How The War Can Change America

By Charles Krauthammer

In the great debate leading up to the gulf war, the real issue was whether this fight was about Kuwait or about Iraq. For those who opposed the war, it was about Kuwait -- and restoring the Emir to his throne, as many Senators argued, is not exactly the stuff that moral crusades are made of. For those prepared to risk war, the real issue at stake was Iraq. It was not that one small innocent country had been violated but that one large criminal country was on the march and had to be stopped.

That is how the issue looked until Jan. 16. But war is an exercise in surprise, and the real surprise of this one may be that it was not about Kuwait, not about Iraq, not even about the future of the Middle East, however much all of these will be shaped by the outcome. It may turn out to have been a war about America.

Except for revolution, nothing changes a country more than war. Indeed, the very definition of a people often revolves around a reference to war. We speak of the antebellum South, prewar Germany, post-Vietnam America. If the war in the gulf ends the way it began -- with a dazzling display of American technological superiority, individual grit and, most unexpectedly for Saddam, national resolve -- we will no longer speak of post-Vietnam America. A new, post-gulf America will emerge, its self-image, sense of history, even its political discourse transformed.

The most extreme example of such a transformative war is the Six-Day War. It changed Israel from a weak, marginal refuge for refugees, clinging to the < shores of the Mediterranean, to the very symbol of self-reliance, power and valor. (An image subsequently transformed, of course, by ensuing violent upheavals, namely the Yom Kippur War, Lebanon and the intifadeh.) It is too early to assume that America will enjoy a similar triumph in the gulf war. But if this war should conclude half as decisively as the Six-Day War, America will not be the same.

The cliche that generals are always fighting the last war is far less true than the notion that a nation is always reliving it. Great wars define the psyche and sensibilities of a people for decades -- until the next one rewrites memories and reshapes character. The legacy of World War I defined the Western peoples for 20 years. The sense of order, optimism and patriotism that marked the Edwardian age died in the trenches of Verdun. In their place arose the pacifism, the nihilism, the psychic cubism of the '20s and '30s.

These were in turn overthrown by World War II, which, in America in particular, produced a hunger for normalcy in domestic life and a self- confident sense of mission (captured by J.F.K.'s "We shall bear any burden" Inaugural Address) in international life. The long twilight struggle of the cold war could have been sustained only by a people that had lived through World War II.

Then came Vietnam. The residue of World War II was Bretton Woods, NATO, the free world. All that is left of Vietnam is the Vietnam Memorial. The confidence in America's right and trust in America's power that were the legacy of World War II collapsed in the face of ambiguity and defeat in Vietnam. Vietnam became a metaphor for futility, a symptom of the corrosion and corruption of the American dream. The notion of American decline, prefigured in Jimmy Carter's idea of national limits, could exist only in a people still demoralized by defeat in Vietnam.

Vietnam was not just a feeling. It became an argument. It became the touchstone of every subsequent national debate: Lebanon, Panama and, most recently, the gulf. The subtext of every debate became, Is this or is this not another Vietnam? Indeed, in order to take the country with him into the gulf, President Bush had to promise explicitly that "this will not be another Vietnam." If the gulf war turns out well, such assurances will no longer be necessary. Vietnam will be retired as the defining American experience of this age.

What is at stake in the gulf war is the Vietnam legacy, whether it should be seen as a historical aberration or the historical norm. In Vietnam, was America defeated by a constellation of contingencies, or was character destiny? Did it succumb to an unfavorable local topography (that neutralized American technological superiority), a misapprehension of the enemy and an undermining cultural revolution at home? Or did it succumb to itself, to overweening ambition and moral blindness, to a refusal to acknowledge its own mortality and limits?

For 20 years this debate has been replayed endlessly, often in microcosm. Take the most recent gulf debate about America's forte, air power. In Congress one heard time and again that air power cannot win wars: Vietnam proved that. Did it, or did it prove that air power cannot win wars in dense jungle against irregular units on bicycles? In the next such debate about the adequacy of air power, the "lessons of the gulf" will be the new reference point.

The larger question, of course, is the adequacy -- moral, material and martial -- of America. A month ago, conventional wisdom had the U.S. being overtaken as a great power by Japan. Perhaps. But is making a superior Walkman a better index of technological sophistication than making laser bombs that enter hangars through the front door? Is a nation's ability to make VCRs a better index of power than the ability to defeat aggression?

A post-gulf America might see its economic problems in perspective: not as a metaphor for corruption and decline, not as an indictment of a society's health and vitality, not as a crisis of the soul but simply as economic problems -- a product of mistaken policies and misaligned resources. A post- gulf America might even see itself in perspective: as the planet's dominant power, afflicted with problems but able nonetheless, by prodigious acts of will, to turn history.

Of course, if the war turns out badly, this new American self-image will turn into a desert mirage. And a historic opportunity for the self- transformation of America will have been missed. Even if the war does turn out well, the postwar euphoria will eventually fade too. But it will leave something behind: a renewed America, self-confident and assured. That was the legacy of the last good war, World War II, a legacy lost in the jungles of Vietnam.