 Well, good afternoon and welcome to the third interview in our second year of our six week series of conversations with known and presidential historians about the American presidency. The series is brought to you by the LBJ Presidential Library and the UT Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and Humanities Texas. I'm Phil Barnes and it's my privilege to chair the UT Ollie Enrichment Committee. Dr. Mark Lawrence, the director of the LBJ Presidential Library, and himself a widely respected historian, is the host for each of these interviews. This year we are focusing on presidential decisions from war and peace. And from these conversations we are learning just how complex and often difficult these decisions were. And this week we will see just how history may occasionally repeat itself. As a participant in this webinar you may present questions throughout the program for our Q&A segment by using the Q&A function to write and submit them. Our Q&A host again today is my UT Ollie colleague, Sandy Criss. Our special guest, Mark Silverstone, is associate professor and presidential studies at the University of Virginia. He also leads the acclaimed presidential recording program at UVA's Miller Center where he edits the White House tapes of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, a historically important function. Through his access to White House tapes and his thorough study of now unclassified communications, memoranda, documents, and other materials from the Kennedy administration, Mark has written the Kennedy with the Raw Camelot and the American Commitment in Vietnam. This book will certainly be the definitive history of President Kennedy's decisions leading to an escalation in the war in Vietnam. He shows in detail how the president received and responded to plans prepared mainly by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, providing for the withdrawal of American troops as advisers if, when and as, the South Vietnamese Army succeeded in defeating the communist insurgents. Mark Silverstone shows that Kennedy declined to commit to any firm dates for the withdrawal. Preferred always to keep his options open. His documented reluctance likely stemmed from conflicting reports about just how well the South Vietnam Army was actually performing. While the American press regularly reported on progress in defeating its enemy, now declassified documents revealed field reports of exactly the opposite, that the South Vietnam Army was not defeating the communist and likely could never do so. Of course, the president was assassinated and the withdrawal plan was subsequently abandoned. The South Vietnamese Army never demonstrated its ability to defeat the insurgency and to the extent that that was the criteria for withdrawing American troops, the withdrawal would not likely have been authorized, even if Kennedy had lived. That, of course, we can never know for sure. Now we have the opportunity to learn more about this remarkable period in presidential history from the author of this remarkable book. It's a special pleasure delighted to welcome for today's interview Mark Silverstone, author of The Kennedy With Royal, Camelot, and the American Commitment to Vietnam. And now to Mark Lawrence. Thank you so much, Phil, and welcome everyone to this third in our series. Welcome especially to my friend and colleague, Professor Mark Silverstone. It's great to have you, Mark. And honestly, I can't think of a person better positioned to help us think about the fateful American decisions for war in Vietnam. Surely one of the most most important decisions for war and peace that has, of course, had profound consequences for American history ever since. Mark, thanks again for being with us. I'm thrilled to be here with you, Mark. Thanks for the invitation. Mark, I think most historians would agree that the key decisions for war in Vietnam came in the first half of 1965, but that the decision had really little in common with, you know, FDR's Declaration of War or Call for Declaration of War in 1941 or Woodrow Wilson's in 1917. Instead, the decision to fight in Vietnam came about rather gradually and didn't involve a single moment of decision for war. Historians of the war, in fact, often explain American decision making by reaching back into the 1950s or at least the early 1960s to show how it was that American involvement escalated. And your book provides a really deeply researched history of decision making about Vietnam in the undeniably pivotal Kennedy years from 1961 to 1963. And we want to, of course, get into the argument of your book and understand how you interpret Kennedy's behavior, a subject of great controversy over the years. But before we get there, take us back to this period in the early 1960s of American involvement in Vietnam. What was the situation in Vietnam as John F. Kennedy came into office in 1961? Well, Kennedy inherits a not not quite a war yet, although there is certainly military action between the government of then President Goethe Nguyen of South Vietnam and a burgeoning and more martial communist movement in South Vietnam. Recall that by 1954, the end of the Franco-Vietnam War, that war that lasted from 1946 on up, the French who were reimposing imperial control were confronting the combined forces of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the nation that was founded in September 1945 by Ho Chi Minh and communists that were allied with that state. And that war ends essentially in 1954 with an agreement hashed out at Geneva for the recruitment of forces north and south of the 17th parallel, essentially communist forces north of the 17th parallel and non-communist forces south. And from that period, 1954 to 1960, which began with the French still in place in South Vietnam, although they would be displaced over the next couple of years, the United States play an increasingly important role in supporting First Prime Minister Goethe Nguyen and then President Goethe Nguyen in making sure that he was able to sustain an independent non-communist entity, initially so that there would be a southern Vietnam at the time of elections that were supposed to take place in 1956, elections that were to unify the country north and south, elections that actually never did take place. And none of the great powers actually were too terribly upset about that. Certainly from the Western allies perspective, they recognized that any free and fair election would have resulted in a victory for Ho Chi Minh, resulting in a communist state at that point. But thereafter, once ZM had proved his mettle in South Vietnam, battling against internal enemies of which there were several, he seemed to be a man that the United States would pin its hopes on. Certainly that was the case when the U.S. first supported him in 54, but even more so after his battles with his local antagonists in 55 and then into 56. And by 1957, when he comes to the United States, he's being hailed as the tough miracle man of Vietnam in the United States has in many ways cast its lot with ZM and his anti-communist regime or non-communist regime. John Kennedy being among those who were part of a lobby organization, the American Friends of Vietnam, who were stoutly supportive of ZM and his efforts to sustain this non-communist entity. The Eisenhower administration between 54 and 60 pumps about two billion dollars of aid into South Vietnam and very much keeps it afloat. And without that aid, it's hard to imagine that that a southern Vietnam slowly and surely becoming a state of Vietnam, known formally as the Republic of Vietnam, would have lasted. And so by the time that Kennedy wins the election in 1960 and