♪ ♪ (theme music plays) RUBENSTEIN: Hello, I'm David Rubenstein.

I'm gonna be in conversation tonight with Lien-Hang Nguyen, author of Hanoi's War and she's the general editor of the forthcoming Cambridge History of the Vietnam War.

She is an endowed professor in history at Columbia University.

Uh, we are coming to you tonight from the Robert H. Smith Auditorium of the New York Historical Society.

So, thank you very much for coming here this evening.

NGUYEN: Thank you, David.

It's my pleasure to be here tonight.

RUBENSTEIN: So let's go back to the history of Vietnam War for those who haven't lived through it, or may not be that knowledgeable.

Um, there was a war that, between the French who were the colonial leaders of Vietnam, uh, and they had had it since the late 1800's.

They lost it in World War II to the Japanese, but after World War II the French were given back, uh, more or less, uh, control of Vietnam.

And then there's a battle between the French and the Vietnamese led by Ho Chi Minh.

And the general was General Giáp.

They were the two most famous people, and they were given credit, is that right, for winning the war in 1954 against the French?

NGUYEN: That's the conventional history.

And I would say broad outlines, true, but I would put forward there was another leader, the General Secretary, Truong Chinh, whose name actually means, "Long march."

Um, and he was really the party leader in control in Hanoi.

I would say the actual height of Ho Chi Minh's power was probably 1945.

And then the height of General Giáp's power was 1954.

RUBENSTEIN: So in 1954, the French are defeated at the Dien Bien Phu.

Before that, President Eisenhower is asked to support, um, the French and doesn't offer to provide any support, the French lose.

And so Vietnam is then divided, where is it divided at what parallel?

NGUYEN: So this was a very controversial issue by the time of the Geneva Convention, uh, to bring an end, uh, and to establish an armistice and, and ceasefire, uh, for the wars in Asia, not just the French Indochina War, but also the Korean War.

One of the major sticking points especially for the Vietnamese communist delegation was, "Okay, we have to divide the country."

Dien, Dien Bien Phu was a victory, but it was a victory in one small corner of Northern Vietnam.

It did not mean that actually in many ways that the Vietnam Minh, uh, were victorious throughout the country.

There were many places of which the French actually retained control.

So, uh, by the time you get to this, uh, the, the Geneva Conference, you had Chinese and Soviets, uh, pursuing their own agenda, wanting their Vietnamese communist allies to just compromise at the negotiating table.

And one of those compromises was dividing, even if it was supposed to be temporary, temporarily divided at the 17th parallel.

RUBENSTEIN: Prior to that, Vietnam to extent it was divided was divided to 16th parallel.

NGUYEN: Yes.

So under the... At the end of World War II, under Southeast Asia Command of Lord Mountbatten, the division was, was different to oversee Japanese surrender.

RUBENSTEIN: So after Dien Bien Phu, 1954, um, the countries are divided North Vietnam, South Vietnam.

Uh, during the Vietnam War, I recall everybody saying, "Well, Ho Chi Minh was the leader and General Giáp was the general."

You pointed out they were long gone in terms of influence.

Who actually was running the show in North Vietnam?

NGUYEN: So the person running the war, uh, in, in North Vietnam was a man by the name of, of Le, Lê Duan, um, as he's been known.

And, and that was, you know, when I was writing this book, you know, one of the things I kept running into was that all of these more conventional histories kept talking about Ho Chi Minh, uh, and General Giáp.

But Lê Duan, you know, one of the things about him, and I think probably why he was successful, uh, during this period when he was de facto General Secretary from about 1957 to when he, uh, formally took the position, this is the number one position in the, in the Hanoi Politburo in the, in the Vietnamese communist party, to when he became the official General Secretary until 1960, all the way until his death in 1986.

Now that's the longest serving General Secretary in all of Vietnamese communist history.

Today, we have, uh, a General Secretary who's now in his third term, but that pales in comparison to, you know, the, to, to Lê Duan's, uh, rule and control over, over the communist party.

