This book is extremely important and valuable for two reasons. First, I believe it is a very honest and accurate description of how Eisenhower, JFK, and LBJ got America into the Vietnam War. There are a lot of biased books, but this book is heavily documented, based on declassified memos and communications from the highest ranking civilian and military leaders. It seems to me that both “war hawks” and “war doves” will find it honest and informative. Second, the author was recently appointed as National Security Advisor to Donald Trump. So it reveals some of the thinking of this important advisor. We should not expect that H.R. McMasters will be derelict.
So who was derelict? LBJ and McNamara most importantly, because they cared about winning the 1964 election and passing the Great Society legislation, way more than what was the right thing to do in Vietnam, way more than the lives of those who would die. They lied and manipulated to get their way. All of the JCS were derelict for not standing up to LBJ and McNamara, allowing themselves to be manipulated. But I don’t think we should be too hard on the JCS, because they are required to follow the orders of the president and SecDef.
Chapter One is about the early days of the Kennedy administration and the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Eisenhower and Congress had established formal structures for Defense decision making, with the JCS advising the president. JFK gutted that apparatus, using a few close friends for advice and using the JCS to support decisions that were already established. Eisenhower had set in motion the preparations for the Bay of Pigs invasion. JFK let it proceed but denied it the kind of support it needed for success. Then he blamed the JCS for failure. Kennedy and McNamara strengthened the role of the SecDef at the expense of the JCS. Kennedy established Maxwell Taylor as his Military Representative, a new postion. JFK fired or “kicked upstairs” the service chiefs, putting in his own men.
Chapter Two is about the Cuban Missile Crisis, then shifts to Vietnam. The JCS wanted a more muscular military response to the Soviets. McNamara advocated a naval “quarantine” and a secret deal to remove nukes from Turkey in exchange for the removal of nukes from Cuba. McNamara convinced the president, and the strategy worked out pretty well, emboldening McNamara to be more assertive over the JCS. There is a quick review of Vietnam history from 1940 to 1963. The French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam was partitioned, elections were to be held but never happened. Ho Chi Minh consolidated power in the north and started directing revolt in the south. The U.S. supported Diem, a Roman Catholic who did not treat the Buddhist majority well. In 1963 the U.S. started sending uncertain feelers for a coup. The coup finally occurred on Nov 1, 1963.
Chapter Three includes the Nov 1, 2914 coup that killed Diem, and the assassination of JFK on Nov 22, 1963. JFK did not communicate clearly to Ambassador Henry Lodge, and Lodge thought there was a green light from Washington for the coup. JFK was upset when he learned of Diem’s death.
Chapter Four covers the initial months of the Johnson administration. LBJ had big plans for the Great Society legislation and wanted to limit military spending so that the country could afford the Great Society. LBJ also didn’t want to lose Vietnam to the communists. Maxwell Taylor continued to strengthen his power as chairman of the JCS. McNamara was happy to deceive the public with an optimistic assessment of Vietnam, allowing the U.S. to limit spending on Vietnam, leaving funds for domestic spending. McNamara championed a strategy of gradually increasing military force. The JCS advocated a sudden and vigorous military response to achieve victory. Special Forces were used to raid North Vietnam.
Chapter Five explores the tension between the Joint Chiefs and the President and SedDef in the spring of 1964. LBJ appointed Lemay to serve an additional year as the AF chief, reasoning that as long as (but only as long as) he was in uniform he would not publicly oppose LBJ’s Vietnam policy. The Pentagon conducted a war game, SIGMA 1-64, to test the strategy of graduated pressure. The war game accurately predicted the future events – the introduction of large U.S. ground forces into the war, the lack of support from Congress and the American people, and the underestimation of Hanoi’s resolve. (This study crushes a prominent claim of the book A Bright and Shining Lie, which claims that the U.S. did not understand Hanoi’s resolve. The Pentagon understood it.) McNamara made sure that LBJ never saw this report.
