Live from the Miller Center

Welcome to Shield of the Republic of Pot sponsored by the Bulwark and the Miller Center of public affairs at the University of Virginia and dedicated to the proposition articulated by Walter Lipman during World War II, that a strong and balanced foreign policy is the necessary shield of our Democratic Republic. I’m Eric Edelman, Council at the Center for Strategic and budgetary assessments, Bulwark contributor and a non resident fellow at the Miller Center. My normal partner in this enterprise Elliot Cohen is traveling in the Middle East. He will be back after the holidays. But for our last episode before a holiday break, I’m happy to be at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, where we are recording this today with John Owen and Mark Silverstone, who are both, affiliated with the Miller Center and the author of two important recent books.

John’s book, the ecology of nations, which is about challenges to the liberal international order and the interrelationship between democracy at home and democracy abroad. And Mark Silverstone’s book, The Kennedy withdrawal, which I believe, anyway, is the definitive answer to the unanswerable question of whether or not, John F Kennedy had he lived and been reelected would have withdrawn American troops from Vietnam as so many people have argued or or whether he would have been constrained by other, events. John and Mark welcomed to shield of the Republic.

Thank you, Eric.

Thanks, Eric. Great to be here.

Mark, let me start with you. I mean, both of these subjects are subjects that, are well worn themes for, shield of the Republic. We began our whole series of podcasts, slightly more than two years ago with my former foreign service colleague Carter Malkazian, who had written a book about the American War in Afghanistan, and, we were recording in the immediate weeks after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the disastrous withdrawal, which in many ways echoed the pretty disastrous US withdrawal in in nineteen seventy five. Mark, you have not only written this terrific book about Jack Kennedy’s, concerns and plans both for staying and leaving Vietnam in nineteen sixty one through his death in nineteen sixty three, but also, you were also the editor of a special session or special edition of the journal diplomatic history, the professional journal of the society for historians of American foreign relations, that examined the whole question of withdrawals, not just the Kennedy withdrawal, which you wrote about for that, in a shorter version for that, essay, but also the Nixon, ultimate withdrawal and then denouement in, in Vietnam that echoed what happened you know, this is not, this is not just a kind of historical question of antiquarian interest in two thousand nine during the debate over the Afghanistan surge that, the Obama administration undertook.

There was a very active debate about what the Kennedy episode in the nineteen sixties told us about how we should think about withdrawal. In two thousand nine. At the time, Gordon Goldstein had just published a book of Ruminations by former national security adviser McGeorge Bundy, which, in which Bundy was confronted with a lot of his, you know, memorandum that he had written as national security adviser for both Kennedy and Johnson, and which led him to the conclusion that Kennedy would have withdrawn. And there were others who argued that at the time, this is in two thousand nine during the, Obama debate, that that wasn’t actually correct. And that, Kennedy probably would have had trouble withdrawing and in fact, Johnson believed he was carrying out Kennedy’s policy and and a policy notably recommended to him by Kennedy’s own advisors including Mc McGeorge Bundy.

I I must say, look, I have a little bit of sympathy with Bundy. I’m I’m I’m not looking forward to being confronted in the future. I’m I’m already getting it a little bit from, from James Wilson, who’s a a UVA grad who’s at in the historians office at the state department. So from time to time, I am confronted with memos that I wrote. I’m not looking forward to kind of, you know, having to continue to do that necessarily.

Bulwark, tell us just how you what brought you to write about this and, you know, explain to our listeners sort of what your conclusions were because they’re really fascinating.

So first of all, thanks, Eric, for giving me this opportunity. I listen to shield all the time. And as I’ve mentioned, do so with my son, and, and so it’s an honor really to be here with you. I had thought about this issue of Kennedy in Vietnam and what might have been from time to time, certainly growing up, Alverstone’s nineteen ninety one film, was really powerful. And, it reawakened in me an interest in the assassination that I had as a junior high school student But I really didn’t become engaged with Vietnam as a research field until I got here to the Miller center and began to work with the Kennedy White House tapes.

And in two thousand and five, we had been invited to participate in what, were called critical oral histories. Jim Blight and Janet Lang and and David Welch, in this occasion, we’re conducting a study of the Kennedy Johnson transition, and Vietnam. And What did Kennedy think he was doing? What did he actually do? What did Johnson think Kennedy was doing?

And did Johnson therefore think he following through on Kennedy’s objectives, after Dallas. And as part of that conference which again took place in two thousand five. We at the Miller Center since we were engaged in this transcription process were asked to share what we had learned through Kennedy’s White House tapes, and there was one particular tape from early October nineteen sixty three in which Secret Podcast defense, Robert Mcnamara, and chairman of the joint chiefs Maxwell Taylor, we turn to Washington from their ten day or so fact finding trip in Vietnam and present Kennedy, essentially, with a plan to get the United States out of Vietnam by nineteen five. That’s not the only thing that they offered to Kennedy in this report. There were a series of pressures that they suggested that the United States impose on the ZEM regime order to get it to perform better, something that the administration had been interested in for for quite some time.

But a single piece of this of this report was the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam,

by

the end of nineteen sixty five, and in an effort to kick start the process, the thought that the United States might withdraw a thousand troops by the end of nineteen sixty three. And the reasons for doing so were various. They included, certainly domestic politics. And domestic politics in in a variety of of guises. On the one hand, there had been deep displeasure with the American Alliance with Cygon, for some time.

