The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam by Max Boot. A New York Times bestseller, The Road Not Taken was a 2019 finalist for Pulitzer Prize in biography.
Max is a former writer and editor for Christian Science Monitor and The Wall Street Journal. Today he is a Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. In addition, Max is a contributor to The Washington Post and writes for The Weekly Standard, the Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times.
In providing a detailed story of Edward Lansdale’s entire life, perhaps for the first time Max documents the history of American counterinsurgency in post World War II Asia.
Edward certainly had a talent for winning the loyalty of people with honesty, respecting their cultures, and viewing the world from his family’s strong Christian Science beliefs. In addition, Max repeats the idea that Edward is indeed the agent in Graham Greene’s The Quiet American.
The Road Not Taken certainly serves as a resource to understanding how the CIA established counterinsurgency and was very successful at first. Yet we see how Washington withdrew key support at critical stages in both Cuba and South Vietnam. It is no wonder that Edward was unable to fully apply proven lessons from The Philippines in partnership between CIA and US military operatives in confronting communist expansion in Laos and Vietnam.
Early life to College
Although, it would appear somewhat insignificant that Edward attended UCLA and began his career as an advertising executive, he would clash with Kennedy’s Ivy League White House. Yet, Edward would join the CIA (then known as The Office of Strategic Services) during World War II. Edward rose to become an advisor, then assigned as an intelligence officer deployed to across Southeast Asia. Edward clearly understood during his efforts how to successfully confront communist advances during the Cold War. Time has certainly proven the arrogance and lack of firsthand experience inside Kennedy’s White House drove Vietnam into the ditch. One of the stronger impressions is Edward establishing successful Asian counterinsurgency programs beginning in 1945.
Counterinsurgency in Malaya
While not inventing the policy of hearts and minds, Edward certainly learned from British General Gerald Templer‘s counterinsurgency strategy during the February 1952 Malayan Emergency. This was a communist guerrilla movement similar to what Edward confronted in The Philippines.
It would be obviously fitting that neither John or Robert Kennedy, along with Defense Secretary Robert McNamara could understand that Edward relationships in South Vietnam began as the French were suffering their defeats across Vietnam.
Counterinsurgency in The Philippines
By the fall of Dien Bien Phu in 1953, Edward was throughly understanding the role of guerrilla tactics outside of large cities. In addition, his experiences confronting communist guerrillas across The Philippines in 1950 supporting President Elpidio Quirino clearly put his life in danger many times. Edward’s key efforts to deploy successful counterinsurgency were supporting Quirino’s successor Ramon Magsaysay. Max’s detailed actions by Edward in this timeframe certainly reveal his successful personal relationship with Magsaysay was key for America. Again, for over 10 years Edward fully understood their culture. He certainly knew counterinsurgency tactics very well and this would lead him to assignment in Saigon and building a relationship with Diem and his brother Nhu. In addition, Edward’s relationship clashed with multiple US Ambassadors and White House staff as the US relationship was faltering.
1955 Battle of Saigon
Edwards role supporting Diem in the late April 1955 attack by French-back criminal gangs in Saigon was amazing to read. Max also sheds more light on a wider French role attempting to re-install colonial rule by ousting Diem and forcing the collapse of democratic South Vietnam is certainly intriguing. In addition, France ordered Edward to be followed and perhaps marked for assassination. Max sharing how Edward’s dog escaped onto the streets in the middle of the fighting was a light humored moment. Diem survived with Eisenhower finally giving Diem his full support.
Bay of Pigs
Edward’s next role was leading the CIA’s post Bay of Pigs operation called Operation Mongoose to oust Castro. In addition, Max reinforces that Kennedy’s decision to ground a brigade of B-26 bombers from the initial wave simply doomed the landing, and Kennedy would never recover. However Mongoose also failed, resulting in a loss of confidence with President Kennedy and his brother Robert who was the US Attorney General.
Kennedy trapped by a lack of understanding
However, why did Kennedy’s White House tap Edward to return to Vietnam? Max reveals that Edward’s action summary for South Vietnam would indeed be recommend by Kennedy’s inner circle. Perhaps an internal acknowledgement that Edward was actually best positioned to help Diem succeed? Edward would be directed by Kennedy’s White House to begin establishing a close relationship with Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu.