then becomes president in 1961, there are a couple of additional developments that have taken place. ZM had launched a campaign against communist south of the 17th parallel trying to wipe them out and was doing a fairly good job of that, at which point decisions both south of the 17th parallel among communists living there, but particularly in Hanoi north of the 17th parallel decisions were made to go on the offensive because communist ranks were being so depleted. And as a result of several of those decisions, particularly one at the tail end of 1960, new administrative structures are set in motion, particularly the National Liberation Front, which was a combined organization of communists and non-communists, but clearly dominated by the communists to carry on this this assault on infrastructure, ZM's governmental infrastructure and in an effort to unify the country under the communist flag. And that is what Kennedy confronts when he becomes president. The American military presence at the time is minimal. There are only six hundred and eighty five US military advisors in country. The maximum amount that's allowed under the Geneva Agreement of 1954. And it's a training mission that they're trying to build up a southern Vietnam army that was really kind of the remnant of the old Vietnamese National Army that was fighting with the French during that period from 46 to 54. And it's it's not going particularly well. There are a host of challenges that we can talk about later, but this is what Kennedy inherits, a mobilized, immobilized communist movement that is really going on the offensive. So the war is escalating pretty dramatically as John F. Kennedy steps into office. And then again, just to help us set the stage here, tell us broadly how the war develops over Kennedy's thousand days in office. Well, it mushrooms on all sides, really. There's there's no doubt that Kennedy escalates the war. And oftentimes the word escalation is attached to Lyndon Johnson. And for good reason, it's probably more accurate to describe what happens during the Johnson period as Americanization, certainly after the summer of 1965. But there's no doubt that the United States under John F. Kennedy becomes much more deeply engaged rhetorically. It becomes more deeply engaged in terms of the number of servicemen that go to Vietnam, as I mentioned, 685 at the time he comes into office. The actual figures, 16,732 at its under Kennedy in 1963. And then a host of military supplies going fixed wing aircraft, helicopters, more and more civilian advisers as well to help build up the the civilian infrastructure. And there are other private groups that go into to try to help nation build as as it was called. So from the perspective of America's engagement, it escalates dramatically. From the perspective, I would say, also of what's happening on the other side, there is a dramatic there's a dramatic escalation as well. And as with the Americans, it happens over time. I like the way you set this up, because it really is a process, the way that the war emerges. And there had been some vigorous debate in Hanoi over whether the NLF and its its military arm, the People's Liberation Armed Forces, commonly known as the Viet Cong or VC, whether they should really go on the offensive or whether there should be more political agitation. Initially, the decision is made to go on the offensive. And not everybody in the Politburo, including Ho Chi Minh, agrees with that. But by the time we get into the middle of 62, the United States is starting to throw more and more men in. And there are decisions made also in other capitals, including Beijing and Moscow, that maybe now is the time to help support Hanoi. And Hanoi is is eagerly courting the Chinese at this point. And because of that burgeoning relationship, which had been important as well in the Franco-Vietnam War, but becomes really important again here during the Kennedy period, the Chinese are able to send the right kinds of signals and the right kinds of of material to the North that allows Lays Juan is really the first among equals in North Vietnam at that point. Ho Chi Minh really steps back from kind of day to day operations of running the show by 1963. There is a much more aggressive posture that the North adopts. And so the wars is intensifying on on both sides in the court from the course of the middle of 62 through the end of Kennedy's thousand days in office. And, Mark, your book provides such a terrific narrative of these developments that you were just describing, but it also targets a very specific question. Would JFK have withdrawn or somehow drawn down American forces in Vietnam if he had survived in the presidency for longer? And before we get to your answer to that question, which I promise will be the next one, tell us why that's such a controversial question that has hovered over the history of the Vietnam War for so long? Well, the Vietnam War ended up being a calamity for the United States and for the people of Southeast Asia, most importantly. And it seemed for many for some at the time, but more so for folks later on looking back, that had Kennedy remained in office and the country had the benefit of his judgment and prudence and circumspection and and political talent, like he demonstrated, let's say, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He might have found a way out of this mess. And it was a mess, certainly for John F. Kennedy during his time there. So so part of this is is is how the story turns out. And it turns out pretty poorly. And when you when you remove Kennedy from the equation and slot in Lyndon Johnson, oh, how interesting it is that at least for a short while, they are using the same batch of advisors. And it seems as though the war just mushrooms, it gets much larger, not so much in 1964, although Johnson did deploy 7000 additional troops at that time, but certainly from 1965 on. And wow, what an interesting political science experiment that might be. What's the difference between the two? And I think also because there is a sense that the JFK was such an attractive figure and it's not just about Vietnam, it's about America at large. Johnson certainly is able to achieve so much domestically, extending the program that John F. Kennedy lays out. But because of who Johnson was and who Kennedy was, and we can talk about some of that later, you know, there's some real question as to whether or not JFK would have adopted the same policies that LBJ did. Even though LBJ, let's say, at least in December and January, December 63 and January 64, thought that he was simply continuing Kennedy's policies. OK. So let's get to your answer to the big question. Would JFK have behaved differently from the way Lyndon Johnson ultimately behaved as president? Would he have withdrawn or taken steps toward the withdrawal of American forces? So I don't think that he would have done so in 1964. I think it's hard to see him doing that. He himself said that that he couldn't do that, otherwise they'd have another Joe McCarthy on their hands, perhaps after reelection in 1965. But even then, I'm not so sure or at least for me, the jury is very much out at that point. And while I did not try to engage that question frontally in the book, others have done so with with some rigor as well. What I tried to do is figure out where JFK was when he went to Dallas in 1963, but to my mind, what that says is that he was still committed to fighting this counterinsurgency and there's I think there's pretty decent evidence to suggest that at the same time, we do know that Kennedy had some real concerns about his South Vietnamese ally, both both during the ZM era, as well as the