School of War - Ep 74: Mark Moyar on Vietnam (New Makers of Modern Strategy #4)

Episode Date: May 23, 2023

Mark Moyar, the William P. Harris Chair of Military History at Hillsdale College, author of Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965-1968 and contributor to New Makers of Modern Strategy, joins the show to reconsider the history of the Vietnam War. ▪️ Times  • 01:53 Introduction  • 04:30 Beginnings  • 08:43 Early success  • 12:23 Fallout from the coup • 14:00 LBJ takes over  • 19:06 Domino theory • 22:20 China and Vietnam  • 25:40 Buying time • 28:23 Johnson and McNamara • 34:22 Maintaining the shield  • 35:53 Westmoreland and attrition  • 41:42 South Vietnam  • 45:33 Parallels Follow along on Instagram

The conventional view of America's war in Vietnam is that the whole thing was a vast tragedy caused by bungling, immorality, and bungling immorality. And while no one will argue that America's efforts there ended well, there is a growing tradition of so-called revisionist scholarship and analysis of the events of the mid-50s through mid-70s in Southeast Asia. Today, as part of our continuing new makers of modern strategy limited series, we'll talk to one of them, historian Mark Moyer, about the events. about what the conventional account of the Vietnam War gets wrong.

It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamous. The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a statement. We continue to face a grave situation in Iran. We will fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields, and in the streets, we shall never surrender. For maps, photos, and more School of War content,

follow along on Instagram at School of War. Just tap the link in the show notes and subscribe. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I am delighted to welcome to the show today, Mark Moyer. Mark is the William P. Harris Chair in Military History at Hillsdale College. He's the author of numerous books relevant to today's discussion, a few that are relevant to today's discussion,

Triumph forsaken, the Vietnam War in 1954 to 1965. Triumph regained the Vietnam War in 1965 to 1968. He's also a contributor to the Newmakers of Modern Strategy with a chapter on Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, and the Vietnam War. Mark, thank you so much for joining the show. Aaron, it's great to be here. So our plan today is to talk about Vietnam,

to talk about your work on Vietnam, You go into some level of detail in Newmakers' Modern Strategy on McNamara and Johnson's, you know, leadership of the war and their strategic concepts and where those fit into the puzzle. But obviously your work has been, at this point, you know, a project to write a new history of the war. And there are two volumes. There's going to be a third volume, is that right, that covers the Nixon years? Are you into that one right now? Yes, I'm working on that now. That one will go 69 to 75 to the end of the war, yes.

Okay. So it's such a vast subject. I mean, it probably makes sense to sort of start towards the start. But maybe if you'll indulge me, could I give like a 30 second express for 30 seconds what I take the orthodox view of the war to be? And then you can you can attack wherever you see fit. Here's what I think I kind of absorbed growing up and over the course of my education. Not from my father, incidentally, who fought in the war and had a very different view, but just from the culture and high school classes and so forth. America inherited somewhat wisely a post-colonial conflict from France that we immediately understood in a Cold War logic of anti-communism. And so misunderstood what was in fact much more of a nationalist effort and a complex civil war in a place that was not particularly strategically significant to the United States. Nevertheless, we escalate again foolishly, our role in this conflict, somewhat drunk on the threat of communism to a point where we had a massive ground commitment that was failing to achieve his objectives, causing large numbers of American casualties.

At some point, sort of mysteriously, this all became Richard Nixon's fault through some sort of some sort of alchemy that was never entirely clear to me, even though he ran on reducing America's role in the war. But, you know, he in various ways escalated. He bombed other countries unlawfully, killed a lot of people. He did withdraw American troops, though that's actually usually somewhat under-emphasized, at least in popular accounts, and betrayed our South Vietnamese allies, and they finally lost a war that they were always going to lose in an enduring shame for America.

So double-barrow question, A, is that basically fair as the sort of general account of things, sort of popular account? And B, where would you like to start? Because you have now spent several decades pointing out the flaws in this account. Yes, that is a fair characterization. And it's best to start in the beginning part with this idea of a missed opportunity and misunderstanding of the communists. And this has been central to the conventional layer of the left, which is also derived from the anti-war movement,

But there's this idea, and people often cite in 1945 when Ho Chiman takes power in Hanoi. He cites the Declaration of Independence in his speech. And this is cited as evidence that, look, he's really this pro-American guy. If only we hadn't been so stupid, we would have understood that he was really a nationalist and not a communist. And so what I did in triumph forsaken the first volume, I looked first in that period. to see what's going on. One thing, and if you look beyond into the larger picture of communism, it was a common refrain in the communist world

to disguise yourself as a nationalist to make yourself more palatable to others. And Ho Chiman even talks as a young man about reading Lenin and how Lenin talked about how the communists needed to sort of co-op these bourgeois nationalist elements in the post-colonial world and manipulate them. And there were a couple of good biographies of Ho Chi Min have come out that have helped clarify a lot of us. But he was very much a diehard Marxist Leninist from the early 1920s.