You can go back quite far for that, but at least during Kennedy, probably for the president himself, the most significant departure from what had been before came with Mike Mansfield. Senate majority leaders report, which suggested essentially that we’re we’re back at the, at the beginning of this of this relationship that had been, pretty robust for the last nine years or so in which the United States was essentially keeping Southietnam alive.

And Mansfield is influential, not just because he’s the Senate majority leader, although that obviously, in and of itself, would have said a lot, but he also had a PhD in East Asian history.

Yes. And had taught it and was widely recognized as as the senate’s font of wisdom on on Southeast Asia.

Peter went on to be, by the way, ambassador to Japan for about ten years, across administrations of both parties.

Right. So so there is skepticism, that Kennedy is hearing about the prospects for the US South Vietnamese relationship, and it’s tough to kinda get great read on where Kennedy himself is. He didn’t write much on this. What he had communicated to others often comes through either in the oral history literature, which, is important for this understanding of Kennedy’s intentions and some of it comes through textual memoranda. And Sam’s national security action memorandum as well as as other materials.

But since we have tapes now to go on, we can actually hear Kennedy speaking with his close advisors about the disposition of American troops in Vietnam, and what he says to Macamara and Taylor, on this, October morning in nineteen sixty three, is that, well, it it might be worth it essentially to get the United States out of Vietnam. And this is based upon a series of conversations that the two of them had going back, but that he’s really kind of dubious of doing it under adverse military conditions. And it’s something he had expressed to Mcnamara when the two were alone in private back in May. And he says so to a larger group this morning, and he will say so again to an even larger group that afternoon when the full national security council meets to debate the wording of a public announcement to the country that the United States believes that The situation in Vietnam would have progressed such that. To years hence, we would be able to get American troops out.

As Kennedy says in that morning meeting, though, if sixty five doesn’t work out, we’ll get a new date. And that’s consistent with, from my perspective, everything we know about Kennedy’s posture towards South Vietnam, the commitment he had made to making sure that the country would would, survive as a non communist independent state And over the course of the next several weeks, the the policy plays out to put the screws to ZEM in ways that the McNamara report laid out, and there is still conversation about getting those troops out. And those thousand troops out. And in fact, those thousand troops do leave, by early December. So that policy kind of continues.

We don’t know, of course, what Kennedy would have done with the nineteen sixty five end date, but a variety of factors including Kennedy’s own words suggests to me that at the time he went to Dallas, he was still committed to preserving an independent non communist South Vietnam, while he might have revisited that commitment at a later date even his most ardent admirers believe he would not have done so until after November nineteen sixty four. And then, of course, you get into counterfactuals of several orders of magnitude. But essentially, in his last days, while He was certainly uncomfortable with the depth of the American commitment. There is no sense that he was really willing to abandon it.

And, of course, again, you as you say, it’s a counterfactual. We can’t, you know, know what he would have done, but the decisions that L. B. J makes in February of sixty five are made in the context of a deteriorating military situation, which would have made it extremely difficult as you’ve note for Kennedy to to withdraw because he himself was concerned about this. I mean, the the problem this illuminates, I think, and and John, I’d be interested in your comments on this.

I mean, it is a classic one that political scientists identify about Alliance management, right, which is the the, oscillation constantly between, you know, fears of abandonment and, you know, fears of entrapment, right, the the the fear that the South Vietnamese had that the United States were gonna walk out on them, which is palpable. I mean, in your book, you document it very well, how constantly, you know, this was a problem, for the Americans to wrestle with, you know, the the problem of the weak ally You know, if you abandon me, I will die, you know, and and that is powerful. I I kind of live through this a little bit, you know, myself. In Iraq when I was under Secret Podcast one point, I just swore story. You know, Don Rumsfeld, and George Casey wanted to pull out in a brigade, combat team from Iraq out of the fifteen, I believe, we had at the time.

Don’t hold me to that number, but it was roughly that. And they wanted to they wanted to ramp down our, you know, our, numbers so that we could turn over more of the fight to the Iraqis. And, Rumsel decided to pull one out, and this was in, like, I wanna say, June of two May or June of two thousand six. So it’s in a period where circumstances are deteriorating after the golden dome bombing, in Samara in February. I think it was early March of of two thousand six.

And Rumsfeld is was his want occasionally said to me, when a Pilada brigade, why don’t you call Condy Rice and let her know I’m doing I called the secretary of state who I nominally still worked for because I was on detail as a foreign service officer. She was not happy. You know? And and her comments to me were, you know, what what is, you know, you know, what don’t you understand this is gonna completely demoralize you know, the Iraqi government. We can’t the end destabilize it.

You know, we can’t can’t do this now. So the tension between the two is is a is a real custom.

At least there was a conversation about that between those those two departments. There really isn’t much of one during the Kennedy period. I mean, this is really a project that’s being run by the defense department. It looks as though state department and white White House personnel from time to time might acknowledge it or have their hand in it, but not really until the very end until October of nineteen sixty three. And even in this conversation with McMara and Taylor and Kennedy on the morning of October second, Bundy asks McMara point Bulwark.

What’s the point of doing it? What’s the point of of pulling out? And Mackamara says, in these plaintive tones, we need a way to get out of Vietnam. To leave forces there when they’re not needed complicates both our problems and theirs.