But I think part of why he was successful, particularly during this period in the late '50s all the way throughout, uh, the '60s was because he was the puppet master behind the curtain and did not take a very, uh, visible role.

RUBENSTEIN: So, uh, generally politicians or government leaders that have power don't mind other people, uh, knowing about that.

Why was he so uninterested in having people know that he was really pulling the strings?

Why did he let people think that Ho Chi Minh was pulling the strings?

NGUYEN: That's a really good question, David.

So this, this goes back to when the Vietnamese communist directed a cult of personality around Ho Chi Minh in many ways, uh, you know, really following the model put forward by the Soviet Union and even in China.

So by the time of, you know, after Stalin's death, in which the Soviet, uh, you know, the, the Soviet communist party tries to instruct all the other, uh, communist parties across the world to dismantle these cults of personality.

Uh, because they had, you know, what they were doing in the Soviet Union with de-Stalinization.

At this point, the people's Republic of China and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam said, "You know what, actually it's working for us."

Uh, in, in North Vietnam's case, it was, it was, it was very effective in rallying people under...

Behind the flag and to support the party, to sort of have Ho Chi Minh personify the Vietnamese revolution.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, after the, uh, French leave, after 1954, um, eventually, uh, we send some advisors over under President Eisenhower and President Truman, a small number of advisors.

How many did we have before President Kennedy took office?

Was it a couple hundred advisors or something like that?

NGUYEN: Yeah.

So under, um, Eisenhower, you know, the, the number of advisors stayed under the ceiling that was stipulated in the Geneva Accord.

So it was, it was several hundred.

When Kennedy took office and particularly after, "Operation Beef-up," of 1962, um, and by the time of his death, there was over 16,000.

RUBENSTEIN: So what prompted the enormous escalation under President, uh, Johnson, I think we went up to 540,000 troops.

Um, what prompted that, was it the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that permitted it?

Or was it, uh, just the fear that the dominoes were gonna fall and everything was gonna go communist in Southeast Asia?

NGUYEN: If, if you look at, at U.S. Presidents, they did not have, uh, really, uh, what could have been a viable strategy for victory in Vietnam, that they were really, you know, sort of kicking the can down the road.

And I think with LBJ, he had a, a domestic agenda he wanted to pursue, and he didn't want to get what he called, and again, I'm, I'm quoting LBJ, the, "Bitch of a war," in Vietnam to derail that domestic agenda.

And so for him, the crossover point of when he, what he wanted to do was to get the North Vietnam to quit, uh, their military aggressions in the South never came, uh, to happen, never came to pass because there was really no viable military strategy that would've allowed the Americans to win.

RUBENSTEIN: In his epic piece on the Vietnam that Ken Burns did, the ten part series, he says that there was never any evidence that the American presence could thought that they could actually win the war militarily.

They always thought it was a political gesture to kind of stay there, not to be the first president who lost the war.

Do you agree with that view?

NGUYEN: I do.

I think, you know, containment was definitely misapplied in Vietnam in terms of the strategy of containment.

And then I think there was also this notion of credibility on the line, not just the countries, but then individual Presidents did not want to go the way of Truman in losing yet another Asian country to communism.

But the one thing that gets to me, if you do look at the historical record, um, and we get to 1965, the pivotal year in which Johnson commits over 100,000 by the end of that year, you have within the documentation, uh, LBJ, you have McNamara say the most important domino of the domino theory was Indonesia.

And it was shored up after the destruction of the PKI and the rise of Suharto.

So then why, by the end of that year of 1965 did we pour in another 100,000 American troops to shore up what they were saying publicly was the most important domino, which was South Vietnam, not Indonesia.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, uh, the United States moved its troops, uh, up dramatically in terms of numbers after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

What was the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution all about?

NGUYEN: We now know, looking at the materials that had been de-classified about LBJ, that he knew the second attack.

There were two attacks, one on August 2nd and a supposed one that happened two days later on August 4th, which allowed him to go and seek this, seek the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

RUBENSTEIN: These are military attacks on American ships?

