William Tyler
From Cold War to Hot War in Vietnam

William Tyler - From Cold War to Hot War in Vietnam

- Okay, thanks very much. And welcome everyone. You can all see what my subject is tonight, ‘cause I’ve slipped a map on just for the beginning. And I’ll just talk about the map before I begin the actual talk. There’s only three things or four things I want to mention about the map. First of all, the division of Vietnam between North Vietnam and South Vietnam, very similar to the division we saw last week between North Korea and South Korea. And we’ll talk about how that happened, obviously. And then the two countries to the left, as you look at your map, Laos and Cambodia. And if you look at the title of the map in the bottom left-hand corner, you can see it described as Indochina, because Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos form part of the French empire, French Indochina. And then if you look a little bit to the north, you can see above Laos and above Vietnam, the word China. So China is the dominant power, or at least it is once Mao comes to power in 1949. But the whole area in color is French Indochina. So if you can just sort of remember, you all know Vietnam, you all know about the division. Just remember that Laos and Cambodia lie to the west of Vietnam. And the whole three of those countries, Vietnam, North and South, Laos and Cambodia, form French Indochina. So having said that, we’ll lose the map. And unfortunately, you’ll have to look at me rather than the map now. Thanks very much. I find this incredible that I can say that, and someone miles and miles away can immediately get rid of it, and I appear. It’s magic to me.

Now, before I start, I had an email this week from one of you Lockdowners, and asked me, it was from Karen, and said, “Could I mention her mum?” Her mum is called Carol Birdie, and Carol is 92 this week. And I’m delighted to say to Carol, happy birthday this week, and I’m glad you enjoy Lockdown. And maybe I should say happy birthday on behalf of all our Lockdown family, because that’s what many of you feel, that we are a community. And certainly that is a very important aspect of the whole of the Lockdown university. And for me, it’s a whole purpose of adult education as well. To feel part of something bigger is always, and people who have like minds, is always a very positive thing. And adult education has always done that for us. Now then, the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War is often seen as the classic war of the Cold War. But we saw last time we met, that it was the Korean War that was actually the classic, first classic war of this post-Second World War period. And we reminded ourselves last week, that the Korean War was very often referred to as the Forgotten War. In fact, you could say that the Korean War has been totally, what shall I say, not obliterated, but pushed into the background by the Vietnam War. Even in Britain, that fought in the Korean War and didn’t fight in the Vietnam War, let alone in America, of course, or Australia or New Zealand which fought in both of those wars. And it’s interesting to ask yourself why. And well, I suppose the first reason is that the Vietnam War was fought in the light of not just American media, but world media. So that somebody like me in the 1960s, born in 1945, was well aware of the Vietnam War. It began from an American point of view in my second year at university.

And it was very much a subject of discussion as it was throughout the Western world amongst this new, very much post-war generation. I was born in '45, but after the defeat and surrender of both Germany and Japan. And there were many like me. And I’m going to quote a small piece from Peter Clement’s book on the making of a superpower, the USA, which I think is sort of relevant here. He writes, “Vietnam was the first full-scale war to be televised.” The first full-scale war to be televised, not film, not edited film in news cinemas, but this was the real thing. And we saw live pictures. Vietnam was the first full-scale war in the televised era. Hence Americans could see the realities of the conflict on the news in their homes each evening. And so could the rest of us in the Western world, not just America. Although up to the time of the Tet Offensive, the media was broadly supported the war. People could see that United States was not winning. The widespread introduction of color, moreover brought home the horrors of war. That’s interesting. The effect of color television makes it real in a way that black and white television doesn’t. We’d all been used to seeing pictures of World War II in black and white. You know, the little boy who first saw a colored film of the Second World War said, “Well, I thought they fought the war in black and white.” So the introduction of color TV in the state and elsewhere in the Western world brought it home to us in a way that the black and white material couldn’t. And yet the black and white television material brought this war right up to our faces in a way that the Korean War had not been. So it’s the role of the media.

Now, of course, today we face an additional problem and that is the internet. And those of you following, as many of you will be, the Israeli-Hamas clash, will know that a lot of stuff is put on the internet, which is entirely untrue, but is believed by a new generation of the young in the Western world. And how we deal with that is difficult. And how the Americans dealt in the Vietnamese War with more media, well, bluntly, the politicians couldn’t control it. And as a result of that, the anti-war coalitions, if you like, across the Western world, in the end, pulled the rug under American political power in many ways. So the Vietnam War is important because of media. And it’s important because the American young and indeed the young throughout the Western world, as I’ve tried to say, were also opposed to it, partly in America’s case, partly because they were expected to fight. And that was not something they were prepared to do. And I’ve written down, it’s the peacenik, it’s the peacenik generation, isn’t it? It’s all about, it’s all the media coverage, isn’t it? Of peace in the songs of the period, the protest songs connected to the Vietnamese War, which went global, not just in America. We sang them in Britain. And it created a climate of, we want peace. And the older people don’t understand that. If they would only touch and get in touch with the young, we could stop war, ban the war, ban the bomb, and all the rest of it. It’s very much of the 1960s, is this whole war fought in that context. And America lost the Vietnamese War, whereas of course it had won the Korean War. And in an odd way, it’s wars that are lost, which are often attract attention afterwards. The British are particularly prone to celebrating the leader dying in the moment of victory, or the great defeat in which the British heroically fought to the last man.

