In his celebrated essay “The Quagmire Myth and the Stalemate Machine”, published in 1972, Daniel Ellsberg drew out the lesson regarding the Vietnam war that came out of the 8,000 pages of the Pentagon Papers, which he had secretly copied a few years earlier. It was simply this: policymakers acted without illusion. At every juncture they made the minimum commitments necessary to avoid imminent disaster – offering optimistic rhetoric, but never taking the steps that even they believed could offer the prospect of decisive victory. They were tragically caught in a kind of no-man’s-land – unable to reverse a course to which they had committed so much, but also unable to generate the political will to take forward steps that gave any realistic prospect of success. Ultimately, after years of needless suffering, their policy collapsed around them.
上世纪六七十年代，丹尼尔•艾尔斯伯格(Daniel Ellsberg)用几年的时间秘密复印了8000多页五角大楼文件。根据这些文件，他写出了那篇著名的《沼泽迷雾与僵化机器》（The Quagmire Myth and the Satlemate Machine，收录于1972年出版的一本文集），详细地总结了越南战争的教训。归结起来很简单：政策制定者们的行动缺乏远见。在每一个关键时刻，他们都只做出了避免眼前灾难所需的最低承诺。他们只是在口头上表示乐观，却从不真正付诸行动——即便他们相信行动可能取得决定性胜利。政策制定者们仿佛悲剧般地困在了无人地带——既无法从走了很久的路线上掉头，也拿不出政治决心、迈出任何有一线成功可能的一步。最终，在经受了多年不必要的折磨之后，他们的政策还是全面溃败。