Could the US have won the Vietnam war?

Summary

History Extra Podcast Summary: "Could the US Have Won the Vietnam War?"

Episode Details

• Title: Could the US Have Won the Vietnam War?
• Release Date: April 13, 2025
• Host/Author: Ellen Evans
• Guest: Historian Geoffrey Warrow
• Produced by: Immediate Media

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Introduction to the Vietnam War’s Strategic Choices

In this episode, host Ellen Evans engages with historian Geoffrey Warrow to explore the intricate dynamics of the Vietnam War, questioning whether a U.S. victory was ever attainable. Warrow draws from his latest work, "Vietnam War: A Military History," to argue that the conflict was profoundly influenced by the choices and miscalculations of U.S. leadership.

Key Discussion Points:

• The Vietnam War as a "war of choice," driven by political agendas rather than strategic necessity.
• The underestimation of the Vietnamese adversary by U.S. Presidents.
• The prolonged nature of the conflict stemming from high-level decisions.

Notable Quote:

"You say throughout this account that you lay out it was a war of choice, that it was fought and elongated off the back of hubris and reputation."
— Geoffrey Warrow [01:21]

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Origins of U.S. Involvement in Vietnam

Warrow traces the roots of American involvement back to the post-World War II era, highlighting President Harry Truman's shift from anti-colonialism to supporting French efforts in Indochina to curb communist expansion.

Key Discussion Points:

• Franklin Roosevelt’s vision for decolonization and the establishment of the United Nations.
• The impact of the Chinese Revolution and Mao Zedong's rise in 1948 on U.S. foreign policy.
• Truman’s pivot to support the French against the Viet Minh, establishing North and South Vietnam post-Geneva Treaty in 1954.

Notable Quote:

"Truman, who supports them till he's pushed out in 1952, and then Eisenhower comes in in 1952 and continues this support for the South Vietnamese regime, even though he's well aware that it's corrupt and ineffective and unpopular."
— Geoffrey Warrow [01:43]

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Escalation and Strategy: The Domino Theory and Rolling Thunder

Warrow discusses the escalation under Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, driven by the Domino Theory—the belief that the fall of Vietnam would lead to the spread of communism throughout Southeast Asia.

Key Discussion Points:

• Eisenhower’s substantial financial aid to South Vietnam to prevent communist spread.
• Kennedy’s increase of U.S. advisors from hundreds to 15,000, despite recognizing the regime's weaknesses.
• Johnson’s deepening commitment amidst domestic pressures and the Great Society programs.
• The development and limitations of Operation Rolling Thunder—a sustained bombing campaign aimed at weakening North Vietnam without provoking Chinese or Soviet intervention.

Notable Quotes:

"President Johnson says, I have the quote in the book. He says something. I don't want people to think that I have some kind of a strategy for Vietnam."
— Geoffrey Warrow [10:40]

"Rolling Thunder is conceived as graduated pressure. So you're going to hit a small number of targets, radar transmitters, military barracks, essential war industry. But you're going to avoid the really important places..."
— Geoffrey Warrow [09:08]

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General William Westmoreland and the Misjudged Tactics

Central to the war’s progression was General Westmoreland’s belief in American military superiority and technological advantage, which Warrow critiques as a fundamental miscalculation.

Key Discussion Points:

• Westmoreland’s reliance on air mobility and helicopter maneuvers to locate and decimate Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops.
• The strategy’s ineffectiveness, as the enemy adeptly avoided engagements, rendering many U.S. operations fruitless.
• The illusion of approaching the "crossover point", where American firepower would exceed Vietnamese replenishment capabilities.

Notable Quote:

"General Curtis LeMay had argued in 1964, 65, that we ought to go in and just like bomb them back to the Stone Age... Johnson discards that advice."
— Geoffrey Warrow [07:16]

"They're really close to sealing a deal. Li Ziyuan says, look, the Americans will give me anything."
— Geoffrey Warrow [47:09]

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The Tet Offensive: A Pivotal Turning Point

The Tet Offensive emerged as a critical moment that shattered American confidence in a swift victory, exposing the vulnerabilities of U.S. strategies and leadership.

Key Discussion Points:

• The scale and surprise of the Tet Offensive in early 1968, including attacks on major cities and the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.
• Walter Cronkite’s influential reporting declaring the war unwinnable, which swayed public opinion.
• The resulting credibility gap where public trust in the Johnson administration eroded significantly.

Notable Quote:

"It's coming into view. And the American people really believe this and that that is why the Tet Offensive is so shattering to American morale."
— Geoffrey Warrow [17:58]

"That's when he has this famous quote about how I think we have to just accept the fact that we're not going to win."
— Geoffrey Warrow [23:15]

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Domestic Turmoil and Shifting Policies

The war’s intensification led to significant domestic unrest, influencing policy shifts and leading to increased efforts to find a political resolution.

Key Discussion Points:

• McNamara’s realization of the war's unfeasibility and his attempts to resign.
• The influx of activists and draft-resistant individuals into the military following the implementation of the draft lottery in 1969.
• Growing racial tensions within the military and declining morale among troops.
• The eventual shift from seeking a military victory to pursuing negotiated peace talks.

Notable Quote:

"The war has become sort of self-sustaining and sort of a robotic approach that bears no resemblance to, you know, wise strategy."
— Geoffrey Warrow [27:35]

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Nixon’s Prolongation and the Nixon-Kissinger Conspiracy

Nixon’s administration, in collusion with Henry Kissinger, deliberately prolonged the war to secure political gains, ultimately leading to greater casualties and extended conflict.

Key Discussion Points:

• Nixon’s promise of a "secret plan" to end the war quickly by diplomatically isolating Hanoi from Soviet and Chinese support.
• The Cambodian and Laotian incursions, which failed to dismantle the Ho Chi Minh Trail and instead exacerbated regional instability.
• The revelation of Nixon and Kissinger’s sabotage of a potential peace deal in 1968, prolonging the war until 1973.
• The emergence of the Khmer Rouge as a direct consequence of Nixon’s aggressive tactics in Cambodia.

Notable Quote:

"What did they get? Did they get that better peace, better outcome? No."
— Geoffrey Warrow [49:09]

"The really perverse fact that I demonstrate in the book is that they get the exact same piece in January 1973, the Paris Peace Accords."
— Geoffrey Warrow [49:09]

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The Futility of Prolonged Conflict and Final Thoughts

Warrow concludes that the Vietnam War was marked by strategic missteps, political ego, and a fundamental misunderstanding of the Vietnamese resolve, rendering a U.S. victory unattainable despite massive resource expenditure.