And it’s an interesting point that you make in the book, which I think is very useful for, you know, scholars to focus on. So one point you make is that A lot of the planning for withdrawal actually is completely divorced, from the situation in Vietnam, and is driven by Magnamara’s bureaucratic imperative, which is the imposition of the planning programming budgeting system and cost rationalization for defense programs, of which Vietnam is one, just one among many. And it’s not even really connected necessarily to an assessment of the situation on the ground policy determination it’s really we’ve gotta get, you know, budget, you know, essentially in balance, and there’s a cost here. I’ve gotta decrease it. How do we decrease it?

Well, we’ll have fewer troops there, which means they’ve gotta be withdrawn.

Yeah. And also to make sure that the programs that we’re currently running in Vietnam were harmonized. Because they hadn’t been. There had been a counterinsurgency plan that Kennedy inherited when when he came in, but by and large, as Kennedy’s advisor said, several of these programs, whether they were to work with the regular, defense forces in Vietnam, the strategic Hamlet program, other operations being conducted by rural affairs, they were not tightly coordinated, and they should be. And so Macnamara’s objective is to force all of them to work more closely together to rationalize to put to make them part of a conceptual whole at the same time that he is going through these gyrations at DOD with cost reduction and, and budgeting.

And, you know, a common through line that goes through this whole debate about withdrawal in Vietnam withdrawal troops in Iraq, and also Afghanistan is the desire of American policy makers to get the the indigenous partner to step up and ultimately be, you know, responsible for their their own defense. You know, when we get to the Nixon period, and I know you you you were not writing about that specifically in the book, but although you’re, I know, very knowledgeable about it from the diplomatic history roundtable, you know, Secret Podcast, who, in my book, by the way, is one of the great secretaries of defense, and there are not many of them, and and it’s a hard job. But he was relentless in pushing the you know, saying we gotta get American troops out because we gotta get Vietnamese, the Arvin, the army, the Republic of Vietnam to shoulder a lot of, a lot of the burden here.

Yeah. Totally. I was just reading again, Bob Komer’s bureaucracy does its thing. And and one of the arguments that Komer makes in that is that after all, stops and starts and, and, false leads and, and corners that they they, they were not able to really turn around. Some of that proved to be effective and that there was a bit more responsiveness that they got from Sigon during the nixon years as a result of this pressure, essentially.

Look, we’re not gonna be here forever. You can see the writing on the wall. You know, there are fourteen separate increments of withdrawal during the course of the Nixon period. You have to step up and and and organize better. But I I think there’s still many who who believe that if it was effective, it was much too little too late.

And still you didn’t have the kind of successful. You’re not promoting the kinds of leaders who you would need to have at in various spots, both in the civilian as well as military ranks in Saigon to to be able to carry it off to carry it off.

And, you know, mentioned Bob Komer’s, bureaucracy does its thing, his ran study, which is a terrific study, by the way. And, I, I you know, read it while I was under Secret Podcast, and we were wrestling with many of the same kind of dynamics in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, you know, the gravamen of Comer’s, study is that we created the army of the Republic of Vietnam in the image of the US army, and we tried to create a mini US army. And that was counter cultural in Vietnam, and, they lacked the resources, and it was never going to, you know, succeed. If you look at the special inspector general, report about the collapse in Afghanistan, it’s the same pathology.

It’s like we’ve learned nothing collectively as a government between the sixties and, you know, the the twenty twenties. We trained the Afghan National Security Forces to operate with, you know, the kind of air cover and combat air support that only we can provide, that we, you know, did the kind of mission planning for them that only we could do that they couldn’t really do on their own. And then when we pulled the contractor support and all the other enablers that you know, we had provided, we wondered why they couldn’t why they couldn’t fight when it obviously would have been by the way, just a an aside, I’m one of the I think only people in government who had Bob Comer as a predecessor in two of their jobs. He was my predecessor as under secretary of defense, He was undersecretary and the Carter administration. I think he was one of the he might have been the first, actually, undersecretary when that position was created.

And he also was briefly ambassador to Turkey, which is a little known part of his career. He was nominated by Lyndon Johnson, in, the days immediately after the nineteen sixty eight election, the United States Senate and its infinite wisdom refused to, confirm him because the administration was going out and Republicans and the Senate would not allow the confirmation to take place. He was given a recess appointment, which obviously would expire. And, and, ultimately, was, ordered back to the United States in, his is is recessed appointment or is is a nomination actually was withdrawn by the next administration on, like, January twenty second or twenty third of nineteen sixty nine. And he returned to Washington in April after having about a four or five month tour of duty.

Although it was very, it was a very eventful, you know, four months. He he went to speak very famously at Middle East Technical University, and, while he was giving a speech in, like, in I can’t remember whether it was late sixty eight or early sixty nine. The students outside overturned his armored Cadillac limousine and lit it on fire and burned it.

So I

would when I was in Bachelor to Turkey, I would frequently, if I went out to speak at Turkish universities, which I did from time to time, and I came back and people named us, he said, how did you do mister ambassador? I said, I exceeded the Comer standard. They didn’t burn my didn’t burn my Oh, okay. My limbo. So, although there were a couple of occasions when it came close, I think.

But, John, let me turn, to you. I mean, the Vietnam War was As you note in your book, essentially, an effort, miss, misbegotten in some ways, to sustain the liberal order that the United States had established after after World War two, and that order today finds itself under enormous stress and strain. Your book is really terrific too, and it it it has a very subtle argument that I can’t possibly do justice to, but I’d love you to sketch out the argument briefly for our our listeners, how the, state of democracy in the United States is connected, and how there are reciprocal influences between the international security environment for democracy seas, writ large and US democracy and vice versa.