NGUYEN: Yes.

North... RUBENSTEIN: That's the theory, at least.

NGUYEN: North Vietnamese, right, uh, attack on, on American and ships.

The first one did happen.

The second one, we have LBJ on record saying, "You know, there could have been static.

It could have been, you know, they could have," as he said to, to the American sailors at the time, "They could have been shooting at whales for all we know."

So he knew that that intelligence was faulty, but decided to keep that from the American public, to keep that from Congress, to keep that from the Senate.

RUBENSTEIN: Right.

So the Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution almost unanimously.

We increased our troops.

And then, uh, we decided to try to end the war.

President Johnson tries to end the war.

There's a story that President Nixon or president can...

Candidate Nixon 1968 was trying to thwart Johnson's ability to end the war by telling the South Vietnamese, "Don't cut a deal now.

I'll get you a better deal."

Is there any truth to that?

NGUYEN: You see David's hitting on all of the, of all the hot points here.

The first is, you know, the, the, the, uh, faulty intelligence of Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

The second is, possibly one of the first instances of foreign interference in an American presidential election, which was 1968.

Uh, the South Vietnamese did have, uh, contact and communication with the Nixon team through various channels.

Be they Ms. Anna Chennault, uh, Claire Chennault's widow, uh, the ambassador, uh, to, uh, the Vietnamese ambassador to, to Taiwan.

Uh, also was, uh, a conduit, uh, in terms of the channel of communication between, uh, the Nixon team, uh, and Saigon.

Um, there was also...

So there, there were many ways in which the Nixon team, if they wanted to, they could get a message to Saigon, which was to hold out, don't go with LBJ's plan of the start of four party peace talks.

You'll get a better one under if I win.

But one of the things that that, you know, kind of, uh, brings up is that, you know, the South Vietnamese would've done that anyway.

They didn't need to wait for a Nixon signal.

South Vietnam in this instance was actually, um, much more efficient than the North Vietnamese.

By the time, and I've seen them, the documents, that the North Vietnamese were like, "You know what, um, it looks like we could actually try to help Humphrey defeat Nixon."

But by the time they undertook that by the late summer, early fall, it was too late.

And I think in this way, uh, Saigon leadership was actually much more effective in manipulating American electoral politics.

RUBENSTEIN: So there are reports that President Johnson picked up through, um, wiretapping that was, I guess, legal, that Richard Nixon was involved with this.

He called Richard Nixon, and Nixon denied it.

Is that true?

NGUYEN: So one of the, there wasn't enough evidence that Johnson could bring it up publicly, um, in terms of, of, of...

But yes, I mean, one of the things that, that I, again, encourage all of my students to do is to look at the, at the tapes, uh, to look at the documentation of the historical record that it is incredible the extent to which a lot of what we know now, as they trickle out information, declassified documents, um, that, you know, leaders at the time...

I mean, yes, LBJ knew.

Now how much of this was LBJ was happier with Nixon in, in terms of, would he continue LBJ's policies, uh, with regard to Vietnam in ways that maybe Hubert Humphrey, even if that is his vice president and the Democratic nominee wouldn't.

So how much of this does it get down to Nixon?

You know, at least with him, uh, there would be a continuation of what I would've wanted to do, uh, in Vietnam.

So how much did that play a part on top of that we don't have the evidence enough to... RUBENSTEIN: Now in the... NGUYEN: Nail Nixon.

RUBENSTEIN: 1968 campaign, Richard Nixon said, "I have a secret plan to end the Vietnam War."

What was that secret plan?

NGUYEN: Oh, that elusive secret plan that no one could ever pin down.

I think as, as, again, as more documents come out, that that was to bring the Soviet Union into, uh, into play.

And here it was, he was trying to hark back to the sort of great powers should really dictate the international order, should solve issues like, uh, something like Vietnam War to, to form the peace establishment... RUBENSTEIN: Now you pointed out in your book that the North Vietnamese leadership was very skillful at playing the Chinese against the Russians and so, so forth.