Key Discussion Points:

• The impossibility of escalating the war further due to limited troop availability and economic constraints.
• The structural breakdown of military discipline and effectiveness as the war dragged on.
• The ultimate realization among U.S. leadership that the war was unwinnable, leading to a negotiated settlement that offered little to no real victory.
• A call for understanding the human and political factors that drove the prolonged conflict.

Notable Quote:

"You can see how we got into it, that it seemed like a safe bet at the outset. There were people who were talking about how difficult it was going to be, but they were lonely voices like George Ball..."
— Geoffrey Warrow [50:56]

"Where it really begins to break down is during the Johnson administration it becomes abundantly clear, Bob McNamara by 1966, understanding that we can't win the war."
— Geoffrey Warrow [51:07]

Closing Thoughts: Warrow emphasizes the need to empathize with the decision-makers who, driven by optimism and a belief in American superiority, inadvertently trapped the nation in an unwinnable war. He underscores the importance of recognizing these historical lessons to prevent similar future miscalculations.

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Final Note: For those interested in a comprehensive analysis of the Vietnam War, Geoffrey Warrow’s "Vietnam War: A Military History" offers an in-depth exploration of the conflict's strategic failures and political machinations.

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This summary was produced based on the transcript of the History Extra podcast episode featuring Geoffrey Warrow, hosted by Ellen Evans.

Transcript

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[Ellen Evans]

Welcome to the History Extra podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. The war in Vietnam was an unparalleled test of American military might. But could the US Ever have secured victory? Why did various US Presidents commit so much firepower to fighting such an elusive enemy? And why was the war even fought at all in today's episode? Historian Geoffrey Warrow joins us to discuss his new military history of Vietnam, which argues that this was a war of choice and that those in the highest offices of US Power underestimated their enemy in waging the conflict for so long. Ellen Evans spoke to Geoffrey to find out more.

[Geoffrey Warrow]

You say throughout this account that you lay out it was a war of choice, that it was fought and elongated off the back of hubris and reputation. And before we get into the meat of how this war was fought, can we start with the choices that led to the USA's involvement in Vietnam in the 1950s and ultimately to the escalation of engagement?

Yeah, well, that's a great question. You know, Franklin Roosevelt, who was United States President until the last month of World War II in Europe, had always believed that the US would not support European colonialism after the war. And part of his whole plan for a United nations and a new World Order was that, you know, you'd have decolonization and then the US would be sort of the kind of patron of all these developing nations around the world. And the old European colonial powers would pitch in as well to bring them up and help them avoid communism, which was a ever present threat given the poverty of these regions. But as World War II ends in Asia and Stalin seems bent on domination of East Central Europe and Northeast Asia and perhaps more. And then you see the Chinese revolution and Mao Zedong takes power in 1948 in China, which is, you know, just an earth shattering event for American policymakers, there's a change in attitude in the White House. And Harry Truman, the new president, you know, says, well, I know we didn't want to support European colonialism, but we might have to as a break on Communism. So, you know, you have now have Truman supporting the French, for example, in Indochina in their struggle against the Viet Minh guerrillas that form. And, you know, there's a provisional North Vietnam and South Vietnam established in 1954, the Geneva Treaty. And so Truman, who supports them till he's pushed out in 1952, and then Eisenhower comes in in 1952 and continues this support for the South Vietnamese regime, even though he's well aware that it's corrupt and ineffective and unpopular. But he feels like he has to hold the line against the spread of communism. He's particularly concerned by the domino theory and the fact that if you push over Vietnam, then Laos and Cambodia will go and the rest of Southeast Asia. So he puts in a billion dollars of American aid into South Vietnam during his presidency, which, you know, probably about 10, $12 billion today, even though, again, he's very, very well aware of the defects of the regime, but he feels he has no choice. Then Kennedy comes in, a Democrat and representative. This new frontier. And Kennedy's well aware that as a Democrat, he's going to be regarded as being softer on national security than the Republicans. So he feels, like, the need to really stand strong in Vietnam. And he's come into office with a Bay of Pigs crisis, which he doesn't look good in. Bay of Pigs. And then he has the Berlin crisis, when the Soviets build the wall across Central Berlin and divide the city and convert East Berlin and East Germany into effectively a prison. And so he's looking for a win. And so he has to hold the line. And Kennedy, even more than Eisenhower, is aware of the weaknesses of the South Vietnamese regime, but he keeps supporting. He increases advisors from a few hundred under Eisenhower to 15,000 under Kennedy when he's assassinated in 1963. And yet he's dead set against allowing American ground troops or a major American commitment to South Vietnam other than the advisory commitment, because he doesn't want to be tied to this regime when it comes down. And then Johnson comes in and he inherits the presidency in 1963, a year before elections in 1964. And he sees no option other than to keep supporting and actually increase support for South Vietnam, because by the time Kennedy's assassinated, South Vietnam is in a bit of a death spiral. It's really going down the tubes quickly. The military has launched a coup with Kennedy's tacit support against the government of Ngodin Diem. And this coup government has taken over, but they proved just as ineffective as Diem had been. So Johnson feels like, okay, what am I going to do I need to go in and really back them up so that I look like I'm holding the line against communism so I can stave off Republican contenders like Barry Goldwater or Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan who will say I'm being too soft on communism. But the point is, it is a choice. They don't have to do this.

Right. Because to be clear on what you're saying in your account, what begins as ostensibly this containment, this domino theory, becomes much more about the President's own reputations. Is that fair?

Exactly.

There's no strategic vital interest there that requires the U.S. for example, I talk about how Lyndon Johnson as Kennedy's vice.

President and then later Hubert Humphrey as.

Johnson's vice president, they both say something to the effect of, if we don't stop the Communists in Vietnam, they'll be landing on the beaches of Hawaii next right. And Humphrey goes as far to say they'll be landing on the beaches of Waikiki and San Francisco next right. And this is just not going to happen. So this could have been contained in Southeast Asia. The communist spread was not going to spread from Southeast Asia to Hawaii to California. There were interests at stake, but they weren't vital interests. And so this was done more to shore up their national security credentials as American politicians.

So if those are the factors driving particularly LBJ into this conflict, what does escalation look like, and what is the strategy there?

That's a great question, because the whole conflict is fought in the shadow of the danger of Chinese or Soviet intervention, or perhaps both. Particularly acute is the danger of Chinese intervention because in 1950, the US had.

