test test

i don't think the gap was as large as historians might have led us to believe. >> most of us are older than you are. did you ever get a chance to meet westmoreland? >> 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 the "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, that some would have -- [ 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 ground war inside saigon, but there's also an air war over south vietnam which is only of tangential, not concern, but only tangentially under the responsibility of westmoreland. 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 for the americans than it is a full-blown we are in command over the south vietnamese forces, and the reason that the decision is made not to put -- officially put

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 westmoreland and senior military american commanders wanted to do was officially put south vietnamese armed forces underneath american operational control to lend credence to that propaganda. but that's be a important here, that there are many wars over south vietnam and southeast asia occurringing simultaneously, and westmoreland, while he has i think an important piece, 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, always economically precocious is again protects, and it is wildly friendly to the united states, not only the government, but through all segments of the population. so we won. now, how did that happen? the westmoreland strategy didn't work. what did work? [ inaudible ] >> what's that? the great px. that's right. what worked afterwards. 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 terms 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. tch has a lot to do i think 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. i think 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 ka deaths to vietnam for first time from the history department and that does say something, doesn't it? >> i wonder if you can just comment briefly on how the difficulties in understanding what was happening in vietnam related to the difficulties of westmoreland refining the strategy during his tenure there. >> that's a great question. and one of the reasons why i wrote wtion querld's war" 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 the 6th of june 1944 and at the end of june you're here, and then by july you're here, and then you take paris, and then you're at the franco-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 westmoreland 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 westmoreland but i think for subordinate military commanders. how do i assess the loyalty of the local population if pacification is all about creating linkages between the

rural population 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 governmental control over its population? i don't think the americans ever figured that out in south vietnam. so part of the problem with i think the implementation of strategy is if you don't know how effective it's been because the metrics don't seem to quite be making sense, then you can't make the best adjustments midstride that you should be able to make and i think that is a problem that really bedevils not just westmoreland but abrams as well, and i think an important point for any war that doesn't have a front line where there are visible score cards

for how well the war is going. that's a great point. >> one thing you didn't mention in westmoreland's strategy 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 again that it's not there. >> well -- i'm sorry. okay. there you are. go ahead if you want to finish. >> if you think this is going to take years and maybe decades, and, again, this is not something that democracies are not good at sustaining thousands and thousands of casualties year after year. >> that's a great point, and i probably just didn't articulate as well as i should have that some of these quotations that i pulled out from westmoreland, when he's using the words long pull to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, he's talking about it in the context of public opinion, and 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 element of strategy, but clearly public opinion is as well, and you see that clearly laid out in the backchannel messages between westmoreland and the pentagon and the white house, and so, 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 1967 but by 1967 it's at the forefront of his mind. >> yeah. 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 was the goals of stable, independent, and not communist, 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. >> so i think that's a good point, and i do mention this in "westmoreland's war" and i kind of outline a similar approach to strategy. i agree. i think there are two different levels of strategy. grand strategy, which is really i think the purview of

policymakers. those are the ones that set the political objectives and then a subordinate military strategy aimed at achieving those political objectives. so clearly westmoreland, i think his purview lies more in the realm of military strat jay than grand strat jay and i think that grand strategy i think we have to look within the larger construct of the cold war. that johnson and mcnamara, george bundy and others who are -- and the joint chiefs of staff in particular are also looking at grand strategy glo l globally. from a european standpoint in the 1960s, from a southeast asian standpoint, from a chinese standpoint, and that grand strategic concept will change over time as well, right? from the perspective of grand strategy that the vietnam -- the south vietnam in 1965, which seems to be so essential to 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 to henry kissinger as it does to lyndon b. johnson in 1965. >> i also thought that you ought to bring in the whole mccarthy anti-communist political situation in the united states. >> right. clearly i think that johnson in 1965 -- you know, mccarthyism certainly has died out a little bit by the time you get to the early 1960s, but i think certainly communism and the fear of the domino effect, which is really kind of -- is articulated by icen however in the mccarthy era if you will i think certainly is still on johnson's mind. he doesn't want to lose south vietnam like truman lost china, like china was truman's to lose,

but clearly i think johnson is thinking along those terms when he's devising his grand strategy and the political objectives for south vietnam. >> sir, you have started out saying you can have a grand strategy but still lose a war. >> uh-huh. >> in the context of our current situations in iraq and afghanistan, does that situation still hold true? >> i think 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 think we've -- you know, i don't think there's any doubt that we've struggled, i think, with relating military effectiveness to political progress, and certainly there's a debate among both military officers and scholars about the effectiveness, as an example, of the surge in iraq and whether

