political reporter friends that he was going to win and everybody thought i was nuts. this is what we are living through. good evening everyone welcome to the council i'm the dean of international studies, and i am very pleased that the

globalization international program is able to continue its partnership with the carnegie council we do in the event every semester together and have had a very nice track record of wonderful event and i'm glad we are going to continue that this evening. i just want to mention briefly for the globalization program is. it is a program that allows students to come to new york city for a semester or summer to take classes with great faculty members including the presidents of the carnegie council. and also to do internships here in the city and revel in all of the thing new york city has to offer. and i'm also happy to report that starting this semester we have a partnership with the university and many of their students with us this semester

this evening as well. so we have other events that we run throughout the semester if you are interested in finding us on facebook and bitter and various other places, our website and if you are new to the council make sure you pay attention to what's going on here they've always got great programs. this series is named after james chase was the founder. a sponsor of this event and a longtime faculty member we miss him but we carry these on in his memory and i'm sure he would very much like this program. i don't want to take up too much time, i just want to introduce the speakers.

we have susan neilson was a professor of political science at the u.s. military academy at west point and the head of the science division and she happens to be a colonel in the u.s. army and so anything she is talking about tonight doesn't necessarily reflect the position of the economy, the department of defense or the government. we have also with us the author of the book professor robert brigham who is a professor of international relations in history. they are going to talk for about 40 minutes or so and open up to questions and answers and then we will adjourn to a reception and book signing and there will be books for sale after the reception. [applause]

>> i wonder if i could start by asking about your motivations in the book. you have done extensive field research from a variety of perspectives so i would like to start by asking what made you want to go back to the vietnam war through the lens of the national security adviser and then secretary of state. >> they are still casting a long shadow over foreign policy. my research agenda is settled. on kissinger the post asked me to reveal the book that was actually just the parts of his memoir that dealt with vietnam they put those together and edited them a little bit and i gave the book a favorable review in the post.

reading his book and reviewing his book set up a lot of questions i wanted to answer and that was in 2003. they were comparing the different books and so after i got those done and i returned to this project. it probably won't be a surprise given the title of your book that it is a wide-ranging multidimensional critique of the role of henry kissinger in the vietnam war. as you characterize the goal is to bring them to the table through a combination of

coercive diplomacy that would change the incentives to come to the table and be a little bit more likely to create the two terms it is a force of diplomacy to bring them to the tape. >> this is classic kissinger. they believed that it would end in paris and david incentivized in negotiations with military power and threats very early on he developed a strategy.

they would outline peace with honor was peace and honor would look like. they had a reasonable chance to survive when the united states would withdraw and the parallel would become a recognized international border and would seem the troops with the help of south vietnam and that laos and cambodicambodia would be neutrad into the troops would leave there as well, and it meant that there would be some kind of political negotiation between the various parties of south vietnam but would still leave the saigon administration in power. he understood 580,000 u.s. troops could move very far so what he really thought was i need to do through the negotiations and conflict

honorably with saigon having a reasonable chance to survive them as well as the overall framework to get those goals he thought he had to apply military pressure. no one else in the administration except the presidenforpresident thought it. everyone else had a different take how to execute that overall strategy. so it is in this level but they differ greatly. >> you have these various escalations whether it be cambodia or laos. in the backlash that ended up shaping the prospects to succe succeed.

kissinger had no political instincts it's remarkable he is a theorist and this is something nixon got angry with him about several times. let me set this up for you. immediately kissinger and nixon and when they first met to talk about kissinger joining the administration, they agreed the establishment was corroded and needed an overhaul of the bureaucratic revolution and kissinger and nixon agreed that policy had to be centered in the white house. they needed needed to see if marginalized on the sidelines. in this revolution on nixon's

behalf they were using it on the embassy that all serious foreign policies had to go through their office in the white house. so there was a bureaucratic revolution they shared, but in his first political battle over strategy. they thought that the united states could achieve these strategic objectives but they laid out to withdraw american

troops and they called this the victimization that they had been doing this all along and the idea was that you could slowly in a methodical way bring american troops home from vietnam beginning in the summer of 1969 and this would quiet the domestic credit can take the pressure off congress to pass the resolution said the war in the budgeting. so in his mind it was a strategy if you brought the troops home for the american public support and therefore congress could stay on board congress would also be amenable perhaps to spending lots more money and technical material to saigon so they could stand on their own. there are some holes in it but

