To War Or Not To War: Vietnam And The Sigma Wargames | Hoover Institution

Tuesday, October 8, 2024 Hoover Institution, Stanford University

The Hoover Institution's Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative presents To War or Not to War: Vietnam and the Sigma Wargames on Tuesday, October 8, 2024 at 2:00PM PT.

In 1964, America was slowly marching towards war in Vietnam. But what if that war could have been fought differently or avoided altogether? The Sigma Games, a series of politico-military wargames run by the Pentagon’s Joint Staff in the 1960s, sought to understand the unfolding conflict in Southeast Asia. These games, which involved top figures from the Johnson Administration—including National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, Air Force General Curtis LeMay, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Earle Wheeler—offer a chillingly accurate forecast of the war's potential trajectory.  Choose your character for an immersive experience. See the game unfold through the eyes of pivotal figures such as John McCone, Curtis LeMay, Earle Wheeler, and McGeorge Bundy in this interactive event. This event introduces the games and turns to a panel of historians to explore the Sigma Wargames, their prescient warnings, and why these early insights failed to shape the Johnson Administration’s decision-making, ultimately leading to one of America’s most costly conflicts.  The conversation, while a look into a key set of games at a historical moment in American foreign policy, says something more broadly at the impact of wargames on US foreign and defense policy as well as how influence is created (and hijacked) within strategic decision making.

​PANELISTS

H.R. McMaster is the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is also the Bernard and Susan Liautaud Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute and lecturer at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. 

McMaster holds a PhD in military history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was an assistant professor of history at the US Military Academy. He is author of the bestselling books Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World and Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies that Led to Vietnam. In August 2024, McMaster released his most recent book, At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House. His many essays, articles, and book reviews on leadership, history, and the future of warfare have appeared in The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, National Review, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.

McMaster is the host of Battlegrounds: Vital Perspectives on Today’s Challenges and is a regular on GoodFellows, both produced by the Hoover Institution. He is a Distinguished University Fellow at Arizona State University.

Mai Elliott is the author of The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family, a personal and family memoir which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and RAND in Southeast Asia: A History of the Vietnam War Era. She served as an advisor to Ken Burns and Lynn Novick for their PBS documentary on “The Vietnam War” and featured in seven of its ten episodes.  She recently contributed a chapter analyzing “The South Vietnamese Home Front” for the soon to be published Cambridge University Press 3-volume work on the Vietnam War.    Mai Elliott was born in Vietnam and grew up in Hanoi and Saigon.  She attended French schools in Vietnam and is a graduate of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.  (She also writes under the name of Duong Van Mai Elliott).  

I know people are still filing in, and
the first thing we're gonna do is showa little video, so I hope you enjoy.

>> Presenter (00:20):
It's 1964, and America stands at a crossroads in Southeast Asia.
President Johnson is in the midst of areelection campaign while I attempting to
grapple with a deterioratingsituation in Vietnam.
The south Vietnamese government appearsincreasingly weak and unstable,
as the Viet Cong are increasingthe tempo of their attacks.

(00:40):
As the president weighs his options,many of his top advisers convene in
the basement of the Pentagonto play a series of war games.
These were the Sigma war games,
a series of political military simulationsthat were played from 1962 to 1967.
The games explored potential scenarios for
America's deepeninginvolvement in Southeast Asia.

(01:03):
Featuring prominent figures such asnational security adviser McGeorge Bundy,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,Earl Wheeler, and
Air Force General Curtis Lemay.
The Sigma war games provide a revealingglimpse into the paths not taken by
the United States.
These predictions proved to be strikinglyaccurate, as these war games projected
the failure of America's bombing strategy,and warned of a prolonged,

(01:28):
costly quagmire, which would lead tosevere domestic political repercussions.
Despite these stark warnings, there islittle evidence that the insights from
the Sigma war games influencedAmerican policy in Vietnam.
Why were these critical lessons ignored?
Were they overlooked, dismissed,or I deliberately concealed?

