vietnam war has changed and reflects on u.s. vietnam relations today. we interviewed him at the american historical association's annual meeting and washington, d.c. this is about 15 minutes. susan: mark bradley teaches history at the university of specialty, as a studies the history of vietnam and human rights. i would like to talk to you about vietnam. it's an anniversary year. it's a good year to be a vietnam historian. lots going on. how has america's understanding of the war changed over 50 years? mr. bradley: i think the crucial shift has been more recent and -- in certain kinds of ways. wayng the war itself, the academic historians wrote about war, vietnam was a mistake. it was in a critical mode.

the reagan era brought a different way of thinking about the war. that was a kind of revisionist notion that maybe in fact it was a necessary war. that there was a strategic point in being in vietnam. relatively contentious debates between historians who want to recover something from vietnam as something popular, and something that continues to be a mainstream perspective that the war was fundamentally both wrong and ineffective. what you see now is a younger generation coming in all of this. there are debates in some ways about our generation or a generation behind us. the younger people come into it from a very different perspective. as i talked over time, the first set of kids i was teaching, their parents might have served in the war or they were antiwar activist and had some direct connection to the war. now it is the peloponnesian war as far as they are concerned. it was a long time ago.

that helps in teaching in some ways. the blank slate creates its own challenges. but they are able to think about it in terms i think are less politicized and less charged than in the past. susan: it is not emotional for them. mr. bradley: it is not. it is also not america's longest war. the war in afghanistan has that moniker on it. that was a way the war had been exceptionalized. a war had never been that long. americans win wars. they don't lose wars. now we have a generation that people who gone through iraq and afghanistan and the perpetual war on terror. it starts to seem normal rather than an aberration. that also influences the way a younger generation sees it. susan: and here comes the emotional part of it. all the wars they have experienced it and fought by

-- have been fought by people they probably don't know so well. with vietnam, it's a much more personal thing. when we talk to interns at the company we try to convey how much the draft impacted everybody's life at that time. what do your students understand about the importance of the draft on the public perception of the war? mr. bradley: that's a very hard thing to cover with students in a certain way. ken burns made this 18-hours series on vietnam that has been controversial in its own right. one of the things the series did exceptionally well, and i'm hoping to use those in working with students, is he is good on stories. he has long narratives around people who either signed up or were drafted. we see them move through time. some of whom died and we see their families. we see their mothers and brothers and sisters. that kind of thing is something that can help students begin to understand if it had been me, this is how it might have gone.

the wars are essentially fought by almost a separate class of people in the united states at this point. susan: one of the big arguments for the war was the domino theory. if vietnam fell, than southeast asia, etc. and the great influence of china and russia. with the winds of history in our understanding of those powers, has that theory been tested and proven it really wasn't a bigger threat as policymakers understood it to be at the time? mr. bradley: if you interviewed different people they would answer in different ways. i would say the domino theory did not make much of a difference at all in the long run. the war was an extension of the cold war and we were fighting a front of the cold war in a hot way in vietnam. the vietnamese were fighting a war of independence.

-- northns that vietnam has a companies -- has a communist orientation. the fundamental war was about independence. the domino theory in that way doesn't necessarily signify the ways they did for mcnamara or johnson or nixon. the other thing is 1975, the , north had won. today in vietnam we have a market economy that looks much like what it was in their wildest dreams, the americans hoped would become in vietnam and never did. that's the reality of vietnamese society today. history has an odd way of moving in directions that people don't necessarily anticipate as time goes by. susan: how important was normalization with relations with the united states?

mr. bradley: he was important but we sometimes overestimate the impact of the united states on small states like vietnam and other places. in fact, before -- we had a trade embargo against vietnam during the war which we did not lift until the 1990's. once we did, they moved towards normalization of diplomatic relations. in the meantime, everybody but us was training with vietnam. -- trading with vietnam. the australians had a huge presence, the french had a huge presence there, and south korea had a huge presence. they are the largest single foreign investor in vietnam today. talking about what it is economy is so successful, one has to look in parts of europe but in fact more to developments in asia than the united states. our recognition accelerated a set of patterns are already going on. i think that is the more helpful way of seeing and suggesting our recognition set things in motion. susan: if modern vietnam has a

market economy, how much freedom do individuals have? mr. bradley: it is like china. there is a one party state that governs vietnam and running a market economy at the same time. the constraints on freedom of expression are there in the same way they are in china. the state is not particularly keen on people who don't play by those rules. human rights activists, people speaking out against problems in vietnamese society. there have been celebrated trials in the last couple of years where people are locked up for 10 or 15 years. that said, there is a way in which society is engaged in how policies work. there have been peasant uprisings in places in rural areas where the government was essentially trying to take land away. the government had to back off. these are not public. often not what the press is covering. there are sort of press blackout

because the regime is not interested in their being a lot of attention on it. it is making an impact on how government works. a lot of nationalism comes back against the government. people protesting the government was too close to china around a set of issues. that meant the government had to push back in some ways there. in general, the rule for open conversation about politics is not wide, but there are spaces. the same is true for china as well. --'sother legacy is large -- large vietnamese population centers in the united states. how has our country changed as a result of this immigration? mr. bradley: it is interesting where they are now in the united states given it was only in 1975 and later the people were coming over. you have people in government. you have people in the military.