He lived in Moscow for years, revered Lenin and Stalin. He then lives in China. He serves in the Chinese Communist Army in World War II. And he is, as we move forward his career, he doesn't really veer from that. When he gains political power, he imposes. Marxist-Leninist political system. And there's a related myth to this is the idea that Ho Chi-Men was anti-Chinese, and we didn't understand this, again, because we were foolishly anti-communist.

And Ho-Chemin once makes a remark, which I'm sure he made about the sort of critical of the Chinese, but it actually was referring to the Chinese nationalist of Chiang Kai Shack and directed them, not at Chinese in general. and we know, and from his life, he has a strong affinity for the Chinese, is very close to Mao. And thus, there is not any sort of historical animosity. And by the way, too, if you go back further in Vietnamese history, there is a strong history of cooperation with China. They occasionally, very occasionally clash, but for the most part, they are allies. And so when the French come back, the U.S. reluctantly supports the French, and they know,

Ho Chi Minh is really bad character. They fight this war that goes from up to 1954 when the French decided they've had enough and they go home. And at that point, the United States becomes the main backer of South Vietnam. And at that point, U.S. commitments fairly limited. And really, U.S. ground troops still are not there when you get to what's the most important event, probably of the whole war, which is the coup against Nodin Ziam in 1960. which that also has been grossly misrepresented

because you have people like David Halberstam and Neil Sheen and Stanley Carno who are helping to push for this coup. They think the coup's got to lead to great success, but actually has the opposite effect and it destroys South Vietnam and then will ultimately lead to U.S. troops having to go in in 1965 as a last desperate measure. So I'll take a pause there, see if further questions. Yeah, well, let's linger on the coup because you've identified that and you're writing.

You just said it now, and I know others have as well, sort of the pivotal moment, after which we are fighting in conditions or operating in conditions, which are just much less favorable than prior to the coup. So, I mean, first of all, what was going well? What was the future that in your account was kind of lost with the coup and then I want to get into the coup itself and why it happened? So the Orthodox narrative really glosses over for the most part, the period of 1962 and 1963, when there's actually a remarkable turnaround in the war effort and the Sathfamese are doing much better. And pretty much everyone recognizes that. What happens in 1963 is you have a group of militant Buddhists who start claiming they

are being persecuted for their religious beliefs. and their allegations are mostly false, but they are able to win over some American media figures, especially the three who I mentioned, Howard, Sam, Sheen, and Carno, and convinced them that they really do have this just cause. And so the journalists kind of parrot their propaganda, which undermines the South Vietnamese government because in their society, the government loses face when it takes this sort of unbridled criticism. and President Ziam stands for a while,

but eventually gets to the point where these big public demonstrations and his own generals are telling him, you really can't allow this to continue or the government's prestige is going to fall so far that we won't be able to continue. And CEM eventually accedes to some crackdowns with the participation of these generals.

Now, the Americans, or some of the Americans, misunderstand this too, and they think the generals were not part of this. And so Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, who's recently arrived, decides that, well, why don't we get the generals to overthrow President Ziam and have them run the country because Ziam is being kind of repressive and American press is really critical of him. And, you know, the things will go so much better. And so Lodge goes ahead with that. President Kenny is very much on the fence and he doesn't act because. he had just sent Lodge out there as a Republican to give himself political cover, and now it would

look bad to pull Lodge out. So Cougos forward initially Lodge and his media allies, you know, celebrating a great look. We've got rid of this, you know, terrible autocrat, and now the generals are going to run things. But the opposite happens, and the new generals purge a lot of the leadership out of suspicion about their loyalty. And by all accounts, the war effort goes into a nosed act. And now at this point, you have Carnos and Sheeans of the world reinventing history in the preceding period to try to show that, well, things were already going bad. And so this coup, yeah, okay, it didn't work out great, but, you know, the situation was already terrible. But so I go to great length to show, no, that's actually not the case. And the sort of things they cherry pick in the 62, 63, mainly this battle of up back in January 63 is really an anomaly and not represented what's going on.

And then I bring in a lot of sources from the North Vietnamese side, which I was able to get through a former U.S. government official who translated tons of this stuff. And these are some of the biggest revelations I find is the North Vietnamese actually confirming a lot of what certain people have said. And so this then will set the stage for ultimately the introduction of U.S. forces in 1965. Before we get into the actual history, can we sort of deal in counterfactuals for a moment? And what is the, what would the, you know, a future with DM still in the chair as opposed to the, you know, the situation that succeeded him? What would that have looked like potentially? Well, I think it would have probably been a continuation of what we had seen in 1963, which is the government continue to get stronger. And the North Vietnamese continued to infiltrate men and supplies.

but they would keep it at a lower level of violence. And one of the big things can often get glossed over is you have this sea change in North Vietnamese strategy at the end of 1964, where they decide to send the first North Vietnamese Army division into South Vietnam, and that is triggered by a couple things. One of them is the precipitous decline of the South Vietnamese government. Another is how Lyndon Johnson is talking about being a peace candidate. But this, you know, absent this, I think the North Vietnamese probably would not have gone to that next level because they would have presumed that this is going to be a tough slog, whereas in late 64, the South Vietnamese have become so bad that they think this is going to be easy victory for them.