three weeks post ZM when he was still alive. He recognized the power of nationalism coursing through the developing world, but certainly in Southeast Asia. He had gone on record repeatedly as a senator talking about the difficulty of defeating forces that are at the same time everywhere and nowhere and the power of nationalism in a Vietnamese setting. So there's some virtue in thinking that John F. Kennedy would have thought twice about going big, but I don't think that's necessarily the right question is how might Kennedy have stayed engaged? It's hard for me to see him sending in half a million troops, as LBJ did. But it's not hard for me to see Kennedy trying to do trying to continue on with what he had been doing, which was continuing to send sabotage teams north of the 17th parallel with trying to use covert operations as pinpricks, no doubt, unlikely to really inflict sufficient pain as people were talking about graduating pressure, more and more pain, perhaps leading the north and the NLF to the conference table. Those were not effective, those measures, but it didn't stop him from pursuing them. It's conceivable that Kennedy, who was enamored of counterinsurgency and the work of Roger Hillsman, one of his advisors, who himself was enamored of various counterinsurgency tactics, might they have tried to do something like pursue an enclave approach where various pieces of territory in South Vietnam were to be defended as opposed to defending the entire country, and then we moved to the conference table at that point. So I see Kennedy remaining engaged, even militarily engaged. I don't see him doing what LBJ did, but I do see Kennedy as seeing seeing it as important for the United States position in the world to remain a credible force and to do that, I find it hard to believe that he would have have simply walked out. Now, he may have moved off the battlefield, let's say, by 66 or 67, but that really depends upon what the greater constellation of forces were in the world. And also from a domestic perspective, even though he would not run again, his brother likely would, how that all would have meant for a Robert F. Kennedy candidacy. So it's a fascinating question. The counterfactual forces as to contend with situations as they were and to think about these these alignments. But the short answer is I still see him remaining engaged. Let me let me ask you another even more unfair counterfactual. Is it possible to imagine measures short of the big escalation that LBJ undertook in 1965, actually. Preventing. A defeat of the South Vietnamese regime or was the situation simply so desperate that only the introduction of American forces at the level where LBJ escalated them could have really achieved that result. So to preserve an independent non-communist South Vietnam, I don't I don't think that that the kinds of things that I was just laying out or anything short of of Americanization would have worked. And of course, in thinking about what these contingencies were, what would what would the the political environment bear? Certainly in the United States, if you're thinking about the kinds of numbers that people were throwing around, even at the time that Johnson was thinking about Americanization in this summer months of 65, 10 to one ratios, 12 to one ratios to combat a counterinsurgency, you would need a million American troops or more. And and then what, especially because of what we know was the the counterproductive activities of many American forces in the way that that seemingly generated more communists than then killed them. So I I I'm not really sure that that anything less than Americanization would have worked and anything greater than LBJ's Americanization probably would have spawned at least as difficult dynamics. Fascinating. Mark, you're such a meticulous historian in your use of sources. And of course, nobody on the planet I think knows the audio recordings as well as you do what take us into the evidence for a minute. What is the strongest evidence that a historian could reasonably offer to suggest that, look, the Kennedy maybe not JFK himself, but the administration more generally was really getting pretty frustrated by Vietnam and was seriously contemplating finding a way to wind down the war. Well, some of that evidence comes from textual evidence, evidence that that we'd had for a while before the tapes became even available. So for me, it was interesting to see and I'm part of the first person to notice this, there were many before me who've written on withdrawal and written on escalation as well that Kennedy in April of 1962 indicates to April Harman, I believe that that we really should be looking for a way to to to to wind down the American presence in South Vietnam when the opportunity arises. And that presence had had expanded, as I mentioned at the outset, during the course of 1961, by the end of the year, we have 3,000 advisers. By the end of 62, there'd be 9,000 advisers. But here in this this early part of 1961 of 1962, April, after the military systems command Vietnam was stood up, which was this more robust military organization that was to conduct really the advice function that the Americans were providing to the South Vietnamese Kennedy is thinking, OK, we've done this, but but we should also think about the bottom end of that trajectory as well. And that's what Robert McNamara presumably listens to and fastens on when he decides that he is going to initiate planning for a withdrawal of American troops. And that planning commences in the summer of 1962. The first iteration of a plan to get the United States out is tabled in January of 1963. It goes through several iterations into the spring. McNamara thinks that the planning actually results in American forces coming out too slowly. He wants to accelerate the process. And here and Mac V and the Pentagon go through those gyrations over the course of the summer. And then in the fall of 1962, McNamara and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Maxwell Taylor, present Kennedy with that plan just after they come back from a fact finding mission to Vietnam. And the plan builds upon a much larger effort, a comprehensive plan that was supposed to really coordinate all the various American activities in South Vietnam. But but importantly, it includes this projection that the United States will be able to get out of Vietnam by the end of 1965 and to accelerate the process and really to send a signal to all sides. The United States was going to try to withdraw 1,000 troops by the end of 1963. So there's really there's good evidence that planning for withdrawal was ongoing. Right. And it was that planning was real. It was systematic. And there was a lot of man hours put into that. But the implementation of those ideas depended on improvement of the battlefield situation at the end of the day. Yeah, I think I think they did. They did. That's certainly how it's framed during the course of the planning itself. That's coming directly from McNamara and others certainly have a military was conceiving of it. But by the by the time that McNamara delivers this plan to Kennedy in October, he's not so sure and he's getting he's getting very antsy, particularly because of what he's seeing, the interviews he's conducted in South Vietnam when he's there and allegedly and we know this from from British sources and you mentioned sources, I was able to go to the PRO or the National Archives in England. It was an interesting way to to kind of get some perspective on what the Americans were thinking about. And one of those the sources indicated that the McNamara Taylor report that Kennedy receives in early October would have