Episode 169: Vietnam War Legacies

This is democracy, a podcast about the people of the United States, a podcast about citizenship, about engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today’s important issues and how to have a voice in what happens next.

Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy. This week we're going to discuss the Vietnam War and its legacies, its continuing legacies in American society, in global policy, and particularly in light of a recent set of conflicts that produced similarly controversial outcomes for American society and global policy, the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. We are very fortunate to be joined by a friend, colleague, distinguished author, and distinguished scholar, Mark Lawrence.

Mark is the director of the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum here in Austin, Texas, which is the best presidential library, and I say that without any bias at all. Mark is also a professor in the UT Department of History, and he has taught courses on American and international history and various other topics. He's written three fantastic books.

His first book, Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam. His second book is a wonderful narrative history of the Vietnam War as a whole, The Vietnam War: A Concise International History, and it's the only history of the Vietnam War I've seen that is truly concise. It's very hard to write a concise history of the Vietnam War.

And Mark's most recent book, the book that has just come out that we're going to talk about today, is on the Vietnam War and its legacies. It's called The End of Ambition: The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam Era. Mark, congratulations on your book, and thanks for joining us.

Thanks so much, Jeremi. It's wonderful to be here. Before we turn to our discussion with Mark, of course, we have Zachary's scene-setting poem.

Before we turn to our discussion with Mark, of course, we have Zachary's scene-setting poem. What is your poem titled today, Zachary?

It is Hard to Build Utopias.

Let's hear it.

It is hard to build utopias when you burn their children in the jungle. It is hard to build utopias when you burn their children in the jungle, and your carpet bombings make whole nations synonymous with tragedy. It is hard to build utopias when you burn their children in the jungle, and your carpet bombings make whole nations synonymous with tragedy, and you shoot your own children smack dab in the middle of their righteousness. It is hard to build utopias when they are already covered in your own rusty tanks and pierced by your own bullets, when they have already realized they don't need to be saved by you, when your own children are blowing up buildings just so you'd turn around and care a little.

It is hard to build utopia, let alone democracy, let alone peace.

Very moving, Zachary. What is your poem about?

My poem is really about the very naive American attitude that we can go anywhere and build the greatest societies out of places that we've already destroyed, and we've already meddled in for long periods of time, and places where things are much more complex than peace and war and democracy and tyranny.

That's a perfect gateway into our discussion with Mark Lawrence. Mark, these are issues you've grappled with in your scholarship for decades.

I have, but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to top Zachary's poem. Zachary, that was awesome. Thank you. I think our session is over

It's always downhill after Zachary's poem, Mark. But Mark, you have, especially in this recent book, you've really delved into the ways in which the effort to build utopia, or a great society as Lyndon Johnson called it abroad in Vietnam, really distorted American thinking and American society. First of all, why was the United States trying to do this in Vietnam? Why were we looking to build this utopia, as Zachary put it, in a place so far away that so few Americans could even identify?

Well, I think the United States was in many places around the world in the 1960s, trying to demonstrate the applicability of its own economic and political and social systems as a way of waging the Cold War and sort of demonstrating to people all over the world that the United States had the answers when it came to human progress and development and effective governance.

This was a period of intense competition, as you well know, Jeremi, between the East and West for the loyalty and sympathy of societies all around the world. So it really mattered, I think, to Americans that they had the keys to unlocking development and democratization and progress in a broad way. Vietnam was just one of many places where Americans tried to achieve those objectives.

And why were our failures there? And of course, you and others have written in depth on the sources of our shortcomings in these activities. But why was it so disruptive? Why did it have such a deep effect at home, as Zachary refers to in his poem? And also,as your new book really narrates in such depth and in such compelling detail, why did it have such an effect on American foreign policy in so many other areas?

Well, I think that the American experience in Vietnam helped to tear down this set of ambitions that ran so high in the early 1960s. Americans in the late 1960s, perhaps in the early 1970s, by and large, believed that they had the ability because of their vast know-how, their technological capabilities, their resources. The world's most productive economy believed that they could bring real change to many countries around the world, and frankly, to their own society as well. I think there's a lot of continuity that has sometimes eluded historians between the domestic arena in which JFK and LBJ and other liberals were so determined to bring reform to all facets of American life, on the one hand, and the way that they approached the international scene as well, both in the international and domestic realms. Liberals believed that by marshaling the resources of the United States, the vast expertise that the United States had at its disposal, they could achieve great things.