Seemed poised to win the Korean War.

They pushed all the way to the North Korean border, and then China sends 300,000 troops over the border, and this war that had seemed on the brink of victory suddenly turns into a quagmire, which is still going on when Truman, broken by the war and its cost and its unpopularity, decides not to run for reelection in 1952. And Eisenhower wins that election, basically claiming, I'm going to go to Korea and end this war.

So the lesson for Democratic politicians, for.

All politicians, is you can't have an escalation of the war because then it's going to turn what might be a rapid victory into a long slogging quagmire. So Johnson says, okay, how do I fight the Viet Cong in South Vietnam and North Vietnam without who's supporting the.

Viet Cong insurgency with replacement troops and.

Materiel and other essential supplies? How do I do that without inviting A Soviet or Chinese intervention. And so the solution is, okay, we're going to launch an air campaign against North Vietnam, which they call Rolling Thunder, which runs from 1965 to 1968. But it's going to be surgical. The Air Force chief of staff, General Curtis LeMay, had argued in 1964, 65, that we ought to go in and just like bomb them back to the Stone Age, blow up the Red river dikes, flood the whole country, hit all of their industry, hit population centers and just send a really strong message that the US Is not to be toyed with. And Johnson discards that advice, saying, well, that will inevitably bring in outside powers, China for sure, maybe the Soviets as well. So Rolling Thunder is conceived as graduated pressure. So you're going to hit a small number of targets, radar transmitters, military barracks, essential war industry. But you're going to avoid the really important places like the railway lines crossing North Vietnam's northern border with China, where a lot of this stuff comes in. You know, the military material comes in. You're not going to bomb Haiphong harbor.

Which is the great port of Hanoi.

Where the rest of the stuff comes in. Because if you mine that and bomb that, you might hit Soviet or Chinese ships and sailors. And if you bomb those railways coming across with China, they'll hit Chinese trains and personnel that will bring them in. So the idea is, okay, we can't do that. And so Rolling Thunder is never effective. But as I talk about in the book, as a strategy, it's cooked up.

By what I call the political scientists.

In the White House. And this would be Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense, McGeorge Bundy, the National Security Advisor, Dean Rust, the Secretary of State and all their deputies. So they have this idea that you can really fine tune the war and that you can. And that if, if this amount of pressure doesn't dissuade Hanoi, well, then you ratchet it up some more. And another piece of this graduated pressure idea is that, okay, we have to fight the war against North Vietnam and the Viet Cong in South Vietnam. Now, South Vietnam is an ally, but the idea is if we expand the war into North Vietnam and try to attack it at its source, that will bring in this third party intervention.

So as a result, they end up.

All the death and destruction and bombing. 2.2 million tons of aerial bombs, most of it's dropped inside South Vietnam, an ally with horrific effects on the civilian population. So the whole idea is just done with what I would call an absence of real strategy. In fact, Johnson actually Says I have the quote in the book. He says something. I don't want people to think that I have some kind of a strategy for Vietnam. His idea being that if I have a strategy, it means I want to fight a real war there. And I want the American people to think that I'm not really thinking about fighting a real war. So he's always talking about just touching it up around the edges and applying gentle pressure. He refers to rolling thunder as seduction, not rape. And so he has this idea that I can just sort of keep gently adding pressure until they break. And he never understands, nor do his.

Principal advisors until later in the war.

They do that. For the North Vietnamese, this war is unlimited. They will put in whatever it takes because they're fighting to unify Vietnam and to implant a socialist state in both halves of Vietnam. And for the Americans, their aim is far more limited, to stop the spread of communism and to prop up this regime. But it's all done in the shadow of the Great Society, which is costing $11 billion a year funding new programs like Medicare and Medicaid, beautification, urban renewal. And so all the costs have to be very limited because budget hawks in Congress are saying, look, we can't do both. You know, Republicans and Southern Democrats are.

Saying, look, we're happy to spend as.

Much as it takes to fight communism in Southeast Asia, but we're going to take the money for that out of the Great Society. And Johnson says, I am not going to let, as he calls it, that bitch of a war ruin my Great Society. So. So he embarks on this financially catastrophic course.

So that's the picture in Washington and the people advocating for this conflict. And it's a very sobering picture. If we can shift to a figure in your book who's a very strong presence, General William Westmoreland. He is then tasked with carrying out this quote, unquote strategy. Can you take us into Westmoreland's picture in all this?

Well, you know, West Berlin is Westie, as he's nicknamed in the army and elsewhere. His view is that it's a bad job, but I can manage it. So in his first commander's estimate, he talks about, well, ideally, I would strike in. In North Vietnam, and I would strike into Laos and Cambodia, because this is where the Ho Chi Minh trails. The Ho Chi Minh trails, where how North Vietnam supplies the southern insurgency. Laos and Cambodia run along the western border of South Vietnam. So what happens is North Vietnam sends stuff down the trails through neutral Laos and neutral Cambodia, and then they fork into South Vietnam either through the Central highlands or they go further down and they come in through the border with Cambodia. And so all along there's multiple trails close to the border and then big depots and camps where the North Vietnamese rest their troops and they stockpile supplies. And so it's hard to, like, win decisively in Vietnam if you don't do something about the trail. But Johnson says, look, we can't attack the Ho Chi Minh Trail because that would then embroil us in these neutral countries. Laos had been neutralized at great diplomatic effort by John F. Kennedy, and almost.

Immediately after the neutralization was agreed to with the communist powers, and with Laos.

