Finished Reading Max Hastings "Vietnam : An Epic Tragedy 1945 - 1975". The Cold War was a curious time, an interventionist conflict between superpowers, I was a kid during its last decade and had internalized its assumptions and world view. In the 1960's the American political leaders and their advisers had the recent experience of the Korean War (1950 - 1953) and many had personal experience in World War II and these experiences guided their thinking and presented scenarios that they wanted to avoid. The Korean War had demonstrated the strategic effectiveness of Communist China's military and an initial comparative operational weaknesses in the American military and established the idea of a limited war to the United States military, government and people. These terms reflect a very reasonable fear concerning the use of nuclear arms in military conflict, which during the Cold War period would have been part of the escalation in a conventional war between the superpowers. It was a spectre. Thus alternative solutions for issues were sought to avoid outright conventional war, yet the tools of state remained the various branches of the military and the intelligence services. Also I am not that sure to what degree things are better now. Feel free to explain that to me, I guess. Generally the CIA, as a intelligence service, had a better track record for actual intelligence than branches of the military but with the benefit of hind sight, was involved in projects and solutions that you only get with a faith in the ideal of modernity and "the American Way", but to really understand something like that you would have to have lived it, I guess. Symptoms of this search and faith lead to John F Kennedy in the 1960's authorizing the Bay of Pigs and an escalating involvement in Vietnam. Involvement in Vietnam was argued as a way of avoiding a conventional war. Avoiding outright conventional war with China was one of the reasons why the United States and its allies did not conduct ground operations in North Vietnam and chose instead to engage in strategic bombing. A decision Max Hastings discusses as having unintended consequences that included stablising the Hanoi regime through increased militarization of North Vietnamese society and built increased active defenses such as MIG fighters and Soviet trained SAM installations. This logic was discussed in the highest echelons of power with various degrees of sincerity and used to garner support for the "police action" to the general American public. The book refers to presidential discussions from Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson to Robert Nixon with advisors such as Robert McNamara which established the official aims of American involvement in Vietnam. The book also provides a number of narratives at various levels of involvement, the experience of Soviet SAM advisor crews in North Vietnam is particularly interesting, with geopolitical maps, tactical maps and photos of events of the time, including the classic images that have come to represent America and its allies involvement in the Vietnam War 1961 to 1975 (2nd Indochine War).
There are a number of themes Hastings discusses with the increasing involvement of American military advisers under John F Kennedy's (1961 - 1963 November) and Lyndon Johnson's (1963 to 1969) presidencies and continuing involvement and withdrawal under Nixon (1969 to 1974) which has been covered by a considerable amount of literature. The bulk of the books argument is practically a classical statement about the failure of American policy of "Vietnamisation" due to a lack of credibility of the governments backed by the American military. The books point of difference from the mass of other literature on the subject is that it discusses the dominant figures in North Vietnam such as Ho Chi Min and Le Duan and argues that the lack of transparency and increased control of information in Communist Vietnam obscures the misuse of the Vietcong by the North Vietnamese military and the cost of victory to the Vietnamese people. The society that was formed after the war was not the utopia they had hoped for although there is a quote that "any dirty peace is better than a war". Hastings conjectures that the values represented by the idea of a communist society were more comparable to the Buddhist village in an agricultural setting and familial networks of traditional Vietnamese society, as compared to the ideals of an modern urbanised American democracy. This is a satisfying statement that can be made only in hindsight, and anyway, the Diem government wasn't too thrilled with voting when it was apparent that most of the South Vietnamese would vote for a communist government. But even that conjecture is not without apriori criticism after all the Korean War (1950 - 1953) produced a military junta that increasingly adopted democratic features, South Korea, referring to South Korea here, if there are any misunderstandings. Experience is useful to operational success, the Americans were not going to repeat the mistake of Dien Bien Phu (1954), helicopters were extremely mobile and facilitated rapid deployment and concentration of artillery, the Americans could "leapfrog" over valleys. So you know, there was evidence they had learned some things. One of the themes running through the book was that the failure of the American military in Vietnam was to not associate itself with a credible political and social order, believing operational success would compensate for lack of political credibility. The books description of the assassination of Diem and the Tonkin incident were quite frank compared to other sources. There was a horrible symmetry to the assassination of Diem and then Kennedy weeks later in 1963. To his credit Kennedy rescinded the order but it got carried out anyway. Vietnam cost America a lot in terms of its moral and political leadership during the Cold War. Then again.
As a New Zealander, thus not an American, what I find interesting, and it appeals to my luke warm patriotism, is that the book describes the involvement of the Australian and New Zealand governments in the Vietnam War. At the peak of ANZAC involvement (1969) there were 8000 Australian and 543 New Zealand military personnel in Phouc Thy province, which comprised 3 battalions, support staff and special forces units. Max Hastings describes in big strokes the successes and failures of ANZAC operations. Apparently they were quiet, professional, with an emphasis on field craft and did not tend to shoot bystanders (460 : 2018), which I find comforting. There were cultural differences in terms of operational differences and the nature of the successes and failures were interesting. Hastings considers whether or not, if the American forces had adopted ANZAC practices, would this have altered the outcome of the Vietnam War. His conclusion is that the issue wasn't operational, it was the belief that operational success could compensate for a lack of credibility of the South Vietnamese government in the eyes of its people that lead to failure of the overall strategic goals. This is described as the failure of "Vietnamization" and there is a Rodney Dangerfield screwball comedy from the 1980's that features a scene with Sam Kinison that frankly summarizes this issue. In the context of the movie, what it is doing is a little complex, as humour tends to be, it tends to scour issues in the subconscious, some kind of discourse analysis could be done here, preferably by someone else.
The book vaguely complements the TV documentary series The Vietnam War, which is available on line. It is interesting the points of difference, the book specifically has more tactical information and goes out of its way to feature narratives from both American and South Vietnam sources but also North Vietnamese, British spies in Hanoi, Russian and Chinese Advisors. The TV documentary presents the cities, environment and historical figures in detail "A picture is worth a thousand words" but is light on the tactics and the political processes behind the decisions made, but it does have a great soundtrack from music of the era.
One of the points of this book was the lack of transparency and mendacity of both the American and North Vietnamese governments, where the Vietcong despite the brutality of their methods fought for a more credible government. Currently there is an article in "Foreign Policy" dated September 2018 by Ashley Jackson that describes the Taliban becoming a more credible government in Afghanistan, the article is called "The Talbians Fight for Hearts and Minds" (2018). What do I actually think? Well I know I don't know, having read about the process of the unification of Vietnam under the North Vietnamese government, which in the 1970's I know I would not have supported with my 2018 values, but if I was a guy in the 1970's and didn't know any better I probably would have. If Jane Fonda told me to support North Vietnam then I probably would have. Fortunately I am a sophisticated pseudo intellectual 2018 guy so now I would only believe what Pamela Anderson tells me instead. God help me, I don't think I am particularly smart..
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