The Last War—and the Next?July/August 2019 185
ment.” In the decade
that followed, President
Ronald Reagan sought
to overcome what he and
others called “the
Vietnam syndrome” and
shake the United States
free from what he
believed was an exces-
sive reluctance to
confront global threats.
But it was not until 1990
that the United States
faced an act o aggres-
sion so stark that the
debate shifted again.
In August 1990,
Saddam Hussein’s Iraq
invaded and occupied
Kuwait. “International
conÁicts attract histori-
cal analogies the way
honey attracts bears,”
noted Alexander Haig, a
former U.S. secretary o
state and former su-
preme allied com-
mander o ¤¬¢£, in a
New York Times op-ed
that December. “Which
analogy, Munich or Vietnam,... has
more to tell us?” His answer was the
former, which meant that Saddam had
to be confronted. Rather than ignore or
contest the Vietnam analogy, Haig
twisted it to suit his purposes. And to
leave no doubt, Haig also drew a
somewhat contrarian lesson from
Vietnam, arguing that it suggested the
United States should not stop at liberat-
ing Kuwait: it must destroy the Iraqi
regime entirely. “The Vietnam analogy
instructs us not that we should refrain
from using force,” he wrote, “but that iBy the 1970s, the Vietnam quagmire
that resulted in part from that reading
oÊ history began to compete with Munich
as the dominant historical analogy.
Just as Munich became a shorthand for
policy approaches that were overly passive,
Vietnam became a warning against
those deemed too interventionist. Reluc-
tant to plunge the United States back
into conÁict, President Jimmy Carter
pursued détente with the Soviet Union.
In response, critics attacked him for
“tapping the cobblestones o Munich”
and fostering a “culture o appease-