And can you explain what their strategy was to try to get military and other kind of support from the Russians and also from the Chinese, and how they played one off against the other?

NGUYEN: You know, the East West ideological confrontation was very, is very important to understand the context of the Vietnam War that it unfolded in the Cold War, so too was the Sino-Soviet split.

That you have to understand the great divide in the communist world and how that had an impact, uh, on something like the Vietnam War or the Korean War or on revolutionary parties throughout the third world.

Um, that they had two paths put forward, you know, in, in, uh, to them in front of them.

And that was follow the Chinese path or the Soviet path.

The Vietnamese were very good at playing the Chinese and Soviets off one another to maintain their independence.

But at times, you know, that sort of, uh, equilibrium that, that juggling act that they were trying to do, actually also hurt them.

And that way, you know, especially in times in which they needed a unified front, um, they weren't able to get it because the Chinese and the Soviets, uh, were constantly bickering.

RUBENSTEIN: Well, the Soviets wanted a different strategy than the Chinese did.

What was the difference of, uh...

The strategy that they wanted the North Vietnamese to employ?

NGUYEN: So there are many points in which, you know, the, the Soviets never wanted the Vietnam War to escalate to the point of nuclear war.

So they constantly pushed the Vietnamese to engage in negotiations with the Americans.

They also wanted to test their hardware, their weaponry to show the rest of the world, like, "Look, Soviet, uh, weaponry can defeat American weaponry in a large scale war like the Vietnam War."

Likewise, the Chinese were saying, "You need to apply Mao's military doctrine, follow people's war that will defeat the United States."

At the same time, they poured in 320,000 Chinese engineering troops in Vietnam.

So they both had a, had a major stake in the Vietnamese War, but it would be...

It would be paid in Vietnamese blood, not Chinese or Soviet blood.

RUBENSTEIN: So the North Vietnamese are pretty skillful at trying to figure out how to get support from both the Russians or the Soviets I should say, and the Chinese, but then Richard Nixon spoils the game by saying, "Let's have a visit to China and let's have detente with Russia."

So how does that impact the North, North Vietnamese leadership then?

NGUYEN: That was Nixon squaring the Sino-Soviet Vietnamese triangle, uh, in short.

So this, this gets around to that negotiations issue that I just brought up, the Chinese up until basically the 1970s say "You made the worst decision by agreeing to engage in negotiations with Americans."

And in fact, if you look at the conversations between Chinese and Soviet leaders, they throw everything at the Vietnamese.

They say, "When you accepted negotiations, you might have even brought about the death of Martin Luther King."

I mean, they, they really tried to make the Vietnamese regret that decision.

And it wasn't until Sino American (inaudible) was pretty much underway that they said, "Okay, you are right.

We were wrong."

Negotiations are fine.

Um, so that was a clear example, which the, the Chinese and the Soviets disagreed, but by the time Nixon squared the triangle, um, the, the Chinese in the one instance in which they would say, "We made a mistake," was with regard to that issue of negotiations.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, right before I think this the 1972 presidential election, uh, Henry Kissinger was beginning to have negotiations with, uh, the North Vietnamese.

And he famously says that, uh, the, "Peace at hand."

What did he really mean when he said peace was at hand, was peace really close at that time?

NGUYEN: This gets back to the question that you asked me earlier about Nixon's secret plan, um, and what had begun as let's bring in the great powers to solve America's war in Vietnam became this very sort of complicated strategy and how to achieve peace with victory.

Um, that's how Nixon claimed, you know, this is how America will win.

And part of that had some public faces to it, which was, there will be a four party peace talks in which the rest of the world can track our progress.

But in reality, the decision-making would be done behind closed doors.

And so there were secret bilateral talks that began early on.

It actually began under, uh, Johnson's administration, but, but picked up steam of course, under, under Nixon's.

And really when Lê Duc Tho went head to head with, uh, with, with Henry Kissinger.

So it was really those secret talks that took place all around the suburbs of Paris.

