speaker tonight, colonel gregory a.daddis is an academy, where he currently serves as the head of the american history division, a west point graduate, he is veteran of both operations, desert storm and iraqi freedom. he holds a phd from the university of north carolina chapel hill and measures u.s. army -- his newest book westmoreland's war, reassessing american strategy in vietnam, oxford press was recently selected for include on the chief of staff on the army's reading list. colonel daddis is an important -- liaison for military history, region two and

the new york military affairs symposium. welcome, colonel daddis. >> thank you for the kind of introduction and bob for the invitation, i'm not only happy to be here given new york traffic, i'm also lucky to be here, as i watch the clock tick away, not only in the palisades as we were driving down from west point, but also in the cab trying to get us from the hotel to here. it was a close return thing as some would say. what i would do this evening would be to really start with something that happened last week in the white house and there was an uproar as you might have recalled last week at the white house, it was not related to the president's tan suit, which got quite a number of

remarks as we saw, but more significantly for my conversation this evening with you, was really revolved afternoon one word, and that word was strategy, and the president igniting criticism by saying that we don't yet have a strategy against isis targets in syria, causing uproars, certainly among the president's political opponents and i thought it would be worthwhile before we get into vietnam talking about the word strategy. we use it quite often. we have a strategy for everything, we have a business strategy, we have an it vatty, we have a strategy for our fantasy football teams. and in its original context, we're still somewhat unsure of what the word strategy means. so if we go back a bit and take

a look at this word before we get into vietnam, i think it wi will -- strategy is a loose sort of word, and it's a concept that certainly has evolved over time. our starting point with this word should be the use of engagement for the purpose of war, this limited conception centered on the commander's ability to shape individual campaigns and really today's lexi con might -- but in this somewhat limited definition, and he used a number of definitions on strategy for war, but i'm going to focus on this one because it is the most popular.

the after math of the napoleonic wars. by the time we get to the end of the first world war and in it's wake, there seems to be a problem. the supposed glorification of battle as a principle element of strategy. now there seems to be a problem with this word, at least of how it's been defined. so what ladelle hart tries to do with his strategy is to broad on it some more. he therefore tries to define it as the art of distributing and applying not just military means, but a nation's means that

are more holistic in a sense, to fulfill the ends of policy, a nation that looks more to -- more than just it's military means and look to beyond just that. so a nation's are enforcement to serve a sensible policy have to not just focus on military campaigns, but properly allocating and coordinating it's resources. and to ladelle hart, strategy is not just focusing on the campaigns, but the largest objective to supporting a concept that will hopefully asloid damage to a future state of peace. so here is the art of grand strategy, a concept that ladelle hart will focus on to support his indirect approach for achieving war's political objectives. in short this focuses and

encompasses more than just fighting power, we should focus on other powers, financial, commercial, even ethical and all of these should be brought to bear for weakening an opponents will. and we'll talk about this problem of getting at your enemy's will. so here strategy is more than just the pure utilization of battle. now more recently, we have seen other who is looked at strategy as a relationship. as a successful prerequisite for the prosecution's strategy and collin gray will define it as -- it is a relationship. and certainly a dimpl different

way, an important way to think about strategy. 6 what this suggests is matthew ridge way writing the aftermath of the korean war will maintain as well, is that strategy is not just the purview of military operators. certainly the atomic age, ridge way will speak of the need for civilian leaders to work closely with military authorities in setting attainment goals and selecting the means to obtain them, certainly a peace that i would like to highlight this evening. here we see strategy as being something more than just the unique preserve of military officers. we might also consider the fact that strategy doesn't work out the way we always want it to. michael howard is it possible

that military leaders exempt -- should we look at strategy as a system of expedience. that's an extended preface if you will on my talk on strategy in the vietnam era and especially under the tenure of william westmoreland, i promise you that will be the only akr acronym i use this evening, so given these competing definitions of strategy, how did the united states army define strategy as it was looking to the possibility of dethrow -- and here is the 1961 definition

of strategy from the dictionary of united states army terms. are you ready for this? i have to take a deep breath to make sir i get it all out. this is the definition of strategy. the art and science of developing and using the political psychological during peace and war to avoid the maximum support to national policies in order to increase the probabilities of victory and to lessen the chances of defeat. that is a useful definition, is it not? it is so vague as to the almost too broad to be useful. now critics of the vietnam war will shy away from this very, very broad definition, and if there's one word that is most associated with american strategy in vietnam, it is the one word of attrition. critics of the war maintain that william westmoreland, the

commander of macv from 1964 to 1968 prosecuted a ground campaign in south vietnam in the 1960s and he employed a strategy of attrition. concentrating on killing enemy soldiers. here's the story, that westmoreland is hypnotized by the prospects of high body counts. he leads the army to failure because he never realizes that the insurgency war inside south vietnam is not like the war in korea, and is not like the second world war, that he is focused above all else on killing the enemy and he's unaware that there's basic changes needed for the army to successfully win the war in vietnam. this attrition strategy will argue if only he had employed a

better strategy, focusing on countering the southern insurgency, rather than on the conventional threat from north vietnam, americans in fact could have achieved victory. so far afield do these detractors go, that a former advisor to the south vietnam forestry said that westmoreland's strategy of attrition was in fact an absence of strategy, others take note of this, one biographer of westmorela westmoreland's successor, said that abrams immediately move aid way from an attrition strategy upon taking kmangd of macv in 1968, and it goes that abrams will increase an emphasis on securing and passifying the population, we'll talk about this world pacification in a bit. and will manifest such an

enlightened and effect to strategy that in fact abrams had won the war by mid 1970. a better war by a better commander had in fact triumphed. i think there's a problem with these criticisms. and the problem is facts, that facts actually get in the way of a good story. and as a historian, i have a problem with that. that facts sometimes should not get in the way of a better story. in fact william westmoreland did not focus on an attrition strategy on killing the enemy, in fact the word attrition seems to have been misunderstood, not just by contemporary kroit ticks but i would add by -- i think he used his more to express his belief that this war in vietnam

could not be achieved quickly. that it was not going to be won in a matter of months or even years. and this definition of attrition is more to demonstrate that the war was going to be long, rather than dmen strait a commit -- here's the main argument that i would like to make this evening. that westmoreland's own comprehensive approach was a realistic military strategy and they in fact did recognize the complex nature of the threat and effectively employed u.s. forces to combat a sophisticated enemy threat that was both conventional and unconventional and both political and military. and neither a focus on counter insurgency nor a singular focus on conventional operations could have positioned american forces in reaching victory, and this i think was a point that was well understood by westmoreland.