The communists violated, and they basically take de facto control of the country. And, you know, Kennedy asked the Joint Chiefs, what can we do? And they say, well, for us to have any effect in laws, we have to put in at least 60,000 troops and there'd be some hard combat, blah, blah, blah. So Kennedy says, well, no, no, no, we're not going to do that. And the fact of the matter is, there was nothing you could really do about either place. They're both technically neutral, and they're big, huge empty countries. And if the whole problem in the war in South Vietnam was that you could never find the enemy, I mean, I talk about in the book how 90% of search and destroy operations in the Vietnam War never made contact with the enemy. If that was the whole problem of the Vietnam War, how the heck were you going to find them in Laos and Cambodia? I mean, they would just withdraw into these even greater empty spaces and avoid your big, powerful sweeps. So, you know, West Point says, okay, well, then what we're going to do is we're going to fight the war in South Vietnam. We can still win. And he's very. He's very optimistic, very hopeful, very can do. And he says, you know, the thing is, we have the techniques to destroy the Communists in a way that they've never felt before. So, you know, the French were road bound. They were marching on foot. They were going in trucks. Maybe occasionally they'd fly a transport aircraft to one of their few airfields and dump a bunch of troops there. But then they'd have to sort of fan out on foot. We have helicopters, and in the course of the Vietnam War, America is going to put 12,000 helicopters into South Vietnam. So this whole concept of air mobility that you can now put maneuver battalions anywhere you want in the country on very short notice, and you can surprise and overwhelm North Vietnamese or Viet Cong units who will Be stunned by the sudden appearance of American maneuver units, you know, around them, on their flanks. And Westman puts In something like 100 airfields in Vietnam, 8,000 fire support bases, meaning artillery bases. And, you know, if you go to South Vietnam today, you still see the remnants of these fire support bases all over South Vietnam. On every hilltop there's a asphalt helipad and you can see the fence line, the outlines of the fence line. You can even see old Claiborne mines there. So every operation would be launched under the shadow of these fire bases with 105 and 155 millimeter howitzers. And then you have like tactical air support orbiting overhead. You know, America sends thousands of strike fighters over to Vietnam in the course of the war. And they're based in a number of air bases all over South Vietnam. So every time you launch an op, you've got tactical air support overhead, and you've got helicopter gunships attached to the army and Marine units that can come in and spray yet more fire.

So Usman says, with this package, we.

Will shortly reach the crossover point where we will kill more Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops than they can put in to the country than the North Vietnamese can put in to replenish these decimated Viet Cong and North Vietnamese units. And so, but this proves to be a complete fallacy because what happens is the NVA and the vc, they see how the Americans fight. And so they basically avoid. They avoid these operations. They can tell when the Americans are coming. They can see that the Americans are.

Constructing this web of fire bases that.

Precede every operation or reactivating fire bases that have been deactivated as they move back in to try another operation of that area. So they kind of scatter and, and that's why I talk in the book about, in 1967, 68, the CIA did a study of 12 months of ARVN and American operations. And they counted 2 million operations from.

Small squad sized ones up to larger brigade size operations. And they said less than 1% of.

Them made contact with the enemy. That's how adept the Communists were at avoiding these big American sweeps. And so what happens is Westmoreland, who's going to be in command from 64 to 68, basically just launches all of these big operations.

Most of them don't do much.

They end up killing an awful lot of North Vietnamese and vc, which shows just how prodigious the American firepower was. When they do locate the North Vietnamese, they exact an enormous toll. I mean, it was estimated that once the Americans located a battalion of North Vietnamese or VC main force troops. You know, they could destroy the whole unit within 24 hours, but it was very hard to pin them down. And so, and so Westblind goes on and on, and he keeps telling Johnson that, I've got the solution. I can get this done. We've reached the crossover point. He comes to the US in 1967 and he goes on kind of a.

Political tour on behalf of the Johnson campaign.

He speaks to a joint session of Congress. He, he goes on tv, he goes on talk shows, he gives interviews, he goes to the National Press Club. And that's when he says, you know.

Victory is in sight. It's just around the corner.

It's coming into view. And the American people really believe this and that that is why the Tet Offensive is so shattering to American morale, because the Americans had believed that Westland had. His search and destroy strategy was working and was about to bear fruit. And then suddenly it all falls apart. During the Tet Offensive.

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[Geoffrey Warrow]

For the type or amount of benefits mentioned here.

Can we go into that next? Then, please can you introduce our listeners to what happens here?

This was a plan, you know, it was crafted in Hanoi in the summer of 1967. By now, ho Chi Minh has been kind of shouldered out of power by Li Zuan, who had begun the war organizing the southern insurgency and then had gone up to Hanoi and joined the politburo. And basically, it was a much harder line than Ho Chi Minh. Ho Chi Minh wanted all the same objectives, but he was really chastened by American firepower. And he was like, well, we can't afford to go toe to toe with this big. Americans are building up to a strength in 1968 of 543,000 troops in South Vietnam with all the attendant aircraft and everything else. So Ho Chi Minh and his favorite.

General Jop, who had organized the Viet.

Minh victories against the French, are saying, look, we have to continue with this Maoist strategy of dodging the main blows and waiting in the wings until the Americans tire of the cost and the casualties and withdraw. And whereas Li Zuan looks at the situation in North Vietnam where you have. Everybody's getting drafted into the military, food production is suffering, people aren't eating as much that, you know, the Americans used in during Rolling Thunder are knocking out the power plants and the transmission lines so people don't have electricity. They're hungry. They're working longer shifts in factories and in the fields. He says, this can't go on forever. You know, we're keeping them in line by a vicious police state, but even our people will have breaking points. So he says we need to administer a huge shock to the Americans and knock them out of the war. And in the process, we need to just administer a mighty blow to the.

Arvn, the army of the Republic of.

Vietnam, the South Vietnamese Army. And so they cook up this idea of this sort of massive synchronized offensive all over South Vietnam, where the Viet.

Cong that are nested inside the country.

Will rise up in every major city and provincial and district capital and will take out the local ARVN forces, draw the American forces into battle, inflict heavy casualties on them. Americans have been on this, have been trying to, like, pacify a lot of the rural settlements, claw back as many of those as they could. And so Tet historically has a mixed record.

Some point to the massive Vietcong casualties.

As proof that, well, it was really an American victory because we decimated the Viet Cong. But in fact, Li Zuan never cared about casualties. You know, Li Zuan was. It felt that, you know, look, we have in North Vietnam a country of 20 million people. We have 2 million people of military age, 2 million males of military age, and we have 120 males reaching military age every year. So frankly, they can kill a lot of us. And we're still going to be able to supply this because. And this is.

Our aims are unlimited.

We are not going to yield until we unify Vietnam and we implant communism.

Right?

So they absorbed the loss of 15,000 Viet Cong in the Tet offensive and.

They just replaced them with fillers.

You know, North Vietnamese recruits sent down the Ho Chi Minh trail to replace all the people lost in these units. And then, you know, the CIA parses it after and finds that the Communists didn't lose as heavily as people thought.

Most of their casualties were not the main force units.

Most of their casualties were in the, you know, the sort of local guerrillas that they shoveled into the fire first. And at the same time they inflicted a lot of American casualties. There was this Tet offensive, which was the last days of January and then most of the month of February 1968 at Tet.

This is when Walter Cronkite, for example, is in Saigon and then in Hue.

