Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pea Show,
Speaker 1: continuing the Cold War series with Thomas seven seven seven.
Speaker 2: How are you doing, Thomas, I'm well, thank you man.
Speaker 2: Today I wanted to get in the get them as
Speaker 2: a somewhat difficult topic to address, I mean, not for
Speaker 2: the usual reasons people bandy that, but because there's so
Speaker 2: many misconceptions both on the left and the right and
Speaker 2: the kind of the sensible center I'm talking about historians,
Speaker 2: I mean, and there's still a lot of people still
Speaker 2: have a lot of strong feelings about it. Be that.
Speaker 2: Be that as it may. There's a basic lack of understanding,
Speaker 2: even among a lot of revisionists of the kind of
Speaker 2: broader political context of the war world in strategic terms
Speaker 2: and in ideological ones. And what I think of is
Speaker 2: apocal terms. I think people who watch our content, they've
Speaker 2: they they've kind of become habituated to some of my
Speaker 2: my vocabulary. When I talk about apocal events, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm not just trying to draw up on high falutin
Speaker 2: language or or trying to create my own kind of
Speaker 2: you know, revisionist esperanto. I can't think of a better
Speaker 2: way to describe what I'm talking about. And that's a
Speaker 2: rough translation of a phenomenon that Ernst and Olti describes,
Speaker 2: you know, and it basically the way to understand it
Speaker 2: is kind of practical zeitgeist, you know. But that's I
Speaker 2: just wanted to kind of can clarify that. And you know,
Speaker 2: as I've talked about before, much as much as they
Speaker 2: esteem guys like Meerscheimer, they're kind of locked. They're kind
Speaker 2: of boxed in to the kind of like the clouds
Speaker 2: of wits he in conceptual UH cube as it were.
Speaker 2: You know, like a guy like meher Scheimer. If if
Speaker 2: one wants to understand UH predicted in terms of predictive modeling,
Speaker 2: I think there's nobody better than him. And like, for example,
Speaker 2: like in the run of the ninety one Gulf War,
Speaker 2: nobody UH modeled the outcome of that conflict with more
Speaker 2: accuracy than he, and in fact, most people were totally
Speaker 2: off base. He's a clouset Witzian thinker through and through
Speaker 2: and ways both praiseworthy as well as uh not so praiseworthy.
Speaker 2: But he's so fixated on on on conceptual modeling and
Speaker 2: unidentifying like concrete variables that can be insinuated into that
Speaker 2: sort of modeling that he he really misses apocal uh
Speaker 2: like variables of apocal significance. Okay, nowhere is that more
Speaker 2: clear than in his discussion of the Vietnam War. Mershamer
Speaker 2: is one of these guys uh on the political right,
Speaker 2: like at the time and subsequent you know, he was
Speaker 2: constantly he was constantly making issuing the assertion that Indo
Speaker 2: China was was was strategically without value. You know, He's
Speaker 2: got this idea that the global north you know, uh,
Speaker 2: Western Europe, uh, you know, the United States in Canada, Japan, uh,
Speaker 2: Korea and some of the some of the Upper Pacific
Speaker 2: rim that that's you know, in the in the Middle East,
Speaker 2: that's basically that's basically geostrategic terms, that was the only
Speaker 2: that's the location of the only stakes worth fighting for.
Speaker 2: But that's not what people go to war anymore, okay.
Speaker 2: And in fact, uh states going to war over over
Speaker 2: commodities or over you know, to dominate trade routes and
Speaker 2: sea lanes. That's really that that really reflects kind of
Speaker 2: a narrow uh like like like a narrow kind of
Speaker 2: kind of narrow piece of the modern era. You know,
Speaker 2: we're in, uh that kind of power, political competition, you know,
Speaker 2: translated very much to the concrete the need to capture
Speaker 2: sort of concrete resources. You know. So, uh, it didn't
Speaker 2: It didn't matter that Vietnam, the Vietnam War happened in Vietnam.
Speaker 2: You know, if it had happened in Nicaragua, if it
Speaker 2: had happened and you know, if it had happened in
Speaker 2: in Greece, if it had happened uh in uh in
Speaker 2: Borneo like it would, it would not have mattered. You know.
Speaker 2: That's that that's where the communists pushed. That's where politics
Speaker 2: kind of conspired and intrigued, you know, for for for
Speaker 2: great powers to to to come together in hostile terms.
Speaker 2: And that's where America staked U the line in the sand.
Speaker 2: So it didn't matter, all right, this is where communism fought,
Speaker 2: you know, the uh, the American led opposition. You know
Speaker 2: what what what what that's self identified as the free world,
Speaker 2: and that's what people like, that's what people in the right,
Speaker 2: miss Okay. I think people on the left in contrast,
Speaker 2: you know what they teach college kids, you know, bullshit
Speaker 2: propagated by people like Chomsky or by people like Coward's
Speaker 2: in where they claimed that like of Vietnam War, which
Speaker 2: is you know, the Pentagon like murder machine profiting. That's
Speaker 2: not really true. I mean the the there there was
Speaker 2: a kind of the logic of the body count did
Speaker 2: become kind of uh uh a instead of into itself.
Speaker 2: And that's perverse in all kinds of ways, but that's
Speaker 2: kind of the case and in modern war in the
Speaker 2: twentieth century. And I I'm getting into that in the
Speaker 2: manuscript and right right now about Nuremberg because about half
Speaker 2: of it gets into the twentieth century generally. And yeah,
Speaker 2: there was you know, there was all and anytime there's
Speaker 2: anytimes a general war on it and and Vietnam was
Speaker 2: a general war. Okay, you had a draft uh uh
Speaker 2: you know, you had real casualties. You know, America was
Speaker 2: mobilized anyway one to the situation in Europe and the
Speaker 2: ongoing uh the ongoing strategic challenge presented by the Warsaw Pact.
Speaker 2: But I mean anytime and anytime you're dealing with the
Speaker 2: general war situation or conditions, uh you know, with with
Speaker 2: on that spectrum, there's gonna be there's gonna be people
Speaker 2: and and agents and uh and and and companies that
Speaker 2: profit from that, okay, but that's not that's not that's
Speaker 2: not the incentive, Okay, Like you know, uh, America didn't.
Speaker 2: America didn't kill three million people and and and and
Speaker 2: lose a sixty thousand of their own, you know, and
Speaker 2: eventually like impose like a decade long recession on itself
Speaker 2: just so that it could like sell helicopters to the Pentagon,
Speaker 2: you know, or so that Cold could you know, manufacture
Speaker 2: the armor lite and everybody makes money from you know,
Speaker 2: outfitting the US Army with the ship that it needs.
Speaker 2: Like that's that that's just a very basic view of
Speaker 2: things and that's not that's not reality. And uh something
Speaker 2: I have to other people too, And it's hard to
Speaker 2: be able to put themselves in in this kind of
Speaker 2: conceptual mindset because you know, the Cold Wars like receiving
Speaker 2: like out of living memory. But there was real stakes
Speaker 2: the warfare in the twentieth century. I mean, that's not
Speaker 2: to say there weren't reckless decisions made. And that's not
Speaker 2: to say that during the Cold War, you know, men
Speaker 2: in the Pentagon and command roles and in the Department
Speaker 2: of State didn't intriguing and inspire, you know, to go
Speaker 2: to war when it wasn't absolutely the you know, essential
Speaker 2: course of action, but this was taken very seriously because
Speaker 2: there was real consequences. But also you had a real
Speaker 2: cod reepublic intellectuals shaping defense policy, you know, and you
Speaker 2: really did a lot of the best in the brightest
Speaker 2: putting their minds to the waging of warfare. You know,
Speaker 2: on the technical side, at Los Alamos would be the
Speaker 2: zenith of that, you know, and people quite literally developing,
Speaker 2: you know, more and more effective nuclear weapons. But you know,
Speaker 2: you had you hat like I mean the point of
Speaker 2: people a lot. If this was nineteen seventy or nineteen eighty,
Speaker 2: a guy like Elon Musk could be working on SDI.
Speaker 2: You know, you'd have guys who are going to work
Speaker 2: on Wall Street now was quants. You know, they'd be
Speaker 2: working for the Pentagon or the Department of State, where
Speaker 2: they'd be working, uh for these n g O s
Speaker 2: you know, to figure out how to uh how to
Speaker 2: wage World War three. You know you didn't, you didn't
Speaker 2: just have these idiots and these uh these lose these
Speaker 2: like losers, uh like like like Pete Botagig, where the
Speaker 2: fuck his name is? You know, these other these other
Speaker 2: freaks that you know, you've had in uh Washington since
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three, you know, just kind of just kind
Speaker 2: of deciding that, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna generally
Speaker 2: deploy in some theater for no particular reason. I mean
Speaker 2: that that did not happen in the Cold War because
Speaker 2: it couldn't happen, and it just wouldn't have It would
Speaker 2: have been like unthinkable, you know, the degree to which
Speaker 2: there's a paradigm shift in uh, in the public mind,
Speaker 2: it can't be over emphasized. But what I want to
Speaker 2: get into today, I want to get into the the
Speaker 2: political background of Vietnam and why it became such a
Speaker 2: critical theater. And the next episode, like I said before
Speaker 2: went live, you know, we'll we'll get into the battlefield
Speaker 2: situation because that's an important topic. It's not just I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm not a military guy, and I mean it's not
Speaker 2: really my wheelhouse, but I do know something about military
Speaker 2: science topics in a very like abstract sense. I mean,
Speaker 2: obviously I don't I don't have experience like like grunt
Speaker 2: stew or something, and I would not purport to, but
Speaker 2: the but they kind of competing, Uh, I want to
Speaker 2: get into West Morelands Creighton Abrams and they're kind of
Speaker 2: tactical orientation. I want to know a guy named John
Speaker 2: Paul Van and David Hackworth, you know, both of whom
Speaker 2: had uh had a profound the ideas that they contributed
Speaker 2: to an asymmetrical warfare. And uh, you know, I want
Speaker 2: to get into why the US Army really really couldn't
Speaker 2: adapt itself. It started, I think out the Army because
Speaker 2: Franks and the Marine Corps as well as the Air Force,
Speaker 2: like they did adapt free well. And the Air Force
Speaker 2: is the case. It's pretty remarkable because the Air Force
Speaker 2: was totally purposed to essentially like drop nuclear ordinance on
Speaker 2: the warsaw pack that they time and the and the
Speaker 2: you know, to to repurpose their aircraft, you know, for
Speaker 2: essentially you know, uh like like like fire support, you know,
Speaker 2: and a conventional bombing role. That remark. But today we're
Speaker 2: gonna we're gonna talk about politics, which isn't as sexy
Speaker 2: as ah as a battlefield kind of stuff, but uh,
Speaker 2: it's essential to understanding it. And in the case of Vietnam,
Speaker 2: I think I think it's I think it's uh, I
Speaker 2: think it's paramount or the military side of things, the
Speaker 2: seeds of the end of China wars uh, which uh,
Speaker 2: I mean really we we could say that it goes
Speaker 2: it's you know, things come as in nineteen thirty one,
Speaker 2: I mean when when the Jamis Imperial Army assaulted China.
Speaker 2: But for our purposes, what's conventiond what's conventionally viewed as
Speaker 2: the Indo China Wars is you know the French UH,
Speaker 2: the French war against the Vietnam that kicked off I forty.
Speaker 2: You know, there was the storied defeat that dym been fu.
Speaker 2: You know, the Forid legion got you know, surrounded and annihilated,
Speaker 2: you know, and then the American War, which traditionally is
Speaker 2: viewed as commencing in sixty five because that's when there
Speaker 2: was the mass conventional build up, you know, he was
Speaker 2: involvement ended in seventy three. Saigon fell in seventy five.
Speaker 2: I'd include uh, I'd include the uh the Khmer Rouge
Speaker 2: conquest of Cambodia within that same like conceptual paradigm too,
Speaker 2: as well as the nineteen seventy nine war that Vietnam
Speaker 2: foughtings the people's the public of China, which is fascinating,
Speaker 2: and that the latter event informs a strategic landscape today
Speaker 2: in profound ways. I find it fascinating but actually sensible,
Speaker 2: and I attribute this to Robert Gates also, who was
Speaker 2: a rare like sensible man and in UH in in
Speaker 2: power and policy corridors, you know, post ninety three. But
Speaker 2: he UH Obama, like in my opinion, owing to Gates's tutelage,
Speaker 2: UH lifted remaining restrictions on arm sales to UH the
Speaker 2: People's Republic of Vietnam very obviously, you know, employee Vietnam
Speaker 2: is a military hedge against the People's Republic in China,
Speaker 2: which is very smart. Honestly. That's that, that's it jumped
Speaker 2: out of me because it was one of the few, uh,
Speaker 2: one of the one of the few part of political
Speaker 2: moves and not only made sense, like rational sense, but
Speaker 2: actually was was was strategically sound and you'd never really
Speaker 2: see you as government engage in anything sensible anymore. But
Speaker 2: en though China, you know, uh, it really it really
Speaker 2: was kind of the jewel of Southeast Asia. You know,
Speaker 2: there's a reason why the French hung onto it. And
Speaker 2: it wasn't just prestige and clout the way they did.
Speaker 2: You know, Vietnam was not just this backwater. It's a
Speaker 2: comparatively huge country, you know, very large population, and it
Speaker 2: was it was a cosmopolitan place, okay, and in geostrategic terms,
Speaker 2: like I said again, that wasn't paramount. But uh, the
Speaker 2: French indo China, according to guys who spent a lot
Speaker 2: of time, spent a lot of time with geopolitics, you know,
Speaker 2: beginning in really in the nineteenth century, like on Crimean War. Actual, yeah,
Speaker 2: probably around like eighteen twelve, they final Napoleonic era, as
Speaker 2: is that kind of closed out, and Europeans started thinking
Speaker 2: a lot about about the the you know, the then
Speaker 2: contemporary battlefield. People generally associated into China with the kind
Speaker 2: of the eastern third of the mainland of South East Asia, okay,
Speaker 2: and they viewed it as essential in that regard. Like
Speaker 2: I'm you know, not just as like a hedge against
Speaker 2: the you know, powers emerging within the interior. But uh,
Speaker 2: you know, there's it's it's you know, it's got it's
Speaker 2: got cxs obviously, you know, on this extensive coast, you know,
Speaker 2: things like that. So it's Americans tend to be kind
Speaker 2: of geo strategically illiterate, and they Mosto got the time
Speaker 2: to dismissed everywhere some backwater and that's that's particularly as
Speaker 2: guiding as at Vietnam. Like, yeah, Vietnam was largely backwards
Speaker 2: in ninety sixty five, but most of this planet was
Speaker 2: backwards in ninety sixty five. And those places that weren't,
Speaker 2: like a lot of them were still like in ruins
Speaker 2: because twenty years before, like you know, the world the
Speaker 2: gone to hell in a hand basket, and you know
Speaker 2: in uh there were some places, including in Europe, mostly
Speaker 2: behind the wall, but not exclusively that I mean, it
Speaker 2: was still like until the eighties, like you know, there
Speaker 2: was visible like battle damage from you know, combat at
Speaker 2: forty years previously. So that's something to keep in mind. Uh,
Speaker 2: the uh Ho Chi Minh himself was uh, well actually
Speaker 2: the melu that Ho Chi Minh came out of. Uh.
Speaker 2: The Vietnamese were looking for an identity in peculiar ways,
Speaker 2: and Vietnam is a complex society. It wasn't like North Korean.
Speaker 2: There's something I don't know if people know the history
Speaker 2: particularly well, it's strange. But you know Kim Il Sung,
Speaker 2: you know who, uh who who became Stellin's protege. He
Speaker 2: was one of the Soviet Koreans. You know, part part
Speaker 2: of Stalin's uh you know issue with the nationalities was
Speaker 2: you know, not just you know, genocidal uh programs against
Speaker 2: people that he considered to be you know, politically unreliable,
Speaker 2: but also trying to assimulate populations that he considered to
Speaker 2: be useful, like in the kind of the Soviet sphere
Speaker 2: of influence in his Soviet life, well, the Koreans and
Speaker 2: the Soviet Far East he considered to be one of
Speaker 2: these populations. And Kim Il sung really had no interest
Speaker 2: or under in or norns of communism. And if you
Speaker 2: look in North Korea to day, like they you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's this kind of like prestiche of like nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty Stalinism and and and kind of cargo cult uh
Speaker 2: uh in military dictatorship the type of the nineteen eighties
Speaker 2: or something.
Speaker 1: It's also an hereditary it's a hereditary dictatorship, which yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I think Stalin had told them you can't, you can't
Speaker 1: do that, and they're like, screw you, You're just gonna.
Speaker 2: Do what we want. Yeah exactly. But it's but people
Speaker 2: have this like people tend the sentence you like transposed
Speaker 2: that that those kinds of tendencies to places like Vietnam,
Speaker 2: which is very very misguided and like among other things.
Speaker 2: I'm sure some people are gonna claim that this is
Speaker 2: me being like a chauvinistic white man or whatever. I mean.
Speaker 2: Obviously I don't care. But I I colonize peoples, they
Speaker 2: tend to take on their characteristics of their colonizers, okay,
Speaker 2: and the French are very sophisticated people. Okay. Now I'm
Speaker 2: not saying that the Vietnamese, otherwise it'd be stupid or something.
Speaker 2: I've I find the Vs actually be very interesting. That's
Speaker 2: why this people, I mean included. Vietnam features heavily in
Speaker 2: my fiction, as people will see when the second book drops.
Speaker 2: But you know, so Vietnam, like any place, whether it's
Speaker 2: Algeria or Vietnam or anywhere or Morocco, that was you know,
Speaker 2: colonized by the French. It was it was not gonna
Speaker 2: it was not gonna be some backwater like North Korea. Okay,
Speaker 2: I mean regardless, even if what the German would called
Speaker 2: the mentioned material was was not particularly I'm trying to
Speaker 2: be delegate here, it was not particularly capable of human
Speaker 2: stock okay, but the Vietnamese, you know, they're uh there,
Speaker 2: there are relatively creative people. And Uh Ho Chiman himself,
Speaker 2: he was the son of a Confucian scholar, and he
Speaker 2: was a mysterious guy. His birth year is generally accepted
Speaker 2: as eighteen ninety, but that's that's never been verified conclusively.
Speaker 2: A lot of sources, both within Vietnam and without like
Speaker 2: claim other years. His father, his family like lived in
Speaker 2: Central Vietnam, which was kind of like a hub of
Speaker 2: culture as well as political activity, and this endured through
Speaker 2: like the American War in Vietnam. But it owing to
Speaker 2: his dad, is going to his father's prestige, you know
Speaker 2: that just asn't not just as an intellectual, but he
Speaker 2: was this he was a kind of like he was
Speaker 2: an imperial magistrate like the Uh after when Vietnam became
Speaker 2: technically an empire, like after the Japanese deposed like the
Speaker 2: French in nineteen forty five. This is before the war ended.
Speaker 2: It was the VC regime and Uh and Uh the
Speaker 2: thirteenth Emperor of Vietnam who who stepped out who advocated
Speaker 2: ninety fifty five, but because it may there was an
Speaker 2: imperial court and Ho Chiman's father. Uh, he was. He
Speaker 2: was like this. He was like one half like top
Speaker 2: one half judge kind of and he was demoted because
Speaker 2: uh for for abuse of power after some influential local
Speaker 2: hot show was uh what was availed to summary punishment
Speaker 2: in in Hoe's father's core, and he was sentenced to
Speaker 2: something crazy like one hundred lashes uh with with a cane,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 2: Any and the guy died, Okay, So that so o
Speaker 2: Chimn's dad was. I mean this he was something. I mean,
Speaker 2: he loomed larger to say the least, and he was
Speaker 2: he was basically a judge and an intellectual and a
Speaker 2: confusion and a judge, intellectual and a priest kind of.
Speaker 2: I mean, Confucianism is kind of confusing of the Western mind,
Speaker 2: including mine own. But you know, this was not Hochman
Speaker 2: was not some guy peasant stock like quite the contrary.
Speaker 2: Ho Chiman did kind of rewrite his biography as communists
Speaker 2: all kind of did, and I mean, to be fair
Speaker 2: partisans all do that to some degree. Even Cromwell did that.
Speaker 2: He claimed. Ho Chiman claimed that he was radicalized in
Speaker 2: nineteen oh eight when because he was, he was sent
Speaker 2: to Hoais city to study, okay, and he said he
Speaker 2: came across this demonstration of these poor peasants who were
Speaker 2: bound in this kind of peculiar form of serfdom that
Speaker 2: existed in South East Asia. I can't remember what the
Speaker 2: French word is for it, but it was it was basically,
Speaker 2: uh like like think of a think of a serf
Speaker 2: who's bound in the land and who's not compensated for
Speaker 2: his labor, but he's like, you know, paying rent on
Speaker 2: his occupation of the land which he can't leave. This
Speaker 2: was a big deal in Vietnam especially, and there was this,
Speaker 2: there was this there was this demonstration that that the
Speaker 2: Imperial Court cracked down on violently and uh, you know,
Speaker 2: uh the social justice type of the day, including a
Speaker 2: lot of Catholics because uh you know obviously you know,
Speaker 2: Catholic missioners reactive in into China owing to the French regime,
Speaker 2: but as well as well it's kind of the the
Speaker 2: socialist International. This was like a big deal and whole
Speaker 2: claimed like, well, this is when I realized, like I
Speaker 2: was a communist, Okay, I mean, well that's true or not,
Speaker 2: who knows. But he was mired in a revolutionary environment
Speaker 2: owing to the fact, uh owing to his family's downura
Speaker 2: mobility and no small measure because of the scandal of
Speaker 2: his father and and this uh, this caning victim who died.
Speaker 2: Ho realized that he wasn't going to be able to
Speaker 2: he wasn't gonna be able to get a job, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, with with with with this with the Imperial court.
Speaker 2: And he said he refused to uh to try and
Speaker 2: work uh you know as in the in the colonial administration,
Speaker 2: because he refused to serve the French. And that's probably true.
Speaker 2: So what he did do was he applied to work
Speaker 2: on a French merchant ship when he got from when
Speaker 2: he when he got to Saigon and UH in nineteen eleven,
Speaker 2: UH he traveled first to France and then he ended
Speaker 2: up in Dunkirk. He got back and forth between the
Speaker 2: UK and Marseille UH for a few years, and then
Speaker 2: from nineteen thirteen to nineteen nineteen he was in London.
Speaker 2: It's disputed by some these days, but there's actually a
Speaker 2: plaque in the New Zealand House in London, you know,
Speaker 2: which is which houses literally you know, like the New
Speaker 2: Zealander diplomatic mission that said that like ho Chi men
Speaker 2: worked here is like some kind of pastry chef. Okay,
Speaker 2: so I mean he was moving in pretty elite circles.
Speaker 2: You know. I'llbeit in in a in a kind of
Speaker 2: in a in a kind of meal role. But I
Speaker 2: mean he was a young guy, so it wasn't something
Speaker 2: that would have been seen as improper for a guy
Speaker 2: his station, and he wouldn't just be viewed as like
Speaker 2: a kolie, you know, because he was I mean he
Speaker 2: was even he was very young, Okay, even though he
Speaker 2: you know, he was a teenager in the early twenties.
Speaker 2: I mean, even though we don't know his precise birthday,
Speaker 2: I mean that much, it's clear. In nineteen nineteen he
Speaker 2: returned to France in part because of a French socialist
Speaker 2: named Marcel Kasheen. I'm sure we're during that pronunciation as
Speaker 2: they often do. Excuse me. He was an activist and
Speaker 2: the Socialist Party of France. What Kasheen essentially convinced Hoe
Speaker 2: of was he said, look, you know the uh, the
Speaker 2: Versailles uh, the Versailles Summit, this is our chance to
Speaker 2: approach the light leaders, you know about freedom for for
Speaker 2: Indo China, you know, because now they'll be receptive, you know,
Speaker 2: not owing to any particular uh, you know, interest in
Speaker 2: our cause, but because uh, you know, something is gonna
Speaker 2: have to something, something's gonna have to you know, replace
Speaker 2: the imperial regime, and like even they have to see that,
Speaker 2: you know. And part of this, part of this was
Speaker 2: kind of rigid Marxist uh, you know, thinking deterministic, rather
Speaker 2: thinking like you know this this is you know, like
Speaker 2: reading the proverbial signs, you know, like like an auger
Speaker 2: Wood like obviously this is you know, a crucial moment
Speaker 2: and in the advance of history, you know, we we've
Speaker 2: got to get the attention to these men because capitalists,
Speaker 2: though they are, you know, oppressors as they though they are,
Speaker 2: you know, they're they're nonetheless you know that they're then
Speaker 2: that they're none the less serving the cause of history
Speaker 2: as a whole men are you know? I mean this
Speaker 2: is already clear to people who kind of understand uh,
Speaker 2: Marxist ontology such that it could be said to exist.
Speaker 2: Ultimate subsequently claim that what drove Droom to Paris initially
Speaker 2: was that he'd uh was that he he joined the
Speaker 2: group of Vietnamese patriots. Uh. That's when it translated to
Speaker 2: the I again, I can't I can't pronounce the French moniker.
Speaker 2: But it was this group that coalesced in Paris, Uh.
Speaker 2: You know, most clear uh uh with the university environs.
Speaker 2: But they all they did have some power within the
Speaker 2: syndic within within the cynicalist unions that had and there
Speaker 2: was a number of Asian workers like who were present
Speaker 2: on the ground. I mean obviously because you know, the
Speaker 2: French Empire was always UH was always was always hungry
Speaker 2: for menial labors, medial laborers from the outer dominions. But
Speaker 2: this this particular faction, it included UH, basically the guys
Speaker 2: who became kind of like the core of the Vietnamese
Speaker 2: nationalist movement, okay, including UH Fanshoo trend Fan Van Trong.
Speaker 2: These native probably don't mean anything to anybody today, but
Speaker 2: they they were in the inter warriors and into UH
Speaker 2: into the French Indo China War. Uh. These guys constituted
Speaker 2: in early cadre of of a of the political leadership
Speaker 2: cast resisting UH, resisting French UH control political and military.
Speaker 2: So I mean these were like heavy, These were heavy people, okay,
Speaker 2: And I mean undoubtedly Hoe was able to finangle that
Speaker 2: like owing to his background. You know, I mean he
Speaker 2: downplayed his privilege and everything like that, but he I
Speaker 2: mean he was a guy who was I mean again
Speaker 2: he his father was, Ah was Uh. It was a
Speaker 2: very esteemed individual as well as owing to Hoe's Confusion education,
Speaker 2: you know, he would have had to be he would
Speaker 2: have had to have mastered a colloquial Vietnamese in a
Speaker 2: way that most people just would not. You know, he
Speaker 2: developed attitude in French. You know, he knew Chinese letters
Speaker 2: because you had due to study confusion texts, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean he was he was very very well situated
Speaker 2: to take to you know, to to make contact with
Speaker 2: revolutionary cadres, particularly in UH, particularly in uh In in
Speaker 2: UH Interwar H France. But UH and Ho Uh and
Speaker 2: his UH, his comrades, they actually they formally sent their
Speaker 2: letter to UH to the Allied delegation, you know, Clement
Speaker 2: sau Woodrow Wilson. They weren't able to obtain any consideration.
Speaker 2: But what it did do was it I I attribute
Speaker 2: this the fact that Hoe was very he was comfortable
Speaker 2: with Westerners, He was familiar with them as well as
Speaker 2: his his French was was was beyond competent. It was
Speaker 2: probably not absolutely fluent, but it was far more so
Speaker 2: than you know, your average your average Oriental at that
Speaker 2: time that you know you'd run into in Europe. Ho
Speaker 2: chiet Man became identified as the leader of the anti
Speaker 2: colonial movement in Vietnam, for better or worse. And we've
Speaker 2: discussed in the course of our you know, of our discussions,
Speaker 2: and I made the point myself for Pate and my
Speaker 2: pod in my lawn form a lot of what role
Speaker 2: any man becomes insinuated into, regardless of his aptitude or ambition.
Speaker 2: I'm talking politically, particularly a revolutionary. If people decide that
Speaker 2: you know you are the leader, well then you are
Speaker 2: in some real sense, okay, And this uh the Versailles
Speaker 2: delegation identifying how even though they effectively snubbed him, the
Speaker 2: fact that they identified him as the leader of the
Speaker 2: Vietnamese resistance, I'd say that that's what launched his career
Speaker 2: as a as a professional revolutionary.
Speaker 1: Is there is there any evidence of like who he
Speaker 1: was re thing, who he was most inspired inspired by.
Speaker 2: That's a good question, I speculate. Despite the fact, and
Speaker 2: this is gonna seem strange, particularly because most people you
Speaker 2: know who are familiar with the French left uh, not
Speaker 2: just younger people, I mean even people mind's a little
Speaker 2: bit older. They be the French Left as kind of
Speaker 2: the driving force behind the sixty eight ers, and uh,
Speaker 2: the kind of break with the Warsaw Pact and uh,
Speaker 2: you know, the kind of you know, the New Left
Speaker 2: was literally founded by Foucot et least in In in
Speaker 2: academ However, in uh, the Inner War yors, particularly at
Speaker 2: the time of Versailles, the French, the French Communists were
Speaker 2: very very orthodox Marxist Lentinis. They they very much believed
Speaker 2: in the common turn. Uh and it's orthodoxy, probably even
Speaker 2: more so than anybody, probably even more so than the Germans,
Speaker 2: because there was uh, you know, one of the reasons
Speaker 2: why the so you know, the seed not the KPD
Speaker 2: begin the ruling party in East Germany was because the
Speaker 2: Social Democrats and and the Marcus Leninist could never come
Speaker 2: to the table. France did not really have that problem. Yes,
Speaker 2: France was, Uh, I'm gonna say France was a house
Speaker 2: divided quickly. I mean would be a gross center statement.
Speaker 2: But the French Communist, for whatever reason, they I owe
Speaker 2: it to I owe this phenomenon to very strong cadre building.
Speaker 2: They were very very much united. And uh, I would speculate,
Speaker 2: and again I would I'd have to deep dive into it,
Speaker 2: and it would be very hard, I think. I mean,
Speaker 2: it could be done, but it would take time to
Speaker 2: kind of tease out real data on what the primary
Speaker 2: sources were. But whether we're talking about Paul Pott or
Speaker 2: Ho Chi minh or Japp who uh who o Chi
Speaker 2: minh Uh had met at Huay when he was a
Speaker 2: student there, all these guys either owing to the fact
Speaker 2: that they were in France or you know, owing to
Speaker 2: the French influence upon their cadre structure, like in Indo, China.
Speaker 2: They they they'd be reading Marx and Lenin, you know,
Speaker 2: and they and they they then and they'd be reading
Speaker 2: you know, they they'd be reading Hegel and they you know,
Speaker 2: they would have become familiar with the Aristotle and and
Speaker 2: and and they would have become and and and and
Speaker 2: Thomas Paine and Lock. But they but they, they like
Speaker 2: Marx and Lenin would be there, you know, their Bible
Speaker 2: as it were. But yeah, that's a great question, and
Speaker 2: that's kind of a fascinating subject, especially like again, you know,
Speaker 2: like we just mentioned uh, it's uh like like amaging
Speaker 2: the French left is kind of like the standard bearer
Speaker 2: of you know, rigid orthodoxy is is kind of hilarious.
Speaker 2: But I mean that's that's that's that's the way it was.
Speaker 2: Excuse me, they, uh, this is actually what gives ryans
Speaker 2: to the myth. I don't know, I don't know how
Speaker 2: much this is bandied about by court historians these days,
Speaker 2: because frankly, don't read a lot of court history on uh,
Speaker 2: on either World War One or on the Cold War,
Speaker 2: I mean anymore. I mean I do for like, for
Speaker 2: dedicated purposes, like in my writing and research, you know,
Speaker 2: like if I say like, okay, well, you know, I
Speaker 2: like refresh my recollection with what, you know, with what
Speaker 2: kind of like the mainstream historians of the day, and
Speaker 2: we're saying about let's say, like the French War in Algeria,
Speaker 2: you know, and then you know, so not not just
Speaker 2: for the sake like teeing off on the AD, but
Speaker 2: just kind of you know, get a sense of what
Speaker 2: people take for granted in terms of kind of the
Speaker 2: not not just not just the key events that they
Speaker 2: identify as as being essential understanding the conflict, but also
Speaker 2: kind of like you know, what what sort of values
Speaker 2: are insinuated into the narrative, you know, and and hind
Speaker 2: and deliberatet hindsight. But when I was uh, like when
Speaker 2: I'm when I was high school age, if you read
Speaker 2: like a college textbook or like if you took like,
Speaker 2: you know, uh an international relations class in your high school,
Speaker 2: it's say that oh you see, you know, in nineteen nineteen,
Speaker 2: there was this Wilsonian moment where you know, Ho Chi
Speaker 2: minh he could have adopted a pro American stance if
Speaker 2: only Wilson had paid attention to him. But you know,
Speaker 2: because because you know, these like mean weight men were
Speaker 2: just like being mean and racist, like this didn't happen.
Speaker 2: Like I think that that's nonsense for all kinds of reasons.
Speaker 2: I mean, first of all, it's it's like kind of
Speaker 2: sending him fucking stupid, but also it really kind of
Speaker 2: sells people like Ho tiam In short, Ho Hiaman wasn't
Speaker 2: there to be a koolie and like gravel for you know,
Speaker 2: token concessions. He uh he he he basically said, he
Speaker 2: basically penned this document and owen to his uh and
Speaker 2: on end to the influence of kind of his French
Speaker 2: patrons who were experienced revolutionaries. They seem to think that
Speaker 2: Wilson would recognize Wilson and Clements so would recognize they
Speaker 2: didn't know China was going to be a significant potential
Speaker 2: battle theater. Okay, there was nothing friendly about this communication,
Speaker 2: you know. And then this idea that everybody if you
Speaker 2: if if you give HOCHI meant a coke and a
Speaker 2: Snickers bar or Hershey, aren't get him on the head,
Speaker 2: he'll like, you know, give you a buck tooth grin
Speaker 2: and say I love g I Joe Coca Cola. Like
Speaker 2: that's way more quote unquote racist than anything in Wilson's mind.
Speaker 2: This brings us to I realize I'm jumping around a lot,
Speaker 2: but I as we get into this further, like I
Speaker 2: think I shall be redeemed because people will understand. And
Speaker 2: I want to get out of the way now to
Speaker 2: reference a lot of these things as we get into
Speaker 2: kind of the hard and fast, uh strategic analysis of
Speaker 2: the conflict, and I don't want to have to keep
Speaker 2: jumping back and saying, well, this is what this was.
Speaker 2: People talk all the time about how Vietnam was like
Speaker 2: this grave kind of failure of collective security and why
Speaker 2: do they say that, Well, they said because of Cito Scato,
Speaker 2: Like what was Cito to Ito is the Southeast Asian
Speaker 2: Treaty organization. And if you think it sounds a lot
Speaker 2: like NATO, you'd be right, because that's what that's what,
Speaker 2: That's what his whole notion was was created by the
Speaker 2: Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty also known as the Manila Pack,
Speaker 2: that was signed in September nineteen fifty four. And you
Speaker 2: guessed at Manila, the Philippines. Now who who's the driving
Speaker 2: force behind CITO? It was a Vice President Nixon who,
Speaker 2: upon returning from Asia ninety three said, look, we need
Speaker 2: some kind of collective security arrangement in Asia that you know,
Speaker 2: tantamount to NATO. There was far more confidential conflict diets
Speaker 2: in Asia. The strategic landscape was a lot more fluid.
Speaker 2: But and Nixon realized that. But at the same time
Speaker 2: he said that, you know, one of the reason it's
Speaker 2: impossible to h you know, develop a meaningful, uh kind
Speaker 2: of strategic posture moving forward is because it's uncertain like
Speaker 2: what any what if anything, you know, anyone's willing to
Speaker 2: commit and what what they're willing to stand on as
Speaker 2: you know, essential interests, and uh, this creates a credibility problem.
Speaker 2: George Kennon also was very much behind this idea, if
Speaker 2: not CITO itself, he said, there's got to be some
Speaker 2: kind of collective security structure of a formal nature. Now,
Speaker 2: I make this point a lot as people for a
Speaker 2: few reasons. People act like NATO is this magical thing
Speaker 2: that uh, I mean obviously like anybody who claims NATO
Speaker 2: actually still exists as a fucking moron. But UH also
Speaker 2: subsident does exist. It's profoundly destabilizing. But we don't know
Speaker 2: if NATO was uh, what was effective or not. What
Speaker 2: we do know is that there was basic credibility behind it,
Speaker 2: and UH, the Soviet Union considered America, you know, represent
Speaker 2: a credible threat, you know if uh if uh if
Speaker 2: the primary conflict DIAD in Europe was triggered, you know,
Speaker 2: which was obviously the inner German border. But at the
Speaker 2: same time, UH, America periodically had to meet Soviet efforts
Speaker 2: to decopple UH. European collective security from American strategic interests
Speaker 2: was one reason why America maintained intermediate nuclear forces in Europe.