And I think what happens across the 1960s, and this is really what I try to get at in the book, is that Americans lose that sense of ambition. And the Vietnam War is a crucial reason, well, only one of the reasons, but a crucial reason why Americans lose that sense of ambition and American foreign policy undergoes a transformation to something quite different by the late 1960s.

But there are a lot of people who, especially nowadays, who would argue that American intervention abroad was, if not purely self-interested, was motivated mainly by self-interest. Is that accurate?

Well, I think one of the things that makes American foreign policy so difficult to understand sometimes is the ways in which self-interest and altruism blend in the way Americans think about the world. The old adage was, what's good for General Motors is good for the world. And I think that there's something really important in that kind of comment. Right? So many American policymakers believe that the United States was on the side of righteousness and had the keys to assuring progress and uplift for the whole world. But they had no doubt at the same time that the same policies would also serve the United States. So I think this distinction between self-interest and the larger global interest is clearer in retrospect than it was in the minds of the people who tended to make policy in the United States. And that was certainly true, I would say, during the 1960s.

And Mark, I think your book is really brilliant on that point because it shows, especially in your country-specific chapters, and I hope all of our listeners will go ahead and buy and read the book. Mark has chapters on Brazil, India, Iran, Indonesia, and Southern Africa. In each of these chapters, there's kind of a similar narrative arc, it seems to me, where the United States is initially pursuing self-interested goals, but also goals that are merged to some sense of democratic hope, some sense of positive change. And then in almost every one of these chapters, Mark, to my reading, the effects of the Vietnam War to push the United States toward more support for authoritarianism and often more militaristic behavior or supportive militaristic behavior on the ground. Is that a fair reading? And if so, why does that happen?

I think that is a fair reading. I tried to pick case studies, and you've listed them, Jeremi, thank you, that would illustrate a range of patterns in American behavior across the s. Two of them, Brazil and Indonesia, are very similar in demonstrating the ways in which Americans supported right-wing coups that basically eliminated very uncertain political situations in very important countries in favor of regimes, military regimes, that would clearly serve American interests much more directly and be reliable partners of the United States.

But in Iran, I think you see a similar pattern. There isn't a change in regime, but the United States becomes much more supportive and much less critical of the Shah, a deeply authoritarian figure over that time. And then I also threw in a couple of case studies that illustrate how the United States behaved in places where there was no reliable authoritarian alternative. So I look at India, where Americans had great hopes for a new kind of partnership with a regime that was hardly a candidate for a close alliance with the United States in the early 1960s. And I try to show how the United States sort of soured on that whole idea of building connections to India. And basically by the end of the decade was very much at arm's length with the Indian government and largely given up on its ambitions there.

And in Southern Africa, I try to show how in the early 1960s, Americans believed that they could find ways to support racial justice in this region that was plagued by the vestiges of colonialism and white settler rule in several places, largely abandoned those hopes and really settle for a deeply problematic status quo that at least had the advantage of being stable in the short term and therefore not a situation that would require that the United States expand vast resources or political capital on very, very difficult problems.

And Mark, why this arc? Why in each case does it seem not only that the United States is less ambitious as you put it so well in your title, but also that the United States becomes, I don't know if this is fair, but it seems to me more cynical in its policies.

Yeah, I think that's right. I think that it's important to recognize that the American attitude toward the wider world in the early s depended on a certain degree of confidence, right? That Americans could have their way in the wider world. It depended as well on the idea that the United States had the resources to pump into these areas to achieve the results that it wanted. And it relied as well, I think, on the idea that it was okay to take some risks, right? It might not ultimately pan out in every place, but it was worth the effort. And I think what you see across the 1960s, particularly as the Vietnam War heats up and really consumes debate in the United States, is that Americans question all of those ways of thinking that were easy to see at the beginning of the decade.