Yeah. Well, thanks. And thanks, Eric, for having me on this, your Secret Podcast. This is a real honor for me. I’ll start by framing what the United States was trying to do in Vietnam.

And for that matter Afghanistan much later in turn in the terms I put in the book, which is, it’s really trying to engineer the international environment to favor itself, but itself includes its regime type liberal democracy. So I’ll I’ll I’m gonna elaborate in a minute, but I, I wanna make clear when I I’m one of those people. When I talk about National security of the national interest. I don’t simply mean safety from foreign conquest or intimidation, you know, territorial integrity, I also mean preserving the the regime. So China’s leaders believe its national interest is not simply safety from foreign attack, getting Taiwan back, but preserving the monopoly on power of the Chinese Communist Party.

For Americans and national interest, again, security short, security from foreign attack, but also preserving our regime of liberal democracy. And those things are entangled. You can’t really separate them. And one reason why you can’t separate them, and now here’s where I’ll get into the argument of the book, is, we know from history that there are certain times and places in which it’s very hard for countries to become and remain democratic. The nineteen thirties was the most obvious time for me.

I wasn’t around, but clearly, democracy was was falling in Europe. And in some jeopardy in this country, you know, like to remember that, but but, fascism, and communism on the other end of the spectrum, very appealing to a lot of Americans, a lot of important Americans. This is true. Not just in the US, but in a lot of other countries. That’s telling us something.

Something was going on internationally in the thirties. It’s not just coincidental. The nineties were very different in the nineteen nineties, which I do remember, it was a lot easier to become a democracy, to remain a democracy all across most parts of the world. I think the Middle East would be an exception, but other parts of the world, were, democratizing, and this was the time of, Francis Pukuyama’s end of history thesis. We know that Liberal democracy has won the age old contest of ideas.

Well, here again, something’s going on internationally, not just within one country or two. So I’ve always found this interesting, and I turn to evolutionary theory to help figure out what’s going on here. And I say there’s this thing called the international environment that sometimes is friendlier to democracy, sometimes friendlier to autocracy. Or an evolutionary Sarah Longwell. It selects for democracy sometimes and for autocracy sometimes.

So that’s one big point I make in the book. A second big point is great powers like the United States have a lot of influence over that international environment. So there’s a back and forth movement, if you will. Most US leaders would not adopt my evolutionary terminology but their behavior and their words suggest they understand this basic point. So in the nineteen forties, even the thirties FDR, Understood.

Democracy is under threat here and elsewhere. And at the end of the war, he his administration and the Truman administration took active steps to reshape the international order so that it would make it easier to be a democracy so that it wouldn’t favor authority because authoritarianism, fascism had led to the worst war, the human race had ever seen, as well as lots of other bad things. So that’s point to the United States and other countries like China today, which I’ll I’ll come back to in just a moment, have this ability they understand the dynamics and they shape them to favor themselves. So American leaders,

and

I wanna wanna be as clear as I can, aren’t necessarily primarily acting to promote democracy for its own sake. They are backing the national interests in doing this. The third point, big point of the book is things aren’t going very well. We’re not in the nineteen thirties. Here in the twenty twenties, but it’s more in that direction than we like.

Democracy is wobbly. In this country, but also in other wealthy mature democracies in Europe, in particular, Again, this is telling us something. Something’s going on out there in the international environment. So because I argue that great powers like the United States have, a special role in shaping the international environment, we have to look at ourselves first and foremost. What are we doing something wrong?

I say, yes, we are. We have been sort of pumping into the international environment, some rules, some norms, some policies, a kind of a culture that is undermining democracy here at home and in a lot of other countries as well. That’s so that’s one problem. I call this open liberalism. It’s, I I’m for liberal democracy for sure.

Liberalism has evolved over the decades, over the centuries. We now have form that was that worked really well about, complete openness of borders to movements of capital, labor, good to services. It it’s good for some things. It’s it seems to be backfiring on us. Now there’s a culture of complete openness and experimentation and fluidity that comes with that that works for a lot of people.

It really doesn’t work for other people. Alright? Fort big point is it’s not just that. That’s not the only problem with democracy in the world today. It’s really the rise an activity of two authoritarian Ron DeSantis, China, and Russia.

They are they’re quite aware also of the dynamics I discussed in the book. They don’t use evolutionary language either, but they are actively, and there’s a lot of scholarly and literature and journalism on this, think tank studies, trying actively to reshape the international environment to favor themselves and their regime type. They’re very aware of the liberal bias that the United States built into the international order after World War two. They’re tired of it. It it helped them in some ways But in other ways, it’s really handicapping them.

And China, especially is in a position to do something about it at last, and it is doing some things. It’s changing trying to change some rules and discourse and and so on. So so far, kind of gloomy. So my last big point is the United States is still a great power, still a democracy, and can do something about this. So there are things we can do to try to write, write the ship, it’s not gonna be easy.

It’s gonna take some real rethinking. And it’s not without risk, but I think it has to be has to be done.