been much more downcast and tougher had the administration not wanted to use it as a way to continue to pry funds out of Congress. That was part of the rationale for Kennedy. It's explicitly part of when he sends McNamara and Taylor to Vietnam, the foreign aid budgets get cut. Vietnam is is is a four letter word in American violence at the time because of what had happened over the course of the 63 and the Buddhist crisis and the appearance of the Americans supporting a religiously repressive regime. Congress was really raking Vietnam over the coals and McNamara and Taylor were trying to to present both Kennedy and the American public with a way to continue to prosecute the war, but to do so for Kennedy. And the public in a limited fashion. This is not a bottomless pit. There's there's a way that we can get out of there and just to finish this bit here, this plan that that McNamara and Taylor delivered to Kennedy. Of course, much of it is secret. But the timetable for withdrawal out by sixty five in a thousand sixty three. That's public. That's a bounce to the country. And that's. Mark, let's talk a little bit about the two presidents. JFK and and LBJ. Some historians over the years who have attached most importance to this idea that JFK was seriously considering withdrawal have tended to characterize Kennedy as an unusual, maybe unique Cold War president and have argued that Kennedy he had a particular. You mentioned this, in fact, a few minutes ago, had a particular sensitivity to nationalism in the Third World, had had a keen sense of the limits on American power, perhaps in contrast to other Cold War presidents, and most especially in contrast to Lyndon Johnson. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about your sense of JFK and the extent to which there's anything to this idea that he was exceptional among Cold War presidents. It's a great question and especially because, as I mentioned, that political science experiment is so fascinating, you take out one of these two figures, I think there is something to the notion that Kennedy was different than LBJ, exceptional within the confines of Cold War presidents, perhaps at that time, but of course, he never would have been elected had many of those Cold War or adopted the Cold War frame was, I think, essential for anybody running for elective office at that point in time. That said, he is certainly somebody who seems very willing to consider contrasting opinions, who welcomes debate, who is eager to kind of set policy advisers off against each other and to hear people make their case and then to choose the best route after after hearing them out. He's comfortable that way. He's comfortable with conflict even. And that seems to be a pretty important characteristic in a chief executive, somebody who's willing to listen to several sides, if not not all sides. Lyndon Johnson didn't seem to operate that way. You know, it'd be great if we had meeting tapes from LBJ for the 1963, 1964 period, as we had with Kennedy in the 62 and 63 period. Obviously, we have we have the telephone tapes with Johnson. And you can hear him batting back and forth these matters on on Vietnam, but it's a bilateral conversation. And for the most part, we know and you, better than anyone I've seen recently, has has also addressed this. And in your most recent book on on on Johnson, comparing and contrasting it to Johnson is Johnson doesn't like to be presented with dissent. He he wants his advisers to kind of work out a position and then deliver to them. He likes to work with like minded people. He's most comfortable that way, perhaps that's particularly true of LBJ in with respect to foreign affairs, as opposed to domestic affairs. But Johnson certainly seemed to be uncomfortable with that kind of verbal give and take in the way that JFK was not. JFK seemed to be more comfortable with the presence of of neutralists out there in the world was willing to work with them, saw value, even in working with communist regimes, if they were not closely allied with Moscow. And that was that seemed to be the case where Kennedy was moving in 1963 with respect to Cuba, Cuba might not renounce its communist orientation. But as long as it renounced its fealty to Moscow, all things were possible. And that's not something that LBJ would have counted. So there does seem to be a real difference between the two. And just going a little bit deeper on LBJ, it seems to me, we now know, thanks to a lot of terrific research and writing in the last really 20, 25 years now, that LBJ was hearing all the time about the difficulties that the United States would face if it chose to fight a big war in Vietnam. And he was being urged from members of Congress, from members of his own administration, from foreign leaders, oh, please don't do this, right? There are alternatives out there. This is going to be a mess, right? If you really go all out in Vietnam. Would LBJ reasonably have listened to that kind of advice? Perhaps we could say with the benefit of hindsight he should have. But could he under the circumstances, given the pressures that weighed on him, geostrategic or political or other things, have have realistically chosen a path other than the one he did choose to do what he believed was necessary to prevent the loss of South Vietnam? Yeah, I think in 1964, it would have been really hard. Let's start there, at least. Yeah, sure. Carrying on for for JFK. Let us continue his watchwords in his first remarks to Congress following the assassination. He's got his work cut out for him in trying to realize elements of Kennedy's agenda that were still outstanding. He's trying to realize some of his own pet projects as well, particularly with respect to the war on poverty, so that he can run on that come November 1964, and he believes that he's essentially carrying through on on Kennedy's policy in Vietnam, which is supporting the South Vietnamese and its effort to remain in their effort to remain independent. And since in many ways, he was getting outflanked on the right. You know, he didn't have to go all the way out on the right. But but he takes action in the summer of 1964 after the Tonkin golf incident to show the American flag. The United States is not going to get pushed around. We're going to stand up for our allies. You know, it's hard to see JFK having done something very much different. Now, it's open to speculation, whether Kennedy would have opted for the same type of instrument that Johnson did, the legislative instrument, the Congressional Resolution in August of 1964. It came easily to Johnson. He did something similar with Eisenhower back in the 50s, made sense, given who Johnson was to do something like that. But I yes, I see it hard for Johnson to have done something very much differently in 1964. By the time he gets in 1965, as as, you know, well, and and many of the viewers do as well, probably, there is this moment after Johnson has won an extraordinary electoral and and popular vote victory that there may be opportunities for new departures. And Johnson's vice president, Hubert Humphrey, describes this period as that of minimum political risk. Here is Johnson's opportunity to move in a different direction. And had LBJ not been LBJ, perhaps there would have been an opportunity to do so. But because of who he was, because of his concerns about what our friend Fred Logo calls credibility cubed, the personal credibility as well as partisan and geopolitical credibility. It was very hard for Johnson, as he himself would say, to talk tail and come home running with his tail between his legs, as he just talked about with Richard Russell, he'd be impeached if he decided to do