And in a sense that British view is also partly within the American DNA as well. This defeat was, it had such an impact afterwards. It’s the fallout from the defeat, which becomes important. And you can deal with it in two ways. You can either wash your hands of it, or you can face up to it and rebuild your power, which is of course what America was to do. Why then did America fight and lose? Well, we know why it fought, because it’s the domino theory propounded by President Eisenhower. One country falls to communism, the rest go down like dominoes. But why did the Americans fight? Because they thought they could win. It’s a case of overconfidence. It’s a case of hubris. Pray God, the same scenario is being acted out by Russia in the Ukraine. Putin expected to be in Kiev by Christmas, you remember, of the first year of the war, and he wasn’t. And this is a lesson, not just the Vietnam War, but of the Cold War and the post-Cold War period, that those countries that are superpowers, now we could say America, Russia, and China, and in parenthesis, maybe we can say Iran too, they don’t have entirely the power they think they have when faced either with internal rebellions or faced with a outside rebellion, for example, in Ukraine, where people are so committed to protecting their own land. And of course, one of the reasons the young didn’t want to fight in Vietnam is it wasn’t America. Had it been Florida or had it been California or New England, Americans would have fought, but it was in Vietnam. In fact, you all know, Britain did not fight in Vietnam, mainly because the labor government under Harold Wilson, Wilson, well, what is in it?

Why should we fight in that land so far away in which we have no particular political or military interest? Now you could argue that, and people have done in Britain, that Wilson made a mistake because we should have stood up to communism, but would Britain’s involvement in the war created a different outcome? Of course it wouldn’t. America would still have lost the war. And it makes all these questions today, as we face another uncertain time in world history, very difficult to answer, very difficult to answer. What do we do in the face of aggression in a country far away, not against anybody other than their own people, which was the case in Vietnam? These are big questions, and I hope at the end, some of you will try and answer for me some of these questions as we go along, because we’ve got quite a number of Americans listening, and that would be very interesting for me, and I think for other non-Americans. But we should also remember that Australia fought alongside America in the Vietnam War, and Australian reminiscences from that war are equally important. Those of you who’ve read the synopsis that I placed on my blog earlier this week, in fact, last week, will notice that the first topic I said I would talk about was under the heading background, 1945 to '65. In other words, the two decades between the ending of the Second World War and the outbreak of the American-Vietnamese War. So let me begin then by saying 1945, Japan, is defeated, and the de Gaulle government comes back into Indochina, because Indochina, French Indochina, had been conquered, Vietnam had been conquered in the 19th century, Vietnam in 1858.

Now, although the Vichy government, that is the Nazi-allied government of Beitang, had seized power in Vietnam, and ruled alongside the Japanese, it was a very odd arrangement, with the Japanese accepting Vichy France there, but in fact, it was the Japanese that pulled the strings. Once Japan is defeated, Vichy France’s power is totally overthrown, and the French come back. Well, that makes a simple story, except, of course, it wasn’t a simple story. Because we have to go back, not to the end of the Second World War, '45, but to the middle of the First World War, to 1917, to find the origins of the American-Vietnamese War of 1965. And if we go back to that date, to 1917, the event that captured the thoughts of the world, and indeed changed history, was the Russian Revolution and the rise of communism. And it’s that, it’s the communism arising from 1917, which America, and Eisenhower’s domino theory, is so petrified of, in Southeast Asia post-1945, that it would all become communist. Now, they defeated communism in Korea, and now they’re facing it again in 1965, as it were a decade or so later, they’re facing it in Vietnam. If we come into the post-First World War period, and we come to the year 1930, a Vietnamese, whose name we all know, Ho Chi Minh, founded the Indo-Chinese Communist Party. Note, not the Vietnamese Communist Party, because the whole of Indochina, French Indochina, is included in Ho Chi Minh’s Indochina Communist Party, that is Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, with the intention of turning all three countries into a communist stronghold in Southeast Asia, replacing France.

Ho Chi Minh was actually 40 years old in 1930, not a young revolutionary, but a middle-aged revolutionary. But his antipathy to French colonial rule had started when he was expelled from his school in 1908, that is a French-run school, with French as the language of teaching, and indeed with a French curriculum. Its imperialism writ large was French imperialism in Vietnam. The story of French imperialism in Vietnam is similar to all European imperialisms. It happened to be a rather harsh imperialism. And why? They were after raw materials from Vietnam, not these rubber. From 1911 to World War I, Ho Chi Minh was a stoker on a French merchant ship that traveled the globe. And it gave him a greater, in fact, all his pre-1965 career was to provide him with global pictures. After he left the merchant navy, he spent a year in America before he came to Britain and acted as a pastry chef in the well-known Carlton Hotel in London. A pastry chef? Well, of course a pastry chef. Where’d you think he learned that? Well, of course, because of a French influence. At the end of the First World War, he sent an appeal on behalf of the Indo-Chinese Communist Party, which he had set up, remember, 15 years before, sorry, which he was to set up in 1930. But his first adventure into this political minefield was to send an appeal to Woodrow Wilson in 1919 in Paris at the Versailles Conference. And he asked for American support for Vietnamese independence. Now, one of the alternatives of history that’s nice to look at is what would have happened if Woodrow Wilson said, “What a splendid idea, "an independent Vietnam.” After all, America was none too keen at Versailles to underpin French and British imperialism. It was forced to, but it didn’t want to. It had talked about, remember, Woodrow Wilson had talked about the opportunity for individual nations to arise and govern themselves.

And here is Ho Chi Minh saying, “Come on, "that’s what we want.” Now, in the book called simply “Vietnam” by Max Hastings, which is, I think, the best one-volume history of the war, it’s quite a thick volume, but for those who want a lot of detail, but easy to absorb, then Max Hastings’ “Vietnam,” which is on my blog, so if you don’t remember it, you can look it up. And Max Hastings writes in this way, “Ho Chi Minh became increasingly politically active "and met nationalities of many hues, Irish, Chinese, Indian. "He spoke English and French fluently, "together with several Chinese dialects and Russian. "And he said,” this is his words, and this is his words in the brief that he sent to Wilson at Versailles, “All subject peoples are filled with hope "by the prospect that an era of right and justice "is opening to them in the struggle of civilization "against barbarism,” by which he means colonial rule, and which, frankly, is what the Americans were saying in less lurid language. But of course, they reject it, and they reject it because it’s Marxism. Had it been couched in other terms, well, I think they would still have rejected it, because they didn’t want to take on, Woodrow Wilson didn’t want to take on France and Britain. It was enough that he could sort out Europe, if you like, without starting sorting out the French Empire in Southeast Asia. In 1924, Ho Chi Minh visited Moscow and subsequently China. Now, Ho Chi Minh is a central figure, but as Max Hastings writes, he’s a complicated figure.