And what was taking place in, you know, at the international conference center on the Avenue Kleber was not important.

Those, that was for the... Those were for the cameras.

And so one of the things that Nixon was doing, and I think this is also part of, you know, Nixon and Kissinger's very complex plan to, to win, win Vietnam was that they would, uh, exert pressure on their allies and their enemies.

And in this case, they thought that they could tell the Saigon President Nguyen Van Thieu what to do to accept whatever peace would be given to him, 'cause he wasn't present at the secret bilateral talks.

And so that, "Peace is at hand," comment that, that Kissinger stated, uh, was one in which he took for granted that Saigon would just do what Washington tells it to do.

RUBENSTEIN: So ultimately they do reach a peace agreement, uh, and the peace agreement basically ends the combat.

And that year is, that's 1973?

NGUYEN: It is.

So that long drawn out, you know, we will deliver the peace, which really they couldn't deliver because Saigon at the very last minute put up, put forward a list of 69 modifications that needs to be done, uh, to the draft peace agreement, means that, okay, peace is not coming, uh, in 1972.

It eventually happens after, uh, what is known as the Christmas Bombings in which, uh, Nixon, um, basically orders a devastating, um, bombing campaign over, uh, the Christmas holiday, uh, when he knows that Lê Duc Tho will return in, uh, to Hanoi, uh, to basically send a message to the North Vietnamese, you need to sign, even though, uh, we weren't able to deliver and was also to send a message to Nguyen Van Thieu to that this is it.

You know, if we do this, you also need to sign on that dotted line and it eventually happens, uh, in late January.

RUBENSTEIN: So did the South Vietnamese, or did the Americans really think that the agreement in 1973 was going to end all combat?

NGUYEN: So no one believed that.

You know, if you wanted to, to represent the Americans in an unflattering light, it would be that Nixon and Kissinger believed that this was... That the Paris agreement was just a fig leaf for which the Americans could use to exit out of Vietnam.

And that it'll fall, maybe, you know, four years later, or maybe not on Nixon's watch.

Uh, for the South Vietnamese, they knew, that mutual withdrawal, that this is something that they had insisted upon that the Americans would only leave when the North Vietnamese would also, uh, draw back their troops.

That that was, you know, that Thieu knew that early on that, that wasn't the case.

He could see Nixon, you know, obviously he was making these public announcements of troop withdrawal.

Uh, the one, you know, by this point, depending on, you know, where from 1968 to 1973 the other, the other main issue, the other main, um, term that they could not come to agreement upon was basically Nguyen Van Thieu does he have to be, do the Americans have to, uh, tell him to step down, uh, remove their support from him, which is what the North Vietnamese wanted.

Uh, they didn't get because the Chinese and the Soviets said, "You need to accept this."

You know, Mao only had the point to, "Look, we have Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan, we put up with him, why can't you put up with Nguyen Van Thieu?

Wait until the Americans are out and then, you know, vanquish the Saigon regime.

Don't try to get that through negotiations," but for, for Lê Duan, they were integrated, you needed you, you, he needed the Americans to withdraw their support from Nguyen Van Thieu.

RUBENSTEIN: So after the 1973 agreement, the American troops mostly left, uh, Vietnam?

NGUYEN: Yes.

So there was a, you know, a residual force in Saigon.

RUBENSTEIN: How long did it take before the North Vietnamese and their supporters in South Vietnam actually completely took over South Vietnam?

NGUYEN: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: Was that a year and a half or so?

NGUYEN: Yeah.

So if the January, 1973, was when the peace was signed and then of course, April of 1975, but one of the, one of the, you know, again, looking at the history, both sides, the Vietnamese sides knew that, you know, the, the Paris agreement on ending the war and restoring the peace was not gonna stick.

Before the ink dried, the two sides were back at war.

RUBENSTEIN: So let's go through what happened to the major people we've been talking about.

Uh, General Giáp, who was the military general successful in 1954 and earlier, uh, when did he die?

NGUYEN: General Giáp died more recently in 2013.