Resources are pumped into Southeast Asia in a way that makes them much less likely to want to expend resources elsewhere. LBJ becomes quite risk-averse, losing much of that tolerance for taking chances that I think had been part of the American approach in the early part of the decade, because he understood that the war was deeply controversial. And the last thing that he wanted was another controversy or another problem, another headache in the world.

So if there were reliable alternatives to be had out there in the third world, LBJ was increasingly likely to seize on those and privilege stability above change across the board, I think you could say, by the end of the decade.

And just to build on that, Mark, another thing that struck me in your book was how often LBJ, the President of the United States, was willing to work with people he wouldn't work with otherwise if they were willing to support him in Vietnam. So in a strange way, the Vietnam War became a driver of American policy rather than American interests and ideals. Again, is that fair? And what are your thoughts on that?

I do think that's true. I think by certainly, LBJ is so focused on Vietnam tha the sees every other policy challenge globally through that prism. And so even in relatively distant and perhaps somewhat unlikely places where you wouldn't think Vietnam was a major issue, LBJ is talking about Vietnam. So when he meets the generals in Brazil, when they come to visit him, I suppose I should say, or when he's talking to the Shah, Vietnam is very much on the agenda and he's looking for support. He's looking for indications that these regimes will support him, even if it's in a relatively symbolic way. That mattered a lot to LBJ as time passed.

So Mark, could you just say a little more about why that happens though? I mean, your book narrates that so well. And I was particularly struck by the Brazilian generals as well, because to me, you couldn't get farther from Vietnam than Brazil, right? But why is, I mean, this is the most powerful person in the world, President Lyndon Johnson. He's got so much experience also dealing with political failure as well as political success. Why does this small, as he says, this small country far away, why does it come to dominate everything this way?

Well, because I think that it came to dominate so thoroughly the American home front by. LBJ was nothing if not a political creature who was deeply sensitive to what was going on politically across American society, deeply sensitive to what was being said about him and his leadership. And so over time, I think he came to see Vietnam as the single major issue that confronted his administration.

And for this reason was prone to seeing every other issue through that prism. And I think you see it not only in connection with foreign policy issues, where you might be more likely to see connections among different foreign policy questions. You also see it in the domestic arena, where LBJ's attitudes toward his advisors, toward members of Congress, were deeply informed by his perception of where they stood on Vietnam and how they were likely to support him or not. It's, I think, one of the tragedies of the Johnson presidency that Vietnam becomes so all-consuming for him that every other issue becomes in some ways subordinate to it.

Right. You and I have talked about this before. I mean, even his views of students in the United States become defined by where they stand on the Vietnam War, which is extraordinary if you think about that. Zachary.

Yeah. So you very clearly and convincingly laid out this idea of the end of ambition and the limits that it places on foreign policy decisions. But how do you square that with the rise in global connections and global awareness among young people and others during this period?

Yeah, that's a fascinating question. And, you know, Jeremi is one of the great authorities on this issue. But the way I would answer this question is as follows. I think that LBJ, as time passed and as Vietnam consumed his agenda, became increasingly concerned with exerting control, exerting control over an increasingly chaotic situation. And that chaos was apparent not only in Southeast Asia, but also in the streets of the United States and in the streets, frankly, of other cities around the world, particularly in the all important year of 1968.

He was aware that activism and unrest was increasingly a global phenomenon. And I think for this reason, was drawn to the idea that where stability seemed to be possible, where he could find partners who would cooperate with him and clamp down on at least some of this unrest, he was ready to seize those opportunities. So, you know, I bite off a piece of that larger story by looking at American relationships with countries in the third world.

But, you know, Jeremi, I think your book Power and Protest gets at another dimension of this broad phenomenon, the quest for stability and security and predictability in an increasingly uncertain world where governmental authorities are losing their ability to control. You know, everything that's happening around the world is in some ways a big story of the 1960s.

Yeah, I thought, Mark, your book did really a wonderful job of taking that story that some of us have focused on and really connecting it to the story of what was called the third world and how this impacted not simply detente policy, a search for stability between the US and the Soviet Union and a search for law and order at home. Lyndon Johnson's the first to really use that phrase, law and order. But as you show in this book, as I think no one has before, how this really comes to define, again, American policy in Brazil and Indonesia, which to me was, again, startling. I had seen hints of this, but my gosh, the depth of it, I think we have not appreciated until reading your book.

