Strategy & Policy | David Kaiser: Vietnam and the Road to War

"Road to War" | Case Study: Vietnam, 1951-1975: The United States and the Third World During the Cold War | May 3, 2012 | Professor David Kaiser
*****
Professor David Kaiser delivers his last lecture for the Strategy & Policy Department following 22 years of teaching at NWC in addition to his previous 14 years of teaching in academia.
*****
Disclaimer: The views expressed are the speaker's own and may not necessarily reflect the views of the Naval War College, the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, or any other branch or agency of the U.S. Government.

[@timp3931]

stopped when he emphatically said Oswald did not act alone

[@silone20101]

I like to know what exactly happened about Laos by CIA tried to stop or blocked Communism to take over Laos?

[@BaronVonHobgoblin]

The comments on Militant Islam have not worn well. In fact, the whole lecture is mostly about "grey zone conflict" and has no real trace of the idea that the military is an external police enforcement mechanism of the sort that is, and has been, applied to cross-border elements of militant Islam. I mean for comments made around 2012 the fact 9/11, and its subsequent police actions, has made no real impact on the professor is surprising to say the least. The inability of the War Colleges to see Afghanistan and militant Islam itself as a problem in their own right is a bit depressing. In effect our professor here is still "fighting the Cold War", at least in-so-far as this lecture is concerned. There is a definite failure to come to terms with the whole idea of "Police Action" by the military even though the term was used in the 1950s to refer to the Korean War! What if we were to follow this line to its logical end instead of the "grey zone" line? In my line of thinking the Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan suppressed militant Islam and as many cynics, such as the professor, like to argue "our own support" of such militant Islam produces "blowback". This view is incorrectly based on the old Cold War domino theory and does not recognize the agency of individual nations! The term "blowback" is only used by anyone who does not want to accept their own improper sight picture of the problem, handed down from someone well above any trigger, they were tasked to deal with. People seem to forget that the CIA is a military organization, its mission merely that of a plainclothes soldier and the failure of high-level policymakers to accept on the ground realities does not promote a cogent policy of action - direct or otherwise. There is no such thing as a "Strategic Corporal" even in the CIA! Still a good lecture but by no accounts is this a forward leaning lecture, this is the sort of inertia inducing discussion that is of historical interest but of little use when discussing future military policy.

[@Sealight007]

not impressed

[@robertgabuna355]

Chuckles...

[@rudolphguarnacci197]

I agree. None of these lecturers ever touch upon how much money is made and which families profit.

[@DIRKDIGG88]

Yep Not to mention the suffering of the Vietnamese people

[@gofar5185]

question please: what do you propose that whitehouse do this time... as everyone knows, cia-whitehouse are funding netanyahu israel for its west bank expansion... and trump gave a go signal to netanyahu... discussing vietnam wherein 60% asean people are still alive who still have the memory of the BIG FOUL biological warfare in vietnam... to then hear the iraq & libya cities RUINAGE... yet no citizen of america tells whitehouse, ENOUGH!!!

[@rudolphguarnacci197]

You can't blame Trump anymore.

[@stefanschindler422]

Chronologically informative, but deeply flawed by skipping over absolutely crucial details regarding American imperialism and terrorism as standard practice and USA crimes against humanity in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Chile, Brazil, Indonesia, etc. Example: no mention of Carter's covert terror campaign against the social democratic government of Afghanistan, which led (by invitation) to the Soviet counter-intervention. In sum, and apart from his late and justified skepticism regarding the morality and legality of covert operations, this is a standard conservative whitewash of what really happened, much in need of correction by the insights of folk like Chomsky, Parenti, Zinn, Blum, Pilger, Prouty, Douglass, Talbot, Lapham, Klein, etc. See my short book: AMERICA'S INDOCHINA HOLOCAUST.

[@robertgabuna355]

Thank you!

[@rudolphguarnacci197]

They always leave that out

[@Bill-ou7zp]

Dude, chill out. This is a military academy. You shouldn’t expect them to go into detail on things not directly related to strategy