Intelligence in Public Media

Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945–1975

Reviewed by Leslie C.

My graduate school professor, who served in Vietnam bution: The Battle for Japan, 1944–1945 (Knopf, 2008).
as an advisor to a South Vietnamese riverine patrol unit, Complexity and controversy are bound to this subject,
liked to say that the history of the Vietnam War could not and while Vietnam unfolds as a standard chronological
be written until the participants on both sides were dead. narrative, what impresses most are the clarity of the au-
By this half-jest he meant that distance permits perspec- thor’s assessments and the facility of his presentation.
tive. While the participants have not all passed from the
scene, the gap grows; I was startled, when reading Mark A slew of inflection points emerges between 1945,
Bowden’s book on the Tet Offensive, to realize that 2018 when Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam independent with
marked the 50th anniversary of that seminal event.a In US acquiescence, and the 1964 Tonkin Gulf Resolution,
Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945–1975, Max Hastings when Congress gave President Lyndon Johnson author-
shows that there is perspective enough—plus bibliog- ity to wage war in Southeast Asia. The decision to back
raphy not available to his predecessors—to achieve a France’s fight against Vietnamese nationalism; the debate
balance between traditional narratives of doomed Western surrounding the 1954 Dienbienphu debacle; the installa-
hubris and revisionists who believe that America could tion of Ngo Dinh Diem as president of the Republic of
have prevailed and South Vietnam survived. The lessons Vietnam; the gradual accretion of US advisors—Hastings
Hastings derives should be of interest to intelligence dismisses as fantasy revisionist claims that President
professionals. While hindsight makes such criticism seem Kennedy intended to withdraw from Washington’s com-
easy, events subsequent to 1975 in Southwest Asia and mitment to Saigon; the disaster at Ap Bac, which exposed
elsewhere suggest it remains relevant. Saigon’s military limitations; disaffection with Diem,
culminating in his assassination during a coup; Kennedy’s
It would be difficult to do justice to the breadth of own assassination; and the elevation of Johnson—a tragic
the canvas Hastings has sketched in a brief essay. Let’s figure whose goals ran afoul of his inability to cope with
dispense with what this book is not: an academic history an intractable conflict and rising domestic dissent.
based on interpretation derived from new archival
research. Rather, it is synthesis for a general audience One irony under which Johnson labored was con-
marked by Hastings’s observations which, despite the fa- tainment of communism in Asia following the “loss”
miliarity of the material, are fresh because the author is an of China, when, as Hastings shows, both the USSR and
equal opportunity judge. None is spared: hawks, doves, China had scant interest in Vietnam. Their support—ex-
communists, politicians, soldiers, anti-war activists—all pressed in weapons, advisors, and propaganda—de-
fall under Hastings’s scrutiny. And this is no screed of the veloped only gradually, and even then they were never
sort the history of these events has too often generated; enthusiastic backers of Hanoi’s ambitions. The other was
his criticisms are fair. Hastings fluently weaves together that the scale of the American effort, which marginalized
the experiences of ordinary people and those of decision- the Saigon government and rendered South Vietnamese
makers at the highest levels, also a hallmark of his writing “outsiders in the struggle for their country” (210), legiti-
on the last year of World War II in Armageddon: The mized Vietnamese communism.
Battle for Germany, 1944–1945 (Knopf, 2004) and Retri-
The year 1964 was pivotal. Even with the “blank
check” of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, Johnson’s landslide
a. Bowden’s book, Hue 1968: A Turning Point in the American War victory in that year’s election was probably the last time
in Vietnam (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017) was reviewed by Thom- he could have extricated the United States. After 1964,
as G. Coffey in the March 2018 issue of Studies in Intelligence the war became increasingly destructive as opposition
(Studies in Intelligence 62, no. 1: 83–85).

All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed in this article are those of the author. Nothing in the article should be con-
strued as asserting or implying US government endorsement of its factual statements and interpretations.

