THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, June 1, 1995 TAG: 9506010402
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL SIZEMORE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines
Robert McNamara, whose new book on the Vietnam War has rekindled passions over the U.S. failure there, said Wednesday the nation is in danger of repeating its mistakes in the former Yugoslavia.
McNamara's new book, ``In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam,'' concludes that the divisive war he helped direct in southeast Asia as defense secretary was a tragic misapplication of U.S. military force.
In a news conference via telephone with reporters across the nation, McNamara said he wrote the book for two reasons: to help heal the wounds the war inflicted on the nation and to lay out lessons that can be studied to avoid a repeat of the Vietnam debacle.
Several of those lessons are applicable today, he said, as the United States considers ratcheting up its involvement in the warring Balkans.
``I don't draw the lesson from Vietnam that this country should never apply military force other than to answer a direct threat to our shoreline,'' McNamara said. ``But today, in Bosnia, I'm inclined to believe that military force cannot be applied advantageously.''
Among the lessons that should be applied in the former Yugoslav states, he said, are two key U.S. miscalculations in Vietnam: ``the degree to which nationalism can motivate people to fight and die for a cause they believe in'' and ``the degree to which high-technology weaponry can be used to reconstruct a failed state.''
Age and experience have mellowed McNamara, the brainy ex-president of Ford Motor Co., who joined the Kennedy administration in 1961 as a can-do whiz kid, full of heady optimism. Back then, he said, ``I believed every problem had a solution. I'm at a stage now to admit some problems have no solutions.''
Another important lesson of Vietnam that is applicable today, he said, is that ``no president should ever take this nation to war without the approval of the American people as evidenced by action of the Congress.''
Congress did pass one measure, the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, that some viewed as authorizing the U.S. escalation in Vietnam. ``But it was never Congress' intent that those words would be used that way, so in a very real sense we didn't have the authority,'' McNamara said.
``I was happy to read today that the president will not introduce troops in Bosnia without congressional approval.''
On other topics, McNamara said:
Today, 20 years after the U.S. pullout from Vietnam, it's time for the United States to restore full diplomatic relations with its former foe. Vietnam is ``cooperating fully'' with efforts to learn the fate of Americans still listed as missing in action, and, with U.S. help, is in a position to become a new economic power in Asia.
Now that the Cold War is over, U.S. military spending should be cut faster. ``We haven't shrunk it as much as I believe we can and should shrink it. We are using the defense budget as an unemployment insurance policy. . . . We're keeping bases open we don't need; we're keeping plants open we don't need; we are buying equipment we don't need.''
At the current rate, McNamara said, in the year 2000 the United States will be spending only 3 to 5 percent less on defense than the Nixon administration was spending at the height of the Cold War - a level he called ``totally disproportionate to our defense needs.''
Many critics have misconstrued his conclusion that the Vietnam War was ``wrong, terribly wrong,'' saying that if he knew it was wrong, he had a duty to speak out then. It is only in retrospect that he reached that conclusion, McNamara said.
``At the time, we believed that while we were not succeeding militarily, we were preventing the extension of communist control over Asia, and potentially Europe and the United States as well.
``At times, I think, we exaggerated the extent of the Soviet threat,'' he added, but still, ``it was a very, very dangerous world.''
For those Vietnam veterans and their families who feel betrayed by his revelations, McNamara said, ``We owe it to those who served to try to ensure that their children and their grandchildren don't have to repeat the mistakes that were made.'' ILLUSTRATION: Robert McNamara, ex-defense secretary: We must heed Vietnam's
lessons.
by CNB