given the circumstances nixon and kissinger were dealt a bad hand. i think they played it worse but they were dealt a bad hand, and this was their strategy you can see the political upside to th this. it started in the johnson years after the tet offensive in apr april 68. what kissinger had in mind was the secret talks nobody but nixon knew the talks were going on, so eventually they had secret talks and it is in those

talks kissinger thought he was handicapped by the withdrawal of american troops he thought that was the biggest asset and that is one of the reasons he thought he had determined the course of military measures. >> this basic strategic approach comes through with another recurring theme is this desire to keep the policy centralized in the white house with regard to the president and henry kissinger in some ways as you just mentioned i wonder if you can say a bit more about how some might argue it is conducted to make the trade office and its in your account there are significant costs due to the fact it was pulled so much into the white house the secretary of state an and defense deliberatey

excluded from these important meetings not really the process to speak of was what you say is the cost of that? >> south vietnam and american public support and the hangover of the vietnam but we feel in mistrust of government. it is the failure to integrate a successful and sustainable peace process. we know from crunching all of the various agreements we can get our hand on the university that has bee done a good job of putting all of these agreements that have ever been written down into a database. you are going to need lots of different people with different skill sets to make this a sustainable peace and they have

had a handout for the vietnam peace agreement and the sophomores at the college to figure out this is not how you negotiate there are no enforcement mechanisms built-in. kissinger couldn't build a coalition o of supportive allies inside of the national bureaucracy. that means there was nobody from the pentagon or the state department to go to congress. they had no idea these meetings were going on. that isn't how you run a democracy or peace negotiations. in a small room in paris they had no idea that this was going on until it was too late.

another important stakeholder that you described as being no collaboration, minimal consultation is the government of south vietnam and so o so one hand, henry kissinger had sort of a solid tenet of the negotiation and the government that would survive they didn't seem to understand what forces were in play and south vietnam.

it was at a certain point it's hard to imagine a different outcome so i wonder if you can just speak to the possibility. one of the discoveries for me is looking at these documents and realizing that there was a civil society and south vietnam that existed that really wanted t bue more of an active agent in their own history. henry kissinger had contempt for almost anything vietnamese. he had as a major tenant the saigon government had to be intact.

he would have learned that there is a majority of the population that was probably if they were not already, the majority were not already in the camp they were probably anti-communist so there was a sizable population that could have been mobilized in any other situation if would have mobilized the force. the agreement was built on the back of mobilizing that society whether it was a nonpartisan relationship so that is what the good negotiators do but that is not at all what happened here. they were not consulted about

it, they were not taken into consideration and at the end of the day the united states withdrew and threw saigon under the bus. there were 58,000 americans, 3.82 million for the preservation of south vietnam and it wasn't taken seriously at the end and that to me is trag tragic. >> let me turn to a greek earning theme you argue with the way that they manifested itself in the conduct. the question of ambition on the one hand if you don't have great

ambition you have a great accomplishment and on the other hand a whole host of negative tendencies that come with great ambition and as you think about this particular account how do you reflect on the role of ambition and public service. >> when you cross the line into arrogance you get in trouble very early on kissinger went to the press and said if you are withdrawing troops you have to give something. this is something that makes them thought was a good idea and the joint chiefs of staff thought was a good idea and an

abstract. they didn't think it was a good idea to do it secretly. they thought they would get the congresputcongress on board andt and bill rogers knew nothing about it. without the air chief knowing it until the bomb hit the ground. to me that crosses the line and there's also some subchapters that are quite disturbing they knew he wanted to enact his vision but didn't know how to do it. i'm kissinger caught rogers and laird out of the decision-making but he also did is get closer to the president by telling nixon

only you would have the guts to do something as brave and as bold as bombing cambodia to save vietnam. kissinger became quite good at this overtime so they decided to rattle on but that is a classic example and there was also a value to be the one national security lieutenant who favored the policy everyone else thought was too brash the same thing with the b-52 bombings and a familiar refrain to have no one else in that immediate team supporting the policy except for kissinger and the president and he is constantly using these

insecurities to get the policy that he wanted to see done. so that is a polemic you can rant on that but it distorts a democracy service and also i think affects policy and strategy in the vietnam. it was to buy enough time to get a chance to survive and they thought that they were actually doing that it bought 18 months because it destroyed the north vietnamese sanctuary. the reality is he sped up the clock because the congress immediately when things have

quieted down the speech did what they wanted it to do. they went on television and spoke for the majority to bring the troops home and increased pressure here and there and extract ourselves with honor from the vietnam. cambodia undid that and i was on kissinger's watch. so this is when the clock sped up and congress tries to pass one amendment after another with all of these efforts to limit the american involvement. so, to me it is a classic example of kissinger talking tough, appearing tough and then producing the opposite desired response.

