1 - Introduction

Summary

In his recent book, In Retrospect: the Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, Robert McNamara suggests that the problem with Vietnam was that we did not understand Vietnam; no one making decisions was conversant with Vietnamese culture; United States' leaders ethnocentrically assumed that Vietnamese values were the same as ours. McNamara says he wrote his book so that we can “learn” from his (and our) mistakes. What he hopes we learn is that we should never enter into war without really knowing the country we seek to help, or are fighting against. An “expert” in that country should advise, and be in on the decision.

Interestingly, McNamara also said he could not have “known” this lesson at the time of Vietnam. He said it took him twenty years to write the book because the lesson was so long in coming.

From a culturalist perspective, McNamara's book is intriguing for several reasons. First, McNamara acknowledged something that cultural sociologists and anthropologists take as a given, but that most people tend to forget: that strategic decisions are made in a cultural – as well as historical, political, and economic – context; and that in order to understand your own or others' “strategic” interests one must understand the culture of which they are a part. Moreover, in arguing that he “could not have known then” what he knows now, McNamara implicitly admits to his own cultural immersion – as well as to the United States' infamous and long-standing cultural myopia.