And Hastings says, “There are many mysteries "concerning Ho’s life. "He never married, and his emotional needs "appear to have been fulfilled by commitment "to political struggle,” good Marxist phrase, “to political struggle. "Who funded his global travels? "Was he a paid servant on Moscow, "or did he merely receive ad hoc financial assistance "from political fellow travelers? "It is unsurprising that he became a communist, "because the world’s capitalists were implacably hostile "to his purposes.” In other words, his rejection by Wilson for an independent Vietnam at Versailles. “He was less remarkable for his own writing and thinking, "which was unoriginal, than for an extraordinary ability "to inspire in others faith, loyalty, and indeed love. "A Vietnamese student wrote of a first meeting with Ho "some years later in Paris. "He exuded an air of frailty, a sickly power, "but this only emphasized the imperturbable dignity "that enveloped him, as though it was a garment. "He conveyed a sense of inner strength "and generosity of spirit that impacted upon me "with the force of a blur. "A man of considerable, a man of considerable charisma.” But a charisma that is linked to this total determination and commitment to the cause, to the cause of an independent Marxist Vietnam. And it’s important just to sort of touch that base with Ho Chi Minh. In World War II, when the Japanese occupied Vietnam, it was the Communist Party that organized guerrilla resistance to the Japanese takeover. As Japan fell in 1945, Ho Chi Minh organized a coup d'etat as the French were moving from Vichy French control to de Gaulle’s French control, and he declared Vietnam independent. In 1950, Vietnam as an independent country under Ho Chi Minh was recognized by the now People’s Republic of China, following Mao’s triumph in 1949.

But the French were not prepared to simply leave. The story, as you all know, wherever you live, is that the European empires fought, and I mean literally fought, against independence across their empires in the post-war period. And France was no exception to that. And France had a large army based in Vietnam in their attempt to quell the Marxists that were seeking to take control. And indeed, as Ho Chi Minh had declared, an independent Marxist state, the French were having none of that. But in 1954, France suffered one of the most catastrophic defeats of any European imperial power. At the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, France was not just roundly defeated, but humiliated. Oh, it was heroic, and the French will tell you today, and it was, the French, as it were, stood to the last man, metaphorically. But it was a terrible, terrible defeat. And did Britain, or indeed France itself, learn from that? No, they both went on attempting to protect their empires in a world which, indeed, Woodrow Wilson had seen all those years before at first sight, was ending. But people who lived through it didn’t see it as ending. And the French governments didn’t, and the British governments didn’t. But Dien Bien Phu in 1954 was a vital marker in the sound of the withdrawal of European powers from imperial control.

But there were others that could have learned the lesson from Dien Bien Phu, not, simply the Americans, who never took on board that the French army, and remember, the French army are no mere pawns in this. The French army was a considerable fighting force in 1954. And it’s overturned by, basically, a guerrilla movement at Dien Bien Phu. And the Americans, well, hubris again. That’s the French, not us. Failing to learn lessons in history is a recurring theme of politicians, and we know that, or of generals. Actually, there was a route through all of this that had been done by Templer in Malaya for the British, where he introduced a policy of Malayanization, we would call it today. And it was a success. It was one of the very few European success stories in the withdrawal from empire was the story of Malaya. But the Americans learned that too late. Nixon grasped that with his policy of Vietnamization. But by then, it was too late, far too late. So let’s stick with 1954, the French are defeated at Dien Bien Phu. France’s day was done, and the nations met at Geneva to decide what should be done. And what was done is what you see on the map we showed at the beginning, that Vietnam was divided into two, a Marxist North and a so-called, inverted commas, democratic South. So it’s a Korean answer. It worked in Korea, and the Americans said, well, it worked in Korea, it will work here. But as we all know, it didn’t work in Vietnam. Now, I just have a small piece here to read from Max Hastings book on Vietnam. An elderly peasant who lived beside Route 1 in Vietnam said, the happiest day in my whole life was when I saw two truckloads of French soldiers leaving Hue for the last time. They drove by my house and looked so sad.

France left behind the graves of 93,000 soldiers. Who had died since 1945 in the futile struggle to cling on to Indochina. Those men had no kindling to weave for them shrouds of romance. Well, the days of romantic empires are long since gone by 1954. When the French withdraw from Vietnam, and the independent countries of North Vietnam and South Vietnam are established. But the peasant was wrong, because the killing isn’t going to stop. The killing is simply not going to stop. Just over 10 years time, America is going to be embroiled in Vietnam. And the Vietnam War, which the Americans fought, is going to lead to even more losses of life. Killing had only just begun in the post-war world in the bloody withdrawal of France from Vietnam. Yeah, I’ve got one of my books. Where did I put this? I’m always doing this, you know, it’s really foolish. Here it is. I dropped it on the floor and then buried it in the papers I got. But I want you to read from Thomas Reeves’ book, “20th Century America,” in which Reeves writes the following. “By the end of the Eisenhower years,” the man who had talked about the domino theory, “by the end of the Eisenhower years, South Vietnam was in civil war. Between 1955 and 1961, the United States poured more than a billion dollars into South Vietnam, most of it in military aid.” Why? Well, because they’ve got the communist guerrillas operating in South Vietnam, the Viet Cong. I read on from Reeves’ book. “American leaders were determined to prevent the falling dominoes.” Senator Kennedy, JFK, Senator Kennedy used different metaphors in 1956 with the meaning clear. “Vietnam,” he said, “represents the cornerstone of the free world in Southeast Asia.” That’s the domino theory.