the invasion was even worse at this point because the congress said you can't do that but it involved the south vietnamese army and it was a disaster. they achieved the objective for a 15 minute and then the press was there so it just undercut everything that they were trying to do with this military escalation and all the time the north vietnamese troops were pouring into south vietnam. >> in the book that you just sort of shared, it is true we don't often think of them as having first and foremost a portfolio that is about domestic politics, and yet by your account the extent to which henry kissinger wanted to not think about domestic politics and think about u.s. strategies when other places argued that actually the center of gravity

of the united states in the vietnam war comes across as a major strategic weakness. >> that is perfectly stated. one of the themes in the book i hope people pick up his senate policy was always done in the united states and very rarely was about south vietnam or any vietnamese it was all about the domestic consideration and political credibility there was always a domestic component that got cut several different ways. kissinger said the timeline for the negotiation. he wanted to deliver a peace agreement even after nixon said i don't want it, kissinger still pushed it and would go to meetings and say we've got asked

this before october 15 to give this to the president and then you look at the notes there is another area that i want to get this in. kissinger met with his north vietnamese counterpart we have transcripts written by the associates. is remarkable how similar they are so we now have a very good solid record. john carlin who works in the state department just published a volume in the foreign relation

series that captures the negotiations and so we have that ended picks up on some of this and adds a little bit to other places. so the record of what was said in these meetings is pretty clear. what is remarkable is after each of these, nixon received on his desk a summary and they do not reflect at all. nixon makes strategic decisions based on what kissinger was telling him. classic lines about beer getting close to withdrawing their troops and later they said at y. and z. but when he said he left the counterparts that were out of attack that gave him the

evidence he needed. even if it is richard dixon, deceiving the president for that office was some reason of negotiation the president is going to make decisions based on those conversations, that gives me pause. the only thing that squares the circle a little bit is they didy never had much faith in kissinger or those talks. i don't know how much photocd was making from that, but if i heard that the north vietnamese were interested in a troops withdraw i might behave this w way. they would never admit this to

begin with because they didn't recognize the political legitimacy. at no point, and i can say this with extreme confidence come as no point do they ever even remotely hint that the average troops to be removed from south vietnam or in agreement and in the end they conceded on that point to allow the infiltration to stay where it is and allow the main infantry divisions to stay so they poured tens of thousands of new troops in and kissinger by agreement in the documents allow those troops to stay there.

that causes them to say the only sticking point we have now on the agreement is the south vietnamese government. we wanted them out and you insisted they stay with now that you are learning the troops are here we will take them out ourselves and that is the agreement kissinger signed and that is what happened. >> let me push back on the title a little bit. the title, the subtitle reckless henry kissinger and the tragedy of the vietnam does ascribe a lot of responsibility to the figure of henry kissinger. and i understand the argument about the tragedy. tens of thousands of the vietnamese died and billions of dollars were spent.

reckless is the title i went around with the public affairs for a while. i kept coming back to this because i think that kissinger's behavior in the negotiation in the escalation and its insistence were no.

i think thethey had done everythinyou will not havebe pet

isn't going to work that given all of that i think he does deserve a lot of blame and his behavior as a policymaker. >> let me ask a couple questions about his reputation. in some ways he is known as being the master strategist and one of the elements as you have recounted at the core of the policy that was the preferred approach so it looks like a battle that shaped the approach that wasn't on the winning side of that argument is that fair?

>> he lost that battle and one of the things he wanted to make sure is we have this enormous treasure trove of sources i think over 300,000 pages of conversations. ...