So let's talk about Johnson then and McNamara and the decisions that get made once Johnson is president. So he inherits this crisis, this developing crisis in East Asia. What are his options broadly, you know, from 63 into 64 and ultimately the big decisions that he makes in 65? Like what is what what are the range of possibilities actually look like to him? Yeah, when Johnson succeeds Kennedy after Kennedy's assassination, he is really hoping Vietnam will kind of stay in the back burner. He is, you know, unlike Kennedy, he's much more interested in domestic policy.

So he really, for 1964, his main objective is to keep Vietnam from getting in the way of his domestic agenda and from his reelection in the 1964 presidential campaign. So he will do just enough to try to keep it from collapsing. Now, as things get worse, the generals are telling him that he needs to take a harder line publicly and also needs to hit North Vietnamese hard when they provoke the United States, particularly after the Tonkin Gulf incidents of 1964. But, you know, and had Johnson done that, it could perhaps have dissuaded the North Vietnamese from this big offensive. But they, after the 64, after the Tongue Gulf incidents,

McNamara convinced him they only need a little sort of pinprick response based on sort of academic game theory that if we just do this little response, then we'll show the North Vietnamese that we are serious. Yes. Well, the North Vietnamese interpret that the opposite way as, in fact, evidence the United States is weak. And then Johnson reinforces this when he goes out on the campaign trail and says, I'm not going to send American boys to go fight in Asia's wars. And that, you know, I'm not the warmonger that Barry Goldwater is. And so when Johnson wins, as soon as Johnson wins in November 64, the North Vietnamese take this as the green light to go ahead and invade. And then in the next few months, By June of 65, it's become clear that the North Vietnamese are going to defeat South Vietnam unless American combat forces intervene. So Johnson faces this choice, do I send in American troops? And it's often thought that this was some sort of active of arrogance on his part.

But in fact, he knew that it was going to be a tough and bitter war if he went in. So he's not at all eager to do this. But then he looks at the other choice, which is we leave. And he ultimately decides that leaving is too damaging. And this is also one of the central controversies of the war. You have people saying, well, Johnson exaggerated the threat of communism, this idea of a domino theory where the fall of Vietnam leads to the fall of other countries is false. And we know that because 1975, when South Vietnam falls,

only a couple of the dominoes fall. And sure, Cambodia falls, and people, by the way, kind of glossed in fact, well, yeah, there are two million people killed by the Khmer Rouge, F as a result of all this. But, you know, you don't see these other countries like Thailand and Indonesia and Malaya, Philippines, Japan, et cetera. So, therefore, this domino theory was wrong. Well, my counter to that is that 1975 is a vastly different situation than 1965. And in fact, much of the change is brought on by American invention. So you have to look at what's going on in 1965, and there is great reason to believe that the domino theory is valid. And Johnson sees this. You have every non-communist country in the region warning that if the U.S. pulls out of South Vietnam, that basically its credibility will be lost,

and China will rule the Pacific. And, you know, if you're in another country, if the Americans bail out on their biggest ally, South Vietnam. Why would you expect them to be better if they say, well, K, Thailand, we'll come protect you, even though we just let South Vietnam go down the tubes. And we also have direct appeals from the Indonesian military to the Americans because they're about to face a showdown between communists, anti-communists, telling the Americans that what happens in Vietnam will dictate what happens here.

And that ultimately proves to be the case in September of 1965. There's this showdown and the anti-communies prevail. And as I argue in the new book, Triumph Regained, there is every reason to believe that without American intervention, Vietnam, that the communists would have prevailed in that conflict. So we had John Gattis on the show a few weeks ago. We talked about credibility in his own writing on credibility and his great account of American strategy and the Cold War strategies of containment.

And so I just want to zoom in for a second on this question and this sort of dilemma that faced Johnson, because there's this other aspect to it with the domino theory, right, of this possibility that a communist Vietnam, in addition to maybe not causing other dominoes to fall, might actually not be that bad because of the possibility of what, you know, at the time or at least a little bit before that time would have been referred to as Titoism, right? That it would be possible for there to be a communist power that was actually more of a thorn in the side of China and Russia than an ally to them. And indeed, you know, only what, less than a decade later, you do have the United States able to exploit real tension between China and Russia. So what's your response to, I mean, just stepping back completely as sort of the highest level strategic consideration of the problem, you know, you say Johnson decides not to leave because he is a bit persuaded by domino theory. Why does he also, I guess implicitly, but maybe explicitly reject the possibility that a communist Vietnam could even be something that could be used for American purposes?