now of course effectively implementing that strategy are not one and the same. so we might suggest then, that the united states failure in vietnam had less to do with commanders choosing a correct or incorrect strategy, for the ground war than it did with the inability of foreign forces to resolve intractable problems within vietnam's governing society. it is possible to have a good strategy and still lose a war. now in the end, i think the saigon government and this is an important part of the story that often gets left out of -- shared

and accepted by the bulk of the south vietnamese population. this is porvet to realize here. that in this civil war, ore vietnamese national identity in the modern era, there was simply some questions that foreign forces could not answer. an uncomfortable proposition for americans in the early 1960s. might suggest that that is an uncomfortable proposition for americans today. so in my opinion, based on my research, the american faith and the power to reconstruct if not create a south vietnamese political community, led to policies which never fully addressed the fundingmental problem and the fundamental issue and this was a struggle to define vietnamese nationalism and identity in the modern age. not only had american political military leaders overestimated

their ability to bend north vietnam's will, or bend north vietnamese leaders to their will, but they also overestimated and perhaps more importantly, their ability to help build a political community inside south vietnam. and i think in the after math of world war ii in particular, remember that this is a nation that single handedly won world war ii, never mind that there were allies involved, it was tom hanks landing on the normandy beachhe beachhead on d-day that won the war for us. this is something that i think is difficult for -- civilian leaders were uncomfortable with the possibility that the path of americans to reshape if not create new political and social communities overseas. could only achieve so much. how is it possible that there

are limits to american power? all right, so where to begin? i think probably the best place is with the myth, and the myth goes something like this, that the americans come out of world war ii, they win the war successfully, single handedly and the united states army comes out of that conflict with one understanding and that is conventional operations will lead to political objectives. a basic pillar of this popular narrative on -- moorely understood by the united states army because it was -- coming out of world war ii and the korean war, but the facts suggest another story, as west point superintendent from 1960

to 1963, westmoreland in fact instituted mandatory counter insurgency training for all cad dids. under westmoreland's tenure, stood up a counter insurgency committee and that committee found that the interdisciplinary nature of this subject required cadets to study the political, military, economic, psychological and social logical aspects of unconventional warfare. so cad deads. -the famous north vietnamese military commander. cadets also explored the histories of revolutionary struggles in the philipeans in mall laya and in indo china. upon assumption of kmangd in vietnam in mid 1964,

westmoreland is bringing a host of theoretical study with him that was really being imbued in officer core in west point and filtered throughout the army in its training programs. when he does assume command, he has a broad, broad mission, and it necessarily nolls a broader interpretation of political military objectives and the problems of achieves those objectives in the modern era. certainly in political military conflicts in which revolutionary warfare plays a big role. so the objective for which westmoreland is given is to achieve a stable and independent noncommunist government in south vietnam. this is a daunting political objective. you might even question whether it was one that was possible to be achieved by westmoreland, if not by any midwestern military commander in 1964. to create a stable, independent,

noncommunist vietnam, and a daunting, daunting objective. so because of this objective, so counter a local insurgency inside south vietnam, and also perhaps more importantly, to expand the percentage of south vietnam's population under saigon government's control. we might question the capacity of americans to do just that. to expand the percentage of the local population under the saigon government's control. now in june 1965 cable from westmoreland outlines his concept of operations and it notes clearly that the insurgency in south vietnam must eventually be defeated among the people in the hamlets and towns, westmoreland realizes that this

is a war that's going to be fought among the population. and as he directs his commander later that year, the war in vietnam is a political as well as a military war. it is political because the ultimate goal is to regain the loyalty and cooperation of the people and to create conditions which permit the people to go about their normal lives in peace and security. he might question the capacity of his forces to regain the loyalty of the the local population.

now, certainly westmoreland used the word attrition. he used it in his memoirs, he used it in his correspondent with senior and sub order nachblt kmachkders. every time he used it, it was in the condition text of talking about a long war. simple words like attrition could not fully characterize this war that he's trying to prosecute. so when you read west more land's messages to subordinates in the white house, he suggested a strategy that is les focused on killing the enemy, especially to those who are directing the war effort, if not to the preponderance lags at large, that this conflict in vietnam is not going to be concluded in a swift manner.

>> the premise behind whatever further actions we may undertake, must be that we are in for the long pull. this struggle has become a war of attrition. i see no likelihood of achieving a quick, favorable end to this war. so having realized that this is going to be a long war, having realized that he has a daunting purpose in front of him. he now has to craft a strategic concept to implement his military forces, to direct his military forces toward achieving his political objectives. now as his chief intelligence officer will later control,

westmoreland had not one battle to fight, but three. first to contain the growing conventional threat, and this is the external threat, if you will, at least how the americans thought about it. but from the american standpoint, first to contain a growing external threat from north vietnam, we need to understand that by mid to late 1964, there are already north vietnamese that are infiltrating into south vietnam, most famously, infiltrating along the ho chi minh trail. second, westmoreland has to develop the republic of vietnam's armed forces, so not only does he have to focus on the enemy's main force units, but he also has to focus on building and developing the local south vietnamese forces, not only to combat the conventional forces, but also the insurgent threat from the

national liberation front, or more popularly or pejoratively known -- final lie the third leg of this stool, if you will, is to passify and protect the peasants in south vietnamese country side. he publishes what will become known as three faces of -- he this is an important point, we need to remember that by early 1965 and certainly by the spring of 18965, there is a realization that if the united states is not commit ground forces to vietnam, that sigh gone government is going to fall.

