Posted by
Old Bill on Monday, May 12, 2008 11:43:32 PM
"In war," said Gen. Douglas MacArthur, "there is no substitute for victory." But what is victory? We are tempted to assume that if our troops can walk across the battlefield on the bodies of dead enemy soldiers, as did Phillip of Macedon at Charonea, then that is victory--end of story. But is it?
It is certainly victory in battle. But victory in battle is neither always sufficient to guarantee victory in war, nor is it always even necessary to achieve victory in war. After the Communist blitzkrieg that conquered South Vietnam in 1975, Col. Harry Summers reports having a conversation with a general of the North Vietnamese Army in which he pointed out to him: "You know you never defeated us in a major engagement." To which the Communist thought for a moment, and then replied: "That is true. But it is also irrelevent."
After the defeat of their Tet Offensive in 1968 by the American and South Vietnamese armed forces, the Communist leaders of North Vietnam reevaluated their grand strategy and political policy, and decided that henceforth they would not seek victory on the battlefield--not as long as the American armed forces were present--but rather would wage a campaign of psychological--actually political warfare--aiming at victory on the streets, then in the voting booths, and finally in the Congress of the United States.
They could not hope to defeat the American/ARVN armed forces, but they could continue to wage war until, by bleeding the Americans, they ultimately convinced the American people that the war was either not winnable, or not worth the cost of winning. In order to achieve this political victory, they had to rely as much on the assistance of the left wing of the Democrat Party, which had shown itself in the streets of Chicago in 1968 to be as much in favor of Communist victory and American/South Vietnamese defeat as the Communists themselves. They also received the assistance of the Democrat Party-dominated American news media, which continued to portray the war as lost or unwinnable, even in the face of the continuing defeat of every Communist military campaign for the next 5 years.
All that was left was for the cynical Le Duc Tho and the naive (or even more cynical?) Henry Kissinger to produce a piece of paper in Paris that promised 'peace in our time'--to borrow a phrase. When the Communist blitzkrieg of 1975 was launched 2 years later, in murderous violation of this peace agreement, the Democrat-controlled American Congress had no qualms about refusing to send even material aid to the ARVN armed forces to stem the onslaught. Victory had been achieved by our enemies ultimately on the battlefield, but fundamentally by their decade-long program of political warfare against the enemy they could not defeat militarily--us.
In this the Communist leaders revealed that they were familiar not only with the works of Marx, Lenin, and Mao, but also with those of Sun Tzu. The master had written that: "Victory in battle through superior weapons, troops and training is good, but is not as good as ensuring victory beforehand by skillful manuevering befor battle, defeating the enemy's plan befor battle is even joined; victory by defeating the enemy's plan is good, but is not as good as victory through skillful diplomacy which defeats the enemy's policy, isolating him and creating such a powerful alliance on our side that he recognizes his defeat is inevitable, and submits without even going to war. This is the best way to win. Winning by destroying the enemy's farms, towns and cities is the worst way to win." But he didn't say it wasn't better than losing.