sign up today. next on american history tv, historian mark philip bradley of the university of chicago discusses the vietnam war. he explains why teaching the vietnam war has changed, and reflects on usb at number relations today. we interviewed him at the american historical association meeting and washington, d.c. this is about 15 minutes. he teaches history at the university of chicago and is a special -- and as a specialty, so it is a history of vietnam and human rights. i want to talk about vietnam with you. it is the anniversary year. probably has been a good year to be a vietnam historian. has america's understanding of the war changed over 50 years? the crucial i think

shift has been more recent and certain kinds of ways. during the war itself, the way academic historians talked and wrote about the war was during a critical mode. vietnam was a mistake, books were set up to understand how that mistake might work. ofwas a different way thinking about the war. that was a position that maybe in fact it was a necessary role -- war and there was some sort of strategic point. that set up a contentious set of debates between historians who want to recover something out of vietnam that is more positive, and what has continued to be a mainstream historical perspective in many ways, the war was fundamentally wrong and ineffective -- ineffective. the younger generation comes into all this. i feel like these debates was about our generation or a generation behind us. the younger people come to it

from a different perspective. the first set of kids i was teaching, their parents may have served in the war. or had some sort of direct connection to the war. now, it is a long time ago. i think that is helpful in teaching in some ways. it is a blank slate. that creates its own challenges what thatto find out might late -- what that might be like for students. they are able to think about it in terms that are less -- less politicized. reporter: it is not emotional for them. prof. bradley: it's not. -- afghanistan now has that moniker on it. that is also a way that the war was exceptional eyes. there was never a war that long. there was never a war like that. now, you have a generation of people who have gone through iraq and afghanistan and are perpetual war on terror, and it

seems normal, rather than an aberration. reporter: the difference, of course, and here we come to the emotional part, is all the wars they have experienced have been fought by people they don't know so well. with vietnam, the war was a more personal think it when we talk to interns at our company, we try to convey to them how much of the draft impacted everybody's life. are your students understanding of the importance of the draft on the public perception of the war? prof. bradley: i think that is a very hard thing to recover with students. there was an 18 hour series on vietnam that was controversial in its own. one of the things that series did well, and i'm hoping to use those in working with students, is that he has got long narratives around people who either signed up or were

drafted. you see them move through time. we see their families, their mothers, their brothers and sisters. that's kind of thing, i think, is something that can help students begin to understand. if it had been me, this is how it might have gone. very abstract with students. the war is fought by almost a separate class of people in the united states. one of the big arguments of the war was the domino theory. that is vietnam fell, then southeast asia, etc., and the great influence of china and russia. of history ands our greater understanding of those two major powers, was that theory -- was a proven that it was as big of a threat? prof. bradley: dr. bradley: again, different people might answer your

questions in different ways. i would say the domino theory was about 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 difference of fighting the war for independence, fighting a decolonizing war, gave way to the cold war because the had communist orientations and china were supporting them, but the fundamental war was about independence. the domino theory in that way doesn't necessarily signify the ways in which they did with mcnamara or johnson or neck's -- nixon. the other thing, when you get to the other side of it, 1975, the north had won. it seemed as if the communists were victorious. today in vietnam, we have a market economy that looks much like it was in their wildest dreams, the americans hoped

would come to fruition 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. host: how important was normalization of relations with the united states in vietnam's recent development? dr. bradley: it 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 trading with vietnam. the australians had a huge presence, the french had a huge presence there, and most importantly, south korea had a huge presence in vietnam. they are the largest single foreign investor in vietnam today. that has been true for a very long time. talking about why the vietnamese economy has been 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 -- that were already going on, and i think that is a more helpful way of seeing it then suggesting our recognition set things in motion. host: if modern vietnam has a market economy, what about its government system and how much freedom do individuals have? dr. bradley: it is like china. there is a one party state that is governing vietnam and running a market economy at the same time. the constraints on freedom of so -- so 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. so human rights activists, people who are speaking out against problems in the enemies society. they have been celebrated trials -- 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. so there have been peasant kind of uprisings in places in -- 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. they are often not what the press is covering. in fact, there are sort of press blackouts about them, because the regime is interested in there not being a lot of attention on it. but there is a way everyday society is making a real impact on how government works. a lot of the nationalism the government has whipped up in some ways comes back against them. people protesting the government was too close to china around a set of issues. that meant that the government had to push back in some ways there. so in general, the room for open conversation about politics is not wide, but there are spaces. and the same is true for china, i think, as well. host: another legacy of the vietnam war are large vietnamese population centers in the united states. how has our country changed as a result of this immigration?