his first move is to halt the losing strechbd. to defend political and population centers and preserving and strengthening the south vietnamese armed forces, so first he has to stabilize the situation before anything else. not just to destroy enemy forces, but also to reinstitute rural pacification and rural construction activities. this phase aimed to begin in 1966, american forces would participate in clearing, securing, reserve reaction and offensive operations required to sustain and support the resumption of pacification and

again this is another important point. these military operations should not be seen as an end unto themselves. they are a step in a larger hole and that larger hole is a cam pain to achieve political stability in south vietnam, and create linkages between the local population and the government insaigon. and finally, in phase three, mcphee would oversee the defeat and destruction of remaining enemy forces inside south vietnam, and their base areas, of course where are the north vietnamese base areas? in low cals off-limits to his forces most importantly those in cambodia and laos. westmoreland's official report on the war, as he's outlining this three-phase campaign plan,

includes sustained campaign, so it asks you to think about this word attrition, less about west more land focused on killing the enemy and more about again intimating that this is goings to be a sustained long struggle. there were no napoleonic battles to be found here and i think westmoreland realized that, attrition suggested that a stable south vietnam, capable of resisting both the military and political pressure from both internal and external aggressors was not going to rise in a matter of months or even years. >> a multitude of military tasks defies easy explanation, if we don't call it attrition, what do we call it? i think that's the problem, what

westmoreland lacked is i think the entire u.s. army in the united states war era lacks was a way to articulate broad military concepts. the plexity of the fighting in south vietnam caused immense problems with strategic articulation, what do i call this war? what do i call this strategy? an impoverished strategic language left uniformed officers and their civilian leadership, if not the country as a whole unable to communicate their intentions in the means to achieve the political objectives at hand. now looking precise terminology to describe three battles mcphee

was simultaneously fighting comes with a risk of ambiguity. i think any broad concept comes with such a risk. in fact a post war survey conducted among those generals that were serving in the milita milita military command in vietnam, 70% of the army generals surveyed were uncertain of the war's objectives. so if killing the enemy, if racking up body counts had been the guiding light of military strategy in vietnam, we might have expected more certainty among the army's leaders. westmoreland's strategy left many american field commanders in doubt about the united states main purpose in south vietnam. words like attrition, while useful for critics, remain

unsatisfying in expressing the complexity of the tasks facing americans and probably more importantly their south vietnamese allies throughout the 1960s. all right, so i have laid out the political problem, i have laid out the conceptual solution that westmoreland comes up with, what about the problems of implementation? there are many. i think throughout the war, regardless of the time period, american commanders found it nearly impossible to translate military successes into political progress. a key point, i think for understanding the american effort in vietnam. as one usaid commander said, as we never articulated our massive resources into conjunction with vietnamese politics. and i think westmoreland understood this.

probably the fundamental issue, this is westmoreland's words in 1966, is the issue of coordination of mission action tifts inside saigon, it was abundantly clear that all political, military, economic and security in this sense police programs must be completely integrated in order to attain any kind of success in a country which has been greatly weakened by a prolonged conflict and is under increasing pressure by large military and subversive forces. it's important to note here that this long conflict long preceded american participation. and this integration will bedevil american commanders throughout their -- military operations, even successful

military operations, often caused depopulation in the country side, therefore contradicting the very goals that americans were trying to achieve. how could you develop a sense of political stability and political community, when your village, your district, your province is being ravaged by war, and again, this is a country that has long been at war. despite american's military operations and pacification efforts, and training the south vietnamese forces, enemy recruitn recruitment in the south continues, enemy re-enforcement in the north continues. some years nearly unabated. it is a frustrating time for americans between 1964 and 1968. tactical successes often times achieve only temporary results and you read this in memoirs and the after action reviews of officers.

of the successful operation against the national liberation front forces and the political insurgen insurgency, and three to six months later, the insurgency seemed like it hadn't been hit by american forces at all. maxwell taylor will even call the national liberation front a phoenix which continues to rise from the ashes. westmoreland always looked to follow military combat operations with pacification programs and i have used this -- the way mcphee designed pacification. there was a realization in the

1960s that that linkage if you will had been broken. and a shadow parallel government had instilled itself in that gap, the national liberation front had inserted itself if you will between the rural population and the saigon government. so what westmoreland was trying to achieve here, given his objective, was to re-establish those linkages. again a difficult task i think for any foreign force. but as west more land writes in his official report, on the war pacification effort and the main force war were essentially inseparable. they were opposite sides of the same coin. the problem was every time you flip that coin, one side seemed to be working against the other. every time i had a successful military operation, if i am a commander in vietnam, i seem to have a problem of creating and maintaining momentum with a

political side of the war. now i think it's important to know too, that president linden johnson's national security team is also speaking in the same language that west more land is using, national security advisor mcgeorge bundy summarized westmoreland's -- halting the enemy offense, by destroying the southern insurgency and passifying selected high priority areas and that is bundy's relating westmoreland's strategic concepts of the president. he says that after progressively restoring the country to governmental control, westmoreland will then aim to support rural construction with comprehensive attention to the pacification process. so if the critics are right, in arguing that westmoreland had

been attributed to enemy forces, he had duped his civilian leadership. and i don't think that was the case. say what you will about mcgeorge bundy and robert s. mcnamara, they're pretty intelligent folks and i think they understood as well the problems of relating and translating military success into political progress, and we can talk if you would like in the question-answer period about a controversial figure, robert s. mcnamara, also important i think to note is that westmoreland would have been out of step with contemporary theories on counter inge urgency if not army doctrine if all he did was focus on killing the enemy, contemporary counter insurgency and army doctrine of the day began with the assumption that security preceded all other military and political operations.

