Defeat in Vietnam: Consequences

Summary

History As It Happens: Defeat in Vietnam - Consequences
Released on April 29, 2025
Host: Martin DeCaro

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Introduction

In the episode titled "Defeat in Vietnam: Consequences," host Martin DeCaro delves into the enduring impacts of the Vietnam War on the United States. Through insightful discussions with historians Jeremy Suri, Jeffrey Engel, and Frederick Logeval, the episode explores political, military, and cultural ramifications that continue to shape American society decades after the war's end.

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Historical Context and Immediate Aftermath

The episode opens with Martin DeCaro reflecting on the visceral images of the fall of Saigon, highlighting the profound emotional scars left on the American psyche. DeCaro states, "Enduring images of US Military helicopters evacuating desperate people from a rooftop embassy in Saigon... left deep scars on the American psyche" (01:28).

Frederick Logeval provides a somber recount of the human tragedy in Vietnam and Cambodia, emphasizing the moral obligations of the United States: "There are tens of thousands of other South Vietnamese intellectuals... who have supported the South Vietnamese cause and the alliance with the United States, to whom we have a profound moral obligation" (00:35).

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Political Consequences and Congressional Dynamics

The conversation shifts to the political fallout following the war. Jeremy Suri discusses the divided American reaction, noting, "A large number of Americans... were embarrassed that we had suffered a defeat" (01:55). This embarrassment fueled anger and disillusionment with leadership on one side, while the anti-war movement questioned the prolonged conflict on the other.

President Gerald Ford's 1975 speech to Congress is analyzed as a pivotal moment where he sought to maintain American credibility: "We must not abandon South Vietnam to the Communists because it would be terrible... for our own national security" (02:36). However, this stance clashed with the reality of waning American prestige due to the prolonged intervention.

Jeffrey Engel highlights the financial and human costs of the war: "Over $150 billion have been appropriated for that war by the Congress of the United States" (04:00). The episode underscores how Congress ultimately turned down Ford's request for additional assistance, leading to the swift collapse of South Vietnam.

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Military Lessons and the Role of Air Power

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the military strategies employed during the Vietnam War and their lasting impacts. Both Suri and Engel critique the over-reliance on air power:

Jeremy Suri asserts, "Even when you use an inordinate amount of air power against an asymmetrical adversary, it gets you actually very, very little" (29:54).

Jeffrey Engel adds, "American policymakers leave Vietnam thinking we want to... reduce casualties, but they always want to reduce casualties... but they actually can't do it without ground forces" (28:07).

The hosts draw parallels with modern conflicts, such as Afghanistan and Iraq, where air power remains a staple but is often insufficient without robust ground operations.

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Policy Implications and the Evolution of American Foreign Policy

The episode delves into how Vietnam influenced subsequent American foreign policy decisions. Ronald Reagan's interventions in Grenada and Lebanon are examined as attempts to overcome the "Vietnam syndrome." However, both operations had mixed outcomes, leading to further scrutiny of American military engagements.

Jeffrey Engel critiques the War Powers Resolution, noting its ineffectiveness in curbing presidential military interventions: "When we criticize the War Powers act... it's important to note that no one's come up with anything better" (49:55).

Suri and Engel discuss the challenges in defining core versus peripheral national interests, highlighting ongoing debates over America's role in regions like Ukraine and the Middle East. They argue that political motivations often overshadow genuine national interests, echoing the missteps of the Vietnam era.

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Cultural Reflections and the Legacy of Vietnam

Pop culture's role in shaping perceptions of the Vietnam War is another focal point. DeCaro references iconic films like "Platoon," "Hamburger Hill," and "Full Metal Jacket" as critical reflections of the war's brutality and futility. In contrast, he contrasts these with action-oriented portrayals in later media, such as the "Rambo" series, which shift the narrative towards individual heroism and PTSD.

Frederick Logeval and Engel discuss how these cultural depictions influence public memory and policy, often leading to a sanitized view of war that ignores its human cost.

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Current Relevance and Reflections on Modern Interventionism

In concluding the episode, the hosts reflect on America's current stance on interventionism. Suri describes a reactive approach driven by perceived threats rather than strategic interests: "We've become very, very, reactive... that gives the other side the ability to set the agenda and back you into a corner" (60:14).

Jeffrey Engel emphasizes the ongoing struggle to balance American primacy with ethical considerations: "We're finding, I think, Americans extremely reluctant to say that, yes, the cost is worth it, except for our core areas" (61:55).

DeCaro poses a critical question about the nation's role in the world, contemplating whether America has truly learned from Vietnam or continues to repeat its mistakes.

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Conclusion

"Defeat in Vietnam: Consequences" offers a comprehensive examination of how the Vietnam War continues to influence American politics, military strategy, and cultural consciousness. Through expert insights and reflective discussions, the episode underscores the necessity of learning from historical defeats to navigate present and future challenges effectively.

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Transcript Timestamps:

• 00:35
• 00:01 to 00:23 – Advertisement/Intro (Skipped)
• 01:28
• 01:55
• 02:36
• 04:00
• 29:54
• 28:07
• 49:55
• 60:14
• 61:55

Note: Advertisements, introductions, outros, and non-content segments have been omitted to focus solely on the episode's substantive discussions.

Transcript

[Martin DeCaro]

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[Jeremy Suri]

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[Jeffrey Engel]

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[Jeremy Suri]

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[Jeffrey Engel]

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[Jeremy Suri]

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[Martin DeCaro]

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[Martin DeCaro]

History as it happens. April 29, 2025. Defeat in Vietnam Consequences.

[Frederick Logeval]

A vast human tragedy has befallen our friends in Vietnam and Cambodia. Our ambassador has left and the evacuation can be said to be can be said to be completed. What can one say except when will the misery in this country ever stop? South Vietnamese Military command has ordered its troops to abandon the prevent capital of Xuan Loc.

[Jeremy Suri]

They left their wives, their children, their aged parents on the Runway while they.

[Frederick Logeval]

Forced their own way on board a.

[Jeremy Suri]

Rabble of young enlisted men. The city of Saigon was renamed today. The victorious Communists, who forced the city's surrender said the capital of South Vietnam henceforth will be known as Ho Chi Minh City.

[Frederick Logeval]

The lessons of the past in Vietnam have already been learned, learned by presidents, learned by Congress, learned by the American people.

[Martin DeCaro]

Enduring images of US Military helicopters evacuating desperate people from a rooftop embassy in Saigon, of panicked Vietnamese trying to flee their country as the communists conquered the capital, left deep scars on the American psyche. And now, 50 years after the fall of Saigon, the consequences of defeat still matter even when we choose to ignore them. That's next as we report history as it happens. I'm Martin DeCaro.

[Jeremy Suri]

Well, the country was very divided and the reaction was quite divided as well. So a large number of Americans, perhaps a major majority, were embarrassed that we had suffered a defeat. Americans are not supposed to lose wars, we had told ourselves and continue to tell ourselves we don't lose wars. And it's pretty hard when you watch the last people clinging to helicopters fleeing the embassy and the North Vietnamese overrunning the country. It's hard not to see that as a defeat. So for some people, there was a moment of anger and anguish and disillusionment with our leadership. But on the other side, those who had opposed the war for a long time asked why it had taken. So.

[Martin DeCaro]

On April 10, 1975, President Gerald Ford, then in office only eight months, delivered a speech to Congress that must have sounded familiar. New president, old message. The United States must not abandon South Vietnam to the Communists because it would be terrible not only for the South Vietnamese, but for American allies everywhere and Our own national security.

