Half a century ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson made a decision that still haunts the American memory today. In February 1965, Johnson announced the now-infamous bombing campaign Operation Rolling Thunder. Fifty years later, it is hard not to notice a dark sense of déjà vu. Every day, headlines report the progress of American airstrikes and the intensifying bombing campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Since last August, the United States, joined by a host of allies, has led a surge of new airstrikes in Iraq and Syria as part of Operation Inherent Resolve. And over the past six months, the United States alone has deployed more than 5,000 weapons against ISIL.
As efforts continue to escalate, the historical parallels are impossible to ignore. By the 1960s, in the midst of the Cold War, Americans were tired after forces in Korea had failed to roll back communism. Today, recovering from the longest war in US history, Americans are similarly weary of international conflict. In practice, the United States has almost blindly supported the Iraqi government in its confrontation with a local, nonstate actor. The war in Southeast Asia similarly brought US support to South Vietnam against the throes of a guerrilla movement. Given the similar context for both conflicts, it is not surprising that so many — from Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to Paul Findley, one of the principal architects of the War Powers Resolution — have compared US efforts in the Middle East today to Vietnam.
Considering the psychological toll Vietnam took on the United States, the historical similarities between the two campaigns might seem troublesome. But it is clear that Operation Inherent Resolve has fundamental advantages over its historical parallel. With a firm moral stance, joint operations on the ground and a global coalition of support, efforts against ISIL are better positioned for success.
Since airstrikes began in August 2014, the fight against the Islamic State has been one of significant moral magnitude. Though President Obama initially dismissed ISIL as “a jayvee team” last January, he has since supported increased pressure against it. When ISIL advanced into Iraq, the world watched as over 40,000 Yazidis — a Kurdish religious group — were left stranded on Mount Sinjar. In response, Obama authorized humanitarian aid and offensive airstrikes in order “to prevent a potential act of genocide.” Since then, numerous developments, including ISIL beheadings of civilian hostages, mistreatment of women and children and the recent execution of a Jordanian pilot, have framed the fight against ISIL as an international moral struggle. It is not just about defeating a threat to nations, but also about destroying a threat to humanity. As such, Obama’s recent proposal for an Authorization for Use of Military Force carries a strong sense of ethical resolve that has garnered support from both the American public and the international community.
Certainly one could argue that Vietnam, too, was a moral struggle. The Western world at the time saw communism as a challenge to its way of life — one that threatened to bring such evils as starvation and nuclear war. Many Americans believed that the Vietnamese needed to be “saved” from such treatment and brought to join the West against the growing communist sphere of influence. Yet the Vietnam War is remembered less as a moral struggle than as a misguided confrontation with Vietnamese political interests. Beneath the surface of the Vietnamese cry for communism was a longing for independence after decades of French colonial rule.
In some respects, it might seem that the Islamic State is a nationalist movement much like that of the North Vietnamese. After years of American presence in the Middle East and gains in Shiite influence across the region, ISIL seeks to reinvigorate Sunni influence in the form of a caliphate. By calling itself a state, ISIL invokes notions of sovereignty and self-determination. Its calls for nationalism, however, have gone beyond the state-bound violence of Vietnam. Over the past six months, ISIL has held journalists for ransom, called upon foreign fighters to attack their own nations and published online videos of their killings for the world to watch. These are not civil longings for statehood or nationally-motivated acts of resistance but rather violent rebukes of modern civilization.
Operation Inherent Resolve’s moral strength, however, would be meaningless without the support of joint operations on the ground. Fifty years ago, as American airstrikes escalated in North Vietnam, this strategy was not present. Despite the bombing campaigns, South Vietnamese forces were unable to launch ground offensives into North Vietnam. Without boots on the ground, bombing could only be so effective. From the sky there is no way of securing gained territory or properly deterring the amassment of new forces. Additionally, blind bombing without a ground follow-up can create increased resentment against the foreign force. In asymmetric warfare, airstrikes are only effective if combined with a parallel effort on the ground.