City where, you know, the Marines, you know, have to fight this two, three week battle against the NVA regulars who infiltrate and come into Hue city and rested away from the South Vietnamese for, you know, nearly a month. And it's really bloody.

The Marines lose one casualty for every.

Yard of, of the city they regain in the final battle for the Hue Citadel. And Cronkite's there and he's reporting on it and he's saying, you know, that's when he has this famous quote about how I think we have to just accept the fact that we're not going to win, that the most that we can hope for is that, you know, people will recognize that we did our best and we, and we sought an honorable peace. So, and then this is, this is really earth shattering to Americans who had assumed that we were on the front foot and we had them on the run and that victory was coming into sight. And then suddenly you have this upsurge of fighting all over South Vietnam. And the Viet Cong even get into the US Embassy, they seize the US Embassy for a short period until rapid reaction forces are landed on the embassy roof. And then they come down and they, and they kill the Viet Cong who've infiltrated. But there's scenes of fighting in the American Embassy compound. And then of course, the bloody battle for Hue and for other cities in South Vietnam just reminds Americans that all this progress that we were told was happening was completely illusory. And so this is when the so called credibility gap that afflicts Lyndon Johnson just widens and becomes almost unbridgeable.

Yes, the violence and the statistics of that period are particularly staggering. And as you say, pictures are being shared all over the world, being shared back at home. What does this mean for the domestic picture in the US For Johnson and for other figures waiting in the wings.

By the time the Ted offensive breaks out in late January 1968? You know, the Secretary of Defense, Bob McNamara, who had been, you know, the biggest cheerleader for the war at the outset, you know, he had told people, look, the Pentagon has a $50 billion budget. This is back in 1965, it has a $50 billion budget. This is our only war. I mean, how hard can it be? I mean, we're talking about this little third rate peasant country of 20 million people and we're the United States generating 40% of world GDP and with all our technology and techniques within a year. McNamara repents of that early enthusiasm and realizes the difficulty of this war, that.

We can't find these guys, we can't destroy them. And even when we do destroy them.

They just replace those casualties with new people. And then we bomb the Ho Chi Minh trail and we can't crimp their supply lines. I mean, they always get enough ammunition and food, whatever they need down that trail, no matter how much we bomb it. And so he realizes there's no solution here.

This war will literally go on forever.

He's already understanding that in 66 and 67. And so he's a completely broken man by the time the Tet offensive breaks out in early 68. And he's trying to resign. And Johnson is keeping him on like maliciously because he hates resignations, he feels as betrayals. But the point is. So Clark Clifford is brought in to be the Secretary of Defense in waiting. And Clifford says, look, it's time and he's going to take over in March of 68. And so he says, look, we need a review of the whole situation. And Johnson says, yeah, I want a review of everything. I want to know, like what to pursue all options, what we should do. And so there's this review run in the PENTAGON in early 68, chaired by Paul Nitze and Paul Warnke, two guys who are going to bulk large in American security policy going forward for decades. And these guys say, look, this is the stupidest war in American history. We are spending so much on an area of minimal strategic importance to the United States. And so we've got to get out, we've got to. And they go through everything, the ground Operations, the bombing. And they just show how everything is strategically and financially counterproductive and is imposing a severe drain on American capabilities all over the globe. And they point to the fact that we have bigger interests in NATO Europe, we have bigger interests in the Middle east, we have bigger interest on the Korean Peninsula and the Taiwan Strait. And they're like, so why do we keep spending at this rate in South Vietnam?

The war has become sort of self.

Sustaining and sort of a robotic approach that bears no resemblance to, you know, wise strategy.

So they urge Clifford, who takes over.

As SecDef in March of 68, and President Johnson that, look, we gotta get out. And this is when Johnson calls in the wise men, these old government seers, bankers, government officials, retired generals who advise him in a clinch. And he says, you know, and they all say, no, no, the wise men, by the way, had previously supported the war as recently as a year ago. And now they're saying, no, no, these guys are right wings. That's what Johnson says, you know, and then so Dean Acheson, one of the wise men, conveys the message, we can no longer achieve what we set out to do in the time that is available to us, in the time that's available. Meaning that this war is, is going.

To go on forever.

This is what the great French analyst who had analyzed the French Indochina War and analyze the American, Bernard Fall Bernal, had always said. This war for the Americans is militarily unlosable. Americans can't lose. But to not lose, they have to stay there forever, right? Johnson recognizes. So he goes, I'm not going to run for re election because if you look at pictures of Lyndon Johnson from when he's inaugurated to now, he just.

Wastes away as a man. This war, the stresses of this war.

Have just destroyed him. He was so eager to be a domestic reform president and then this war ends up sucking up all the oxygen and all of his time and energy.

And the campus protest, the media outcry.

The congressional outcry, and he's trying to keep all the Congress people in line. He's trying to like, sweet talk the journalists. He's trying to get the campuses to calm down. He finally says, I'm out. So, you know, the Tet offensive really breaks Lyndon Johnson and really commits him now to no longer seeking victory in Vietnam, but going for a negotiated solution. So at this point, he sends Avril.

Harriman over to Paris to begin talks with the North Vietnamese on ending the war.

And then he proceeds to a bombing halt of North Vietnam as an incentive for them to end the war. This is all basically because of Tet and the shock it administered to the American system.

Your book details all of the staggering amounts of resource going into this war, the escalating pressures, et cetera. You've mentioned a lot of the names who are coming to these conclusions. You know, Walter Cronkite reporting that it's unwinnable, McNamara saying it's unwinnable, Johnson believing it's unwinnable. Can you take us inside the school of thought today that says that the USA could have won this conflict?

Oh yeah. Well, that was the view of Richard Nixon. You know, Richard Nixon is nominated by the Republicans in 1968 and he runs against Hubert Humphrey, who was Johnson's vice president and then is kind of shoveled into the presidential slot after Johnson decides in March of 1968 when he gives that famous speech, I will not seek.

Nor will I accept the nomination of.