i would argue that we speak in similar terms today. if you look at the last sen years of the army's experiences in both iraq and afghanistan, commanders in don trin all speak in providing some sense of security with regard to the local population so that political instability can take hold. in short, of course a secure environment could pacification flourish, i think is a point that was well understood by the united states army at the time. in fact when you look at westmoreland's june 1965 concept of the operations, he notes that in order to defeat the insurgency in south vietnam, the people must provide security of two kinds, to secure the country from large well equipped units, including those which may come from outside the country, the north vietnamese regular army

units and secondly the population required secure security from the guerrilla, the assassin and the westmoreland informer.

south vietnamese army. and often times, you'll clearly get this from americans in particular, they see a south vietnamese army that is often unsympathetic to the country's rural population. and by 1966 and 67 in

particular, you see frustration bubbling up from the american officer corps, as well as the civilian leaders who were directing the war effort. moreover, i think american military effectiveness, and here is the important point, in this larger point i would like to make about the problem of implementation, is that any military effectiveness could not impose political constancy on si saigon's leadership, nor could it force the population to view the central government in saigon as the single legitimate political entity which could better combat the insurgent threat, and perhaps more importantly, take into account the population's needs. in short, not all problems inside south vietnam could be solved by american military might.

now by 1967, clearly i think both sides and recent scholarship that focuses on the north vietnamese effort, both the americans and the hanoi leadership are concerned that the war has entered into a prolodged stalemate. and you will see a series of decisions made, that will lead to the tet offensive in early 1968, this is unfortunately, preceded by a long salesman ship campaign prosecuted by a number of -- report on the progress of the war. westmoreland will dutifully follow the president's wishes, he will qualify as best he can when talking tot the public about how much the united states is making in vietnam, but clearly the message is taken

hold by the end of 1967 and that message is that the united states is in fact making progress in vietnam. >> there are failed expectations across the board. and those failed expectations in the aftermath of tet, swiftly lead to the conviction that westmoreland had somehow presided over a flawed strategy inside south vietnam. not only had the president decided on national -- or very nearly before coming on national tv, that he was going to not going to run for re-election, but there more importantly was a problem with public support. in the aftermath of the tet offensive, walter cronkite will most famously go on television and question the war effort.

and johnson will say, if i have lost walter chrronkitcronkite, lost middle america and i have lost the war. but these failed expectations, increasingly as the war preceded and as the war endinged, will turn on west more land himself. they will argue that westmoreland's focus on attrition had minded him to the true nature of the wore. the americans would have been better placed to achieve victory if wompbl westmoreland would have fought a better war, the united states would not have lost the war in vietnam. and these arguments two object proliferate after the war, if

only the military had been allowed to widen the scope of the war into cambodia and laos in north vietnam, if only public support would have remained strong, those damned hippies, if only a resolute civilian leadership had been whether to see the war through, but those damned politicians, but among military critics in particular, the notion of a failed strategy remaininged at the heart of arguments why the united states lost in vietnam. unfortunately, i think the simplistic and mistaken -- dominated all -- especially american centric histories. in fact we have reduced it to where we can reduce it no forward. one historian has described westmoreland's strategic equation as possibility plus firepower equals attrition. we could not ask to simplify

strategy anymore, could we? for the most complex of wars fought by the united states in the 20th century, we can boil it all down to a one plus one equals two equation. but the mcphee commander never relied on a strategy squli in vietnam. given the collection complex -- and also within the larger context of the cold war, summarizing westmoreland's campaign strategy in one word, attrition seems fraught with imprecision at best, and prevarication at worst. that the united states failed in vietnam does not necessarily prove that west more land

implemented a strategy of attrition. he said i think you can have a good strategy and still lose a war. the overarching military strategy on which they were based, i think represented an inclusive set of concepts that focused on combatting and defeating an enemy. we cannot forget that this is war. and also at the same time, relied on a vast array of political and diplomatic and social and cultural instruments of power. as west more land maintained from the start, the war in vietnam is a political war, as it is a military war. and it is in this portion of the war the political one that americans arguably face the

greatest challenges. in large sense, i think senior u.s. policymakers of the day were asking too much of their military strategists. in the end, vietnam was a civil war, between an among vietnamese. for the united states, the american people waged a struggle on both the construction of an echblgt tiff host government and the destruction of a nationalist enemy proved too fragile. officers like westmoreland and his successor found that nation building in a time of war was one of the most difficult tasks to ask of any military force. the coming out of world war ii, american faith in the power to reconstruct if not create a south vietnamese political

community led to policies which did not address the fundament issue, the personal contest to define and come to a consensus on vietnamese identity in the modern age. so i think if there is perspective to be gained from this long, american experience in southeast asia, it arguably lies here. as uncomfortable as it is about what i'm about to say, i think this is true. not all problems can be solved by military force. even, even when that force is combined with political and economic and social efforts. the capacity of americans to reshape new political and social communities may not, in fact, be limitle limitless. so i would like to end with matthew ridgway who is a commander obviously of american and united nation forces in the

korean war and he is writing of those experiences while the vietnam war is still raging, and he offers an important conclusion. he tells his readers in his memoirs of the korean war that in setting foreign policy objecti objectives policymakers need to look to define those policy objectives with care and to make sure that they lie within the range of our vital national interests and that their accomplishment is within our capabilities. so i think for those seeking to understand the disappointments of american military strategy during the vietnam war, ridgway's counsel seems a useful starting point. thank you for your attention. [ applause ]