[Frederick Logeval]

There are tens of thousands of other South Vietnamese intellectuals, professors, teachers, editors and opinions leaders who have supported the South Vietnamese cause and the alliance with the United States, to whom we have a profound moral obligation. I am also mindful of our posture towards the rest of the world and particularly of our future relations with the free nations of Asia. These nations must not think for a minute that the United States is pulling out on them or intends to abandon them to aggression.

[Martin DeCaro]

Even at this late stage, with Saigon on the brink of collapse, Ford was clinging to the idea that South Vietnam had to be saved to preserve American prestige and credibility, rather than acknowledging how much damage had been done to American prestige and credibility by intervening in Vietnam so long.

[Frederick Logeval]

Under five presidents and 12 Congresses, the United States was engaged in Indochina. Millions of Americans served, thousands died, and many more were wounded, imprisoned or lost. Over $150 billion have been appropriated for that war by the Congress of the United States. And after years of effort, we negotiated under the most difficult circumstances a settlement which made it possible for us to remove our military forces and bring home with pride our American prisoners. This settlement, if its terms had been adhered to, would have permitted our South Vietnamese ally, with our material and moral support, to maintain its security and rebuild after two decades of war.

[Martin DeCaro]

The President asked Congress for another billion dollars in assistance to South Vietnam. Congress turned him down.

[Jeremy Suri]

The plane raced down the taxiway, swerving to avoid abandoned vehicles, perhaps even running over people.

[Frederick Logeval]

People stood patiently, consolidating suitcases and awaiting.

[Jeremy Suri]

Their turn on one of the incoming.

[Frederick Logeval]

Helicopters that would fly them to the safety of an American.

[Martin DeCaro]

About a month later, early May 1975, just days after the fall of Saigon, President Ford held a news conference where reporter Helen Thomas asked him to reflect on what the country should learn from.

[Frederick Logeval]

This debacle in terms of secret diplomacy and fighting a land war in Asia. Also, would you welcome a congressional inquiry into how we got in and how.

[Jeremy Suri]

We got out of Vietnam?

[Frederick Logeval]

Ms. Thomas, the war in Vietnam is over. It was sad and tragic in many respects. I think it would be unfortunate for us to rehash allegations as to individuals that might be to blame or administrations that might be at fault. It seems to me that we ought to look ahead, and I think a congressional inquiry at this time would only be divisive, not helpful. Mr. President, may I ask you then, don't you think that we can learn from the past? Ms. Thomas? I think the lessons of the past in Vietnam have already been learned. Learned by presidents, learned by Congress, learned by the American people. And we should have our focus on the future. And as far as I'm concerned, that's where we will concentrate.

[Martin DeCaro]

It would take more than years, but decades for Americans to come to terms with the many lessons from its defeat in Vietnam. After having wrought utter destruction upon that country with napalm, Agent Orange and free fire zones, many Americans did view Vietnam as a mistake that should have been avoided and should never be repeated. Others believe the US could have prevailed somehow or at least prevented North Vietnamese victory, and that any mistakes made should not be avoided but corrected in the future. In other words, the country had to kick its Vietnam syndrome and win again. Reagan chose Grenada, where a brutal group.

[Frederick Logeval]

Of leftist thugs violently seized power, killing the prime minister, three cabinet members, two labor leaders, and other civilians, including children. Let there be no misunderstanding. This collective action has been forced on us by events that have no precedent in the Eastern Caribbean and no place in any civilized society.

[Martin DeCaro]

Ronald Reagan, who had called the Vietnam War a noble cause, well, it's time.

[Frederick Logeval]

That we recognized ours was in truth a noble cause. A small country, newly free from colonial rules sought our help in establishing self rule, the means of self defense against a totalitarian neighbor bent on conquest.

[Martin DeCaro]

This is the third and final episode in my series marking the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. Part one with Frederick Logeval covers the origins of US involvement. Part two, the anti war movement with Paul McBride and Carolyn Eisenberg. This episode is about the consequences, mostly for the United States. There were of course, severe consequences for the Vietnamese, but again, we're going to stick mostly to the US Here. In the decades after the war, the two countries repaired and eventually normalized their relations by helping to bring Vietnam into.

[Helen Thomas]

The community of nations. Normalization also serves our interest in working for a free and peaceful Vietnam in a stable and peaceful Asia. We will begin to normalize our trade relations with Vietnam, whose economy is now liberalizing and integrating into the economy of the Asia Pacific region. Our policy will be to implement the appropriate United States government programs to develop trade with Vietnam consistent with U.S. law.

[Martin DeCaro]

And today, American companies like Nike employ hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. So it is a shame The Trump administration ordered U.S. diplomats not to attend ceremonies marking the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War tomorrow, April 30th. It's a shame because of the sincere reconciliation that has taken place and the difficult task of putting this terrible war behind both countries. Jeremy Surrey teaches history at the LBJ School of Public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He hosts this Is Democracy podcast and he is the co author with his Son of Democracy of Hope newsletter on substack. Jeffrey Engel is the founding director of the center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University and the author of when the world seemed George H.W. bush and the End of the Cold War. Our conversation next History is defined by the names that stand the test of time, names that inspire, unite and lead. Now it's your turn to create a lasting legacy with a dot vote domain. Whether you're running for office, driving change or rallying support, a dot vote domain ensures your name is as memorable as those in the history books. Visit GoDaddy.com type in your name. Vote and secure a web address that stands out. Claim your place in history with Dot vote. Jeffrey Engel, hello again.

[Jeffrey Engel]

It is so very lovely to see you.

[Martin DeCaro]

You too, Jeffrey. Joining us from Vienna, Austria, Jeremy Suri. Welcome back.

[Jeremy Suri]

Happy to be with you, Martin. And with you too, Jeff.

[Martin DeCaro]

You know, we three were not old enough to remember the fall of Saigon in April 1975, but it was very much a part of our parents lived experience the long war in Vietnam, the nightmare that divided and damaged our country. That whole painful chapter was very fresh in 1975 when the last Americans evacuated Saigon and the communists took over. What were the initial reactions of the American people when Saigon fell?

[Jeremy Suri]

Well, the country was very divided and the reaction was quite divided as well. So a large number of Americans, perhaps a majority, were embarrassed that we had suffered a defe Americans are not supposed to lose wars. We had told ourselves and continue to tell ourselves we don't lose wars. And it's pretty hard when you watch the last people clinging to helicopters fleeing the embassy and the North Vietnamese overrunning the country. It's hard not to see that as a defeat. So for some people there was a moment of anger and anguish and disillusionment with our leadership. But on the other side, those who had opposed the war for a long time asked why it had taken so long, why had so many people died, especially in the previous two, three years when there were negotiations for what would have been perhaps a better deal to get out earlier and save 20 to 30,000American lives and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese lives. So it's fair to say that no one was happy. Everyone was embarrassed and in some ways ashamed. But the meaning of that and the lessons were different for people from different points of view.

[Martin DeCaro]

I'm glad you brought up the or alluded to the 1973 Paris non peace accords. I'm going to get to that in a second But Jeffrey Engel, your initial thoughts?

[Jeffrey Engel]

You know, I think it's actually quite useful that we have a very similar recent case, which of course is the U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan in 2021. So recent that we all remember the various reactions, you know, very similar to 1975. You know, how did we do it so wrong? How do we do it so ineptly? How did our ally collapse so quickly after all the investments of billions and billions of dollars? There is also a sense of relief. By 1975, just like by 2021, the decision had already been made that the United States was not going to engage in a war anymore in a full scale war in either of those places. So the fact that we no longer have troops there, the fact that we no longer have interest there, the fact that we no longer have allies there, while obviously terribly painful, also precludes us from doing anything more, if you will. It. It rips the band aid off of the pain.