Yeah, that's an excellent question. And that issue does come up. And for one thing, you know, we now have more evidence of what the North Vietnamese actually say about Tito, and they are harshly critical of him. They view him as a traitor to the communist movement. You know, when the Hungarians try to set up sort of independent communist regime in 1956 and then get mowed down by the Soviets, the North Vietnamese applaud what the Soviets are doing. The North Vietnamese are really do buy into this idea of a world communist movement. Now, by 65, there is this real fissure between China and North Vietnam, the North Vietnamese are actually at the forefront of trying to keep those two sides together.

And partly because it's in their interest to get aid from both, but also they do recognize that it's better to have a united communist movement rather than China and the Soviets getting played off against one another. Now, I argue that, in fact, it's American intervention Vietnam that plays a lot. plays a large role in further widening this Sino-Soviet split because it creates new jealousies and North Vietnamese have to rely more on the Soviets for sophisticated anti-aircraft weapon as the U.S. starts bombing North Vietnam. And so you'll start to see the North Vietnamese drifting away from China and towards the Soviet Union. Now, had the U.S. not gone into North Vietnam, certainly there were still these real tensions between in the communist camp, but I think what you would have seen was China basically becoming the dominant power over

all of Asia, and we'd see, you know, the North Korean-style governments. I think today's Vietnamese government is still more Chinese than people realize, but, you know, had all of Asia to include Japan, which I think was at risk. I mean, had that all come into China's orbit, thinking long term, I mean, and this is really long term, you know, the Soviet Union ends up dissolving, but China is still there and is now our main geostrategic adversary. So if we had a lot more North Korea's in East Asia right now, I think the U.S. would be in a far worse position. I mean, we're still struggling now to contain China with a lot of these countries that were saved through Vietnam, you know, the Indonesias and Taiwan's and South Korea's, Malayas, Thailand's, that, you know, I think we would have been in a much, a much worse position today geopolitically. I think I'm on your side and not on the side of your critics, but let me pose a kind of obvious question of response to that, which is it's hardly like the history of Vietnamese, Chinese.

relations post-the-American war in Vietnam have been particularly friendly from the almost immediate aftermath, indeed, to the present day when they are. I mean, they are an interesting sort of strategic player in American strategy with regard to China. So how do you account for that? Yeah. And one thing too I should mention is this broader notion of the historic relationship between China and Vietnam.

So there has long been this myth that China and North Vietnam have been fighting war after war after war, they fought between up to a period of around the year 1000, there was a fair amount of fighting. You know, the regional Vietnamese came from China and there was a lot of civil strike. But after, from that point on, there was just recognition that Vietnam would be a vassal state of China and they would pay tribute to China and return, China would protect them. So for the year 1000 until 1979, there's only three wars. almost a thousand-year period. And we also have the Chinese actually serving as protector

when the French come in in the late 19th century to establish colonial rule. The Chinese actually try to stop them and they fight them and end up losing to the French. But Chinese are actually trying to live up to this end of the bargain. The, and they're still very close the Chinese in North Vietnamese up until the late 1960s. And part of the why things go rise, Ho Chiman dies in 1969. And he had been very pro-Chinese. When he leaves, there's a, by the time he dies, Leis Wan, who is now kind of running things as much more suspicious of the Chinese.

And you also have, the Vietnam War is instrumental in driving China in North Vietnam Park because it forces North Vietnam. to rely much more heavily in the Soviets. And the North Vietnamese are hoping that Chinese will kind of be more supportive than they are. And the Chinese keep saying publicly that they're not going to fight the U.S. in Vietnam. And the North Vietnamese are aghast at this because they think, as they put it, the Chinese are basically they want to fight to the last North Vietnamese. They're happy to let all these North Vietnamese get killed,

but they don't want to risk war themselves. So that will lead to a serious in sourrelations in 1969. There's actually several hundred thousand Chinese troops in North Vietnam starting in 1965 in support roles. They will get pulled out in 1969 because relations have fallen so far apart, which again wouldn't happen without Vietnam. And then further as you get into the 70s, the Chinese and North Vietnamese will clash further over.

especially over Cambodia, and then fight this war. And as you said, I think there is, I can partly treat, the Vietnamese as they are now, are pretty good at sort of telling people what they want to hear. And they have been fairly sometimes vociferous in their anti-Chinese rhetoric, but I view them today a bit like Mexico,

which Mexico, you know, will spout a lot of anti-American rhetoric, but they will quietly cooperate with us in many ways. And they know it's, in their interests not to overly antagonize the, you know, massive superpower that lives right next door. So to state your, your claims here in a particularly bold way, and let me know if you, if you endorsed this or you wouldn't modify it, but the domino theory, you know, was essentially

correct or certainly had a lot to be said for it. And the reason why a bunch of dominoes didn't then fall after 1975 is because of the American effort. You stand with Lee Kuan, you in a way, saying that this bought us. bought non-communist, the American effort in Vietnam bought non-communist powers in Asia at time and allowed them to prepare in a way that no American involvement would not have. So it's A, and B, the reason why Titoism was not a real factor is because the extent to the extent to which those forces of those tensions between Vietnam and China existed is because of the Vietnam War.