that. And then as he would later say to Gene Harvey in February of 66, I can't get out. I just can't be the architect of surrender. So again, to then put John F. Kennedy in that position, it's hard to see Kennedy saying something like that, given Kennedy's willingness to opt for, let's say, the diplomatic option with respect to Laos and think about what Kennedy Kennedy had done, proving his bona fides, certainly coming through the fires of the missile crash in 62, here is somebody who was willing to to go to the conference table to try to to achieve what's possible out of a difficult situation. And of course, by 64, Laos was unraveling as well. So, you know, would he have been able to use that as an example in 65, 66? It's hard to say. But there would likely have been greater comfort in considering that option than we saw from LBJ. What's your sense of that advice that Hubert Humphrey famously gave to LBJ in February of 1965? This is the moment of minimal political risk, right? As you say, Johnson had just scored one of the biggest electoral triumphs in American history. He essentially counsels his boss at the top of the ticket. Look, don't worry so much about the right wing, what you really need to worry about are the people actually elected you into office. And this is all in service of an argument to really rethink the escalatory pattern that was leading to a bigger and bigger war in Vietnam. Was Humphrey right in his advice? Yeah, it doesn't seem that that Americans, the the the chattering classes as well, were were interested in going big in Vietnam at the time. And I think anybody was was really interested in vacating the field. And again, as as our our friends in the field have indicated, Johnson wasn't getting pressured to Americanize heavily at this point from external sources. And much of that was coming from Johnson himself. At the same time, it is Johnson's perspective, being the political genius that he was, that that I know what's going to happen if we decide to move in a different direction that that our allies in Asia and even in Europe are going to get scared about what this means. And I would say that that this happens to Kennedy, too. In in in late sixty three that the administration is getting word because of the test ban treaty, because of what Kennedy had said about looking to get out of Vietnam by nineteen sixty five, the Taiwanese are concerned that this means the United States is is kind of calling it quits on the Cold War. The South Koreans are concerned. The ties are concerned. I mean, it's really quite interesting to hear them say those kinds of things. And then you think about LBJ as well here in 1965. So Johnson is thinking that if we do decide to move in that direction, there will be a great human cry, even though it's not evident right now. And particularly if Johnson wants to to get all the funds that he can for his domestic program, as he says, ever Dirksen won't give me a dollar. No, no, no, no, no. So. So it's Johnson looking into his crystal ball, saying I can see things that may not be apparent right now, but I know that they're going to come up. No, no. Well, very well put. Mark, thinking very broadly from, say, nineteen forty five all the way down to nineteen sixty five. Were there moments? Maybe maybe not the Kennedy moment. But were there moments where the United States might have taken an off ramp from the escalatory process that played out across really two decades? Yeah. Other other paths. I suppose the first would have been forty five, forty six in the decision to allow to acquiesce in the in the reinsertion, the redeployment of French troops, which was something that really the British in many ways were responsible for. But the United States didn't didn't throw wrenches into that process largely because there was a desire at the end of the war to make sure that we would have a strong ally on the continent of Europe as an anti-communist cold work and given the concerns, the emerging concerns about what the geopolitical alignment was was turning into forty six and then into forty seven. You can understand that, but it's certainly put in train dynamics that that led to that that first war. Initially, that war looked like an anti-colonial conflict as much as an anti-communist one, and it wouldn't really come until the latter part of the 1940s. Because largely the French were willing to magnify it in that way, but also because of activities that were taking place in the communist world as well, that the United States started started to see it as an anti-communist campaign. And as the the Cold War really solidified, it was it would have been hard to see the United States not support the French in that effort, even though there were efforts made to condition the way that the French were were fighting that war. Trimming administration was pushing the French to grant independence much more fulsomely and more energetically quicker. John F. Kennedy did the same thing. And perhaps that might have forestalled a greater conflagration later on. I'm not sure what the diplomacy would have been, but it would have reshuffled the deck for sure. Once that war expands after the Chinese were providing more and more support to the Vietnamese communists in 1950 and then it grants to an unsuccessful conclusion for the French in 54, then the question is, what does the United States do then, particularly with ZM and particularly as ZM himself seems to be a failing force in the fall of 54, but then even more so in the spring of 55, when for a moment it looks like the United States is willing to pull back from supporting Godin ZM as the standard bearer for Western interests in Vietnam for a host of reasons, might they have pushed for a different cast of characters that might have actually pursued an election in 1956. And yes, there would have been a communist regime in in a unified Vietnam, but there was a communist regime in in Yugoslavia that the United States seemed to be working with at the time after the Tito Stalin split of 48 and there were some opportunities there. It would have been easier to see John F. Kennedy making hay of that more so than Dwight Eisenhower. But yeah, so those are those are kind of the hinge points, I think, as we move closer toward the Kennedy administration. Mark, let me pause here just for one minute to remind all of those who are watching today that they have the opportunity to add questions to the Q&A. You'll see that little button down at the bottom of your Zoom screen. So please, I see some questions there already, which is fantastic. Please go ahead and add more as I'm finishing up with Mark. And then, of course, during the Q&A session itself, Mark, let me just let me just ask you one more before turning it over to Sandy Kress and to those questions. What are the the the lessons of the long period of escalation in Vietnam for how we might think about geopolitics today, but perhaps especially the period that you have written about so authoritatively? Well, it's as you know, playing playing these these these kinds of games or or or teasing lessons out of a conflict such as this and applying them to others is really tough. And particularly today, when we're seeing the war in Ukraine, which seems to be a different kind of a conflict, the if you want to talk about patron-client relationships, the United States and South Vietnam, the United States and and and Kiev, certainly on the other side of the fence during the 1960s, we were not facing a nuclear power. And I think that that changes a lot of things. So it is one of a number of things that are quite different. On the other hand, I think to think back on the Vietnam experience and what was