that was militarily successful or politically successful. but, yes, i think 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 the course of the last ten years that we're still struggling with that, and i don't think we should be surprised by that because i think that is the general problem of war, that if war is, in fact, a contest of wills and if it's true that 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. >> how are you doing? i think you are a wonderful, compelling speaker, you're really great. i'm going to ask something that's probably been asked a million times, maybe by today's standard a comic book question, but in terms -- >> it's going to be like who is better, superman or batman, that kind -- >> we could have used those guys, right? >> if only we had superman. >> even godzilla. what if we just nuked hanoi. what if we nuked the ho chi minh trail, just killed everybody, you know what i'm saying? cut the head off the snake and the body will die. we nuke them and the war ends, right? don't you think? were we afraid of a third war? is that what you're afraid of? just everybody.

>> i think the question -- besides i think the moral and ethical implications and clearly -- [ inaudible ]. >> i think the issue is one of proportionality. so i think we always have to ask ourselves at what cost does victory come, and i think, you know, clearly the use of atomic weaponry is debated in 1954 when the french are on the verge of losing. there's an argument made by some among the joint chiefs of staff we should use tactical nuclear weapons to keep the forces at bay and save the french and ultimately eisenhower i think correctly makes the decision not to go down that road, but i think more generally it's worth thinking about the problem with proportion proportionality, and was it worth -- was an independent noncommunist vietnam worth that

cost? and i don't think it was. i think that, you know, for those that argue that if only we were able to expand the war, if only we were able to put more of our military effort, clearly i think we could have won the war. i mean, 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 to the vietnamese population and they already suffered horrendous casualties for a war that has been so scarring to 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 preceded american ground forces even arriving in vietnam. so i would suggest that, again, another portion -- 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 that boundaries of proportionality. >> thank you. i'm wondering if the real lesson of vietnam, westmoreland sort of hinted at it from what you said, was that all politics are local, and the domestic enemies are the ones that count. we can go from there to -- 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 came to power and turned on the sunni and the kurds were like secondary enemies even though they have oil money and obviously, you know, they are a kind of enemy. where is the responsibility on the part of military advisers to

let the civilian advisers know that all pop ticks alitics are ? >> clearly it's a key responsibility for military officers and that's why i like collin 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 westmoreland, i think clearly the advisory corps 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, 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, to influence this question about national identity and the relationship between the individual vietnamese and his or her government. i think we probably overestimated our capacity to answer those questions. >> interesting use of the word "attrition" in terms of a misinterpretation of westmoreland's 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 westmoreland'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 hang wen's. he's a professor at university of kentucky and he wrote a wonderful book that outlines the first secretary's own strategy, and the secretary 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. he tries it in 1964, most famously try it is in 1968 with the tet offensive, in 1972 with the easter offensive, and then 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 -- you know, there are those that argue that westmoreland should have focused more on counterinsurgency.

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 both john f. kennedy and another's death in 1963, they seized an opportunity here to potentially try to win the war before the americans -- or at least defeat the south vietnamese armed forces before the americans' war really takes hold, and clearly you see that through the infiltration of north vietnamese army units to include regiments into south vietnam. when i mentioned that westmoreland realizes he can't ignore these bully boys or main force units i think that's important, and recent scholarship suggests in one

sense that he was right, that he couldn't ignore them because they were also trying to win this war militarily. if they couldn't do it through direct battle and a general offensive, general uprising, they would certainly try to 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. they live 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 -- must do in iraq and afghanistan to defeat a, islam, and b, communism. we have to have something to counter those religions and they were very, very powerful. i just looked at a film and

they're talking in france about, you know, the preparation for rioting which happened in '68, and it was in england and it was in the united states obviously massively. it's extremely difficult to go against a powerful religion like communism and islam, and as you said, 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 so i agree with you to a point. >> i think that brings up an important question for any strategist either civilian or military, how do you fight a revolutionary war of ideas? next question, please? >> you have implied that the united states won world war ii. now, my friend shelby stanton and i were in company a first

battalion for special forces in 1974. shelby wrote several books about vietnam. in '76 we did an article. this was about a battle around westmoreland in the summer of '41. basically when bar bar o sa was defeated and typhoon was defeated. at the time the soviets were losing 10,000, 16,000 killed per day before we even entered world war ii, and -- >> the problem is in the cold war we can't acknowledge that, right, so we have to say we won the war. >> apparently you've implied that several times that we won the war. it is true we were the winners -- >> i'm sorry, i'm saying -- >> my point -- 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 just say that it was less arrogance and ignorance and more just a faith in power to build societies, and i think we need to put this into context also of the 1960s where social sciences are really taking hold, where modernization theory is 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 rosto as an example, there is faith in american power and modernizing power to build nations abroad. so i think it's less arrogance and ignorance and more just a faith in this democratic, capitalist society which is at