>> thank you for a very illuminating presentation. >> thank you. >> in your studies were you able to find evidence of how the flow of supplies and manpower from the north to the south and how the organization of the northern policy was addressed by our campaign or westmoreland, whoever was directing our campaign. >> it's a constant concern, obviously, and i think it's a concern even before westmoreland arrives in 1963 as a deputy commander, even before then, american military commanders and if there is a constant of american military commanders in vietnam, it is that they are continually asking the national command authorities to expand the war beyond south vietnam

borders. they argue that the bureau is not looking at the vietnam war simply within the boundaries of south vietnam and thus we need to look at the war more comprehensively and thus be able to get to the enemy sanctuaries in cambodia and laos to get to the ho chi minh trail and the main artery that hanoi is using to supply the south. so i think westmoreland is concerned about throughout his tenure in south vietnam and clearly, this relates to a problem of retreating enemy forces. so as i mentioned in my remarks we need to make sure that we realize that there are portions of south vietnam in which true attrition of the enemy, the enemy's forces made sense in the mosaic of south vietnam where different provinces and different districts looked different from one another. where the war is unfolding at different rates and in different

way s. attrition in different areas, thus in the central highland which is is relatively less populated than other areas of south vietnam and where north vietnamese regular army units and regiments as early as late 1964 and 1965 are entering into south vietnam westmoreland feels like he has to combat that and so we see the famous opening battles in the valley in pli coup province. it's because westmore land is concerned about the reinforcements down through the ho chi minh trail and into south vietnam. he's worried in mid-1965 about these north vietnamese regiments cutting south vietnam in half. that's why the campaign unfolds as it does and that's why we see mel gibson landing from his helicopter in the valley clearly

he's concerned about this throughout and abrams is, as well. the problem is one of the political decisions made about limiting the war. johnson, i think, rightfully so is concerned about this war escalating into something larger than it should be. johnson throughout his time as president is deeply, deeply concerned about this war exploding into something more than a limited war. he's certainly looking back on the american experience in korea and how the chinese were involved when macarthur overstepped a bit and i think that is on johnson's mind when he decides to limit american combat operations inside south vietnam. with that decision it was the continuing concern about supplies and external reinforcement of the southern insurgency.

thank you. thank you very much for a great talk and very illuminating on some points. i have a couple maybe devil's advocate points and looking at some of the things you said tonight. three things. first, you know, coming from a corporate background. you said 70% to 80% of the corps wasn't sure what the strategy was. to me, that is a major issue because you can't expect to have everyone pulling in the same direction. >> that's right. >> i mean, obviously it's a complex situation and many different layers, but the fact that there's not a guided strategy might be seen as something that westmoreland could have perhaps done better. the second thing is military operations with no strategic

goal has always been a problem. you know, everybody, you know, reads about the germans in the russian campaign and they have great, great operational victories that led nowhere. >> right. >> and you know, part of the strong strategy is knowing how to get strategic or using your operations to get strategic benefits. >> and the final point is -- i've forgotten. i apologize. the -- >> yeah, if i can speak to both of those and they're good point, right? >> the problem, as i argue in west moreland's war, i think certainly if there is a point for criticism that's it. >> that he has a problem with strategic articulation and never resolves that problem successfully. >> what adds to that problem is the mosaic concept and the

operators operating in the province or the marines that are operating along the dmz are fighting a completely different war than those commanders that are fighting the mekong delta. so for those u.s. army units fighting in the central highlands away from the population center where their enemy is a conventional threat. it's a completely different war than those army units fighting south of saigon in the populated region of the mekong delta where there are conventional north vietnamese forces and there's a whole host of national liberation insurgents and that's the problem for westmoreland. he can't just lay down, as you said, a guided strategy for one size fits all because the war just doesn't work that way. if he tries to direct holistically, what matters in one area won't matter in another area and that's what is working in one area might be

counterproductive in another area, so i think that's the problem and i think the point is a worthwhile one that westmoreland is never able to successfully articulate this mosaic war and i would also argue to the domestic home front, as well. we may argue about whether that was the responsibility of the president. secondly, about military operations with no political goals, i would just ask you to perhaps think about the possibility that there is a political goal. the political goal is the independent non-communist vietnam. so there certainly is a political goal. whether that political goal can be achieved by military force i think is another thing and mcnamara and his memoirs will lament the fact that they didn't have more of a discussion and an honest discussion about whether american military forces can achieve that political goal and i think that's one of the important perspectives to pull

out of this is that if strategy is in fact, a bridge and kyling on between civilian and military leaders and that dialogue has to be brutally honest and the not only one set in the political objectives, but perhaps in talking about the capacity to achieve those objectives. >> thank you for the excellent presentation. >> thank you. this follows up on your last answer. other tactics that were available to the americans, crulack had a strategy and ink blots and things like that if you want to address the issue of what alternatives there were tactically and strategically that there were with other people at the pentagon were advancing at the time. >> since you mentioned kri lock i'll focus just on the marines. so the key argument that comes out of vietnam is that there was a better way and the marine corps had actually found that

better way. and it was through what was known as the combined action program and the combined action platoons were groups of young marines that were sent out into the villages and lived in and among the population and they worked with regional forces and popular forces, and the militia force forces and the argument goes that if westmoreland had followed the marines' lead and chosen that different path that the world would have unfolded differently. the problem with that argument is that even the marines didn't follow that alternative. that when you look at the marine combined action program and again, this gets to your point about this trying to relate military operations to the political goal, where the marines were operating were in the northernmost provinces of south vietnam. the threat there was north vietnamese army regiments. so ultimately less than 2% of the united states marine corps

in vietnam was actually implementing the combined action program. so i would argue that this is a bit of a false alternative. even the marines who thought they had a better way, they didn't because less than 2% of their operations were focused on these combined action programs in large part because krulack and others quite simply could not ignore those bully boys and there were lots and lots of bully boys in the northernmost provinces and alternatively when you look at the back message traffic between westmoreland and the marines, there's not as much difference in their -- in the language that they're using in terms of securing the population of trying to balance military operations with pacification efforts. i don't think the gap was as large as historians might have led us to believe. >> did you ever get a chance to meet west moreland? >> just very briefly at the end of his life he came up for a visit to west point.