>> now i don't know about other areas in the middle east was right on target with the soviets and chinese. >> these were political rivalries. >> not that the strategic considerations did not come first but nixon forms and over this distant one --dash with this rivalry so he wanted to give him out of the office so

he set up a little committee so when he would get those moves to keep them out of the oval offic office. >> many of us in this room have asked if we were to guess for those who are foreign affairs if there is a question raised to is the foremost american policy expert for the united states today probably the name henry kissinger would come up more than any other so hard you explain that disconnect? and with that sterling reputation quick. >> henry kissinger is very smart and witty and charming and understands grand strategy he just did not practice it as well. not in my view or especially

vietnam. much of his time out of office has been editing his time in office. nobody cares about the legacy more than henry kissinger in government than kissinger. he is brilliant and is an absolutely beautiful writer so if you combine those. in those places to be plugged in and i understand that completely but when it comes to being close to those across the country in vietnam that is something i take very very seriously to put men and women in harm's way you have to give

more than just theoretical answers you have to look parents in the eye to say we are pursuing a policy of national interest and we took this path and the full debate and we came to you and you said yes none of that took place we have to have that full and frank discussions. we are a brilliant theorist but a vietnam in practice it was very different. . >> b will start taking your questions.

>> please identify yourself. >> i'm a graduate student of the international school of economics in moscow. this is a very controversial topic so i thought this was a very interesting theory and kissinger had that irritating tendency to focus on the great man that form policy managed on great personalities is there a similar strand in this discussion and with those

responsibility those that failed to extract themselves with limited ability quick. >> that's a great question. and this notion of great man history i do not believe in it at all. that we could have the society that nobody has ever heard of and we will be pursuing that and other works but every single administration struggles with the dilemma

that kennedy didn't know because of the politics but that was always in context but why kissinger in my view did sit here in this powerful role that we had? he was in the room to make decisions without full consultation of the national security bureaucracy this isn't a great man it is tragic. but his own actions to provide himself in the 1971 interview that i love being the lone cowboy. with enormous power to

negotiate in the united states, enormous power but to do with your actual question is agree with you completely and to suggest that kissinger created this world and by that was needed. where you breathing in all sorts of people with all the things you can do to create this process and the end result and your agreement has to have enforcement mechanisms

and we don't think they will take place ever but the united states think kissinger or even senator mitchell can come in and then to be that honest growth with interest and specialty to work so kissinger did create this world so that is why with a lot of authority and there is a nerve that we are just starting to hear it is too long and costly for

what we have gotten out of it and i agree with the ten or of your questions. the reality of the situation. >> the relative charges against nixon and kissinger so is it true that that alters the logbooks? and to misrepresent the conferences of paris?

and with that policy very well. do you ever consider the t word? . >> yes. there is a wonderful exhibit right now that i would encourage you to all go see. they have a whole room dedicated to henry kissinger. that probably goes a little further than i would go. there have been lots of people calling him a war criminal and a treason but i do think that is a serious charge and that he sent nixon summary that was inaccurate statements that is the softest language i could

use so how has he maintained a reputation? because he takes partial responsibility for that. in the memoir he says i created the cardinal sin of the negotiator i became an advocate for my own negotiation. so what he would say in this situation is if i was not telling the president that there is hope for a peace agreement to go back to the stone age but that's how i see it the president of the united states if you are serving at the pleasure of the president not at the senate confirmation

to have a full and frank description there is no other way to see it but on the bombing in cambodi cambodia, this is widely accepted now and those who did the bombing coordinates who has gone on record with the war college in alabama to say he was the officer charged with coming up with a coordinates. he and kissinger actually change the coordinates. and then created the logbooks with the last minutes of that

relay station that has been accepted for quite a while and scholars of all use that in the last two years. . >> given what you know, is there the national or international counsel with morality and justice where kissinger and nixon and others involved? and specifically of our side.

>> that's a great question the war crimes tribunal not even beginning to know about from 1967 so at that point given the state of international la law, there really wasn't much meat you have those principles but after that there was nothing like the international criminal court where this had been adjudicated. finding commissioners oversee was just impossible given the cold war. so finding some kind of un mandated, the mechanics are difficult. in a lot of ways, and i love your question that is what is happening now in the literature coming out of the

second generation. if you look with fiction it is the vietnamese children born in south vietnam 74 and 75 and they are writing with their parents generation could not articulate as a civil society vision in a sense that does what you are saying to place the whole war on trial through fiction, thinly veiled, comes to some type of recognition a lot of humanity was lost in the tragedy. if you have not read the sympathizer, you could spend your entire reading year reading vietnamese voices from

the saigon army officials that really place the war in the civil society context. they do a little bit of that cultural work even though the legal work was never done. >> thank you very much. >> i am just wondering if you say that vietnam has the exit strategy? is there any good example from that exit strategy particularly after world war ii yes that's a great question is there any model? history doesn't repeat itself

so i do think we can draw lessons from the past especially looking at the attributes that go into the peace agreement that we know work? and for students here had this as they're final exam give me the 14 best practices that must exist that the non- peace agreement has never done by the way that does some of the work that you are talking about but as a bipartisan organization funded by congress and it brings practitioners from around the world to come up with these negotiating ideas and they come back to the same model which is the good friday agreement because it involves all those different aspects to

decommission political prisoners to integrate the economy and what we see in the news now that is the issue so this is what we are tackling right now so what happens to that border? but the agreement checked a lot of the boxes and so for those of us ending deadly conflict that model that we to educate some national groups that this one in the end says you went home could have gotten this? those in the field battle.

