conference proceedings - Australian Army

THE VIETNAM SYNDROME: A BRIEF HISTORY
We may now ask ourselves, at a generation’s remove, whether the Vietnam Syndrome
made any real difference in the conduct of American statecraft? If we could somehow
factor out the Vietnam Syndrome for a moment, would the American domestic temper,
which is the real engine of our foreign policies, have pointed us in the same directions
at about the same time? I think a case might be made that there would have been
differences in degree, minor variations, but not in kind. No cliché should ever exercise
much influence over a nation’s affairs.
Such questions are of course no longer of theoretical interest only. So it is just as
well that the power of the Vietnam Syndrome has faded to that of a rhetorical artifact.
As the metaphor is no longer capable of bearing too much intellectual or emotional
weight, history has moved along in its unsentimental way. Perhaps this new century
has a full supply of its own grand clichés, waiting to be requisitioned—but I hope not.
War is too important to be left to history.
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