>> i had seen him speak once after he had retired and one of the things that struck me was he certainly looked the part if you were casting for a 1960s four-star general. >> we need to remember that this is the man who won time man of the year. if you read that article he's lauded as one of the best and the brightest. he attends harvard management school and so i don't think he's quite the modern major general if you will. [ inaudible question ] >> yeah. right. how much control did westmoreland have over the bombing of the north versus the restrictions? >> that's a great question. none. and that's the other thing that's important here, right?

much of my discussion tonight obviously focused on the groundwork inside say gon and there's also an air war over south vietnam which is only of tangential, not concern, but only tangentially under the responsibility of west moreland. he has no control over the bombing campaign in the north. he's occasionally asked his opinion. he has no control over the navy and he has relatively little control over the south vietnamese forces. again, this is more an advisory role more than we are in command over the south vietnamese forces under american control is to work against north vietnamese propaganda which throughout the war was calling the south vietnamese army the puppet army and the last thing that west moreland and senior american military commanders wanted to do

is to put south vietnamese armed forces underneath american operational control and lend credence to that propaganda, but that's an important point here, right? that there are many wars over south vietnam and southeast asia occurring simultaneously and west moreland while he has an important piece and if not the most important piece of that war is not in control of all of the war. >> i would ask you to address what is today the great irony is that america has won in vietnam. vietnam is a stable, capitalist country where even the chinese minority are always economically precocious is again, protected and it is wildly friendly to the united states and not only the government, but through all segments of the population. so we won. now, how did that happen? the west moreland strategy

didn't work. what did work? >> what's that? the great px. that's right. what worked afterward. i don't know if i can unravel all of that, but what i might suggest here that you bring up an important point and one of the elements of strategy that we don't often talk about that we should probably spend a bit of time talking about is time. not only should we have honest discussions about what military force can achieve in term of political objectives, but how long will it take for those political objectives to be resolved or achieved? i'm sorry. so i think the element of time is an incredibly important part of strategy in terms of where we

got to where we got. it has to do a lot with how the cold war unfolded after 1975. it had to do, i think, with local relationships between china and vietnam and cambodia. i think it had to do with the globalization that we saw really take hold in the late 1980s and 1990s and into the 2000s, and i think clearly, i think it had to do with the economic piece of our foreign policy. in one sense you can make an argument, right? that at least the way we define victory might not have come out exactly the way we wanted it, but this coming summer i'll be taking a group of west point cadets to vietnam for the first time from the history department and that says something, doesn't it? i wonder if you can just comment briefly on how the difficulties

in understanding what was happening in vietnam that you talk about in victory related to the difficulties of westmoreland refining strategy during his tenure there. that's a great question. and one of the reasons why i wrote westmoreland is because i asked that very same question. here is a conflict that has no easy metrics for evaluating how well you are progressing. so unlike world war ii where you land on the normandy beachheads on june 1944 and at the end of june you're here and then by july you're here and then you take paris and you're at the frank owe-german border and everyone understands by using geography as a scorecard how well the war is going. in a war without front lines like vietnam, how do you know you're winning? and if you don't know how well you're winning, how do you know if your strategy is working?

and i think that's another important part here of the implementation of this strategy. not only is west moreland dealing with a number of different wars that are occurring simultaneously throughout south vietnam and throughout southeast asia, i would argue, but he also has very little ability to get a true understanding of how well the war is progressing and how effective the united states armed forces are doing in terms of achieving that military or those political objectives and that is incredibly frustrating for not only west moreland, but for subordinate military commanders. how do i assess the moilt loyalty if pacification is all about creating linkages between the populations and the saigon government. if i don't know how to assess the political loyalty of a population with which i don't know their culture and i don't understand their language, how do i do that? i mentioned earlier the

importance of expanding control over the population. how do i measure control? how does a foreign force measure local government control over the population. i don't know if the americans ever figure that out in south vietnam. part of the problem with the implementation of strategy is if you don't know how effective it's been because the metrics don't seem to be quite be making sense then you can't make the best adjustments that you should be able to make and i think that is a problem that really bedevils not just westmoreland and abrams, as well and for any war where it doesn't have a front line where there are visible scorecards for how well the war is going. that's a great point. >> one thing you didn't mention is american public opinion which i think in the end was the most important thing deciding victory or defeat in the war, and i think it's telling you again

that it's not there. >> well, i'm sorry. >> okay. go ahead. >> especially this will take years and maybe decades and again, this is not something that democracies are not good and that's sustaining thousands and thousands of casualties year after year. >> no. that's a great point, and i probably just didn't articulate as well as i should have and some of these quotations that i pulled out, when he's using the words long pull to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff he's talking about in the context of public opinion. especially in 1967 when journalists are using words like quagmire and mired and stalemate and unwinnable, westmoreland in back channel messages is always talking about public opinion as one of these key elements of strategy. so not only is time a principle of strategy, but clearly public

opinion is, as well. and you see that clearly laid out in the back channel messages between westmoreland and the pentagon and the white house. again, this definition of attrition is one that is less focused on attrition of enemy forces and more about, even political attrition at home. the attrition of the popular opinion and popular will at home and that's clearly a concern to westmoreland. i would argue, much earlier than 67 1967, but by 1967 it's at the forefront. >> you talk about the strategy not being attrition. attrition is never a strategy, it's a tactic. you don't mention tactics at all and you don't mention grand strategy. the grand strategy are the goals of stable, independent and noncommunist that are very

eloquently demonstrated that we won the war on those things and in terms of a grand strategy and how we could have won that war much earlier, perhaps when ho chi minh was making offers to us to negotiate some kind of thing in '54 and '56 we could have gotten all of that back then without a war. i think that's a good point in westmoreland's war and i outlined the similar approach to strategy. i agree. there are two different levels of strategy and grand strategy which is the purview of policymakers and those are the ones at the grand strategic level that set the political objectives and the subordinate military strategies for the political objectives and westmoreland, his purview lies more in the realm of military