So let me try and tie together some of what, Mark and I were talking about earlier, John, and and what you just said. So part of the, sort of armament of arguments that are authoritarian adversaries like to throw at us is that we’re not actually a very reliable or good ally. And I don’t want to get into the debate about whether Putin invaded Ukraine because of the drawal from Afghanistan, but clearly the kind of shambolic withdrawal from Afghanistan, you know, created enormous problems for us. Now, if you think back to nineteen seventy five, the pretty, you know, shambolic withdrawal from Vietnam caused us some momentary kind of dislocations, in the region and elsewhere, although the United States ultimately did recover, from, you know, from that and, you know, continued to be able to play an important role. And East Asian security, and and in fact, a role that enabled the so called peaceful, you know, rise of China.

But how much reputational damage do you think, you know, that did to the United States? And, of course, the other you know, element of concern about the alliances we talked a minute ago about the fear of abandonment by allies I hear this all the time about from European allies is what happens if Donald Trump is elected in November of of twenty twenty four, will the United States pull out of the NATO Alliance or its other treaty alliances. I mean, John Bolton, who was one of Trump’s national security advisors unequivocally, he believes in the second term that Trump would, you know, pull us out of Nate. I mean, who knows whether he would or he wouldn’t. It’s not even clear whether he unilaterally without the ascent of the Congress can actually do that.

Although, that means I’m not sure we wanna litigate that, but so how does all of this fit together? Because, you know, part of your argument is that our sort of standing as a democracy, and the challenges we face at home is also having, you know, an impact on our ability to affect this ecosystem of Yeah. Of international democracies.

Yeah. I want let me talk about the F Afghanistan withdrawal in in in two ways. First, what was the United States trying to do in terms of terms I argue? And second, about the reputational effects. So the first is, the United’s this is two thousand one, two thousand two is a long time ago.

My students weren’t born. But the United States really was, trying to now I I’m sitting in the room across the table from someone who who was there who knows more about this, but but I in terms of my argument, United States was trying to engineer the ecosystem in the Muslim Middle East or on its periphery for obvious reasons. Their the political pathologies of radical Islamism had just gotten out of control. And Afghanistan, you know, Al Qaeda’s headquarter there and so on. So the United States saw an opportunity.

It was the unipole. If not now, when, we can we can affect this thing. We we can, help, liberal democracy or some, you know, locally appropriate facsimile get a foothold in the region. This is this is classic ecosystem engineering, not against China, not against Soviet, and against a different kind of foe. Very difficult task, obviously.

So I want I wanna just make clear the US is not just exercising power or punishing an enemy. It’s really trying to shape shape the environment.

I’d look from from from where I sat. That’s absolutely right.

Yeah. So now, it turned out to be, extremely difficult, and it took many years and the United States eventually under Biden just withdrew pretty abruptly, and I agree. It was was not a well done withdrawal. We can we don’t wanna litigate the timing of that and how it was done exactly.

And your bipartisan blame since the original withdrawal agreement was reached under, under president Trump was signed by his secretary Pompeo.

Yeah. So plenty of blame to go around. Now the damage to the to the US reputations, which is the question you put to me. I think is is, serious, and it affects indirectly the international environment that I’m so obsessed with because the US is the democrat liberal democratic great powers. The Hedgemon, if you will.

So, I was at a side note. I was at a a party in Washington a few weeks ago, and I talked to a European Ambassador, not not from one of the big western country, but he he was from eastern Europe. And he said to me, if American democracy goes, European democracy goes. Maybe he was exaggerating, but this this is not a crazy thesis that the US is just kind of lynchpin or key Keystone. So biologists talk about a Keystone speech and in an in an ecosystem, this is the US is something like that.

Right? So when the US reputation suffers, when it gets a reputation for being unreliable, acting randomly, you know, where where does this abrupt withdrawal come from with such poor planning? That that’s, that smaller states and the elites within smaller states pay a lot of attention. You know, is this telling us not just something about the US and the Biden administration or, you know, the Pentagon or but but something about the ability of a democracy to do what it needs to do in today’s world. And if democracies aren’t capable of handling vital issues like that, maybe it’s not a great system anymore.

Look at yep. So elites, and I have a lot of this in my book, elites look at alternatives. They do this all the time. What house democracy doing? Meaning, How is the US and the EU doing?

How are these alternative regimes doing? Let’s look at China. You know, China has its problems. They become more evident since COVID. But China is still still does some things pretty well.

It doesn’t get entangled militarily in other countries. That right now makes it look pretty good to some to some elites. Right? So I think we need to take reputation seriously as a matter, not not just of US and China, but The regime types we represent, the the environment so I’m not gonna say American democracy is in danger because we withdrew from Afghanistan, particularly. It’s not It’s not that simple.

But that withdrawal is part of, the recent damage to the US reputation.

Let me kind of reframe that. Yeah. And then, and then, Mark, maybe you wanna join and comment about, you know, how this played out in Southeast Asia, you know, in the years after, Kennedy and and Nixon’s withdrawal as well. So just to kind of revise and extend your remarks, John. No.

Feel free. You know, if you look at the president’s poll numbers, his approval, disapproval rate, and cross in August of twenty twenty one at the time of the withdrawal. And my, you know, working hypothesis has been ever since that the president ran against president Trump in, president Biden, that is Yeah. Ran against president Trump in the twenty twenty election, saying, Trump is erratic. He’s not competently managed COVID.

I’m a safe pair of hands. You know, I’ve been around this town for forty years. Was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I am a safe competent pair of hands, and American voters looked at what happened they might have wanted, actually, the US to get out of Afghanistan. Right.

