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BOOK REVIEWS 213 of operationally distinguishing levels of security interest is compounded by an undifferentiated approach to threats. Thus, as Gaddis shows, symmetrists and asymmetrists alike have, in practice, responded in an undiscriminating way— except for the availability of economic and military means—to a wide variety of actual and potential threats of Communist expansion; for all administrations have been equally enthralled by the metaphor of Munich and falling dominoes. But a truly selective and also effective strategy of containment must be as discriminating in its conception of vital interests and threats as in its choice of means. In the end, Gaddis despairs of combining the best elements of the strategies of symmetry and asymmetry. But his own analysis of the strategic dynamics of U.S. cold war policy suggests that a more discriminating mix of the methods of augmentation and retrenchment might promise some relieffrom "the constraints that have locked national strategy into this unimaginative cycle for so long." —Robert E. Osgood Why We Were in Vietnam. By Norman Podhoretz. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982. 240 pp. How do nations cope with the experience of defeat? After the physical debts are paid, the material scars healed, the meaning of defeat must still to be confronted . Commentary on defeat: its causes and consequences, is the visible part of a process all societies must undergo in the aftermath of failure. The shock of recognition of collective failure forces a reexamination of identity itself. The images, the unstated assumptions, the operational codes; all of the labels and the behaviors that define a nation to itself are suspect in the wake of defeat. In this process of reinterpretation, new mythologies are created to frame the experience. Old myths and models for action are judged in light of defeat, and they may ultimately be held responsible. The experience of failure is either integrated into accepted national tradition, or tradition itself is revised to reflect the historical centrality of defeat. Then, past glories become forever suspect as mere preparation for failure: the preparation for defeat, the false witness of national destiny. Norman Podhoretz's Why We Were in Vietnam is a polemic in the true sense of the Greek polemos, meaning war. For he is engaged in the bitterest of combats: that which is waged for the "hearts and minds" of a people. For America is now at war over the interpretation of our past. It is not simply the description of the fact of Vietnam that is at stake, but the emotional sources of national identity and pride. From the moment of retreat from Vietnam, the revisionists of tradition have held sway. In this period of initial ascendancy, the emotional high ground has been held by flagellant anti-Americans: those whose objective was not simply to vilify American behavior in Vietnam, but to use it to discredit American values and identity, and force societal change in what they perceived as a fundamentally unjust system. Podhoretz's broadside can be seen as part of a second phase in this war of 214 SAIS REVIEW interpretation: the counterattack on the legitimacy of revisionism. Representing a traditional world view already discredited by defeat, the traditionalists seek not to reenshrine their old doctrines, only to keep revisionism from becoming the standard lens through which the American past is viewed. He is rebuilding history backward from the awful fact of Vietnam. Podhoretz seeks to integrate the experience of defeat into a large continuity of American behavior and policy in the postwar era. Paradoxically, of course, so do the revisionists, but with a far different intent. In this context, the title, Why We Were in Vietnam, is a significant clue to Podhoretz's purpose. "Why" does not mean: why we should, why it was good, why it was necessary to be in Vietnam. He is no apologist for scheming and dissembling national administrations. "Why" is an attempt to show the indivisibility of Vietnam from the purpose and objectives of American global strategy after 1950. Podhoretz seeks to demonstrate why this strategy went awry in Southeast Asia. He is saying that our postwar approaches to the world cannot be discarded and impugned because of a single defeat. American values and...

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