Chapter Six covers the summer of 1964, with the same themes. LBJ viewed everything in terms of its effect on the election. Maxwell Taylor maneuvered to give himself more influence and authority. He became Ambassador to SVN in July, securing a memo from LBJ giving him authority over military operations. Taylor got LBJ to appoint Earl Wheeler to Chairman of the JCS – the third consecutive Army general to hold the position. Wheeler had no combat bona fides and was compliant towards McNamara, LBJ, and Taylor. There was a big conference in Honolulu, and Taylor shut out the views of the JCS. LBJ asked the JCS for recommendations, but constrained their response to limited actions. The Gulf of Tonkin incident occurred during this period. On one night, NVN patrol boats attacked a US Navy destroyer. A couple of days later there was confusion, and a NVN attack was thought to have occurred, but almost certainly did not. When LBJ was first notified of the second attack, he ordered the Navy to respond with a strike on the NVN navy base, thinking that would help is election campaign. One Navy pilot was killed and another taken prisoner – the first POW of the war. The incident resulted in a Congressional resolution giving the president authority to respond. Campaign surrogate speakers were told to emphasize that things are going well in Vietnam now but to hold open the possibility of escalation later. LBJ wanted some freedom to escalate after the election, so everyone basically lied about how well things were going in the summer and fall. The book is getting pretty repetitious here.
Chapter Seven includes quite a bit about William Bundy, younger brother of McGeorge Bundy. William Bundy advocated graduated pressure on NVN, with a bombing campaign to start on Jan 1, 1965. Once Maxwell Taylor got established in SVN as the ambassador, he saw the need for a more vigorous military response, but he had little success getting support for this from LBJ and McNamara. Throughout the book to this point, a major theme is the inter-service rivalries, the inability of the Joint Chiefs to agree, and the ability of McNamara and Maxwell Taylor to use the rivalries to neutralize any effectiveness the Chiefs might have had in influencing decisions. Air Force General LeMay and Marine General Greene often teamed up to advocate vigorous military action. Army General Johnson opposed the most vigorous actions and feared that escalation could cause China to intervene or increased violence from the Viet Cong. General Johnson was skeptical of the ability of air power to interdict the supply routes or to coerce NVN. General Greene wanted the Marines to secure all of the coastal areas of SVN.
Chapter Eight starts with a Pentagon simulation, Sigma II. Its results were similar the earlier Sigma I simulation. Graduated pressure, implemented through controlled bombing of NVN, did little to hinder the military capability of the communists and did nothing to weaken their resolve to win. It resulted in escalation, with the introduction of U.S. ground combat units into SVN and erosion of support from the American public. But graduated pressure fit with the domestic political objectives of Johnson, McNamara, and the rest, so LBJ continued to follow it. McNamara continued to look back to the success of graduated pressure in the Cuban Missile Crisis. [I interject that it was easy to isolate Cuba because it is an island close to the U.S. NVN had land routes and short sea routes to send munitions to SVN.]
Up to this point, McMasters does not seem to take sides. He has shown that JFK and McNamara and their civilian associates, and Maxwell Taylor were dishonest and valued winning the election over everything else. The options were to vigorously strike the enemy in NVN and Laos, graduated pressure, or negotiated withdrawal (giving up.) McMasters clearly sees graduated pressure as the worst choice, but hasn’t really taken a stand between vigorous strikes and withdrawal. History shows that graduated pressure did not work and cost the U.S. dearly, so any author would have to oppose that strategy in retrospect.
Chapter Nine starts after the election. “McNaughton and William Bundy rationalized that committing the U.S. to a war in Vietnam and losing would be preferable to withdrawing from what they believed was an impossible situation.” Location 3706. (Gasp!) Johnson was determined to pass the Great Society legislation at any cost. He won the election in a landslide and picked up seats in the House and Senate. LBJ spent most of the month at the ranch to avoid dealing with the war and to work on the Great Society. The JCS continued to favor a sudden and vigorous application of force on NVN but the civilian leadership slow-rolled them and stuck to slow escalation.