[Martin DeCaro]

The Paris Non peace Accords of 1973, this is really an American withdrawal agreement. There would be no peace. There were titanic battles, 74, 75, between North Vietnam and the South. The south was able to prevail as long as the United States provided air support. That's what happened here in 75. The United States said, that's it. The Ford administration said, that is it. We're not going to do this anymore. But didn't the American people understand that the war was already lost even before 75? I mean, going back to 73 and the US pulls out. That was Nixon and Kissinger's attempt to basically try to fool the American people and the world that the south was going to hold on. It was just going to be Vietnamization. The Vietnamese would fight their war, not us.

[Frederick Logeval]

The United States will continue to recognize the government of the Republic of Vietnam as the sole legitimate government of South Vietnam. We shall continue to aid South Vietnam within the terms of the agreement and we shall support efforts by the people of South Vietnam to settle their problems peacefully among themselves. We must recognize that ending the war is only the first step toward building the peace.

[Jeremy Suri]

Martin. There were still many Americans who believed we could win the war and blamed those who they thought were soft on the war for the collapse of Saigon in 1975. And this is a story Henry Kissinger himself told to the end of his life. He claimed to the end of his life that they had a real agreement and that South Vietnamese was a country that could have been protected. And as late as like a few months before he died, I heard him saying and this is in his memoirs and everywhere that Congress was responsible for the collapse of Vietnam because they didn't continue funding the South Vietnamese.

[Martin DeCaro]

That's true. It actually wasn't Ford at the end, it was Congress that went in for.

[Jeremy Suri]

Go along to your initial question. When Saigon fell, what happened in the establishment? People started pointing fingers. The old Kennedy people, McNamara, Mac Bundy, they blamed those who came after them in the White House. Those in the White House blamed Congress, Congress blamed the White House. And this actually became an important partisan divide in American foreign policy. Ronald Reagan was on the side of those who blame soft Democrats in Congress. So called people like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were on the other side and said this was a misuse of the imperial presidency. And that's where the debate went from there.

[Martin DeCaro]

Jeffrey, before you jump in, I need to follow up with something Jeremy said there about Kissinger. He's lying, or he was lying because we have it on tape. And I know there's a danger in overinterpreting any one of the Nixon audio tapes, but we have them on tape talking about the decent interval. Kissinger says something like, we all know that South Vietnamese is not, you know, they're not gonna hold out for very long as long as the coll comes after the 1972 election. So it can't pin it on us.

[Jeffrey Engel]

So we've got to find some formula.

[Frederick Logeval]

That holds the thing together a year or two after which, after a year.

[Jeffrey Engel]

Mr. President, Vietnam will be a backwater.

[Frederick Logeval]

If we settle, it's eight years October. By January 74, no one will give.

[Jeffrey Engel]

A dad the difference between losing and not winning. Which is to say the American people by 1975, I think, had come to terms with the fact that they were not going to win in Vietnam. Vietnam, if win is understood in the most traditional sense of our enemy capitulating the north was not going anywhere. By 1975, that ship had sailed long, long before. Maybe a decade before at least. On the other hand, the speed of the ultimate collapse of the South Vietnamese, I think, was really quite shocking. You noted, of course, the importance of American air power. There was a period where the South Vietnamese had the third largest air force in the world, obviously supplied by the United States. So the fact that we had given all this aid and all money and all this material, our ally couldn't even provide a decent enough interval, if you will, didn't make Americans think that they wanted to re engage the war. But the question of how did we lose and how why did we lose? Becomes even more pressing because it's so visually stunning, the speed of the collapse.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah, that image on the, on the rooftop of the embassy, the helicopter. As you mentioned earlier, Jeff, not unlike what happened in Afghanistan, shocking scenes of.

[Jeremy Suri]

Desperation and chaos in Afghanistan are being seen around the world. Can't believe my eyes, says the man who shot this video of people clinging to an American cargo jet as it takes off.

[Martin DeCaro]

Machine gun fire could be heard as.

[Jeremy Suri]

Thousands of panic stricken Afghans storm the airport. So I think Jeff makes a really good point and I think the connection to Afghanistan is worth making here. First of all, one lesson from history is that it is very hard to pull a lot of forces out of a country very quickly. Even when you've decided to. It's actually much easier to start a war than to get them out. And what is that's absolutely true. What is really an interesting parallel in the two cases is how hard it is once you've decided to withdraw, to not turn your own forces into sitting ducks for the enemy. One of the really depressing and shameful parts of the American withdrawal from Saigon is how many people are left behind, particularly those who are allies of the United States in country. And the same happened in Afghanistan. Just as in the late 70s. Now after a few years, people want to forget and they don't even want to help those who are in that country, who are helping us to come to the United States. And so we're dealing with an immigration issue as well as a foreign policy issue.

[Frederick Logeval]

I understand the attitude of some. We have serious economic problems. But out of the 120,000 refugees who are either here or on their way, 60% of those are children. They ought to be given an opportunity.

[Jeffrey Engel]

If you've decided to your point, Martin, if you've already decided to pull out, that means that you've decided in the national interest that it's no longer worth American lives. It'd be better if you could get out yesterday. There is no gain even from the sacrifice of troops at that point.

[Martin DeCaro]

But as mentioned, Nixon and Kissinger had to stage manage it. So look, we were actually doing what we were doing. Withdrawing. The Paris Peace Accords were not a peace deal. They were an American withdrawal agreement. And the north got what they wanted. Their troops would stay in the south or their forces would stay in the south and the United States would not.

[Frederick Logeval]

All American forces will be withdrawn from South Vietnam. The people of South Vietnam have been guaranteed the right to determine their own.

[Martin DeCaro]

Future after the war. Did Americans, and who am I referring to? Ordinary people, the establishment, policymakers, intellectuals. Did they Question the notion that the United States must maintain its primacy. I mean, did Vietnam really shake to the core, the defeat in Vietnam shake to the core assumptions underlying American foreign policy?

[Jeremy Suri]

I don't think so. I think Americans remained, in general, as committed to primacy, which means being the first among all nations in the world as much as ever before. But I think there was a questioning of how to do that. And if there had been a tacit and perhaps even enthusiastic approval for American intervention in places like Vietnam, or at least a disinterest in being concerned about those interventions, now there was, I think, a general rejection of that. And there was a search for maintaining primacy without direct intervention. This was the whole point of the Nixon doctrine, that we would find other people to do this for us. And in the late 1970s, before the Iranian revolution, the Shah of Iran was very popular in the United States because he seemed to be a very good surrogate for our power. So I think Americans wanted primacy, but they wanted primacy after Vietnam without sending forces into places like Vietnam.

[Jeffrey Engel]

I think I might slightly disagree not with anything you've actually said, but I would put my personal attention at a slightly different level of analysis, which is to say, I think that among policymakers, bipartisan, the desire for primacy remains and the desire for primacy on the cheap, which is why you need allies like the Shah. I do think that we see a current of discontent growing in the 70s, 70s, that we see again today of average Americans, if you will, saying, why was any of this worth my son's life? Why was any of this worth my service? Why was any of this? You know, I'm looking around, watching the deindustrialization of America happen in real time in the 1970s, and saying, we spent how much on Vietnamese bombs? While the primacy of American foreign policy remains critical for those in charge, this is because we lost. This is a moment where Americans begin to question as rarely before, the investment and the actual cost of their wars. I mean, you don't really have a need for that kind of introspection. When you've won. When you've won, everything seems like a necessary sacrifice. When you've lost, it seems like a loss.