He also said, “It is the keystone to the arch, the finger in the dike.” And that is the domino theory, as it were, in practice, accepted or created by Eisenhower, recognized by Kennedy. And of course, recognized by Kennedy when he becomes president. And recognized by his vice president, more importantly, LBJ, who holds onto the belief when he becomes president, succeeding Kennedy after the assassination. The finger in the dike. Today, Ukraine has a finger in the dike of Putin’s Russian expansionism across Europe. In the Middle East, Israel has the finger in the dike against the spread of terrorist Islam funded by Iran. There’s nothing wrong with the theory of the finger in the dike, and there’s nothing wrong in supporting the country which is the finger in the dike. But in today’s world, there is hesitancy on the part of NATO, led by the US, to actually send troops to support Ukraine in its fight with Russia. And there’s a reluctance to send troops to support Israel in its fight against terrorism. Although that is working out in different ways, even as you sit listening and I sit talking with various American and British attacks on the Houthis in Yemen, and America attacks elsewhere in Syria and Lebanon, all of this is, if it was just an academic study, would be fascinating, but it isn’t. In Britain, we had a debate about what would happen if Russia did attack NATO, or would young British men and women accept conscription, or in American terms, the draft? And of course, the answer that comes back is probably not. But if it happened in reality, would it be like World War II and they would step up to the mark? I don’t know. We live in a different world today.

I mentioned before the placement of media, but I’ve also mentioned the power of the internet. But one of the things the media does, and has done since Vietnam, is to show you the raw footage from war in color. And although the worst pictures are not shown, we know enough and hear enough, think about the attack in October in Israel, to frighten young people. Of course, Israelis will fight, it’s their country. Defending your country is different, as Wilson knew, than sending your troops halfway around the globe to fight in Vietnam. We face different issues today with war, and I’m not sure, which means I am sure, really. I’m not sure that politicians are necessarily with it enough. Certainly in Britain, we have allowed our expenditure on defense to slump so badly, that only today it’s reported in the Times that our major asset, the new super, all singing, all dancing aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth II, is unable to lead a NATO exercise, because its propeller is broken. We are as unprepared Britons, as we were in 1914, and as we were in 1939. Because politicians don’t want to spend money on things that might happen, rather than on garnering votes at the present. Better to spend money where people want them to spend money, and which get them votes, than spending it on defense, where there are few votes, particularly when the threat is not immediate. We all know, all of you listening know, about the threat, the world, the threat to the world by China, by Russia, by Iran. But the great mass of people don’t think about that. They think about the economy. Clinton again, it’s the economy, stupid, that people think about. I’ve got to look at the clock, I’m getting carried away again. Now I want to read you a piece from a book called, “America Since 1945,” by Levine and Papasoteriou. And this is an interesting little piece.

And it goes like this. The situation in South Vietnam was going from bad to worse, after the overthrow of Diem in 1963, South Vietnam’s leader. A series of coups and other violent domestic confrontations, apart from the struggle against the Viet Cong, the civil war in South Vietnam, rocked South Vietnam until 1967, when at least a stable government emerged. The communist insurgency, the Viet Cong, was gathering strength, challenging the government’s authority in many provinces, to the point where villages often had to pay taxes to the Viet Cong. Without an American military presence, South Vietnam would probably have collapsed in 1965. Yes, that’s true. So America is faced, that is LBJ is faced. Does he allow Vietnam to collapse and become Marxist as one nation? Or does he intervene as the Americans have done in South Korea to bolster South Vietnam? And Levine adds, Johnson was aware that he was trapped, yet he dare not withdraw. Feeling out of his depth in foreign policy, he was reluctant to clash with the internationalist consensus that had supported a worldwide anti-communist crusade since 1950. He kept the entire Kennedy foreign policy team. He wasn’t really interested in foreign policy. Remember his great messages to great society. He kept Kennedy’s foreign policy team and was unwilling to countermine their policies that had led to a deeper American commitment in Vietnam in the first place. Military advisors, money, military equipment, poured into South Vietnam since the Geneva Accords of 1954. Yet to go to war must be a dreadful decision for any leader of any country to take. Okay, you can go to war when you’re attacked, like FDR in 1941 after Pearl Harbor, that’s easy. But to go to war when you aren’t yourself threatened, there was no way that Ho Chi Minh was threatening America, American soil, that is to say.

But yet, well, particularly the Americans must say what they think about LBJ. Whether he was simply on a track which he couldn’t get off and a track which maybe had been laid prior to his presidency by Kennedy, the hero, the God that you couldn’t criticize. And so the decision was made, particularly after some American advisors and troops and indeed a ship had been fired upon by Viet Cong and by North Vietnamese, gave the Americans the cover that they needed, the facts that they needed to be able to say, we’re not going to allow ourselves to be attacked like this, we will now take action. Think about the Americans killed recently in the Middle East, the three of them. Would LBJ have simply not reacted? Or would he have actually declared war on Iran? I mean, these are very difficult questions for leaders. And we live in a very different world from that of 1965. The war came and the war escalated as wars often do. And thousands of American young lives were lost. And then the question hangs in the air, for what? For what? In Korea, the answer is absolutely clear. Korea was established as a independent country in the South and a Marxist country in the North. And South Korea has flourished. On the other hand, North Korea, as we saw last week, has become a terrible drag. Now, in Vietnam, could the Americans do what they did in South Korea, create a South Korea? It’s already divided between North and South. They don’t have to draw a line as in Korea. In Vietnam, can the Americans support democracy in South Vietnam to mirror that of South Korea?