Speaker 2: That's another question, and well that's a complicated issue. We'll
Speaker 2: get into that. But my point is that it's not
Speaker 2: treaties themselves that that that promotes stability. It's the it's
Speaker 2: it's it's the willingness of the signatories, you know, in
Speaker 2: order to UH. It's a willingness the signatories. I say
Speaker 2: it was credibility. They're in Okay, and this should be obvious.
Speaker 2: Where the signatories two seats though, it was Australia, France,
Speaker 2: New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the USA. Okay,
Speaker 2: I might add this out of those signatories, Australia, New
Speaker 2: Zealand cave show up to showed up the fight the
Speaker 2: Vietnam War. Okay. France had just fought the vietnamn UH
Speaker 2: for eight years and been defeated. Thailand was definitely a
Speaker 2: combatant in the Vietnam War. If for no if I
Speaker 2: mean they this was very much below board in terms
Speaker 2: of special operations forces were very effective, but Thailand unconditionally
Speaker 2: availed UH, their their bases and their airspace to do
Speaker 2: anything that the Allies needed. The UK UH, the the
Speaker 2: UK just UH. This caused great consternation. Anthony Eden profoundly offended.
Speaker 2: H U S Department of State of the Era and
Speaker 2: UH by essentially making it clear UH that that the
Speaker 2: UK would not commit any kind of collective security arrangements
Speaker 2: as regards the no China. Why they put pen to
Speaker 2: paper on the middle of pact, that's another question that's
Speaker 2: kind of complicated. It ordered the kind of the weasel
Speaker 2: wards inherent to UH. To diplomats, I think I'm not.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I'm gonna hatred of of of
Speaker 2: I don't know if I'm gonna hatred of diplomats in
Speaker 2: an of themselves. But there is a there's a kind
Speaker 2: of a lawyer ball they play about, you know, qualifying
Speaker 2: their willingness to hottern treaty obligations and UH. In the
Speaker 2: case of the UK UH deciding on with Seito, it
Speaker 2: had a lot to do with the claims of well,
Speaker 2: this is this is a quote defensive alliance, I mean,
Speaker 2: which is meaningless and more in peace. As Carl Smith taughtus,
Speaker 2: there's another thing as an offensive or defensive war. All
Speaker 2: wars both offensive and defensive. But that's a bit upside
Speaker 2: the scope. Any event, it was cedy was headquartered in
Speaker 2: uh In in Bangkok, Thailand. Incidentally, two and again Dulles, Uh,
Speaker 2: John Foster Dallas was one hundred percent behind it. Two.
Speaker 2: In fact, he could be viewed as kind of the
Speaker 2: primary architect, like I said Nixon. Nixon was was convinced
Speaker 2: a formal club of security arrangement was necessary, modeled roughly
Speaker 2: on NATO. Dulles was the one who pushed for CIDO
Speaker 2: as the answer to that. And it was Dulles who
Speaker 2: who who uh who was profoundly offended by Eaden's anyone
Speaker 2: to commit what is interesting? And it goes to U
Speaker 2: two that like the quote special relationship between the United
Speaker 2: States and the UK, I mean there were people in
Speaker 2: the UK who had fake realize the UK lost World
Speaker 2: War Two, and Eatan's a complicated figure. And a year
Speaker 2: later in ninety fifty five, like Eden mcame Prime Minister.
Speaker 2: But that's he's he's one of the more interesting post
Speaker 2: war uh British executives I think. But yeah, as it
Speaker 2: may like he he made it clear that the UK
Speaker 2: was was was was gonna sit out anything that happened
Speaker 2: in in in Southeast Asia. And it's an interesting question,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean the obviously neither Eden nor anybody
Speaker 2: else wasn't kind of augur. But you know, war literally
Speaker 2: came to the UK's doorstep, uh in Northern Ireland and
Speaker 2: uh there revisional IRA's efforts were very much perceived as
Speaker 2: as as part of the anti colonial movement. Okay, I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't want to I don't want to start some
Speaker 2: big controversy with people. I'm not sitting here saying that
Speaker 2: Canadians were a bunch of communists or something like that, Okay,
Speaker 2: but it point being everything else aside, even if even if,
Speaker 2: even if it's been some kind of hawkish uh like
Speaker 2: proto Thatcher type at Downing Street, I don't the situation
Speaker 2: that actually developed in the UK in the sixties. I
Speaker 2: don't think they were in a position to be they'll
Speaker 2: be fighting some general war against against you know, North
Speaker 2: Vietnam and you know, halfway across the planet. But isn't
Speaker 2: ans counterfactual? The uh, the background of what the what
Speaker 2: immediately gave rise Desito From April twenty sixth until July twentieth,
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty four. Uh, there's a Geneva conference in the
Speaker 2: Status of Indo China, Like why was this convened? Well,
Speaker 2: the French uh had you know, had just taken a
Speaker 2: defeat by the VIETNMM at the end been Fu, uh,
Speaker 2: which I would say was other than Singapore, you know
Speaker 2: where the where the Jamons and Pupil army just just
Speaker 2: like smashed the United Kingdom. That Singapore is the most
Speaker 2: devastating defeat every levied to a white Westerner by a
Speaker 2: uh a arising a rising non Western state them ben
Speaker 2: Fu was the second, okay, Uh. The psychological impact on
Speaker 2: this was devastating, and the Vietnam showed that they were
Speaker 2: a marshall race. Okay. They man handled artillery up the
Speaker 2: mountain side and and bombarded the French positions. You know.
Speaker 2: The uh, the the Vietnamese of a genuine they've got
Speaker 2: a genuine aptitude for war. We'll get into that as
Speaker 2: in the next episode, as we get into the kind
Speaker 2: of battlefield realities of the war. But that aside the
Speaker 2: characteristics of the Vats themselves, aside. You know, France, Uh,
Speaker 2: France was a real military power in those days. Okay too.
Speaker 2: They weren't slouches, you know, and they weren't uh, they
Speaker 2: weren't you know, the France nineteen fifty four wasn't the
Speaker 2: France to today. You know, these this wasn't some half
Speaker 2: assed army of a of mercenaries or something either. I mean,
Speaker 2: it was the French Foreign Legion, you know, and these
Speaker 2: were crack troops, you know, highly motivated, arguably uh arguably
Speaker 2: the best equipped the army on the planet at that point.
Speaker 2: You know, it kind of was confortable you know the
Speaker 2: United States. Uh, it was coin of the year. They
Speaker 2: it was connerable with the United States was fighting with Korea,
Speaker 2: you know, after after a mobilization kicked off in earnest,
Speaker 2: but uh, becase it may uh there's need of a conference.
Speaker 2: Uh and the statisment of China. Half of it was
Speaker 2: it was it was purpose. Half of it was purpose
Speaker 2: to deal with issues resolving from the Korean War, you know,
Speaker 2: and the UH and then the armistice, and and half
Speaker 2: was the kind of resolve the French you know, China situation,
Speaker 2: which is the recipe for as to begin with. Okay,
Speaker 2: like you don't take that approach the you know, just
Speaker 2: say yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna we're gonna knock out
Speaker 2: two birds of one stone with this like great conference
Speaker 2: and you know, we're just gonna figure out you know,
Speaker 2: the based the whole status of Asia by you know,
Speaker 2: putting the right you know, put it put putting, you know,
Speaker 2: putting the right putting the right paperwork together. I mean,
Speaker 2: all the things ridiculous. UH. The delegation, the delegations UH
Speaker 2: represented on the status of Korea. It was the Soviet Union,
Speaker 2: Peoples of Public in China, North and South Korea, and
Speaker 2: the U s A and the Indo China side of UH.
Speaker 2: The of the UH at the conference was France, UH.
Speaker 2: The Vietnam although a non state actor, you know, they
Speaker 2: had a formal representation UH, the U s s R,
Speaker 2: the U s A, the People's Republic in China, the
Speaker 2: UK and UH, the nascent, the UH, the maybe not
Speaker 2: maybe the believer I should say, like UH success or
Speaker 2: government in Vietnam to UH? What UH? What had been
Speaker 2: the Beshy regime that was deposed by Japan, which says
Speaker 2: I indicated at the start of this conversation at the
Speaker 2: start of this talk only had a year to remain.
Speaker 2: In nine to fifty five, there was the there's a
Speaker 2: referendum in the emperor stepped down and Bao Dai was
Speaker 2: the emperor to be replaced by DM. What was the
Speaker 2: status of Vietnam? And I am a be four. Well,
Speaker 2: there was two regimes of Vietnam. There's a Democratic Republic
Speaker 2: of Vietnam led by the Communist Workers Party UH, and
Speaker 2: the State of Vietnam, again by Emperor Bao Dai. The
Speaker 2: Democratic Republic of Vietnam was strongest in the north and
Speaker 2: in the center of the country, but had some followers
Speaker 2: in the south as well. So basically what you're talking
Speaker 2: about is you're talking about a country that's uh almost
Speaker 2: it's a political map of it looks almost like leopard
Speaker 2: spots at this point. It's okay, and UH the UH,
Speaker 2: the seat of soerity that's claimed by the emperor is
Speaker 2: is really a sovereign in name only, Okay. At the
Speaker 2: time of the French defeat, sixty five thousand documented members
Speaker 2: the Workers Party lived south of the seventeenth Parallel, which
Speaker 2: is what became the divider between North and South Vietnam.
Speaker 2: In the me calling Delta region alone, which is UH
Speaker 2: in in in northern South Vietnam, so I mean a
Speaker 2: key strategic piece of real estate, there was thirty thousand
Speaker 2: party members concentrated. In addition, there was one hundred thousands
Speaker 2: others in the south whore you know, sympathized with the
Speaker 2: Vietnam or who were you know, just uh, you know,
Speaker 2: card carrying communists of varying stripes. In short, the UH,
Speaker 2: the the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, which whose sole representative
Speaker 2: was the Communists. They could claim membership throughout the entire country, okay,
Speaker 2: the the formal state of Vietnam led by the emperor.
Speaker 2: Part of the problem with this was UH was part
Speaker 2: of the problem with characteristic of those resisting the communists
Speaker 2: UH movement globally, you're looking at a house divided. You know,
Speaker 2: the war had World War two, had had destroyed the
Speaker 2: right for all time, there was no there was no
Speaker 2: real political right anymore. Okay, there's reactionary elements, you know
Speaker 2: who backs people like Emperor Bao Dai. You know, in
Speaker 2: various monarchists. You know, there was people who didn't really
Speaker 2: have a political consciousness, but they you know, they they
Speaker 2: were hostile to Communists for self interested reasons. You know,
Speaker 2: there wasn't there wasn't theresign really corralling these people. You know, like,
Speaker 2: you can't build a movement, particularly when you're facing off
Speaker 2: against dedicated cadres. You can't just build. You can't just
Speaker 2: build a political You can't just you can't build a
Speaker 2: political army based on opposition to something, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean? That was that more Nowhere is that more
Speaker 2: evident than Vietnam. And I think that I can't really
Speaker 2: be overstated because the the Vietnamese who resisted the Communists
Speaker 2: really do get kind of a bum rap. You know,
Speaker 2: they're either they're rather casts as cowards or or just
Speaker 2: you know, uh, you know, these kind of these kind
Speaker 2: of third world uh kleptomaniacs or or just uh, you know,
Speaker 2: pitiable kind of uh Lackey's and Koli's Like that's not
Speaker 2: the case at all. I mean, they were a mixed bag,
Speaker 2: but there were they they had disadvantages from Jump and
Speaker 2: the people who should have been looking out for their
Speaker 2: interests most aggressively we're not doing so I think on
Speaker 2: on the military side, I think I think they were
Speaker 2: the uh there was uh, there's plenty of American commanders
Speaker 2: in South Korea. South Korea really came to fight in
Speaker 2: the Vietnam War. They deployed there their forces around fifty
Speaker 2: thousand men for countries as a Korea, it's a major deployment.
Speaker 2: But on the military side, you had some very game,
Speaker 2: uh commanders who very much wanted, you know, to give
Speaker 2: the the South enemies what they needed to win and
Speaker 2: uh and and led these guys into combat very briefly.
Speaker 2: And these guys performed well with with honor. But uh,
Speaker 2: on the political side, you know, it's like what what's what?
Speaker 2: What what do you have in South? What do you
Speaker 2: have and what became South Vietnam. It's like, okay, you
Speaker 2: got you got a cadre of like kind of upper
Speaker 2: league mobile or Kodrie kind of like upper lya mobile
Speaker 2: Catholic types, which the French were still here. You know,
Speaker 2: you got you you got, you got guys are basically
Speaker 2: small business man who don't like the Communis to take
Speaker 2: their stuff. You know. Uh, you got the Buddhists. We're
Speaker 2: kind of like put upon by everybody. You know. You
Speaker 2: got various minorities like a montag Yard Zone Sundry who
Speaker 2: you know, realize their numbers up if the Communists win.
Speaker 2: But I mean there's I know, it probably sounds like
Speaker 2: I'm somebody who's like totally fixated. I'm owing to you
Speaker 2: know kind of the the central emphasis of my research
Speaker 2: being Nuremberg and and kind of the political theoretical trajectory
Speaker 2: of things. Subsequent but imarious problems in the Cold War
Speaker 2: really can be chalked up with the fact that, you know,
Speaker 2: it's like, well, you know, if you're waging waging a
Speaker 2: war of excrimination against the political right, like it's not
Speaker 2: that that doesn't you're you're not living all hubble lot
Speaker 2: when you're trying to draw up on your own cadres
Speaker 2: to defeat the communists. And in Vietnam. Uh, that's a
Speaker 2: topic that's not particularly emphasized, but I uh, I think
Speaker 2: it's more important than in some theaters like legit.
Speaker 3: I I it uh.
Speaker 2: And as we'll get into like later in the series,
Speaker 2: America learned this lesson in part by the final phase
Speaker 2: of the Cold War, and that's one of the reasons
Speaker 2: why the the that the conference are so effective in
Speaker 2: places like Nicaragua, where honestly, the the Santin Eastern regime,
Speaker 2: the story has probably invested more in that regime than
Speaker 2: any other sense. Uh tens the Vietnam era. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's as a client regime outside their media scare of influence.
Speaker 2: I mean, but.
Speaker 3: In any event, uh, the the the uh.
Speaker 2: There's ne EVA conference basically all all it. All it
Speaker 2: did was formed wise. It it formalized the division that
Speaker 2: was already burgening. You know even in the even before
Speaker 2: the French had been it had been defeated at them Benfu.
Speaker 2: But what it did was it created this kind of
Speaker 2: arbitrary dividing line to create kind of the fiction that
Speaker 2: you know, there was there was two sovereign states here
Speaker 2: that were at war and like that was never that
Speaker 2: was never the case. I mean, the Vietnam War was
Speaker 2: a civil war. I mean it's not me. There's not
Speaker 2: me having sympathy for the devil or or or you know,
Speaker 2: trying to simplify the political strategic situation. A civil wars.
Speaker 2: One seems to be a civil war because great powers,
Speaker 2: you know, converge, uh and and and and draw like
Speaker 2: an imaginary line on the center of the country. That's
Speaker 2: quite literally what happened. The fact, uh, the fact that
Speaker 2: you had you know, we'll get into this too. You know,
Speaker 2: North Vietnam was a crack army. It was an incredibly
Speaker 2: game for US as well as like a truly conventional army.
Speaker 2: This idea that Vietnam is just kind of like weird
Speaker 2: guerrilla war, like that's bullshit. Yeah, there's aspects of asymmetrical war,
Speaker 2: particularly in the Mekong Delta and particularly early on. Make
Speaker 2: no mistake, the reason why Vietnam was so bloody and
Speaker 2: so brutal is because it was a conventional war where
Speaker 2: firepower carried the day. The North Vietnamese UH the only
Speaker 2: way that uh, the only way that they could accomplish
Speaker 2: their political objectives was through a conventional military victory. And
Speaker 2: they knew that. This is one of the reasons why
Speaker 2: America deployed so heavily. The way that they did was
Speaker 2: that misguided uh not in and of itself. But we're
Speaker 2: gonna get into why that didn't produce the results that
Speaker 2: it had to. But this is a This is also
Speaker 2: another example of how this you know, whether or not
Speaker 2: we accept the kind of whether or not we accept
Speaker 2: the quote democracy is utilized at present and even during
Speaker 2: the Cold War when it actually had, you know, some
Speaker 2: kind of identifiable meaning, even if it was only like
Speaker 2: contra marcist Leninism. I returned to kind of the Schmidtian
Speaker 2: notion that it doesn't do you any good at war
Speaker 2: to have this kind of ongoing discussion in policy terms,
Speaker 2: because even if people are doing some in good faith,
Speaker 2: which they never are, because this becomes another means of
Speaker 2: exploiting divisions within the electorate for some sort of competitive advantage.
Speaker 2: But even if that were not the case, you know
Speaker 2: that you don't you don't endlessly debate military questions as
Speaker 2: if they're you know, ordinary policy matters. And the fact
Speaker 2: that that's what a general war became led to some
Speaker 2: really perverse outcomes, both on the battlefield and in terms
Speaker 2: of what came to be considered a success in political terms.
Speaker 2: And I think Vietnam was a rare situation where the
Speaker 2: political and the military was questions were basically synonymous, and
Speaker 2: Depentagon on some level recognize that, but the way they
Speaker 2: preceded in actual policy terms, whereas if these were two
Speaker 2: discreet things that had success metrics independent of one another,
Speaker 2: if that makes any sense other than the more more
Speaker 2: of what I mean in the next episode when some
Speaker 2: concrete examples emerged as to how this phenomenon played out.
Speaker 2: But ultimately, and I'm gonna wrap this up in a minute,
Speaker 2: what need of a court led to was this fiction
Speaker 2: of two Vietnams, okay, and it created a pathway, or
Speaker 2: at least a roadmap to uh unification that was supposed
Speaker 2: to obviate any potential crisis of authority, but it UH,
Speaker 2: it was contingent upon it. It was, it was, it was,
Speaker 2: It was contingent upon in plain language, you know, both
Speaker 2: purported sovereign governments advocating any use of ourn force in
Speaker 2: order to affect a political outcome and dominate UH the
Speaker 2: future state by way of a single party regime. And obviously,
Speaker 2: you know, the Hanoi government always claimed that the Vietcong
Speaker 2: or the National Liberation Front was was was independent of
Speaker 2: of of their authority. It was the spontaneous up art.
Speaker 2: There was some shoot to that, but obviously Hanoi cadres
Speaker 2: were operationally insinuated into the NLF. The Saygi regime always
Speaker 2: maintained that, you know, the NLF was nothing but UH
Speaker 2: a direct client of Hanoi, and that so long as
Speaker 2: it existed, it constituted a terrorist threat to the UH,
Speaker 2: to the universe, to the unification process, and so none
Speaker 2: of the terms that Geneva agreement had to be honored.
Speaker 2: So I mean that this this outcome was entirely predictable, okay,
Speaker 2: I mean, there's there's basically no way that there's basically
Speaker 2: no way that any other, any other outcome would have
Speaker 2: been emerging. But that's that's why the kind of political
Speaker 2: UH foundation was so murky and and kind of unworkable,
Speaker 2: you know it. And I also got to show you that,
Speaker 2: you know, make this point a lot there's I generally
Speaker 2: don't engage people because it's it's just like bad fait
Speaker 2: the bullshit. But people don't know what they're talking talking about,
Speaker 2: like those who look, you know, they love the baby
Speaker 2: about colonialism and how bid this was. It's like, okay,
Speaker 2: so you really what I just described here, Like you
Speaker 2: really think that's superior to having like the French administering
Speaker 2: Vietnam like I I mean, like in what way, shape
Speaker 2: or form? You know? And you could say that, well,
Speaker 2: that was just another example of you know, white Westerns
Speaker 2: imposing this paradigm like it really wasn't man. I mean,
Speaker 2: the reason why it was so dysfunctional in Fubar is
Speaker 2: because you did have that. You did have Beijing like
Speaker 2: having their say, you did Moscow having their say, and
Speaker 2: obviously you know, in having their say, they were deliberately
Speaker 2: sabotaging their proceedings and creating conditions we're in, you know,
Speaker 2: UH A cadre based movement, could you know, effectively sabotage
Speaker 2: any government that immerged in the South. But you can't.
Speaker 2: You can't. You can't just you can't just shut down
Speaker 2: a conversation by saying, oh, that's just like something the
Speaker 2: white man imposed, I didn't know China, you know. So
Speaker 2: it's everybody's always people act like this kind of you know,
Speaker 2: people act like the nineteenth century regime that endured really
Speaker 2: till nineteen nineteen ninety twenty, you know, like you know, Britain, France, Germany,
Speaker 2: you know, dividing up the world. Uh, in these in
Speaker 2: these key theaters, Like was this like a bold situation?
Speaker 2: It's like, well, what's your alternative? They're like they never
Speaker 2: they never have one. You know. It's like this idea
Speaker 2: like the world's kind of exists in sits you and
Speaker 2: like it's it's like a place of plenty in peace,
Speaker 2: but then people screwed up just but like imposing politics
Speaker 2: upon it. It's like I think ontologically, like I think people,
Speaker 2: it's like don't like a lot of people and people
Speaker 2: are particularly dumb. They just like can't grasp like the
Speaker 2: ontological reality of politics. I mean, I don't know, but
Speaker 2: at any event, let's uh, let's let's wrap up for
Speaker 2: now because uh uh I want to shift gears with
Speaker 2: what we get to do next. And I realized this
Speaker 2: might have been a little bit dry, But again, like
Speaker 2: I said, I'm gonna reference all this stuff when we
Speaker 2: get into the the uh you know, discussing the battlefield
Speaker 2: situation and uh and and kind of the political uh
Speaker 2: maneuverings of mister Kennedy and mister Jonas and mister Nixon,
Speaker 2: so it becomes important. But yeah, I I hope, uh,
Speaker 2: I hope this didn't bore people at death. I hope
Speaker 2: they got something out of it relating to the topic.
Speaker 1: So just run through or anything you want to promote,
Speaker 1: and we'll go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, indeed, I mean, good things are happening.
Speaker 2: We uh you know, like I said, within the next
Speaker 2: week or so, we're launching the YouTube channel at one last,
Speaker 2: steel Storm two is dropping this month. To be on
Speaker 2: the lookout for that. I've got some big stuff happening
Speaker 2: on the podcast. But I'm gonna announce that formally on
Speaker 2: uh on the next pod episode, which you're gonna become
Speaker 2: more frequent. But you'll you'll uh, I don't want to
Speaker 2: I want to get into that like on the pod.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that's all I got. You can find me
Speaker 2: on Twitter at Triskelly and Jahad the he is A seven.
Speaker 2: Find me at Substack Real Thomas seven seven seven dot
Speaker 2: substack dot com.
Speaker 1: Thomas, I appreciate it. Until the next time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, likewise, thank you people.
Speaker 1: This is part seven of the Cold War series. Thomas
Speaker 1: seven seven seven.
Speaker 2: How are you doing, everybody? I'm okay man today. The
Speaker 2: issue with the Vietnam conflict, as we kind of got
Speaker 2: into last episode, it's not just that the the sort
Speaker 2: of controversy around it that endures to this day, you know,
Speaker 2: in terms of ethics and in terms of policy critiques.
Speaker 2: I mean, something has contrived. Some of it's not. But
Speaker 2: even if we take people's sort of values and partisan
Speaker 2: ideas are the equation entirely, the Vietnam conflict straddled, for
Speaker 2: lack of a better way to characterize it or describe it,
Speaker 2: in multiple epochs, in in in terms of political and
Speaker 2: military affairs, you know, as Vietnam jumped off and earned
Speaker 2: it says, we'll get into what which was very much
Speaker 2: during the Kennedy administration. I know some people have this
Speaker 2: sort of like, uh, you know, this this uh, this
Speaker 2: revisionist notion that O. Kennedy was trying to disengage from Vietnam.
Speaker 2: That's not true at all. But even if regardless of that,
Speaker 2: the uh uh, a paradigm shift in military affairs was
Speaker 2: underway from the post new look Eisenhower era, you know, uh,
Speaker 2: which was kind of bookended by the Cuba crisis, which
Speaker 2: you know put an end to that kind of thinking,
Speaker 2: you know, and and from that kind of like the
Speaker 2: first phase of the American War, you know, like sixty
Speaker 2: two to sixty five, I guess you could say represented
Speaker 2: you know, that is sort of a gray area between
Speaker 2: you know, sort of policy orientations the uh, the kind
Speaker 2: of revolutionary period in the Third World where like you know,
Speaker 2: the Color Revolt, if you want to look at it,
Speaker 2: like that was an underway, full swing. You know what
Speaker 2: the what what remained of the Western Powers were still engaged,
Speaker 2: you know, uh, Spain, Portugal, France who just you know
Speaker 2: been issued to crushing defeat at the end ben Fu.
Speaker 2: You know, they were trying to they were trying to
Speaker 2: find a way to you know, utilize firepower and the
Speaker 2: technological ads that they enjoyed, you know, in order to
Speaker 2: in order to advantage them and in counterinsurgency warfare. Vietnam
Speaker 2: ended in the nineteen seventies as the era of true
Speaker 2: strategic parody. It was emerging from the United States and
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union and major powers were disengaging from the
Speaker 2: Third World in direct capacities like owing not just the
Speaker 2: fact that you know, independence was causing more and more
Speaker 2: conflict diets to emerge where escalation could have brought the
Speaker 2: superpowers into direct collision, like in nineteen seventy three in
Speaker 2: the Middle East, but also it's because you know, there's
Speaker 2: a certain weariness for you know, this kind of constant
Speaker 2: engagement and act in combat and in multiple in multiple featers.
Speaker 2: So Vietnam is important for all those kinds of reasons,
Speaker 2: but also just uh it there's because of all those
Speaker 2: things that just describe and kind of the you know,
Speaker 2: the historical situatedness of the conflict in like temporally, I mean,
Speaker 2: there was there's a lot of data to be derived
Speaker 2: from it about about warfare. You know, when the roamies
Speaker 2: the road in terms of combat and things and technology
Speaker 2: and how these things impact impact the modern battlefield. But
Speaker 2: also you can extravlate things about the American system and
Speaker 2: how particularly uh, particularly wartime administrations. Uh, the politics uh
Speaker 2: is very much insinuated into the decision making process. I
Speaker 2: don't mean high politics, although that is the case too.
Speaker 2: I mean these kind of like domestic intrigues still over
Speaker 2: into the decision making process as regards you know, war
Speaker 2: and peace decisions. And that's very bad. And obviously this
Speaker 2: this gained a lot of momentum, you know, during the
Speaker 2: kind of meat you know, uh, the rise of of
Speaker 2: of the you know, the modern or contemporary not modern
Speaker 2: contemporary like news cycle, which really began in the sixties
Speaker 2: and seventies, you know, like reacing its zenith, you know
Speaker 2: in like nineteen ninety nineteen ninety one where he had
Speaker 2: the true twenty var news cycle and the Gulf War
Speaker 2: on TV. I mean, now obviously that's done. I mean
Speaker 2: there's certain like like media is ubiquitous, like in a
Speaker 2: way never it's never met before. But there's not as
Speaker 2: bully pulpit of like the news media, you know, the
Speaker 2: terrestrial news media that's what everybody watches and that controls
Speaker 2: you know, narratives and the parameters of discourse. Like That's
Speaker 2: what I was talking about. But to dive into the topic.
Speaker 2: There there's nobody who's more associated with Vietnam than and
Speaker 2: Robert Man, okay, and Errol Morris, who I'm a great
Speaker 2: I've got great scheme for I mean, this was weird
Speaker 2: nevish type, but he he makes great films. You know,
Speaker 2: he did a documentary on Fred Later you know who
Speaker 2: authored the report. He did a documentary on on Donald Rumsfeld,
Speaker 2: you know, in his I mean not to go too
Speaker 2: far afield from our topic, but Errol Morris really pioneered
Speaker 2: the documentary style of filmmaking in a way that's become convention,
Speaker 2: and him letting his subject and his you know, obviously
Speaker 2: his primary uh, his primary efforts are biographical of historical
Speaker 2: personages or of people are just interested in, like in
Speaker 2: the case of Laketer, but putting the camera on the
Speaker 2: subject and letting the subject just testify, and Morris asking
Speaker 2: his questions off camera or the or the you know,
Speaker 2: the filmmaker or the interviewer asking off camera like Morris
Speaker 2: and vented that style. But he I highly recommend anybody
Speaker 2: The Fog of War. I think it was released in
Speaker 2: two thousand and three. That's a pretty good kind of
Speaker 2: capsule summary of McNamara's career from you know, it's the
Speaker 2: testimony of McNamara himself. But because it's only like a
Speaker 2: two and a half hour film, obviously a lot of
Speaker 2: things are left out. But I highly recommend that to
Speaker 2: anybody who wants to learn more about macnamara. So let's
Speaker 2: talk about the man himself, Robert S. McNamara the S
Speaker 2: stance for strange. His middle name was Strange, Robert Strange McNamara.
Speaker 2: He was the longest serving Secretary of Defense to this day,
Speaker 2: from nineteen sixty one to sixty eight. Nowadays, even administrations
Speaker 2: that have a comparatively strong mandate, you know, they played
Speaker 2: musical chairs with their cabinet postings. But even even uh,
Speaker 2: even in McNamara's epoch, it was unheard of for a
Speaker 2: Secretary of Defense to serve that long. Okay, like, why
Speaker 2: did he serve this long? Well? Mat the Mari team
Speaker 2: from Humble oura Jins. He was born in San Francisco
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixteen. His father was the sales manager of
Speaker 2: some kind of wholesale firm that literally made shoes and
Speaker 2: other things like this, okay, like shoes and boots for
Speaker 2: you know, like nurses and factory workers, So I mean
Speaker 2: like part of the upper kind of like the lower
Speaker 2: middle class, upper working class. He proved himself to be
Speaker 2: a prodigy of swords with mathematics what we consider to
Speaker 2: be logistics and data management, well, I mean logitics. Is
Speaker 2: this in those days we consided to be like data
Speaker 2: management today. He graduated ninety thirty seven from Berkeley, went
Speaker 2: out of the Harvard Business School in ninth and graduate
Speaker 2: ninety thirty nine. Obviously, right around this time, you know,
Speaker 2: the New Dealers War was was jumping off. It was
Speaker 2: only about you know, two years away. And when Magnamar
Speaker 2: found himself in uniform, he ended up in the Army
Speaker 2: Air Corps. And guys of his kind of caliber and
Speaker 2: intellect tended to be shuttled that way for obvious reasons.
Speaker 2: And he uh he entered the army as a captain
Speaker 2: in forty three. He served under Curtis Lamy, who then
Speaker 2: was a colonel with macnamarin La May. And it's interesting
Speaker 2: because macdernala May and and and McNamara gets into this
Speaker 2: in the in the Fog of War documentary, Like mcnamver
Speaker 2: is probably the closest thing Lea May had like a friend,
Speaker 2: but like mac namers, you know, and he's like, I,
Speaker 2: I I don't. I felt like I didn't really know
Speaker 2: the man very well, you know, at all. And then
Speaker 2: it's like when when Lamy died, apparently May's widow, kind
Speaker 2: of mac namaran is like, yeah, Curtis said, you know,
Speaker 2: he loved you. He said all these great things about you,
Speaker 2: and mc namurrs like, really, like I idly heard the
Speaker 2: guys say more than one word, but any of it.
Speaker 2: Matthamas as a young officer kind of a defecto adjutant
Speaker 2: to le May. He he kind of demonstrated his chops
Speaker 2: for uh, for military logistics and just kind of you know,
Speaker 2: applied applied analysis of of of of you know, the
Speaker 2: mission at hand and in terms of like getting results
Speaker 2: within the you know, rationale of what of of what
Speaker 2: armyra coor was charged within the Pacific. Le May and
Speaker 2: mag the mirror. They came up with a way to
Speaker 2: assault the Japanese mainland from the Marianas Islands instead of
Speaker 2: having to you know, jumped the Himalayas it has been
Speaker 2: his had been done. And this o the things I
Speaker 2: don't quite understand, like you know, fuel consumption versus load,
Speaker 2: you know, versus you know, travel within or rebolvable, the
Speaker 2: jet stream and all these kinds of things. You know,
Speaker 2: the complex the complex calculus of the then nascent science
Speaker 2: of uh military aviation. Okay, so the magna mirror. The
Speaker 2: guy really was a polymath. Okay, I mean he and
Speaker 2: he demonstrated that really by the time he was about
Speaker 2: thirty years old. Well, my man, I got discharged. He
Speaker 2: ended up at the Ford Motor Company in nineteen forty six.
Speaker 2: And uh, the Ford Motor Company. It seems strange these
Speaker 2: days it was like a college reason't really meaning thing.
Speaker 2: But in those days when it was a rare credential
Speaker 2: and when uh, unless you were one of these kind
Speaker 2: of rich boys went to Yale or something, if you
Speaker 2: went to college on merit, it's because you were a
Speaker 2: guy who really really knew his stuff. There was very
Speaker 2: view there's there's there's a dearth of of of managers
Speaker 2: and an executive officers at Ford Motor Company were college educated.
Speaker 2: So guys like mcnamurr was in demand. He got recruited
Speaker 2: dinner in the as a manager of planning and financial analysis.
Speaker 2: He he he advanced rapidly by nineteen sixty when he
Speaker 2: was in his early when yeah, it was in his
Speaker 2: late Yeah, it was nearly forties, been like forty three
Speaker 2: forty four. Uh, he became the first president of Ford
Speaker 2: Motor Company outside the Ford family, Okay, which was a
Speaker 2: huge deal. And this was November ninth, which is a
Speaker 2: date that I think we're all familiar with, and if
Speaker 2: you were not before, I hope that after watching stuff
Speaker 2: that Pete nos I do, you're familiar with it now.
Speaker 2: November nineth nineties sixty was when he became first president
Speaker 2: of Ford. This was one day after after JFK was elected.
Speaker 2: And uh, during his uh, during his tenure at Ford,
Speaker 2: both as what we now consider a quant and like
Speaker 2: a corporate accountant, and during his brief tenure as president,
Speaker 2: he's credited with basically like making Ford competitive in the
Speaker 2: post war period, like after like the government pork like
Speaker 2: went away obviously, and this in the nineteen fifties and
Speaker 2: early sixties, like a huge amount of American automakers like
Speaker 2: just cease towigs. It's okay, I mean the all these
Speaker 2: kind of a kind of brand. Some of them endured
Speaker 2: like ame c endured to like the seventies or eighties,
Speaker 2: but like there's a huge number of of automotive brands
Speaker 2: that went under during the nineteen fifties. It was I
Speaker 2: mean that, uh, I means one part, one part market corrective,
Speaker 2: one part that just you know, just the scaling back
Speaker 2: of of the subsidies they'd enjoyed, you know, during the
Speaker 2: kind of staladays of the new deal for big manufacturing firms.
Speaker 2: But in any event, JFK. Whatever we can say about him,
Speaker 2: and I don't want to. I don't want to get
Speaker 2: into a discussion on the man's merit or character or
Speaker 2: that of his politics. One thing I said disputable is
Speaker 2: that uh, he he with the exception of of of
Speaker 2: the kind of naked nepotism in the case of his brother.
Speaker 2: But I consider that to be more of a matter
Speaker 2: of self preservation, you know, with installing him and as
Speaker 2: the Attorney general, with the exception to that. Kennedy or
Speaker 2: and ors advisors, they had a remarkable eye for cabinet talent,
Speaker 2: and Kennedy's uh Kennedy's first choice for Secretary of Defense
Speaker 2: was Robert A. Love It, who'd been the secondary defense
Speaker 2: under Truman. Interestingly from fifty one to fifty three, height
Speaker 2: of the Korean War, so obviously Kennedy was looking at
Speaker 2: it for a man who had served as a wartime
Speaker 2: Secretary of Defense, Okay, which indicates the kind of hard
Speaker 2: realism pre Cuba that Kennedy's not conventionally credited with. But
Speaker 2: that I think it's clear if people know how to
Speaker 2: read between the lines. But the reason why he broke
Speaker 2: love at first is because he didn't. He nobody thought
Speaker 2: that man Kimura would leave for a mortar company. So
Speaker 2: it's like it wasn't even it wasn't even like consideration,
Speaker 2: not on grounds his mirror or anything. It's just that,
Speaker 2: you know, the guy with a freaking all star and
Speaker 2: love it also have been appropiated. George Marshall and I.