the height of its power in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and especially when you look at -- just when you look at consumerism as 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 totalitarianism, against fascism in world war ii and done so successfully, you fought in the korean war and not just contained but rolled back communism in the mid 1950s, i think that faith in american power which may seem a bit arrogant now, i think when you put it in the context of the era, it may not be as unreasonable 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, pushed out of power literally by -- 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 i think is that lazwan and the politburo are balancing their own

requirements. after the bifurcation of vietnam in 1954 where there is two entities, south and north vietnam, that in north vietnam hanoi's leaders, ho chi minh and ultimately lazwan 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, brings us up in hanoi's war, that lazwan and others are constantly having to make choices between building 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 they now

not only have to balance the problems of reintegrating southerners into vietnam, some of the southerners who obviously fought against the communists, but also now have to deal with a 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 politburo coming out of the american phase of the vietnam war to simply call it success and move on. >> -- died in 1986 and that was the turning point. when lazwan died, people who came after him said communism didn't work. it didn't work in china, they changed it in 1980 and the new leadership said we're going to take the capitalist way. it's the death of lazwan.

>> 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, and 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. the french will hold certain areas, and those areas are urban areas but the problem is i don't think they did hold the country, that they held only very small

portions of the country and that will 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 on the french experience in indochina, the british experience in malaya, the french experience in algeria, and what they find is a difficulty of coming to 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, and 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's 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 ever fully determined by the americans. >> last short question. >> okay. >> i had to wait a long time for this. in early '68 i was in basic training at ft. jackson. you can obviously hear easily every day the cadre in the mess talking about the restraints that personnel -- they didn't curse westmoreland out but they cursed lbjp one of the restra t restraints he was under was the incremental buildup that johnson put him through and the administration. i don't think you spoke much about it, and just an observation of my own having fought in vietnam in '69 was

that the only thing i ever saw later on was that what really worked that scared the bejebers out of the north vietnamese was linebacker one and two. that got them to negotiate with us. >> yeah. that's an important point i think that clearly westmoreland is dealing with the theory of graduated pressure, which kind of takes hold in national security establishment, this idea that we can determine how much pressure to ratchet up or ratchet back, and eventually hanoi will realize that it can't win this long war because we have the ability to either ratchet up or ratchet back. unfortunately, we don't have that ability, and we don't have the ability to so neatly

determine the pace of the war, the pace of military operations, or determine the pace of how quickly the local population is seeing the south vietnamese government as a legitimate entity, and so what you see here i think are some disconnects not only in modernization theories as we talked about earlier, but also this theory of graduated pressure. as we talked about a little bit earlier in the evening, there is a difference clearly between articulating strategy and implementing it, and i think this is a clear case of that. thank you. [ applause ] here are just a few of the comments we've recently received from our viewers. >> calling to comment on a debate that i saw between bruce vine and john yew regarding the

declaration of war and the war powers act. quite interesting to watch the legal debate, and it also demonstrated some of the ineptitude of the neocon proposition that in the beginning of any war the president is the ultimate hearsay of the country's ability to go to war. >> i would like to commend c-span2 for airing the information from the writers on grief and the military. it was excellent information that gave interaction and dynamic and nuances and the reality, for instance, that

post-traumatic stress disorder can climb up and can be resolved if you continue to try various interventions. >> i think american history tv on c-span is one of the best programs available. i wish we could do it more than once a week. >> and continue to let us know what you think about the programs you're watching. call us at 202-626-3400. e-mail us at comments@cspan.org or send us a tweet @c-span. next on american history tv, author donald miller explores manhattan's transformation in the 1920s an urban backwater to the cultural capital of the united states. mr. miller is the author of "supreme city." he describes ambitious

individuals like walter chrysler who oversaw the skyscraper florence boom. also the creation of cultural a and architectural feats. this was hosted by the new york public library. it's about an hour and a half. >> great. thank you, lois. i want to thank the library and especially debra for organizing this event. can you guys hear me in the back? can you hear me now? no? yes? >> yes. >> all right. i'll speak loudly. okay. well, it's great to be in the city lecturing on the city that you wrote about in ve