important there and what you would want to look for going forward in decision making for war. I think you want to have a pretty well thought out process for how one decides on the strategy to be employed. On the kinds of priorities that you're placing upon that particular piece of territory in the context of your global strategy, so something like that really didn't take place in the Kennedy administration with anything like the vigor that it should have. Kennedy didn't really prioritize in that respect. He never never did pursue the writing of a basic national security policy. And there are decent reasons for that. But that kind of planning and really systematic, thoughtful approach to to how we organize our approach to global affairs wasn't apparent, even though he was operating under some recognizable principles. So I think that the need to prioritize is important. The need to align your program with the right kinds of people. The need to make sure that your your decision making process loads all all these ideas up to the president in a systematic fashion is important. That goes to some of the stuff that we talked about regarding LBJ and and him kind of closing himself off ultimately with the the big three with Ruskin and Mac Mara and Bundy and the Tuesday lunches and all the really big decisions being made among a very small number of people and that's not healthy for for wise decisions. So I think. Priorities, personnel surrounding yourself with people who are willing to be contrary. I think that's essential. I think politics taking account of that is really important. But particularly for LBJ in 1964, politics seemed to dominate and that seemed to override much of of of his approach to Vietnam during the course of the year. And as others have said, politics can be the enemy of strategy. I don't think you can remove politics from the game, given that the nature of the process, but it sure would be helpful if we could try to figure out a way to put it in its place when we're thinking about the pursuit of America's vital interests abroad. Well, Mark, for my part, I want to thank you very sincerely for spending time with us this afternoon and and having such a fascinating conversation with me and I want to congratulate you as well on the Kennedy withdrawal Camelot in the American Commitment to Vietnam, which has been published very recently by Harvard University Press. Mark, thanks again. Really appreciate it. That's fantastic. Really appreciate your being with us and your answering Mark's questions. It's fantastic for all of us to be able to be educated by you in this way. I want to I want to maybe pick up where Mark left off by looking back on it, we'll get back into that time frame. But we have a couple of questions of people who are looking back from now, back on it. And you look at Southeast Asia, it's friendly. It's a market oriented economy. Golly, people are traveling there right and left from here. What was this just judged badly that at the time? I mean, Ho Chi Minh obviously had an association with Russia and China and was supported, but could he have been negotiated away? One of our audience asks and George Gibbs asked, was this just bad strategic thinking as it played out? It certainly appears to be. Yeah, the opportunity to to woo Ho, let's say, out of the communist orbit as a potential lost opportunity is is a question that scholars have thought about for a long time. The opportunity for doing so, the window for doing so seems to have been upon reflection, fairly narrow. Really, the late 1940s seems to have been the moment. Ho Chi Minh, yes, begins his his speech on the 2nd of September 1945, when he proclaims the founding of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam with the words of Thomas Jefferson, and there was an affinity for the United States, an understanding of American history, the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services was working with Ho and Vietnamese communists to rescue down flyers in China during the latter stages of the war, 44 to 45. And there might have been some opportunity, as people would say later, of course, this is a bitachronistic, but to to see Ho as an Asian Tito as who could have been wooed out of Moscow's orbit, as I said, the the the scholarship seems to suggest that opportunities for that really kind of ended by the late 1940s. And and after that, there was much closer coordination and cooperation, particularly with the Chinese after 1950, after the People's Republic was founded the fall of the October prior and then both the PRC and the Soviet Union recognized the DRV. I think we're in a very different situation at that point. So a lost opportunity, perhaps. But again, the opportunity to to take advantage of that was was pretty slim. After that, yeah. Let me I want to I want to go back in time and get into John F. Kennedy's head. I've read so many in your work and in others, so many different thoughts he had going back before he was president, obviously a concern that it seems he and President Johnson had obviously being called soft on communism. And yet he says he's quoted when a congressman no amount of US military assistance would conquer an enemy, which is everywhere. And at the same time, nowhere. And yet then he comes along and says to a to a reporter as he's about to become president, Vietnam is the place for a win. And then he hems himself in in the inaugural address. We shall pay any price bear any burden. All of that seems to me to be a little bit of a muddle. Straighten me out as to where he really was as he's beginning to think about it as president. Well, I think John Kennedy thinks about it as a cold warrior. Yes, he is under. He understands the dynamics of the developing world as so many nations were getting out from under the colonial yoke. Decolonization was a fact of life and it was going to spread throughout the 1950s into the 1960s, particularly in the year 1960. Kennedy described the 1960s as the development decade. This was going to be the decade of these these lands. And it was going to be important to pay attention to the words of the people to to listen to their feet. He was particularly attuned to the coursing of history in that way. At the same time, he recognized the importance of the Cold War struggle, which he saw as an existential struggle. And I believe he held to that very sincerely. And and as he is setting his sights on National Office, Edgers, Congress in 1946, he runs for the Senate in 1952. He almost gets the vice presidential not in 1956. And and he's thinking about bigger game after that. Yes, his his rhetoric becomes increasingly hawkish, but it's still hawkish. I think on Vietnam, it is the keystone to the arch. It is the finger in the dyke. He's saying in 1954 as senator with a with a national profile, to be sure. And I do believe that he believes that. So I think that, yes, Kennedy perhaps tailors his rhetoric a little bit for National Office, understanding the tenor of the Times, but I do think he approaches National Office as a as a Cold Warrior, but it doesn't mean that he's a major reflex of Cold Warrior, that he's going to adopt the kinds of policies that he adopted previously and that that other Democrats had had adopted. He is is going to consider the possibility, as we talked about before, of working with neutral regimes, of working with even communist regimes, playing for time. And that was always Kennedy's hope that that he himself personally could play for time, but that the country could play for time. The problem was they were in the hour of maximum danger, as he said, during his first address to the nation at the end of of January, 1961, in a really kind of