Speaker 2: I don't think the Marshall Plan was this great power coup.
Speaker 2: I don't think it accomplished much of anything other than
Speaker 2: other than putting some shine on the occupation regime, which
Speaker 2: really which needed to be rehabilitated, UH in order to
Speaker 2: get the Boomist Republic to play ball the way the
Speaker 2: Truman and Hour and the Truman and later I administrations
Speaker 2: needed it to. But that's another story. George Marshall heed
Speaker 2: trumant his clout in those days, and UH A lot
Speaker 2: aside in the fact again that he you know, he
Speaker 2: uh he cut his teeth as a wartime defense secretary
Speaker 2: public the fact that prior to that he serves Marshall's
Speaker 2: Undersecretary of Defense, and he was very much a protegy
Speaker 2: of the guy. But uh a lot of declined. He's like,
Speaker 2: you know, out of raw fatigue, I think. But also
Speaker 2: he said, you know, I you uh, you should, you
Speaker 2: should you should poach magnam Era because he'll probably take it.
Speaker 2: And uh, Kennedy went through started shreiver uh and offered
Speaker 2: him the Secretary of Defense position or the Secretary of
Speaker 2: the Treasury. Magnumer immediately accepted the appointment of Secretary of Defense.
Speaker 2: Was Magma knowledgeable about defense matter as well? I mean,
Speaker 2: I mean compared to compared to anybody since uh Cheney.
Speaker 2: Let me qualify that. I mean, I hope people think
Speaker 2: not not in proud of that Cheney's a total piece
Speaker 2: of shit. When Chaney was Secretary of Defense under Bush
Speaker 2: forty three, I think he very much had a sense
Speaker 2: of what needed to be done in the transition era
Speaker 2: from the UH from the from the as the Cold
Speaker 2: Wars literally ending, Okay, And I only invoked him because
Speaker 2: regardless of the guy's character, which I think we're gonna
Speaker 2: agree is not something laudable, and whatever other issues he has,
Speaker 2: he was a highly qualified Secretary of Defense. No, we
Speaker 2: did not come up through the military, but he was
Speaker 2: something of a polymath, and he understood military matters as
Speaker 2: we are as policy or the roomies the road in
Speaker 2: a really splendid way. Subsequently, I think the Secretary Defense
Speaker 2: these days is something is is kind of uh, it's
Speaker 2: almost like it's almost like kremlinology. You gotta look through
Speaker 2: the kind of a pig. There's always like sinecures that
Speaker 2: don't mean anything anymore, and people's titles don't actually indicate
Speaker 2: what their roles in fact are, like I think I
Speaker 2: think Robert Gates was the de facto like shadow foreign
Speaker 2: policy president. I also think that Secretary Defense has become
Speaker 2: Secretary of State in a real way, which is very strange.
Speaker 2: But in the Kennedy era, these cabinet positions carried a
Speaker 2: lot more weight and uh, there's a lot more transparency
Speaker 2: in terms of the man who said who held the
Speaker 2: office was very much the decision maker, with some mirrow exceptions.
Speaker 2: You know, uh, there when you have an executive. It
Speaker 2: was as much of a who was as much of
Speaker 2: a hands on the sort of authoritarian his FDR. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they're very much for some people are ciphers and key roles,
Speaker 2: because he simply didn't want them to do anything. But
Speaker 2: exempting that, you know, you, uh, if you've got a
Speaker 2: pointed Secretary of Defense, you were a pretty heavy hitter.
Speaker 2: And magnaver was one of the fourth Secretary of Defense
Speaker 2: because until you know, the until Nuremberg was Secretary of
Speaker 2: War was the cabinet posting. But that's that's uh, there's
Speaker 2: a lot to unpack there, frankly, but that's that's outside
Speaker 2: our scope. But in any event, mcmaarr was kind of
Speaker 2: a perfect choice for this arrow, okay, because uh, the
Speaker 2: technology and I mean this was this was the dawn
Speaker 2: of the information age, Okay, like computing as we know
Speaker 2: it was very much just kind of beginning then, and
Speaker 2: it begun during the Second World War, but in an
Speaker 2: applied capacity it was emergent. Uh, macnamara understood logistics better
Speaker 2: than anybody. He understood highly scaled systems and management of
Speaker 2: those systems and how do I identify variables and the
Speaker 2: bouted rationality of the system in question and what it
Speaker 2: was purposed for. You can identify like what was most
Speaker 2: essential to production. And that's an odd skill set. That's
Speaker 2: kind of like what management comes down to in the
Speaker 2: burn up sense of managerialism. I mean when I say management,
Speaker 2: I don't mean some dick who like manages a home depot,
Speaker 2: and I don't mean like the way you eat like
Speaker 2: fatty char ladies talking about management. I mean in terms
Speaker 2: of you know, actual actually knowing how to knowing how
Speaker 2: to optimize the performance of of a both the human
Speaker 2: element and the autonomous element within some highly scaled structure,
Speaker 2: you know, with all kinds of variables, some which are
Speaker 2: more essential than others, you know, but the core ones
Speaker 2: that facilitate productivity and the most concrete ways you know,
Speaker 2: need be identified by most people can't do that, and
Speaker 2: particularly in un member his day. Yeah, as it just indicated,
Speaker 2: you know, this was like the dawn of the information age,
Speaker 2: and you know technology there's there's gonna punctuated equal every
Speaker 2: of the technology and then we can all agree on that.
Speaker 2: You know. Uh, it's like once there's there'll be one
Speaker 2: innovation and then you know that that that that leads
Speaker 2: to others. You know, in a very kind of in
Speaker 2: a very kind of in a very kind of rampid capacity.
Speaker 2: This was under this what was underway, But you didn't
Speaker 2: have at your disposal like all this kind of you know,
Speaker 2: you didn't. You didn't have consumer tech that we take
Speaker 2: for granted and big business in those days. You know,
Speaker 2: like you didn't you you you're basically like using like
Speaker 2: a pen and paper an antarchist like proverbially and sometimes literally,
Speaker 2: you know, to handle like massive realms of data. So, uh,
Speaker 2: the kind of like the right man in the role
Speaker 2: and the aromastos men not for conspiratorial reasons but rand
Speaker 2: their pological ones. You know that it was this was
Speaker 2: this was more essential then than even today, although it's
Speaker 2: still like remains essential. But Macnamer's philosophy, in his own words,
Speaker 2: was uh. He said, the senator defense in the then
Speaker 2: current era had to take an quote active role. He said, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, he aimed to provide aggressive leadership, questioning, suggesting alternatives,
Speaker 2: proposing objectives, and stimulating progress, just as he had done
Speaker 2: at Ford Motor Company. That might sound corny on its
Speaker 2: face or like corporate pr like magnamr Is the Concert
Speaker 2: company man, but in his case, I think he really
Speaker 2: believed that, and honestly, I think in a lot of
Speaker 2: respects that's like what he accomplished. He rejected radical organizational changes. Look,
Speaker 2: I just indicated there was there's a lot of people, uh,
Speaker 2: both within the military establishment and also within the policy establishment.
Speaker 2: And this was very incestuous in some case is too,
Speaker 2: but on Capitol Hill there's all kinds of people who
Speaker 2: are trying to force uh, you know, these kind of
Speaker 2: top down changes to the military apparatus. You know the
Speaker 2: command structure, you know the way forces it being were organized,
Speaker 2: you know, uh at at that division level, and you know, uh,
Speaker 2: and and what weapons systems we're gonna get privileged over others?
Speaker 2: There even there was really is that there was a
Speaker 2: there was there was debate about the draft and its future. Okay,
Speaker 2: uh this Uh there was a committee I cannot remember
Speaker 2: the name of it, and I'm sorry, headed by a senator,
Speaker 2: uh Stewart Synington. He wanted to his committee with him
Speaker 2: leading the charge. They wanted to abolish the discrete military departments.
Speaker 2: They wanted to replace the joint chief the single chief
Speaker 2: of staff and you know not and and and and
Speaker 2: give him dominion over they wanted to like an inner
Speaker 2: service command structure. Okay, you know, you abolish discrete ranks
Speaker 2: between the services. You have like this unitary command structure
Speaker 2: that went to this one man who in turned of
Speaker 2: accountable only to the president and his national security cabin which,
Speaker 2: in my opinion is a terrible idea, but like this
Speaker 2: this was kind of thing among other stuff that was
Speaker 2: being taken seriously then, you know, and mat the mirror
Speaker 2: as soon as he took office, He's like, no, that
Speaker 2: that ship's over with, you know, like, shut the fuck up.
Speaker 2: That's not happening. You know, we're not well, we maybe
Speaker 2: will be you know, we we maybe will be fighting
Speaker 2: World War three at you know, in a few years,
Speaker 2: we're probably gonna be at war, you know, in in
Speaker 2: a secondary theater, you know, within months. We're not when
Speaker 2: we're not gonna completely upset the We're not gonna cpletely
Speaker 2: upset the wagon and uh for the apple cart, you know,
Speaker 2: and and start playing games with you know, with with
Speaker 2: force structure organization. And that was and that and that
Speaker 2: actually that that was that that that was huge, okay,
Speaker 2: because things would have I Simington's idea was particularly stupid,
Speaker 2: I think, but there's all kinds there was all kinds
Speaker 2: of stuff being bandied about that wouldn't really that wouldn't
Speaker 2: really kind of upset the ability of h of the
Speaker 2: entire defense establishment to react. And really from from after
Speaker 2: the Cuba crisis, I mean in seventy three and then
Speaker 2: an eighty three, I mean, yeah, there was there was
Speaker 2: the punctity crisis of a strategic nature and that were
Speaker 2: truly critical, but about every two years, like in between,
Speaker 2: like you there were there was some kind of like
Speaker 2: what you can think of as like brush fire uh uh,
Speaker 2: crisis of a secondary in a secondary theater that that nonetheless,
Speaker 2: you know, like required an active response. And this ultimately,
Speaker 2: this is one of the things that led to like
Speaker 2: the creation a special Operations Command, but that that stuff
Speaker 2: had the scope too, you know, like a unitary command
Speaker 2: or special operations forces. Unfortunately, a lot of disasters happened
Speaker 2: for that to become uh implemented. But that's kind of
Speaker 2: always the way it is, not just with the military.
Speaker 2: But uh, what was Kennedy's polity policy envision If you
Speaker 2: want to understand Vietnam's escalation, I don't just mean the
Speaker 2: punctioning of escalation. That was yielded or exploited, depending on
Speaker 2: your perspective, by the Gulf of Tonkin resolution Vietnam. True
Speaker 2: engagement with Vietnam went began with Eisenhower, Okay, in a
Speaker 2: real capacity. And when when when Kennedy took the oath
Speaker 2: of office, there was there was special Operations forces types
Speaker 2: on the ground who were directly engaged with the communists. Okay.
Speaker 2: So I mean it's this this idea that you know,
Speaker 2: this idea that you know, like I said before we
Speaker 2: went live, Oh, Kennedy was trying to disengage from Sally Stasia.
Speaker 2: But then you know, Johnson, this this this bad guy,
Speaker 2: you know, just engage us, engage them. Is the country
Speaker 2: at war? Said he could you know, make money by
Speaker 2: you know, bell helicopters, selling selling stuff to the Pentagon
Speaker 2: or whatever the fuck? Alverst Stone and Howard is in
Speaker 2: claim that did not happen. Kennedy UH in his UH,
Speaker 2: in his UH speech to Congress in March twenty eighth,
Speaker 2: the UH, the core emphasis of the speech was defense.
Speaker 2: It was Cold war, it was UH, it was war
Speaker 2: in peace, it was power pilotic stuff. In part because
Speaker 2: you know, Nickson was always not just kind of on
Speaker 2: a campaign trail. I mean, Dixon was not just always
Speaker 2: trying to portray Kennedy as some as some punk rich
Speaker 2: kid who was went by in the years he was
Speaker 2: He's basically he basically was always calling him a pussy,
Speaker 2: you know, and saying like he's soft on communism. You know,
Speaker 2: he's a rich kid. He he doesn't he does not
Speaker 2: have the presence to command, nor does he have like
Speaker 2: the knowledge, you know, which is not wrong, because Kennedy
Speaker 2: was a lot of things, but he was like stay
Speaker 2: in the Kennedy's he was a gangster's son, and he
Speaker 2: was a war hero when he started in the brown Water.
Speaker 2: Like the dude was kind of a bit you know,
Speaker 2: like yeah, like yeah, he wasn't like a big pussy
Speaker 2: or whatever. I mean, yeah, but the but I mean
Speaker 2: politics is politics and being what it is. That's you know,
Speaker 2: and I mean it wasn't just Nix and other people too.
Speaker 2: They you know, Kennedy, he he had kind of like
Speaker 2: a boyish charm like our phony might think that is
Speaker 2: like he did not you know, he didn't come off
Speaker 2: as uh this like a heavy personage and especially succeeding
Speaker 2: Eisenhower like this, like the Soviets were genuinely afraid of Eisenhower,
Speaker 2: and uh, I think for good reason. Like I'm not,
Speaker 2: I don't think eys I was this rare genius like
Speaker 2: some people do. And uh, I think in some ways
Speaker 2: he was an ugly eye in terms of his character.
Speaker 2: But he uh, he was a ruthless so ob, you know,
Speaker 2: and he he definitely had a kind of command presence.
Speaker 2: I mean that goes without saying. But okay, the out
Speaker 2: line to to uh the March twenty eight, ninety sixty
Speaker 2: one speech when he outlined, as he said, look, massive
Speaker 2: retaliation is a doctrin and he's like, that's over. Okay.
Speaker 2: It's like, so is the new look as it's been
Speaker 2: you know, as it was uh euphemistically assigned. You know,
Speaker 2: He's like, we're not we're not gonna rely on on
Speaker 2: first un splendid first strike capability, nor are we just
Speaker 2: gonna rely on the nuclear deterrent, you know in low
Speaker 2: A conventional forces, like it's not realistic, it's totally flexible
Speaker 2: and and frankly it's uh and frankly it's it's it's
Speaker 2: totally it's it's it's it's it's morally bankrupt. You know,
Speaker 2: you don't you don't you don't keep the peace by
Speaker 2: threatening that several states of the world look like massive
Speaker 2: like genocidal counter value with Saul, you know, like as
Speaker 2: a standing policy, but it uh, I mean it being
Speaker 2: someone for but there really was like there, like the
Speaker 2: kind of MIDEU that Herman Khan came out of. And
Speaker 2: I think Herman Khan was great, and I'm not putting
Speaker 2: shit in him at all, but either the MIDEU of
Speaker 2: Khan and Van Neuman, like there were guys like like
Speaker 2: genuinely autistic guys, uh who'd uh you know, come up
Speaker 2: through uh academia and and game theory and stuff. Who
Speaker 2: who were suggesting things that you know, made sense in
Speaker 2: terms of you know, the the raw variables of of
Speaker 2: balance of forces and capabilities or were just like where
Speaker 2: just like grossly moral offensive, morally offensive in terms of
Speaker 2: like uh, in terms of policy orientation, but I mean
Speaker 2: like doctor Strange Love Like yeah, it's like it seems
Speaker 2: like over the top ridiculous, like something that piecedic movie,
Speaker 2: but it was like ranging on like a real phenomon,
Speaker 2: you know, like uh, which is which is kind of
Speaker 2: funny but also kind of fucked up. But uh, the
Speaker 2: he Kennedy also, to his credit, and this wasn't realized
Speaker 2: until Carter and a presidential director of fifty eight and
Speaker 2: fifty nine. And obviously the technology at that point it
Speaker 2: made it far more critical for human decision makers to
Speaker 2: assert control over nuclear arms and commanding control. But things
Speaker 2: were already moving in that direction whereby not only were
Speaker 2: we we're we're human decision makers being sidelined, but the
Speaker 2: military and specifically Strategic Air Command was very much taking
Speaker 2: control of these processes. And Kennedy, you know, said that
Speaker 2: Scott to stop, you know, and and mag and Urra
Speaker 2: was exactly the man to kind of see to that,
Speaker 2: you know, in terms of structuring forces and protocol strategic forces,
Speaker 2: I mean to uh, to obviate the threat of of
Speaker 2: civilian control and the commander in chief role being appropriated
Speaker 2: by by a military element. He manter I believed it
Speaker 2: more to obviate that than anybody until Carter. And as
Speaker 2: we get into the Carter era, we're gonna talk about
Speaker 2: like all that cool stuff. I think it's cool fancied
Speaker 2: by the late Cold War and the kind of strategic
Speaker 2: nuclear paradigm and and artificial intelligence there in some people
Speaker 2: will probably think that's boring as fuck, but I think
Speaker 2: it's really cool. But in any event, what's key, uh
Speaker 2: about Kennedy's policy speech on defense was uh, he said, quote,
Speaker 2: we need to operate with an eye to to quote
Speaker 2: prevent the steady erosion of the free world through limited wars. Now,
Speaker 2: this is the crux of why America went to war
Speaker 2: in Vietnam. Okay. The way you gotta look at the
Speaker 2: Cold War is that obviously there's the ongoing strategic nuclear
Speaker 2: threat of you know, a total war between WARSAW picked
Speaker 2: and NATO, which would be catastrophic. I mean that goes
Speaker 2: out saying, but the real issue on as a basic
Speaker 2: stability ensued between the superpowers, it could be imagined and
Speaker 2: the team b the you know, the the TV exercise
Speaker 2: and the men who uh, the men who organized and
Speaker 2: facilitated it and who were instrumentally getting regular elected. Frankly,
Speaker 2: the scenario these guys painted was like, look, imagine in
Speaker 2: America where essentially all of Asia save South Korea and Japan,
Speaker 2: all of Latin America, say, Mexico, all of Africa save
Speaker 2: like a handful of the Arab states who are nonetheless
Speaker 2: like Soviet aligned, you know, goes Communists or becomes basically
Speaker 2: sympathetic to the communist perspective and is either staked out,
Speaker 2: you know, a position of absolute which in the Cold War,
Speaker 2: or as a veil itself as a Soviet proxy. Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: America would survive in those circumstances, but it basically be
Speaker 2: as a garrison state that was kind of second rate
Speaker 2: power within the Western hemisphere, you know, surrounded by a
Speaker 2: hostile Like that's a very that that's a very dangerous
Speaker 2: world to live in. And a lot of the things
Speaker 2: we could even if even if some kind of perennial
Speaker 2: piece could be achieved, a lot of the things we
Speaker 2: take for granted, we just would not exist, you know.
Speaker 2: Uh that would it kind of frozen American tech and
Speaker 2: American wealth at a certain point because just by virtual
Speaker 2: of dominating the rest of the planet, you know, like
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union could have kind of like remade the
Speaker 2: world in its own image, kind of like how America
Speaker 2: like remade the world in its own image after nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty nine, which is not a good thing. But my
Speaker 2: point being, like people act like the Cold War was
Speaker 2: this kind of like ridiculous paranoid fantasy, or that it
Speaker 2: was like this excuse to like so munitions and helllicopters
Speaker 2: you know, by defense contractors, like it was in fact
Speaker 2: the real thing, and this was this was the potential outcome.
Speaker 2: Really until until Gorbachev and until the Stowe's folded their flag.
Speaker 2: It wasn't this binary thing like either you know, total
Speaker 2: war or peace or you know, ah, this communism doesn't work. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it doesn't work, but it doesn't matter all because of
Speaker 2: the ship doesn't work that you know. Nevertheless, like indoors
Speaker 2: or shuffles on like like some like like some fucking
Speaker 2: Frankenstein's monster or something like that. That was a very
Speaker 2: real possibility. And Kennedy's uh, what he was saying here
Speaker 2: is look, if we ignore, if if we ignore theaters
Speaker 2: like you know, China, if we ignore theaters it's up
Speaker 2: there in Africa. If we ignore especially you know, uh,
Speaker 2: developments in their own backyard. I mean, that's two folds
Speaker 2: on the road doctrine. But that aside a minute. You know,
Speaker 2: it's like we're gonna die like at death by a
Speaker 2: thousand cuts. That's regards our ability to you know, influence
Speaker 2: the course of politics and the rest of his planet.
Speaker 2: You know, and you do you really want to be
Speaker 2: like a garrison state, albeit a continent side garrison states
Speaker 2: as large as all deficient, self sufficient, But you do
Speaker 2: you really want to be like like the American island
Speaker 2: in like the Red World. I mean that that was
Speaker 2: that was not only poignant, but he was very realistic.
Speaker 2: And I give Kennedy aught of props for that for
Speaker 2: that speech. Like I said, I'm reading wind the lions
Speaker 2: as he intended, Gogress read wind the lines. But that's
Speaker 2: that's I'm not a Kennedy fan or apologist at all.
Speaker 2: But not only does that go ahead, I'm.
Speaker 1: Sorry, let me ask, Okay, he said that the Cold
Speaker 1: War was a very real thing. Is that because of
Speaker 1: was it?
Speaker 2: Was?
Speaker 1: It a continuing ideological war between the the neo conservatives
Speaker 1: and who started them and the Soviet Union that whole time.
Speaker 2: Well, there's wars within that, there's wars within that camp.
Speaker 2: I mean, do you want to know what I think?
Speaker 2: I agree with the Yaki's perspective that the Doctor's plots
Speaker 2: like that epoch, not that incident itself, but that incident
Speaker 2: was demonstrative like a break within the communist camp, like
Speaker 2: if the leadership cast Okay, and that's also one of
Speaker 2: the reasons why, like Israel up and just became like
Speaker 2: massively anti communists, like all of a sudden. Okay, so
Speaker 2: yeah there was that. The Soviet Union became this kind
Speaker 2: of strange thing, like, yeah, it was. It was. It
Speaker 2: clung to revolutionary socialism till the end of its life.
Speaker 2: But like was it a Marxist Leninist state, Like as
Speaker 2: much as such things existed, it was. But uh, you
Speaker 2: know what the Soviet Union really had going for it
Speaker 2: was the kind of Soviet DDR model that was really
Speaker 2: appealing in the people in the Third World. You know,
Speaker 2: like uh, Olive from North when he was under cover
Speaker 2: like doing verty shady things. When he landed the Monagua airport,
Speaker 2: he relaid back under like like State Department cover roof.
Speaker 2: He liked their teleux or whatever. He's like, a Managua
Speaker 2: airport it's a mirror. It's He's like it's a mirror
Speaker 2: image of a checkpoint Charlie in the inner German border.
Speaker 2: You know, He's like these a bunch of nicarag was
Speaker 2: running around acting like they're the Stazi. You know. He's
Speaker 2: like this is and I mean that spoke for itself.
Speaker 2: So even when even when Stalinism, even when the even
Speaker 2: when the even when the war's up pack kind of
Speaker 2: like even after sixty eight, and I mean even before
Speaker 2: like putting six days on the formal breach, you know,
Speaker 2: with the new Left, even when like nobody in France,
Speaker 2: nobody in the Netherlands, like even comedies, I mean like
Speaker 2: looked like the Soviet Union for inspiration, like you better
Speaker 2: believe that, like hundreds of millions of people in Africa
Speaker 2: and Latin America, you know, in Indonesia, like they did,
Speaker 2: you know, like that's they looked at that as like wow,
Speaker 2: this this is a great model of progress. And you
Speaker 2: know where we we don't need to suffer, you know,
Speaker 2: the we don't need to suffer the pain of exploitation
Speaker 2: to reach you know, uh, the bounty of of of
Speaker 2: technive technology and and plenty and modern productive, productive techniques.
Speaker 2: You know, all we have to do is sign on
Speaker 2: with the Soviet block and we'll get all those things.
Speaker 2: And plus like you know, they're gonna they're gonna lead us,
Speaker 2: They're gonna lead us to this tilleric utopia because eventually
Speaker 2: we're gonna fight America. I mean like that, and yeah,
Speaker 2: within that, like the godfathers and neo conservitism, like they
Speaker 2: became like on that target list ironically, Like that's why
Speaker 2: I like communists like a Frankenstein monster. Like a lot
Speaker 2: of people who are like called which is the meaning
Speaker 2: was term, but a lot of people are called like
Speaker 2: anti Semitic people are like, oh, how can you say that?
Speaker 2: You know, Communism was you know, emerged from the Jewish
Speaker 2: world of social existence. The Soviet Union hated Jews. It's like, well,
Speaker 2: there's such a thing as like, you know, there's such
Speaker 2: a thing as you know, a bale of prague. Okay,
Speaker 2: like you create something and it gets out of control
Speaker 2: or it turns on you. But it's also too like
Speaker 2: ideologies aren't any like one thing. It's like you can't
Speaker 2: say like communism was Jewish or just not Jewish or that.
Speaker 2: You know, the coalition that created it in Russia, you know,
Speaker 2: consisted of like X Y Z kind of people and
Speaker 2: nobody else. The Soviet it was a weird coalition of
Speaker 2: like indigenous Slavs, uh, you know who who hated the
Speaker 2: European overcast, you know, Uh, they were aligned with a
Speaker 2: slightly more cosmopolitan element, you know of of Ashkenazi Jews
Speaker 2: who hated that same overcast for different reasons. And these
Speaker 2: people don't really like each other, but they had common
Speaker 2: enemies and common interests. And when that fell apart in
Speaker 2: in large measure because uh, the situation of the Jewish
Speaker 2: people are internationally totally changed after Nuremberg again for the
Speaker 2: Delphin Declaration. Yeah, they stop keeping up appearances at all.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I agree with YACKI basically that if you
Speaker 2: were on the right after a after about ninety fifty
Speaker 2: three fifty four forty five, they were running around like
Speaker 2: a John Bircher like calling for the death of Ivan,
Speaker 2: you were, you were a fucking idiot, I mean basically
Speaker 2: because it Russian's definitely like the Soviet Union definitely wasn't it.
Speaker 2: Then Russian honestly is not really your friend if you're
Speaker 2: a white western man. But they're not really your enemy either,
Speaker 2: I mean, and it's they as a hedge against people
Speaker 2: who really are your enemy. Is better that they existently
Speaker 2: not exist. But that's probably a subject for whatever episode.
Speaker 2: But yeah, the but the Cold War, the way to
Speaker 2: understand it in very raw terms, especially in the Kennedy
Speaker 2: era before things got a little bit more complicated through
Speaker 2: the taunt and then like when the Colder jumped off
Speaker 2: again into Earnest in ninety it's not it's not reductions
Speaker 2: to say that there really was a quote colored revolt underway.
Speaker 2: This was the question of the day in power, political
Speaker 2: and military terms. It was very much led from Moscow.
Speaker 2: It was facilitated by warsaw pacts, arms, logistics, equipment, foodstuffs, technology, manpower, everything,
Speaker 2: and that's what was on the table. Yeah, there was
Speaker 2: no deeper nuances to like the ideology that had created it.
Speaker 2: But in uh and as the world that stood when
Speaker 2: Kennedy took the oath of office, like the Cold War
Speaker 2: was what I just described, and that was a very
Speaker 2: real thing, you know, Like I said, there were yeah,
Speaker 2: guys like Yaki, guys I got a Reamer Yaqui was
Speaker 2: dead by then. But what he'd been saying before, and
Speaker 2: what Reamer was saying until the d die was you know, uh,
Speaker 2: you get if you're a European, you know who's under
Speaker 2: occupation and which all which they all were. I mean
Speaker 2: it's still this day, but in those days, you know,
Speaker 2: the Red Army was also in Berlin. But uh, you know,
Speaker 2: I said, you need to be very careful about what
Speaker 2: you wished for and in and and and then advocating that,
Speaker 2: you know, the Soviet Union should be destroyed because it's
Speaker 2: really the only hedge against the traditional enemy of Europe.
Speaker 2: And I agree with that, but uh, for our purposes,
Speaker 2: I have besides the world situation as it was in
Speaker 2: ken of the other of office, because like people this
Speaker 2: idea like oh, you know, what a bunch of horse ship,
Speaker 2: we got to go fight the communists and now or
Speaker 2: or they'll be over here, like that was not what
Speaker 2: was on the table. And that's not what anybody thought.
Speaker 2: And the potredominant theory. Wasn't this like crazy thing that
Speaker 2: John Bircher's thought or that crazy general's thought, like this
Speaker 2: was actually happening like huge swaths of the planet or
Speaker 2: going red. Okay, Stalinism had real cachet and you know,
Speaker 2: a huge in in in in one huge global popular
Speaker 2: and the entire like Raizon Detras. Opposedly, neurim Berg was
Speaker 2: we're gonna create this world society. I know, we even
Speaker 2: have the United Nations and so okay, well if like
Speaker 2: you know, at that at that time, and then there's
Speaker 2: about like and I think there's about like five billion
Speaker 2: people in the world. It's like, well, if like four
Speaker 2: billion of those five million people like think that communism
Speaker 2: is great, you've got a problem. Okay. I mean that's
Speaker 2: what the Cold War was about. It wasn't about you know,
Speaker 2: when I walk outside Terry Hood, Indiana, you know there's
Speaker 2: gonna be some there's gonna be some chinaman with a
Speaker 2: red star in his head and being it. You know,
Speaker 2: it's gonna like fucking you know, charge me and and
Speaker 2: like you know, turn me into fucking sashimi and like
Speaker 2: enslave my wife and you know, make everybody's go to
Speaker 2: the drive in and watch like shitty communist movies. Nobody likes.
Speaker 2: Like that's not what people thought. Maybe some people thought that,
Speaker 2: but that's not you know, like that, that's not what
Speaker 2: underlay the Cold War, and like people like, man.
Speaker 1: Well, let me let me ask you another question. It
Speaker 1: almost makes it almost makes it sound like you could,
Speaker 1: like somebody would say that they're reactionaries and how you
Speaker 1: know how people on the right are always just we're
Speaker 1: all reactionaries. It makes it sound like if the if
Speaker 1: the third world is turning red and these dominoes are falling,
Speaker 1: there's a reason why they're doing it, and they're reacting
Speaker 1: to what they're seeing happening to Europe. Basically, yeah, and.
Speaker 2: It seems like that's the case too. And that's why
Speaker 2: I mean today there's something that is I spend a
Speaker 2: lot of time. I spent a lot of time reading
Speaker 2: about and kind of studying as much as they can
Speaker 2: what uh what what what what some of these like
Speaker 2: Middle Eastern Nazi the actors are doing. And a bunch
Speaker 2: of these guys like a popular Front deliberies at Palestine
Speaker 2: General Command, like who who are big time a lie
Speaker 2: with Worsaw act like they flipped his lomic like very
Speaker 2: profoundly okay, and like very immediately after the wall came
Speaker 2: now and like some people be like, oh, you know,
Speaker 2: those guys just being mercenary and doing what they have
Speaker 2: to do to keep you know, money and weapons flowing.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's that simple, man. I think to
Speaker 2: your point, a lot of these guys they were basically
Speaker 2: they basically had contempt for like the features of capitalist
Speaker 2: modernity that they considered to be like most offensive. You know,
Speaker 2: whether it's like sexual essentiousness or you know, like the
Speaker 2: erosion of uh of of meaningful roles for men and
Speaker 2: women or you know, like mixing between races or you know, pornography,
Speaker 2: and I there there is a certain puritanical aspect of
Speaker 2: communism as it manifested in the Third World, but even otherwise,
Speaker 2: you know, like that was one of the things the
Speaker 2: uh that was that was a cause of refrain. There's
Speaker 2: like I'll get the fuck device and stuff in the DDR,
Speaker 2: you know, like I mean there was like not like narcotics,
Speaker 2: but like prostitution and sex stuff and all kinds of
Speaker 2: really crummy social ills. But at least the official line
Speaker 2: was that this stuff nasty, it's it's it's it's it's deplorable. Uh,
Speaker 2: this is the kind of thing characteristic in the Capital
Speaker 2: is West, Like we don't have any truck with that,
Speaker 2: and and this kind of thing should should be identified
Speaker 2: and stopped out wherever we find it. So yeah, I
Speaker 2: think there's an aspect of that and uh and yeah,
Speaker 2: that's but that was that was the jockey's old point
Speaker 2: and some of the people he inspired subsequent, like Thompson
Speaker 2: and like and like James Maddle who a lot of
Speaker 2: people think it was a crank. I actually hold him
Speaker 2: in a lot of steam. Uh. They that that was
Speaker 2: the point is the op points that Washington and New
Speaker 2: Yorker are in Los Angeles are or help a lot
Speaker 2: more quote unquote red and Moscow in East Berlin ever
Speaker 2: were ever will be. So yeah, there's an aspect of
Speaker 2: that that's a kind of a good question, and it's
Speaker 2: like a it's like a question, is it quite It's
Speaker 2: like a theoretical philosophical aspect to it, like we just raised,
Speaker 2: but there's also like a practical aspect and in concrete terms,
Speaker 2: the way people we are like leading their lives, you know,
Speaker 2: like you raised two that's what That's why I raised
Speaker 2: the use of these Middle Eastern peoples and stuff, because
Speaker 2: I was I think they're kind of like a bell
Speaker 2: weather for sort of radical tendencies. But I mean, that's
Speaker 2: that's my I've got my own thoughts on that, and
Speaker 2: that's that is like way too far outside of scope.
Speaker 2: But yeah, i'll uh i'll uh i'll uh I'll try.
Speaker 2: I'll try and get to the point and I wrap
Speaker 2: this up to realize, been a rambling for a minute,
Speaker 2: but the.
Speaker 1: Uh, I can ask questions to get people doing that.
Speaker 2: But no, no, I I I appreciate you asking questions, man,
Speaker 2: Like I I appreciate that, like the give and take.
Speaker 2: I mean you, I mean you always you always in
Speaker 2: situ way like meaningful stuff that i't a lot of
Speaker 2: time I haven't thought about. But also it's just, uh
Speaker 2: it helps me because I I have wore sometimes that
Speaker 2: like I go out too many tangents because my brain
Speaker 2: just sort of works that way. But yeah, I way
Speaker 2: interject whenever you want and don't. I'm not gonna feel
Speaker 2: explated or something. But the uh, the the uh yeah,
Speaker 2: Kennedy's basically I mean would basically underlay all this too
Speaker 2: in uh again kind of like raw strategic terms too,
Speaker 2: like without I mean, aside from the politics. Kennedy realized
Speaker 2: that you need a lot of you for lack of
Speaker 2: I forgive me if this sounds like flippant or silly,
Speaker 2: but you need like a number of mini options in
Speaker 2: military affairs in terms of your response. Okay, it can't
Speaker 2: just be either like massive assault, massive counter value assault,
Speaker 2: or some kind of like inglorious retreat or doing nothing,
Speaker 2: you know. I mean that's uh, it's like Highlight said
Speaker 2: the Starship Troopers like this, which is like a thinly
Speaker 2: veiled metaphor. I think the critique of a of a
Speaker 2: like Eisenhower, Truman and Eisenhower era military thinking. Like some
Speaker 2: young officer Cannedy says it like this grizzled like invagery captain, Like,
Speaker 2: what the hell, what the hell do we need conventional
Speaker 2: invagery for? And the captain it's like, let me ask
Speaker 2: you something like if a child's misbehaving, you cut his
Speaker 2: head off or you stink him, you know, like you
Speaker 2: you know, you know, you'll just like maintain a hatchets
Speaker 2: like in the misbehaving child. You know. That's uh which
Speaker 2: seems like the Coby kind of silly, but it's actually poignant.
Speaker 2: And uh yeah, that's something we take for granted as
Speaker 2: the way things develop, particularly through the Reagan era and
Speaker 2: in terms of military affairs. I mean, but in the
Speaker 2: nineteen and in the nineteen fifties, really through like fifteen
Speaker 2: ninety sixty, people were literally talking that way, like hey,
Speaker 2: we've got nuclear arms we can threaten anybody with, you know,
Speaker 2: basically like counter value genocide, Like why why do we
Speaker 2: need why do we need invest around with conventional forces?