[Martin DeCaro]

Well, I would say that many of the lessons or warnings from Vietnam were not learned, or they were learned for too short of time, but one might really have endured. The American people are still not going to tolerate large casualty numbers.

[Jeffrey Engel]

I don't think I actually agree with that. The latest research that I've seen suggests, and this actually is what underpins Some brilliant work by Peter Fever and others at Duke University underpinned the decision to surge troops in Iraq in 2006 was that American people actually don't mind casualties if they see visible signs of progress and victory. What they really don't like is losing people and losing wars. But they are surprisingly willing to make that sacrifice if the President says it's in the national security interest, if it then works. It's only when it doesn't work that Americans get frustrated and then look back retrospectively and say every casualty was a tragedy.

[Martin DeCaro]

When we look at modern casualty figures, we often focus on deaths. But because of modern medicine, battlefield technology, many people who would have died in previous wars are now surviving. The number of Americans who are terribly wounded in Afghanistan, in Iraq, is in the tens of thousands. We often overlook that.

[Jeremy Suri]

Yes. And of course also the mental issues, the psychological harms of war. I do think Jeff is right. It resonates historically that Americans will tolerate large casualty numbers if they see progress. That's why withdrawing from a place like Vietnam or Afghanistan and taking casualties when you withdraw is really painful for Americans, cuz they don't see that as contributing to victory. But there is a very important legacy in the way the military conducts and thinks about casualties and thinks about its own personnel coming out of Vietnam. We started the Vietnam War with the Selective Service and a conscription army, and we end the war with a professionalized, all volunteer military. We started the war with journalists like you, Martin, running around the battlefield, interviewing people. We end the war with some of the most severe restrictions on journalists in combat. And that will carry over into the wars in the Middle east that we fight in Afghanistan and elsewhere. So Americans tolerate casualties, but they see casualties in a different way.

[Jeffrey Engel]

After Vietnam, we, as a natural, I don't know, human beings do this. This is the way every war has ever been discussed. Focus on the people who die. I think if we change the equation, change the metric, change the analysis from the number of soldiers killed to the number of lives destroyed or fundamentally altered, and it would be a shocking number for Americans to see how devastating Afghanistan and Iraq were. But we've gotten really, really, really good. I say this as a son of a former army doctor. You know, we've gotten really, really good at saving people's lives. What we still can't do is recreating the life that they had before they were hurt.

[Martin DeCaro]

Ied, improvised explosive devices, the troop carriers in Iraq that didn't have the right armor. And Rumsfeld said, well, tough. You go to war with the army, you have not the one that you want or something like that.

[Frederick Logeval]

I missed the first part of your question and could you, could you repeat it for me? Yes. Mr. Secretary, our soldiers have been fighting in Iraq for coming up on three years. A lot of us are getting ready to move north relatively soon. Our vehicles are not armored. We're digging pieces of rusted scrap metal and, and compromised ballistic glass that's already been shot up, dropped, busted, picking the best out of this scrap to put on our vehicles to take into combat. We do not have proper armament vehicles to carry with us north. I talked to the general coming out.

[Jeffrey Engel]

Here about the pace at which the vehicles are being armored.

[Frederick Logeval]

They have been brought from all over the world, wherever they're not native, to a place here where they are needed.

[Jeffrey Engel]

I'm told that they're being the army is. I think it's something like 400amonth are being done. And it's essentially a matter of physics. It isn't a matter of money.

[Frederick Logeval]

It isn't a matter on the part of the army of desire.

[Jeffrey Engel]

It's a matter of production and capability, of doing it.

[Frederick Logeval]

As you know, you go to war with the army, you have not the.

[Jeffrey Engel]

Harmony you might want or wish to.

[Frederick Logeval]

Have at a later time.

[Martin DeCaro]

This issue of high casualties in Vietnam, 50,000 dead, including a member of my own family was killed at the battle of Hamburger Hill in May of 1969. This has affected the way US leaders have fought wars since an over reliance on air power. Jeff, right in your wheelhouse. George H.W. bush, the first Gulf War. You'll remember this. I remember this. We were all old enough to remember the first Gulf War, not the fall of Saigon. But remember, critics of intervention there to kick Saddam out of Kuwait were saying, this is going to be another Vietnam.

[Frederick Logeval]

Should military action be required. This will not be another Vietnam. This will not be a protracted, drawn out war.

[Jeffrey Engel]

My favorite moment of that entire experience with tongue in cheek humor was from Dana Carvey of Saturday Night Live, you know, doing his impression of George H.W. bush, saying, I'm not going to do the impression, but saying, people think I've forgotten the lesson of Vietnam. I know the lesson of Vietnam and that's don't go into a war in Vietnam. But I think it's important to note there's two things going on in what you just described. The first is a recognition that American high technology and air power specifically is capable of being a force multiplier that would reduce casualties for American troops.

[Martin DeCaro]

Absolutely.

[Jeffrey Engel]

The second is American air power got better. There is Very little precision dropping of bombs in Vietnam, but that technology has developed to be quite effective by 1991 and supremely effective by 2003. The notion that you could actually save people's lives, save your own troops lives by pinpointing attacks against the enemies had always been something that aviators had said they were going to do back into World War I. The technology finally catches up with the idea by the 1990s. So, yes, American policymakers leave Vietnam thinking we want to, to reduce casualties, but they always want to reduce casualties. Now they finally have the technology to actually do it.

[Martin DeCaro]

But air power alone is not enough.

[Jeffrey Engel]

In a kinetic environment, in a kinetic warfare environment, not in counterinsurgency, not fighting the IEDs. Air power doesn't help you much with IEDs. To your point, Martin, I think one.

[Jeremy Suri]

Of the lacunas, one of the missed lessons from Vietnam is that air power is very limited in its effect in winning wars. There is the precision revolution that's led by William Perry, who later becomes Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter and others in the late 70s and early 80s. And there's no doubt that we're able to become more accurate in the way we use weapons and then use unmanned aerial weapons. But what is missed from Vietnam, in part because most Americans, even policymakers, don't understand the degree of damage is how deeply damaging the air war is, but at the same time how deeply ineffective it is. And we continue to emphasize air power because air power is something where the technology favors us and where the low casualty rates, at least for Americans, favor us. But the real lesson from Vietnam should have been that actually, even when you use an inordinate amount of air power against an asymmetrical adversary, it gets you actually very, very little.

[Jeffrey Engel]

There's a very specific Vietnam point to this, Jeremy, which you're dead on. Right? Approximately. And I'm getting this from Jeff Waro's new book on Vietnam. Approximately 99% of American efforts to engage the enemy on the ground in Vietnam failed, which is to say they didn't meet the enemy. Why is that significant? Well, because the whole point of American strategy was send our troops out, locate the enemy, contact the enemy, maybe even take a hit from the enemy. But that's okay because then we're going to bring in our artillery and air power and destroy them on the ground. Well, that works only when you can identify where the enemy is. And so this feeds into the long standing belief that Americans, A, never lost a battle in Vietnam and B, could have won the war because we never lost a battle. How do you lose a war when you don't lose any battles? It is true. What we did lose was axiomatically the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people as we were trying over the course of a decade to bring our massive, overwhelming firepower to bear on the battlefield.

[Martin DeCaro]

Body count was irrelevant. But I'm glad you both brought up the air power issue in Vietnam, because my question implied it was only after Vietnam that we became overly reliant on air power. Vietnam is a case study for over reliance on air power. As Nixon himself would have said, we're gonna bomb the bejesus out of them. And not just North Vietnam, South Vietnam. More bombs are dropped there. And we also have to remember Cambodia and Laos as well. What the United States did to those countries was a crime, I guess.