But not like that. I like that. And and so the Biden Administration’s rep you know, reputation for competence at home, suffered, and he’s never politically recovered from that. If I hear you right, what you’re saying is it there’s also a international dimension to this. Our reputation for competence in execution of policy was damaged by that event and gave it was sort of grist for the middle of you know, the PRC and Russia who want to say, look how incompetent, you know, the American democracy is there better ways to organize societies than that.

Right. Right. So and it’s not an isolated event. Right? It comes against the backdrop of, you know, the the trump years, this January six twenty twenty one.

All of these events that make democracy look wobbly in the United States and look like a bad bet for a lot of elites out there in the world. You know, why would we maybe thirty years ago it was a great bet, but not anymore. Right? And they can’t even withdraw from this little country. They’ve been there since two thousand and one, and they can’t they don’t know how to get out.

Maybe we’ll look to other models. Yeah. So I do I do take this. I think this is quite a serious, matter.

Yeah. This calls to mind that conversations that people were having in the nineteen fifties era of decolonization. When the question was all about hearts and minds and the contest of development. Whose model will prove the most effective.

Right. Yeah.

The, the the western model or the eastern model, and it was explicitly framed that way. And so much of the emphasis was on getting our own house in order, making sure that our reputation for competence was solid so that as countries got out from under the yoke of colonialism, they would choose our model and not the other guy’s model. And that was part of what Bob Komer was interested in. Walt Rostow and others who

Walt Rostow, who was the deputy National Security are under McGeorge Bundy for Kennedy and who had written stages of economic growth, which was precisely rooted in this whole modernization theory debate.

Exactly. And who also was pushing along with others, really significant, expansion of US foreign aid, to the developing world, as a way to signal, not only our our our interest in in in them and and our friendship, but a hope that they would side with us in in the great contest. So so the dynamics are familiar. Yeah. Yeah.

Between then and then.

And in the Kennedy administration, correct me if I’m wrong, Mark, but I think AID, the agency for National Development is actually established

sixty one In

the Kennedy Administration.

Foreign assistance act. Yeah.

And the and the, president’s commitment, to go to the moon, by the end of the decade, is in many ways a part of this larger competition of of systems in the wake of the Russian launch of a earth satellite sputnik in nineteen fifty seven before the United States went to space, even though I think by sixty one, we more or less had had caught up, but

Yeah. Kennedy’s pledge to go to the moon and then turn a man safely comes six weeks, five weeks after, Yuri Gaurin. Heads on out into space successfully. And, it’s a it’s a single moment for the administration. A second inaugural slash state of the union.

If you will, he did, make a major address at the end of January sixty one. Which is quite lurid, in fact, if one goes back to read, read it about us living through the hour and hour of maximum danger, things are gonna get worse for, they get better. I mean, imagine a president these days. Well, it it’s not exactly American carnage Yep. Of a different sort, but it’s a it’s a suggestion that we’re in some really tough times.

And I think it’s also part and parcel of the of the ask not, commitments that that Kennedy is is, imposing on Americans, greater sacrifice, greater patience, greater persistence, which are themes that carry through his, his administration. But yeah, it’s it’s about ensuring the viability of democracy at home so that there is the spillover effect abroad at the same time that they’re quite actively going out and trying to make sure that regimes don’t turn again to the other guy.

I’ll jump in with just a quick, support there is, Joe Nye, the father of the soft power thesis. He’s done a lot. He and people associate with doing a lot polling, what why do people what do people most admire about the United States? And I thought the answer would be democracy, but the number one is technology. And so Kennedy and the Kennedy people were onto something that this is a a show of national competence and superiority to the Soviet model.

Yeah.

I mean, they had defined the nineteen sixties as the the decade of development, and they were going to problem solve. There were, and they have reason to believe that they could be successful in that given, the era of abundance that we were living through. And, yes, the economy had taken a little bit of a downturn at the end of Ike, but generally speaking, the trajectory was still pretty good. And one could believe in in the early nineteen sixties that if there was a problem, the Americans could solve it. Certainly, what Bob Mack and the wiz kids that he brought to the Pentagon.

Guys.

Yeah. You you, you know, you make reference in the book, Mark, to, actually, I think one of the most illuminating interviews that Jack Kennedy gave, which is in December, of nineteen sixty two. So it’s about two minutes two months, rather, after the missile crisis, over Cuba. And it’s a I think David Lawrence of ABC News.

Several of them, there were I think Sandivan Oker is there. Yeah.

But and it the and this was televised. And it was sort of Kennedy’s reflections at, you know, the end of a pretty tough year. And and there are a couple of things about that that have struck me. And in fact, I have part of it inscribed on an index card I keep in my briefcases. So one part of it that’s fascinating is Kennedy’s talking about to the your point about pay any price bearing burden.

I know he’s the American people are you know, tired after seventeen years of exertion in this difficult cold war. But we have to kind of persevere. And I’m thinking seventeen years, you know, we’re now, like, seventy years after, essentially, the institution of this, you know, global rules based order, and I think there’s palpable fatigue among Americans at the cost of keeping it up. The the other and and to Bob Kagan’s point about the world America made, which really is what you’re describing, John. You know, Bob’s point in his book is, Americans have this idea that the system just ticks over and nobody has to run it.