Speaker 2: You know? And that's that seems crazy, but that but
Speaker 2: it wasn't just I'm not talking about like I'm not
Speaker 2: just talking about like goofballs like in the media or
Speaker 2: something like you equivalent of like internet guys of the day,
Speaker 2: Like I mean like like actual guys would out and
Speaker 2: policymaking circles, you know, and guys who had uh, who
Speaker 2: had a chest full of ribbons and and and a
Speaker 2: half full of brass like you know, fucking talking this
Speaker 2: white man. But it's Macnamara. And then that's why we'll
Speaker 2: get into this I g as we as we proceed
Speaker 2: in our series. But the roots of the revolution and
Speaker 2: military affairs are here with Macnamara, and Macnamara one of
Speaker 2: the things he diligently worked towards, I mean, the Vietnam
Speaker 2: War ended up taking off like a huge amount of
Speaker 2: his time and labors, but obviously but uh, developing a
Speaker 2: conventional capability not just for the purpose of flexible response,
Speaker 2: but to really make like a devastating conventional capability the
Speaker 2: kind of sphere point of American power that very much
Speaker 2: came from Magnamara. And he realized the way the world
Speaker 2: was going, and uh, part of it was he realized,
Speaker 2: you know what we just talked about that you know,
Speaker 2: nuclear arms are purpose for a very very specific exigency
Speaker 2: that almost never ever ever occurs. But also just you know, uh,
Speaker 2: the dawn of the information age, the uh, you know,
Speaker 2: the kind of rapid, uh punctuated development of all these
Speaker 2: applied technologies. You know, like things were becoming possible in
Speaker 2: the battlefield that were unthinkable even you know, twenty years ago,
Speaker 2: you know, and and in the in the then present,
Speaker 2: it's the uh and Macnamer Macnair's fortune is really during
Speaker 2: the Kennedy administration. I mean, if you need any more
Speaker 2: evidence that Kennedy really did kind of marry the US
Speaker 2: and the Republic of Vietnam in terms of in terms
Speaker 2: of you know, uh, global security policy. Uh, it was
Speaker 2: uh it was mac damara who who put together really
Speaker 2: the first military advisory group that landed in Vietnam, like
Speaker 2: in real depth. I mean, yeah, going back to Eisenhower,
Speaker 2: there's been you know, advisor on the ground what became
Speaker 2: Military Assistants Command of Vietnam, you know mc V. It was, uh,
Speaker 2: it was during was when Kennedy was still alive. It
Speaker 2: was during the last you know, like year and a
Speaker 2: half of his life or whatever. The mac namara raised
Speaker 2: force levels to about for a few hundred about to
Speaker 2: about seventeen thousand, okay, and I mean this was well
Speaker 2: before the Golf of Tonkin incident, Okay, in August nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty four, after mister Kennedy was dead, of course. But
Speaker 2: the uh, the and the Golf of Tonkin is a
Speaker 2: tricky issue too, Like I I don't know how to
Speaker 2: approach that because it warns more attention than I'm giving
Speaker 2: it right now. But people talk about it like I
Speaker 2: know that I'm gonna get it, like hate messages for this,
Speaker 2: because I do. Anyway, from the libertarians, a libertarians have
Speaker 2: this idea about the uh about about Article one an
Speaker 2: Article two, like expressly delegated powers they do these things
Speaker 2: like they do the gold standard, like something like they're
Speaker 2: Sacroe stack and never ever change or something. But formal
Speaker 2: declarations of war between powers that enjoy equalities of status
Speaker 2: and a multipolar world where if have planet's like divided up,
Speaker 2: you know, between these information powers and where like a
Speaker 2: change in the status of relations comes from like a
Speaker 2: formal declaration of war. And this is a recognized policy
Speaker 2: instrument that doesn't happen anymore. Maybe that's bad, maybe it's not,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't happen anymore. And since Nuremberg. It's not
Speaker 2: thinkable for that to happen anymore so for guys to
Speaker 2: come out and be like, well, actually it requires a
Speaker 2: declaration of war. Like, no, that's not how things work, okay,
Speaker 2: And I'm not gonna like worry aboudy the next position
Speaker 2: for the next hour, and like why it doesn't work
Speaker 2: that way? But it doesn't. And you've got to take
Speaker 2: my word for that, okay. And and Article two and
Speaker 2: expressing delegated power that is not negotiable and does not
Speaker 2: change with the times. Is the president being the commander
Speaker 2: in chief okay? And the president ability to command forces
Speaker 2: is not contingent upon a nineteenth century style declaration of war. Okay. However,
Speaker 2: considering Congress controls the purse strings, it's a good idea
Speaker 2: to make your case for why you should get, you know,
Speaker 2: endless money in cargo to wage the war. That's what
Speaker 2: the Gulf of Talking was about, Okay. Was it a ruse?
Speaker 2: Maybe it was, Maybe it wasn't. It doesn't matter. Josh
Speaker 2: was gonna get his war somehow, or his mandate somehow.
Speaker 2: With Johnson's war, Congress had to find a way to
Speaker 2: give him the uh, give him the uh, the the
Speaker 2: the Tabula rossa to do so and to and also
Speaker 2: signal of the Pentagon that they were willing to they
Speaker 2: were willing to foot the bill. And this is the
Speaker 2: way it came together, you know, basically to protect the record,
Speaker 2: you know, because America, I mean, he's the fiction of oh,
Speaker 2: we're always fighting defensive wars. Hey, we were attacked. And finally,
Speaker 2: like we talked about in the last episode, there was
Speaker 2: a lot of fictions that went into the drawing of
Speaker 2: the map and into China after nineteen fifty five, and
Speaker 2: whether North and South Vietnam or truly sovereign states that
Speaker 2: was even really clear because the only the seventieth parallel
Speaker 2: was supposed to be a stop gap measure pending you
Speaker 2: know name pending country wide elections were by the to
Speaker 2: be a single seat of government and that didn't happen.
Speaker 2: And the UH and and the DM government claimed initially
Speaker 2: that that was because the NLF, you know, the viet Cong,
Speaker 2: you know, had resorted to violence in order to in
Speaker 2: order to sway in order to sway you know, opinion
Speaker 2: in their favor to terror. So these elections are definitely postponed. So,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's not as simple as well you know,
Speaker 2: the Republic of Vietnam's a sovereign country and it's under
Speaker 2: assaults and we have an obligation to them moral as
Speaker 2: well as duristic. Like the beginning it is that it's
Speaker 2: not as it's not so simple the sailor the Golf
Speaker 2: of Tonkin incident, for the alleged incident, and the resolution
Speaker 2: was like some ruse by evil mister LBJ to you know,
Speaker 2: get a war man date or so mucho a lie
Speaker 2: and oh, by the way, that's illegitimate anyway, because there's
Speaker 2: no declaration of war like it's eighteen forty like not.
Speaker 2: That's not the way he approached it. And like I said,
Speaker 2: I know people are gonna send me like fucking messages.
Speaker 2: I don't care if I'm right and you're wrong, but
Speaker 2: that's important and I'm I'm the last person who's gonna
Speaker 2: defend LBJ in the record. But whether it been Kennedy,
Speaker 2: whether it been Ike, whether it had been mister Nixon, uh,
Speaker 2: they probably would have finastic goal better than LBJ did.
Speaker 2: But they would have gotten their warman day in some
Speaker 2: similar way. Okay, they just would have Okay, that's that's
Speaker 2: not arguable. Obviously, after the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was
Speaker 2: m was rushed through. Uh that's uh basically the escalation
Speaker 2: over Vietnam like but it literally began like with the
Speaker 2: air war, and inially it was massive intiliatory air strikes
Speaker 2: against naval targets and and and targets within a North
Speaker 2: Vietnam proper that were said to, you know, be facilitating
Speaker 2: it's it's it's it's blue water navy capability, which you
Speaker 2: know supposedly is what had brought you know, American vessels
Speaker 2: under assault. But from there, I mean the uh, the
Speaker 2: kind of fix was in and people can I mean
Speaker 2: the fixes in run characterizecuse. Like I said, I believe
Speaker 2: within the bound rationality of the Cold War, the Vietnam
Speaker 2: War had to be fought, okay, and I I stand
Speaker 2: by that position. But mag Namara, even it had that
Speaker 2: not been the case, you know, man if in this
Speaker 2: area defense, uh, you know, like a he can an officer,
Speaker 2: I mean, you're you're accountable the commander in chief. Okay,
Speaker 2: I mean it's not it's not like Magnamara. Ahead. You know,
Speaker 2: first of all, you can't you can't need some conscientest
Speaker 2: objector and fulfill your obligations in the offense of secondary defense.
Speaker 2: But whatever McNamara did or didn't do, I mean, he
Speaker 2: was executing the owners of the commander in chief, and
Speaker 2: policy does not originated with the Secretary Defense's Office or
Speaker 2: at the Department of the Army or Depentagon. Frankly, However,
Speaker 2: as we get into McNamara's success or as true successor,
Speaker 2: Melvin Laird, I think I think, I think, I think
Speaker 2: that the career of Lair and the kind of the
Speaker 2: trajectory of his tenure and his machinations against Nixon and Kissinger,
Speaker 2: I think that was kind of the origin of the
Speaker 2: true like modern deep state as we think of it.
Speaker 2: There's always been shadow government, shadow governments, not the deep state.
Speaker 2: That's something that was emergent, in my opinion, really interested
Speaker 2: around the nineteen seventies. But in uh, in any event,
Speaker 2: uh Magma anyway, he he uh, you know, Magna visited
Speaker 2: Vietnam repeatedly, like in person, you know, I mean he
Speaker 2: and and not just not a diplomatic meeting greets, you
Speaker 2: know where he revisited, you know, DM or two and
Speaker 2: go to go to some embassy party and then you know,
Speaker 2: take some like handshake shots of some general I mean
Speaker 2: he he visited mcavee. He he spent time at Long
Speaker 2: Been asking junior officers, like, what's going on here? Is actly?
Speaker 2: You know? Uh? He spent time pouring over uh, you
Speaker 2: know body count statistics that were coming from the title
Speaker 2: uh headquarters you know in the field that you know,
Speaker 2: like DOCTA or whatever, and saying like you know this,
Speaker 2: this isn't right, this is not possible, this idea, it
Speaker 2: was just like this kind of ghoulish warmonger just like
Speaker 2: signing off and everything or you know, somehow enriching himself.
Speaker 2: I mean, Magnemara, we don't need to sit here and
Speaker 2: like feel sad for magnemer He ended his He ended
Speaker 2: up at the World Bank. Subsequently, he had a very
Speaker 2: good life, you know. But but the fact is in
Speaker 2: public life he was ruined. You know. It's like, what
Speaker 2: what great stuff did Macnera get from you know, this
Speaker 2: kind of seventy years of managing the Vietnam War. Like
Speaker 2: it's not it's not like he got like some great
Speaker 2: benefits from this. He knows how he pulled us a
Speaker 2: lens Ski and like was pocketing a billion dollars and
Speaker 2: what he would have been a nobody before, like This
Speaker 2: is like a huge step down, you know, like Magnaver
Speaker 2: didn't get anything by by waging the Vietnam War on
Speaker 2: behalf of Johnson, Like he really didn't. But we're coming
Speaker 2: up in the hour here. Let's I'm gonna get into
Speaker 2: Melvin Laird and the rest of Magnamara next episode, and
Speaker 2: we can do that whatever you want, like even this week.
Speaker 2: And I'll uh, I realized the gind of got it
Speaker 2: cut to the chase. It's just somebody is a personage
Speaker 2: just kind of towering his magnumbry. It warrants a lot
Speaker 2: of attention, like more so than some than some people
Speaker 2: and even some presidents. But yeah, so I hope I didn't.
Speaker 2: I hope I hope I didn't drag it out too
Speaker 2: long for you're okay, great, Yeah, yeah, I figured you
Speaker 2: would have like kind of reined me in if I
Speaker 2: was like point two far on tangents. But yeah, no,
Speaker 2: thank you, Pete. This was really great. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean the only reason I interrupted was I had questions.
Speaker 2: So I want to take up that question proper too.
Speaker 2: I'll get a dedicated episode. Maybe it was like the
Speaker 2: bookend when he finished the Cold War. That's like a
Speaker 2: hugely important question and to me especially like I spend
Speaker 2: a lot of time with it, you know, just going
Speaker 2: to my own kind of interest in things. So yeah, no,
Speaker 2: I interject whatever you want, man like please do like
Speaker 2: it helps me organize my thoughts.
Speaker 1: All right, quick plugs so we'll get out.
Speaker 2: Yeah man. Uh as people might have noticed because I
Speaker 2: tweeted it out as well as I announced that on
Speaker 2: my subject hit like steel Storm two. Uh. You know,
Speaker 2: my second science fiction novel. It's been printed, it's it's
Speaker 2: in it send the hands of Imperium Press. I gotta
Speaker 2: touch base on my dear friends there anyway, but they
Speaker 2: physically have it, so I'm gonna get word from them
Speaker 2: when it's gonna go up for sale on imperium press
Speaker 2: dot org, and I'll drop a word of that. In
Speaker 2: the meantime. You can find me, uh you find my
Speaker 2: podcast and so on my long form at substick. It's
Speaker 2: real Thomas seven seven seven dots substack dot com. You
Speaker 2: can find me on Twitter at Triskellian Jahad. The T
Speaker 2: is a number seven. But if you seek me on
Speaker 2: Twitter you should you probably shall. We'll find or just
Speaker 2: like start Thomas seven seven seven. That's basically where I'm
Speaker 2: at where I'm active right now. I am launching the
Speaker 2: YouTube channel by the end of the month, I promise.
Speaker 2: I know it's been delayed and delayed, but by the
Speaker 2: last day in January, and I mean before then, but
Speaker 2: by the end of January, like the channel will launch.
Speaker 2: So please look for that two it's uh Thomas TV
Speaker 2: on YouTube.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it till the next time.
Speaker 2: Like, man, thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Thanks. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pea
Speaker 1: Show for a Part seven is eight eight of the
Speaker 1: Cold War series. Thomas seven seven seven.
Speaker 2: How you're doing, sir, I'm very well man, thanks for
Speaker 2: posting me as always. Don't feel bad. I only I
Speaker 2: only know that it's part ocho because that was indicated
Speaker 2: when I joined the meeting that is Cold War with
Speaker 2: Thomas Part eight. You know, like uh, like Jason takes
Speaker 2: me in hand. But it's just like Thomas fuks on zoom.
Speaker 2: But uh, because it may We're going to continue to
Speaker 2: flesh out, you know, the career of Robert McNamara and
Speaker 2: the Vietnam conflict, not just because mcnamarror is a key personage,
Speaker 2: you know in understanding the Cold War, I mean represented
Speaker 2: a certain type truly. You know, people derisively would refer
Speaker 2: to people like McNamara and Thomas Schelling. We'll talk about
Speaker 2: probably the episode after naxt he was another brilliant Shelling.
Speaker 2: I mean he was not a brilliant polymath. He was
Speaker 2: instrumental in Cold War strategic planning and uh, you know
Speaker 2: gaming scenarios that uh that were where in you know,
Speaker 2: a strategy could meaning meaningfully be incorporated into exta technology
Speaker 2: and weapons platforms. And the degree to which the shape
Speaker 2: policy at every level like cannot be overstated. I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess on the one hand, that's obvious because we're
Speaker 2: talking about you know, I mean, I mean the essence
Speaker 2: of the political is war and peace. You know, kind
Speaker 2: of the zenith of war fighting technology is a general
Speaker 2: nuclear war, even if you know, we stipulate that a
Speaker 2: lot of the kind of hysteria around nuclear weapons is
Speaker 2: just that hysteria. But you know, the Shelling was far
Speaker 2: less of a public figure than magnam Era. I mean
Speaker 2: for a few reasons, not uh that that I think
Speaker 2: are obvious. You know, Shelling uh didn't preside over uh
Speaker 2: an active war. We're in you know, American Uh, Americans
Speaker 2: were dying in theater. But Mcnamerica kind of became that
Speaker 2: a figure that the left kind of loved to burn
Speaker 2: an effig, you know, proverbially speaking, And uh, I think he,
Speaker 2: I think he kind of like embodies that era, like
Speaker 2: the era of the technocrat. And I don't I don't
Speaker 2: mean that in punitive terms. I mean certainly that there's
Speaker 2: a lot of men who that that kind of that
Speaker 2: that kind of sociological structure produced, that we're not attractive people,
Speaker 2: and that we're re lacking in in a grounded morality,
Speaker 2: and and we're not, you know, we're not the kind
Speaker 2: of men who one would want sort of guiding policy
Speaker 2: in concrete ways. But you know, McNamara himself was a
Speaker 2: complex person. And to make the point again and again,
Speaker 2: like McNamara was not this guy who was fired to
Speaker 2: be Secretary of Defense. It wasn't like one of these
Speaker 2: kinds of He wasn't one of these guys who really
Speaker 2: had no way of kind of like capturing cloud other
Speaker 2: than going to Washington and and capitalizing on connections. You know,
Speaker 2: they asked him, he didn't ask for them. And like
Speaker 2: we talked about, it's not like mcnamur resigned in disgrace
Speaker 2: or something, you know, I mean, he he went on, uh,
Speaker 2: he went on to be the chairman of the World Bank.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, you know, his name became
Speaker 2: synonymous with the with the kind of grewsome uh calculus
Speaker 2: of the body count, you know with uh you know,
Speaker 2: the kind of the kind of head nerd view of
Speaker 2: that that came to surround the papers. You know. So
Speaker 2: it's not like it's not like market no matter somehow
Speaker 2: like profited immensely from his tenure as Secretary of Defense,
Speaker 2: and you know, his he even when eve when public
Speaker 2: opinion precipitously turned against the war post tet Uh. You
Speaker 2: know it's uh McNamara didn't simply exit stage laugh when
Speaker 2: things went bad. And I I can't, I can't emphasize
Speaker 2: enough to you know, the fact that he served for
Speaker 2: seven years. That's an eternity for a cabinet post, particularly
Speaker 2: for Secretary of Defense, and particularly during uh A wartime administration.
Speaker 2: You know. So, like I said, I I'm sure a
Speaker 2: lot of people are gonna just claim it, I'm some
Speaker 2: kind of Macnamara apologists owing to you know, owing to
Speaker 2: him you know, either like emotional uh factors or you know,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna hero worship. Like neither of those things are true.
Speaker 2: But I at all anyone who hasn't seen uh it,
Speaker 2: I like I said, I I I highly recommend he
Speaker 2: watched the Aeron Morris biopic on On macnamara, where I
Speaker 2: mean you he he interviews the man himself, you know,
Speaker 2: because that's what man what I'm what Morris does. I've
Speaker 2: reserved judgment until one views that Magnamara quoted himself incredibly well.
Speaker 2: And and compare that to one of Morris's subsequent biopics
Speaker 2: about Donald Rumsfeld. He just came who came off just
Speaker 2: as really kind of I mean just really just a
Speaker 2: really really just nasty person, you know, I mean in
Speaker 2: every sense of the word. You know. Uh, I think uh,
Speaker 2: I think compared to I think compared to those who
Speaker 2: followed who are either clowns or just you know, kind
Speaker 2: of you know, cynical uh creeps like Rumsfeld, and I
Speaker 2: think I think mc namara wims very large and uh
Speaker 2: in mostly positive terms. But we left off last episode,
Speaker 2: I believe, talking a bit about the Gulf of Talk
Speaker 2: and resolution and the incident itself. I don't wanna, uh,
Speaker 2: I don't, I don't wanna. I don't want to rehash
Speaker 2: the entire debate as it were, that still surrounds the
Speaker 2: incident that gave rise the Congressional revolution that you know,
Speaker 2: gave Johnson the Tabiola rossa to escalate. Essentially, I I
Speaker 2: just made the point then, as I'll reiterate now that
Speaker 2: for better or worse, and I understand the libertarian argument
Speaker 2: against this UH precedent, and I very much understand the
Speaker 2: kind of constitutionalist objection to it, But for better or worse,
Speaker 2: this is how the business of war and peace is conducted,
Speaker 2: and this is how it's finessed. And policy terms, Okay,
Speaker 2: it's some kind of incidents that identified as a clear
Speaker 2: and present danger or constituting a necessity, you know, UH,
Speaker 2: demanding intervention. You know, Congress affords the executive the UH,
Speaker 2: the ways and means in budgetary terms and in command
Speaker 2: terms to accomplish you know, the mission in general terms,
Speaker 2: and UH and and and and then you know it's
Speaker 2: it's uh. The legislature bows out of the decision making
Speaker 2: process in large in in large part you know there
Speaker 2: in in in a formal capacity, you know, until uh
Speaker 2: and until until something happens or a series of occurrences
Speaker 2: ensue that, you know, brings it back within their direct purview,
Speaker 2: you know, either willing to you know, revolt of the
Speaker 2: the body politics at war, or you know, some kind
Speaker 2: of perceived malfeasance on on the on on the part
Speaker 2: of the executive in terms of the conduct of the war.
Speaker 2: But we're not here to have a discussion on abstract
Speaker 2: constitutional theory, you know, or on you know, war power
Speaker 2: and and when, what it what and what its significance
Speaker 2: is in the in the post number era. I just
Speaker 2: wanted to make the point that the Westphalian practice of
Speaker 2: literally declaring war as a change of status and relations
Speaker 2: between equals like that, that's totally obsolete. And it doesn't
Speaker 2: matter if we think that good or bad. That's the
Speaker 2: way it is. So the golf of talk and resolution
Speaker 2: doesn't stand out as this uniquely you know, kind of
Speaker 2: corrupt uh way of uh of a rather morally uh
Speaker 2: you know, uh compromise executive Verkira Warman date. I'm not
Speaker 2: gonna sit here and say Josson was was had any
Speaker 2: redeeming characteristics. But even like like if Kennedy had been
Speaker 2: in the White House, he would have pursued he would
Speaker 2: he would have proceeded in much the same way as
Speaker 2: would Nixon, Okay, as would you know, Reagan had he
Speaker 2: been I mean, this is something important to keep in mind,
Speaker 2: but I won't believe that point anymore. But what the
Speaker 2: resolution represented was that, and I'm gonna, I'm go, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna jump backwards a little bit, doesn't. We proceed to
Speaker 2: talk about Colonel John Paul Van who I think is
Speaker 2: very important. He was his analysis of the Vietnam War
Speaker 2: like as it was underway, I think is essential to
Speaker 2: understanding the battlefield situation and you know, kind of the
Speaker 2: tactical shortcomings of a particularly of McVie. But I don't
Speaker 2: want to get into that yet. But what's important to
Speaker 2: keep in mind in discussing the escalation that was facilitated
Speaker 2: by the Tonkin Resolution is that Military Assistants Command Vietnam.
Speaker 2: It arrived in country in nineteen sixty two, and from
Speaker 2: sixty two to sixty five there was a proper counterinsurgency
Speaker 2: campaign underway against the viet Cong. And this really you know,
Speaker 2: Army Special Forces was very much purpose for that, you know,
Speaker 2: and that we talked earlier about, you know, Kennedy's you know,
Speaker 2: Kennedy's a strategic orientation towards sec NERD theaters, you know,
Speaker 2: and the need to you know, not surrender these contested
Speaker 2: territories to the communists, you know, for not not just
Speaker 2: for you know, on grounds of military necessity, but you know,
Speaker 2: owing owing the profound political implications of communist victory, you know,
Speaker 2: in these uh in these developing countries. You know, the
Speaker 2: and the fact that he is the Kennedy was such
Speaker 2: a champion of special operations forces is inextrictly bound up
Speaker 2: with that policy vision. But Vietnam pre Tonkin Gulf.
Speaker 1: So Kennedy in sixty two and sixty three was commander
Speaker 1: in chief guiding these missions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, essentially, Yeah, I mean he had it was it
Speaker 2: was mac Namara and it was you know, he Kennedy
Speaker 2: had a lot of talent around him, you know, who
Speaker 2: are who are helping him identify kind of the concrete variables.
Speaker 2: Now this translated actual war fighting. But so, I mean,
Speaker 2: I wasn't just emergent from the mind of Kennedy. But
Speaker 2: Kennedy did understand military matters reasonably well, you know, I
Speaker 2: mean he had been in pretty heavy action in the Navy.
Speaker 2: You know, he wasn't he he wasn't just some like
Speaker 2: civilian neo fight who had no idea of you know
Speaker 2: what what of what this constitute and what the difference
Speaker 2: was between the heavy army you know, organized around uh,
Speaker 2: organized around armor, you know, and that that uh that
Speaker 2: had a very very clouset wood see in view of
Speaker 2: war fighting. It was the advance of fire. I mean,
Speaker 2: this really did like rule the day, you know, and
Speaker 2: and I mean for good reason, frankly, because the the
Speaker 2: the army's uh most probable military mission was to fight
Speaker 2: the Red Army. I mean, but the uh, the kind
Speaker 2: of tactical flexibility that early special operations forces represented, this
Speaker 2: really was like a revolutionary idea. You know, like people
Speaker 2: under like forty five or so, when they think of
Speaker 2: the army, they or they when they think of the
Speaker 2: military establishment, they think of special operations forces. That's completely
Speaker 2: the opposite of the way things were during the Cold War, Okay,
Speaker 2: and it uh and there there's a lot of there's
Speaker 2: a lot of institutional resentment of the army towards special
Speaker 2: operations and I mean that's a whole other issue that's fascinating.
Speaker 2: But point being, there's kind of this mischaracterization I'm on
Speaker 2: court historians that Okay, in Vietnam, there's this guerrilla war underway,
Speaker 2: and you know Johnson, you know, being the you know,
Speaker 2: being the kind of fool that he was, and you
Speaker 2: know the Army being you know, trigger happy as they are,
Speaker 2: they just like looked over the situation and said, you
Speaker 2: know what, We're gonna deploy in massive, in massive depth,
Speaker 2: and we're gonna throw like as much firepower as we
Speaker 2: can at the viet Cong. Like that's not what happened.
Speaker 2: You know. There's a years long counterinsurgency, low intensity war
Speaker 2: against the National Liberation Front by the Army of the
Speaker 2: Republic of Vietnam, you know, by uh by the Arvin
Speaker 2: Ranger element, which was kind of their quasi special forces elements,
Speaker 2: and like we talked about, the South of Enemy's Army
Speaker 2: does get a bad rap because there were elements among
Speaker 2: them that fought hard and we're and we're very game fighters.
Speaker 2: But yeah, there's actually a fastening old movie called Go
Speaker 2: Tell the Spartans, which is about exactly this topic. It's
Speaker 2: about you know, the like the Kennedy era of Vietnam
Speaker 2: War and these green berets of this kind of forlorn outpost,
Speaker 2: you know, uh as they realized the kind of tactical
Speaker 2: situations changing, and obviously in the back of their mind
Speaker 2: they're terrified. Although they'd never like let on this is
Speaker 2: the case that of of of like the North Veennamese
Speaker 2: Army one day showing up and just like sweeping through,
Speaker 2: you know, out of nowhere. I mean, things like that
Speaker 2: did happen, you know, later on like against the against
Speaker 2: the purported you know, in address to what Army intelligence
Speaker 2: was claiming with the capabilities extent of you know, Hannoid
Speaker 2: to deploy in the south. But uh he as it
Speaker 2: may as uh as the as as things that are
Speaker 2: going bad in the south, and as as d M
Speaker 2: made it clear that he was willing to negotiate. You know,
Speaker 2: we talked about the kind of murky political status of Vietnam,
Speaker 2: you know, and it there was there was a lot
Speaker 2: of there's there's great concern that d M was just
Speaker 2: gonna sit you know, quote unlet sell out the West
Speaker 2: and kind of you know, kind of terms with with
Speaker 2: Ho Chi Minh and with Hanoid, you know, to incorporate
Speaker 2: you know, not just the NLF, but you know, the
Speaker 2: Communist Party of Vietnam UH into you know, into UH
Speaker 2: into the ruling apparatus, and I mean obviously that was
Speaker 2: unacceptable because that you know that that the precedent that
Speaker 2: that would set would be completely would be completely at
Speaker 2: odds with what you know, America is trying to accomplish
Speaker 2: in the developing world. And you know, we talked about
Speaker 2: how again like you know, the UH the it was
Speaker 2: it was at base. We're talking about a political conflict.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter that you know they're they're there, that
Speaker 2: that's into China's not you know, a bounty of natural resources.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter that you know, there's not there's not
Speaker 2: some absolutely essential you know, maritime portocoll that you know
Speaker 2: has UH has profound military significance there. You know, the
Speaker 2: line in the sand was UH was Vietnam, and that's
Speaker 2: that's where the Communists challenged and that's you know, the
Speaker 2: challenge of everyone. That challenge was going to be met
Speaker 2: or it was not. And the Communists had great momentum
Speaker 2: in the Third World even really up until up until
Speaker 2: the late nineteen eighties, you know, like long after, you know,
Speaker 2: long after like Stalinists type rule, you know, Marxist Leninist
Speaker 2: revolutionary ambition and and the kind of the kind of
Speaker 2: the armed UH insurgency culture or political culture around it.
Speaker 2: Long after that like lost its luster, you know for anybody,
Speaker 2: but you know, total diehards, you know, like the kind
Speaker 2: of people who joined like the Bottom Minehoff gang, you know,
Speaker 2: in in the Western world. This kind of thing had
Speaker 2: an incredible power to animate people in the Third world,
Speaker 2: you know, and Hochi Minh was himself as a testament
Speaker 2: to that. You know, like we talked about, Hoe was
Speaker 2: not some It wasn't some bumpkin or some or some
Speaker 2: ignorant you know, farmer or something. He you know, he
Speaker 2: was uh, he was. He was highly educated. You know,
Speaker 2: his family was uh was was was wealthy and well
Speaker 2: situated and very insinuated into the uh indigenous political structure,
Speaker 2: you know, and uh in Vietnam, so you know, and
Speaker 2: he was not He was not an outlier, nor was
Speaker 2: he an achronism. But because it may it uh, the
Speaker 2: the mass escalation, I mean yeah, part of that was
Speaker 2: owing to the fact that the post the new look army,
Speaker 2: you know, once what once conventional forces, you know, kind
Speaker 2: of became uh what once again in vogue for lack
Speaker 2: of a better way to describe it, the army, uh,
Speaker 2: the army remained obsessed with with firepower, you know, and
Speaker 2: the idea that you know, combined arms and a lot
Speaker 2: of these nascent technologies you know, and and the precursor
Speaker 2: the smart weapons you know, and uh as well as
Speaker 2: like the technologies immediately preceding the revolution and military affairs
Speaker 2: that allowed command and control, the truly direct fire they like,
Speaker 2: the the destructive capabilities of these things was just awesome.
Speaker 2: So there was, in fact the sense and the Pentagon
Speaker 2: that like, look, you know, asymmetric warfare. Yeah, there's you know,
Speaker 2: there's considerations emergent you know, within that paradigm, and that's
Speaker 2: got to be accounted for within the battle space itself
Speaker 2: and within you know, uh and and and and and
Speaker 2: it's got to inform decision making of how forces are
Speaker 2: structured and deployed in country. But at the same time,
Speaker 2: you know, if you can blast the hell out of everything,
Speaker 2: you're gonna get a lot done, you know. And and
Speaker 2: how can you know, how can the National Liberation Front,
Speaker 2: you know, no matter it doesn't matter how hard they are,
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter you know what kind of uh what
Speaker 2: what kind of civilian support they have? You know, it
Speaker 2: doesn't matter, you know, kind of how uh, it doesn't
Speaker 2: matter that they've got this kind of mass, youthful male
Speaker 2: population to draw upon. You know, if you if, if you,
Speaker 2: if you apply this kind of pressure in the form
Speaker 2: of you know, just relentless and massive firepower against the adversary,
Speaker 2: he's gonna just crumble. I mean, there was there was
Speaker 2: more than you know, like a modicum of of that
Speaker 2: sort of thinking. I mean, obviously, however, it was clear,
Speaker 2: you know, in nineteen fifty nine, and I mean sixty
Speaker 2: nine all the way to you know, nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 2: seventy five, when the People's Army Vietnam launched its final offensive,
Speaker 2: it was clear that Hanoi was not going to prevail
Speaker 2: without a massive conventional assault on the South Vietnam. It's
Speaker 2: a comparatively huge country. The National Liberation Front had the
Speaker 2: capability to dominate the countryside very effectively. Thus, this is
Speaker 2: what was responsible for the kind of you know, hearts
Speaker 2: and minds campaign, all of that, and and the idea
Speaker 2: of free fire zones and strategic hamlets, and we'll get
Speaker 2: into some of that later. But the uh, but but
Speaker 2: the but key urban centers the viet Cong could not,
Speaker 2: not only could not capture, but they couldn't, you know,
Speaker 2: and there there was a dearth of of necessary civilian support,
Speaker 2: you know, which was the true kind of like infrastructure
Speaker 2: of the Vietcong, you know, like any gorilla movement, that's
Speaker 2: what they have to draw up on. But even like
Speaker 2: their big coup was when they their big battlefield coup
Speaker 2: was when the NLF captured Howayi City, you know, and
Speaker 2: that's you know, and and uh, there's just there's those
Speaker 2: dramatic shots of the US Marines, you know, like raising
Speaker 2: the American flag like over the citadel and in uh
Speaker 2: in Hway, you know, because it was it was this
Speaker 2: horrible like pitched battle. But I mean just really really raw.
Speaker 2: That's why I think it's cool that full Metal Jacket
Speaker 2: like focuses on Howay you know. And and uh, Gustav
Speaker 2: Hasford made Wway the focus of uh the battlefield segment
Speaker 2: of his novel for for a reason. But the point is, like,
Speaker 2: you know, they couldn't hold it. You know, it's not
Speaker 2: like it's not like it's not like the NLF took
Speaker 2: away and said into this massive push on TET sixty eight,
Speaker 2: you know, and then uh, and and then the civilian
Speaker 2: population he came out and drove, you know, allow them
Speaker 2: to consolidate that that their presence there, you know, quite
Speaker 2: the contrary. So it was clear that South Vietnam either
Speaker 2: was going to have to develop a competent conventional capability
Speaker 2: buttressed by or facilitated by rather you know, modern combined
Speaker 2: arms and hardware, as well as the training of their people,
Speaker 2: you know, to operate these these weapons systems and weapons platforms,
Speaker 2: or there was gonna have to be direct intervention you know,
Speaker 2: by Sito ideally, and we got into STO the other
Speaker 2: day or some constellation of you know, American allies in
Speaker 2: order to in order to stave off uh this uh
Speaker 2: this uh this imminent assault until until the South could
Speaker 2: stand on its own. And that's what I just said.
Speaker 2: That's what became Grand strategy in Vietnam. You know. And
Speaker 2: as any military man will tell you, you know, you
Speaker 2: don't you don't you don't you don't wait until, uh,
Speaker 2: the exigency is afoot and then respond to it, you know,
Speaker 2: just like just as you anticipate capabilities, you know, not
Speaker 2: you know, you don't just consider you know, probable action
Speaker 2: in terms of uh, in terms of judging and you know,
Speaker 2: a potential opposing UH force. You were you pre empt
Speaker 2: UH the ambitions of that opposing force, you know, you
Speaker 2: don't you don't you don't wait until the People's Army
Speaker 2: of Vietnam is assaulting across the seventeenth parallel, you know,
Speaker 2: in in in in in depth, you know, with with
Speaker 2: combined arms, you know, to decide, like how are you
Speaker 2: going to react to that? Okay? So this was the
Speaker 2: this was this was the logic behind the massive escalation
Speaker 2: and UH there had been at its peak pre talking golf,
Speaker 2: I think it was between seventeen thousand and eighteen thousand,
Speaker 2: five hundred approximddally UH American forces on the ground in Vietnam.
Speaker 2: This is by the end of nineteen sixty seven, this
Speaker 2: had swelled the four hundred and eighty five thousand UH
Speaker 2: troops and UH by the peak, which was the summer
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty eight, it was it was over half
Speaker 2: a million. It was something like five hundred and thirty thousand. Okay,
Speaker 2: the UH and obviously you know, as as as the
Speaker 2: casualties mounted and as UH and as some the plus
Speaker 2: situation you know kind of like restricted the UH the
Speaker 2: tactical environment and and what was and what was permissible
Speaker 2: according to the rules of engagement. You know, commanders on
Speaker 2: the ground, uh down to the company level, you know,
Speaker 2: their their constant refrain was like, basically, we need more manpower.
Speaker 2: You know, we need we we you know, we need
Speaker 2: to be able to apply more apply more pressure now
Speaker 2: And why why why was it kind of boiled down
Speaker 2: to that metric? Okay, well, you know we talked, uh
Speaker 2: we we talked when we first kind of scratched the
Speaker 2: service of of the atomic age, I mean, like it's
Speaker 2: advent and what the implications were in policy terms as
Speaker 2: well as military ones. And obviously I can speak a
Speaker 2: lot more about the former than the latter, because I
Speaker 2: am not a military man, and I you know, that's
Speaker 2: not really my wheelhouse. But I do know something about
Speaker 2: policy as it interfaces with military decision making and the
Speaker 2: needs of you know, the needs of the military establishment
Speaker 2: to accomplish stated policy goals as directed by the civilian executive.