My party to be your president. So suddenly Humphrey, who is a hated figure because he was a northern liberal who had initially opposed the war in February 1965, had gone on record against the war and he'd been frozen out by Johnson. And so then to make amends with Johnson, he come back and become this great advocate of the war. So on the left, liberals had always loved Humphrey, had real suspicion of him. They called him Johnson's war salesman. And at the Democratic convention In Chicago in 1968, the young people were crying, dump the hump, dump the hump. So he's running against Nixon. And so Nixon has what seems to be an easy glide. And so he talks about to election, talks about how he has a secret plan to end the war and that the Democrats have been so ineffective at waging war. And he's going to come in and he's going to, he's going to win it quickly. And his secret plan basically amounts to he's going to reach out to Moscow and Beijing and he's going to weaken their relationship with Hanoi by offering detente to the Soviets and an opening to China. He'll recognize the CCP and Mao Zedong and he'll sort of turn his back on Taiwan and have the, you know, and sort of work toward this one China policy that's consecrated during the Carter administration and that will then persuade them to sort of give America what they want in Vietnam, which is a two state solution. You know, they'll stop their support for the north and then, and that will allow the Americans and the ARVN to fight alone against the nva and at the same time Nixon will then take the gloves off, you know, and he'll. He'll fight without all the limitations, the self imposed limitations that Johnson did. Remember, in Johnson, he didn't impose limitations for humanitarian concerns. He imposed limitations because he was afraid of escalation. The Chinese would come into the war, the Soviets would come into the war. And so Nixon thinks, well, I can.

Lower that risk by reaching out to.

Those guys and separating them from Hanoi, and then I could hit as hard as I want. And so what the book demonstrates, and I haven't seen this in many other accounts, in any.

I think a lot of the accounts.

Of the Vietnam War that I've read, they look at it in a vacuum. Like this is this war being waged in Vietnam, and America just didn't fight hard enough. You know, if we'd done all those things that Johnson shrank from doing, then we could have won the war, like invading Laos and Cambodia and hitting North Vietnam hard. Well, let's go. Nixon tried all of that. He does the Cambodian incursion in 1970, where 2,000Americans die and they go in. And the idea, and this is pushed by West Berlin's successor, Creighton Abrams. And Abrams says, we need to take out the Cambodian sanctuaries and the Laotian sanctuaries because that's where the Ho Chi Minh Trail is. That's where their sanctuary. That's where they shelter beyond the reach of American fire, and that's where they stockpile all their supplies. So Nixon says, okay, and they go in. It's the same thing that's been happening in South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese just retreat. They just pull back from the sanctuaries deeper into Cambodia. And so the Americans and the ARVN go in, and they have very strict rules of engagement. Nixon liked to talk tough, like he was a big fan of the movie Patton, and he saw himself as a patent like figure. You know, just go, go. Hit him hard, stick it in, and just twist the knife and that kind of stuff.

But he has very strict rules of.

Engagement because he too, doesn't want to widen the war. He goes, if I go all the.

Way into Cambodia, first of all, the.

American army will get lost in such a vast space. But also that will bring in the Chinese, because the Chinese have total control of Laos and Cambodia during this war. Just total political control. And. And so they just attack a narrow strip along the frontier. They find a lot of stuff, a lot of ammo, a lot of vehicle parks and that sort of thing. But all that stuff will be replaced once the Americans withdraw. Which they do in very short order. And then in 1971, because Congress is so upset about the Cambodian incursion, the casualties and the limited results, that they then say no more American ground troops can be used in Cambodia or Laos.

The first step they've taken against the.

War, by the way, another discovery of the book is just the complete submission.

Of Congress to the executive in this war. Because everybody there is posturing, too, to show that they support the troops and.

That they support the struggle against Communism. Right? They don't want to be seen as the one that won't vote money for the troops or won't stand up to Communism. Democrats and Republicans like. So the first blow they strike against this is after the Cambodian incursion. So that's why the incursion into Laos in 1971 is ARVN only.

No American ground troops.

Although it's the biggest American air assault of the war, because all the helicopters are flown in and all the tactical air support is flown by the Americans. The biggest airlift in everything of the war. Massive losses of American helicopters and a half dozen strike fighters. Because by now the NVA have got really sophisticated air defenses.

And that incursion also fails.

The South Vietnamese are savaged by a much more nimble, better coordinated North Vietnamese army in laos.

They suffer 50% casualties, and they retreat.

In really a bedraggled route from Laos. So this idea that you could attack the sanctuaries is proven and win the war.

We know that wouldn't work because we.

Tried it and it failed. And then Nixon looks at bombing North Vietnam again, same constraints. He's not going to try that till the very end of the war, 1972, when he's trying to. When he's desperately trying to get. And then he sends the B52s against North Vietnam. But there's only so much of that you can do, you know, because that will bring in foreign intervention if you start carpet bombing North Vietnam and inflicting.

Millions of civilian casualties.

Another discovery my book makes is that financially, America couldn't afford it. Every time we tried to escalate in Vietnam beyond that, we reached a high point of 543,000 ground troops in 1968. It was impossible to go beyond that because we were tapped out everywhere. We only had one division in the United States that could be sent to Vietnam. Everything else was committed to NATO, Korean Peninsula, Taiwan Strait. And so there was only one division in the US that was free to be deployed to Vietnam. And then there was the economic cost of the war. Financially, we couldn't Afford it. But Nixon finds that he has to start winding down de escalating the war, pulling troops out, because the war has triggered a massive rise in inflation. It's doubled by the mid-1960s, and it's doubled again by 1970. In 1971, Nixon has to take the Americans off the gold standard and devalue the dollar because of the costs of the Great Society plus the Vietnam War. So Congress was not in a mood.

To vote more funds for this war.

In fact, by 1970, Congress rebels and says, we're not going to put anything else into Vietnam because we're seeing that all of our priorities like intercontinental ballistic missiles, MIRV warheads, ABM system, new tactical fighters, everything's being put on hold because of the cost of the war in Southeast Asia. So there's no slack anywhere in the system. And so when people say we could have won the Vietnam War, I say, you know, with what troops? We didn't have any extra ones to send to Vietnam and with what money we were bankrupting ourselves fighting the war.

In Vietnam as it was to have escalated would have made it far worse.

And one final point on that, another discovery in the book is that at maximum strength, 543,000 troops in Vietnam that yielded only about 70,000 combat troops on any given day, because of the tail to tip ratio, we needed so many people in the rear echelons supporting these troops in the field with ammunition, with.

Food, with laundry, with barracks, with clerking.

And all the staffs, that we would have had to add a million more.

Troops just to get 100,000 more combat troops.

Right. And that was impossible.

Most of our active duty strength was.

Being committed to South Vietnam as it was.

It's a very bleak picture. The futility is coming through in what you're saying of the amount committed for the sake of the reputations of those in highest office. You mentioned that, you know, each day 70,000 troops would have been on the ground. And perhaps we can change our lens to some of them just for a second. Before we begin to wrap this episode up, I wanted to ask if you can sort of characterize the nature of the warfare for those on the ground. And I particularly wanted to ask about the horror of booby traps as well.