[Jeffrey Engel]

As an aviation enthusiast, I'm not sure I fully enjoy your use to the term over reliance on airpower, because I. What we've actually developed is remarkably more effective air power, but also simultaneously a realization that it can't be used for every situation.

[Martin DeCaro]

Well, I'll give you an example. Talking about the consequences of the war here, Clinton in the Balkans. Right. Two interventions there. The second one, especially in 1999, was an air campaign. 100% air campaign. There were no U.S. troops on the ground. There were some peacekeepers after the fact. In fact, I think at the time, it was heralded as something that worked.

[Helen Thomas]

If NATO is invited to do so, our troops should take part in that mission to keep the peace. But I do not intend to put our troops in Kosovo to fight a war. Do our interest in Kosovo justify the dangers to our armed forces? I thought long and hard about that question. I am convinced that the dangers of acting are. Are far outweighed by the dangers of not acting. Dangers to defenseless people and to our national interests.

[Jeffrey Engel]

What's happening on the ground in places that we bomb is horrific beyond words. But from the American policymaker perspective, we achieved our goal of not having a wider war in the Balkans without losing a single American ground troop.

[Martin DeCaro]

That's pretty effective in Afghanistan. Jeremy, you can jump in here. In Afghanistan, the United States was reliant on air power, especially in the later stages of the war, trying to back up the Afghan police and the Afghan army that the United States spent billions of dollars training, arming, et cetera. Right. But the moment that the air power wasn't there, especially when it came to repairs for American aircraft, the Afghan army collapsed because the conditions on the ground. Right. You know, are all that really matter.

[Jeremy Suri]

This is the point, though. Right. And I think this discussion gets at this very well. Air power can serve certain purposes, but is not a blanket solution to all of your aims in war. In the first weeks of the conflict in Afghanistan, In October of 2001, actually, air power was very useful, right? We had special forces on the ground who were able to call in airstrikes on Taliban positions with great precision, and that was able to disrupt Taliban positions and give the warlords, the Northern alliance, whoever we want to call them, our bad guys, the ability to overtake, take those bad guys. And so it actually did serve a purpose in supplementing the ground activities, but it rarely. There might be some exceptions. It rarely substitutes for ground activities. And there's no evidence that you can use air power to substitute for an occupation and governing military force. You still need the vaporian monopoly of military power on the ground. And the air. Air power doesn't build that force.

[Martin DeCaro]

As Max Hastings says in the afterword of his book An Epic Tragedy, the American commitment was fatally flawed by its foundation, not upon the interests of the Vietnamese people, but instead on the perceived requirements of U.S. domestic and foreign policy. Reelections and containment of China foremost among them. He goes on to say, American decision makers fail to recognize the economic and cultural impact of a huge army upon an Asian peasant society. And you can just, you know, substitute in Afghanistan in the sentences where he says, vietnam there, and it still works. Let's move on to another subject, fellas. Another lesson of Vietnam. The consequences of defeat, that we have to get better at discerning between core and peripheral national interests. There are core national interests and peripheral national interests. Vietnam was a peripheral interest, and I think there were people at the time who were arguing that case. Are we better at that now, Jeremy?

[Jeremy Suri]

No, we're not better at that, because many of the dynamics that led us into Vietnam are perhaps as strong now as they've ever been. We react to political necessity. One of the reasons we stayed in Afghanistan as long as we did was because no president wanted to take the heat for getting out. And then when we got out, which was a courageous decision, whether well managed or not, there was a very high cost to pay. The politics, the domestic politics of war, are often unrelated to national interest. They're related to the perception of being strong or weak. They're related to whether you are seen as not achieving foreign interests, but whether you're helping domestic interests of one kind or another. And they're very much about the legacies of predecessors. And so there are all kinds of other pressures that infect the way we think about national interests. And then there's a second, second problem, which was significant in Vietnam, which is that our allies play a role in influencing how we think and how we act as well. And there's a lot of great work, I'm sure you've talked about it in an earlier episode on the role of the French in pulling the United States into Vietnam and things of that sort. And there's a similar story to be told about American interests in various other parts of the world, where our concern for one country, our concern for Israeli security, security gets us involved in military conflicts that are not in our national interest in other parts of the Middle east, because Israel is in our national interest and Israel has certain interests of its own and manipulates our politics just as other countries manipulate our politics. So the politics of war are often making decision making about war, not about national interests. And that is as big a problem. In fact, it's probably a bigger problem with the current administration than it was with any administration during the Vietnam War.

[Martin DeCaro]

Jeffrey Engel, are we better today at discerning between core and peripheral national interests?

[Jeffrey Engel]

I don't know how to answer that question because I don't know how to interpret the word we, by which I mean the United States government. No, in general. Okay. But no, in general. That's, that's my point. The differences between the Trump administration in its first term and every other administration since 1945 and the Trump administration in its second term and every other administration since 1945 is a different order of magnitude. So when you say we are better, are you talking about the United States in the last 40 years has gotten better since Vietnam, or are you talking in the last hundred days the United.

[Martin DeCaro]

States foreign policy establishment? Set aside Trump for a moment because, yeah, he is different in some ways, but not entirely. He does not want to give up on American primacy. He just has a different way of wanting to do it. But this idea of core and peripheral national interests, take Ukraine, for instance. There's a big debate over that. Yeah. Is Ukraine a core national interest or a peripheral one? To Biden, it certainly sounded like a core interest.

[Jeffrey Engel]

The way I would answer this question is going to frustrate you by saying we're still fighting over what is the difference between a core and a peripheral place. So I would argue the United States has done very poorly in the last hundred days by backtracking in Ukraine, because I think Ukraine is actually a vital area and Europe is too. On the other hand, if you like Donald Trump, think that, that Ukraine is not a core strategic area for the United States, then we're really good at not over investing by pulling out.

[Jeremy Suri]

I have a slightly different take, though. I think what Jeff says makes sense. We continue to invest in places that are potentially peripheral because we have trouble differentiating between periphery and core interests. And we tend to follow the crisis or look at the nature of the enemy, not have a strong and deep discussion about what our interests actually are. So rather than talking in the foreigner policy establishment circles that I speak with, I don't hear serious conversations about what are American interests in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East. I hear instead conversations about what are the threats in those areas. When you define what you're doing by threat, you by definition are not defining by interest.

[Jeffrey Engel]

What you say is spot on and reinforces just how interesting the Trump administration is in its decision not to value Europe as a vital strategic area. I mean, George Kennan talked about how only a few core areas in the world and Europe was the most important of them for American foreign policy. The Biden administration, I think, did a remarkably good job if you believe that Europe is a core area, which they did, did a remarkably good job of rallying allied political support to make sure that we had a broad, just not unilateral defense of a core area. By extension, the Trump administration doing, doing fundamentally the opposite. Weakening not only our support for Ukraine, but weakening our support for NATO and our alliance with across the Atlantic is revealing to us that it does not think that Europe is a core area. So have we gotten good at only fighting in places that really matter? Well, it only depends if you think we've gotten good at defining where it really matters. And I'm of the belief that Europe still really matters.

[Jeremy Suri]

Well, and I think the issue with the Trump administration, and I think this is directly connected to Vietnam. I think they're making the Vietnam mistake because instead of thinking through what our interests are in Europe, trade, security, cultural, they're actually simply saying that, no, the threat from Russia is not what people say the threat is. They're reassessing the threat. And in the Middle east, they're doing the opposite. Instead of saying, okay, here's what the interests of the United States are in the Middle East. They're simply defining this huge threat threat, whether it's real or not, of Islamic extremism, et cetera, et cetera. And that is driving policy even more than it was under the Biden administration. And that is exactly what got us into Vietnam. Not the question of whether Vietnam was the country worth fighting for, but who the threat was the perceived threat was to Vietnam, which is what brought us there.