Well, we know it didn’t happen. Because the Americans are defeated in Vietnam, and the whole country becomes Marxist in a way that Korea did not. In March of 1965, the first American combat troops arrived in Vietnam. And a tide turned into a flood. 75,000 sent by mid-year. And a promise of a further 175,000 made by LBJ in July of that year, 1965. The Americans are ramping up. Wars escalate. You can’t just have a little war. Many people have thought they could have a little war, like Putin and Ukraine. But it doesn’t very often work out like that. Little wars become big wars. Big wars cost lives and cost money. So by July, 1965, America is committed to this war for good or ill. Its allies do not include Britain, but in terms of the Western world, do include New Zealand and Australia. They do have Southeast Asian allies, South Korea, of course, the Philippines, of course, Thailand, and so on. But in effect, that’s just a cloak to cover America’s nakedness in this war. Now, I’m not going to give you a detailed military history of the war. That’s not my purpose. You can find that in, indeed, Max Hastings’ book, “Vietnam,” will give that in very clear form. I want to put the Vietnam War into a sort of context, and that’s what I’ve been trying to do so far. And I’ve got just a quarter of the talk left to go, and I want to do that now, to place it in its context.

Now, the aspects of the war that caught international, as well as domestic American attention, increasingly, were highly critical of American policy. First of all, excuse me, I must learn not to throw my arms around, and throw my books off the table. It always happens. When I teach live, there’s always somebody in the front row who picks books up for me and brings them back. I haven’t got that facility here. Now, this is a book on the Cold War that I’m reading from. But I wanted to read this, by 1970, five years after America first goes in under LBJ. By 1970, the Americans had dropped more bombs on Vietnam than they had on any other previous target. Someone estimated that they dropped more explosives than were dropped by all nations during the Second World War. In spite of the high explosive cluster bombs in Napa, which poured down from the American bombers, it was obvious early on that this was not a tactic to use against a militarily undeveloped nation. Absolutely right. Absolutely right. You’ve got to fight differently. Exactly what the Israelis are fighting in fighting Hamas. This is not a traditional war with equal force, fighting equal force. This is, strangely, America has all the power, yet it can’t turn that power into victory. I’ll read on. It was obvious early on that this was not a tactic to use against a militarily undeveloped nation. Most supplies were still transported by bicycle or carried on the backs of porters. Therefore, bombing of roads and means of communication had little effect on the supply chain. Yet Washington was reluctant to cease bombing for fear the United States would look weak.

Bombing was also used against the Viet Cong in the South. And in an attempt to deprive them of their forest cover, the Americans employed chemical herbicides to defoliate the trees and destroy the rice crops on which the Viet Cong depended for food. The most nefarious of these defoliants was Agent Orange, a substance which contained dioxin, a carcinogenic substance which poisoned not only the rivers and streams in the Vietnamese people, but also the American personnel who loaded the chemical barrels onto the planes. The long-term effect of Agent Orange was to pollute the rivers and streams, the fragile ecosystem, and also the Vietnamese people. And this is not hearts and minds as the British and Malaya. This is simply the reverse of hearts and minds. If I’m vaguely democratic in South Vietnam, and I’m vaguely on the side of the Americans, supporting a democratic government, but my paddy fields of rice are destroyed by Agent Orange, my child is set alight by napalm, this is not going to endear Americans to me. Now, this is not an anti-American story, please. I’m just pointing out that in a modern, Cold War and post-Cold War world, it isn’t military might that wins, not necessarily. You have to be far more subtle than that. And of course, that’s why Putin is losing badly in Ukraine. He’s lost the, well, he’s lost the war words with Ukraine. Ukrainians see themselves now distinctly as Ukrainian, and don’t think about Russia. An example of that is that the Russian Orthodox Church has ceased to exist in Ukraine now, and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in various forms has taken over.

The use of bombing was not a good move. Everything seemed to conspire against American morale, the morale of the troops. Now, this is John Lewis in his introduction to a book on the Vietnam War, in which various sources are used. It’s on my blog list. It’s simply called “The Vietnam War,” edited by John Lewis. And Lewis writes, “The North tried the big one, "the Tet Offensive in 1968 to no great practical effect, "and the loss of over 45,000 of its combatants. "The shock of Tet was more terrible "than the military consequences of Tet, "yet American nerves were rattled. "It was Dien Bien Phu all over again.” Exactly what I said, no lessons learned. “The will to fight and die in a faraway land "waned and disappeared.” We will come next week to the issue of how middle-class Americans, young men, young women, were not so involved. It was heavily the poor and heavily Black Americans. That’s something we’ll look at next week. The morale issue and Tet are important. This is the rough guide to the war. Just short circuit’s what I want to say. “The Tet Offensive. "They were driven back with heavy casualties, "but it was a massive blow for U.S. confidence "and convinced many commentators, "including the much-respected Walter Cronkite, "that the war was unwinnable.

"The U.S. military presence in Vietnam "had peaked during the year at 549,000 troops,” over half a million American troops, and they couldn’t win. It was now, in the view of Americans, an unwinnable war. “On March 12th, ‘68, "leading what’s called the Children’s Crusade, "because his campaign attracted so many student volunteers, "the anti-war candidate, Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy, "wins a credible 42% of the vote "to LBJ’s 48% in New Hampshire’s Democratic primary. "This encourages Robert Kennedy to declare his own candidacy "on the 16th of March, "proposing to end the bloodshed in Vietnam and in our cities.” “And in our cities.” The Civil Rights Movement, which I will come to next time. “In a televised broadcast on the 31st of March, "an exhausted President Johnson announced a partial end "to the bombing of North Vietnam, "and new initiatives towards a ceasefire, "and also said that he would not stand "in the presidential election. "Meanwhile, although death details "will not emerge until 1969, "American soldiers left by Lieutenant William Kelly "massacre around 500 Vietnamese civilians "in the village of My Lai on the 16th of March.” Good guys are not meant to do things like that, but we know that all countries who portray themselves as good guys do bad things. But all of this, by 1969, is common news. “Nixon becomes President in 1969, and was committed to "withdraw of troops from Vietnam, although he still hoped "that South Vietnam would win a victory "without American troops, thus establishing a Korea-like "state of North and South Vietnam, "Marxist from the North, democratic to the South. "And he used the phrase,” which I mentioned earlier in the talk, “of Vietnamization.” And I’ve written on my notes, “It was too late.” Too late.

