As America's Vietnam expedition was becoming a quagmire in 1966, Vermont Senator George Aiken famously said that we should "declare victory and go home." The war, of course, dragged on for several more years, and North Vietnam won. A third of a century later, Vietnam is a quasi-capitalist country, cultivating U.S. investment, consumer markets and tourism. If only we had declared victory and gone home in 1966, we might have spared countless American and Vietnamese lives. History's ultimate shape would not have been different.
At the time, "staying the course" in Vietnam, however foolishly, was posed as a test of American credibility. Who would follow the lead of a superpower who tucked tail and ran, as Lyndon Johnson liked to put it?
Who indeed? Less than two decades after Washington finally decided to cut American losses in Vietnam, communism was a shambles and the United States was the world's sole superpower.
Something of the same choice faces us in Iraq. Only, unlike our situation in Vietnam circa 1966, we really have already won something substantial -- if we don't worsen our situation with a needless war.
Saddam Hussein is now bottled up, unable to threaten his neighbors, unable to pursue a serious program of nuclear or chemical or biological weapons. America's policy of threatening war while working through the United Nations has been vindicated. So why not declare victory and go home?
Better yet, why not empower a UN multilateral force to back up the inspections? Jessica Matthews of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has been promoting such an approach since last fall. If Bush needs an additional fig leaf to shift policy, here it is.
If Bush were shrewd, he would allow the Europeans to negotiate a compromise along these lines -- and bring the U.S. troops home. He would be hailed globally as tough, prudent and statesmanlike. His popularity ratings at home would rebound.
Is this conceivable? Not to the Pentagon, but perhaps to the ultimate Bush inner circle -- Karl Rove and Poppy Bush.
The president may insist that he is not basing his foreign policy on public opinion, but Rove and Bush the Elder know better. Anything other than an easy, costless victory and a clean aftermath will be a political nightmare. As reports from Korea make clear, the Iraq war has not even commenced and the ancillary damage is mounting. While the administration keeps obsessively focused on Iraq and alienating key allies, more serious dangers loom.
If Iraq were not dominating the news, the incipient debacle in Korea would be on the front pages. In case you missed it, Colin Powell was rebuffed on Monday in Seoul, when the Chinese, Australians and South Koreans flatly rejected administration entreaties to bring multilateral pressure on North Korea to disarm.
Multilateralism is a two-way street. Bush should appreciate that he can't blow off the Chinese in the United Nations and then expect them to do his bidding when the United States finds a multilateral cloak convenient.
Instead, Powell was urged to reverse U.S. policy and begin direct talks with the North Koreans. In the meantime, the South Koreans, longtime U.S. allies, are so disgusted with U.S. policy that they are proceeding, over Bush's objections, with their own bilateral entente with the North, weapons of mass destruction or no.
The other day, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) invited an audience at the University of Massachusetts to consider what a victory Bush would be trumpeting if the North Koreans were behaving like the Iraqis -- allowing in UN weapons inspectors and renouncing weapons of mass destruction. He'd declare the crisis over.
The Bush administration imagines that if Saddam fell, one regime after another in the Middle East would conclude that they had to come to terms with U.S. power. But the region has its own schisms and tensions, which would be exacerbated by a war.
The administration also believes that once war started, the world would follow Bush's lead. More likely, other nations would work to constrain the reckless use of U.S. power.
Bush insists that war, even if ill-conceived, is a test of America's credibility. By that test, bringing the troops home is unthinkable.
But we have already achieved our foreign policy goal of neutralizing Saddam as a regional threat. Which kind of America will win more respect in the world -- one that uses its power recklessly, against the advice of key allies, or one that shapes a broad consensus, builds international institutions and contains threats without needless and destabilizing wars?
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of the Prospect.
This column originally appeared in yesterday's Boston Globe.