bracing address. It's a very dangerous moment. And he is approaching it with all due understanding of the nuclear sort of Damocles. And that's really what he's hanging over our heads. And that's really what he's he's focused on most intently. But I see Kennedy as a sincere Cold Warrior at that point. Certainly he held fast to those anti-communist principles. But at the same time, he recognized and he was flexible enough to think that, you know, maybe there are some opportunities to work with with those who are not explicitly our adversaries or to try to peel some of them off from each other. Mike Watkins asked whether the summit with Khrushchev that didn't go so well, whether that affected his view here, whether it made him feel that he had to push back or stand up more in Vietnam. As a result of the difficulty or the problem of that summit. That certainly seems to be the case. The word what he says to to New York Times journalist James Reston as he's coming out of one of those sessions with Khrushchev at Vienna in June of 1961, is that Khrushchev just battered him and we now have the problem of making our credibility known and Vietnam is the place. Yeah. And he says that in the context of not just the conversation with Khrushchev, but what had happened a couple of months earlier at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba, also with discussions ongoing with the Soviets about Laos and neutralizing that country, one of the really only bright spots to come out of that that summit with with Khrushchev, Vietnam is the place. 1961 would continue to be tough for Kennedy. The Berlin Wall goes up in August. There is a tank crisis at checkpoint Charlie in October of 1961. And at some point during that time, and it's unclear really when and this is where and Mark Lawrence will know this and other scholars on on the program will understand this as well. When you're working with oral histories, it's tough sometimes to pin down precisely what happened because you don't have real time contemporary records. What we do know is that in a 1961 television broadcast, John Kenneth Galbraith and the broadcasters of the about the anomaly fact, Galbraith would would look back on this period in 61 and say of Kennedy, Kennedy said to him, you know, you can only have so many so many losses or you can have only so many things go wrong in a single year. And sooner or later, you got to turn things around. And in 1961 was a pretty pretty bad year, which also I think goes to what Kennedy was trying to say to James Resting in the summer of 61, look, we have to stand tall at some place. Yeah. And Vietnam is the place. You're not going to do it in Laos. The Laotians aren't good timber, if you will, as as Kennedy and his advisors thought, to make a an anti communist stand, certainly militarily at the time. But the Vietnamese were and want to be. And so that's where we would plant the flag. It was very haunting. I know it is for everyone who hears it to listen to the tape in which Kennedy recounts just three weeks before his own assassination, the assassination of Jim. Talk a little bit. We have a questioner who's asking who was behind that assassination. It certainly sounds as if the United States had some role in it. Talk a little bit about that and what consequence that had on our position relative to Vietnam afterwards. Sure, the assassination is a fascinating episode, and it is not just encapsulated in what happens on November 1st and November November 2nd, nor even would I say, you know, back the full week prior or even into the early part of October, but really into August when the first of efforts to topple good and ZM are floated and considered explicitly by the United States. And the viewer mentioned Kennedy's remarks in November, reflecting on the coup. We have Kennedy's remarks during that last week of August in which he's thinking about the coup. Should we go ahead with it? Does this make a lot of sense? Is this in our best interest? What are we going to get after that? Who's going to run the show? There is some real opposition to moving ahead that emerges initially. But ultimately, Kennedy will decide not only in August, but in October. And I think he is more partial to the coup in October than he is in August. I think he has more doubts in August than he does in October. That whatever whatever helps the counterinsurgency we support, whatever inhibits the counterinsurgency, we don't support. And if removing ZM was going to help the war, he would be for it, but it had to succeed. The worst thing would be to launch a coup and have it fail. So if it's not going to succeed or looks like it's not going to succeed, succeed, the United States should convey our understanding to those Vietnamese generals who were responsible for plotting the coup. But the green light or the yellow light or then the red light that the United States would provide was crucial because it was essential for those generals to know that American aid would still be forthcoming. And that was really the bottom line. It was true in August and it was true in October. And once those signals went out, that yes, the United States would support a successful coup, then it was easier for the generals to move forward. And they did. And then Kennedy reflects on that, as the viewer said, in this dictated memoir of November 4th, in which he accepts responsibility for the coup, a process, a decision making process that he admits was flawed. Right. And Mark Lawrence and I were talking a little bit earlier about decision making processes, Kennedy's decision making process on Vietnam, I think, left something to be desired for a series of officials, including, I don't know if you want to call them mid level officials, but not the senior most officials to be doing that kind of improvisation and to be and to be dictating American policy without a roundtable discussion of the key principles says something about the the environment that you have structured. Right. And so I think that's important to to to grasp as well when we think about Kennedy's approach to Vietnam. I saw a professor long ago make a point recently that one of the differences between President Kennedy and President Johnson is that President Kennedy would have been making these decisions in a second term. He wouldn't have been running for reelection, although you made a good point earlier, his brother might have been running for president and he might have had to take that into account. But Johnson had had a second had it different. Kennedy wouldn't have had a had another election and Johnson did. Does that affect your thinking about whether Kennedy would have? I know you said earlier, the balance you think was that he wouldn't have gotten out. But the fact that he would have been in a second term, not having to run again, would that have maybe influenced him? Yes. So. So it is a key concern. I'll grant that. And I want to be careful with the language here, because it is easier. It is easier for me to see Kennedy having gotten out than it would be for Lyndon Johnson to have taken steps to get out. Could Johnson have done things differently? Mark and I talked about that. And maybe there weren't as many opportunities given what and who LBJ was and the way that he saw things. I do think Kennedy would have remained engaged, though. I don't know how long a period he would have stayed that way. And I'm unclear on what that engagement would have looked like. But given what we know of where he was in the fall of 63, it would suggest that he was still committed to the fight. He was still committed to the brush fire wars that were going to be happening in this development decade. Yes, Kennedy offered