[Frederick Logeval]

To abandon this small and brave nation to its enemies and to the terror that must be follow would be an unforgivable wrong. We're also there to strengthen world order. Around the globe, from Berlin to Thailand, are people whose well being rests in part on the belief that they can count on us if they are attacked. To leave Vietnam to its fate would shake the confidence of all these people in the value of an American commitment and in the value of America's word. The result would be increased unrest and instability and even wider war. We're also there because there are great stakes in the balance. Let no one think for a moment that retreat from Vietnam would bring an end to conflict. The battle would be renewed in one country and then another. The central lesson of our time is that the appetite of aggression is never satisfied. To withdraw from one battlefield means only to prepare for the next.

[Martin DeCaro]

Everybody in the Kennedy administration and the Johnson administration were cold warriors. All of them said we need to vigorously fight the Cold War. Some of them said Vietnam is not worth that.

[Jeremy Suri]

Yeah, and I think everyone who's in the foreign policy establishment today, there are exceptions in the Trump administration, but in general, there are people who grew up with an assumption that American primacy in the world is necessary and that American primacy in the world is good. It's very hard to question that in American foreign policy circles.

[Martin DeCaro]

Ronald Reagan called Vietnam a noble cause. He was, of course, I think, Jeremy, you mentioned this earlier. He was miffed at the US defeat there.

[Frederick Logeval]

Well, it's time that we recognized ours was in truth a noble cause. A small country newly free from colonial rules, sought our help in establishing self rule, the means of self defense against a totalitarian neighbor bent on conquest.

[Martin DeCaro]

And he wanted to kick the Vietnam syndrome. Before I go any further, do you think we should define Vietnam syndrome? I think we've. We've already kind of gotten to it. Don't you think?

[Jeremy Suri]

I would define it as the American belief that we have to exert primacy in the world, but do it not with American forces on the ground.

[Jeffrey Engel]

That's so interesting because I have a completely different definition.

[Martin DeCaro]

Well, it was, right. Our morale was down, right. The Vietnam syndrome. We were a defeated nation. Right. We had bad morale. Is that what you're getting at?

[Jeffrey Engel]

Well, it's also that not so much morale, but we weren't sure how good we were until the Gulf War. And consequently, the lesson in the Vietnam syndrome was don't get involved in places where you're going to be shown to be inadequate. It has a net effect, which Jeremy and I are saying has the same net effect of restricting American enthusiasm to get into conflicts, but slightly different reasons for why.

[Martin DeCaro]

Reagan and the Vietnam syndrome. People criticize Reagan as a cowboy who was going to get us into a nuclear war. He only deployed ground troops to one or two places, as far as I can tell. Now, he did use covert operations and support for some pretty bad people in Central and South America during his administration. And that, of course, is a legacy of Vietnam. Right. If we're going to interfere in other countries, don't drop the paratroopers in and send in the Marines. We're going to Ali north and the CIA within the CIA, Iran Contra, et cetera. But that may be for a different.

[Jeremy Suri]

Podcast episode, but I think you're right. I think he was cautious with the deployment of American forces. He was not cautious with the deployment of American arms. He sent American arms all over the place, starting with Afghanistan, continuing a policy Jimmy Carter had begun. But El Salvador and elsewhere. What is interesting, I just want to get on the table is the places he did use American forces. He sent them into small places like Grenada. And when he sent them into places like Beirut and there were problems, he pulled them out very quickly.

[Martin DeCaro]

I was just about to get to Grenada and Lebanon because they happen at the same time almost the same day. I think the news.

[Jeffrey Engel]

Actually. Just about the same day.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah, yeah. The news came in that the Marines had been killed in the. In the barracks bombing. The Caribbean nations, under US Pressure, invited the US to go into Grenada. I mean, did Grenada, this tiny, defenseless country, did this really kick the Vietnam syndrome?

[Jeffrey Engel]

No. But you know, what did. Is the next one in Latin America that people forget about, I think, although it's Panama important again. Exactly. Panama. James Baker and Brent Scowcroft and George Bush were all very much of the belief. The Gulf War is not what allowed the United States to kick the Vietnam syndrome. It was actually Panama. Why? Because it was the first time that we went up against a force that was more than just a token Grenada. And competent, logistically competent, technically competent. Our stuff worked. You remember the problem in Desert One and the rescue of the hostages in Tehran. Our stuff broke. That is part of the Vietnam syndrome.

[Martin DeCaro]

Talking about Jimmy Carter trying to save the hostages. Rescue the hostages. Yeah, exactly.

[Jeffrey Engel]

Panama is a large operation that gets pulled off extremely well, thereby giving American policymakers, but I would argue also the American military itself, confidence that, yes, we can actually do hard things.

[Jeremy Suri]

And I would point out that Grenada was not a well run operation. The problems that different branches of the military have talking to one another, that then leads to Goldwater Nichols legislation that transforms and creates jointness within the Defense Department. There are all kinds of missteps in Grenada. And then there's also just the inconvenient fact that there really weren't Communists in Grenada either. So Grenada actually turns out to be a moment where in the short run, Americans rally. But even Reagan himself begins to have doubts about that really quickly. So I do think the Panama operation is more significant, though there, of course, were doubts with the Panama operation as well. Noriega held on a lot longer, and it was for a while, somewhat pathetic to have American forces outside the embassy playing Bruce Springsteen to try to get him out of the Nazi.

[Jeffrey Engel]

Okay, first of all, playing Springsteen is never pathetic, but I actually think that that was a pretty good use of restraint. But if I'm not mistaken, Grenada in American military history is the highest percentage of valor awards given per troops.

[Jeremy Suri]

I didn't know that.

[Jeffrey Engel]

Which I think is partly to be understood by the fact that we really want to feel good about this fight.

[Martin DeCaro]

Exactly.

[Jeffrey Engel]

Makes the soldiers feel good about this fight, so makes it ridiculous. More ribbons.

[Martin DeCaro]

Makes it ridiculous.

[Jeremy Suri]

I don't think it worked. I don't think people fel good about this.

[Martin DeCaro]

And there was a movie made about Grenada. Clint Eastwood was in it. Heartbreak Ridge, great movie.

[Jeffrey Engel]

I love that movie.

[Martin DeCaro]

Oh, come on, man. I love Clint Eastwood.

[Jeffrey Engel]

But, I mean, it's not a good Grenada movie, but it's a good movie about Eastwood. Now Major Powers has put me in charge of this Recon Platoon.

[Martin DeCaro]

We take care of ourselves.

[Jeffrey Engel]

You couldn't take care of a wet dream.

[Martin DeCaro]

God loves you.

[Jeremy Suri]

I know that you men do not impress.

[Martin DeCaro]

Recon Platoon kicks butt. You know, I want to get to the or return to the first Gulf War here because it's a critical piece of this conversation. But, Jeremy, since you brought up legislation, we did an entire episode about the War Powers act, which I'll share a link to that episode in my newsletter about this episode in this series. So we don't have to go into the entire history again because we already talked about it once. But one of the lessons again, or warnings from Vietnam that we were supposed to have learned was we can't allow a rogue executive Nixon to be bombing Cambodia, bombing Laos, doing whatever he wants in the context of Vietnam. So we have the War Powers Resolution that's supposed to involve Congress. I just don't think the War Powers Resolution is very effective or has ever really been effective at Keeping the United States out of military intervention.

