Word: vietnam
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Vietnam was important enough to the U.S. for Johnson to commit more than 500,000 troops. Nevertheless, he was unwilling to risk invading the North, blockading its coasts, threatening the existence of its government or even bombing close to its border with China. American commanders were ordered to keep the war on the ground in the South, and Washington was reduced to hoping its soldiers could kill North Vietnamese troops faster than Hanoi could move them onto the Southern battlefield...
...similar to the one it gained in Korea in 1953. "We had a plan of sorts," says Bundy. "Grind up the other guy's army until he would presumably not take it anymore, and then we would get a political settlement." Rusk wrote in his memoirs, "I thought North Vietnam would reach a point when it would be unwilling to continue making those terrible sacrifices" and negotiate a settlement...
Today's world confronts the U.S. with nothing remotely like Vietnam. There is no global struggle with communism to drag America into every brush-fire conflict from Yemen to Angola. U.S. Presidents have the freedom to pick their wars and fight them as they choose, without worrying about setting off a thermonuclear war. The U.S. could go into Somalia and Haiti knowing it would never involve 500,000 troops for years, because the final outcome in those countries is not vital to America's national interests--we do not believe we are in a long twilight struggle with Somali warlords...
...Platonic ideal. To the extent Weinberger's list is followed, it is a rigid rule book that would keep American troops out of almost everywhere. If it is applied loosely, however, it is simply a set of common-sense precautions any President would take if he could. Even Vietnam does not measure up badly on that scale. For years the war was popular, the U.S. had a clear goal in defending the South, it was convinced intervention was in the national interest and, with a ratio of about 20 North Vietnamese killed for each American, decisive victory at first seemed...
...foreign policy and interests. That means you use it sometimes when you don't have popular support or when you have very limited goals." Says Seth Tillman, who was a staff member of Senator J. William Fulbright's Foreign Relations Committee during the 1960s: "The lesson of Vietnam is to forget about Vietnam. Be very discriminating about your interests and the feasibility of protecting them...