Actually, you have to run it and requires a certain amount of national exertion. The the other thing that, Kennedy says is very poignant and and really has stuck with me throughout my years in government is that they say, what have you learned? You’ve written about presidential decision making, put your profiles in courage, or

just put his name on

I mean, we now know that there were others involved in drafting that. But, you know, what have you learned about presidential leadership and what Kennedy says really quite poignant. He said, I I’ve realized the problems are harder than I imagined that the choices are more narrowly constrained than I realized. And that, you know, in the end of the day, it’s the president who has to make the decision about what to do about these naughty problems. The advisors give all sorts of advice, you have to make the decision.

And then he says, and then the advisors get on to continue to go on to continue to give other advice. Whether it’s right or wrong.

And it’s

I mean, it’s a very, I think, you know, poignant, I think encapsulation of the difficulty that policy makers, but particularly presidents have when confronting these really difficult, you know, difficult problems. But to the issue of, you know, bear any burden, pay any price. I mean, this dot there is an amount of, you know, national exertion required to keep this system going. Yeah. And, you know, it involves, you know, a variety of different things, notably including literally our willingness to tax ourselves to pay for all of this.

John, do you have a optimistic or a pessimistic view of where we’re headed on that? I mean, our our Americans you know, finally reaching the point of exhaustion. I mean, we’re hearing sort of kind of isolationist sentiments on both sides of the political spectrum Right. Both the left and the right that sort of, you know, for different reasons, obviously.

Yeah.

But both of which betray a certain fatigue with, you know, carrying the burden of being the Hediamon that that, you know, that has to, you know, be the the night watchman and, you know, turning the key to keep the mechanism going.

Yeah. Yeah.

What she says?

Yeah. It’s it’s too. It’s no. I have a glib reply, which is if you if you think, Egemini is expensive. Try letting someone else become the hegemon.

You’re gonna pay for it for it later in ways you don’t want. But it is an option and I I even think, you know, thinking of the title Secret Podcast. So Littman’s shield of the republic. It’s important that they add the word republic in there. Not shield of the state.

Mhmm. Shield of the republic. That’s that’s basically what I’m talking about. To to maintain a robust democracy, the US needs to think and act in out in the world. Not aggressively, not, attack our enemies.

Although that sometimes must be done. But, it’s more about shaping the rules and the information environment and so on. So, yes, I think we are a weary titan, to cite Aaron Frigs book from Pugetwell. Which

was about Britain in the late nineteenth century. Yeah.

So we don’t want, yeah, we don’t want that to happen. But the difference Yeah.

The I mean, if if I might just Yeah. Sure. The difference, you know, Aaron’s book is a great book, but The difference that the people he’s writing about, the Brits in the late nineteenth century and us, is that they had someone to pass the torch to. Yeah. Who shared a common language, two people separated by a common religious churchill said.

Yeah. But, and also pretty much a common sense of the the importance of democracy. Right. And today, there’s nobody for us Yes.

To pass the That’s right. That’s right. So and also, I I don’t I like to think we’re not headed on such a decline as Britain went through in the first half of twentieth century. But So I think the choice is open to us. I think, what what are we going to do?

I think a lot depends on who who becomes president next year. There is a we all know about this. You alluded to this a, revival of, I’ll call it, yeah, isolationism. I mean, they they people don’t like that term. But, you know, withdraw, let let the other let these countries sort it out themselves.

Restraint. Yeah. Restraint. How have you like it? Have you like to put it?

I think part of it, you know, people like Barry Poseen who who that they know what their their scholars, they know. But a lot of people who back this don’t really know the history and don’t they they don’t understand. I would say how the world works. They don’t know that, you know, Bob Kagan’s phrase the jungle grows back. Yeah.

That that that’s gonna happen. They also take very seriously, some of the mistakes that I think the United States has made as Hedgeman, you know, some of those in Vietnam, thinking about the the US, some of the interventions the US did after the cold war ended, could have been done better, or maybe shouldn’t have been done. You know, but but, the alternative is not simply what we either go a full bore on intervention and try to run the world because the world can’t run itself, or we would just withdraw. In hegemony, really, the the rational type of hegemony occupies a a middle ground that I try to out in in the book, and opting out simply doesn’t work. And the the main reason is it gets to what you were saying a minute ago, Eric, China has made I don’t I don’t think China wants to rule the world, although if the United States completely withdrew, why not?

Why wouldn’t China continue to extend its influence and try to shape global rules. You know, other countries do this. This is what great powers do.

And it lowers the barriers to

entry for them. Exactly. So, we can think hypothetically about what kind of a world that would be if the United States said, you know, we’re we’re pulling our navy out of East days. In fact, we’re gonna just we’re just gonna be a western hemisphere power. You know, that that’s restraint.

We might not like we might not just not light, but we might suffer. We might find, a lot of pressure on our own security, and we’re and what really worries me is that would put democracy under pressure. The United States is less and less secure from foreign in intimidation. There’s more and more pressure to centralized power in this country to sacrifice, to make compromises on our own democratic institutions. And that really is, I think, something to think hard about and something I I I certainly want to the

garrison state from the late nineteen seventies that was described here.

Yeah. And what Eisenhower Howard worried about Yes. That’s absolutely a lot in the nineteen fifty, they are whether we’d be able to bear it. Which is why Eisenhower chose to essentially try to cut defense spending, but did it by assuming risk, which he thought he could mitigate by America’s disproportionate nuclear force and and power.