It's because of American intervention in Vietnam. Is that all fair? Yeah, that is. And one other thing I should mention, too, that also is, I think, derived by the Vietnam War is the onset of the cultural revolution in China. And this really starts after, and I think Vietnam is certainly one of the triggers, as is what happens in Indonesia. Because in 1965, Mao in early 1965, he seems to be riding high because the Vietnamese look like they're, North Vietnamese look like they're about to defeat the South Vietnamese, and Indonesia looks like it's about to fall into his lap.

By the end of the year, neither of those things has happened, and they've now seen remote prospects. And so he turns inward and starts this massive campaign of terrorism and bloodletting, mainly against his own people, including a lot of people within the Communist Party. And so this will have an extremely debilitating effect on his economy, his military. And this will also contribute to the fallout with North Vietnam. Because the North Vietnamese view this as left-wing excess that's going too far, and as, of course, the Soviets do as well. And so by the time you get to 75, you no longer have a China that is, you know, intent on this global internationalist crusade.

Again, by then they've come to see the Soviet Union as their main threat rather than the United States, which partly due to defense. And also, President Nixon is adept at sort of playing them off against each other. He goes and visits each one and really helps stoke this superpower conflict. But again, I think a lot, much, if not, most of that would not have been possible without Vietnam. This is really interesting sort of strategic excurses here. Let's pause it. We could always come back to this sort of level of consideration.

But I want to pick up the thread of the war itself again. We left it in 1965. there is a decision to to escalate, to commit American ground troops in large numbers. Talk about Johnson and McNamara's leadership, or maybe actually management would be the better word of the war. What do they do that maybe goes better than the Orthodox account gives it credit for? What do they do badly? How does it go in the period 65 to 68? Yes, well, the mentioned there's a number of opportunities up to July 65 where they waffle and send the wrong signals.

but by that point it is necessary to send American troops if they want South Vietnam to survive, which again, I think is clearly in America's interest. So they send American troops. And as far as the fighting within South Vietnam, they largely leave that to General William Westmoreland. And the biggest mistake, I think, is they decide to put severe constraints on the use of American power beyond South Vietnam. And from the beginning, the generals, Westmoreland and also the Joint Chiefs of Staff are saying, the enemy is sending all huge amounts of men and material through Laos and Cambodia.

At minimum, we should send our ground troops in there to stop them. And possibly we should even go into North Vietnam and invade North Vietnam because that's the source of enemy's power. Otherwise, we're just going to be sitting here killing North Vietnamese, but they can just keeps sending more and more and it's never going to end. And Johnson and McNamara turned them down for several reasons. One is they don't really understand the magnitude of the infiltration for a long time, and they buy this notion, which is pushed by civilian theorists, that this is mainly a locally sustained effort. It doesn't require all this external support. They also think that

going to North Vietnam will trigger a Chinese invasion, much has happened in the Korean War. and we know from subsequent revelations that really was not a possibility. The Chinese had no interest in going back in, but it wasn't clear at the time. And then also the generals are calling for intensive bombing of North Vietnam, and McNamara instead has this concept of gradual escalation, which is, again, derived from these academic conflict limitation ideas that, no, we don't hit hard. We kind of start off low, and we can gradually escalate, And this will leave us better negotiating options over time.

The opposite actually turns out to be true because it conveys weakness and it allows the North Vietnamese to build up their strength. Now, within South Vietnam, I think the U.S. actually does a better job than they're giving credit for. And what's more than is faulted for fighting a war of attrition and trying to bleed the enemy and that this was sort of a lack of strategic imagination. but I actually think without, if you can't extend the borders, there really wasn't much of a better option. And some people often think and argue that, well, what we needed to do was to focus more on counterinsurgency and controlling the village populations. And they point to the Marine combined action platoons in this context where the Marines sent a squad of Marines into a village to work with local militia. And that seemed to work pretty well. Problem with that is that by 1965, there is this massive North Vietnamese army presence,

and you have North Vietnamese Army, you're now starting to see entire North Vietnamese Army division showing up. And when you have a battalion of the North Vietnamese Army, and they decide they want to take a village, they're going to crush your little village defense force. You know, a Marine squad and a Vietnamese militia platoon do not stand a chance against, you know, a big North Vietnamese regular force. And we do see, in fact, the combined action. Theatoon outposts get overrun frequently. And so it's recognized pretty early on, even by, you know, Marine Corps is actually the most

skeptical initially of Westmoreland sort of search and destroy tactics, which is you kind to go everywhere to find the enemy. But they eventually recognize that you have to do it because when you have these big concentrations of NBA, you really only have two options. One is you go out and try to hit them in the remote area. which is what they, Westmoreland is pushing, or you wait until they come to you. And when that happens, though, you're seeding the initiative of the enemy. So they can mass an overwhelming force at a given point if you seed the initiative to them.