Studies in Intelligence Vol 63, No. 1 (Extracts, March 2019) 47

mounted. The 16,000 advisors in 1963 became by 1968 tionship between officialdom in Saigon and the US press
more than 500,000 combat troops. Desultory bombing corps, it was confirmed extensively with the subsequent
of North Vietnam initiated under Johnson to pressure leak of the Pentagon Papers. But self-lionizing journalists
Hanoi culminated in the 1972 “Linebacker” strikes under do not get a pass either, as Hastings shows that critics of
President Nixon to force Hanoi to make concessions at the US effort, in the press and elsewhere, were willfully
peace talks in Paris. None deterred—or likely ever could blind about the true nature of the Hanoi regime, feeding
have deterred—the North Vietnamese politburo from its its built-in propaganda advantage. Hastings’s conclusion
goal of unifying Vietnam by whatever means necessary. is apt: “The maxim obtains for all those who hold posi-
When the American effort peaked, Ho Chi Minh and Vo tions of authority, in war as in peace: lie to others if you
Nguyen Giap—though they remained beloved figures in must, but never to yourselves.” (165)
the Vietnamese revolution—had been marginalized by
harder men. There is, for Hastings, a bottom line for the tragedy
of Vietnam, and it is worth quoting at length because the
Hastings makes clear the utter Stalinist ruthlessness of principle is as valid now as it was then, and awareness of
Le Duan, to which the Tet Offensive of 1968 and its af- this calculation is useful for anyone engaged in the work
termath is a testament: by launching a doctrinaire attempt of national security.
to foment an uprising, Le Duan exposed a heretofore
elusive Southern insurgency to open battle and superior The fatal error of the United States was to make
firepower. It never recovered, and the war developed a an almost unlimited commitment to South Vietnam,
North Vietnamese face. Americans regard 1968 as the where its real strategic interest was miniscule, when
nadir, when in fact only America’s effort began winding North Vietnam—the enemy—was content to stake all
down as political will sagged, with the American military and faced no requirement to secure or renew popular
suffering a “relentless decline” due to racial tension, drug consent. . . .The basis for a historical indictment of
use, and near-mutinous lack of motivation. (532) The war Lyndon Johnson’s decision is that he made his choic-
was more conventionally violent from then until its end in es with a view to his own interests and those of his
April 1975, with only one side committed to its preferred country, rather than those of the Vietnamese people.
outcome. He showed himself blind to proportionality.” (266)

America’s Vietnam nightmare had many components Better still, Hastings’s acute observation on the antiwar
and Hastings offers insights on these. He dismisses the movement also applies to the US effort in its entirety:
notion that vacillating politicians hamstrung the military, “Americans will forgive almost anything but failure.
suggesting instead that its commanders “displayed naivete The struggle tried beyond endurance the patience of the
in failing to recognize that in all countries at all times, world’s greatest democracy. Many of its citizens turned
frustration with political leaders is the default posture sour not because their cause appeared morally wrong but
of professional warriors, who are themselves almost instead because it seemed doomed. (386)
invariably blessed with less wisdom than they suppose.”
Hastings is British, which is notable only because
(207–8) Similarly, generals like General William Westmo-
Americans have written most of the standard histories,
reland were ill-equipped for anything other than a World
and he presents multiple perspectives—American, Viet-
War II-style straight ahead fight: “Soldiers observe wryly
namese (North and South, military and civilian, guerrilla
that the unique selling point of their profession is that
and regular), Australian, and of great interest, testimony
they kill people. It is too much to ask of most, that they
from Chinese and Soviet advisors who served in North
should resolve political and social challenges beyond their
Vietnam and not infrequently under American bombs.
intellect, experience, conditioning, and resources.” (210)
Plus ça change . . . Hastings does not treat intelligence as a separate
subject, though he does include accounts of practitioners,
Politically, the root problem was deceit, and the serial
including Edward Lansdale, Lucien Conein, and William
decisions of policymakers to mislead the American people
Colby, among others. He does not accept the cliché that
on what was done in their name and why. While this was
Tet 1968 was an intelligence failure, noting that a CIA
evident early to those observing the antagonistic rela-
analyst in Saigon Station anticipated both the event and

48 Studies in Intelligence Vol 63, No. 1 (Extracts, March 2019)

its outcome based on abundant indicators, and he is more While not everyone will agree with Hastings’s judge-
measured than most on the Phoenix Program, which ments, this root conclusion is difficult to deny. As the
usually gets one-dimensional treatment. His theme, rather, author styles the work an epic, some examination of
is that individual failures are beside the point when the the conflict’s legacy—both culturally and in the “real”
whole enterprise was fatally flawed because it was built world—would have been welcome. The notion that
on a foundation of deceit and lacked any realistic appre- America saw the ghost of Vietnam off in 1991 is facile,
ciation of proportionality based on American strategic and if Hastings has accomplished anything with this book,
interests. it is to show that there is no survival value in self-decep-
tion.

v v v

Leslie C. is a career CIA Directorate of Operations officer who has an interest in intelligence history.

Studies in Intelligence Vol 63, No. 1 (Extracts, March 2019) 49