Right. Right. So this turns around. I’m very familiar with the critique that says, it’s Imperial America that’s not Democratic. Right?

That and and at a certain point, that that’s true. Right? If the United States really tried to rule and control the world. Yeah. I don’t wanna live in that country either.

But people many people forget the opposite, the kind of converse risk, which is if you really are isolated, you’re quite vulnerable. You’re you’re gonna find adversaries who have a very different vision of the world and the good life and the good society have more and more leverage over you you’re gonna be less secure. What do you do then? Well, I’m that’s what I’m afraid. You also risk, a, moves away from democracy.

We’re running, short on time, Mark. I just wanted to come back to you on one one thing. You talked about, the year of maximum danger, and, of course, one of the people who served in Kennedy’s administration, essentially as my predecessor, because his job was the direct assistant secretary for international security affairs in the Pentagon, which was the forerunner of the undersecretary for policy position. It was Paul Nitz. And it’s, of course, had used that phrase once before, and, when he wrote NSC, sixty eight in, in nineteen forty nine and early nineteen fifty, he anticipated with the, detonation of a Soviet nuclear weapon that in four years out, around nineteen fifty four, would be the year of maximum danger when the Soviets not only would have a conventional you know, advantage, but also enough nuclear weapons to negate our our nuclear engine, hence he advocated a big buildup both conventional and nuclear forces by, by the United States.

You know, President Biden said we’re at an inflection point. And, you know, my sense is that people under as a scholar before I came into government, I grossly underestimated how difficult it is to get the American public behind doing almost any big, big thing. And, I mean, Kennedy kind of is wrestling with that in much of your book. And how do you get the American public? That’s what my late teacher Walter Lefie Breeze to call the tocqueville problem.

How do you get public support for for foreign policy? And, you know, sort of historians and scholars normally will look at this and say, we’ll look at the Truman doctrine speech where Vanderberg says, mister president, you got care hell on American people or, Atchison later says, mister president, you have to speak more clearly than truth. And so this is, you know, American political leaders are hyping the threat. They’re, you know, making the threat bigger than it is. In my experience, it’s actually the opposite American political leaders, for the most part, don’t actually communicate to the American public exactly how threatening the internet environment is until there’s some crisis.

And until the Soviets detonate a nuclear weapon in North Korea invade South Korea, or until I mean, it’s interesting, by the way, that the, you know, NSC sixty eight, which is generated by the Soviet nuclear detonation doesn’t actually get implemented until June after the invasion of of of South Korea. Actually, later,

I think it’s enough October.

They actually, the budget gets submitted.

But but

I mean, nobody is ready to adopt that when it’s presented in April. In fact, the Secret Podcast defense, you know, Nitsa records when he briefed him on it, it was Louis Johnson, who had been hired by Truman to actually you know, reduce US defense spending and balance the budget, said he was gonna have an aneurysm when he heard what what Natoo was talking about. So Do we have the do we have leadership in the United States today, the capacity to actually mobilize the public behind big things, including aid to Ukraine, standing by Israel as it goes through this very hard nasty business of rooting out hamas, which is inevitably I mean, you know, everyone’s obsessed with, civilian casualties. I would just note inter that if you look at the percentage of civilian casualties in Gaza, even accepting the Hamas Ministry of, Defense or Ministry of Health’s figures, per, ammunition dropped compared to our casualty totals, civilians in in Mosel and Raca. It’s not even close.

We had we created way more civilian casualties. You know, and percentage basis than the Israelis have. But, you know, still the images of Gaza coming out of Gaza are, of course, horrific and civilian suffering is horrific. But, you know, do we have American leadership today? Do you think it can mobilize the public?

And I don’t just mean, you know, the president, you know, or his putative opponent, but, you know, across the political class.

I I don’t know. You, John, probably no better than I, but but I would say that, If it exists, it’s operating in a very different media landscape than it was previously when presidents had probably greater capacity to deliver their message and to have it also received the way they wanted wanted it to be received. And that was certainly the case with somebody like JFK, even the case during the mobilization effort and not just for the Truman doctrine, but really for the Marshall plan later. Right. And you had these public private partnerships.

That we’re working to get the word out about the necessity of all that money to rebuild, war torn Europe. Program that, as you know, was was initially offered to to both sides, in, in Europe. And served as really the defining moment for making the cold more cold. It was in and dividing Europe. Dividing that Europe, dividing Europe was later that fall that that the common form is created and and, you know, Walter, Whitney collects his his essays and the cold war volume, and and that was you know, nineteen forty seven into nineteen forty eight is certainly a a big year, but a larger point is that there’s an ability to mobilize the public in ways that are elusive today because of the proliferation of media nodes, and the ability of, of certainly bad actors to capitalize on on some of those the ability to get the word out in a constructive fashion.

It’s a real challenge. Regardless of the oratorial, capabilities of of the president or or those who serve him or their allies in in in private life and public life. It’s it’s really, really tough.

I share. I share that view and I share that skepticism. And for we could go on. Unfortunately, we’ve reached the end of our time for today’s episode of shield of the Republic. I I wanna thank Mark Silverstone and John Owen, at the Miller Center for, joining me.

I hope we can have you, guys back, in the future. This has been I hope we can come back to the Miller Center and record here again. It’s, it’s been a pleasure to be with you guys. I hope our listeners have, a happy holiday season. We’ll be back to you in, in early January.

And that’ll be it for today’s episode of Children Republic.