And also, if they really get into a big area like they did in the city of Hway in 1968, you end up having to fight and destroy the populated areas in order to get them out. So I think Westmoreland has been judged unfairly. I do, even some of people who I tend to agree with overall on big picture of the war, some of them have been very critical Westmoreland and see a big change between him and General Creight and Abrams. But I actually argue that there really isn't that much difference between Westmoreland, Abrams, and what happens with Abrams is he comes in a period when the North Vietnamese are

a low point or they hit a low point after he gets there. And then that allows him to change. But when he first comes in, he's actually doing the same things that West Morland has been doing. So there really are kind of two parallel efforts that need to, well, I'm going to say this. And then you tell me if you agree, there are two parallel efforts that need to be maintained. A conventional threat from North Vietnamese regulars requires some kind of conventional response. And your point is Westmoreland is sort of criticized for doing, for pursuing that track. But there is probably also, I think, right, a need for a call it what you like, counterinsurgency.

effort, but you can't pit that against a conventional threat. That will work against, you know, Viet Cong and local insurgents and malfactors. But these tracks kind of have to run simultaneously or at their proper times and places. How would you phrase it? Yeah, I mean, generally, for the most part, you kind of have to maintain both of them, at least for much of the war, because, of course, how you manage that will also affect what the North Vietnamese do you. If they see you don't have that kind of directional threat area. They will, they may escalate their conventional operations. And if they see you're not doing much on the pacification or kind of certainty side, they'll focus more on there. And you know, military commanders will often talk about maintaining,

they call a shield, basically using the bigger units to shield the villages from large enemy forces. And we've also seen, again, from now more from what we see for the north of the enemy side, they actually view this approach of Westmoreland's to be very effective in encountering what they want to do and that, you know, they run into lots of problems. Because Americans are out aggressively looking for them, it makes them harder to move around. And one of the other big thing I've found, which hasn't been well known, is that American operations also do a lot to disrupt North Vietnamese logistics inside South Vietnam, and they suffer from acute food shortages by 1966 such that they have to postpone or cancel a lot of

their military operations. They don't have enough rice in particular. And this is also a controversy relevant to the bombing because McNamara thinks there's this huge excess supply capacity in North Vietnam, which actually does exist. We now know the North Vietnamese are suffering badly from from lack of food. How do you think about some of the problems and obvious challenges with the sort of the metrics of attrition and how do you how do you fit that into your broader defense of Westmoreland? Because I, you know, to take one vivid account that was moving to me because it sort of reminded me of things that in a different way I had experienced in Afghanistan, Calmorelandi's

sort of ground level account of being a Marine Infantry officer engaged in these conventional operations and the way in which body counts in particular just become, you know, sort of Fugazi numbers almost from from the moment that they're taken, right? I mean, at the tactical level, the numbers are fictions and impressionistic and then get distorted at every level on the way up. For me, this reminded me of the sort of clearhold build accounting that we would do at the sub-district level in Afghanistan, which to be seen similarly Fugasey and divorced from reality. But these numbers are driving, right? We can pull maybe McNamara into this on some level. these numbers, this sort of metric approach to warfare is driving a lot of American decision-making

and certainly American impressions of success or failure. So do you defend this as well? Am I misunderstanding this? Or is this a fair hit on the American conduct of the war, 65 to 68? There are certainly some excesses and quite a bit of false reporting. It's partly why there is this emphasis in the body count, because if you do count the bodies, then presumably it's hard to, you know, if people are being honest, you know, it's hard to fake that.

You know, one of the biggest problems you have is that many of the casualties inflicted on the enemy are from airpower artillery, and the North Vietnamese will often remove those casualties before they can be counted. And so there's a great amount of uncertainty in that regard. And sometimes people say, well, we think, you know, we killed this many. but we can't be sure and they withdrew this many. I mean, there certainly is pressure on a lot of commanders to get a high body count and relative to U.S. personnel especially.

Now, there is, and certainly some of that can go overboard, but I do think the general idea that you're trying to reduce the number of enemy forces, which is essentially what attrition is about, makes sense given the other parameters because the Americans are trying to buy time for the South Vietnamese. And we also have, I mean, a lot of the criticism of the body count implies or even says that basically we thought we were killing far more of the enemy than we actually were, and we didn't understand that everything we were doing was hopeless.