Speaker 2: There came the ability to the the ability to corral
Speaker 2: data and the ability to interpret data, the ability to
Speaker 2: apply data to all kinds of problems at scale. You know,
Speaker 2: whether you're talking about you know, whether you're talking about
Speaker 2: the best of offset liability if you're you know, if
Speaker 2: if you're manufacturing automobiles, you know, and thus that that
Speaker 2: was the you know, unsafe at any speed. That was
Speaker 2: like the Ralph Nader book about uh, you know, the
Speaker 2: auto industry and it's it's macat calculus of you know,
Speaker 2: how many how many deaths owing to the products liability
Speaker 2: issues were acceptable? You know, vis a vis what would
Speaker 2: be the cost of remedying these design defects. I mean,
Speaker 2: everybody's familiar with that, Okay, that this this was something
Speaker 2: that was emergent, just like across the board, you know,
Speaker 2: in uh in the private sector and government, you know,
Speaker 2: in in in social planning, the military, uh, in the
Speaker 2: Cold War, it what you know, what the what the
Speaker 2: victory metric was in these secondary theaters, you know, where
Speaker 2: the primary challenge was a political one, you know, not
Speaker 2: a military one. You know, a comparable situation would be
Speaker 2: with the British we're facing in Northern Ireland. Okay, I
Speaker 2: mean that that that conflict developed ory differently, but uh,
Speaker 2: identifying you know, not just what uh what the tactical
Speaker 2: orientation should be in order to neutralize the opposing force,
Speaker 2: but what the performance metric is, you know, of those
Speaker 2: forces in theater. Well, what this came boiled down to was,
Speaker 2: you know, the the the ability to manufacture enemy dead.
Speaker 2: Quite literally, the logic of the body count became the
Speaker 2: performance metric. So there'd be demands from a battalion level,
Speaker 2: you know, originating with the originating you know, at M
Speaker 2: at long been uh, you know, and and trickling down
Speaker 2: to company and then platoon level, you know, like you
Speaker 2: need to produce bodies, you need to produce enemy dead.
Speaker 2: And UH, as a standalone metric, that's problematic. I mean,
Speaker 2: aside from the fact that it's macabre and all of that,
Speaker 2: and I realized it's it's kind of a gross thing
Speaker 2: to talk about that makes people uncomfortable. But this is
Speaker 2: very much like I mean, this, this is this, this
Speaker 2: is the stuff of modern warfare. Okay, but it took
Speaker 2: on a significance into itself and Vietnam owing again to
Speaker 2: the kind of to to the kind of the culture
Speaker 2: of strategic planning. But it wasn't just spillover from you know,
Speaker 2: the uh, the kind of a the data revolution spearheaded
Speaker 2: by I. D. M. And it's got the proto computers
Speaker 2: you know that were utilized uh in the Second World War,
Speaker 2: and and and and you know thereafter obviously, you know,
Speaker 2: the victory metric of in nuclear war is very much
Speaker 2: distilled down to you know, the ability to the like
Speaker 2: the ability to yield you know, enemy dead at the
Speaker 2: beyond like a certain tipping point. You know, that's that's
Speaker 2: literally what the term you know, like mega death indicates
Speaker 2: and assured destruction. Mega death was not just you know,
Speaker 2: the name of like kind of a got you know,
Speaker 2: a like a like a fucking heavy metal man, you know,
Speaker 2: like it Actually it actually was a term of art,
Speaker 2: if not the nuclear war studies and game theory, but
Speaker 2: because it may there is something too, uh there, there
Speaker 2: is something to this logic on the body count. I mean,
Speaker 2: if you're if the burn rate that uh that you're
Speaker 2: that you're imposing a upon the opposing force you know,
Speaker 2: far exceeds the population and military age males you know,
Speaker 2: who can be trained, equipped and fielded, you know, to
Speaker 2: replace those losses. At some point, you know, the insurgency
Speaker 2: is gonna fall apart where it's at least not gonna
Speaker 2: be able to mount operations you know beyond you know,
Speaker 2: like platoon level or something. And uh, this did work
Speaker 2: in a sense I'm one of the few defenders you'll
Speaker 2: find the Phoenix program. We'll get into that at another date.
Speaker 2: And people who don't really understand it, like even people
Speaker 2: are otherwise sensible, Like it's become this kind of it's
Speaker 2: become this kind of horror story that they like to
Speaker 2: bandy about. You know that, you know, it's kind of
Speaker 2: synonymous in their mind, or you know, it's taken on
Speaker 2: kind of the characteristic of a it's become kind of
Speaker 2: like the exemplar of of a of executive overreach and
Speaker 2: and and and violence they're in you know, but it
Speaker 2: something like that identifying enemy cadres, I mean, if you
Speaker 2: have a reliable system of of of identifying these people
Speaker 2: and targeting them for annihilation with a minimum of collateral
Speaker 2: damage where possible. That's basically how you fight uh counterinsurgency
Speaker 2: warfare or how you wage counter in curtaincy warfare. And uh,
Speaker 2: that's what the British Army started doing by the late
Speaker 2: nineties in Northern Ireland. Uh. The way they did it
Speaker 2: obviously was or by by the late eighties, I mean sorry,
Speaker 2: by not the late nineties, but the this uh that
Speaker 2: this this this was underway in Vietnam. At the same
Speaker 2: time that, you know, there was this kind of uh
Speaker 2: there's this kind of like body count driven effort in
Speaker 2: uh and you know, being waged by you know, conventional forces,
Speaker 2: you know, just to rack up the body count. And
Speaker 2: I mean obviously this led to all kinds of problems.
Speaker 2: You know, wherein these these numbers were confabulated. You know,
Speaker 2: civilians were counted as a as a as enemy combatants.
Speaker 2: You know, like really very very corrupt things happened, you know,
Speaker 2: of a moral and material nature. But that happens in
Speaker 2: every war, right, yeah, exactly. And it's also this didn't
Speaker 2: like somehow emerge in the Macnamara Magris and this gooulish
Speaker 2: guy who was like, oh, well, I have an idea.
Speaker 2: You know, let's let's transform let's transform the military apparatus
Speaker 2: into this kind of corpse manufacturing uh enterprise, you know,
Speaker 2: because that's just a great thing to do. I mean,
Speaker 2: this was this was the thinking at the time. And
Speaker 2: frankly too, I mean it there's a again, the Cold
Speaker 2: War was strange. I mean, in some ways there's commonality
Speaker 2: to all uh, you know, to to to all conflicts
Speaker 2: where there's uh uh at you know, where where there's
Speaker 2: where there's certain variables present. You know that that uh
Speaker 2: that caused you know, combat to resolve in similar ways,
Speaker 2: you know, adjusting for technology and things, you know, like
Speaker 2: with it within disparate theaters and across you know, across
Speaker 2: you know, the temporal divide and stuff. But uh, there
Speaker 2: were strange things about the Cold War that limited what
Speaker 2: was possible, not just because the threat of escalation, you know,
Speaker 2: even in even in a very secondary theater, excuse me,
Speaker 2: it was always present, but also again if you're fighting
Speaker 2: a primarily political war. You know, we're not just talking
Speaker 2: about we're not talking about the enemy's ability to field
Speaker 2: military age males, you know, who are gonna be trained
Speaker 2: as infantry or sapers or whatever. Not every man is
Speaker 2: gonna make it as a Viet Cong. That requires a
Speaker 2: certain radicalism, uh within uh you know, like with with
Speaker 2: with with within you know the quote heart and mind
Speaker 2: of that individual, you know, I mean it's not if
Speaker 2: you're if you're looking to build an insurgent army, particularly
Speaker 2: in a situation like when the vietnames called the American War,
Speaker 2: where you know, basically there's like an eighty percent chance
Speaker 2: you're gonna die, like you're not. It's not like being
Speaker 2: drafted into the US Army and you know, to go
Speaker 2: fight the Korean War. It's like a very different thing,
Speaker 2: you know, like you you every man pretty much needs
Speaker 2: to be a partisan. And yeah, you know, there were
Speaker 2: there there were a there were NLF fighters you know,
Speaker 2: who are basically like press ganged and you know, like
Speaker 2: joining the viet Cong and stuff. But that that was
Speaker 2: the minority, because you don't get results out of people
Speaker 2: like that, you know. I mean, so it the the
Speaker 2: idea that we've got to kill as many of these
Speaker 2: people as possible, and it targeted capacity, and you know,
Speaker 2: killing them is a is an end in itself because
Speaker 2: that's a victory metric in order to kind of alter
Speaker 2: you know, the political conditions on the ground and how
Speaker 2: these conditions translate to military power, you know, albeit in
Speaker 2: an asymmetrical way like that. That is a real thing.
Speaker 2: And that's that's that's a legit analysis. I'm not saying
Speaker 2: legit and you know, moral terms whatever, I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: not rendering decision on that one or the other. But
Speaker 2: in terms of there there is a tactical logic to that.
Speaker 2: That's not you know, insane or something or totally off
Speaker 2: base or the nor is it the kind of nineteen sixties,
Speaker 2: you know, technocrat version of Chatto generalship. And I think
Speaker 2: that that's important. It's uh. But moving on that, THEMERA
Speaker 2: became very very skeptical of administration policy, not because Johnson,
Speaker 2: as we as we talked about, you know, Johnson viewed
Speaker 2: escalation and the threat of escalation as a kind of
Speaker 2: political bargaining ship, which is not how you wage a war. Okay,
Speaker 2: I mean it's not and I mean you're first of all,
Speaker 2: you're playing with the lives of the men you know
Speaker 2: who uh who are charged with fighting that war. But
Speaker 2: also it just doesn't uh, you know, it doesn't. It
Speaker 2: doesn't work. You know, that's not a thing that yields concessions.
Speaker 2: And you know it doesn't. It doesn't it doesn't instill
Speaker 2: fear in the opposing force. You know, it basically tells
Speaker 2: him that, you know, eventually, you're gonna be willing to compromise,
Speaker 2: because otherwise, at the end of the day, you know,
Speaker 2: if you if that was not the case, you know,
Speaker 2: you'd be fighting this war. There'd be no like no
Speaker 2: restraint on the rules of engagement. Like don't get me wrong,
Speaker 2: you know. Uh the uh despite despite the kind of
Speaker 2: the kind of canaris like, oh, America was like fighting
Speaker 2: the Vietnam War with one hand tied around his balls
Speaker 2: or something. I mean, we killed a huge amount of
Speaker 2: people in Vietnam, Okay, like some real cowboy ship was
Speaker 2: going on. I'm not I'm not trashing the war effort
Speaker 2: at all. Okay, like uh unlike World War Two, I
Speaker 2: think within within the boundary rationality of the Cold War,
Speaker 2: I like I said, Vietnam had to be fought, Okay,
Speaker 2: but there was a lot of uh there there there
Speaker 2: there was there's a lot of wholesale killing of human beings, okay,
Speaker 2: according to pretty loose uh criteria, you know, the tactical restraints.
Speaker 2: There was you know, the the literally the parameters that
Speaker 2: were imposed on the operational environment. Like yeah, that had
Speaker 2: a that that rendered victory problematic. Okay, like no doubt
Speaker 2: about it, but it but the uh but but this,
Speaker 2: but this, but this idea that you know, uh America
Speaker 2: was like hesitating to drop bodies in Vietnam wing to
Speaker 2: crazy r O R O E. Like that's that that's
Speaker 2: that's completely fastile. But the uh but what mcnamer realized
Speaker 2: was that, uh, you know, the dropping more and more,
Speaker 2: deploying more and more men to Vietnam was not going
Speaker 2: to solve the problem, you know, Nor was uh? Nor
Speaker 2: was uh? Nor was the problem that you know, they're
Speaker 2: the bombing campaign wasn't intense enough or something, you know,
Speaker 2: Like he he basically reached the conclusions you know that
Speaker 2: that we're gonna talk about now, and like a lot
Speaker 2: of like like a lot of what I'm drawing upon
Speaker 2: to describe his mindset and describe some of the extant
Speaker 2: challenges of of of the Secretary Defense in his epoch,
Speaker 2: I'm drawing upon his own direct testimony, you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: among other things, obviously, but the Mactimer and in winter
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven, MC and everyone as far as to
Speaker 2: suggests freezing troop levels and uh, basically to prepare Magnara
Speaker 2: said like, well, then you know, we we don't we
Speaker 2: don't have infant we don't have any indefinite timetable you know,
Speaker 2: to make South Vietnam like combat ready in terms of
Speaker 2: their force isn't being you know, to stand on their
Speaker 2: own against the North, you know it. Uh, He like
Speaker 2: basically said that the situation is not going to improve
Speaker 2: on the ground. Either either you know, either the ear
Speaker 2: of the Republic of Vietnam can fight now or it's
Speaker 2: or or or or it can't fight. You know, two
Speaker 2: years from now, the situation is not gonna it is
Speaker 2: not going to be radically different. This was rejected outright
Speaker 2: by Johnson. And that's you know, it was November twenty
Speaker 2: ninth of sixty seven that Magnevara announced his Penning resignation.
Speaker 2: He didn't retire until February sixty eight, or resign rather,
Speaker 2: But that, I mean, that was that that thing was
Speaker 2: a story that brought the camel's back. Okay, I think
Speaker 2: Magna gave it his all and Vietnam for years. He
Speaker 2: risked his reputation, he probably risked like a lot of
Speaker 2: his a lot of his moral uh, he probably compromised
Speaker 2: a lot of his a lot of his a lot
Speaker 2: of his moral commitments too. Frankly, I'm not gonna sit
Speaker 2: here and make a martyr out of him. He took
Speaker 2: the job. And I mean, if you're Secretary of Defense,
Speaker 2: I mean you're you're dealing with the deaths of human beings.
Speaker 2: You gotta be okay with it. But the you know,
Speaker 2: he for for for this is what he did for
Speaker 2: for seven years almost and uh when when he when
Speaker 2: he approached his commander in chief and said, like, this
Speaker 2: is a situation as it stands, I mean Johnson Bass
Speaker 2: like waved him off, like dismissed him, you know. I
Speaker 2: mean I and I'm not saying that magnum are quit
Speaker 2: because you know, on ground is like massculine ego or
Speaker 2: something at all. But I can't even imagine being in
Speaker 2: that role particularly and considered like what what was underway
Speaker 2: in the country, you know, and uh and your secretary
Speaker 2: Defense like literally the man who uh you know, who
Speaker 2: you rely upon more than any singular figure, I mean
Speaker 2: in that administration, you know, to give you the straight
Speaker 2: story on the strategic situation, like he tells you exactly
Speaker 2: that you know exactly what what what you know what
Speaker 2: what what the what your options are is as commander
Speaker 2: in chief, you know, and you simply dismiss him because
Speaker 2: like that that that doesn't comport with like your own
Speaker 2: conceptual prejudices. I mean, it's incredible, But LBJ was just
Speaker 2: a terrible person and a terrible chief executive. You know.
Speaker 2: It's but that that doesn't need to be rehashed. But
Speaker 2: who succeeded. Who succeeded McNamara was Clark Clifford very briefly,
Speaker 2: that's not like a yalely like uh you're like old
Speaker 2: uh old America like name, I don't know what is,
Speaker 2: but he you kind of a placeholder. The true succession
Speaker 2: to mc namara was a guy named Melvin Laird. He's
Speaker 2: kind of forgotten the history, but Melvin Laird loomed really
Speaker 2: large over the late Cold War. His deputy, uh what
Speaker 2: what was not worry about Clifford was one of his
Speaker 2: one of like one of his chief uh like assistants
Speaker 2: was Paul Nitza, you know, and Paul Nitza was you know,
Speaker 2: he was the co founder of Team B and uh
Speaker 2: you know until he was like quite elderly like he
Speaker 2: he uh like Nitsa was even like he was he
Speaker 2: was he was drafting, uh he was, he was. He
Speaker 2: was he was drafting policy statements on behalf of the
Speaker 2: project for a New American Century, you know, like as
Speaker 2: late as the early two thousands. You know, like he
Speaker 2: he's he's he's one of these. He's one of these
Speaker 2: kinds of I mean not to sound no dramatic, he's
Speaker 2: one of these Nize was one of these shadowy figures
Speaker 2: of the defense establishment, you know who who really was
Speaker 2: uh you know who really was kind of like a
Speaker 2: hidden eminence. But uh, that's really all that's remarkab about
Speaker 2: Clifford Laird. Uh, Laird was interesting, and there was a
Speaker 2: how long, how how long we've been going here? I
Speaker 2: don't know if I should I don't know if I
Speaker 2: should dive into I don't know I should dive into. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we'll get started on Melvin Laird and and and then
Speaker 2: what begin the Nixon doctor in and then like well
Speaker 2: we'll we'll like deep dive properly into like Nixon's war
Speaker 2: next episode at that school because it requires I'm not
Speaker 2: intentionally dragging this out, but it there's just like a
Speaker 2: lot here. But Melvin Laird, Uh, some people, some of
Speaker 2: you'll talk on him like it was a hands off
Speaker 2: secretary Defense either wanting to you know, Nixon being an
Speaker 2: imperial executive who bullied his cabinet, Like that's that's complete nonsense.
Speaker 2: Other people cast Laired as this guy who uh you know,
Speaker 2: in in and then and delivered. Ever to strike a
Speaker 2: contrast to mc namara, you know, uh was was was
Speaker 2: a verse to you know, setting a policy course in uh,
Speaker 2: like you know, in its own right emergent from the
Speaker 2: Secretary Defensive Office. It's not now those things are correct.
Speaker 2: Laird actually was, uh, it was very much uh engaged
Speaker 2: in the course of policy and uh he very much
Speaker 2: became an enemy of Nixon Kissinger. And this had implications
Speaker 2: for Watergate, which in my opinion, was, you know, just
Speaker 2: the coup against Nixon. By what we do today is
Speaker 2: the deep you know, I uh certainly was government in
Speaker 2: those days.
Speaker 1: You broke up there, you broke up there for a
Speaker 1: second out were you referring to it as you said
Speaker 1: that the people who would have carried out Watergate would
Speaker 1: have been comparable to today what we call the deep state?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, definitely, definitely. It's just that the it's like
Speaker 2: the like government was different than the Cold War and
Speaker 2: certain key ways. But I mean some like I'm not.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, okay, we get. I mean, if you
Speaker 2: want to talk about in linear terms like yeah, I get,
Speaker 2: we can, we can look at it as is kind
Speaker 2: of you know, the phenomena in common. But the but Laird, yeah, uh,
Speaker 2: I think Laird's hostility to Nixon and Kissinger, it took
Speaker 2: on a very personal tenor, which is strange. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think it, uh, But in pure policy terms Lared's vision,
Speaker 2: I think he was wrong, but it's he wasn't totally
Speaker 2: of base. If you if you, if you'd Vietnam as
Speaker 2: essentially weakening the United States, not just some material terms,
Speaker 2: but uh, he said that, you know, essentially, he's like,
Speaker 2: you got a war weary country now, you know then
Speaker 2: like that they're now being nineteen sixty nine. You know,
Speaker 2: he's like a general war broke up, you know, broke
Speaker 2: out with warsaw pack tomorrow you know uh uh, you know,
Speaker 2: with with the country really have the political will, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, to fight worse, to fight the Soviet Union,
Speaker 2: warsaw packed in Central Europe. You know, it sacrificed. It's
Speaker 2: like a million and a half young people, you know,
Speaker 2: on the on on on the heels of what we've
Speaker 2: already endured in Southeast Asia. Secondly, he's like, you know,
Speaker 2: the uh, the the Soviet Union was advantaged, as we
Speaker 2: talked about before, in terms of the fact that you
Speaker 2: know it it basically had pre existing cadres on the
Speaker 2: ground throughout the Third World, owing in a large part
Speaker 2: you know, the kind of the anti colonial movement and
Speaker 2: other things on like a basic hostility you know to
Speaker 2: the West and and and profound turves not just superficial
Speaker 2: ones and uh, but also like a lot of these
Speaker 2: a lot of these movements, like including the National Liberation
Speaker 2: Front itself. You know, they've been engaged, uh in combat
Speaker 2: either against the Axis or you know, against UH or
Speaker 2: against the Portuguese, the French or the English or you know,
Speaker 2: any of these uh, any of these fading you know,
Speaker 2: colonial powers. The Soviet Union was able to really kind
Speaker 2: of spare its its own blood and treasure. Meanwhile, it
Speaker 2: really kind of had the United States's number in terms
Speaker 2: of it's war fighting doctor and in terms of strengths
Speaker 2: and weaknesses, you know, and uh, while America was you know,
Speaker 2: while America was taking heavy casualties in Vietnam, you know,
Speaker 2: and UH and and uh and and and and people
Speaker 2: were losing confidence in the dollar and things. You know,
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union was really was was uh was was
Speaker 2: under had undertaken It's owning a revolution in military affairs,
Speaker 2: you know, but it had done so without you know,
Speaker 2: like paying any costs and blood. And uh. Lard had
Speaker 2: a good point there, and UH, this became very evident
Speaker 2: post I think, and that's one of the reasons why
Speaker 2: when Reagan took the oath of office, you know, a
Speaker 2: decade later, there really was a sense that warsaw pat
Speaker 2: constituted a clear and present danger that wasn't that wasn't
Speaker 2: just propaganda or you know, a precursor to war fever
Speaker 2: or something, or or ear an iteration of war fever,
Speaker 2: what have you. What Lard did do was he said, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, his big thing where where where he and
Speaker 2: Nixon converged. He said that, you know, uh, we've uh,
Speaker 2: we've got to be we've got to be more assertive
Speaker 2: in in foreign affairs. We gotta be we gotta strengthen
Speaker 2: you know, us influence you know over the over what
Speaker 2: was then the European Community, you know, because the EU
Speaker 2: didn't exist yet. You know, He's like, we've got to consolidate.
Speaker 2: We we we've got to consolidate, you know, the whold
Speaker 2: we have on Japan and Korea, you know, to make
Speaker 2: sure that's permanent, you know. When uh and uh, he
Speaker 2: said that, you know, absolutely incredible nuclear determs is essential
Speaker 2: to essential sound foreign policy. But he said that strong
Speaker 2: conventional defense is is is just as important, you know.
Speaker 2: And the uh he came back to this point again
Speaker 2: and again. Like I said, he's like, you know, you're
Speaker 2: you're you're gonna be basically turn people against the military
Speaker 2: established man that we're constantly engaged in these brush fire wars.
Speaker 2: And I understand, I understand that point, but I don't
Speaker 2: accept it. But it uh, you know, my point is,
Speaker 2: like I said, like, it wasn't It wasn't some crazy idea.
Speaker 2: It's uh the Viyitnamization, uh regime. You know, Nixon's policy
Speaker 2: a disengagement with the South, you know well well, butcherssing
Speaker 2: its forces and being you know, in material terms as
Speaker 2: well as as well as in terms of morale and
Speaker 2: you know, transform transform the army of the Republic of Vietnam.
Speaker 2: It is something comic capable that very much that policy
Speaker 2: course very much came from Nixon, but Melvin Lair with
Speaker 2: the rubber met the road, you know, kind of uh
Speaker 2: saw to it being implemented. So it's profs for that.
Speaker 2: The uh. One of the early riffs between Layered and
Speaker 2: and and and Nixon and Kissinger. I mean basically the
Speaker 2: entire like executive basically the entire executive National Security staff
Speaker 2: of the White House, like you know, other than himself.
Speaker 2: In sixty nine, that's when the secret bombing is Cambodia began.
Speaker 2: You know, Cambodia was officially neutral. I mean, they were
Speaker 2: engaged in their own like bloody civil war. There's all
Speaker 2: kinds of intrigues there. And what's fascinating is that as
Speaker 2: the sin of Soviet split kind of set in, there's
Speaker 2: very much a proxy war between the Soviet Union and
Speaker 2: and Red China in Cambodia, you know, between the between
Speaker 2: the Soviet client North Vietnamese like later just you know,
Speaker 2: the Vietnamese army and the Khmer rouge. But that next
Speaker 2: an increasingly sidelined Laird and these key decisions, and that's
Speaker 2: there's an interesting parallel I with with Iran contract there,
Speaker 2: which which Warrants mentioned. I want I want deep dive
Speaker 2: into that now because obviously it would be here all afternoon.
Speaker 2: But it's Laird. Laird understood. Laird said, basically looked like
Speaker 2: this wasn't a matter of priety, is you know, it's
Speaker 2: not a matter of me being affronted that you know,
Speaker 2: despite the vegu of Secretary Defense, I being left out
Speaker 2: of these decisions but he said, there's an inevident there's
Speaker 2: an evidence there's going to be an inevitable disclosed public
Speaker 2: disclosure of uh of these bombings, and UH public outrage
Speaker 2: UH authentic or not cultivated or not by by hostile
Speaker 2: elements is gonna is gonna harm the harm wrought by
Speaker 2: that is gonna neutralize any tactical advantage by hitting these North.
Speaker 2: These North made me sanctuaries in Cambodia. And Larry was
Speaker 2: actually right about that. And again, I mean, may what
Speaker 2: what what was the anti war movement? And was it
Speaker 2: was its focused on these discrete policy decisions, you know,
Speaker 2: like the secret bonding of Cambodia. Was that like authentic
Speaker 2: uh outrage? I don't know, Okay, not at all. It
Speaker 2: was it was it was the It was the nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty eight equivalent sorrows inc you know, color revolutioning, uh,
Speaker 2: the American street against mister Nixon and the Vietnam War
Speaker 2: with of course the help of warsaw paged intelligence agencies.
Speaker 2: But that didn't matter. The point is that's what it
Speaker 2: would be a catalyst for. And of course I mean
Speaker 2: the you gonn almost hear the Nixon rebuttal of that
Speaker 2: of you know, we're not we're not gonna let these
Speaker 2: like we're not gonna let some like commy cocksuckers in
Speaker 2: Berkeley like dictate like the course of policy, particularly not
Speaker 2: you know, the course of war and peace decisions, because
Speaker 2: you know, bombing nominally neutral states that are actually communist
Speaker 2: sanctuaries is bad PR. But Laird was absolutely right. Okay,
Speaker 2: And you know, you if you're the president of the
Speaker 2: United States, you know you're presiding over the political culture
Speaker 2: that you're presiding over, and misguidance it may be, you know,
Speaker 2: like comically improper as it may be. You know, you
Speaker 2: are dealing with the hostile media. If you're a mister Nixon,
Speaker 2: her mister Trump, that's going to do early in his
Speaker 2: power to remove you from office. And these things must
Speaker 2: be considered. Now, that does not mean that you're refrained
Speaker 2: from assaulting Cambodia if it's a if it's if it's
Speaker 2: a tactical necessity. What it does mean is that you
Speaker 2: finesse it the right way, and you know, you don't
Speaker 2: do it in secret and cut the Secretary of Defense
Speaker 2: out of the equation. But that that really kind of, uh,
Speaker 2: that really uh, that really was kind of the nail
Speaker 2: in the cop and the relationship between Laird and and
Speaker 2: and Nixon and Kissinger, and later when when it was disclosed,
Speaker 2: when the bombing of Cambodia was disclosed, and these mass
Speaker 2: protests broke out, which with a precursor to the to
Speaker 2: the Kent State uh tragedy, which I don't know, people,
Speaker 2: I didn't know that until fairly recently. I mean I
Speaker 2: knew like when that. I knew when the camp I
Speaker 2: knew when the Cambodia bombies occurred, I knew when Kent
Speaker 2: State happened. I didn't realize that like that, at least
Speaker 2: the nominal pretext for the big protest was was the
Speaker 2: bombing of Cambodia. But uh, when this was disclosed, the media, uh,
Speaker 2: Nixon through Kissinger very publicly accused Laird of of leaking it,
Speaker 2: you know, just uh, which was a pretty was a
Speaker 2: pretty pretty serious allegation. I haven't deep dived into the issue.
Speaker 2: I can't really comment in that. I would have been
Speaker 2: surprised if that was the case. Somebody Lard was a
Speaker 2: serious guy, however you or I feel about his politics.
Speaker 2: He wouldn't have compromised. A guy like Lard wouldn't have
Speaker 2: compromised the you know, an active war effort, you know,
Speaker 2: to stick it to mister Nixon or to score points
Speaker 2: with the with the with with with with with with
Speaker 2: Woodward and Bernstein types. I. I just can't see that happening.
Speaker 2: But uh, be as it may, this was another I
Speaker 2: mean this, this was in another dysfunction of the Nixon
Speaker 2: White House. And I mean, don't get me wrong, I
Speaker 2: think Nixon was actually fighting the Vietnam War to win it.
Speaker 2: And uh next episode will also get into the man
Speaker 2: of Creighton Abrams, General Creighton Abrams, who succeeded Westmoreland, And
Speaker 2: uh I I think of Westmoreland almost, uh almost, uh
Speaker 2: almost like a McLellan of his era, you know, like
Speaker 2: very much, very much, very much a being counter or
Speaker 2: like a lesser or like a middle level executive and
Speaker 2: in particularly innovative company, you know, in in in in
Speaker 2: in in an army uniform. How Westmoreland advanced the way
Speaker 2: he did remains a mystery. But again I I don't
Speaker 2: there there's obviously not a help of a lot I
Speaker 2: can add. There's not obviously not a help a lot
Speaker 2: of insight I have into into the US military culture.
Speaker 2: And uh, I mean having not seen it from within.
Speaker 2: But the uh laird, Uh we'll wrap up here in
Speaker 2: a minute. So that because uh, the next kind of
Speaker 2: sub top I'm gonna get into is is huge. But
Speaker 2: the there's a legacy the laired I think he was
Speaker 2: very much the last kind of like Secretary Defense that
Speaker 2: had any real independence in policy matters now because he
Speaker 2: was such an incredible, dynamic guy, but because subsequent presidents
Speaker 2: did not make mistake that Nixon did your secretary defense
Speaker 2: during the Cold War, in my opinion, was was arguably
Speaker 2: as important as as ah as one as a selection
Speaker 2: for Attorney general. But uh, that's that's a that could be. Uh.
Speaker 2: I guess they could be arguing a number of different ways,
Speaker 2: but I think this might be a kind of a
Speaker 2: natural stopping point. I.
Speaker 1: Uh, you can do your you can do your plugs.
Speaker 1: You can also announce that Twitter is being Twitter again.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think.
Speaker 1: Account you know yeah yeah. I was suspended from Twitter
Speaker 1: the week Elon took over.
Speaker 2: It's just bizarre and like as they suspended him and
Speaker 2: he's is a legit guy, and like he's afraid to
Speaker 2: speak his mind, Like what what what would what? He
Speaker 2: doesn't he doesn't he like blogs about I mean, he's
Speaker 2: he's he's like kind of a mega guy. But what
Speaker 2: what the hell is he dropping that's offensive to Twitter?
Speaker 2: You know, like it's just totally random.
Speaker 1: Accept his love for docking back for the attack. That's
Speaker 1: the only thing that really.
Speaker 2: But it makes no sense, like even like like the
Speaker 2: things that even usually throw like their triggers like he
Speaker 2: or whatever, like he like why bing him? But it's
Speaker 2: but the uh but yeah, I mean and it's I
Speaker 2: I but who people not every time does this has
Speaker 2: happened literally a dozen times. It happens like every several weeks.
Speaker 2: Everyone it happens. People act like I die or something.
Speaker 2: It's like I do a lot of just like goofy
Speaker 2: shit posting on Twitter. I drop some serious stuff there too,
Speaker 2: but that's like it's kind of a big nothing man
Speaker 2: like I use it to promote what we're doing so
Speaker 2: that our people can find us, you know, and and
Speaker 2: tune in for like the stuff we're doing here. This
Speaker 2: idea that it's like this awesome platform that we need.
Speaker 2: We don't fucking need that shit. Like I built my
Speaker 2: brand when I was on no social media at all. Okay,
Speaker 2: I do have an account there that is active, But
Speaker 2: I I'm gonna be low key about it because like I,
Speaker 2: I don't know who the hell knows like what they're
Speaker 2: you know what what the kind of one can never tell,
Speaker 2: like what what the lay of the land is in
Speaker 2: terms of you know the I mean, who can who
Speaker 2: can predict arbitrary and caprecious action, which is by definition
Speaker 2: is arbitrary caprecious. But I'm transitioning to YouTube, that's like
Speaker 2: my primary platform. I'm gonna back it up on Odyssey
Speaker 2: and stuff. Yes, I realized YouTube is censorious as well,
Speaker 2: but I mean I've been we're we're kind of we're
Speaker 2: kind of leaving Twitter behind anyway. But yeah, so I
Speaker 2: don't want people acting like this is like the end
Speaker 2: of the fucking world. Like it just it bothers me
Speaker 2: when people act that way. But the but the yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean find me on substack real Thomas seven seven
Speaker 2: seven dot substick dot com. I'm on Instagram just at
Speaker 2: like number seven h m A S seven seven seven.
Speaker 2: The YouTube channels launching at the end of the month.
Speaker 2: Like I said, I'm very excited about it, Like I
Speaker 2: really am it. I there's a lot of potential there
Speaker 2: and I think people will be very happy with it,
Speaker 2: and I've got I'm very blessed to have some really
Speaker 2: great people helping me produce it, because I certainly would
Speaker 2: be pissing into the wind on on the production side
Speaker 2: or not for them. But yeah, and Steel Storm two
Speaker 2: is available at Imperium Press. That's the second installment in
Speaker 2: my science fiction series. So yeah, please check it out
Speaker 2: if you're a fan of my work product and or
Speaker 2: science fiction. And that's that's all I got.
Speaker 1: Well, once again, thank you, and it's all the next time.
Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Kenyona Show,
Speaker 1: part nine of the Cold War series. How you doing, Thomas,
Speaker 1: I very well.
Speaker 2: Thanks. Today I wanted to talk about something that's sort
Speaker 2: of a forgotten that themned them to the Vietnam War,
Speaker 2: And like I raised before we went live, there's some
Speaker 2: there's some pretty haunting things about Vietnam. I don't want
Speaker 2: to sound allo dramatic, and I don't mean in the
Speaker 2: way that it's presented in most court history narratives, but
Speaker 2: there are there's a lot of dishonesty about the conflict,
Speaker 2: particularly among you know, in the accounts of men who
Speaker 2: served in the executive branch Now, if you go to
Speaker 2: the Vietnam War Memorial, you know the wall in Washington, DC.
Speaker 2: And I didn't notice this until two thousand and five.
Speaker 2: You know, these the black marble or granted whatever it is.
Speaker 2: I'm not a big fan of the memorial, honestly, like
Speaker 2: the way it's designed. I think it's kind of morbid.
Speaker 2: But because it may, each section is designated by conflict gear,
Speaker 2: you know, so it's like all the men who died
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty seven in hostile action, you know, they'll
Speaker 2: they'll be like their names the final panels nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 2: So I figured, okay, that's probably I didn't think there
Speaker 2: are any casualties of the embassy marines or whatever during
Speaker 2: occupation or operation. I think it was enduring wind the
Speaker 2: evacuation of Saigon. But I noticed there's like thirty eight
Speaker 2: or some names on it, and I'm like, that's not right.
Speaker 2: And uh lo, and behold the men who died on
Speaker 2: Ko Tang, the Battle of Ko Tang Island against the
Speaker 2: Khmer Rouge, where it just kind of as an afterthought
Speaker 2: tacked down to the Vietnam War Wall, which doesn't make
Speaker 2: any sense. The Battle of Kotang was not the final
Speaker 2: battle of the Vietnam War. It was against an entirely
Speaker 2: it was against it, you know, it was waved against
Speaker 2: an entirely different regime in an entirely different country for
Speaker 2: totally unrelated reasons. And I found that to be kind
Speaker 2: of grotesque. But some years later Rumsfeld wrote a couple
Speaker 2: of books. Okay, he wrote his autobiography and then he
Speaker 2: wrote his memoirs. And Rumsfeld really cut his teeth in
Speaker 2: government as the White Awshiva staff from the Ford administration,
Speaker 2: and he talked about the Battle of Ko Tang like
Speaker 2: it was this great operation and you know, there was
Speaker 2: only I think he said there was only three casualties,
Speaker 2: which is perverse. And we'll get into why. It was
Speaker 2: just like an out and out lie. And this disturbed me.
Speaker 2: I mean, I suppose the rebuttal would be, well, you know,
Speaker 2: Rumsfeld is recalling things then that were, you know, thirty
Speaker 2: five years in the past. Rumsfeld had a photographic memory.
Speaker 2: He used to brag about that. And Uh, my dad
Speaker 2: made the point. When my dad got out of the army, Uh,
Speaker 2: he went to work for McGeorge Bundy and they developed
Speaker 2: kind of a rapport, you know. Uh, and my dad
Speaker 2: used to drive him around and stuff like that. And uh,
Speaker 2: my dad met Rumsfeld during his tenure with Bundy. You know,
Speaker 2: my dad was just like a nobody, you know, so
Speaker 2: there was no way for Rumsfeld to remember him. And
Speaker 2: then decades later, my dad and a Rumsfeld at some
Speaker 2: like CFR thing, and Rumsfeld addressed him by his first
Speaker 2: name because he just that's the way the guy is.