Yeah, no, it was another thing I discovered in the book is that how.

Overworked the grunts were.

You know, they were called GIs in previous wars and now they're called grunts. Many theories as to why that was, but usually the grunt that they would emit when they heaved on their heavy 60 to 100 pound backpack with all the stuff they had to carry into the field and the grunts and Vietnam fought an average of 240 days a year versus an average of 40 days a year for the GIs in World War II. So they're fighting all the time, and yet it's this war against an invisible adversary. So when I say fighting, they're going.

Out on patrol, they're sweeping, they're looking.

For the NVA or the VC and American tactics. In the war, the infantry was regarded as a tethered goat. So in other words, the infantry was not meant to inflict major harm on the enemy. The infantry was sent in as this tethered goat that would attract the predators who would then close in to fight the American infantry.

And once they did, they would be.

Targeted by these fire bases and by the tactical air support. So the troops in the field were basically bait that were patrolling around looking for the enemy, hoping to lure the enemy into contact.

And then once the enemy made contact.

Then the second lieutenant on the radio.

Would call in the coordinates of where.

They were and they'd bring down artillery.

Fire and call in strike fighters to.

Bomb these attacking North Vietnamese or Viet Cong troops. That was the theory, but in fact, the NVA and VC already in 1965, they're recognizing these American tactics for what.

They are and they're figuring out ways to avoid it.

So they, they either just go away entirely and avoid the whole sweep, or.

They observe the sweep carefully.

They've got trail watchers everywhere. They know the routes the Americans are going to take because you have to.

Use the trails, because otherwise you're just.

Hacking through bamboo and it takes forever to get anywhere. So they've got people watching the trails. They know the Americans are coming. They can also measure the distance between American squads or platoons so they know if this squad or platoon is too far away from the others to be rapidly reinforced. So they might say, okay, we'll settle down here in ambush positions, we'll annihilate this squad or this platoon, and then we'll run away before they can counter with artillery fire and airstrikes. What the Americans do is they just spend forever out in the bush. And they're so there. And the booby traps are horrific on all these trails, whether it's in a remote area or it's in a settled area. All the little tracks, trails, roads are mined and booby trapped. And most of the booby traps are rigged with unexploded American ordnance. All these 105155 millimeter shells fired from the fire bases. A lot of them don't explode. All of these B52, arc light, they're called arc light strikes. When they send the B52s against North Vietnamese or VC positions, bunker lines, a lot of those bombs don't explode. Tactical airstrikes from, you know, F105s, a lot of that stuff doesn't explode. So they have local guerrillas who harvest all this unexploded ordnance and then recycle it as booby traps. You know, just basically bury it, put a new fuse in, rig a trip wire.

Every gap in a hedgerow, every gate.

In a village might have a booby trap attached to it. So it's just a really harrowing time. Every time these guys are in the field, they're kind of scanning the area around them, looking for hidden enemy. But they're also having to keep an.

Eye down on the ground for trip.

Wires or for just any kind of disturbed earth, which the sign of another minor booby trap or a pit filled.

With excrement, smeared punji sticks, which, if they fell in, they'd infect themselves and.

Inflict horrible injuries on themselves. So it was really just exhausting. And at first, the American generals, in their after action reports, were incredibly impressed, 1965, 66, 67, at the bravery and the physical fitness and the resourcefulness of.

This American army in Vietnam, which was draftees.

I mean, these were not career soldiers. These guys were guys drafted, trained, and sent over.

And they were fit and they were.

Motivated and they followed orders. They did really well. But as this war drags on, as it becomes just bloodier and more resultless, the morale begins to slacken. And 1968 is really a crossover point because first the Johnson administration and then the incoming Nixon administration, they basically openly.

Admit that they're giving up on victory.

And they start talking about, this is a war for negotiations. This is a war for an honorable peace. And the troops are like, what's, oh, I don't want to fight a war to sort of modestly improve the borders of South Vietnam versus North Vietnam.

That's their business.

And so, like, a lot of troops just start giving up. Plus, Nixon introduces the lottery, you know, in 1969.

So basically, you replace the draft with a lottery system.

The lottery system means everybody's available.

So all these campus protesters that have.

Been shielded by college deferments suddenly start getting drafted into the Army. So these guys start joining the infantry platoons, and they're pretty convincing about why this war does not make a lot of sense. It's just the army changes so radically after 68. You know, you've got the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, you've got the assassination of Martin Luther King, you have a surge in drug use, a surge in racial tension inside the Vietnam army as American blacks are really affronted by the King assassination. And they sort of see themselves as fighting a white man's war in Vietnam. And increasingly in combat units and certainly behind the lines in the rear echelons that are so much bigger than the combat units, you have the segregation of American bases into black areas and white areas. And discipline breaks down. People stop wearing the proper uniform. They're kind of walking around behind the lines in Keds and T shirts. They're not wearing the uniform out in the field. They're kind of improvising with the uniform and they're not following orders.

I mean, there's a lot of articles.

In the Time, Newsweek, Life magazine about how it's impossible to give out orders in Vietnam. There's a famous piece in Life magazine about this West Point graduate, Captain Brian Utermal. And who says that, you know, like, in my company, I just can't hand out orders because if I do, the troops won't obey them. And if I send them out on patrol, I know they're not going to go out and try to make contact with the enemy. They're just going to walk out of sight of the combat base and they're going to like, just sit down in.

A wood and smoke dope and and.

Then talk and hang out. And then they're going to come back after a couple hours and say, yep, no contact with the enemy and there's nothing I can do about it. So that's what's happening. And so when people talk about how.

We could have won the war, they.

Also don't answer that question with this army. No, no way. By the. You had right wing columnists like Stuart Allsop, who is saying by this period, you know, 1969, 1970, we gotta get this army out of Vietnam. Because the army is crumbling in Vietnam.

And the longer it stays there, we're.

Not going to have an army left.

So that's the picture going into the 1970s, and yet there's still sort of four or five years to run at that point. How does America extricate itself from the war eventually, this conflict? And what's the picture in the mid-70s of what it all was for?

