Australian Left Review
Article Title
Relegitimizing intervention: the assault on the 'Vietnam Sydndrome'
Abstract
* Michael T. Klare is Director o f tk euri Militarism and Disarmament o f the Institute for Policy Studies, Washington. D C., and author of a forthcoming book on US arms sales to the Third World.
America's military leaders are guiding for the final assault on what they view as the biggest obstacle to US military supremacy: the Viet Nam Syndrome. Stated simply, the Viet Nam Syndrome is the American public’s disinclination to engage in future Viet Namtype interventions in the Third World, most Americans cheered the US from Indochina and the simultaneous reduction in our "police” presence abroad, some US leaders have campaigned ever since to relegitimize intervention as a standard instrument of US policy. As discontent ove long gas lines and higher oil prices intensified, these apostles attempted convince the public that military action be necessary to prevent erosion of our privileged way of life. If the public can be persuaded to w.-cept this argument, they believe, US policymakers no longer need fear domestic resistance to future interventions abroad.