Speaker 2: So Rumsfeld, what I'm getting his rumhold not forget what
Speaker 2: the casualties were at Ko Tang, and he didn't just
Speaker 2: get confused about, you know, what actually happened there. Nor
Speaker 2: do I believe somebody ghost wrote the book and Rumsfeld
Speaker 2: didn't fact check it. So I mean that's I guess
Speaker 2: what what kind of jumped out of me is that
Speaker 2: this this was still being kind of swept under the
Speaker 2: rug like decades later. So what was the Mayagas incident
Speaker 2: and why is it important? Well? On May twelfth, ninety
Speaker 2: seventy five, uh a uh an American cargo ship s S.
Speaker 2: Mayag Is the A crew at thirty nine. It was
Speaker 2: off the territorial coast of Cambodia, you know, which was
Speaker 2: then which was then ruled by the commuter route. You know,
Speaker 2: two weeks before and UH they had conquered the capitol,
Speaker 2: they got captured. The Kremier Rugs claimed that they were
Speaker 2: in territorial waters. UH. The captain of the Mayagas subsequently
Speaker 2: claimed like they were fired upon by teeth by peat
Speaker 2: by pt boats and you know, corralled into Cambodian territory. Regardless,
Speaker 2: this whole crew was seized. UH. This UH had echoes
Speaker 2: of UH when the North Koreans had UH seized the Pueblo,
Speaker 2: which is the navy intelligence vessel in nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 2: and UH, the North Koreans grabbed the Pueblo at the
Speaker 2: height of the tet offensive and being there it was
Speaker 2: an intelligent ship, the North Koreans were able to seize
Speaker 2: encryption equipment. And it's believed that, UH, it's believed that
Speaker 2: John Walker, not John Walker Land, a different John Wallcker
Speaker 2: who became associated with infamy and freezing. He was this
Speaker 2: naval officer who, UH, as it turned out, was spying
Speaker 2: for the Soviet Union for decades. And it's believed that
Speaker 2: you know, the North Koreans conveyed UH this naval encryption
Speaker 2: equipment to Moscow. Walker then provided Moscow with like the
Speaker 2: with the ciphers so that they could you know, that
Speaker 2: the Soviets could could decode you know, the encrypted language.
Speaker 2: So I mean this was a this was a big deal,
Speaker 2: you know, and it it and it you know, there,
Speaker 2: even if Johnson had a stronger mandate, and even if
Speaker 2: the Vietnam War was going better, Uh, the United States
Speaker 2: wasn't really a position you know, opened up another front
Speaker 2: in Asia and you know, wage war with North Korea.
Speaker 2: But there's evidence that in part the North Koreans via
Speaker 2: the Chinese, were very much trying to facilitate that. But
Speaker 2: that's a little bit outside this go. But in any event,
Speaker 2: Ford was not going to allow a repeat of the
Speaker 2: Pueblo incident. So immediately, obviously, you know, the uh, the
Speaker 2: the National Security Council convened secondary defense, UH, which at
Speaker 2: the time was Schlessinger, who uh, I've got nothing nice
Speaker 2: to say about. People who remember him at all generally
Speaker 2: remember him for some incredibly slanderous things that he said
Speaker 2: about President Nixon. But he uh, you know, Nixon played
Speaker 2: musical chairs with his cabinet kind of like mister Trump did.
Speaker 2: Although there was obviously there was more kind of rhyme
Speaker 2: and reason to to uh Nixon's staff decisions. But uh,
Speaker 2: Schlessinger had succeeded Elliott Richardson. Elliot Richardson had succeeded Melvin
Speaker 2: Laird Like none of these men like Stir for more
Speaker 2: than several months. Okay, but he was a holdover from
Speaker 2: the Nickson ministry for better or worse. So is Kissinger,
Speaker 2: who was Secretary of State at the time. But uh,
Speaker 2: And what's important, what's important to keep in mind during
Speaker 2: this time is that there was no Special Operations Command.
Speaker 2: The US military was kind of a mess. You know,
Speaker 2: this was only this was less This was less than
Speaker 2: a year and a half after the draft had had ended,
Speaker 2: the all Volunteer Force was being implemented. There's a there's
Speaker 2: a there's a draw down in uh in the number
Speaker 2: of h division sized combat capable formations. So basically, uh,
Speaker 2: the the Cold War flash points in Europe and in
Speaker 2: Asia were really being manned by a skeleton crew, as
Speaker 2: it were, and there was not this like rapid deployment capability,
Speaker 2: and there was no Special Operations Command. So you know,
Speaker 2: the kind of instinctive response people have in reading about
Speaker 2: the Mayagas was like, well, why didn't you know? What
Speaker 2: didn't so commerce predecessor, just like deploy Navy seals or
Speaker 2: something like that. Infrastructure didn't exist. And also and uh
Speaker 2: as the crow flies. I think the closest UH combat
Speaker 2: capable force to UH to Cambodia would have been located
Speaker 2: in Okanawa. Nineteen seventy five. Okay, like this was, this
Speaker 2: was this is heigh of the Cold War. You know,
Speaker 2: this was not America did not have you know, four
Speaker 2: deployments all over this planet, you know that, And it
Speaker 2: didn't have the commanding control nor the forces in't being
Speaker 2: you know, to respond to something like this instantaneously. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but I mean I've seen it seems short sighted, I
Speaker 2: guess that people today, But it's history in the rearview mirror,
Speaker 2: Like this was not this kind of thing was not
Speaker 2: really within the contemplation of of of the Department of
Speaker 2: Defense either. It was it was not the kind of
Speaker 2: exigencies that were emerging in nineteen seventy five in any
Speaker 2: any kind of regular or predictable capacity. But because it
Speaker 2: may like we talked about, like we talked about last
Speaker 2: couple of episodes, Cambodia and the Kremie Rouge was absolutely
Speaker 2: a client regime of the people's Republic in China. This
Speaker 2: created some strange intrigues. As you know, Pet King was
Speaker 2: decoupled from Moscow in a real way. And this was
Speaker 2: you know, solidified by the efforts of a Nixon and Kissinger.
Speaker 2: America had to tread somewhat lightly too in order to
Speaker 2: preserve that just a uh an immediate kind of brought
Speaker 2: spectrum assault on Khmer Rouge Cambodia, which they had they
Speaker 2: were calling Democratic Campuccia. That would have caused real problems
Speaker 2: and uh that could have uh that wouldn't have this
Speaker 2: the Sino Soviet split by that point, was that the
Speaker 2: chasm was too great. Proverbially, that wouldn't have driven the
Speaker 2: Chinese back into the arms of Warsaw Pact, but it
Speaker 2: definitely would have generated momentum in that direction. Okay, So
Speaker 2: that's kind of the subtext of this, and that's one
Speaker 2: of the reasons why I think it's an important It's
Speaker 2: not just you know, like a footnote of history. It's
Speaker 2: something that deserves to be talked about, not just because
Speaker 2: the men that were lost there and and the three
Speaker 2: of them in particular stuff for an utterly horrible fate
Speaker 2: that we'll get into, but it's imperative to understand, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, how complicated and how strange the late Cold
Speaker 2: War became. And obviously later you know, uh, in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy nine, the Hanoi government quite literally went to war
Speaker 2: with China, and uh, concomitantly, you know, the the Vietnamese
Speaker 2: assaulted into Cambodia, deposed the Khmer Rouge and and this
Speaker 2: you know, decades long conflict ensued, you know, between the
Speaker 2: Vietnamese occupiers and the Khmer Rouge have been driven off
Speaker 2: into the bush, which was very much a proxy war
Speaker 2: between the people's public as China and the Soviet Union,
Speaker 2: which I mean not to be flippant about it, because
Speaker 2: I mean, you know this, the cost in human suffering
Speaker 2: was immense, but uh, creating generating that conflict was kind
Speaker 2: of a master stroke of the Nixon White House and
Speaker 2: subsequent administrations who continued to cultivate that divide and conquer strategy.
Speaker 2: But there's some uh, there's some evidence, uh, if one
Speaker 2: knows what to look for, the Chinese had absolutely no
Speaker 2: interest in sabotaging the kind of strategic alliance for the
Speaker 2: America which was then still pretty fresh. But at the
Speaker 2: same time, you know, China was not America's friend, and
Speaker 2: they were just as prone to intrigues as uh. As ever,
Speaker 2: I believe that the Chinese probably directed uh the Kmier
Speaker 2: rouge to seize them uh, to seize the uh mayagas
Speaker 2: or at least once it happened, you know, they they
Speaker 2: they they they endorsed that move. And I think the
Speaker 2: I think the long game for Pet King was that
Speaker 2: then they could intervene as like negotiator. It would be
Speaker 2: a way to kind of bloody Uncle Sam's nose in
Speaker 2: terms of global credibility, you know, cast China as uh
Speaker 2: you know kind of uh the arbiter of a of
Speaker 2: of warrant piece affairs in the Orient and uh. Plus
Speaker 2: it would generate good will, at least in pay King's
Speaker 2: mind with uh you know, whatever government replaced the Ford administration.
Speaker 2: And that sounds totally backwards, it's strange, but that's the
Speaker 2: way that the Chinese think and thought it is. It's
Speaker 2: an arguable examples are myriad. If people think I'm just
Speaker 2: you know, kind of mouthing off they don't like the
Speaker 2: Chinese or whatever, But this was a delicate situation, is
Speaker 2: uh what I'm getting at, you know, beyond the obvious
Speaker 2: fact that that any kind of hostage rescue operation is
Speaker 2: is is kind of the worst possible in operational terms,
Speaker 2: UH circumstance to emerge. You know, one doesn't need to
Speaker 2: be H one doesn't need to be some high speed
Speaker 2: military type to recognize that. But the way it played
Speaker 2: out in UH operational terms was for for it was
Speaker 2: informed the seizure of the make of the Mayagas at
Speaker 2: his UH morning briefing on UH the sixteenth, like I said,
Speaker 2: the National Security Council was convened Brent Scowcroft, who, as
Speaker 2: I'm sure people will recognize, you know, later went on
Speaker 2: to play a major role in the Reagan administration, particularly
Speaker 2: Reagan's first term. You know, he he basically early on
Speaker 2: in the crisis was UH what was the one who
Speaker 2: uh you know convened UH what ultimately became you know,
Speaker 2: the parties who determined what what the what the operational
Speaker 2: response would be for better or worse? The UH, the
Speaker 2: the big concern I mean obviously aside from the you know,
Speaker 2: the issues are just indicated relating to a relating the
Speaker 2: UH US Chinese relations and everything else. America had a
Speaker 2: major credibility problem, and like we talked, you know, owing
Speaker 2: to the falls Saigon. And as we talked about I
Speaker 2: think last episode, I'm not just overstating that because it's
Speaker 2: kind of my peculiar emphasis as a revisionist. This was
Speaker 2: in the Cold War, particularly as UH strategic parody set
Speaker 2: in which UH in the later region of era was
Speaker 2: I mean, it was was kind of the you know
Speaker 2: what was was the height of that kind of paradigm shift.
Speaker 2: The United States enjoying credibility and its ability to project
Speaker 2: power successfully, you know, when a third world That's basically
Speaker 2: what the entire Truman doctrine hinged upon, and the entire
Speaker 2: American Cold War strategy in in military terms, hinged on
Speaker 2: the Truman doctrine. Okay, so coming off of UH, coming
Speaker 2: off of defeat and Saigon, despite you know, however much
Speaker 2: that had been mitigated by the sound of Soviet split.
Speaker 2: In pure military and strategic terms, if America had proven
Speaker 2: unable or lacking in the will to respond UH to
Speaker 2: the seizure, that mayegg isn't its crew Well, in you know,
Speaker 2: military operational terms, that would have UH, that would have
Speaker 2: had real world consequences and UH, and and that that's
Speaker 2: that's really what was on the minds of you know,
Speaker 2: Ford himself and everybody in his National Security cabinet. Ford
Speaker 2: immediately issued a statement declaring at the seizure of the
Speaker 2: vessel was an act of piracy, which is interesting language,
Speaker 2: which wasn't really precedented. And the context understand that statement
Speaker 2: within it wasn't just him, It wasn't just the president
Speaker 2: relying upon you know, kind of cringe polemic. What he
Speaker 2: was saying was, I mean, this this was the era
Speaker 2: when people were banding that you know, the president had
Speaker 2: to have you know, approval from Congress before he, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, acted in the Article two commander in chief
Speaker 2: role and like nonsense like the War Powers Act was
Speaker 2: being floated. Okay, I don't want to start a constitutional debate,
Speaker 2: but that kind of stuff was emergent from the hangover
Speaker 2: over over the Vietnam conflict that that does not have
Speaker 2: a leg to stand on according to the letter of
Speaker 2: the Constitution. But because that was the tenor of discourse,
Speaker 2: forded to send some kind of message that you know,
Speaker 2: he was not gonna he was not gonna he was
Speaker 2: not gonna await some kind of congressional debate. And whether
Speaker 2: or not, you know, he was off the rise, he
Speaker 2: was forc against the Premier Rouge. You know, he's saying, like,
Speaker 2: you know, this is outside of the bounds of of
Speaker 2: of ordinary international relations, and you know I'm gonna respond
Speaker 2: to OVERI fit that's reading between the lines. I find
Speaker 2: that very interesting. I can't think of a more unenviable
Speaker 2: position to be in than, you know, the American president
Speaker 2: in the aftermath of Watergate, being faced with a you know,
Speaker 2: a kind of asymmetrical national security crisis like this that
Speaker 2: calls for you know, immediate decisive action that I mean,
Speaker 2: that's never a particularly desirable situation to find oneself in,
Speaker 2: but in that era, and then specifically in that moment,
Speaker 2: you know, weeks after the fullest I gone like I
Speaker 2: can't even imagine. But secret to state Schlessinger, what he
Speaker 2: did immediately was he directed the Joint Chiefs to order
Speaker 2: their people in theater to locate the mayaga Is and
Speaker 2: at all costs prevent the vessel's movement to mainland Cambodia,
Speaker 2: employing all the des ury munitions required to do that,
Speaker 2: but obviously taking care not to harm you know, the
Speaker 2: hostage crew. Kissinger, and this was fascinating, immediately went into action.
Speaker 2: But he didn't contact the Khmer Rouge or attempt to.
Speaker 2: What he did was he conducted the Chinese liaison office
Speaker 2: in Washington and he immediately demanded to release the mayag
Speaker 2: is and to convey that message to the Khmer Rouge
Speaker 2: on the ground. The whoever the formal diplomatic representative of
Speaker 2: Pey King was, refused to accept the note, saying basically,
Speaker 2: I can't take responsibility for this gets injured. Then tapped
Speaker 2: George Herber Walker Busch, who at that time was leading
Speaker 2: the counterpart lie as an office in Pey King. He
Speaker 2: delivered the note personally to the Chinese Foreign Ministry and he,
Speaker 2: according to Bush himself, and uh, I don't see why
Speaker 2: you would lie about this. He conveyed orally that if
Speaker 2: there was not you know, if the immediate release of
Speaker 2: of the Mayaga's crew was not you know, was not realized,
Speaker 2: that uh, the Khmer rou should be held responsible collectively
Speaker 2: and there'd be a massive shock and awe assault on
Speaker 2: Panolan Penn And again the this wasn't just diplomatic protocol
Speaker 2: that both Kissinger and then Bush approached China. I mean
Speaker 2: it goes to show you what was underway behind the scenes,
Speaker 2: and that this obviously the most charitable view to take
Speaker 2: of it is that, well, you know, the Khmer Rouge,
Speaker 2: they were paranoid psychos and it was this kind of
Speaker 2: backwards revolutionary regime. They grabbed the Mayagas just because they
Speaker 2: were paranoid. Then when they realized, you know, that it
Speaker 2: was a US flag vessel, they freaked out and didn't
Speaker 2: know what to do. The most kind of punitive view
Speaker 2: of it is that, you know what I the possibility
Speaker 2: I raised a moment ago, was that the Chinese orchestrated this,
Speaker 2: as you know, part of a Machiavilian kind of intrigue drama,
Speaker 2: which they've done in the past, frankly, and continue to
Speaker 2: do so today, albeit and less punctuated in violent terms.
Speaker 2: But regardless, Washington obviously was aware that, you know, China
Speaker 2: was either responsible for this and in approximate causal terms
Speaker 2: or had the power to force a resolution. And that
Speaker 2: tells you everything you need to know about the relationship
Speaker 2: between the Khmer Rouge, the Vietnamese, the Soviet Union, China
Speaker 2: in the United States. H Subsequently, the Khmuho's tried to
Speaker 2: do exactly that, release the Mayaga's crew unharmed, which we'll see,
Speaker 2: and I think that further substantiates, you know, my kind
Speaker 2: of uh spitball analysis. But I, like I said, I'm
Speaker 2: not I'm not just speculating or conspiracy theorizing. I think
Speaker 2: anyone who spends time with the factual record and you know,
Speaker 2: kind of read between the lines of American diplomacy speak,
Speaker 2: I think this becomes clear. Okay, back to the uh
Speaker 2: kind of practical operational side of it, though the uh
Speaker 2: it was on the the following day, it was confirmed
Speaker 2: that the Mayagas was off the coast of Ko Tang,
Speaker 2: which is an island in Cambodian territorial waters which the
Speaker 2: Khmuter Rouge had fortified after the after Prono and Pen fell,
Speaker 2: which it later became clear that they'd done so in
Speaker 2: anticipation of a Vietnamese naval assault, because their big fear
Speaker 2: was that it would be used as a staging ground,
Speaker 2: you know, to assault in mainland presumably as you know,
Speaker 2: a secondary theater to a divert kremue Ruse forces and
Speaker 2: being from you know whatever across border Loca I had
Speaker 2: had been the you know, the the spair plannks as
Speaker 2: were of of the Vietnamese of potential Vietnamese assault I
Speaker 2: can't speak how problem that would have been, because I mean,
Speaker 2: who knows, but it wasn't. It was entirely reasonable to
Speaker 2: you know, anticipate that at the time and with what
Speaker 2: was underway. And I mean ultimately the Vietnamese did. I
Speaker 2: mean that's what the posed the com rouge was a
Speaker 2: Vietnamese attack. So I mean this was not just this
Speaker 2: is not just an alibi of a of the regime,
Speaker 2: whatever else we can say about it and its credibility.
Speaker 2: The absence of combat cable American forces in theater again
Speaker 2: was the big problem. The closest, uh truly comic cable
Speaker 2: element was the second Battalion, ninth Marines, when a training
Speaker 2: who were then engaged in a trainingcise on Okinawa and
Speaker 2: on the night of the thirteenth of May, which was
Speaker 2: the day after the that the seizure of the the
Speaker 2: vessel itself, they were ordered to return a camp and
Speaker 2: prepare for departure by air on May fourteenth. It Uh,
Speaker 2: the problem was this was a heavy I mean, this
Speaker 2: is this, this was not this is this is the
Speaker 2: proverbial operation. Every one needs to go into light. I mean,
Speaker 2: like again, these days we would think of it as
Speaker 2: like a Sealed Team six or like a Delta Forest
Speaker 2: kind of operation, and uh, this is not really what
Speaker 2: people were training for at that time, and there was
Speaker 2: an by nineteen seventy five, there was there was a
Speaker 2: handful of officers with second Italian ninth Marines who died,
Speaker 2: you know, been under fire in Vietnam, but virtually none
Speaker 2: of the enlisted matter Renco's head. You know, the idea taken.
Speaker 2: I mean, however tough these guys were, and I'm sure
Speaker 2: that they were like a hard dudes taking you know,
Speaker 2: taking a marine element that had not been in combat before,
Speaker 2: and you know, kind of breaking their proverbial sherry, you know,
Speaker 2: by having them assault a ship that had been taken hostage.
Speaker 2: And this in a kind of anti counter terrorist operation
Speaker 2: like that seems like a recipe for disaster. Would ultimately
Speaker 2: put the gobache on that planned operation. Was uh a
Speaker 2: guy named General Burns, Yeah, Burns, he was commander with
Speaker 2: the seventh Air Force. He uh wade in and said, look,
Speaker 2: you know, it's very possible that you know, the crew
Speaker 2: has already been you know, taking landside either on Ko
Speaker 2: Tang itself or is being shuttled to the mainland. Regardless,
Speaker 2: He's like you're gonna need more firepower than just you know,
Speaker 2: then then you know, can be uh gonna be brought
Speaker 2: to bear you know by dropping uh, but by dropping
Speaker 2: uh by dropping the Marines, you know, by chopper onto
Speaker 2: uh onto the vessel itself, you know, with you know
Speaker 2: kind of like light covering fire from whatever. These I assume,
Speaker 2: like I assume like Hue. I don't know if Hue
Speaker 2: Cobras were fielded then yet, but yeah, yeah they would
Speaker 2: have been. But I mean point being you know with uh,
Speaker 2: Burns to his credit, was thinking ahead and uh his
Speaker 2: idea was, uh bring to bear air Force gunships and
Speaker 2: shoppers to be able to you know, saturate the island
Speaker 2: of firepower if need be. And the uh you know,
Speaker 2: the the hostage rescue element, he suggested, uh, the fifty
Speaker 2: sixth Security Police Squadron. He is like the Air Force
Speaker 2: guys who like guard like air bases at that at
Speaker 2: that time, that's what they were. Like. These days, the
Speaker 2: Air Force has like a high speed like like spec
Speaker 2: war like element, but in those days they basically had
Speaker 2: these guys were somewhat like more high speed like MPs,
Speaker 2: you know, and again like that's not really that's not
Speaker 2: really you know, the element you want for something like this.
Speaker 2: But uh, his view at least was more kind of
Speaker 2: in line with what was to develop than then than
Speaker 2: that than that which was floated uh previously and in
Speaker 2: this operation was actually implemented it and the Utapo Airbase
Speaker 2: and Thailand, which I believe is still in use. Like
Speaker 2: the idea was that these gunships and these UH and
Speaker 2: these UH air Force MPs you know who are the
Speaker 2: hostage rescue element, They're gonna be shuttled from the Philippines
Speaker 2: to uh Utapo in Thailand to be yah different thing,
Speaker 2: and then from there they were gonna assault Ko Tang
Speaker 2: on the way to Thailand. Uh there was there was
Speaker 2: a chopper crash and like eighteen of their number were killed.
Speaker 2: So as you can see this, uh it was eighteen
Speaker 2: eighteen the security police and five crewmen. So I mean,
Speaker 2: as you can see, there's just getting like more and
Speaker 2: more food barb by the moment. In operational terms.
Speaker 1: It sounds it sounds like trying to go into a
Speaker 1: ram and get the hostages.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, And uh, yeah, no that's that You're exactly right.
Speaker 2: And this coupled with desert one and you know, with
Speaker 2: which the aborded Iranian rescue mission and uh, the lack
Speaker 2: of integrated command and control of Grenada. That's really what
Speaker 2: created so COOM, you know, because the need for it
Speaker 2: became recognized.
Speaker 1: Well, there was only one lost in Grenader, right, was
Speaker 1: there one? I think there was only one casualty in
Speaker 1: Grenader right?
Speaker 2: No, there was a number. And what happened was these
Speaker 2: Navy seals who were there was a bunch, there's a few.
Speaker 2: There was like a you know, there's an Army command element,
Speaker 2: a Marine command element, and then there was these seals
Speaker 2: who ended up somehow dropped in the wrong place and
Speaker 2: then they ended up drownings. They weren't retrieved. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: was a whole mess, and like it had to do.
Speaker 2: It was literally totally avoidable when it was like a
Speaker 2: command and control.
Speaker 1: Nineteen dead, nineteen dead, one hundred and fifty wounded.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean Grenada is all. We'll get
Speaker 2: into Grenada in one of the later episodes because it's
Speaker 2: in political terms, Uh it it bored directly on uh
Speaker 2: uh the Sandinist Revolution, and there was there was North
Speaker 2: Koreans on the ground there. I mean, obviously it was
Speaker 2: the Cuban element there's a couple of East Germans like
Speaker 2: it's fascinating and it very much, uh, it very much
Speaker 2: was what the I mean, however, anybody feels about the
Speaker 2: Reagan administration, and you know, some of it's alleged overreach.
Speaker 2: Grenada actually was it was it was being purposed to
Speaker 2: rapidly reinforce Nicaragua and and friendly proxies like the theater.
Speaker 2: You know, that was you know, the the only thing
Speaker 2: to building Grenada was an airstrip for that purpose, and
Speaker 2: that's exactly what they were building. But as it may,
Speaker 2: after this atter, this, after this UH, after this disaster
Speaker 2: with you know in uh at uh the TAPO for
Speaker 2: it can be another National Security Council meeting on UH
Speaker 2: on May fourteenth, the uh A communication like been established
Speaker 2: with the seventh Air Force elements UH that had departed
Speaker 2: from Hawaii and where the circling Ko Tang and in
Speaker 2: these day, in those days, that was a closer you
Speaker 2: get to like real time communications. I mean, that's another
Speaker 2: thing we take for branded today. But obviously then like
Speaker 2: you were, there was quite literally like blindness in theater
Speaker 2: if you were the command element in in the White House,
Speaker 2: you know, trying to direct military operations to the Joint
Speaker 2: Chiefs of Staff and then they in turn, you know,
Speaker 2: any any any data they were getting from the battlespace
Speaker 2: was you know, minutes at least minutes and probably hours
Speaker 2: out of date. The UH these fighters, UH they were
Speaker 2: trying to What they didn't realize was that the crew
Speaker 2: by this time of the Mayagas had been shuttled to
Speaker 2: this fishing boat which was then UH attempting to transport
Speaker 2: them to UH the mainland, this coastal city called Kampong Sum.
Speaker 2: These guys their credit, these pilots who were circling in theater,
Speaker 2: they recognized that that's probably was going on. They requisitive
Speaker 2: permission to UH trying to shoot the rudders off of
Speaker 2: this ship that was conveying them and like assault the
Speaker 2: pet boats that were escorting it. Ford intervened had said that,
Speaker 2: you know, the use of those kinds of munitions would
Speaker 2: be would present too great risks of the crew. So
Speaker 2: they put the gabash on that the UH at at
Speaker 2: the same time, UH the National and Security Council, they
Speaker 2: got word, UH they got word back that the Chinese
Speaker 2: For and Ministry and BREAT Beijing had refused to UH
Speaker 2: pass any kind of formal communication on the Khmer Rouge.
Speaker 2: But Busch said that in his belie but Busch said
Speaker 2: that he could all but guarantee that the Chinese are
Speaker 2: putting pressure on the Khmer Rouge to comply with whatever
Speaker 2: American demands were because like, obviously even if I mean,
Speaker 2: like I said, I've got my own theory on this,
Speaker 2: that this was very much orchestrated by Pey King. But
Speaker 2: whether it was or not, obviously the situation was rapidly,
Speaker 2: you know, spiraling out of control. And uh Busch, uh whatever, Uh,
Speaker 2: whether a view of him charitable or or whether it's
Speaker 2: you know, not particularly so. So Bush was a serious
Speaker 2: guy and he very much understood the Chinese and had
Speaker 2: a rapport with them. And I mean he was a
Speaker 2: career intelligence And if you're relayed that in my belief, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, this has been conveyed and this is what's happening.
Speaker 2: I think, you know, that was I think I think
Speaker 2: I think that was as good as gold. But uh,
Speaker 2: the the acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Speaker 2: was a guy named uh, it was a guy named
Speaker 2: David Jones. What he presented and this was ultimately followed
Speaker 2: through in operational terms. He presented the arrange in military
Speaker 2: opposite of the National Security Council and he said, you know,
Speaker 2: look like we're not even sure where the Mayagus crew
Speaker 2: is at this point, you know, whether there's shipboard, whether
Speaker 2: they're landside, and if they're landside, where they're actually located.
Speaker 2: And he's like, obviously like they are, you know, rescuing
Speaker 2: them on a harmony to be our priority. But he's like,
Speaker 2: we've basically got to like waste the commuter rouge because
Speaker 2: like we can't just like let the slide. You know,
Speaker 2: He's like, we gotta this is a credibility issue at
Speaker 2: bubb all else, you know, aside. You know, obviously you
Speaker 2: know we're not going to disregard the lives of our people,
Speaker 2: but you know, we've got it. We've got to lay
Speaker 2: as much hurt on the premier ruge as we can.
Speaker 2: And from that point forward that was basically accepted by
Speaker 2: the White House. It came down to three possibilities. Some
Speaker 2: intelligence suggested that they were still on the mayagas. Some
Speaker 2: suggested they were on Kotang Island. Others suggested that they
Speaker 2: were on the fishing boat itself route uh I, bound
Speaker 2: for the mainland and the you know, the coastal city
Speaker 2: of Campung Som, which is what these Air Force pilots
Speaker 2: were laid, which turned out to be true, incidentally, But
Speaker 2: what was ultimately decided was an ancial security council decided
Speaker 2: to do. They decided to deploy the Marines to take
Speaker 2: the Mayagas itself, assault Kotang Island and together the ass
Speaker 2: of Assault and Cambodi itself, particularly it's shipping and uh
Speaker 2: it's uh it's shipping infrastructure, you know, and you know
Speaker 2: all like you know, naval military targets and uh escalating
Speaker 2: the Panolan pen itself, you know, and like any other
Speaker 2: kind of like counter value uh targets of opportunity that
Speaker 2: presented themselves. You know, if if uh if if within
Speaker 2: you know, twenty four or thirty six hours or whatever,
Speaker 2: you know, there wasn't resolution to the crisis. The fishing
Speaker 2: boat on which uh the magus crew actually was and
Speaker 2: it did arrive at Kampung Sam. The Khmun rouse commander
Speaker 2: at Kampung Sam either either he had either been either
Speaker 2: the Chinese had gotten to him, or he just understood
Speaker 2: what was underway. He issued in order to his men,
Speaker 2: like you know, I don't know you know, do not
Speaker 2: harm these hostages, you know, under any circumstances. You know,
Speaker 2: he asked these hostages. You know, he's like, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean by that point, but established obviously
Speaker 2: it was an American flag ship, you know, and he uh,
Speaker 2: he asked him if the radio equipment was was operable,
Speaker 2: you know, said they get it's He's like, look releasing
Speaker 2: you you know, like, can you call off this assault?
Speaker 2: And uh it was it turned out the radio equipment
Speaker 2: was not operable, but the uh as it uh and
Speaker 2: as it turned out later like one of the one
Speaker 2: of the one of the guys later just closed. He's like,
Speaker 2: he's like, I didn't know if we'll be able to
Speaker 2: reach like any of the aircraft in the air. But
Speaker 2: he's like, by that point, like I wanted He's he's like,
Speaker 2: I wanted to commuter ruders to get their ass kicks.
Speaker 2: So he's like, I, you know, he's like I wouldn't
Speaker 2: have transmitted it anyway, which Franklin was the right call,
Speaker 2: I think, but that but by that point, uh, the
Speaker 2: die was cast. The uh the it was that uh
Speaker 2: the U it was that around just past dawn on
Speaker 2: May sixteenth, Kotang itself was assaulted. But as it as
Speaker 2: it turned out, Intel suggested that there was only about
Speaker 2: twenty or thirty Camire Rouge fighters on the island. It
Speaker 2: turned out that there's over one hundred. And again they
Speaker 2: they they they had a lot of heavy machine guns
Speaker 2: among them and like uh and cruiser like squad weapons.
Speaker 2: Is because you know, like we talked about a moment ago,
Speaker 2: they fortified the island and as a patient of a
Speaker 2: Vietnamese assault which never came. But you know, these uh,
Speaker 2: the Khmer Rouge, whatever you can say about these guys,
Speaker 2: were were incredibly game fighters. This pitched battle ensued between
Speaker 2: the Marines and the camer Rouge. The UH, the the uh.
Speaker 2: The crew of the Mayagas was safely conveyed uh back
Speaker 2: from this fishing boat like back to the Mayagas itself
Speaker 2: and uh and and they were they were they were
Speaker 2: safely conveyed away from the battle space. But uh, when
Speaker 2: it became clear that the crew had been released and
Speaker 2: was safe it uh the Marines were ordered to withdraw
Speaker 2: and they began uh affecting a tacticle withdraw like a
Speaker 2: fighting or tree as it were. But the Marine commander
Speaker 2: on the ground there was two beachheads at the eastern.
Speaker 2: The commander of the easternmost UH operational area, he conveyed, like, look,
Speaker 2: unless we're like wrapped, unless we're rapidly reinforced, like we're
Speaker 2: gonna be overrun. So UH they reinforcem or some instead
Speaker 2: have been called off. Were then directed back to Ko
Speaker 2: Tang to reinforce the Marines on the ground. You know
Speaker 2: this uh in this kind of chaotic withdraw that ensued,
Speaker 2: there was a machine gun team of UH three marines
Speaker 2: that uh in this kind of craggy they in this
Speaker 2: kind of craggy area, like on the beach itself, like
Speaker 2: just outside of the ever kind of shrinking perimeter. You know,
Speaker 2: they'd uh they'd set up a UH an ad hoc
Speaker 2: machine gun nest and they'd been left behind in the
Speaker 2: wake of the withdrawal. And UH one of the one
Speaker 2: of these guys platoon mates had said on board the shopper, like,
Speaker 2: you know, there's there's at least three men on the
Speaker 2: ground there. For some reason, this wasn't this wasn't a
Speaker 2: biden And I realized, like in the middle of a
Speaker 2: hot alz, like in the midst of a firefight. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm sure, things are confused, but this, uh, as it happened,
Speaker 2: these guys were left behind, managed to radio a passing
Speaker 2: US naval vessel and apparently, uh, some intelligence officers said
Speaker 2: it's probably like a Kremiere Rouge trick, and there like,
Speaker 2: I mean, it seems ridiculous. It seems like something like
Speaker 2: a cordial old movie, like some Premier Ruge saying like Yo,
Speaker 2: g I Joe, you'll send them all. I mean, that's
Speaker 2: I'm not even light of a horrible situation with that.
Speaker 2: It seems to me by that point probably everybody's looking
Speaker 2: to cover their own ass as it became clear that,
Speaker 2: you know, they're like there head probably been men left behind.
Speaker 2: These three guys are left behind. This became this like
Speaker 2: a enduring kind of myth on most And I remember
Speaker 2: before I knew anything about the mayag As, before I'd like,
Speaker 2: I mean, I was always fancy by Vietnam, and I
Speaker 2: mean ever since I could read, I was reading about,
Speaker 2: you know, about the cold warn things. But I knew
Speaker 2: this guy in the early nineties. Uh, he was kind
Speaker 2: of a sad guy. You know, he's kind of like
Speaker 2: the troubled Vietnam veda myth and lore you know, like
Speaker 2: he had a drug problem and stuff, but he he
Speaker 2: never became pretty tights like we worked together, like we
Speaker 2: delivered pizzas together, you know. And he he'd he I
Speaker 2: talked about Vietnam and he was really into the Pow
Speaker 2: Mia movement, you know, and I kind of just looked
Speaker 2: at him, was like a sad guy who was troubled
Speaker 2: by the war and other things. But he kept coming
Speaker 2: back to Ko Tang and saying, you know, they left
Speaker 2: guys behind, you know in Cambodia. You know that means
Speaker 2: they left other guys behind, and like, uh, like, I'm
Speaker 2: not saying he was right about all these things he claimed,
Speaker 2: but he wasn't just like talking shit, you know, like
Speaker 2: and he that's this. As it turns out, the uh,
Speaker 2: these guys were a bannon on Ko Tang. That that
Speaker 2: fed a lot of the speculation that the that the
Speaker 2: kind of Pow movement you know, derived uh their claims from.
Speaker 2: But it came out years later. These three guys and
Speaker 2: there were his kids, I think, like and they were
Speaker 2: like I think they were like eighteen nineteen and twenty one, respectively.
Speaker 2: They were on the island for a week, and uh,
Speaker 2: the Khmer Rous realized that like some of their rights
Speaker 2: stores had gone missing, and that you know, bootprints uh
Speaker 2: that obviously weren't uh you know, camier rous sandals were
Speaker 2: found and the cammree was tracked these guys and they
Speaker 2: found them. They were uh shuttled to the mainland. Uh
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, god knows what they were subjected
Speaker 2: to do by commie us tortures. But after several days,
Speaker 2: uh they were looking to the jailers. Uh they were
Speaker 2: beaten to death with the butt end of a B
Speaker 2: forty rocket launcher. I mean, I can't even imagine that
Speaker 2: man like being being uh being being abandoned uh by
Speaker 2: uh by your own forces and then falling into the
Speaker 2: hands of the caremure rouge like literally on this like
Speaker 2: god forsaken island. I mean, that's that's beyond that. A
Speaker 2: lot of stuff frightens me, like at my age and
Speaker 2: frankly had some kind of awful experiences, but that that,
Speaker 2: I mean, I find that there's like horrifying even even
Speaker 2: to think about, you know, and their kids.