I wonder, Mark, what you think about the legacies. I guess I'm asking you in this question sort of for your extended conclusion. You have an excellent conclusion to the book, but how would you extend it on for where this takes us, not just in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but in the last decades of the Cold War?

I think that the result of the trends that I write about in the book is that the United States by the early 1960s is drawn very strongly to the notion of stability in the third world. As I've said, most of that ambition that was so characteristic of the early s has disappeared. I think it really was Richard Nixon and someone you know, Jeremi, better than anyone, Henry Kissinger, who fully articulated the logic that had become clear to the Johnson administration as the 1960s passed.

What jumps out at me in connection with the history of the 1970s is how unstable some of those, many of those relationships that the United States had formed in the interest of assuring stability turned out to be. So the relationship with the Shah of Iran, very appealing, right? Under the chaotic circumstances of the 1960s gives way to massive instability in the 1970s. The quest for stability in Latin America gives rise to a new period of instability and chaos in some places, at least, as the 1970s advances. And on and on, we could go looking really around the world.

So I think what I would try to emphasize by way of the larger implications of the book is that this search for stability, which made a lot of sense under a very particular set of circumstances, gives rise to precisely the opposite as time passes and tends to confront the United States with a number of really pressing challenges. And I don't push this too far in the book, but I think it's not too much of a stretch to connect some of this instability to trends that continue to play out in the 21st century.

Southern Africa, Southern Asia, right? Southwest Asia, at least, remain areas of real contention. And they remain areas of contention for a whole lot of reasons. But I think that the history of the 1960s is not unimportant in understanding why it is that those areas remain sources of concern many years after the period that I write about.

Sure. And the Middle East, you talk about and write about Iran, and that certainly would be a major element of what you're talking about here. Mark, how then should we explain, taking in all that you've shared with us in elucidating these changes in American policy and the implications for American democracy and for international affairs, how then do we situate that in relationship to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have an eerie echo of the period you're writing about?

You are not kidding. I mean, the similarities between Iraq and Afghanistan, on the one hand, and Vietnam on the other, have been a subject of a vast amount of writing. I'm certainly persuaded that the similarities are eerie in many, many ways. And we could certainly spend some time, if you like, talking about some of the ways in which those wars were similar. The way I would tell the story of the way in which Americans have thought about and tried to draw lessons from the history of the Vietnam War would go something like this. In the 1960s, with the end of the Cold War, Vietnam lost some of its power in American politics and society.

But I think it was really the Iraq War, and particularly the difficulties that the United States ran into there between, say, and or so, that brought Vietnam very much back to the forefront, at least in connection with debates over foreign policy. And I think around the same time as political polarization really became that much more extremein the United States, you could also see that Vietnam continued to operate at a very deep level in American society as a touchstone for deep-seated social and cultural debates over some pretty profound issues that tend to divide Americans over questions like their Americans' relationship to their government, the reasonable obligations that government can impose on citizens, the duties of citizens to protest and object to the behavior of theirgovernment, and so forth. A lot of those questions, I think, that Vietnam really put on the table remain very much part of American political life and unfortunately tend to divide Americans very deeply to this day.

I think that's super helpful, but then it opens up another question, right? If so many American leaders who were making policy and American voters who were voting for those leaders had the experience of Vietnam in mind in one way or another, and here I'm thinking about people like recently passed Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former Vice President Richard Cheney, Obama himself, who was reading about Vietnam at the start of his presidency. How could they make mistakes of excessive ambition, if that's what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq, if, as you point out, the lesson was so clearly to limit ambition?

Well, that lesson, I think one has to acknowledge cuts against some pretty deep-seated impulses that run through American history and American political culture, even in the post-Vietnam period. I think going a very long way back in American history, you can see a strong impulse to bring uplift and progress and reform to the wider world, to impose the American model on the rest of the world, to assume that the American model is applicable indeed to the rest of the world. So Vietnam, I would argue, and certainly many other Americans would argue, does teach the lesson of humility, of the fact that there are limits on what the United States can achieve in the world. But I think that one of the things that stands out pretty clearly in the history of American foreign relations in the last years, since the end of the Vietnam War, is that that lesson was only partially learned, only really learned by some Americans. And of course, there's a whole other set of lessons that were learned by people with a different set of preferences when it comes to American foreign policy.