The Americans had treated the South Vietnamese, much as the French had done, in an imperial way, as inferior, if you like, not to put too much of a point on it, they did not prepare them properly for independence. This is the mistake of France and Britain. Throughout the imperial world, and America falls into that trap in South Vietnam. Nixon sought to divert attention by invading Cambodia and Laos, hardly a good idea. That led to the horror of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and that’s another story for another time. But America withdrew in 1972, and three years later, South Vietnam fell to Ho Chi Minh’s North Vietnam. America defeated, humiliated, might be the word. There are many reasons for the American defeat, but at the top of the list must be the failure of LBJ to convince the young and the American public at large, and even Congress, that this was a necessary and just war. People weren’t buying that in the 1960s. Max Hastings writes this of the young, he writes, “Two parallel Vietnam Wars evolved in 1967. "The first was, of course, America’s intensifying "battlefield struggle. "The second was the ever fiercer fight against it back home. "CBS TV began broadcasting "the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, "a show that became the surprise hit of the season. "Although its satirical sallies were soft-stuffed "by 21st century standards, a row exploded "about whether the anti-war folk singer Pete Seeger "should be allowed a guest appearance. "He finally delivered a rousing rendering of a number "in which the punchlines ran were waist deep "in the big muddy, but the big fool says to push on.” Now, he was talking about 1941, but everyone knew he was really talking about Vietnam. The cost of this war was enormous.

The war continued to cost $2.5 billion a month, and over 200 American lives a week, one third fewer than in 1968, but still more than 1967. US forces consumed an average of 128,400 tons of munitions a month through 1969. In June, Dan Bullock from Brooklyn, New York became the war’s youngest American to die. Having lied about his age to enlist, this 14-year-old black kid wrote home to his sister, “I think I joined the Marines at the wrong time. "Pray for me because I won’t be coming home.” Just 21 days after landing at Da Nang, he was killed by a communist satchel charge tossed into his bunker. 14, 14. American morale began to slump, and not only American morale, but the morale of their allies. Even among the relatively steady Australian contingent, in the last month of Lieutenant Rob Franklin’s 1971 tour, he wrote, “I’m just about over this.” He had developed a deep respect for the communists, quote, “Really senior soldiers,” unquote, matched by a keen personal desire not to die at the point of the war. At this point of the war, he said, “They might call our mission search and destroy, "but by then I felt it was more like search and avoid.” You could tell this thing was all over. One day, Franklin was leading a rifle platoon that bumped into a couple of Viet Cong when they pursued into a rubber plantation. It was too late in the day and light was fading. Franklin signaled a halt. His sergeant, Arthur Francis, said, “Sir, why are we stopping?” The lieutenant replied, “These guys have got this far. "Let 'em go. "Let’s go home.” And that was a feeling not just about the Australians, but the Americans. “Let’s go home.” This is an American GI who was writing and searching. Not doing well today. I’m really not doing well today. This is an American GI. The American GI writes this at the end of the war and him coming home.

He says, “When I came back, "about six of us were walking through the airport, "and a girl, maybe 18 or 19, "about the same age as us, really, "she asked me how many women and children did I kill? "I told her, 'Nine. ”'Where’s your mother at?’ “I thought it was great fun putting her down like that. "But inside I felt, ‘Gee, why is she treating me like this?’ "I thought I would come home as a war hero, you know. "I didn’t really want to be a war hero, "but I thought I’d get a lot of respect "because I’d done something for my country. "Somewhere deep in my psyche, "I thought the people would react to what I’d done and say, ”‘Hey, good job, good work.’ “My family did. ”‘Hey, great, how many people did you kill?’ “That wasn’t right either. "I didn’t tell them when I was getting home "because I didn’t want a party, but it happened anyway. "I couldn’t stay at it. "I hung out for an hour or two, "then I went out with my friends "and got fucked up out of my face.” It really is difficult to come to terms with the American loss of over 58,000 Americans killed, over 303,000 Americans wounded. And I suppose what we’re left with are the songs. Don’t worry, I’m not going to sing. Credence Clearwater Revival’s song, “Fortunate Son.” Some folks are born made to wave the flag. Ooh, they’re red, white, and blue. And when the band plays “Hail the Chief,” ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord. It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no senator’s son, son. It ain’t me. It ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate one, no. Some folks are born silver spoon in hand. Lord, don’t they help themselves, no.

Of one, the taxman comes to the door. Lord, the house looking like a rummage sale, yeah. It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no millionaire’s son. No, no, it ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate one, no. Yeah, some folks inherit star-spangled eyes. Ooh, they send you down to war, Lord. And when you ask them, how much should we give? Ooh, they only answer, more, more, more, more. It ain’t me, it ain’t me. I ain’t no military son, son. Lord, it ain’t me. It ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate one, one. It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate one, no, no, no, it ain’t me, it ain’t me. I ain’t no fortunate son, no, no, no, no. And that is where I begin next week, with the Civil Rights Movement, and the over-representation of Black Americans in the armed forces of America in Vietnam. And now as we look back, was it worth it? The loss of over half a million American young, was it worth it? I’m sure lots of you, and I guess lots of Americans will want to challenge things I’ve said, and I’m only too happy. And I’m sure there’s lots of people with some really good things to say.

Q&A and Comments:

Michael, thanks very much for your opening comment, which I saw before I started. Thank you, thank you for your comment, Naomi.

Ronald says, “Korea was referred to as the Korean conflict, not the Korean War.” Yeah, that’s a really interesting point. It’s how the British described the war in Malaya as the Malayan emergency. It tells you a lot about how people looked at things.

Alan, “In the UK, it was always referred to as the Korean War.” Yes, it was, that’s true.