Speaker 1: But they should their kids, they should be home in
Speaker 1: the driveway working on a car they just bought.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, man. And it's like, of all people of
Speaker 2: being captured by the Communer Ruge and one most horrifying
Speaker 2: thing I can think of, because like it's not just
Speaker 2: like the Commune Rouge really were animals, Like it's not.
Speaker 2: I mean like it's that's like, yeah, it's not, it's
Speaker 2: not something just like bullshit propaganda or something like it.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a lot of cases where you know,
Speaker 2: if if you're if you surrender, if you're captured at war,
Speaker 2: I mean you're you're dealing with that ponent, you're dealing
Speaker 2: with an opt for that are just guys like you,
Speaker 2: like in the case of the Communit Rouge, like these
Speaker 2: these guys were fucking barbarians.
Speaker 1: But the uh yeah, they they seem like the the
Speaker 1: descendants of the the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War.
Speaker 2: Yeah they yeah. And there's just there's like horrible stuff
Speaker 2: like the there actually were like documents and says like
Speaker 2: cannibalism just like terrorized people and stuff, and like they
Speaker 2: you know, they it's it's one of the few wintances
Speaker 2: again we're kind of the truth is the truth is
Speaker 2: worse than a lot of the propaganda that came out,
Speaker 2: but it but it's also too like I think I
Speaker 2: think a lot of this was suppressed, uh for the
Speaker 2: reasons I said. It was like this, it was this bizarre,
Speaker 2: like messy political and diplomatic situation relating to the you know,
Speaker 2: uh the intrigues incident of the son of Soviets split. Uh.
Speaker 2: You know, a lot of the uh, the ongoing hangover
Speaker 2: as it were, from the Vietnam conflict. And you know,
Speaker 2: like I said, just even the way it's treated as bizarre,
Speaker 2: that gets in the fact like this was just uh,
Speaker 2: this was just uh, you know, it's just kind of
Speaker 2: like as an afterthought, like slapped on to the Vietnam
Speaker 2: War Memorial as all. And this was you know that
Speaker 2: this happened sort of in theater and sort of you know,
Speaker 2: within the same decades, So you know, why not just uh,
Speaker 2: you know, why why not just treat it as part
Speaker 2: of like the same uh, part of the same kind
Speaker 2: of like nucleus of uh of of conflict events. But
Speaker 2: it's yeah, I that's the uh, that's the that's that's
Speaker 2: the story of Ko tank Man and that's the uh
Speaker 2: and that's the time. That's the uh. I believe, and
Speaker 2: I've written about this in my fiction, Like I believe
Speaker 2: that uh, I believe the US engage. I believe US
Speaker 2: forces engaged the Commune Rouge like fairly regularly. I don't
Speaker 2: see how they could not have. Like they were you know,
Speaker 2: they were running around Cambodia for years prior to nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy and then in the aftermath, you know, even uh,
Speaker 2: even when even when the US and China like came
Speaker 2: to terms and uh, the US began cultivating the camer
Speaker 2: Rouge against uh, you know, the pro Vietnamese element. There's
Speaker 2: no way that there's no way that American soldiers did
Speaker 2: not engage the Khmer Rouge in a hostile action in theater.
Speaker 2: But this is the only time it happened above board.
Speaker 2: I mean, this was like a real firefight, you know.
Speaker 2: And that's you know, like I said it, uh I.
Speaker 2: I I try and raise the people because I think
Speaker 2: as a historical writer, I think it's important, you know,
Speaker 2: out of the memory of people like these guys who
Speaker 2: were there. But it's also it shows you how it
Speaker 2: shows you how strange the Cold War got really after
Speaker 2: sixty nine to seventies seventy one, when it became really
Speaker 2: like a three way kind of contest with the United States,
Speaker 2: kind of like nominally allied with China in strategic terms,
Speaker 2: you know, in pursuing the kind of interdependence the results
Speaker 2: of which you know, we we kind of see today
Speaker 2: in the global structure. But it's it was far from, uh,
Speaker 2: it was far from some kind of like clean alliance
Speaker 2: and uh, you know, the the way what the Chinese
Speaker 2: view is kind of sound policy in terms of how
Speaker 2: to intrigue against others is incredibly weird. You know, like
Speaker 2: and I'm telling you, like creating this incident for the
Speaker 2: sake of trying to exploit uh, you know, the the
Speaker 2: ensuing chaos for some kind of political and diplomatic cachet
Speaker 2: that might seem crazy like the Western mind, that's exactly
Speaker 2: the way the Chinese think. If you read about the
Speaker 2: the pointless border war that Mau provoked with with Moscow
Speaker 2: mal basically uh risked and nuclear war with the Soviet Union,
Speaker 2: said he could go around uh humiligating version ev you know,
Speaker 2: for a few weeks and acting like, uh, he'd scored
Speaker 2: some kind of victory so that domestically, like you know,
Speaker 2: he could shore up his kind of fledging personality called credibility,
Speaker 2: and like, no, like even a totally unhanged Western uh,
Speaker 2: you know, tyrant like wouldn't think that way or wouldn't
Speaker 2: do that. But that's that's the kind of stuff characteristic
Speaker 2: of the regime and from I mean in the lifetime
Speaker 2: of people like me and yourself. I mean, yeah, the
Speaker 2: the kinds of chaos of of mau when in the
Speaker 2: aftermath is something we didn't experience firsthand. But even uh,
Speaker 2: even even Dang was kind of credited as like this
Speaker 2: great reformer or and this kind of moderating influence. I mean,
Speaker 2: the stuff that he uh would orchestrate in order to
Speaker 2: in order to UH advantage himself or advantage you know,
Speaker 2: pet King in his eyes uh visa VII the West.
Speaker 2: It doesn't it doesn't make any sense. So that was
Speaker 2: kinna last tragic chapter in the history of UH. What
Speaker 2: wasn't oil China? There's a I mean, there was, there
Speaker 2: was the Chinese, there was the there was the Sino
Speaker 2: Vietnamese border War in seventy nine, and there was again too,
Speaker 2: there was the there's the occupation of Cambodia. You know,
Speaker 2: from seventy nine until until the wall came down.
Speaker 1: China, Chinese and Vietnamese forces fired on each other like
Speaker 1: four years ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, and that's why one of the really
Speaker 2: inzing things, you know, Obama was one of the last
Speaker 2: things he did in office was a he he lifted
Speaker 2: any remaining restrictions on a military tech transfers to Vietnam.
Speaker 2: Like the the people in the Pentagon aren't conceptually illiterate,
Speaker 2: and there's very few of them who aren't. Uh they're
Speaker 2: they're like literally fucking morons. But the they they realized
Speaker 2: that Vietnam's like an essential hedge against the People's Republic,
Speaker 2: and it is, and Vietnam has got a real comic capability.
Speaker 2: I mean, there are hard people, they've got a real military,
Speaker 2: and Vietnam's comparatively huge country. It's got like sixty million people,
Speaker 2: you know, like people think it's now that people think
Speaker 2: it's like like Americans, they think all these countries like
Speaker 2: the size of Albania or something like a Vietnam's and
Speaker 2: a as a as a geotragic hedge. Yeah, Vietnam is
Speaker 2: incredibly important and uh an alliance that would make sense.
Speaker 2: And now that leave some of the pressure of America
Speaker 2: having to you know, kind of play between Tokyo and Seoul,
Speaker 2: you know, which is increasingly you know, causing consternation the
Speaker 2: in in in relationship with both countries as well as
Speaker 2: their relationship to China. Like what would be intelligent would
Speaker 2: be to do the cultivate UH countries like Vietnam and
Speaker 2: some kind of like American version of of of what
Speaker 2: the Russians are trying to college with the Shanghai Qui
Speaker 2: Operation Organization. Like like, not only is NATO like destabilizing
Speaker 2: and pointless, but it also says not how you structure
Speaker 2: military alliances in the twenty fourth century, it's like structurally
Speaker 2: obsolescent as well as as well as politically anachronistic. That's
Speaker 2: gonna subject another show, but I hope I didn't. I
Speaker 2: didn't like bore people with just kind of like relaying
Speaker 2: the Battle of Ko Tang, like I said, I yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and I next time what I want to get into,
Speaker 2: I want to get in to the President Carter's modernization
Speaker 2: of the command and control aspect of america strategic nuclear
Speaker 2: forces and how you know, the advent of AI as
Speaker 2: well as UH. You know, the the onset of strategic parody.
Speaker 2: We're in the window of decision making, you know, was
Speaker 2: reduced in some cases, you know, to five to eight
Speaker 2: minutes or something, and it had just been accepted for
Speaker 2: a time that the president would die immediately and have
Speaker 2: been a nuclear war. It's a strategic air command and
Speaker 2: would be acting as the Article two executive. I mean
Speaker 2: that's parently and constitutional number one number two. It's just like, ethically,
Speaker 2: that's not right. You don't like the United States Air
Speaker 2: Force and you know, uh, strategic air commands that then existed,
Speaker 2: they don't. They don't get to decide you know, uh,
Speaker 2: like who lives and who dies. They don't. They don't
Speaker 2: get to decide, you know, when and how we wage war.
Speaker 2: But also it raised a fascinating issue. I'm what I
Speaker 2: was telling people too, Like guys like Harlan Ellison, you know,
Speaker 2: when they were you know, Harlan Ellison actually came over
Speaker 2: with the idea for sky in It and like James
Speaker 2: Cameron like ripped him off, like Cameron rips off everything.
Speaker 2: But this wasn't just like some kind of horror movie trope.
Speaker 2: There the removal of human decision makers from strategic nuclear
Speaker 2: war fighting. That was a real thing, and by the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties it was becoming and uh, when there's when
Speaker 2: with a lot launching even on warning when when when
Speaker 2: the window of decision making temporarily speaking, becomes so narrow
Speaker 2: that even launching on warning is too late, Like what
Speaker 2: do you do? It's like, well, you know, you defend
Speaker 2: yourself by finding ways to code variables that indicate, you know,
Speaker 2: that that indicate imminent assault like before though you know,
Speaker 2: before there's even like conventional like launch indicators and mobilization indicators.
Speaker 2: But then it's like okay, but then like when do
Speaker 2: you attack when there's like a ten percent probability of assault,
Speaker 2: when there's like a fifty anything over fifty percent, then
Speaker 2: when there's ninety percent, when there's anything over one percent,
Speaker 2: you know, and it's some not you know that that's
Speaker 2: a kind of like machine thinking that becomes inevitable, you know,
Speaker 2: when technology it becomes totally just positive as outcomes, but
Speaker 2: also uh, the amount of data that has to be
Speaker 2: managed in a strategic landscape like that, like humans can't
Speaker 2: do it, you know. So we were looking at a
Speaker 2: situation where the Cold War endured, like machines would have
Speaker 2: been the decision maker, you know, and uh, you'd have
Speaker 2: to hope that you know, the the coded uh indicators
Speaker 2: you know, were correct or at least I couldn't be spoofed,
Speaker 2: you know, by by man or by fate. But that yeah,
Speaker 2: that's I I'll save it for the when we get
Speaker 2: into that. But that's that's that's kind of the that's
Speaker 2: kind of the key feature of the Carter presidency, I think,
Speaker 2: and I mean I I'm a lot friendly to Carter
Speaker 2: and uh, you know the way I I view the
Speaker 2: his epoch and most people. So well, we'll get into
Speaker 2: some of these strategic nuclear command and control issues, some
Speaker 2: of these wartech issues, and and and we'll deal with
Speaker 2: like Carter the man himself in the next episode. And
Speaker 2: like again, I really really appreciate people supporting the series,
Speaker 2: and I wanted to give Ko Tang it's due and
Speaker 2: the you know, the men were there. It's due because,
Speaker 2: like I said, it's it's something nobody really talks about.
Speaker 2: And that's part of the reason for these series, so
Speaker 2: that we can deep dive into stuff that people don't
Speaker 2: really talk about in more mainstream sources. So that's all
Speaker 2: I got. And thank you, Pet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course I'm too quick plugs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can find me on Twitter that probably that
Speaker 2: will probably change in the next few weeks.
Speaker 3: But.
Speaker 2: I'm on there. Again. You can find me at Real
Speaker 2: Underscore Thomas seven seven seven. I'm recording from my YouTube
Speaker 2: channel on Friday with my dear friend Carrie, and I'm
Speaker 2: gonna upload that next week sometime, so I'll make sure.
Speaker 2: I'll hype that everybody knows my YouTube channel. There's nothing
Speaker 2: near yet, but there will be is Thomas TV. You
Speaker 2: can find me on substack, which is kind of my
Speaker 2: permanent home. It's a real Thomas seven seven seven dot
Speaker 2: subseac dot com. I'm gonna relaunch a Telegram channel because
Speaker 2: everybody who supports us, they really like Telegram. I mean,
Speaker 2: Telegram really treats me badly, so I wasn't real keen
Speaker 2: to doing business with them again. But i will launch
Speaker 2: a channel for the sake of the subscribers and our friends.
Speaker 2: But I'm going to do that sometime this weekend and
Speaker 2: i'll plug that when we're back on there. But right
Speaker 2: now I just have like a private channel, but I'm
Speaker 2: going to relaunch a public one. That's all I got.
Speaker 1: Awesome, man, So the next time, thank you, Thomas. Today
Speaker 1: happens to be the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of
Speaker 1: the Paris Piece Accords, which ended the Vietnam War, and
Speaker 1: we couldn't think of anyone better to have on to
Speaker 1: talk about that than somebody that is gracing me with
Speaker 1: his presence on my podcast and going through a Cold
Speaker 1: War series right now.
Speaker 2: So how do I'm doing? Well? Thank you? Well? I
Speaker 2: I appreciate you inviting me.
Speaker 1: Here's the first question I want to ask, because I
Speaker 1: was I was writing questions on the last episode we
Speaker 1: did and I realized the episodes were for the end.
Speaker 1: So did public opinion help in ending the war?
Speaker 2: I mean yeah, because the internal situation in any state,
Speaker 2: any modern state, I mean, whether you're talking about a
Speaker 2: nominal you know, multi party democracy, I mean in the
Speaker 2: terms that that signifiers utilizing the Cold War, or whether
Speaker 2: you're talking about you know, the Communi states of the
Speaker 2: Eastern Bloc, in a in a state in the general
Speaker 2: mobilization especially, but in any in any any policy, ongoing policy, initiative,
Speaker 2: or structure that directly affects the population, like public opinion
Speaker 2: is impactful on that policy, you know. Not despite the
Speaker 2: kind of mythology of democratic peace theory or whatever, there
Speaker 2: are not states that exist that are just totally in
Speaker 2: odds to the body politic, Not any government in existence,
Speaker 2: nor has there been in the modern era that just
Speaker 2: has absolutely no mandate. You know, it's it's completely immune
Speaker 2: to public opinion. That's not nothing to work. But what
Speaker 2: I was saying a moment ago, and I'm going somehow
Speaker 2: with this is not just like a old guy tangent.
Speaker 2: I'm listening to Michael Savage and he's got Colonel McGregor on.
Speaker 2: I know that people don't. I know some people are
Speaker 2: just like doing McGregor either. That's not the point. Savage
Speaker 2: kept on talking about the Russians kind of foibles in
Speaker 2: Ukraine and saying this is like Vietnam when you know
Speaker 2: the Pegon just wouldn't really fight the war, and McGregor
Speaker 2: was credit corrected Savage. McGregor's like, look, man, like Vietnam
Speaker 2: is a fucking scalpunt. We killed the amount of people
Speaker 2: in Vietnam. It was not just like pussy footing around
Speaker 2: like hey, we want to be you know, we gotta
Speaker 2: gotta playtate world opinion. We we don't want to like
Speaker 2: killing Vietnammese. It was I mean, part of my language.
Speaker 2: It was a fucking gook scalp punt. Okay, but you
Speaker 2: don't win wars just by going out and killing as
Speaker 2: many people as possible. You don't win wars by you know,
Speaker 2: manufacturing dead people. If you did, I think throughout ninety
Speaker 2: forty two that Wehrmacht hit something like a fifteen to
Speaker 2: one burn rate in like major engagement with the Red Army. Okay,
Speaker 2: I mean is did does the Greater German Reich it
Speaker 2: exist today? Didn't win the wars? It killed a whole
Speaker 2: lot of people in Russia. No, But the issue with
Speaker 2: public opinion was that it wasn't so much like the
Speaker 2: court history is two things. It's what Michael Samadge said.
Speaker 2: It's that, oh, America wasn't really fighting the Vietnam War,
Speaker 2: you know, or was doing brutal things. But you know
Speaker 2: these things were you know, not the war was there
Speaker 2: wasn't a general mobilization in place, and you know, America
Speaker 2: wasn't really applying force the way it should. That's part
Speaker 2: of the narrative. The other part is, well, the Vietnam
Speaker 2: War was wrong, so all these people rose up and
Speaker 2: just forced you know, evil mister Nixon to stop what
Speaker 2: he was doing. Like nothing like that happened. And you know,
Speaker 2: seventy percent of combat infantrymen and non were guys who enlisted,
Speaker 2: you know, and the remaining thirty percent and probably you know, uh,
Speaker 2: there there was some truth of the fact that there
Speaker 2: was like a poverty draft, you know, when when the
Speaker 2: standards are kind of lessened on on uh you know,
Speaker 2: who who would be you know, considered. I can't remember
Speaker 2: the classification scheme was, but I mean there was some
Speaker 2: truth to that. But this idea that there was either
Speaker 2: this draft revolt or America just became like a country
Speaker 2: of peace micks and and that ended the war. But
Speaker 2: what it did do I mean Johnson was in fact
Speaker 2: lying to the American people and what he was saying
Speaker 2: was not making any sense, and he was getting on
Speaker 2: TV directly concert thing mc namara on top of that,
Speaker 2: unlike uh, you know, the New Dealers War, where Roosevelt
Speaker 2: would literally have you arrested if you were a media
Speaker 2: guy who criticized him his policy or you engage in fetism,
Speaker 2: which constantly was everything from saying maybe the war is
Speaker 2: not a great idea to reporting on you know, America
Speaker 2: actually like losing in the field. I mean that this
Speaker 2: I'm not meaning this up like this is it compared
Speaker 2: during the comparing the the view of UH or the
Speaker 2: orientation of the executive branch. You know, in ninety one
Speaker 2: to forty five and from ninety six about to seventy three,
Speaker 2: it's like night and day. You know, like if you
Speaker 2: think Roosevelt when it's tolerated, you know, Amby Hoffman, UH
Speaker 2: or some or or some counterparty like w Pelly, you know,
Speaker 2: holding one hundred thousand PAN protests waving National Socialist flags
Speaker 2: in Washington, Like you're dead fucking wrong, Like why this
Speaker 2: was allowed? And like why this kind of nonsense? You know,
Speaker 2: why why why cronkite was allowed to be embedded at
Speaker 2: I Corps and UH at long been when UH, you
Speaker 2: know NLF like sappers were assaulting it. I mean that's
Speaker 2: a whole other issue. But people didn't realize something was wrong.
Speaker 2: There was major attrition in Vietnam, like young Americans were
Speaker 2: dying in large numbers, and it was it was clear
Speaker 2: that it was clear that John's was lying. Okay, Nixon,
Speaker 2: who swept the country as we've talked about and Creighton
Speaker 2: Abrams to replace Westmorland. Nixon was in fact winning the war,
Speaker 2: I believe in military terms, I mean the political side
Speaker 2: of it was totally different well in country as well
Speaker 2: as domestically, and as regards the internal situation in the
Speaker 2: United States. Nixon did do some foolish things. However, like
Speaker 2: we talked about in our last episode, you know how
Speaker 2: Kissinger and Nixon they they kind of weighed his personal
Speaker 2: war in Melvin Laired, the Secretary of Defense, and that's
Speaker 2: not what you do if you're the president. And then
Speaker 2: they went it was publicly layered of like leaking the
Speaker 2: secret bombing of Cambodia looked like, first of ball, why
Speaker 2: are you admitting to that? Because that's terrible. Pr Secondly,
Speaker 2: like why you like having this knockdown, drag up flight
Speaker 2: in public with Melvin Laired, Like how does that look? Okay?
Speaker 2: So even people were enthusiastic about, you know, kind of
Speaker 2: the policy shift of Nixon create Abrams and all of that,
Speaker 2: They're like, okay, why why are all these conspiratorial intrigues happening?
Speaker 2: What exactly is going on? You know? And then the
Speaker 2: media really you know, the I'm sorry to feel like
Speaker 2: if I'm if this seems scatter shop, but I'm trying
Speaker 2: to present a linear narrative the best I can. You know,
Speaker 2: the Kent State maybe a lot of people know this.
Speaker 2: I don't think they do though. You know, the Kent
Speaker 2: State shooting of the students the National Guard, that pro
Speaker 2: that was a protest of the assault on Cambodia. Okay,
Speaker 2: you know late in the war in nineteen seventy there
Speaker 2: is my people freaked out about the assault in Cambodia.
Speaker 2: Is because to them it indicated a wider war. In
Speaker 2: a sense, it was, but Nixon was not lying. Vietnamization
Speaker 2: was well underway. There was an active disengagement. The Army
Speaker 2: of the Republic of Vietnam was taking on the brunt
Speaker 2: of combat duties, and Cambodia was key. And we'll get
Speaker 2: into that if you know you're willing to. When we
Speaker 2: got the time, Nixon really kind of neutralized the strategic
Speaker 2: uh game of Warsaw Pact in Vietnam by affecting the
Speaker 2: Sun that Soviets split wherein China and their proxy, the
Speaker 2: Khmer Rouge, came to be totally at odds with the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union and Hanoi, and an active proxy war between
Speaker 2: communist superpowers developed. Uh, you know, between the Vietnamese and
Speaker 2: the Khmer Rouge. I mean, whether the Commuter Rouge were
Speaker 2: evil or not. I mean that that's another issue. But
Speaker 2: point being, there was complexities to widen the war in
Speaker 2: Cambodia that couldn't really be finessed in pr terms. And
Speaker 2: the fact Nixon what have been going on with him
Speaker 2: because during Layered it seemed rotten. These things kind of
Speaker 2: conspired to really turn public opinion against what was underway.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean I realized I was a long winded,
Speaker 2: in some of a scattershoff, but yes, there was a
Speaker 2: huge impact. It was one part the anti war movement,
Speaker 2: which was in part I mean it was a fifth
Speaker 2: column regardless, but in part of actually was funded and
Speaker 2: organized by UH agents of Warsaw Pact intelligence services. There
Speaker 2: was a hostile media apparatus, even those that weren't even
Speaker 2: those aspects of national media at warn't hostile Johnson who
Speaker 2: did a lot of incredibly stupid and kind of incomprehensible
Speaker 2: things allowing media to truly be embedded in the field
Speaker 2: with combat elements in a war like Vietnam I with
Speaker 2: free fire zones. I mean that that's literally insane. You know,
Speaker 2: it was inevitable even if something like mel I hadn't
Speaker 2: broken at some point, some newsmen would would have had
Speaker 2: raw footage of gis like wasting like women and kids.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying as American troops are evil or something
Speaker 2: at all. I'm saying like that's what happens in a
Speaker 2: free fire zone, okay, and in in good wars like
Speaker 2: Over one and two that happened also, but in Vietnam. Uh,
Speaker 2: going to the peculiar nuances of the strategic environment, that
Speaker 2: kind of thing happened in alarming earnest, if that makes
Speaker 2: any sense. But point being, Yeah, so some of this
Speaker 2: was some of this was self sabotaged. Some of this
Speaker 2: was kind of like the peculiar some of those people
Speaker 2: not really understanding like I mean, TV was still new
Speaker 2: then basically. I mean part of it was, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: especially Johnson, you know, who was a guy who was
Speaker 2: like born in nearly twentieth century and not really understanding things.
Speaker 2: Party was Johnson wasn't was fucking insane. Uh. Part of
Speaker 2: it was you know, the uh you had a you know,
Speaker 2: you had a you had a domestic situation that had
Speaker 2: been actually subverted, which was literally the opposite of you know,
Speaker 2: the situation the New Dealer was confronted, you know, when
Speaker 2: they mobilized for war. I mean it was uh on
Speaker 2: the top of that too. I mean there was there
Speaker 2: was incredibly dangerous things. But you know, sixty two was
Speaker 2: the Cuba crisis. Seventy three was the next major crisis
Speaker 2: in the Middle East, which I think in some ways
Speaker 2: was more dangerous nable Arch eighty three, Okay, But in
Speaker 2: the interim, you know you had, uh, there was five
Speaker 2: thousand Soviet military uh personnel on the ground in North Vietnam.
Speaker 2: You know, intelligence types. You know, some of these guys
Speaker 2: are training the northe the knees on SAM missiles and things.
Speaker 2: But uh, there's a there's you know, there was the
Speaker 2: constant fear, you know during these operations like Linebacker, are
Speaker 2: we gonna kill a bunch of Russians? And then you
Speaker 2: know what we're gonna is, what the what the fuck's
Speaker 2: that Crimlin gonna do? Then maybe nothing, or maybe they're
Speaker 2: gonna treat as an act of war. This was like
Speaker 2: incredibly dangerous stuff. And uh there's the ongoing you know
Speaker 2: issue in Europe where you know you had you know,
Speaker 2: you had uh you know, you literally had three hundred
Speaker 2: thousand US troops, uh those and those with the Red Army,
Speaker 2: the full the Gap and then the Rederman plane I mean,
Speaker 2: and and say nothing of you know, occupied the Lynn
Speaker 2: like it this. People don't realize, uh, I mean if
Speaker 2: you don't realize how, I mean you remember because you're
Speaker 2: old enough, and I do. I mean I didn't live
Speaker 2: through Vietnam, but you know, I do remember vividly the
Speaker 2: early eighties and being afraid of of uh of nuclear war.
Speaker 2: I mean, people don't realize like how how tense things
Speaker 2: were and in data capacity that was strewing with people's lives.
Speaker 2: And even even people who basically were patriotic according to
Speaker 2: the terms of you know, the era, and even people
Speaker 2: who weren't particularly anti government, there was a certainly like
Speaker 2: weirdness of the Cold War thinking. And it's like okay,
Speaker 2: like you know, even people who didn't have you know,
Speaker 2: teenage kids, at least some kid on their block gotten
Speaker 2: blown away, you nom or some relative of theirs. You know,
Speaker 2: they got this constant fear of like nuclear attack, you
Speaker 2: know it. Uh, the economy was going to shit, like
Speaker 2: despite people like Olivers don't tell you, like Vietnam didn't
Speaker 2: like make everybody rich, Like yeah, there's always war profiteers
Speaker 2: and Zelenski types, like there were five hundred years ago,
Speaker 2: and there were five thousand years ago. There weren't in
Speaker 2: the sixty eight or to day. Yeah, there were guys
Speaker 2: were profiting from the Vietnam War. But the Vietnam War
Speaker 2: was killing the American economy, you know, I mean like
Speaker 2: it was. These were not like good times. Okay, it's uh,
Speaker 2: that's one of the uh in America didn't really right
Speaker 2: itself until Reagan's second term. Honestly. I mean there's other
Speaker 2: contributing factors, you know, like the energy crisis and the
Speaker 2: need to like restructure uh, like certain aspects of America's
Speaker 2: uh of America's consumption energy consumption in order to would
Speaker 2: count from new realities. But it literally took like a
Speaker 2: decade and a half, like America like on fuck itself
Speaker 2: from Vietnam, like in terms of you know, the national
Speaker 2: economic profile. But seven it was all of those things.
Speaker 2: The big uh, the big issue with the Paris Peace
Speaker 2: agreements is people, Yeah go ahead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're you're talking about the economy. And they were
Speaker 1: almost literally doing two wars because not only are they
Speaker 1: paying for Vietnam, but now they have this war on
Speaker 1: poverty that they're having to print money over and so
Speaker 1: you of course you're going things are going to go
Speaker 1: to two ship because when you're also millions of social
Speaker 1: program come in, you're.
Speaker 2: Also throwing millions upon millions on millions of dollars to
Speaker 2: develop you know, ICBM systems that you know can be
Speaker 2: super hardened to withstand like first strike. You know, like
Speaker 2: you know, keep keeping be fifty two's constantly in the air,
Speaker 2: like with nuclear payloads, keeping three hundred thousand men in
Speaker 2: West Germany, you know, keeping uh, you know, developing and
Speaker 2: maintaining like a fleet of Minutemen missiles as uh, you know,
Speaker 2: as the primary deterrent you know, keeping uh keeping nuclear
Speaker 2: cable submarines in the war. Like this is unbelievable defensive.
Speaker 2: You know, like one of the reasons why like Reagan
Speaker 2: went all in to win the Cold War wasn't just
Speaker 2: because you know, he you know, he had like balls
Speaker 2: or something, or because he you know, he you know,
Speaker 2: he wasn't like a pushy like Carder or whatever, like
Speaker 2: dumb things people think today, And uh, look like America,
Speaker 2: America could waive the colder longer than Ivan, but America's
Speaker 2: running out of money to fucking do it too. You know,
Speaker 2: you can't you cannot sustain that, and definitely you're either
Speaker 2: gonna go to war or you're gonna face some kind
Speaker 2: of structural crisis like the Soviets did, and then the
Speaker 2: odds of war happening becomes exponentially more likely. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know that this idea somehow like America could have
Speaker 2: like it definitely you know, maintains like a six hundred
Speaker 2: ship navy. Uh, you know, could have could have continuously
Speaker 2: like fielded like you know Nora Dora weapons. Uh, you know,
Speaker 2: like the B two platform and uh, and you know,
Speaker 2: and and and and pursue you know, SDI which would
Speaker 2: have become necessary. I know, people just like like to
Speaker 2: talk about it. It's like I'm gonna pipe dream, you know,
Speaker 2: people like you know, mister Ted Kennedy and the Epoch.
Speaker 2: But it wasn't like Jerry Parnell said, like orbital space
Speaker 2: had the Cold War indor in the ninety nineties, like
Speaker 2: orbital space is going to become what naval warfare platforms
Speaker 2: were the strategic nuclear planning in the eighties. I mean,
Speaker 2: at some point the money would have run out, you know.
Speaker 2: You like again, it's they can't.
Speaker 1: That's also that's also why President Nixon ended Breton Woods.
Speaker 1: I mean it makes it easier if you get off
Speaker 1: the gold standard, then you can uh, you know, accelerate
Speaker 1: the money supply to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very much so. But it's also too he was
Speaker 2: genuinely worried. He was genuinely worried about about UH about
Speaker 2: about like a run on the gold resers I, which
Speaker 2: was like a real that was that was a real prospect,
Speaker 2: especially because it's like outside the scope and against with
Speaker 2: this in another episode. And I'm not an economist, but
Speaker 2: I do know I am something of an economic historian,
Speaker 2: and that I I like a basic conceptual picture of UH,
Speaker 2: of the about the structure of UH American economic policy changed,
Speaker 2: and just like how globalism kind of gradually became a reality,
Speaker 2: you know, and how the kind of information age you know,
Speaker 2: changed the way financial markets function wheever meets the road.
Speaker 2: And aside of all these things, you and I just
Speaker 2: raised the nineteen seventies. That was the dawn. That was
Speaker 2: what you're done of the information age. Okay, I mean
Speaker 2: you could say that like the kind of machines that
Speaker 2: like Turing machines were, I don't mean like that, I
Speaker 2: mean like the digital age. I guess I should say
Speaker 2: that the dawna that was the ninety seventies and things
Speaker 2: from from the nineteen seventies to now, things changed just rapidly,
Speaker 2: you know, and that that was altering the way business
Speaker 2: is done in the way like money is conceptualized, in
Speaker 2: my opinion, for better and for worse. I mean, it was,
Speaker 2: it was not. It was not all negative, although there
Speaker 2: aren't any negatives, but you know, the these kinds of punctuated,
Speaker 2: these kinds of punctuated changes are they they're their stresses,
Speaker 2: you know, like I they they they uh, they cause
Speaker 2: they make they make crises more probable of all sorts.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it uh, you know, but the the main
Speaker 2: uh what I kind of wanted to emphasize on, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, like all things related to Vietnam even today,
Speaker 2: even though kind of the like the tamboo is no
Speaker 2: longer around the Vietnam War obviously as it was for
Speaker 2: you know when I was a kid and like when
Speaker 2: you were a teenager. I'm sure, but people there's still
Speaker 2: like ill understood's there's this idea of the Paaris peace talks.
Speaker 2: Like guys are kind of the mainstream, right, even some
Speaker 2: guys like on the dissident right, they do it. It's like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: Congress screwed Nixon over and just you know, cut off
Speaker 2: the money supply and you know, the tangible military aid
Speaker 2: to the Republic of Vietnam. You know, so the South
Speaker 2: can't defend itself, and you know, Hanoi was just rubbing
Speaker 2: its hands together and never meant to like abide the
Speaker 2: rules of the or the material express conditions of the
Speaker 2: peace agreement. It's not really true, you know. And then
Speaker 2: there's like other people who uh uh, you know, people
Speaker 2: on the left and kind of like Majama Storians. They
Speaker 2: just claim that like, well Nixon was just making you know,
Speaker 2: make a fool the American people and like pretending to
Speaker 2: accomplish peace, and that that's not true either. This was
Speaker 2: kind of a if you the view from Nixon and
Speaker 2: Kissinger and uh and across the aisle, you know, jop
Speaker 2: and and and the Hanoi leadership, like the Central Committee,
Speaker 2: the communist part of Vietnam, there's like a lack of
Speaker 2: shared premises written large and if you read the statements, uh,
Speaker 2: what Hanoi was saying to Cosvin Cosvin cos VN that's
Speaker 2: an acronym. It' says for Central offices South Vietnam. There
Speaker 2: was the anglicized acronym for the what amountse the Central
Speaker 2: Committee of the Viet Cong OKAY based in South Vietnam,
Speaker 2: and what they communicated to them was that in their view,
Speaker 2: what the ceasefire meant, or what the peace agreement meant,
Speaker 2: was that America would disengage that communists in South Vietnam,
Speaker 2: like former party members, Viet Cong suspects, you know, sympathizers
Speaker 2: all in Sundry, would no longer be treated as enemy combatants.
Speaker 2: A roadmap would be implemented as it were for what
Speaker 2: was supposed to be implemented in nineteen fifty four, you know,
Speaker 2: which was eventually you know, like countrywide elections, which never
Speaker 2: actually happened, in part because of the constantly you know,
Speaker 2: the Kazi changing regime in Saigon never allowed to happen.
Speaker 2: Like that is true, and they wouldn't allow to happen
Speaker 2: because it would have Vietnam would have gone. So I
Speaker 2: understand that completely. But Uh, the two regime in Saigon
Speaker 2: immediately after, uh, like the ink was dry. Uh. Basically
Speaker 2: like a major push happened in key areas, especially border
Speaker 2: territories like with with Cambodia, as well as the Quang
Speaker 2: Tray province. You know, key uh key key operational areas
Speaker 2: of communist uh control that were like strategically essential for
Speaker 2: them to be able to bargain from a position of
Speaker 2: strength and an advent of hostilities access logistically uh what
Speaker 2: they needed to in Cambodia. And when it became clear
Speaker 2: that the South was gonna was going to continue to
Speaker 2: you know, trying to annihilate when remained of the Viet
Speaker 2: Kong Uh, the Doris responded with conventional means, and their
Speaker 2: reasoning was always South Vietnam is not a sovereign country either,
Speaker 2: are not to Vietnams. Then North never accepted that. So
Speaker 2: their notion was well, kind of like the provisional Ira
Speaker 2: and you can say this is in bad faith. Their
Speaker 2: view was always, you know, we're, uh, we're gonna lay
Speaker 2: down our arms. But you've basically got to like allow like,
Speaker 2: you know, full representation the communist party, and you know
Speaker 2: you've got to you've got to give our people, you know,
Speaker 2: the quality of status at the polls, and uh you
Speaker 2: know added to that too. Obviously there's epistemological problem with
Speaker 2: communism because they claim that they're practicing a kind of science.