There is an alternative set of lessons that would emphasize that really the key point about Vietnam is that you must not give up too early on American commitments overseas, that the United States really does have the wherewithal to achieve its objectives in the wider world. It's just that we don't sometimes have the staying power to see it through. I think there've been fascinating debates in connection with Iraq and to some extent in connection with Afghanistan that have really revealed the competing ways in which Americans of different political persuasions draw lessons from the war.

Mark, we always like to close with a focus on how history can provide us some optimistic, positive steps forward. And that's an article of faith for our podcast. As you know, it's an article of faith for me.

I have to believe this. And your book is so rich in its recounting of this period. What are the lessons that you hope, especially in the context of Afghanistan and Iraq now, what are the lessons you hope that readers take as they think about American foreign policy and American democracy going forward?

Well, one of the lessons I think is the predictable one and the one that we've already spoken about, that there are clear limits on what the United States has historically been able to achieve and presumably can achieve going forward in the world. I think that lesson of Vietnam, as I mentioned just a moment ago, was imperfectly learned, was learned only by some Americans. And yet I think it's a lesson that we constantly need to be reminded of and to consider as the United States confronts inescapably more Vietnam-like, Afghanistan-like, Iraq-like problems in the years to come.

But here's the other lesson that I think comes, that's a little more original, I suppose, and comes more directly to my book. And maybe there's something a little bit optimistic here. I think that my book shows the risks, the very pragmatic risks, the very practical risks that flow from pumping too much attention and resources into one part of the world. It shows the destructive impacts that can occur in connection with American foreign policy globally if Americans lose the ability to prioritize, to decide what's really important and how much resources any particular problem is worth as Americans confront it.

And the reason why I say I think there's something a little bit optimistic in that observation is that this is probably a lesson that many Americans, regardless of where they stand on the big questions of the legacy of the Vietnam War, could perhaps agree on. We recognize that there are risks in going too far in one place and sort of losing a sense of proportionality, losing an ability to prioritize. Um, so it may be that. When the problem is framed in that way, what are America's priorities? Where, where should it attach greater importance and devote more resources? We could find space for agreements or at least broad consents.

I think that's wonderful, Mark. Another way I think of thinking about that and, and you've, you've really provided such a strong foundation for this is to recognize that trying to win unwinnable wars is not what we should be doing. That there are many other opportunities for the use of America's vast resources, right.

That beautifully said exactly Jeremi. And you, you phrased it in even more optimistic way. And I really appreciate that.

I had to find some optimism, Zachary, as, as we close. Uh, I know you and your friends have been talking a lot about what's happened in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, war in Afghanistan and Iraq, obviously the Vietnam. Do you see lessons for your generation in this story?

I certainly do. I think one of the lessons is that these issues are always complex and never just black and white, never easy or impossible. And I think part of the problem, and, I think particularly among young people is that foreign policy issues can seem so black and white and, and, and, and, and so easy, but they're so complex. And, and part of the problem is that. Our political conversations, aren't mature enough, uh, in this country to really be able to, to address those issues appropriately.

I think there's a lot to that. And there's a lot between cynicism and the utopia. You talked about it in your poem, right? I think, I think Mark's book shows that there actually are. There's a lot that can be done in between maybe that's, what's abandoned because of the obsession with Vietnam. Mark, this has been a really insightful conversation. I encourage everyone to go out and read and read your book and buy it and give it away as gifts as well. The End of Ambition: The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam era. Mark, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you so much, Jeremi. And thank you, Zachary.

Zachary, Zachary. Thank you for your poem and thank you. Most of all, to our listeners for joining us for this episode of This is Democracy.

This podcast is produced by the liberal arts its development. Yep. And the college of liberal arts at the university of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harris. Codine stay tuned for a new episode every week. You can find this is democracy on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.