Kennedy’s many Ambassadors
The merry go round of Ambassadors all certainly seemed to clash with Edward. In a certainly critical time for America, Donald Heath, Frederick Reinhardt, Elbridge Durbrow, Frederick Nolting Jr., Henry Cabot Lodge, Maxwell Taylor, Henry Cabot Lodge (again), Ellsworth Bunker, and finally Graham Martin all made the role more complex from 1950 to 1975.
Yet, it would be McNamara who would ultimately handcuff Edward despite all the experience he was providing to the Defense Secretary:
A year later, in early 1962, Lansdale was called in again to McNamara’s office to help him “computerize” the war in Vietnam. McNamara presented him with a long list of entries, written out with a pencil on graph paper, including factors such as the number of Vietcong killed—the “body count” of later infamy. “Your list is incomplete,” Lansdale said. “You’ve left out the most important factor of all. “What is it?” McNamara demanded.
“Well, it’s the human factor,” Lansdale said. “You can put it down as the X factor.” McNamara duly wrote down in pencil, “X factor.” “What does it consist of?” “What the people out on the battlefield really feel; which side they want to see win and which side they’re for at the moment. That’s the only way you’re going to ever have this war decided.”
“Tell me how to put it in,” McNamara said. “I don’t think any Americans out there at the moment can report this to you,” Lansdale replied.
McNamara then took out an eraser and began to erase the “X factor.” “No, leave it in there,” Lansdale said.
pigs. 683-684.
When numbers do not add up
Lansdale’s deputy, Lieutenant Colonel Samuel V. Wilson, recalled seeing McNamara’s eyes “glaze over” as Lansdale kept lecturing him about the X Factor. Wilson tried to get Lansdale’s attention by nudging him with a knee but Lansdale “just kept going strong,” uncharacteristically oblivious to the impression he was making. “He was turning McNamara off,” Wilson said, “but waxing more and more enthusiastic, speaking more rapidly.”
pg. 685
Max certainly confronts how Edward offered 20 years experience successfully directing CIA counterinsurgency confronting communist rule. However, McNamara acting as one of the ‘best and the brightest’ could not comprehend nor appreciate the experience, insights and solutions Edward was providing to help contain Diem and his brother Nhu:
From then on, McNamara had little time for Lansdale. With a bitter laugh, Lansdale later remembered McNamara’s reaction to his contributions: “He asked me to please not bother him anymore. He used to say, ‘Thank you, I’ve got something else to do now.’” When McNamara needed something from Lansdale’s office, he would call Sam Wilson. “Things were simply broken between Lansdale and McNamara.
pg. 685
Understanding a failed effort
So, there may be no more damning indictment of McNamara’s misguided role in failing to fully understand the cultural impact of Diem. This was not by Edward alone. It is very welcoming to see the role of Howard Simpson in Chapter 14’s The Chopstick Torture. Simpson wrote a damning book of France’s complete failure at Dien Bien Phu. In addition, Simpson had key experience in Vietnam. Coupled with his US Information Officer in Saigon 1952-’55, he returned between 1964-’65 as information advisor to General Nguten Khanh, Ambassador Maxwell Taylor and President Johnson. Above all, it would be Kennedy’s Ivy League advisors that would fly blindingly by directing military action versus Edward’s counterinsurgency efforts.
McNamara’s numbers game failed
Edward was certainly direct and to the point showing McNamara’s quantify everything approach could not measure the cultural impact of Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu weakening South Vietnam’s democratic efforts.Yet it would be Kennedy’s east coast circle that would fly blindingly by directing military action versus Edward’s counterinsurgency efforts.
McNamara was later to lament that no one in the administration knew much about Vietnam—“we found ourselves setting policy for a region that was terra incognita. Worse, our government lacked experts for us to consult to compensate for our ignorance.” Lansdale was, he grudgingly admitted, the only “Pentagon officer with counterinsurgency experience in the region,” but McNamara denigrated him as hardly comparable to Soviet experts such as Charles “Chip” Bohlen and George Kennan. “Lansdale,” he sniffed, “was relatively junior and lacked broad geopolitical experience.” Actually Lansdale was eight years older than McNamara himself, who was forty-four in 1961, and he had been working in Asia since 1945.
pgs. 685-686.
Vietnam’s outcome would not be different
In conclusion, this is an amazingly detailed study on what could have been in Vietnam. Max is clear that Edward could not have changed the final outcome of the war. At the same time, Edward certainly held the deepest counterinsurgency experience within the CIA but ran into Kennedy’s elitist advisors. Max has written a book for the ages.