So he was actually able to outlive everyone, uh, of this and in the, the cast of characters that I look at, at, Hanoi's War.

Uh, while he is able to outlive everyone, the one thing that came out, out of his death in 2013 was more people probably knew about Giáp's career and his legacy outside of Vietnam than they did within Vietnam.

And that there had been this entire sort of, uh... Basically, I mean, I would almost describe it as, you know, writing him out of the history books.

And it only came with the sort of international outpouring of grief upon his death that, that the younger generation of which majority were born after 1975 said, "Who is this man, we need to know more about him.

We've seen him as an advocate for, you know, sort of, uh, protesting Chinese encroachment in Vietnam, in the 20-teens.

But he, he seemed to have this longer, uh, and bigger role in history, but we don't know about it because it's not being taught."

RUBENSTEIN: When did Ho Chi Minh die?

NGUYEN: Ho Chi Minh died in 1969.

RUBENSTEIN: And is he glorified today or people think he was overrated and not so great?

NGUYEN: That's a good question.

I, I still think that there is a reverence and, and, you know, rightly so, um, to Ho Chi Minh.

I think he was a moderating, influence... RUBENSTEIN: Right.

NGUYEN: In terms of, of what, you know, it would've been a less violent war for the North Vietnamese.

At the same time maybe it would've been extended because sometimes it was with Lê Duan's gamble that possibly shortened the war.

So it's, it's complicated, but no, I think that he, he's still revered, uh, in, in Vietnam.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, uh, what about, uh, Lê Duc Tho, he negotiated the agreement with Henry Kissinger.

They both won the Nobel Peace Prize for that, but Lê Duc Tho didn't choose to receive it.

Is that right?

NGUYEN: Yes.

And because he knew that, you know, it truly wasn't peace.

Um, you know, again, if you look at what's happening in Vietnam today, some of these leaders are being reevaluated.

Um, and so Lê Duan and Lê Duc Tho might now be seen, uh, not as in, as a favorable light as when they were in, in power.

RUBENSTEIN: And Lê Duan when did he die?

NGUYEN: 1986.

So this marked, the beginning of change and reform in Vietnam.

RUBENSTEIN: Now the leader of South Vietnam, uh, right before the fall was as who?

NGUYEN: So Lê Duc Tho quit one week before the fall.

RUBENSTEIN: And where, what happened to him?

NGUYEN: He, uh, ended up, uh, making it to the United States.

And I think that family, um, or his widow was based in Boston for a while.

RUBENSTEIN: In all of your research, what was the biggest single surprise to you?

NGUYEN: So, so, that's a good question.

I, I definitely would say that it was that Ho Chi Minh and General Võ Nguyen Giáp were not the leaders who called the shots, uh, during the Vietnam War, but even more than that, that they're, uh, that they were actually, uh, the brunt of a lot of the, of the attacks of the purges in Vietnam.

So not only were they, they, you know, it could be one of these things where, "Okay, sure, you weren't in charge, you were a symbolic figure, but you were treated well."

But it was, it is actually even darker than that, that they were again, the, the victims of a lot of these political campaigns, smear campaigns.

To the point, even that again, if this is true and I would love to have the Vietnamese show me more documentation, but possibly Ho Chi Minh's life was in danger.

Uh, here, I think, you know, if you look at the history of my next book, the Tet Offensive, um, that in around, um, Christmas Eve of 1967, Ho Chi Minh was, was called back to, to Hanoi.

And he agreed to go, even though he was exiled, uh, to Beijing, to stop the Tet Offensive Resolution, to stop Lê Duan's strategy.

Um, and there was something that was amiss with, um, with his flight into Beijing.

And so some scholars are pointing out, was this an actual assassination attempt that did not happen.

Of course, again, he didn't die until 1969.

But we now see evidence of, you know, that not only were their policies unpopular, but possibly even their positions and their lives were in danger.

RUBENSTEIN: Hang, I wanna thank you for a very interesting discussion.

I really enjoyed reading your book.

Thank you.

NGUYEN: Thank you David.

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