ABSTRACT
The very word "Vietnam" has become "an emotive," Michael Howard has written, "a term for the generation as 'Munich' or 'Pearl Harbor' was for the last." From the Angolan crisis of 1975 to the Persian Gulf crisis of 1987 and especially on the question of United States intervention in Central America, analogies have repeatedly been drawn with Vietnam. The liberal warning that each new intervention will lead to another Vietnam is less than convincing. The Communists succeeded in Vietnam not because of the strength of people's war but because of the unique position they enjoyed in the political history of Vietnam, an ingredient not easily replicated elsewhere. Vietnam also suggests the essentiality and basic fragility of public support for major foreign policy ventures. Moving from the specific back again to the general, Vietnam also demonstrates the value—indeed the necessity—of history in making and implementing foreign policy decisions.