[Jeremy Suri]

I think that's right. And the main reason is that it doesn't have teeth. What it allows the President to do is Send forces for 60 days or 90 days, depending on the reading and the circumstances. But once the forces are there, it's very difficult for Congress to. To stop paying for those forces. And so the President has the first mover advantage, and the President creates the situation on the ground. And the best thing for members of Congress to do, even those who oppose the intervention, is just to sit on their hands and let the President own it. They want the President to own anything that goes badly. And especially if you think it's going to go badly, you want the President to own it.

[Jeffrey Engel]

And when we criticize the War Powers act, which is, by the way, one of the few universally acceptable things you can do in Washington in a bipartisan fashion, even in 20, 20, 25, when we criticize the War Power Acts, it's important to note that no one's come up with anything better.

[Martin DeCaro]

The Constitution has it. Congress declares war. But I understand that if you had to go to Congress every time. Well, maybe that's the point. You know, the President needs to do something in an emergency situation somewhere. You have to go to Congress to get a declaration.

[Jeffrey Engel]

Speed in the. You know, the Constitution was written at a time where it took eight weeks to cross the Atlantic. I'm willing to accept the philosophical point that you could read the Constitution to say that the Congress is the only one that can declare the use of force, period. But I think that's extraordinarily impractical in 2025.

[Martin DeCaro]

But even there, Congress doesn't do its job. So we have these.

[Jeffrey Engel]

Use of Congress not doing its job is a different question.

[Martin DeCaro]

Use of force authorizations that were passed after nine, 11, one for Afghanistan, one for Iraq, they are still cited by administrations today to bomb places like the Houthis in Yemen. Yemen. It's. The whole thing is so ridiculous.

[Jeffrey Engel]

But it reinforces that Congress is feckless, toothless, ineffective.

[Martin DeCaro]

Because they could repeal. They could repeal those authorizations, and they won't. Jeremy, you wanted to say something?

[Jeremy Suri]

Well, and I think this comes back to Vietnam because it's the wrong lesson that we learned, Right? The wrong lesson that we learned was that you need to allow a commander and his subordinates or her subordinates to make decisions and that the politicians shouldn't get in the way. Right. One of the cliches is we lost the war in Vietnam. Vietnam. Because Lyndon Johnson and other politicians politicized the war too much. They were choosing targets and all of this stuff, forcing us to fight with one hand behind our back, et cetera, et cetera. First of all, as Clausewitz tells us, all war is about politics. So I don't know where they expect war to go without there being some politics. But second, we didn't lose in Vietnam because of the politics. We lost in Vietnam because we were fighting the wrong war in the wrong place, in the wrong way. The lesson that was taken was not that not to be more careful. Careful not to be more discerning, not to have more people who are elected representatives asking tough questions. Unfortunately, the opposite lesson was taken. Let the military experts make the decision, leave them alone, and then let them own it. And for members of Congress, that is the most politically safe thing for them to do. And we know that members of Congress have proven themselves devoted less to ideology and much more to confirming their own positions. Right? Keeping themselves in power. And so that's. That's what's happened. The incentive structure is wrong. The lessons are the wrong lessons from Vietnam.

[Jeffrey Engel]

Subsequent presidents have not only said we shouldn't let politics determine our military strategy, they've actually used the literal example of Lyndon Johnson picking targets in the basement of the White House, to which I like to show students a picture of Lyndon Johnson actually picking targets and pointing out that he's not actually telling the Air Force what to bomb, he's telling them where not to bomb.

[Jeremy Suri]

Bomb.

[Jeffrey Engel]

Because he doesn't want the Soviets to get in. He doesn't want the Chinese to get in. So to Jeremy's point, what he's doing is actually exactly his job, which is applying an overall political framework to the military operations. When it doesn't work, people don't like it.

[Martin DeCaro]

Operation Rolling Thunder was a limited campaign, unless, of course, you're on the receiving ends of the B52s. So we can kind of wrap up here. Last topic we'll tackle, and it is the first Gulf War and the lessons it produced. When the nation decided the President and the Congress and the international coalition, of course there were dissenting voices not to do this because it would become another Vietnam. But when the decision was made to go in, the Bush administration wanted to make sure that this would not become another quagmire. We'd get a overwhelming and clean victory. Right. Antiseptic way of fighting war. With the videos you're watching, it was a TV war. I remember watching it on CNN in 1991, and it looked so, you know, you didn't see the civilians in Baghdad when the missile hit the building, right. You didn't see people dying. It just looked like we were taking out Saddam's infrastructure. Didn't this teach us a wrong lesson as well? That every war would go off so easily if we just do it this way again everywhere else?

[Jeffrey Engel]

I don't think the best way to read the way we took lessons from the first Gulf War having a negative impact upon Iraq and Afghanistan in the 21st century, is to critique the tactics people take from it. That air power is awesome. Pinpoint power is awesome. Antiseptic warfare is awesome. But I think the real lesson, sanitize.

[Martin DeCaro]

Is the word I was looking for. Sorry, sanitize.

[Jeffrey Engel]

Yeah, that's a better word than I use. I think the real lesson that Americans, policymakers and the American military took from the first Gulf War is that we are really awesome. We are so awesome, in fact, that we can do things that actually are impossible.

[Martin DeCaro]

We mastered war and kicked the Vietnam syndrome.

[Jeffrey Engel]

Well, and think about the idea, Think about the marketing of the military during this period. You know, this is when we all have that famous commercial we all remember from our childhood. The US military does more before 8am than most people do every day. The implication being when the President gives the military an order, the proper response from the officer corps is, yes, sir, I'll get that done. Maybe sometimes, not always, but sometimes it should be, you know, sir, I can get that done. I can try, but I'm going to fail because, you know, that's an impossible mission or that's an extraordinarily difficult mission. I'm not sure we can do it. But the fact that we leave the first Gulf War with a sense of 100% confidence means that when we start engaging subsequent wars, 2003, most specifically, whenever American policymakers and planners remember, we didn't plan well for the occupation of Iraq in 2003. One of the reasons was we said, it's okay. We're the U.S. military. We'll figure it out when we get there. We don't lose. Unfortunately, things are hard.

[Jeremy Suri]

I mean, Jeff has written so well on this. And I obviously agree with everything you've said. Jeff. I remember being a college undergraduate during that first Gulf War. It was actually my first quarter at Stanford. It was a war of my first days in college. And what was so striking was not just the technological elements. We used to sit in the dorm TV room at that point. We didn't have TVs on the screens and we would watch. And it's when I first saw CNN and all of this it was how painless the process seemed. It made war seem antiseptic. It really looked like a video game. And to a bunch of people at Stanford, a bunch of young. I wasn't one of the tech people, but most of the people at Stanford with me were. The people went on to run the big tech companies and become much wealthier than all three of us are combined, right? For them, they gained a misunderstanding of war, the opposite of Clausewitz, the opposite of fog and friction, the opposite of uncertainty, the opposite of the human toll for victor and vanquished. They saw something that was a video game. They saw something that could be won easily and where, quite frankly, the nerds would triumph. That's how they saw. And I think that misunderstanding misguided us and still misguides us to this day.

[Martin DeCaro]

We have mastered war. We don't have to worry about being bogged down in another Vietnam. We've kicked the Vietnam syndrome. The whole idea that a syndrome, the Vietnam syndrome is something that we have to cure so we can get back on our feet and start dropping bombs and other people again. I mean, there's a problem there. I said this would be the last topic, but something just came to mind because we're talking about the 1990s. Did the shadow of Vietnam influence Clinton when he decided not, to, say, intervene in Rwanda? Because I'm talking about this in a certain. With a certain bias. But there is a flip side to this. There might be times where we actually should intervene somewhere, and we're worried about doing it.