Speaker 2: And if you refuse to abide what they claim is
Speaker 2: the inevitable science of history, you know, which is like
Speaker 2: advancing socialism. You know, you're basically engaged in some kind
Speaker 2: of oppression of humanity in general. Like quite literally, this
Speaker 2: is like what they'd say, you know, whether you're talking
Speaker 2: about East Berlin while you're talking on Moscow, where you're
Speaker 2: talking about Prague, where you're talking about Vietnam. So there's
Speaker 2: like added just kind of like just added like inability
Speaker 2: to come to terms that like framed like uh, Hanoi's
Speaker 2: conceptual horizon. However, Nixon basically puts Saigon in as good
Speaker 2: as stead as it could have been in terms of
Speaker 2: political legitimacy and in terms of bolstering their case in
Speaker 2: the court of world opinion, which actually mattered then in
Speaker 2: a way it didn't it doesn't now. And uh, the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy two offensive, colloquially called the Easter of by
Speaker 2: like you know, military geeks and uh, like historians on Sundry,
Speaker 2: that was stopped in its tracks. I mean, American air
Speaker 2: power were devastated North Vietnamese armed columns, but the other
Speaker 2: public of Vietnam actually stood and fought, and like, I
Speaker 2: think I made the point some we back that they
Speaker 2: get a bad rap, you know, because they're always kind
Speaker 2: of panned as like this cowardly forest like crooks and
Speaker 2: like anyway, full mill jag at the only time you
Speaker 2: see the Arvin on screen, it's some Arvin captain and
Speaker 2: he's wearing like some faggety like fucking silk scarf and
Speaker 2: he's literally pimping some girl to the Marines, like hey,
Speaker 2: you want you want to boom boom and like and that,
Speaker 2: Like you literally never see a portrayal of them as
Speaker 2: like anything but like the scum to eggs or like pussies,
Speaker 2: and like that's not fair. I mean, I'm not a
Speaker 2: Vietnam veterans, so like, I'm sure those guys had their
Speaker 2: own extra grind with them people, But I'm talking the
Speaker 2: historical record, just like as a dude who like writes
Speaker 2: about his ortal topics. There's nothing else like the seventy
Speaker 2: two offensive and the fact that it was stopping its
Speaker 2: tracks like a quits the army the Republic of Vietnam. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's not all airpower. Okay, so yeah there's that, but
Speaker 2: that's that's kind of the way to understand the Paris
Speaker 2: Piece agreement. It wasn't just kissing, dripping duplicatus or Nixon,
Speaker 2: you know, being a snake or I mean, what would
Speaker 2: Nixon game from that anyway? Like because all if any
Speaker 2: and who knows that about Nixon knows like Nixon's a
Speaker 2: guy who like he's a rare American who lived historically
Speaker 2: in absolute terms, like all Nicks never thought about was
Speaker 2: his like contribution to history. Like Nixon never ever ever
Speaker 2: would just like it, just like you know, pull him
Speaker 2: on her ruse and said, like the hell with Tangan,
Speaker 2: I don't care, you know this, I'm just gonna you know,
Speaker 2: this is how I'm gonna like try and shore up
Speaker 2: by Craig, like and I missed the Watergate like that
Speaker 2: this nonsense, but it but it's also you know, the
Speaker 2: Sino Soviet split Nixon. If you read what Nixon wrote
Speaker 2: after the war and post Watergate, Nixon disappeared for about
Speaker 2: five years, but then he made it come back as
Speaker 2: a best selling author. And as the Cold War heated
Speaker 2: up again, you know, people became very thirsty for serious
Speaker 2: analysis on on geo's strategic things. And Nixon really had
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union's number in a way remarkable, and he
Speaker 2: wrote a lot about why he went to China, and
Speaker 2: he said, like, look, you know, I basically realized in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty three, you know, as the steelmate in Korea
Speaker 2: set in, like we had to decople pig King from
Speaker 2: Moscow at all costs. I mean, yeah, we have to
Speaker 2: make compromises there. Like yeah, you know a lot of
Speaker 2: people would suffer in places like Cambodia because of that.
Speaker 2: You know, you can say it's callous, but Nixon was
Speaker 2: totally open about that. But had that not happened, the
Speaker 2: Communists would have won the Cold War absolutely. You know,
Speaker 2: you'd have a communist world in America, this kind of
Speaker 2: garrison of state that existed, you know, and had an
Speaker 2: ability to protect power kind of like in nineteenth century terms,
Speaker 2: like you know, throughout like the western hemisphere, probably as
Speaker 2: far as Greenland or something. But it would, you know,
Speaker 2: it would it would be this kind of like island
Speaker 2: to miss, like a hostel like red World. Okay, and
Speaker 2: that was a very real possibility had things that developed
Speaker 2: what they did. But in the more immediate capacity, uh,
Speaker 2: Nixon realized he had the court now when he did,
Speaker 2: because that neutralized that, they neutralized that the strategic advantage
Speaker 2: of of Soviet victory by proxy and Vietnam because uh,
Speaker 2: he literally had a communist super state on the border
Speaker 2: of like you know, their client in Vietnam, and uh,
Speaker 2: the Khmer Rouge would stand with China no matter what.
Speaker 2: You know, it didn't matter that, you know, they they'd uh,
Speaker 2: it didn't matter that they'd clicked up with the Soviets
Speaker 2: and the Chinese and the National Liberation Front and Hanoi
Speaker 2: to fight the Americans when uh, when things the Commie
Speaker 2: never liked the Vietnamese anyway, and when things went bad
Speaker 2: between Hanoi and or between them Moscow and pet King, Uh,
Speaker 2: the Kremer Rugs would always be all in with with
Speaker 2: China and it's will okay, So you had Nixon managed
Speaker 2: uh you know what what what what did the Soviets
Speaker 2: are like gained in Vietnam. It's like okay, Yeah, like
Speaker 2: we talked about Vietnam was uh that was where that
Speaker 2: was that that was that was where the line in
Speaker 2: the sand was drawn. You know, when when the Free
Speaker 2: World as it was called, you know, like fought you know,
Speaker 2: the Communists in open combat, it didn't matter. It could
Speaker 2: have been anywhere, but that's just where it was. There
Speaker 2: was a political fight, it wasn't a struggle for resources
Speaker 2: and territory. And yeah, they Congress won that. But it's
Speaker 2: like okay, so uh, now, you know the Soviets that
Speaker 2: basically like this kind of they've got they've got this,
Speaker 2: they've they've got this appendage beliaguered by you know, hostile
Speaker 2: kremie ruge Cambodia and like hostile you know, communists China
Speaker 2: do it's north And that is really interesting too because
Speaker 2: obviously this at that time the trifect uh that truly
Speaker 2: ruled the Soviet Union in my opinion was Usenov and
Speaker 2: drop off in grom Eco. And you know, uh, the
Speaker 2: Soviets hedge against China was India. You know, that's something
Speaker 2: like the true military interdepensula between Moscow and in India.
Speaker 2: And uh, that's when Kissinger went all in with uh
Speaker 2: with Pakistan, you know, in the India, the Indo Pakistan
Speaker 2: or it was very much a Cold War proxy resultant
Speaker 2: directly from the writing on the wall. The Soviets detected
Speaker 2: from what's happening with Nixon and China. And then when
Speaker 2: that I mean that result incredibly brutally, and then the
Speaker 2: Soviets pushed uh in Angola like immediately after. That's that's
Speaker 2: why the Povias shifted to Africa. That Africa we can win,
Speaker 2: you know, like what's the West have you know, They've
Speaker 2: got Rogez Rogez is going down, you know, they got
Speaker 2: South Africa South as a paraya, you know, and plut
Speaker 2: like they wanted to fight the South Africans, you know,
Speaker 2: and then fifty thousand Cubans showed up to fight the
Speaker 2: s A d F, you know, and it was, hey,
Speaker 2: we're you know, look at look at look at this,
Speaker 2: look at this racist depressor state, you know, like we're
Speaker 2: we're uh, you know, the the Warsaw Pack, you know,
Speaker 2: believes in in liberating people, you know, in in the
Speaker 2: global South or the colored world, take your pick. But that,
Speaker 2: I mean, all these these things are just these things
Speaker 2: are as incidental. It was approximately caused by Vietnam. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's proximately caused by the fact that Nixon and Kissinger
Speaker 2: were able to decouple Paking from Moscow, like in absolute terms,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, I you know, and it that
Speaker 2: the point that that riff could never be repaired I
Speaker 2: mean that that's remarkable. There would have been I mean
Speaker 2: oing to the vagaries of Mao, and I think just
Speaker 2: things in trip to the Chinese national and cultural character,
Speaker 2: as well as just kind of racial differences and in
Speaker 2: geostrategic issues. I think, I think the sin of Soviet
Speaker 2: allions have been problematic going forward, but it definitely would
Speaker 2: have held together until at least, you know, America splash.
Speaker 2: NATO was like vanquished within for you know, the Oriasian
Speaker 2: land mass and the Soviets and the shotgown is going
Speaker 2: to handle. Ran says later, it always entirely to Nixon
Speaker 2: and Kissinger that the Santa Soviets split was that freshness
Speaker 2: and that permanent. I firmly believe that if that was
Speaker 2: like to kind of like why widely off topic and
Speaker 2: he wanted to focus more specifically and concretely in the
Speaker 2: piece of Sorry, but I thought it was important to.
Speaker 1: Well, here's one thing I wanted to bring up about
Speaker 1: the accords. Yeah, most I would say a lot of
Speaker 1: mainstream historians would say that southeas Vietnam was basically pressured
Speaker 1: into accepting an agreement that basically ensured that it was
Speaker 1: going to collapse.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think there's a political problem here. Like
Speaker 2: we're used to I mean, we're we're not been so
Speaker 2: wrong would characterize it. We're accustomed to the Department of
Speaker 2: State just kind of issuing these ridiculous statements that nobody
Speaker 2: could possibly derive anything from. But like gross offense. I
Speaker 2: mean in terms of like you know, the foreign regimes
Speaker 2: that directed that, Like in the case of Vietnam, there
Speaker 2: was a very it was a very delicate minuet. I mean,
Speaker 2: first of all, I mean, like I said at the
Speaker 2: Assets discussion, you know, we killed a huge amount of
Speaker 2: people in North Vietnam, I mean in the south, but
Speaker 2: particularly I mean we these were not people who had
Speaker 2: warm feelings towards America, you know. I mean, this was
Speaker 2: a brutal war with race overtone was frankly okay. Secondly,
Speaker 2: like I said, this wasn't clear cut. I mean, arguably,
Speaker 2: it's always ambiguous if you're talking about national frontiers, and
Speaker 2: you know, like I know, people talk like, you know,
Speaker 2: the borders of Ukraine are like absolutely sacred, you know,
Speaker 2: and like more holy than you know, like some some
Speaker 2: prom queen's virginity or something or that, Like you know,
Speaker 2: the state of Poland is a sacred thing. I mean.
Speaker 2: But aside from like the garbage of that, the the
Speaker 2: status of Vietnam actually was genuinely ambiguous, you know, and
Speaker 2: the succession of governments America really kind of mishandled that.
Speaker 2: You know. It's like, okay, I mean, you know, you
Speaker 2: had a guy like DM who straight up you know,
Speaker 2: who straight up whacked because it was pretty clear he
Speaker 2: was just gonna go all in and say like, hey,
Speaker 2: look ala lala, like a national election, you know, basically,
Speaker 2: and I think him, being in the kind of hustler
Speaker 2: that he was, was looking to carve out some kind
Speaker 2: of it's I king of space, uh, in the regime,
Speaker 2: you know, for for him and those like himself, you know.
Speaker 2: But he obviously, you know, America wasn't going to tolerate that.
Speaker 2: But you know, their successors, you know, he had a
Speaker 2: guy like too who was completely a hard line on
Speaker 2: the Communists, but that that wasn't reasonable either, you know,
Speaker 2: and they had to come to terms somehow. And I
Speaker 2: believe Nixon's reasoning was you know, just strictly like in
Speaker 2: theater in terms of the military situation and how it
Speaker 2: impacted the delicate politics. As I said, if uh, if
Speaker 2: there'd been a normal uh political situation in America, and
Speaker 2: if you'd had you know, if if they're hadn't been
Speaker 2: like quite literally a coup against Nixon, if you hadn't
Speaker 2: had in Congress that you know, full of people who
Speaker 2: are essentially campaigning on, you know, building a career on
Speaker 2: you know, condemning the promoted evil of Vietnam war, had
Speaker 2: the true doctrine being a bite it as intended, I
Speaker 2: think South Vietnam could have basically held off a northern
Speaker 2: assaultant definitely, and as perverse logic. The body count was
Speaker 2: particularly as realized. You know, North Vietnam had been at
Speaker 2: war for decades, and this thing of the burn rate,
Speaker 2: they were losing a huge amount of military age males.
Speaker 2: I mean, at some point the enormans would not have
Speaker 2: been able to sustain that, you know, at some point
Speaker 2: unless you're talking about some unless you're talking about some
Speaker 2: crazy situation like the farc in Cambodia where you're literally
Speaker 2: talking about dudes like living in the jungle, not metaphorically
Speaker 2: literally you know who are like running running cocaine and
Speaker 2: dope and uh, you know, carrying on some alleged insurgency
Speaker 2: for fifty years, which probably more than anything. That's kind
Speaker 2: of like a cover for their little like narco trade
Speaker 2: and their bizarre kind of you know, anarchical primitives existence.
Speaker 2: Like you can't you can't just a you know, a
Speaker 2: revolutionary campaign for decades on decades, and we're not talking
Speaker 2: about a low intensity campaign like the p I RA
Speaker 2: and in Belfast. I mean even that is difficult. But
Speaker 2: you know, we're talking about you know, the North India's
Speaker 2: army was actually a crack army, and we're talking about
Speaker 2: combined arms assaults. You know, where mass numbers of men
Speaker 2: are dying. You know, uh where you know you're you're
Speaker 2: assaulting with uh, you're restulting with columns a T fifty
Speaker 2: four tanks. They have to be fueled, you know. Uh,
Speaker 2: they're being uh they're they're getting close air support from
Speaker 2: MiG seven teens that you know, with pilots, they have
Speaker 2: to be trained extensively, and when they die, they're hard.
Speaker 2: It's hard to replace them. You know, you're periodically, you know,
Speaker 2: your capital city is periodically getting like bombed into the
Speaker 2: fucking stone Age, you know what I mean, Like it
Speaker 2: does take its toll over time, you know what I
Speaker 2: mean and that, uh, I don't the vietnames initially thought
Speaker 2: it would probably take them to the nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty to win the war, like hannoy, I mean,
Speaker 2: And there is interesting talk because obviously anyone who spoke
Speaker 2: on the Central Committee like picked their language carefully, you know,
Speaker 2: as people doing government, but particularly governments at war and
Speaker 2: especially you know, the communist regimes the Cold War, you
Speaker 2: could tell these guys were nervous, like military and civilian alike,
Speaker 2: like look, basically, beyond nineteen eighty, all bets are off
Speaker 2: like translated and really win the lines like we can't
Speaker 2: sustain this indefinitely, you know. So there is that. But well,
Speaker 2: I think I did want to raise I made the
Speaker 2: point that in my opinion, and I'm not prilinologists, I
Speaker 2: don't speak Russian, but I do know something about the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union, and I believe firmly that the Soviet Union
Speaker 2: was that zenith when the shadow Executive was this direfect
Speaker 2: of u usnov Gramiko and and drop off and drop
Speaker 2: off really really had the United States's number, okay, and
Speaker 2: he under in a way that most Russians don't, in
Speaker 2: the way frankly most like Eastern bloc types didn't. And
Speaker 2: that's one of the reasons why he was so effective.
Speaker 2: And he very much understood that if you can really
Speaker 2: really fuck with, you know, the the internal situation of
Speaker 2: America and and carve out a genuine like single issue
Speaker 2: opposition on a matter of war and peace, you can
Speaker 2: really really use food bar their system. You know. That's
Speaker 2: kind of like America's weak point, just like Solidarity was
Speaker 2: like the weak point of these Iron Curtain regimes, and
Speaker 2: like its similar you know, uh, similarly structured things. You know.
Speaker 2: Solidarity of course was it was like it basically a
Speaker 2: Catholic social teaching movement that was at base, you know,
Speaker 2: like a labor union, you know, that was demanding what
Speaker 2: the party was was always promising but never delivering on.
Speaker 2: And that was like kryptonite to the you know, Marcus
Speaker 2: Lennon is Cadres that ruled you know it. Uh So, yeah,
Speaker 2: there was. It's kind of a perfect storm of things
Speaker 2: that made, you know, made the situation untenable visa the
Speaker 2: South Vietnam. But I also I mean, and again I
Speaker 2: want to well in the discussion just a bit, I
Speaker 2: got to come to the point again again because people
Speaker 2: like like Vietnam's is weird anominally you're this like unique
Speaker 2: and remarkable evil. You know, we talked about the reason
Speaker 2: I raised this with Cito, you know Scato, so all
Speaker 2: these days a treaty, the organization, the nineteen fifty four
Speaker 2: Dual Accords of Korea and into China, and the Truman doctrine,
Speaker 2: like this was entirely congruous with US policy after after
Speaker 2: the Second World War, like the cost of waiting a
Speaker 2: Second World War, among other things, was when these primitive
Speaker 2: as hell third world nations, which of those the true
Speaker 2: were primitive, like people living in huts, when they come
Speaker 2: unto assault by ivan, you go defend them, and your
Speaker 2: kids go defend them, and your tax dollars go defend them,
Speaker 2: and you lose those things. I mean that this was
Speaker 2: very well understood. You know. That was the Cold War
Speaker 2: that came to an end, in part because Watchington realized
Speaker 2: it wasn't tenable. Part was the revolution and military affairs,
Speaker 2: but part of it was just it took. It took
Speaker 2: thirty years for the damage brought by World War Two
Speaker 2: to be repaired and for these states like Korea to
Speaker 2: be built into like functional client states with a comic
Speaker 2: capability of their own. I mean, that's you know, I
Speaker 2: don't want to see what America could have done within
Speaker 2: the I'm not I don't think World War two gymen fought, obviously,
Speaker 2: but within the power of rationality if I'm if I'm Kennedy,
Speaker 2: or if I'm macnamara, or if I'm Nixon in sixteen,
Speaker 2: in February sixty nineteen to the office, like one of
Speaker 2: my doing sell these days to say, Okay, the Truman
Speaker 2: doctrine's off, the Cold War's off. We're not gonna defend Vietnam.
Speaker 2: We're not not pre commitments. You know, we may not
Speaker 2: even defend West Berlin. I don't know. Because war is
Speaker 2: bad and just people don't like it and it's messy
Speaker 2: and people die. I mean, like what is the other
Speaker 2: people that should have been done? You know, I mean
Speaker 2: that's arguably that's why it was incredibly it's side of
Speaker 2: the fact, don't genocide your own civilization. And it was
Speaker 2: incredibly stupid to wage World War two because this was
Speaker 2: the result, you know. I mean, Okay, well now you
Speaker 2: get no not now you get to fight ivan for
Speaker 2: the rest of the planet. I mean, you know, and
Speaker 2: that's what happened. So this was like nobody really explained
Speaker 2: to me. It's like it was good to wouldcinerate, you know,
Speaker 2: it was good to would cinerate you know, one hundred
Speaker 2: and many thousand people at Dresden. But the most evil
Speaker 2: thing ever was other than you know, the quote unte
Speaker 2: Holocaust was like blowing away like Vietnamese villagers at MELI.
Speaker 2: I'm not trying to be flipping because that's that's fucking horrible, Okay,
Speaker 2: Like both those things are horrible, but nobody can tell me,
Speaker 2: like why the ladder is like, you know, the Day
Speaker 2: of Miracle lost its innocence, but the form was just
Speaker 2: like something that like had to be done, you know,
Speaker 2: like it doesn't There's a lot of dishonesty about Vietnam.
Speaker 2: You know. It's kind of like it's kind of like
Speaker 2: the dishonesty of World War two and reverse, you know,
Speaker 2: like and this is faded because it's fad of misterical memory,
Speaker 2: but I mean you remember because you're a little, just
Speaker 2: a little than me. Like Vietnam is presented as like
Speaker 2: the worst war ever waged for like reasons no one
Speaker 2: can particulate, you know, like why like yeah, and the
Speaker 2: whole thing was very was very very cynical and ideologically German.
Speaker 1: But yeah, well, is that because everything after Nuremberg has
Speaker 1: to have a moral component to it. Yeah, if you have,
Speaker 1: if you apply to a moral component to anything, then
Speaker 1: if you start with the morality it's a good war,
Speaker 1: it's a bad war, then you can I mean, you're
Speaker 1: basically pulling at the heartstrings of Middle America, of Protestant America,
Speaker 1: church going America and around like the dog of course.
Speaker 2: But at my point is it was arbitrary, you know,
Speaker 2: and it's like the like it was, I realized why
Speaker 2: people were doing this, and I realized why this Fifth
Speaker 2: Column developed the way it did and why they focused
Speaker 2: on Vietnam. But in absolute terms, like this doesn't make
Speaker 2: any sense, you know, and like I said, Vietnam is
Speaker 2: exceptionalized like people, you know, the narrative presented by you know,
Speaker 2: people that are on COVID, people like Oliver Stone, you know,
Speaker 2: people in the era like Abbie Hoffman was that this
Speaker 2: is like kind of conspiratorial design. It's like, look, man,
Speaker 2: like the human doctrine is very clear, like America deployed
Speaker 2: and pretty much exactly the same way in in Korea
Speaker 2: and the Dominican Republic in sixty five in Bolivia, a
Speaker 2: rundown Shagwavara decades later in Nicaragua, and I'll sell it
Speaker 2: to or although obviously those weren't you know, those weren't
Speaker 2: deep employments. Like it's not like America abiding the Truman
Speaker 2: doctrine and you know, realizing I had to fight it
Speaker 2: still be a client regime to maintain credibility. I missed
Speaker 2: uh as as as the error strategic parody was imminent
Speaker 2: like that it's not something weird thing like hard to
Speaker 2: like difficult to decipher, like I you know, and again
Speaker 2: like nobody explained to me why like why why Like
Speaker 2: annihilating Europe uh and sarificing your son is like I'm
Speaker 2: on Guadalcanal is like awesome, but you know, like losing
Speaker 2: your son and I had drank or q son is
Speaker 2: like this great evil like when America lost its innocence.
Speaker 2: Like it's just it's just it's just stupid, and you
Speaker 2: know it's and it's beyond stupid.
Speaker 1: It's you know, well they just said that it it
Speaker 1: just really became a a trope that it this wasn't
Speaker 1: the war to fight, that there was nothing good about
Speaker 1: this War sixty eight. You know, even Cronkite is saying
Speaker 1: that the war can't be won.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, and again too, like imagine, I mean there
Speaker 2: were but think about this, like imagine in nineteen forty three.
Speaker 2: Imagine after you know what, the United the USR didn't
Speaker 2: meet the Wehrmachten combat until forty three, and they got
Speaker 2: their asses kicked the casserine pass. Like imagine if Walter
Speaker 2: Winschall had gone on the radio and said, mister Roosevelt's
Speaker 2: a liar, World War two can't be one. You know,
Speaker 2: victory of the access is imminent. Like dude would have
Speaker 2: been arrested, have not disappeared, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Like it's it's it's it's a joke. But you can't
Speaker 2: make this up, you know, like the my actics was
Speaker 2: just some like normal occurrence or just like sound journalism.
Speaker 2: And again, I mean Americans did this weird idea. Like
Speaker 2: I said, the two kind of most puzzling myss to
Speaker 2: me because it's otherwise like intelligent people you know, who
Speaker 2: present this these things I'm about to raise. You know,
Speaker 2: it's not just like dumb people who were creating worldships.
Speaker 2: They've heard It's like the guys who say with Michael
Speaker 2: Savage did I mean Savage isn't smart, but the arts
Speaker 2: marketing to say it is like, oh, America was like
Speaker 2: just pusty footing around in Vietnam and we killed them
Speaker 2: like three million people and it was literally like a
Speaker 2: fucking scalpont. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not like saying that butt
Speaker 2: shade on on on the Vietnam Army. I've got a
Speaker 2: lot of respect for them guys and I but the
Speaker 2: but I mean, look, man, it's real, like we we
Speaker 2: killed a fucking huge amount of those people and we
Speaker 2: were being like we were we were being like we're
Speaker 2: doing like cowboys shit around. It's you know, like so
Speaker 2: it's like, don't pretend that, like, you know, don't pretend
Speaker 2: like killing millions of these fucking people with like firepower
Speaker 2: with that was purpose to fight the Soviet Union, like
Speaker 2: it was like something like low key thing that was
Speaker 2: like not not real war. But also the like when
Speaker 2: people claim like Vietnam it was just like a stupid war,
Speaker 2: it's like, look, I mean, like I said, part ways
Speaker 2: the mirror stand on this. You know, like you don't
Speaker 2: you know, you don't fight you didn't fight wars in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty eight, you know, to like access to like
Speaker 2: more like grain reserves, you know, or like you know,
Speaker 2: control the ability to like you know, ship like silk
Speaker 2: out of out of out of out of the fucking
Speaker 2: you know, out of China, back to back to Europe
Speaker 2: or something. You know, Like it didn't matter where Vietnam was.
Speaker 2: You know, that's where the line is, say, was drawn.
Speaker 2: That's where the Reds pushed, you know, and if you're
Speaker 2: gonna if you're gonna win the Cold War, like wherever
Speaker 2: the Reds push. It might be Bolivia, it might be Iran,
Speaker 2: it might be Vietnam, it might be Angola, like it
Speaker 2: might be it might be West Berlin. Like that's where
Speaker 2: you fight them. You know, Like the issue is like
Speaker 2: who's gonna you know, the color was fought in every
Speaker 2: in every aspect of conceptual political life, you know, like economically,
Speaker 2: like culturally, like technologically and militarily you know, you know,
Speaker 2: you can like pick and choose like where you fight,
Speaker 2: you know, and that's and plus like wars like a
Speaker 2: like we talked about war rihves like the seasons. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's that's the problem with clouds, of which is victims
Speaker 2: like taking the kind of this sort of like like
Speaker 2: like logical extreme it becomes a g irrational like you
Speaker 2: not like you don't just like go to war like
Speaker 2: affect like policy ambitions by other means, you know, like
Speaker 2: war rives like the seasons, and there's about irrationality to
Speaker 2: warfare absolutely and warf is a rational process the way
Speaker 2: it's fought. But like you don't just go to war
Speaker 2: because it's like I you know, I can't. I don't
Speaker 2: like I don't like the trade arraignments that of country.
Speaker 2: Why I know I'm gonna launch a massive assault on
Speaker 2: them like that. That's that's not how things work. And
Speaker 2: that I said, like I want to sell you my house.
Speaker 2: Maybe if I go to your house and like beat
Speaker 2: the ship out of you, like that'll help me like
Speaker 2: get a better deal. I mean it's like not, that's
Speaker 2: not how people think, you know, Like that's that's not
Speaker 2: like things are done, you know, like and it's not
Speaker 2: I realized that's like sounds but you know, the uh,
Speaker 2: you know, this is a very important point. And that's
Speaker 2: one of the things that's why as that race sorel
Speaker 2: It's not just because I mean, like ideas an aesthetics
Speaker 2: and things in the way like people view like labor
Speaker 2: and the way identitarian things in political life. I mean,
Speaker 2: he deals with those things in intelligent ways, that is
Speaker 2: to people like us. But it's like ontological view of
Speaker 2: like conflict, Like this is something that happens, like it's
Speaker 2: not this rational thing. It arrives like it's like why
Speaker 2: you find like a girl attractive. It's like why. It's
Speaker 2: like why, it's like why certain symbols like take root,
Speaker 2: like during cultural epox It's like it's it's like why
Speaker 2: winter comes. Where at war? Now, you know, war arrives.
Speaker 2: I mean that I realize that was a bit far afield. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think that's important. I mean, in none doesn't regards
Speaker 2: to Vietnam, but in the case of Vietnam, it's particularly
Speaker 2: kind of like neglected that you know, Yeah, we'll go ahead.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Oh, no problem. Well we're coming up on
Speaker 1: the hour, so let me end with this, because I
Speaker 1: know you could probably go on a little bit about this.
Speaker 1: The common trope even till today, is that the United
Speaker 1: States lost the Vietnam War. What what is your opinion
Speaker 1: when you hear somebody say that, what thoughts come into
Speaker 1: your mind?
Speaker 2: I mean, I agree with John Paul Van. For those
Speaker 2: who don't know, Van was a really interesting guy and
Speaker 2: a very troubled guy. He he had kind of like
Speaker 2: a horrible upbringing, like mom was literally like an alcoholic prostitute,
Speaker 2: like didn't know his father. Joins the Army Air Corps,
Speaker 2: gets train as a pilot. World War Two ends before
Speaker 2: he sees action. When the Air Force man an independent service,
Speaker 2: he wanted to stay in the Army, so he became
Speaker 2: an infantry officer. Long story short. He commanded a company
Speaker 2: and then a ranger battalion in Korea, and David Hackworth,
Speaker 2: the young David hacker was under his command, and Van
Speaker 2: became as like whole badass. Okay, he had problems with alcohol,
Speaker 2: He got into shit with an underage girl. I mean,
Speaker 2: typical like warrior type. It was his own worst enemy,
Speaker 2: but like a really brilliant soldier. And when he left
Speaker 2: the service he was one of the before his last
Speaker 2: kind of role in the uniform, he's one of the
Speaker 2: first guys deployed the mcavee Okay militarysisans comand Vietnam in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty two. And the reasoning there that we talked about,
Speaker 2: there's more much a Special Forces war, you know, counterinsurgency
Speaker 2: direct action, identifying cadres and eliminating them. Okay, sixty four.
Speaker 2: After two years at MCVEE, Colonel Van retires. He becomes
Speaker 2: this independent like defense consultant. Now lo and behold. A
Speaker 2: year later, this like massive build up happens and Van
Speaker 2: is like, what the hell are you doing? And Van
Speaker 2: so lit of these friends in the Pentagon. So he
Speaker 2: was able to get back to Vietnam as a civilian,
Speaker 2: and he ultimately died in nineteen seventy two and in
Speaker 2: a shopper crash. But he Van wrote a book with
Speaker 2: a bright shining why, and this kind of put the
Speaker 2: Vietnam War in perspective for me in terms, and I
Speaker 2: was a kid, and I highly recommend it to anybody.
Speaker 2: Van said, basically what I what I what I say.
Speaker 2: At the outside of this discussion, I was basically borrowing
Speaker 2: from a Van, like, look, you don't like win wars
Speaker 2: wars on a cond of to see like how many
Speaker 2: people you can kill? You know, you don't like win
Speaker 2: a war by like racking up the biggest body counts
Speaker 2: or by winning all the battles. You know, you win
Speaker 2: wars by by annihilating the man's ability to fight, you know,
Speaker 2: but it's strung as infrastructure and his you know, and
Speaker 2: his ability to reconstitute and continted to wage war and
Speaker 2: by breaking his political will to wage war in any
Speaker 2: number of ways, and some constellations those things like wins
Speaker 2: the war. So no, America lost the Vietnam War. But
Speaker 2: Americans look at this like a football game or something like, hey,
Speaker 2: we killed more of those people, like okay, great man,
Speaker 2: like the the like again the Merrimont killed something like
Speaker 2: they're they're there. Burn ratio is in like fifteen to one.
Speaker 2: I'm not exaggerating, Okay, I mean does does that mean
Speaker 2: like does I mean that the German right won World
Speaker 2: War two because they killed twenty million Russians? I mean
Speaker 2: at uh, you know, And it's not it's not a
Speaker 2: football game like saying like hey at Aya drying, like
Speaker 2: we kicked more Vietnams. It's like they didn't really win
Speaker 2: or like whatever Westmoreland's cope was it? You know, the
Speaker 2: uh and and Van was absolutely right. The problem with
Speaker 2: America is that it set the firepower. That's something that
Speaker 2: America borrowed from the German General Staff of old. But
Speaker 2: with kind of without the kind of uh tactical flexibility
Speaker 2: and intelligence of the German General staff. It's like the
Speaker 2: American notion is that fire power solves all problems. It
Speaker 2: doesn't matter what it is. If you're throw in a
Speaker 2: firepower at it's gonna be defeated. Nothing can stand up
Speaker 2: to American combined arms. That's not true. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess there's no if you if you throw it
Speaker 2: a firepower at Vietnam, you would continue to kill two
Speaker 2: numbers of people. They could probably turn it into like
Speaker 2: a non functional country. I mean, especially had one resorted
Speaker 2: to nuclear and biological weapons. But that's not You don't
Speaker 2: wage war to just annihilate countries, you know. That's why
Speaker 2: the Carthaginian peace has become like this mythological thing. I mean,
Speaker 2: I assume I'm not in general, but I do know something.
Speaker 2: So no, I mean America, America lost the Vietnam War
Speaker 2: because it it was I mean again too, it's like,
Speaker 2: what's your victory metric? I mean, like the minute, the minute,
Speaker 2: the minute those guys, those little yellow guys with with
Speaker 2: red stars on their pith helmets were running into Saigon
Speaker 2: with their with They're clashing the costs. They look too
Speaker 2: big for him. And these guys are running. They were
Speaker 2: they were double timing. These guys have been more at
Speaker 2: war for thirty years. Think about that. I mean that
Speaker 2: that's when that's when the hand only won that war. Okay,
Speaker 2: I mean so the uh the you know, I I
Speaker 2: look at that, and then if you look at them
Speaker 2: when I say that, because again, they got it's like
Speaker 2: some pride thing or something like like I'm making fun
Speaker 2: of their favorite football team or something, you know, And
Speaker 2: like I said, I've got I've got all. I've got
Speaker 2: huge respects for the Vietnam Army. Not just that's like
Speaker 2: my dad's generation, but they're like fascinating guys and like
Speaker 2: that's when the US Army was, Yeah, it's best. And
Speaker 2: plus it was was like cool you had like that
Speaker 2: was the only time like you had like weird in
Speaker 2: the army too. You had like weird like long hair
Speaker 2: eyes and like and like weird rednecky guys like like
Speaker 2: like crazy ass like like dude like huge afros, like
Speaker 2: fucking I'm like being silly, but like not you know,
Speaker 2: I'm like I really play about a trope. But I
Speaker 2: I'm the last person who's going to say anything nasty
Speaker 2: about the Vietnam Army, like those guys are like the best.
Speaker 2: They were like legit, like what was cool about America?
Speaker 2: Like legit, you know, but going around saying and it
Speaker 2: wasn't and it wasn't their fault, like they those guys
Speaker 2: that those guys fucked splindily like they performed very very well.
Speaker 2: But uh no, Marya, absolutely not when the Vietnam War.
Speaker 1: No, all right, well let's end it there. Thomas, please
Speaker 1: give your plugs and uh yep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man. You can find me on substack, which is
Speaker 2: kind of like my permanent home. It's real Thomas seven
Speaker 2: seven seven dot substack dot com. I beag on Twitter again,
Speaker 2: but I get, I get. I get fucking nude from
Speaker 2: there like all the time. But I mean, if you
Speaker 2: look for me, like, you'll find me there, but it's
Speaker 2: don't be like sad. If like you look for me
Speaker 2: and I'm gone and I literally get banned from there
Speaker 2: like every like several weeks. I'm at uh real Capital
Speaker 2: r e A L underscore Thomas seven seven seven on Twitter.
Speaker 2: I am launching my YouTube channel man like, and I
Speaker 2: talked to my long suffering editor and like production guy
Speaker 2: and he's ready to go. So this weekend, I gotta
Speaker 2: record more with mister Pete here, and I've got to
Speaker 2: record my own pod and I got to record uh
Speaker 2: with a couple of dear friends of mine for the
Speaker 2: channel content that's gonna go to my editor and then
Speaker 2: that's gonna launch. So you can find my channel at
Speaker 2: Thomas TV on YouTube. I'll uh, I link it on
Speaker 2: my on my substack and I link it on my
Speaker 2: Twitter if you can't find it, but there's nothing there yet,
Speaker 2: but there will be in like a week. Yeah, like
Speaker 2: like literally in a week, like right around the first
Speaker 2: of right on the first week and during the first
Speaker 2: week in February. That's what I got. Oh and my
Speaker 2: my second book in my steel Storm series just drop.
Speaker 2: You should get that at Imperium Press. It's imperium press
Speaker 2: dot org. The book is steel Storm two. It's the
Speaker 2: second one of five. It's it's uh it's Frank Herbert
Speaker 2: style science fiction. And I think, uh, I've gotten over
Speaker 2: wrongly positive feedback on it. I wouldn't keep writing them.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and thank you for that, everybody, and really,
Speaker 2: really really I'm honored by that. But yeah, that's all
Speaker 2: I got, man,