facing saigon you can do that whenever you want that is what the north vietnamese kept saying we have a 23 month withdrawal process and kissinger says it takes you five months to get them here if you will trade prisoners of war for a complete unilateral us withdrawal, do it. . >> what is preventing the treaty? what do you think? what is the problem?

. >> i would say that there is a huge society that what made it however and this gets back to my point exactly the most important people were the architects but that non- identity downtown and that new building to be nonsectarian? that is a complete makeover so now there is the riverfront that is exactly what i'm talking about none of that

vision is going on with the paris peace talks. none of that so the very first question is about strategy. you believe in negotiation but the heaviest bombing? how do you reconcile those two things? they always secretly hoped hanoi was the enemy he said "that raggedy ass country". contempt so that is on the macro and to get much better to be the anonymous broker and architect of the peace agreement and could be a

theorist but we don't want him constructing we want the young people that are here today saying their majors whatever they are and work on these issues. so at the end of the day good friday with incredibly important lessons how to suffer foreign affairs in the footprint in the world how small countries react in that there is no political corollary but a great theorist said that. >> we only have four minutes left that we would like some reflections along these lines it's really hard not to read a book thinking what's going on in the world.

i know i should've left you a half hour, not three minutes but what really resonates to resemble something going on? . >> i am very nervous anytime we concentrate power to close to don't allow the national security bureaucracy to function in the way that it has and we have horrible fundamentals right now with the state department to have a vital role of foreign policy because it is the link between the public and the policymakers. we need all of those elements of a functioning democracy and

we are not there today. we are not there in vietnam. this is the tragedy to speak to the dangers in the face of the white house he have all three branches. the national security advisor position kissinger held the only person in us history to be the national security advisor and secretary of state that didn't happen. the state department so to defy diplomatic solutions to the world's toughest problems. and with civilian commanders to come up with military solutions the national security advisor's job is to mediate that natural tension to provide advice to the president. when you cut those two elements out and you just

consult the president that is bad for democracy. which is bad for the people. and those continue to pay the price. it is still alive and well. . >> please join me to think the professor for his book and comments today can clap. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

. >> education was important to your family early on in second grade something happened knowing what was going on in the early days. >> this also gives you insight into who my mother is as well growing up in a neighborhood on the south side of chicago on the south shore in the house. [applause] we are everywhere. when we moved into the neighborhood it was a mixed-race neighborhood. this is one of the reasons why we moved there we moved with my aunt robbie who was a teacher who could own her own home memory ii my uncle who

was up order but they had a stable income to buy a house in south shore so the neighborhood was mixed. that match the schools are mixed so i put a school picture in my book to show you the diversity that was there so what was going on in the seventies was called white flight and white friends they literally started to disappear before my eyes and i did not realize until i had grown up and learned about segregation and the whole issue of pushing folks out of communities that the neighborhood was starting to change so we started to feel those affects not just friends leaving but the

disinvestment in the neighborhood and the schools. second grade comes around the first time i was in a chaotic classroom where things were flying and teachers were not teaching and i knew this is a second grader and i would come home for lunch. i loved around the corner. we would turn on all my children and watch the shows. [laughter] i would have my bologna sandwich and i would complain. we didn't even get homework. i was that kind of kid. [laughter] we are not learning enough in this class. how will we make it in third grade? i was a worrier. [laughter] because we had girls that came with us and we were all complaining. this needs to change.

we thought she was just listening and humoring us but little did we know she was back up at that school and making some moves. what happened was a few of us got tested out into the third grade because of my mother and the advocacy of other mothers. but i told this story because i knew even at that age i was not invested in as a second grader. and we think kids don't know when they are shortchanged and devalued and i'm here to tell you i knew that in second grade. with a school and a quality. kids know when they are not being valued and that makes them feel some kind of way. [applause]