These joint ground operations are essential to the fight against ISIL. While American-led efforts have regained at least 1 percent of ISIL-held territory in Iraq, ISIL has expanded substantially in Syria, now controlling one-third of the country. The difference between these two fronts is the extent to which Operation Inherent Resolve has joint ground support. In Iraq, the United States works with local Kurdish peshmerga forces more regularly. In recapturing the Syrian city of Kobani, international airstrikes worked together with Kurdish fighters. Generally, cooperation is limited in Syria, where civil war continues to ravage the country. Kurdish support on the ground allows Operation Inherent Resolve to more effectively deter the spread of ISIL, while working with the local populace. And joint operations have an additional advantage: fewer American boots on the ground.
Fortunately, even if the United States were to send ground troops back to the Middle East, as former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has suggested, it would not be acting alone. The American-led coalition to rollback ISIL lies in stark contrast to the unilateral actions the United States took 50 years ago. There was little international support when the country sent advisors, then ground troops and bombers to Vietnam. In its Cold War mindset, the United States tried to prevent the communist dominoes from falling in Southeast Asia, but in doing so only succeeded in enforcing a bipolar framework of the world. The United States and the Soviet Union were at odds with one another, and neutral countries, like Korea and Vietnam, were forced into the middle. This bipolarity worked against the United States in Vietnam, since no country wanted to get involved in the tug-of-war between the world’s two superpowers.
Five decades later, however, the world is less static. Today the United States is the world’s leading hegemon and global superpower, and without the dichotomous world struggle, it is easy for other states to fall under the wings of US leadership. Along with Western allies Canada and Australia, players like Jordan and Saudi Arabia have joined the United States in confronting the regional unrest caused by ISIL’s rise to power. Unlike in Vietnam, widespread opposition to ISIL has prompted international action and produced a far-reaching coalition of support. Such prevalent backing only deepens the multilateral resolve against ISIL.
ISIL faces a United States that has vastly adapted its approach to confrontation since 1965. As McCain has pointed out, however, if Operation Inherent Resolve is to be successful, there needs to be a clear US strategy in the Middle East. This will help avoid the gradualism of escalated troop deployments that created such backlash 50 years ago. In defining its strategy, the United States should consider the enemy’s goals — an essential aspect of military planning that was neglected in Vietnam.
ISIL has said precisely what its goal is: establishing a caliphate. It is fighting for both a territorial state and an ideological mission. Still, in facing ISIL so far, the United States has only measured spatial success, as was the case in Vietnam. The Department of Defense talks of “kilometers regained,” not of people saved. To secure a strategic victory, the United States should work with local populations to curb the spread of ISIL propaganda and find solutions that complement pure military operations in Iraq and Syria. If the United States has truly learned the lessons of Vietnam, it will act quickly and efficiently, limiting senseless civilian casualties and relaying honest updates to the American public. Acting with this clear vision, the United States can avoid repeating the failures of its past.
A half-century ago, the United States failed to contain communism in Southeast Asia and lost a war that, in early forecasts, looked winnable. Over the last several decades, Vietnam has become synonymous with American failure and, in particular, with the overextension of US forces and an overeagerness to intervene in other countries’ local affairs. Dropping more than 600,000 tons of bombs over North Vietnam, the United States ignored wartime realities and misrepresented its South Vietnamese counterparts — disregarding international objections to entanglement and dangerously mischaracterizing North Vietnamese nationalist tendencies. Without a proper strategy to confront this anti-West ideological struggle, the United States failed in Southeast Asia. Today the memory of Vietnam evokes these images of false characterization and hyper-intervention.
Over the last five decades, however, the United States has learned from its misguided past. Framed as a moral necessity against Islamic extremism, Operation Inherent Resolve is a stronger bombing campaign than Operation Rolling Thunder. It is a smarter strategy, tying together local ground forces with Western air power in joint operations. And Operation Inherent Resolve is a wider campaign, bringing together numerous states in a multilateral coalition against ISIL. Five decades later, the echoes of Rolling Thunder have begun to shape American foreign policy for the better.