Well, my book kind of develops this situation that hadn't been covered in earlier history of the Vietnam War because it wasn't really known. Around 2011, historians discover a couple of things. The X File in the Johnson Library and then Nixon's notes with his chief of staff Bob Haldeman in the Nixon Library. And it kind of proves that there was a conspiracy by the Nixon campaign in 1968 to ruin a peace deal that was coming together. Remember, Johnson says, I'm not going to run in March of 68, and commits himself to, in the eight months remaining till the elections in November, to seeking peace. He does a bombing halt. He sends Averill Harriman to Paris, and.

They'Re very close to sealing a deal.

Li Ziyuan says, look, the Americans will give me anything. And they're basically going to concede everything he wants. And they're going to be able to leave their troops inside South Vietnam. There'll be a reconciliation commission between the Communists and the government in South Vietnam, which the communists will brush them aside in due course. So, you know, this will probably happen. And so Nixon learns from an informal diplomat attached to the American delegation in Paris, an informal diplomat named Henry Kissinger, who at the time was a professor of government at Harvard and was working on contract for Dean Rust, the Secretary of State, to advise Averill Harriman's delegation in Paris.

Very wily, very ambitious. And he had been a supporter of.

Nelson Rockefeller, who was the wrong kind of Republican. He was sort of the moderate east coast establishment republic Republican. And Nixon represented more the conservative western wing of the party. And Nixon didn't like Kissinger because of op EDS he'd written against Nixon in favor of Rockefeller. So to get back into the good.

Graces of the gop, Kissinger has to.

Kind of ingratiate himself with Nixon. So he said, he reaches out to the Nixon team and he says, I can give you intel on what's going on in Paris.

They're really close to a deal.

Harriman's got the champagne on ice. They're that close. So he basically works out this system, Kissinger, where the Nixon team can talk to President Nguyen Van Thu, the President of South Vietnam, through the South Vietnamese embassy in Washington, and through Anna Chenault, the widow of Claire Chenault, the founder of the Flying Tigers, who's a big stalwart of the China lobby in Washington, D.C. and basically they say, do not sign this piece. Do not even go to Paris and.

Sit down with a delegate.

Say, we're not going to like, deal with this peace because it's a false base and it will imperil our security, blah, blah, blah. So Nixon and Kissinger deliberately wrecked this peace plan that was coming together. And they say, oh, but, you know.

And they console themselves that they're doing it for all the right reasons.

That the Johnson Plan would lumber America.

With a bad peace and a bad.

Deal and that it would be better for American strategic interest to fight on and get a better peace. And so what I prove in the book is that, you know, so the war could have ended in October, November 1968 if Nixon and Kissinger had not deliberately and surreptitiously derailed it. And it would have ended with, you know, 30,000American dead. Instead, the war drags on until January.

1973 for the Americans.

That's when we get out and cost another 28,000 dead. So we lose twice as many killed in the war because of this covert intervention by Nixon and Kissinger. And, you know, what did it get them? Did they get that better peace, better outcome?

No.

The really perverse fact that I demonstrate in the book is that they get the exact same piece in January 1973, the Paris Peace Accords. It's the exact same deal that Johnson was offering in 1968 for twice the bloodshed, not only of American troops killed and wounded, but of South Vietnamese regulars, ARVN troops, South Vietnamese civilians who are.

Destroyed in this war because of Nixon.

And Kissinger's very cynical prolongation of it. And not only prolonging the war in South Vietnam, they expand the war into Cambodia. And they launched this almost like cataclysmic bombing campaign in Cambodia because once they go into that Cambodian incursion, they stir up the Khmer Rouge.

One reason Johnson had never gone into.

Cambodia, because it would have knocked it from neutrality into active hostility to the Americans, made the problem much worse. So then Nixon and Kissinger wage this pitiless war against Cambodia that then leads, as we know, to the rise of the Khmer Rouge, the killing fields and all the other horrors associated with the war.

You've painted a picture of a very bleak war as we've covered, very futile and for quite nefarious reasons, it would seem. Leaving listeners with thoughts. Now, I'm sure many will turn to your book for much of the detail we've discussed today. But leaving listeners with a thought you'd like them to understand about this convoy conflict and what can you offer us there.

Yeah, I would say that you use the word nefarious. I think that when you look at it all together, it looks pretty nefarious. It does. But I would also say we have to have some sympathy for the practitioners. Not Nixon and Kissinger. That was entirely nefarious in my view. But Eisenhower, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson. You can see how in retrospect we can see how futile the war was, how unwinnable the war was.

But they were all imbued with this.

Kind of can do American optimism, as was a general like William Westmoreland. And they all were very taken with American technology and American wealth. And they felt certain that American air power, air mobility on the ground, with helicopters and tactical air support and plenty of artillery everywhere you wanted it.

There's no way this couldn't win, you.

Know, so they were sort of drawn into this war on the assumption that, look, there's just no way these guys are going to stand up to us. We are so much stronger and harder.

Hitting than the French.

So you can see how we got into it, that it seemed like a safe bet at the outset. There were people who were talking about how difficult it was going to be, but they were lonely voices like George Ball, a Kennedy and Johnson advisor. By and large, people thought American capabilities were so vast that we couldn't lose. So you can see how we got into it. Where it really begins to break down is during the Johnson administration it becomes abundantly clear, Bob McNamara by 1966, Bob McNamara is, is understanding that we can't win the war. And yet Johnson says, like, I got us into this thing and I made promises of victory and turning things around. I can't get out. And so then he has to keep going. But he can't honestly go to the American people and say that this is a real war requiring a real commitment. Even so we did fight it like a real war with real commitments. As I said, we ratcheted strength up to levels that we couldn't go beyond because we had really maximized our effort. People would talk about how we could have fought even.

No, there wasn't anything left.

We had half of our B52 force in Guam and Thailand bombing South Vietnam. And that was a force that was supposed to be reserved for strategic attacks on the Soviet Union. So we had, and we had most of our ground troops there. So it's like, what else could we have done? And this was already clear to Johnson, but he just can't, he can't lose. He doesn't want, like Nixon, you know, he says, I won't be the first American president to lose a war. And so it becomes entwined with ego and prestige and they lose sight of.

The strategic realities of the war.

And I think so I can see how we get into it, but I.

Don'T see how it's prolonged in this.

Way for so long and certainly have no sympathy for Nixon's very cynical manipulation of the situation to get himself elected. And then after fighting this war for an additional four years, getting the exact same deal that LBJ was on the brink of getting in the fall of 68.

[Ellen Evans]

That was historian and author Geoffrey Warrow speaking to Ellen Evans. His latest book is the Vietnam War A Military History. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Jack Bateman.