strategy than grand strategy and the grand strategy, again, we have to take a look within the larger construct of the cold war, right? that johnson and mcnamara and george bundy and others who are trying and the joint chiefs of staff in particular are also looking at grand strategy globally from a european standpoint in the 1960s, from the southeast asian standpoint and from the chinese standpoint and the strategic concept will change over time, as well and the perspective from grand strategy that the south vietnam in 1965 which seems to be so essential after american national security is not the south vietnam that is so important to national security in 1970, that south vietnam in 1970 does not matter as much to president nixon and henry kissinger as it does to lyndon b

johnson in 1965. i also thought that you would bring in the whole mccarthy anticommunist political situation in the united states. >> clearly, i think that johnson in 1965 is -- mccarthyism has died out a bit by the time you get to the early 1960s, but certainly communism and the fear of the domino effect which is really kind of -- as articulated by eisenhower in the mccarthy era. he doesn't want to lose south vietnam like truman lost china like china was truman's to lose, but johnson is thinking along those terms when he's devising his grand strategy and the political objectives of south vietnam. you started out by saying you

can have a grand strategy and still lose the war. in the context of our current situatio situations in iraq and afghanistan, does that situation still hold true? >> this is where i'm obligated to say that what i'm about to say is not representative of the department of defense clearly, i don't think that there's any doubt that we've struggled, i think with relating military effectiveness to political progress and certainly there is a debate among both military officers and scholars about the effectiveness as an example of the surge in iraq and whether that was military -- militarily successful or politically successful but, yes, even with today it's possible to have a

comprehensive strategy that takes into account local conditions, local politics that takes into account regional issues and still not be able to translate american military power into political objectives. i don't think there's any question over that and weir still struggling with that. i don't think we should be surprised by that. that is a general pob lem of war and that is a contest of wills and war is an instrument of policy then we shouldn't be surprised that the crux of war, the crux of strategy is successfully translating military power into something political to make war useful and i think we have been struggling with that over the last ten years, and i think it's something worthwhile for all of us to think about. >> hi. how are you doing?

i think you are a wonderful, compelling speaker. you're really great. i'll ask something that's probably been asked a million times and maybe it's a comic book question. >> is it like, who's better, superman or batman? >> if only we had superman. >> even godzilla, but what if we just nuked hanoi? what if we nuked ho chi minh trail and just killed everybody, you know what i'm saying? cut the head off of the snake and the body will die and we nuke them and the war ends, right? don't you think? are you afraid of a third war? is that what you've afraid of? just everybody, you know what i'm saying? >> i do. i think -- besides the moral and ethical implications. >> i think the issue is one of proportionality and we always

have to ask ourselves at what cost does victory come, and i think, clearly, the use of a tom trick weaponry is debated in 1954 when the french are on the verge of losing. there is an argument made among the joint chiefs of staff that we should use tactical nuclear weapons to keep it is forces at bay and eisenhower makes a decision to not go down that road. and it's worth thinking about the problem with proportionality and it was an independent noncommunist vietnam worth that cost, and i don't think it was. and let me know if only we were able to expand the war and if only we were able to put more of our military effort, clearly, i think we could have won the war. >> i don't know if i subscribe

to the unwinnable war thesis. clearly, we could have won, but it would have come at a tremendous, tremendous cost and they already suffered horrendous casualties for a word that has scarred our nation, it pales in comparison to the impact it had on vietnam and not just the american war, but the french war and this long conflict that has preceded american ground forces arriving in vietnam, so i would suggest that again, another important portion of strategy is thinking about proportionality and i think the use of our nuclear arsenal in the 1960s might have kind of overstepped the boundaries of proportionality. >> thank you. >> i'm wondering if the real lesson of vietnam and westmoreland hinted at it was that all politics are local and

the domestic enemies are the ones that count. we can go from there from vietnam to iraq, afghanistan, libya and ukraine and america -- well, we don't seem to appreciate that and where is the responsibility when saddam hussein was out of the way, the shia turned on them and came to power and turned on the sunni and the kurds were like secondary enemies even though they had oil money and obviously, they are kind of enemy. where is the responsibility on the part of military advisers to let civilian advisers know that all politics are local? >> clearly, i think it's -- it's a key responsibility for military officers and that's why i do like colin gray's definition of strategy being

this bridge between civilian policymakers and military leaders because i think that honest dialogue is so incredibly important, and clearly, i think at least in the context of vietnam, you do see american officers, not just west moreland and clearly the advisory core that's operating with the province chiefs and the district chiefs and the south vietnamese army. they're all talking about the importance of the south vietnamese winning their own war and winning their own conflict. so i think it is an important point and again, that's why i like the dialogue, understanding of strategy and here, as i mentioned at the end of my talk, i think that we probably overestimated a bit. we overestimated our capacity to influence local politics and to influence this question about national identity and the

relationship of the individual vietnamese and his or her government and i think we probably overestimated our capacity to answer those questions. >> interesting use of the word attrition in terms of a misinterpretation of west moreland strategy. given the recent scholarship that's come out that that was the north's strategy and that they did truly intend to fight to the last southerner, what do you think of the theory that despite west moreland's most excellent 360-degree strategy he was simply outlasted by an enemy that used attrition against his own attrition? >> right. >> the enemy always has a vote, doesn't he? >> yeah. the recent scholarship and probably the best work is hanoi's professor of the university of kentucky wrote a wonderful book that outlines the

first secretaries of his own strategy and he is fighting a war of attrition, but is also on numerous occasions trying to win the war militarily through a general offensive and general uprising and he tries it in 1964 and most famously tries it with the tet offensive and successfully in 1975 after the withdrawal of american forces. so i think that is an important point to realize here that if critics who argue that westmoreland, those that argue that westmoreland would have focused more on counter insurgency. the problem with that is that's not how the enemy was fighting. the enemy was, in fact, sending large military main force units into south vietnam in hopes of

achieving the political objective of winning the war through military means in short order. so as an example in the aftermath of john f. kennedy and the death in 1963, he sees an opportunity here to potentially try and win the war between the americans or at least defeat the south vietnamese forces before the americans' war takes hold and you see it through the infiltration of north vietnamese units. when i mentioned that west moreland, he can't ignore the bully boys and i think that's important and recent scholars something that he's right, that he couldn't ignore them because he was also trying to win this war militarily and if he couldn't do it through direct battle and a general ox fencive and general uprising he would certainly try and do it through attrition.