[Jeremy Suri]

So Rwanda, Clinton, Vietnam was a shadow hanging over Bill Clinton his entire presidency because of his own personal issues. And so this comes up in every meeting he has with the military. It comes up in his very fraught relationship with Colin Powell. The military didn't respect him, and he felt uncomfortable. They were not insubordinate at all, but he felt uncomfortable around them, especially with the issue of gays in the military, which he led with, which was probably not the smartest issue to deal with. And so when it came time to Rwanda and also in the case of Yugoslavia, he was very uncomfortable asking military officers, or in fact, telling them to do things they didn't want to do. And the US Military, the US army in particular, had no interest in going to Rwanda. That is not in their mission menu. They would go, certainly, and do the best job they could if they were ordered by Bill Clinton. There was no insubordination at all, but it was not their chosen area of activity. He knew that. And that further discouraged him from wanting to go There he had the Vietnam memory of getting bogged down somewhere. But he also was not in the position to really believe that it was up to him to tell the military to do something it did not want to do. And that made it all the easier to try to avoid any kind of military activity in Rwanda.

[Jeffrey Engel]

But also, I would add, Somalia. You know, Americans always fight. Everyone always fights the last war. If Rwanda happens before Somalia, I think we get a different story. But the immediate lesson, more than Vietnam, that Bill Clinton took from Somalia, was don't get involved in a humanitarian effort with no strategic interests beyond the humanitarian effort, because it's not worth the this.

[Helen Thomas]

Past weekend, we all reacted with anger and horror as an armed Somali gang desecrated the bodies of our American soldiers and displayed a captured American pilot, all of them soldiers who were taking part in an international effort to end the starvation of the Somali people themselves. These tragic events raise hard questions about our effort in Somalia. Why are we still there? What are we trying to accomplish? How did a humanitarian mission turn violent? And when will our people come home?

[Martin DeCaro]

So I think the tragedy of Vietnam, as I wrap up this three part series, is that in many ways we haven't learned the right lessons or heeded the correct warnings in many respects. But we are living at a time now where supposed foreign policy restraint or a reluctance to want to get involved in foreign wars, whether it's our war or Ukraine's war against Russia, Russia seems to be the prevailing mindset, or at least it's in conflict with the previous prevailing mindset about interventionism. What are your general thoughts on where we are right now as a nation, about our role in the world and interventionism? And what does interventionism even mean anymore?

[Jeremy Suri]

Well, I think we're in a moment now where Americans don't want to pay the costs, financial and human, of long term military activity in Europe and elsewhere, where there's a concern that the money is being misused. This is shared by both parties in different ways. It's expressed itself different ways. But there is a consensus in the United States that we've paid too much and our allies have not paid enough. So there is a reluctance to make larger contributions. But I see no reluctance to defend what people see as essential to the United States when it is threatened, when they see a threat. And we might disagree over what those threats are. But I think if anything, there's a strong consensus that if the Chinese somehow move in a way that we feel is damaging to our interest, that we are going to take action against them. We've certainly shown a willingness to support and give lots of military treasure to Israel. So I think we are very driven now, not by investment and preparation, but by reaction. We've become very, very reactive. And I think that reactivity is dangerous because when you're reactive, that gives the other side the ability to set the agenda and back you into a corner. And the lesson from Vietnam should be that we were so wonder that we got ourselves into a war and down a long chain of events that was very hard to unravel. And we don't want that to happen.

[Martin DeCaro]

And we have to remember, Jeffrey, you'll get the final remark here, but we have to remember that when Johnson finally does decide in March of 1965 to send the Marines into Danang, he was doing it because he thought this was a way to avoid a larger commitment. Then something called Mission Creep happens. Jeffrey Engel, your thoughts on where we are as a nation. Right. Right now.

[Jeffrey Engel]

I keep thinking about that movie that was so terribly snubbed at the Oscars, Heartbreak Ridge, because as I think about it more, I'm remembering how much of a Vietnam movie that actually is. You know, the movie is all about for those who haven't seen it, and I encourage you to do so. You know, it's all about a Vietnam hero, actually a Korean War hero, but also subsequently a Vietnam hero at the tail end of his career. And when he is told he's going to go to Grenada, his first question is, do we get to win this time? Oh, the implication of the question being we, we could have, but we were prevented from winning by somebody else. I think that's not the question that Americans ask about intervention in 2025. I think after Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans don't ask, do we get to win this time? I think Americans ask, and this is central to Donald Trump's allure, is it worth it to win? We are finding, I think, Americans extremely reluctant to say that, yes, the cost is worth it, except for our core areas, which we don't seem to want to define anymore. I either by pulling out of Europe or by the fact that every administration is still a little bit mealy mouth and wishy washy over what we're going to do when China invades Taiwan.

[Martin DeCaro]

You know, and I'm glad you brought up pop culture because I know we gave you a hard time before, but pop culture is critical. You're right. Heartbreak Ridge was really about Vietnam. The TV show MASH was set in Korea. That was about Vietnam. And for a time in pop culture in Hollywood, Americans had A reckoning with Vietnam on the big screen. Platoon, Hamburger Hill, Full Metal Jacket, these great movies that came out in the 1980s. I mean, that was already, what, 30 years ago. They're not really making too many Vietnam War movies today. But at the time, those movies were important because they were indictments of the war. And for good reason.

[Jeremy Suri]

I wanted to see exotic Vietnam, the.

[Jeffrey Engel]

Jewel of Southeast Asia.

[Frederick Logeval]

I wanted to meet interesting and stimulating people of an ancient culture and kill them.

[Jeffrey Engel]

I wanted to be the first kid on my block to get a confirmed kill.

[Martin DeCaro]

Now maybe now we're going to see, probably already have, movies about the war on terrorism.

[Jeremy Suri]

I just think the effects of film, popular culture is so important, but it's complex in its effects. Right. And just as Bruce Springsteen, who we brought up now two times, right. Could write a song very critical of the Vietnam War, the song of a veteran coming home home. And then that song could be used by Ronald Reagan at his campaign stops, things can get repurposed. The same cultural message can mean different things. Do people watching anti Vietnam war movies think that the war was wrong or they think that the leadership at the time was bad? People can take different memories and different perspectives from the same movie.

[Jeffrey Engel]

And let's not forget, perhaps the most important movie about Vietnam in the aftermath of Vietnam is Rambo. And let's remember the first Rambo is really different from Rambo 4 or 5. Whatever.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah, those later ones were like action movies, hero movies about Vietnam. The first one was more of a commentary on how the war affected.

[Jeffrey Engel]

Honestly, it was about ptsd. It was about how American culture reacted to veterans. It was the story of a one man struggle for acceptance back in a country that he had fought and bled for by Rambo 4. He's basically, it's. It's a Marvel action movie. Like you said.

[Frederick Logeval]

It.

[Martin DeCaro]

On the next episode of History as it Happens happens. We're going to take a break from recent history and dive back into the 18th century. Not another anniversary. Yes, it's true. The 250th anniversary of Lexington and Concord, spring of 1775. But it's a lot more complicated than that. We're all looking forward to next year. The 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. But before the colonists formally declared their independence, weren't they virtually independent of the crown? Didn't that happen in 1774? 75. Why is that important? Next with Lindsay Chervinsky as we report history as it happens. New episodes every Tuesday and Friday. My newsletter every Friday. Sign [e-mail].