The purpose of foreign policy is not to provide an outlet for our own sentiments of hope or indignation; it is to shape real events in a real world. – John F. Kennedy
President Kennedy did not know about the world of Simple Reality or he might have been more successful in his foreign policy initiatives. As we are learning in this blog, worldview or context is all important in determining human behavior. The cost of refusing to acknowledge this profound understanding of the structural determinants that underlay the dysfunctional and unsustainable global village culture will continue to be horrific as the following historical examples will demonstrate.
The greatest tragedy in America’s history might at first glance be the Civil War. Brother against brother, father against son, American against fellow American. Certainly, the stakes were high. We were a nation on the verge of fragmentation, of dissolution, a nation facing the annulment of its constitutional bond with implications for the fate of humanity as a whole. This turned out to be a war that preserved the unity of what up to that time was a nation in the process of fulfilling a unique destiny, a nation seeking its highest identity.
It was to be the costliest war by far in our history in terms of lives lost and it was a conflict that left toxins that we are still “purging” from the national psyche. It is hard even from our current objective distance to see how that devastating struggle could have been avoided. An unavoidable war is somehow less tragic than an unnecessary war.
The American war in Vietnam can therefore be seen as the greatest tragedy in the history of the United States precisely because it was optional. It has also turned out to be second only to our Civil War in its poisonous effect on the collective soul of America. (This essay was written before the current devastating, and avoidable wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan.) The Vietnam War is a classic case study of how a worldview (P-B) can distort reality to the point where even the most intelligent policy makers are blinded by greed and an irrational paranoia.
The first American combat casualties prior to Vietnam occurred in 1954 when two civilian pilots were shot down trying to re-supply the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu. The defeat of the French that year left a power vacuum in Southeast Asia. This is when American foreign policy experts were faced with a paradigm choice. Notice the part fear played in making the choice of least awareness. Let us call the paradigm that the U.S. chose the “dominoe theory” which was based on the fear that if one nation in Asia “fell” to the spread of communism then its neighbors would fall one-by-one into the Communist block. This worldview assumes a monolithic communist conspiracy. That is to say that the communist nations were united in the common goal to spread communism even at the expense of their own national interests.
In the case of Vietnam the U.S. feared that the Chinese communists would support the Vietnamese communists in creating a communist state loyal to and under the domination of the powerful behemoth to the north. The geopolitical big picture would also have to assume that the U.S.S.R. would support China as a “big brother” in a common cause. The policy makers in the U.S. State Department could not see what many of us at the time had begun to intuit. Nor would they have dreamed the final irony that Ho Chi Minh (the Vietnamese communist leader) would quote from the American Declaration of Independence when he declared independence from China.
The other paradigm choice that the U.S. could have made would have acknowledged the dominance of nationalism, not monolithic communist ideology, as the basic source of energy driving the behavior of nations. This has been true since the advent of the nation state in the 16th century. Unfortunately, for the Americans, they had not recognized that there had been no paradigm shift away from national patriotism, even among communist nations. Just a cursory look at the tensions back then along the border between China and the U.S.S.R. and the centuries-old enmity between China and Vietnam would have been a clear warning to the U.S. that it was about to fall into the trap that could have been purposely set by the communists if they (the communist block) had been any more aware of the approaching insanity than the Americans were.
The melodrama began to unfold in the context of P-B with the unconscious superpowers or would-be-superpowers being sucked into the power vacuum with the most unconscious among them taking the role of the “naïve hero” of the western world. We can recognize that superhero because he is wearing the white hat. Again the irony, as you are probably beginning to guess, is that if the Americans had not rushed into the power vacuum to prevent the spread of Chinese-backed communism, the Soviets would have had to take the place of the U.S. to protect its national interests. The Russians have never properly thanked us for “taking the hit” for them. But since we have all ended up being the best of friends united in the war against the new totalitarianism on the block (fundamentalist Islamic religious totalitarianism) then we can conclude that it didn’t really matter in the long run. Which is, I suppose, precisely the point—why fight pointless wars?
To have any hope of creating a peaceful world, many of us will have to take a penetrating and fearless look at our society and the narrative which drives our behavior. We have only begun what will have to be a very introspective and painful process, or at least it will initially feel painful. As Benjamin Franklin said, He that best understands the world least likes it. Understanding Simple Reality can help give us the commitment to begin the process of shifting to a more people-friendly world where wars and rumors of wars are not an everyday occurrence.
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Much more can be found in the book Simple Reality: The Key to Serenity and Survival.
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