>> yes. first of all, i have to disagree with my colleagues here. we did not win in vietnam. if you look at cambodia, laos and vietnam itself they had the potential to be like south korea is today. they are not and they've lived through poverty and death multiplied many times, but as far as the issue about nationalism, nationalism was the only mode we could use as we did -- as we must do in iraq and afghanistan and to defeat islam and, b, communism. we had to have something to counter those religions and they were very, very powerful. i mean, i just looked at the film and they're talking in france about, you know, the preparation for riding which happened in '68 and it was in england and it was in the united states massively. it's extremely difficult to go

against in a powerful religion like communism and islam and as you said, we should have -- we should have highlighted -- we should have promoted nationalism, but it's the only counter and i cannot see any other way of doing it. >> i think that brings up an important question for any strategist, either civilian or military is how do you fight a revolutionary war of ideas? >> next question. you have implied that the united states won world war ii. my friend l.b. stanton and i were in company 8, 1st battalion special forces group. in '76 we did an article for strategy in tactics called small nsk campaign. this was a battle in the summer

of '41. basically when barbarosa was defeated. at this time the soviets were losing 10,000, 16,000 killed per day before we even entered world war ii. >> right. the problem is in the cold war we can't acknowledge. so we have to say we won the war. >> you've implied that several times that we won the war. it is true that we were the winners. >> no, i'm sorry, then perhaps i misunderstand -- >> why didn't we learn this back in the second world war? was it our arrogance or ignorance that got us into the same mess in vietnam? i might be more generous and say it was less arrogance and ignorance and more of a faith

and power to build societies, and i think we need to put this in the context also of the 1960s where social sciences are really taking hold, where modernization theories are really taking hold. if you look at the language that john f. kennedy uses and those who are in the national security establishment like walt roscoe, as an example that there is faith in american power in modernizing power to build nations abroad. i think it's less arrogance and ignorance and more just a faith in this democratic capitalist society which is -- is at the height of its power in the 19 -- late 1950s and early 1960s especially when you look at consumerism is just one index. that we want to believe john f.

kennedy when he says we can go out and do all these wonderful things and there's social science that seems to back that rhetoric up, and if we have military officers who have fought against total teity aryam and fascism and you fought in the korean war and not just contained, but rolled back communism in the mid-1950s, then i think that faith in american power which may seem a bit arrogant now when you put it in the context of the era may not be as reasonable as it seems on its face. >> in the midst of the vietnam war, right in the middle of it ho chi minh was thrown out of power and pushed out of power

literally by baiswan, calling for world domination of communism and eventually in 1975 we left vietnam and as far as i know he was in power and one would assume that vietnam would have pursued that agenda of world domination, but it didn't turn out that way. it turned out more the way dave gordon describes it, what happened between then and now? >> part of the problem is that i think laiswan and hanoi are also balancing their own requirements and we need to realize that after the bifurcation of vietnam in 1954 where there is two entities, a south and north vietnam that in north vietnam hanoi's leaders, ho chi minh are

having to make decisions about supporting an insurgency in the south to reunify this country in the aftermath of a long and bloody colonial conflict or anti-colonial conflict and also build their own stable nation in the north and that is a debate again and hank brings this up in hanoi's work that layswan and others are constantly having to make choices between the building of a stable, political community in the north and feeding and reinforcing the southern insurgency in the south. so in the aftermath of the american war in 1975, that takes on a regional aspect as we as they now not only have to rebalance the problems of reintegrating southerners into vietnam. some of those southerners who obvio

obviously fought against the communists and also have to deal with another very unstable cambodia and have to deal with a china that is increasingly aggressive. so it's not as easy, i think, for the hanoi bureau coming out of the american phase of the vietnam war to simply call it success and move on. >>. >> in 1986 that was the turning point. when the people who came after and said communism doesn't work. it didn't work in china and they changed it in 1980 and they tried to catch up with china and the new leadership said we'll take the cap. >> it's the death -- >> i just want to get back to strategy and tactics. the french were able to hold the entire indo-chinese peninsula with about 200,000 troops.

we had half a million troops and westmoreland wanted 200,000 more if i'm not mistaken which brought upon the resignation of the president. didn't we learn anything from the french? >> we did. i might suggest that the phrase that the french held indochina with that many troops might perhaps might not be accurate. that the french might hold certain areas and those areas are urban areas, but the problem is that i don't think they did hold the country, that they held only very small portions of the country and that would become a problem for them as they're trying to execute their own strategy fighting the french indochina war. what i find fascinating here and certainly the americans will look back at the french experience in indochina and the

british experience in maleia and the french experience in nigeria, and i think what they find is the difficulty of coming to a consensus over what the term control means. and i think that's where you're getting at with whether the french held or controlled areas of indochina while they were still a colonial power. i think that's a key problem for the americans is despite the experiences of the french, it's difficult to find and assess how well you are controlling a portion of that political community especially when there is a shadow government that is parallel to the supposedly legitimate government and competing for not just resources, but the loyalty of the population and again, i don't think it's that piece of the definition of strategy control was eer