of people killed on both sides, the rate of VietCong activity, weapons captured, number of aircraft sorties, North Vietnamese naval activity, the percent of South Vietnamese river boats on patrol, and the number of patrol days for South Vietnamese units”(p. 91). Later, President Johnson would go through all of McNamara’s numbers and advice, and conclude the United States needed too, “kill more VietCong.”

McNamara firmly believed the military could no longer use massive military force to destroy an enemy. The advent of the nuclear age made that impossible and the Cuban Missile Crisis proved just that. Had the United States decided to invade Cuba, Russia would have likely invaded Berlin, followed by nuclear annihilation. McNamara brought this belief to every meeting regarding the Vietnam Conflict. As the Vietnam Conflict progressed, McNamara carried the lessons from the Cuban Missile Crisis into the strategy meetings. According to McMaster, an aid to McNamara once told Adm. David Lamar McDonald, “I know you military fellows have always been taught to get in there with both feet and get it over with, but this is a different kind of war” (p. 72). Indeed, it would be different.

Johnson’s domestic agenda, The Great Society, would be foremost in his legacy. Vietnam would be his downfall. Johnson could not sacrifice votes for his domestic programs to a wayward conflict in Southeast Asia. Once again, he turned to McNamara. McNamara’s job was to show the war in Vietnam should not worry Congress or the American public. No, Congress should just focus on the domestic agenda. However, in order to do this, McNamara had to turn the Joint Chiefs of Staff into a ‘yes’ instrument for Johnson and not true military advisors. McMaster hits this point home when he writes, “The body charged with providing the president with military advice and responsible for strategic planning permitted the president to commit the United States to war without consideration of the likely costs and consequences” (p. 261). No, Johnson wanted his ‘guns and butter.’

As the war progressed, Johnson would have the difficult decisions of either committing to a large scale war or negotiate a withdrawal of all troops, neither was an option. Johnson, as well as McNamara, knew that large scale war in Vietnam could ultimately end in a nuclear war with China or Russia. However, Johnson would never withdraw the troops and admit defeat. “Johnson, however, would not make a tough decision that would alienate constituencies on which his Great Society depended,” according to McMaster (p. 257).

By the Summer of 1965, Johnson would have deployed over 120,000 troops in South Vietnam. “By July 1965 it was no longer a question of whether the United States would deepen its involvement in Vietnam, but how the president would reconcile the demands of war with those of the Great Society” (p. 299). Yes, as McMaster paints the picture of the landscape in Vietnam, he comes to the conclusion that Johnson was now in a Catch 22 scenario. If he did not continue to increase the troops, he was abandoning his commitment to win the war, as he told Congress and the American public.

In the end, Vietnam consumed Johnson. It made him exit the presidential race of 1968. Even though Johnson was able to pass much of the legislation that made up his Great Society, he was always shadowed with the 58,220 American soldiers who died in Vietnam.

Now, why is this relevant today? Lt. General McMaster wrote this book in 1997, as previously noted. However, McMaster makes such a riveting analysis of Vietnam that I believe before any troops are deployed to fight, this book should be read, highlighted, and parts memorized. Since Vietnam, America has been to war with some success but still many failures.

In 1991, we deployed to Kuwait in Operation Desert Storm. But world situations had changed. The Soviet Union was no more and China did not have the nuclear capability or arm forces it has today. Chairman of the JCS Colin Powell used what would become the “Powell Doctrine.” The doctrine states that we should not go into a conflict unless with overwhelming force and to achieve a directive, a goal. This is the ‘shock and awe.’ We did this against Iraq. We removed them for Kuwait, our objective was accomplished and we left. However, had the Soviet Union still been in power, could we have “shocked and awed?”

But our military continues to make that same mistakes. The invasion of Iraq after September 11, 2001, where there was no connection to the terrorists attacks. The improper way Afghanastan was handled by the military. (Remember, we had the world backing in 2001. All agreed that terrorist must be stopped. Yet, this golden opportunity was squandered in Iraq).

Now move forward to 2023. Ukraine is bogged down in a war with Russia. The United States is sending aid to Ukraine but at this time no military personnel. Every war is different but the basic theory is the same. McMaster quotes Clausewitz regarding Vietnam, “the political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and means can never be considered in isolation from their purpose” (p. 309). Before we commit to sending troops to Ukraine or Eastern Europe, we must remember the lessons of Vietnam and other conflicts we fought. And so, I highly recommend this book be read before we do.

Subscripts

1. Originally the war was between North and South Vietnam, therefore, these two parties could call it a war.
2. When H.R. McMaster wrote this book, he was a Major and a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He retried as a Lieutenant General in 2018 (and therefore will be referred to as Lt. General McMaster in this review).
3. The VietCong were South Vietnamese supporters of the communist National Liberation Front in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War (known in Vietnam as the American War). They were allied with North Vietnam and the troops of Ho Chi Minh, who sought to conquer the south and create a unified, communist state of Vietnam.
4. Vietnam would not formally become an American War until December 31, 1964, when additional American combat units landed in Vietnam, bringing the total to 23,000 troops/advisors. (p. 210).