Well, we have North Vietnamese accounts, which are very telling in terms of actually confirming a lot of what General Westmoreland was saying. You know, at one point, Jean-Japapap, you know, admits that, they take that they're, this is 96, they'd suffered a half million casualties, which is very close to the American number that was being put out. So the numbers, I think, are actually more accurate than we had been led to believe. And again, another reason to think that actually what Westmoreland doing is largely working.

The other thing that's interesting on this point is that, you know, again, there's this tendency to, in the orthodox narrative, to kind of view the Americans as, being really stupid and the North Vietnamese as being these great geniuses. So we now know from the North Vietnamese accounts that when the American troops come in, you know, they're taking, North Vietnamese are taking horrific casualties. And the commanders, the North Vietnamese commanders who are in the South, you know, are they are also facing pressure to, you know, show results. And so what they do, you know, if I'm the North Vietnamese, you know, battalion commander,

I've, I lost, you know, 100 guys in the battle. well, I may have only killed 10 Americans, but that would look really bad. So I'm going to tell my experience. Well, we killed 200 Americans. And there's a huge amount of lying coming out of the North Vietnamese side. And so the North Vietnamese initially, for the first two years, don't really understand this. They think they're doing great. So they keep maintaining their own tactics, which are not really working.

So it's not until 1967 in the spring that we know the North Vietnamese said, you know, we're claiming we killed all these Americans. yet there seems to be more Americans there were before. So something's wrong here. And they sort of revisit their tactics. And at this point, they decide to launch the Tet Offensive because they think, you know, what's been happening isn't working. So let's do something different.

We'll attack the cities and the urban masses who must hate the Americans and their South Vietnamese puppets are going to rise up. And so that's what happened. Of course, it doesn't work out. The South Vietnamese population doesn't. doesn't rise up and the North Vietnamese get crushed and their South Vietnamese communist allies get crushed in 1968, which then sets the stage for, and there's two more big offenses the North Vietnamese launch, which I cover at length, which haven't been covered.

But then you get to late 68. North Vietnamese are in shambles, and that's when Abrams can really take, move forward with his pacification program, and that will then continue into the Nixon period. And I mean, obviously Nixon is going to signal the series of changes at the, or going to affect a series of changes at the highest level. But sticking with Johnson for a minute, the American theory of victory here then is what? Considering the limitations we have imposed on ourselves in terms of what we can do and not do in North Vietnam and what we're doing with the Hocheon Trail and so forth, we are simply going to, you know, essentially persuade the North Vietnamese to come to a negotiated settlement that protects South Vietnam. So, So A, is that accurate and B, you know, why doesn't it happen? Yeah, well, Johnson is kind of desperately seeking a negotiate settlement, although he also increasingly realizes that the North Vietnamese aren't very interested in that.

And when Nixon comes in, he also, especially Kissinger more than Nixon, but they think initially that they can coerce the North Vietnamese into a piece. And Nixon talks about how he's going to, you know, show he's the madman who's, and if they don't settle that he's going to blow them into oblivion, and for a number of reasons, Nixon ends up now doing that. And so by towards the latter part of 69, he also is coming around to the view that basically we can't expect the North Vietnamese are going to easily capitulate. And so what we need to do is focus on building up the South Vietnamese and turning things over to them. And, you know,

He's already talked about the 68 campaign that, you know, we need to have more, you know, we call today burden sharing. It's really not very different from, you know, what we've heard in recent times, but we need to get our allies to do more, we need to get South Indian, we need to do more. And, you know, Americans go along with that, but Americans still want to see a successful conclusion. And so, you know, what ultimately happens is, you know, American troops, ground troops are gone by 1972, and North Vietnamese launched this 14 division offensive to take the South, and a lot of

people questioning whether the South can handle it. Turns out South Vietnamese do thwart this offensive. They have a lot of American air power to help them, but you do have a situation where South Vietnam is to the point where it can defend itself with only American air power. and I think, you know, had America maintained its commitment, North Vietnam, I think, would not have done what it did in 75 because they would have feared what happened in 72. But unfortunately, Watergate intervenes, Congress puts all these restrictions on presidential power. Nixon's impeached. So the U.S. aid to South Vietnam falters. And then North Vietnamese tests the Americans in 75 to see what they're going to do.

Americans don't use air power. And that's sort of the green light then for them to invade and ultimately will lead to the destruction of South Vietnam in 1975. You know, our conversation is I'm having almost emotional responses sitting here, hearing out your account because so many elements of what we're discussing with respect to Vietnam, we have lived, you know, just in the last 15, 20 years. The, you know, this sort of self-determence and at times overwrought concern about the other side, capacity to escalate, failing to take into account the fact that they are more afraid of our escalation than we are of theirs.