Chapter Ten – A Fork in the Road - goes from December 1964 to February 1965. Taylor tried to straighten out the SVN government with tough talk, but they saw it as colonial interference and dissolved the national council. The Viet Cong were having a lot of success and McGeorge Bundy and McNamara thought that the U.S. needed to escalate its efforts to prevent a collapse of SVN. But the administration had been constantly telling the American people and the world that things were going quite well in Vietnam, so justification was need for the escalation. The Navy was sent north to try to provoke something, but it was a wimpy effort. Unrelated to that, the VC attacked Pleiku (a place where I landed many times) on February 6, killing and wounding some Americans. LBJ ordered air strikes on barracks in southern NVN the next day.
Chapter 11 – The Foot in the Door: February – March 1965, and Chapter 12 – A Quicksand of Lies: March – April 1965. The administration came to believe that SVN would, in the end, fall to the Communists but that it was important to support SVN for a while and delay the outcome, that this would be better for U.S. prestige, respect, and credibility than an immediate withdrawal. VP Humphrey told LBJ what he thought and was barred from all future discussions on Vietnam. Taylor opposed using Army and Marine combat units. There was haggling over using one, two, or three Marine battalions and where to put them. A battalion was sent to defend Danang. The JCS quarreled over air power and ground combat units and which to use first. John McConnell replaced Curtis Lemay as AF Chief of Staff. The Viet Cong controlled more and more of the country and there was danger that the Saigon government would fail, but LBJ kept lying that they were doing well. LBJ would give pep talks to the military leaders, telling them to kill more VC, and then keep in place the restrictions that kept them from killing more VC. A few of the civilian and military leaders noticed that the U.S. had not defined its objective in Vietnam. Beat NVN into submission to the point they would stop aiding the VC and order the VC to cease and desist? Prop up the SVN government for a while and then find a reason to pull out? Negotiate some kind of settlement? LBJ wouldn’t really discuss the topic or commit to any objective. Chapter 12 ends with a pretty good summary of the book. The JCS had estimates of the number of troops needed to win in Vietnam – 700,000, but did not give those estimates to their civilian superiors. Johnson maneuvered the JCS to give him the advice he wanted to hear, not the advice they knew he needed. A slow escalation, with minimal air strikes on NVN and small troop deployments proceeded, with LBJ refusing to acknowledge to himself or to the American people where it was going.
Chapter 13 – The Coach and His Team: April – June 1963. Chapter 14 – War without Direction: April – June 1965. Chapter 15 – Five Silent Men: July 1965. LBJ gave the JCS a pep talk about how they are the team and he is the coach and they are supposed to do what he says. Nobody knew what the objective of the war was, or if they had an opinion, there were different and conflicting opinions. Destroy NVN’s ability to wage war and compel them to call off the rebellion in SVN? Hang on a little longer, propping up the SVN government? Show the world that we are a dependable ally, then figure out a way to exit SVN with honor? There was a lot of haggling about how many more battalions and air squadrons should be sent to Vietnam. Maxwell Taylor, the ambassador, opposed any combat units, thinking (correctly it turns out) that U.S. combat units would cause the ARVN to cede the fighting to the Americans, and Americanize that war. There was haggling about Rolling Thunder, the air war against NVN. Johnson and McNamara wanted to control the air war from Washington and limit strikes to minor installations that wouldn’t provoke NVN, the U.S.S.R, and China too much. The JCS wanted to send more sorties against move important targets. The peace movement was cranking up in the U.S. and abroad, and LBJ thought that sending more troops to SVN would cause less opposition from the peace movement than air strikes against NVN. By July, LBJ approved about 200,000 total American troops in SVN. In May there was a seven-day halt to Rolling Thunder to see if NVN would respond favorably diplomatically (they didn’t) and to placate the peace movement.
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Top reviews from other countries
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- Gopi KarunakaranReviewed in India on July 5, 2021
Great book on why America failed in Vietnam
- Robert G McPhersonReviewed in Canada on September 22, 2017
A terrific account of how political