made this very stirring speech in the middle of June 63 at American University about the Soviet Union and the need for us to kind of reexamine our approach to the Soviets and the Cold War, which was great and welcome. But Kennedy really didn't say anything about those lesser conflicts, the conflicts that were taking place in in the shadows, where, you know, they're no less dangerous as Kennedy himself would say, because people are stabbed at night as opposed to people being killed on the field of battlefield maneuver. So Kennedy still seemed to be concerned about these issues of credibility about the United States being committed to its allies, about fighting the Cold War at the time that he went to Dallas. And I still see him doing that in 64 into 65. Yes, his own electoral situation would have changed. And that might have changed his thinking to a degree. But again, as I said before, I think that there would have been concerns about Bobby and there would have been concerns about the party as well. Yeah, yeah, it's it's there are third, fourth, fifth order of counterfactual magnitude here that we got to think about a whole host of concerns that would have worked together. I have a series of questions. We're running out of time about McNamara. And I think I'm just going to let you run free a little bit with it. Some who wondered about his relationship with LBJ, he did he really believe that the South Vietnamese could win the war without US troops? Could you impact his relationship with LBJ? And then he this idea that he came to Austin to, you know, to express his regrets for the war. And then he later changed his mind about the war. Talk a little bit about McNamara, his his views throughout the period of time. And then the way he played out his change of mind at the end. Well, it is interesting to see McNamara evolve from where he was with John F. Kennedy to where he was with Lyndon Johnson. I would even say he evolved during the time that he was with JFK in the fall of 61, when Kennedy made the big decisions about escalation. McNamara was among the more hawkish advisors who wanted Kennedy to make a firm commitment to support the South Vietnamese, no matter what, that we would stay with them essentially to the end. Kennedy wouldn't make that full commitment pledge. He was calling for the possibility of inserting over 200,000 troops. We need to be prepared to do that. He then backed away from that by the time that Kennedy finally had to make those decisions a couple of a week or so later in 61. And then he is the guy who essentially carries Kennedy's water for this withdrawal plan, seemingly kind of evolving from from where he was previously, if you want to call it him becoming more dovish, fine, I suppose, on on that spectrum, and that he's implementing a policy that Kennedy wants to pursue or or he's he's moving in a general direction that Kennedy wants to go. But I really think that the withdrawal policy is McNamara's policy. Kennedy doesn't have a whole lot to do with it, other than suggesting a general preference for the trajectory of America's profile. Once Kennedy is assassinated and McNamara is now serving Lyndon Johnson, that he's doing precisely that he's serving Lyndon Johnson and he's very much a person who believed that it was his job to realize the vision of the person who he was serving and became clear fairly early on that Johnson had struck a different tone or posture than Kennedy, even if they weren't pursuing different policies. They would surely. But Johnson picks up on, excuse me, McNamara picks up on Johnson's interest in greater urgency and greater intensity and runs with that, which leads him to to become more energetic in thinking about taking much more drastic action north of the 17th parallel and then canceling withdrawal altogether because that's really where LBJ wanted to go. And and yeah, I don't think Bob McNamara believed that the war was winnable. I think as the the viewer said, just just the South Vietnamese and by the end of 1965, we have reason to believe that he didn't think that the chances were really all that great that a military solution favorable to the West was in the cards either. And he's becomes much more explicit about that into 1966. It wouldn't be until 1967, really the latter part of 67. That his judgment there that he would allow himself to verbalize that judgment more forcefully with LBJ. And once he does, his time with Johnson is up. Right. Let me ask you a final question. Mike Pistorius, who started a Navy career in the early 60s, he recalls conversations with contemporaries way back then about the idea that these insurgents could ultimately defeat the US. Was there a how serious was the threat that the North Vietnamese, the insurgents could actually do what they ended up doing as early as night is the early 1960s? Well, there was a real concern, I would say on the part of various people in the decision making bureaucracy. Folks in the State Department, people who are working with there were a variety of task forces, Vietnam working groups that were very concerned about the South Vietnamese, anti-communist, the ZM regime, as much as they were of the insurgents themselves. And the inability of the South Vietnamese to really offer a credible fighting force, given the intense motivation that was being seen on the part of the Vietnamese communists. And it's a motivation that the South was really never able to muster. And they did not have a cause worth fighting for that equal that of the indigenous southern communists and certainly the North Vietnamese who wanted to to unify. So the fact that that Mike is suggesting is seeing almost in in vac, in vacuums, the the the potential of the insurgents themselves is interesting. I would I would combine that, though, with what those insurgents were coming up against, which was the South Vietnamese forces, the the Army, the Republic of Vietnam and their American advisors, which a whole lot of people did have concerns about. McNamara, yes, was was making repeated pronouncements of progress, particularly after the strategic Hamlet program got going, but not everyone was so sanguine. And as we we learned once the Pentagon Papers came out came in 19 came out in 1971, we could see those those concerns out in in black and white. So so, yes, there was a concern about the way the war this the way the war would go. A belief in in ultimate defeat. I'm not so sure that that's what they were saying, but they believed it would be long and bloody. As other counter insurgencies had been long and bloody, depending on how you want to date them, the Malayan insurgency, 48 to 60, that's 12 years. Even if we got involved, even if we got involved, there was that would have this it was that powerful. Yeah, and and and the testimony that figures from Ambassador Nolting to the State Department, State Department and others were were were making were were clear in that this is going to be a long conflict or certainly a three to five year conflict, hopefully nothing like an eight year conflict, but it's not going to be over any time really soon. Professor, thank you so much. Fabulous learn so much. I know everybody in our audience was grateful to you for and great and grateful for having had the time to learn from you. I'll turn it back over to Phil Barnes. If that is exactly right, we could continue this conversation for hours, if not days. And Mark Lawrence and Sandy, too. Thank you again for such a special time. As I know it each week at this moment, many of us in the audience are members of UT Oli or of friends of the LBJ Library or perhaps both. If not, please check us out. 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