That's A. B, the hostility to allies like Diem, who commit the crime of not governing like Jeffersonian Democrats and sort of the greater hostility towards them in some ways than to our actual enemies is B. You know, and see the sort of catastrophic ending where after, you know, all of this loss of lives and loss of national resources and battling through, you know, a series of difficult crises, some of which were, you know, essentially of our own making. You know, we made things worse as you as you document to then just in a kind of exhaustion, walk away, walk away from something that

actually was, as you point out with the example from 1972, probably sustainable in the long run, that we should actually probably get into that because I think that's an interesting conversation. It is, it is just striking how similar the American way of war in the 60s and 70s is to, you know, a lot that we've witnessed in Iraq and Afghanistan in particular in the Middle East in the last 20 years. Yeah. And it's, and I think one of the other unfortunate apparel is to Vietnam, too, is that you have, there's civilian policymakers coming in who don't really understand the impact on the country of walking away so in such a cavalier way and throwing away something that could be sustained at a low cost most of the people making the decisions are you know divorced from

the people who actually fought in the war and you know part of our general problem in this country is that you know and it's of course gotten worse since vietnam that so few of people are actually bearing the cost of war, and yet the policymakers don't really understand them or have any concerns about what the impact is of asking people to make these great sacrifices, and then the end of the day just saying, you know, that really wasn't that important. Let's just walk away from it, and everything will be okay. And clearly, you know, in South Vietnam, a lot of people who, you know, A lot of people saying, well, if we leave, South Vietnamese will just be negotiating. They'll just kind of get along with the North Vietnamese and sort it out.

But instead, you know, South Vietnamese are crushed. You know, huge numbers of people executed thrown in reeducation camps, massive humanitarian disaster. And you've seen some of the similar wishful thinking about, you know, how the Taliban are really going to be nice guys now that they perform themselves. And they'll let women go to college and all the stuff that also turns out to be erroneous. Yeah. I nurse a kind of pet theory about trauma that runs something like the following. I mean, there's, you know, clear empirical evidence that many more veterans of the Vietnam War are diagnosed with slash claim benefits from PTSD than veterans of earlier wars.

And that trend is continued. The raw fact, though, the undeniable numbers are such that in World War II, you would just have a lot more Americans, a lot more Americans. a lot more American troops witnessing just by the numbers, many more horrific things at greater length than the population that fought in Vietnam witnessed. Again, not an individual basis, but in the aggregate. So it's a mystery. Why is the World War two generation by comparison not traumatized

and the Vietnam War generation is? And there's obviously a lot that's going on here. There are changes in American society, all sorts of factors. But my pet theory is that an obvious factor that can't be ignored is victory. You know, if what you did mattered and what you suffered mattered, that's a lot easier to live with yourself. And if what you did didn't matter, if what you did was for not, and even for Vietnam in a way that's, you know, not true of Iraq and Afghanistan, what you did is on some level despised by large swaths of the public. That's going to mess you up. That's right.

Yeah, it's part of human nature to want to have made a difference. To me, I want to be respectful of your time here, but one last issue I want to ask about before we wrap up for the day. This question of sustainability, because it goes to the heart, the sustainability of the effort, it goes to the heart of this question of, you know, was Vietnam a lost cause from the start? You know, how sustainable was the Nixon policy of Vietnamization of support had not been withdrawn and if Congress hadn't, you know, sort of cut things off in the end? And then relatedly, to what extent was this actually in good faith and to what extent was this? you know, a public facing statement that, you know, we're going to stand with the South Vietnamese in the long run and they've got to take care of themselves. We're going to be there for them. But privately, like, this is a secondary or tertiary strategic concern. We need to demote it.

You know, there needs to be a decent interval. Like, I've reviewed the record a little bit, not as much as you have. My sense is there's a kind of ambiguity and even internal to the next administration's deliberations on this question at the highest level that they kind of go back and forth, but please. Yeah, I think it was sustainable. Is the Easter offensive kind of confirmed? Now, yeah, there's a great question of, was Nixon sincere? I mean, he promises that the South Fummies will help them out again if the North Femies come back at the beginning of 1973 to get them to go along with the peace agreement. Obviously, that doesn't happen. So there's been lots of speculation. Was Nixon sincere? Was he not planning to come back?

I think we're in terms of Nixon, I think still hard to tell. I sell a lot to do of digging on that. Kissinger seemed to have been more amenable to the idea that we'll have the decent interval. So we'll just let them stay a couple years and then go down. But that's still, I think, an open question when I'm still wrestling with the answer to. Mark Moyer of Hillsdale College, author of Triumph Forsaken and Then Triumph Regained and of a third volume. one day on the Vietnam War that we're eagerly looking forward to. Hopefully you'll come back some time and talk about that, but maybe even before that book is

out, come back and we can dive into some of these issues in more detail, including we didn't spend much time on it, but your account of McNamara's management of the war in Newmakers Modern Strategy, which is a fascinating essay that I recommend to listeners. Hey, thank you so much for making the time and joining the show. Great. Thanks very much for having me, and we'll see you again soon. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.