Book Review: The Road Not Taken
/There are a lot of books about Vietnam. So many. But the vast majority of them are about the US war in Vietnam, not about the country itself. No doubt the war was important, not just for the Vietnamese (which suffered the most, on both sides) but for the rest of the world. Because of this, while I stay away from most of the books about the war, I read a few of the more important ones.
This book, The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam by Max Boot, caught my eye, because it was about a potentially different outcome of the war. Plus, it was a deep study in the father of counter-insurgency, which continues to be the weakspot in the US military. Edward Lansdale was a former advertising man that through his military and CIA work become close friends and confidants of Ramon Magsaysay, at one point president of the Philippines, and Ngo Dinh Diem, the president of South Vietnam. He was the US’s man in South East Asia throughout the 50s and into the 60s.
The book is interesting throughout. Although, at the beginning, there is a lot of talk about Lansdale’s personal life (he had a wife and a mistress, and after his wife died, he married the mistress), that I could do without. A few things that I took away:
Lansdale’s view was that the US fundamentally misunderstood how to fight Communist powers. He believed that the US should persuade and cajole leaders to become more democratic and build more legitimacy for itself. And that by offering a better alternative to communism, South Vietnam would have been able to survive.
Once the US military got involved in a big way, it was over. The civilians never had enough power or control to get things done nor were they able to change the rules of engagement to lessen civilian distrust. Basically, the military killed too many civilians indiscriminately, leading to a backlash against the South Vietnamese government and rising popularity of the insurgents. General Westmoreland, in particular, doesn’t come off well in this account.
Almost all of the post-Diem leaders were corrupt and self-serving. All of them appeared to be completely short-sighted. None seemed willing to make the sacrifices necessary. And they ended up much worse than if they had been less power- and money-hungry. For example, Nguyen Cao Ky was vice president under President Nguyen Van Thieu and was part of the original junta that overthrew Diem. He ended up running a liquor store in Los Angeles.
No leader was really a man of the people. Not Diem, not any of the generals that came after him. Diem came the closest, but he was nothing compared to Ho Chi Minh. He became increasingly autocratic over his rule, which was quite long - 8 years.
A good review of the book is here by Fredrik Logevall, who wrote a great book about the French in Vietnam, Embers of War. (Boot quotes Logevall very admiringly in his book). He believes that Boot is a bit too optimistic about the chance that the US could have changed the outcome of the war. The problems of corruption and authoritarianism by Vietnam’s rulers probably would have resulted in the same end. Plus, we forget how attractive communism and the North’s critique of the South’s government was.
Lansdale was very effective in the Philippines, helped by a very different situation and a charismatic and principled leader in Magsaysay. He was initially successful in Vietnam, in the sense that he became quite close to Diem and likely pushed him to be more democratic. But after that initial spurt, he was unable to sustain his role, given opposition from the US State Department and the military. He eventually helped lead the Bay of Pigs disaster and ended up going back to Vietnam. In this later iteration, he promoted Ky, who was seen, according to Logevall, as the symbol of corruption. Eventually, he returned to the US and was ignored by Nixon and his team.
I recommend the book, with reservations. It could have probably been a hundred pages shorter and not lost much. The details on Lansdale’s personal life were a bit too much. And the conclusion that if Diem had stayed, everything would have been different is probably too strong. But the section on the Philippines, of which I know very little, was very interesting. And it was informative to get a glimpse of Vietnam during the golden years of the mid-50s.