is bradley: you know, it interesting where vietnamese-americans are now in the united dates, given it was -- united states, given that it was only in 1975 and later the people were coming over. you have people in government. you have people in the military. in fact, the first american ship that came back to vietnam to do some joint naval exercises two the -- theetnamese enemies, this was two or three years ago, was captained by 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 in certain specific ways. this impact of vietnamese -americans in the united states in a whole variety of fields has been really, really large. it has been different for other refugee communities coming from cambodia and laos. so 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

-- in terms of how people have done economically, socially, since the end of the war. certainly with the laos community,nd mung there have been problems as well. but they are doing well on the american terms. host: you are here 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 -- the reliance on the series of oral histories and not involving academic historians. what are the pluses and minuses of that in your estimation and telling the vietnam story? dr. bradley: i think as much as we would like to think we can command that interest of the general public, i'm not sure we do. [laughter] my friendships with historians have more compelling things then we tell the general public. but they are just absolutely

brilliant interviews that go on, and the people we follow across time and space, you get the sense of knowing the people. quicknot just another interview that is up, but a deep and granular way of thinking about it. but one of the fields of professional historians is this balance, in without respect you would not have a point of view. i know, i know. you can say this, you can say that. i think you get a sense 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. and one of the ways i think burns does it is using the tapes, the presidential tapes. he does it for kennedy, he does it for nixon, he does it for johnson. the american state eventually hangs itself. on the one hand, it is publicly saying all is well, and there is no decent interval, nixon says.

it sort of takes us out of having to make that argument in one form or another where the contention often comes. what you do when you have that? -- when you have got that on tape? that's exactly what are here in as if you were watching it. it's interesting to have the tapes together that do it in a compelling way. host: this network, c-span, is a post-vietnam creation, 1979. over its history, we have had the generations 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 as it approached current policy. as a historian watching more contemporary america, have lessons been successfully absorbed into our policy decisions? dr. bradley: i would say no. i would say -- you know, the afghan war and the war in iraq does not show the lessons of vietnam at large have been learned. the notion we can intervene in a

particular place and engineer a -- either militarily, politically, or socially engineer a transformation place after place after place -- it doesn't work. but all you have to do is look backward in time to think about 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 really 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 just fundamentally flawed. yet we seem to do it over and over and over again. when i first started teaching i did believe wow, this could never happen again. people have seen this and learned a set of lessons. and the last 10-15 years would suggest almost the complete other way around. host: history gives us the opportunity as a society to revisit these questions. what are some of the significant

ways you are observing the next couple of years and anniversaries are being observed , talked about, and discussed? dr. bradley: anniversaries are good in sort of putting people's attention and focus back on vietnam. it has ways, i think helped in the past decade or so as other 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. if you remember at the moment, though it was going to be a major defeat for the united states. people were seeing pictures of the viet cong and the american embassy, etc. and then it turned out in fact, within two weeks, the americans and south vietnamese had beat back the north vietnamese. so it appeared as if it really wasn't 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 put aside able set of more moderate actors in vietnam, more hardline groups of actors got involved in the war. the war transformed into a much more conventional war after 1968. again, it is one of those events where so many things happened as a result of it. it's a good way for people to understand the levels of complexity involved in thinking about what it was to be in vietnam. host: it is a complex history and we had a brief time, but thank you for talking about and now.hen we appreciate it. >> next sunday, we continue our series "1968, america in turmoil," with a look at women's rights. the 1968 miss america pageant challenge not only the beauty contest, but long-held

assumptions about american womanhood. --en's look ration liberation became part of the national conversation, transforming workplaces and households across the country and society at elf. sunday, april 22 at 8:30 a.m. eastern, here on american history tv. c-span's q&a, hoover institute senior fellow niall ferguson on his book the square in the tower, -- toks of power from facebook. eventsou think about the of 2016, just to take an example, not many members of the suppose it world government planned that britain would vote to leave the european union and donald trump would become president of the united states. donald is definitely not somebody who gets invited to those meetings.

so for example, take the financial crisis, the events of 2008, 2009. nobody sat at the meeting in 2008 saying what i think we need for the world government is a massive financial crisis. >> q&a, tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span. this year, c-span is touring cities across the country, exploring american history. next, a look at our recent visits to norman, oklahoma. you are watching "american tv," all weekend, every weekend, on c-span3. >> the center was founded in 1979 by professor ron peters. he thought you know, we have this powerful member of congress, carl albert, we need to do something at the university sort of to memorialize his ideals about congress, about legislating, about governing.