Angela says, “There have been programs on Vietnam during the last couple of weeks on British TV.” Yes, there have.

The Younger says, “Just as color changed, Korean War, and the general internet changed Iraq, AI and the creation of deep fake technology is changing the news today.” Absolutely right. We have got to be able to cope with the internet. It is really worrying. And not so much the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, because the Russians are so bad at it, but the Israeli-Hamas conflict is very worrying in the context of truth. We’ve always said truth is the first casualty of war, but it’s now becoming not the first, but the second and the third as well.

Monty, “Henry Kissinger, as national security advisor, was criticized and vilified for the bombing of Cambodia and the killing of tens of thousands of Cambodians in the Vietnam War. His response, you cannot judge the morality of a state in the same way that you judge the morality of an individual.” Think Gaza. I’d have to think all the way through that. Monty, I can’t answer that quickly. I need to think carefully about the comparison as well. Michael, “The Vietnamese War was fought ‘55 to '75 or '65 to '75, but no color TV in UK until '67.” That’s true.

Janet, “Well, thank you for your comment. The Vietnamese don’t refer to the Vietnam War. They call it the American War.” Well, you see, history is written from the point of view of the person who’s writing it. If, let me give you an example. If it was an American who was giving the talk today and not me as a Briton, an American historian would be saying different things than I have chosen to say. If instead of me, it was a young British historian, then their story would be different. If it was a young British female historian, the story would be different. If it was a black American historian, the story would be different. If it was a young American female historian, the story will be different. You have to take into account where the individual is coming from. Now, it’s pretty clear with me that I’m not American. So at least you can overcome that. But my views politically might also interfere in my views about the war. You have to make judgments. When we choose to read a history book, you read it knowing something about the person who writes it and it influences therefore how you read it. If you know the person writing it is a communist, then you take that into account when you read it. If you know the person writing it was a Catholic priest, then you take that into account. So always you have to look at the context. And for the Vietnamese to call it the American war is not surprising.

You’re absolutely right, David. South Korea, I did mention South Korea, also fought in South Vietnam. General MacArthur says, Henry, stated after World War II, not to enter into a land war in Southeast Asia. Well, you know, I think MacArthur was absolutely on the ball and that illustrates another problem. And it’s a problem that Britain is, it’s in the news today, around the last few weeks of senior military figures saying to the government, we are saying to politicians in general, we are unprepared for what Russia is now doing. The politicians don’t listen. Few politicians understand history and fewer still, how you can use that history to enlighten you at the present. And few politicians like asking bluntly, professionals advice, whether it’s professionals in medicine or in education, but importantly here, like MacArthur in the military, they don’t like doing it because it shows up their own outlook on life. And politicians own outlook on life is to get reelected or their party reelected. It’s a terrible thing to say, but we have, I think, in the modern world, a limited number of politicians who are genuinely committed to policies and to seeing those policies through because they believe they’re the best for the country. We have a lot of politicians who think only of themselves. That will annoy many of you, but I think that is true.

Q: Mitzi, were these battles affected by the Cold War with Russia?

A: No, no, no. The reassessment undertaken by America afterwards leads to the, and indeed Britain, leads to the nuclear arms treaties that come and to the relationship, we’re talking about Britain, and America between Thatcher and Reagan. The answer is no. The mistake with Russia was to believe that we’d won when Marxism collapsed. How foolish was that? And that Fukuyama, the Japanese-American historian who said it was the end of history. I mean, yeah. I can’t, it all seems so silly now when we know what’s happened.

Stuart, I’ve been to Vietnam on a number of occasions. Was given a personal tour of Ho Chi Minh’s house by the curator, it’s a museum. It is preserved as it was on the day he died. On his bedroom bookshelf are numerous books of American democracy. One of his heroes was Thomas Jefferson. After the American War, they had brief wars with China, Laos, and Cambodia. Most Vietnamese are too young to remember the American War. I found most Vietnamese that I met very friendly. They even took me to see my old office in the beautiful custom house. HCMC, still called Saigon by many. That’s also interesting, isn’t it? My son was on business in India and was very, they were searching for Indian business contacts. And so he was careful how he spoke. And on one occasion he was asked where he’d been. And he said to this Indian CEO, “Well, I’ve been to Mumbai.” And so the Indian replied in perfect English, “Oh, you mean Bombay? "We don’t say Mumbai here.” So it’s the same sort of story, it’s very odd.

Stuart, again, sorry. Sorry, Stuart. Stuart, again. In 1972, I was a civilian advisor to the South Vietnam Customs Service. It was clear to me that many Vietnamese were opposed to their government, which they felt was corrupt. I was also an advisor in '95, '97, '99 to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam’s Customs Service. How fascinating, Stuart. I wish we were face-to-face. But you raise a point about corruption. Now, corruption can come in any society, authoritarian, Marxist, democratic, whatever. But corruption is corrosive. And at the present time, both America and Britain, at least, have the stench of corruption around politics. And it is really important that that is dealt with, because if it isn’t, people, and particularly the young, lose faith in our democratic systems. And that is one of the big issues in Britain, in my opinion, but I think also in the States.

My uncle, says Avril, who was in the Canadian Army, was a Canadian officer assigned to the ICC in '56. There was an Indian officer and Polish officer in the ICC with him in Vietnam. Very interesting. Arlene, I’ve read that President Johnson knew Vietnam was an estate. Why did he continue it? Because he was on this travelator. You know, travelators in airports. And you know if you’re on a travelator, you can’t get off. If you do, you fall headlong, with your case splitting open and all the rest of it. And he was on a travelator, he couldn’t get off.

Q: Nina, wasn’t JFK’s father, Joe, determined to support the Catholic clergy in South Vietnam?

A: That I didn’t know. That I didn’t know. And I guess you’re right. So let me read that carefully, Nina. Wasn’t JFK’s father, Joe Sr., determined to support the Catholic clergy in South Vietnam, and influential on our engaging in hostilities? I don’t know, but I suspect that he could well be. And you heard me talk about Joe before. He is not a person you would refer to if you were American in Britain to your British hosts. His name, well, amongst those who know, his name is mud here because of World War II.

