A Foreign Policy, Falling Apart

• "We failed . . . to internationalize the effort." The first President Bush, Zinni said, set an admirable standard by insisting on a U.N. resolution and a broad international coalition before launching war against Iraq in Kuwait in 1991. "Why would we believe that we would not get [similar international support] this time?. . . . And what was the rush to war?"

Last week, the administration remained bogged down in its Iraq swamp, not yet ready -- as it surely will have to be in the days or weeks ahead -- to confront what threatens to be a terminal crisis for George W. Bush. Tinkering won't fix the problem; the administration is going to have to alter its course. This may require embracing the pragmatism that has often saved us from our worst mistakes in the past.

The events of the last few weeks recall the trauma of February and March in 1968, when Americans were absorbing the impact of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. Tet was a brilliant military campaign that won no lasting military benefit for the Vietnamese communists who executed it, but which humiliated an ignorant, over-confident America and destroyed political support for the war in the United States.

Dean Acheson and Clark Clifford, two principal architects of "containment" -- the basis of American foreign policy toward Soviet and Chinese communists from Truman to Johnson and beyond -- told their friend and president, Lyndon B. Johnson, that the jig was up. The costs of war in Vietnam were too high to justify its continuation.

Soon afterward Johnson announced he would not seek reelection, and he asked the Vietnamese communists to negotiate peace. Exploiting antiwar sentiment, Richard M. Nixon won the presidency in 1968. His vanity and that of his principal aide, Henry A. Kissinger, prevented an early end to the war. They insisted on a "decent interval" before acknowledging defeat in Vietnam. It took seven more years, and tens of thousands of American and Vietnamese lives, to bring the war to an end.

Acheson, Clifford and Johnson -- and ultimately, Nixon and Kissinger -- accepted the idea that losing Vietnam would not be a disaster. In retrospect, we can say they were right. Today we cannot know the consequences of any of the choices we may make in Iraq. We can only hope that the end won't be so long in coming this time.

Author's e-mail:

robertgkaiser@yahoo.com

Robert Kaiser is associate editor and senior correspondent of The Post.