the first american ship that came back to vietnam to do some joint naval exercises two or byee years ago was captained a vietnamese american. you have that sort of moment of this american coming back and working with the military in vietnam, which was quite an extraordinary moment. this impact of vietnamese americans in a whole variety of fields has been really large. it has been different for other refugee communities coming from cambodia and laos. it was not just vietnam. it was happening in all three places. for the cambodian american community it has been a much more mixed situation and how people have done economically, socially since the end of the war. certainly with the lao community and the mung community.

susan: you are here did -- specifically to participate in a panel on the ken burns series. you referenced that earlier. i'm sure many people watching us saw that as well. one of the things i read, and you referenced this, the oral histories and not involving academic historians. what are the pluses and minuses of that in your estimation and telling the vietnam story? mr. bradley: i think as much as we would like to think we can -- we command that kind of general influence on the public, i'm not sure we do. perhaps it's more compelling of a way to tell up and we could do. they are just absolutely brilliant interview second on. -- interviews. they go on. people we follow across time and space, you get the sense of knowing the people. not just another quick interview. they are really deep. one of the fears of professional

historians is that they would be balanced in a way that -- it wouldn't matter. i did not get a sense that it was particularly balanced in the end. it really did represent a very strong critique of american involvement in vietnam during that period of time. one way burns does it is using the presidential tapes. he does it for kennedy and nixon and johnson. stateially, the american hangs itself. on the one hand, publicly saying all is well. -- then you have that in the words of the actors themselves, it sort of takes us out of having to make that argument in one form or another where the contention always comes. what you do when you have that? that is exactly what you are hearing if you are watching it.

it's interesting to have the tapes together that do it in a compelling way. susan: we had generation of journalists, members of congress, historians who are part of the experience and served and are now aging out. we always used to hear about the country absorbing the lessons of vietnam towards foreign policy. as a historian watching more contemporary america, have lessons been successfully absorbed into our policy decisions? mr. bradley: i would say no. the afghan war and the war in iraq does not show the lessons of vietnam have been learned. the notion we can intervene in a particular place and engineer a transformation, place after place after place, it doesn't work. all you have to do is look backward in time.

the british believed they could do that as an imperial power. the french believed they could do that as an imperial power. it did not work in the end for them as well. the whole notion that these kinds of interventions can achieve the policy goals that are imagined as possible, but that is fundamentally flawed. yet we seem to do it over and over again. when i first started teaching i did believe this could never happen again. people have seen this and learned a set of lessons. the last 10-15 years would suggest almost the complete other way around. susan: history gives us the opportunity to revisit these questions. what are some of the significant ways you are observing the next of anniversaries are being observed and discussed? mr. bradley: anniversaries are good in putting people's attention and focus back on vietnam. d inome ways, that has ebbe

the last decade or so as other words -- wars have become more compelling in front and center for people. it's an opportunity to go back and perhaps rethink some of these issues. this year it is the tet anniversary. tet is almost the perfect event to think in kaleidoscopic ways about the war. you and viewers will remember that at the moment, tet looks like a major defeat for the united states. people were seeing pictures of the viet cong and the american embassy, etc. then it turned out that, in fact, within two weeks the americans and south vietnamese had beat back the north vietnamese. it appeared as if it really wasn't the defeat that if he did -- the defeat that it was. but then it turned out the north had a kind of bloody interparty battle about whether to do tet or not. that puts aside more moderate actors in vietnam, more hardline

group of actors involved in the war. the war transformed into a much more conventional war after 1968. it is just one of those events where so many things happened, a good way for people to understand the levels of complexity involved in thinking about what it was to be in vietnam. susan: it is a complex history and we had a brief time to thank -- brief time. thank you for talking about vietnam then and now. appreciate your time. >> this weekend, on c-span, live today at 5:30 p.m. eastern, wrote to the white house 2020 at the new hampshire -- with jason kander. and sunday at 6:30 eastern, wrote to the white house 2020 coverage continues with montana governor steve bullock in polk county, iowa. -- and on sunday, the

-- book award for "a benedict option." on american history tv and c-span3 today at four: 55 eastern, prominent figures in american law including elena kagan and the late thurgood marshall. on real america, two cvs save the nation programs from 1968 with republican california governor ronald reagan and george wallace. watch this weekend on the c-span networks. c-span's washington journal. live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up sunday morning, and response to the recent chemical attacks in syria, the former -- a fair of u.s. and syria will

discuss the effect of military strikes. matthew dallek and robert married will join us to discuss the evolution of conservative politics in 1968 as part of c-span's 1968: america in turmoil series. be sure to watch washington journal at 7:00 eastern sunday morning. join the discussion. afterwards,ght on journalist david corn and -- with their book, russian roulette. the election of donald trump. interviewed by joaquin castro of texas. >> the start of the book is the 2013 miss universe pageant in moscow. how did you pick that? for ayou were looking moment that the trump-russia story comes together, it is there. you have donald trump in moscow. he is there to provide -- to

preside over the miss universe pageant. what is his real agenda? business deal. build a trump tower in moscow. , to meet vladimir putin. howalked moments ago about to build the tower, you needed to have putin's permission. but to do anything trump had to hook up with an oligarch. he starts tweeting out immediately in mid-2013, will putin be my new bff when i bring the contest to moscow? night at 9 p.m. eastern on c-span's book tv. this weekend on american history