And Angela writes, the Queen Elizabeth aircraft has been in trouble since it was commissioned with a variety of faults. Yes, that’s true. And that says something, I think, Angela, about the sophistication of modern weapons against simple weapons. You know what I’m saying. We spend enormous sums of money. I can’t remember how many millions of millions we spent on this aircraft carrier. And it’s been had, you’re absolutely true. It’s been bothered by mistakes and things going wrong ever since it was launched.

Hillel, there are claims that Kennedy, in his last address at American University, before he was assassinated, was signaling he was going to withdraw American troops from Vietnam. That is interesting. Why Johnson didn’t was because he was following what had been the declared policy of Kennedy. And as I said, he relied upon Kennedy’s foreign office advisors. He wasn’t bluntly interested. And we’ve got a prime minister at the moment in Britain, in Sunak, who isn’t really interested in foreign policy. Now that happens, but you’ve got to have somebody within the administration who knows what they’re dealing with.

Q: Elaine, so William, what is the solution of any country, depending on themselves, as enlistment is down and countries don’t have equipment to sustain an army?

A: I do not know. Elaine, that is a question that if I was a person that stayed awake at three o'clock in the morning, worrying about the international situation would worry me. I don’t know what would happen. I can only talk about Britain. I don’t know. If there was conscription, I guess it would be, I don’t know. I guess it would be like American Vietnam. I think there will be a large number of people dodging it in one way or another.

Q: David, would there have been a different outcome if the end was not overthrown?

A: No, I don’t think so. I think this was, as it were, written in tablets of stone before it even started. But you asked me my opinion, that’s my opinion. My opinion is an opinion, it isn’t fact. I could be wrong, that’s what I think.

Shelley, LBJ was dealing with another major issue besides Vietnam, he was dealing with getting civil rights legislation filed. Absolutely 100% right. With his fellow Southern Democrats didn’t want. He was dealing with riots every summer in Northern cities. The US was very divided domestically. Absolutely right. If this was in a, if you’d written that in an essay for in the university or something, you’d have two big green ticks against that because it’s absolutely right. And that’s why I read the song at the end, the lyrics of the song, “A Forgotten Son,” because it leads me into this whole civil rights question next week. Marcia, one of the most important, fascinating players during this period was Secretary of State Robert McNamara, later president of the World Bank.

“The Fog of War” is a brilliant documentary about how his views about the war changed. He was fully engaged in this. And the film won an Academy Award for documentary film. Yes, I did. I’m sorry, there’s always a limit on how far off the main story I can go, but you’re absolutely right about McNamara. And the difference with McNamara was he was intelligent and bright, and that is not always the case with politicians on either side of the Atlantic.

Alan, according to the book, “The OSS and Ho Chi Minh,” “Unexpected Allies in the War Against Japan,” Ho cooperated with US Office of Strategic Services against Japan during '45. Ho still wanted US recognition. Yes, he was, somebody was talking about, they’d seen the books on America in Ho Chi Minh’s house. Ho Chi Minh was strangely very attracted to America. And remember, it goes right back to Versailles when he wanted Woodrow Wilson to recognize. I mean, we can’t ask him now, but it would have been fascinating in a television interview to say to Ho Chi Minh, now, you asked for Woodrow Wilson to recognize an independent Marxist Vietnam. Were you genuine in that? I think the answer would be yes. Did you expect him to agree? And he might’ve said, “Well, I thought there was a chance because the Americans were talking about the right of nations to decide their own futures.” And then you could ask him then about 1945. Did you think the Americans would simply endorse his rule in Vietnam and tell the French to get lost? And I think he probably actually genuinely believed that. Although the likelihood of either thing happening was, I think, pretty well zero. The Americans are not going to do that in 1919, and they’re not going to do it in 1945.

Q: Shelley, how did the corruption, the South Vietnamese government figure in? What about the religious differences between Catholic South Vietnamese and Buddhist South Vietnamese?

A: I’m sorry, I can’t go into that, Shelley. That’s a huge question. I’m sorry I didn’t cover that. The reason I didn’t cover it is, again, as I answered just now, I’ve got to keep to a thread through the talk of the story and not to diverge too much as I go along. As I said before, somebody else giving it, you had a Catholic priest giving it, you’d get a very different story. That’s what, we’ll have to find someone to do a different version.

Esther, “My friend’s brain tumor was credited to his flying a helicopter through areas that had been sprayed with Agent Orange.” Oh, that’s horrendous. I said before that I read you a passage in which Americans suffered because they were handling this stuff. Zoo Newser, I like that. “I recommend a book, "Matterhorn,” on the war.“

Elbert, "Australia had a debt to pay for saving them from the Japanese at the Coral Sea, the same as in Korea. You were right about color of the army. Was unable to believe we lived through it. My tears are running down my face, we did come home.” Thank you, oh, well, that’s people saying thank you. Well, thank you for listening. I’ll go on talking to all these people. Well, actually, as my wife will say, I will go on talking even when there isn’t anyone else in the room.

• [Host] Sorry to interrupt you on that note. You’ve probably got time for one more question if you want to take one of these.

• I’ll try and get back to, I’ll go through the list very quickly. Oh! Sorry, I’ve just seen something. Myrna, “Just announced King Charles is diagnosed with cancer. I’m sure we all wish him recovery and good health.” Oh, now that’s a blow to many of us. Oh dear, I think I’ll leave it at that. I think I’ll leave it at that 'cause I’ll only annoy people whom I don’t answer the question to.

Thank you so much for your questions. Thank you so much for the information you share, which is even to me is so valuable. And I will see you same time, same place next week when we will look at the issue of civil rights and how it interfaces with the Vietnam War. Cheers.