Publication of the week: Professor David Armstrong

15 February 2016

David Armstrong, “No End of a Lesson: Vietnam and the Nature of Moral Choice in Foreign Policy”, in Cathal Nolan (ed.) Ethics and Statecraft: the Moral Dimension of International Affairs (3rd ed., Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2015), 47-72. ISBN: 978-1-4408-3354-0 (pbk).

In an earlier edition of this book I considered the US involvement in Vietnam in terms of three distinct moral perspectives. The first depicts American policy in terms of a narrative of US decisions relating to Vietnam that showed, at each crucial turn, successive administrations arriving at a choice of policy that was both morally wrong and, as things transpired, dangerously misguided in other respects too. In this narrative a clear moral parable would emerge: if statesmen strive to do the right thing according to widely accepted ethical norms they will find they have also served their country’s national interests better than the ‘realist’ assertion that they should disregard morality and look only at their country’s national interests. The second narrative argues that, in reality, the US acted with the noblest of intentions throughout its involvement in Vietnam because, through this lens, the conflict there was part of a larger battle between good and evil. Freedom and democracy were indivisible and a threat to those values anywhere was a threat to the US itself. The ‘lesson of Munich’ should never be forgotten: only firmness and strength in the face of the relentless march of totalitarian communism would halt and eventually turn back the tide. The third portrayal of the war is in more value-neutral terms as an unfolding tragedy. This narrative shows individuals not in control of events but swept along by a relentless tide of inevitability, which might be taken as evidence for the thesis that, most of the time, policy makers cannot be held to account for their actions. Even the domestic opponents of the war were themselves participants in the tragedy because they perceived events through a lens of moral absolutism that precluded support for the combination of firmness and willingness to negotiate that characterised the Johnson and Nixon presidencies.

That edition of the book appeared in 2003. Inevitably the US-led invasion of Iraq was dominating politics then but I decided it was too early to succumb to the temptation to apply this perspective to the new war. By the time of the third edition in 2015, although the final outcome of that intervention is still unclear, I thought it worthwhile making some cautious and tentative comparisons between the two wars. Had history repeated itself as greater tragedy, rather than as farce (in the original Marxian version of the quote)? After considering that war against all three narratives I concluded with a suggestion that a fourth perspective advanced during the Vietnam war by Senator Fulbright might be the most appropriate. He talked in terms of the “arrogance of power”: the conviction that American military and economic power could overcome all obstacles. As he put it “power tends to confuse itself with virtue and a great nation is peculiarly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God’s favour”. He argued that there were two Americas, “one is generous and humane, the other narrowly egotistical; one is self-critical, the other self-righteous; one is sensible, the other romantic; one is inquiring, the other pontificating; one is moderate, the other filled with passionate intensity; one is judicious and the other arrogant in its use of great power”.

Professor David Armstrong is the author or editor of books on Chinese foreign policy, revolutionary states in world politics, international organisations, the end of the Cold War and international law and international relations as well as over 150 articles, book chapters and papers for the BBC World Service.