Realism and the Political: Reflections on Vietnam

 

Realism and the Political: Reflections on Vietnam

Peter Schultz

 

                  Here is an interesting passage from John M. Newman’s book, JFK and Vietnam: “McNamara did not question [General] Harkins’ view that the war was being won….Harkins’ claim seems so incredibly naïve that one may ask: how could the American commander [and the Secretary of Defense McNamara] be so out of touch with reality? … We do not know what motivated Harkins, but whatever it was it surely defies a sound military explanation.” [pp. 287 and 288]

 

                  Newman fails to see that McNamara and Harkins, et. al., were realists. They embraced realism as a doctrine or dogma and so long as they did, success was taken for granted, at least once the realistic way forward was discovered and applied. That’s the essence of doctrinaire realism, viz., that being realistic guarantees success. Doctrinaire realists have no reason to doubt their eventual success because that’s the promise of being a realist, being successful. One becomes a realist in order to be successful. So, it is only by questioning and abandoning realism as doctrine that failure becomes visible, becomes a real possibility. So long as elites embrace realism as a doctrine, just so long will they be unable to see failure as a real possibility. Realists always presume when facing what looks like failure something like the following: “We just haven’t found the realistic way forward and if we keep looking and trying, we will find that way. Guaranteed!”

 

                  So, McNamara and Harkins, et. al., not only had “a wholly unrealistic view of the war,” they also embraced a doctrinaire view of the world that blinded them to “real reality,” which includes of course the possibility of failure. Being realists was, unbeknownst to McNamara and Harkins, their real problem. Their problem was a philosophical problem, not a military or a political problem. Their philosophy of realism blinded them to the possibility of failure, which was obvious to many U.S. and Vietnamese soldiers and even to many Vietnamese peasants and many American dissenters. “The best and the brightest” were neither.