(01:49):
This panel will delve into these questionsand examine the game's impact, or
lack thereof,on President Johnson's decisions.
Join us for expert insights from H.R.McMaster, Mark Moyer, and Mai Elliott,
moderated by Jacquelyn Schneider,with introductory remarks by Jacob Ganz.

>> Jacob Ganz (02:09):
Okay, hello and welcome to today's event, To War or

Not To War (02:12):
Vietnam and the Sigma War Games.
My name is Jacob Ganz, andI'm the program manager here at
the Hoover Institution's War Gaming andCrisis Simulation Initiative.
We are thrilled to haveyou with us today for
what promises to be inits setting discussion.
We are honored to be joined by threedistinguished experts on the Vietnam War
and the Sigma war games, H.R.McMaster, Mai Elliott, and Mark Moyer.

(02:33):
Our moderator for today isJacquelyn Schneider, the director of
the Hoover Institution's War Gaming andCrisis Simulation initiative, and
a leading authority on war games and theirimpact on US foreign and defense policy.
This is truly a full circle moment for
me as I wrote my master'sthesis on these very games.
This event is designed to be informative,interactive, but most importantly, fun.

(02:55):
You should have a button with you thathas a picture of your chosen wargamer.
Throughout the panel,
we will pause to ask questions thatwill appear on the screen behind me.
You can respond to thesequestions using your phone,
giving you a chance to step into the shoesof these historic figures who faced
difficult decisions in these games.
Before we dive in, I'm gonna provide aquick overview of the history of war games

(03:16):
and the context of the Sigma series,as well as their significance to
the Vietnam War, thank you andenjoy the event.
Modern war games first appeared inthe early 19th century Prussia.
Known as Kriegsspiel, they were usedby the Prussian army to test out
new tactics during the variouswars of the 1860s and 1870s.
By 1884, wargaming had proliferated intothe United States military, especially

(03:39):
the US Navy, which began to incorporateit into its training and planning.
The breakout moment for war games camein the years before World War II,
when the Naval War College usedwargames to determine how to
fight a war with Japan in the Pacific.
Admiral Chester Nimitz later remarked,
that nothing in the war surprisedhim except for kamikaze tactics,
because the conflict had been playedout so thoroughly during these games.

(04:02):
Wargaming boomed during the Cold War,
driven by innovations at thinktaints like the Rand Corporation.
One key development during this periodwas the politico military wargame, which
focused on leadership decision-makingrather than solely military tactics.
From these politico military wargames,emerged the Sigma wargame series,
a set of ten Pentagon run games thattook place between 1962 and 1967, and

(04:25):
centered on the evolvingconflict in Southeast Asia.
Over the years,
the scope of the games shifted toreflect the region's changing dynamics.
Early games like Sigma 162,the first one, focused on Laos,
while later games like the 1966version explored strategies for
de escalating the waralready raging in Vietnam.
These shifts mirrored America'stransformation from a transformed observer

(04:49):
to a primary actor in the conflict.
Two of the most important Sigma games tookplace in the spring and the fall of 1964.
Known as Sigma 164 and Sigma 264,
these two games were playedwhile President Johnson and
his top advisors were deciding whetherto wade further into the war in Vietnam.
They offer fascinating insight intothe decision-making process of

(05:10):
the Johnson administration.
Now that we have the history of wargames,
let's move on to what it feltlike to be in the room for them.
A politico military war game likethe Sigma series was not what you picture
with maps and dice andlittle tanks moving across a board.
Instead, the players were divided intoteams representing decision makers in
different countries.
For example, in the first Sigma war gameof 1964, there were three teams, blue,

(05:31):
representing the United States and SouthVietnam, red, representing North Vietnam
and the Viet Cong, and yellow,representing communist China.
Later games, like the second Sigma Wargames of 1964, dropped the yellow team and
focused on just blue and red.
Once the teams were formed,they were presented with an initial
scenario that describedthe challenges that they faced.
They were then asked to respondas their respective governments.

(05:54):
Teams communicated strategy through gamemessages, detailing their military and
political actions.
Lastly, a control team of expertswould assess each team's moves,
update the scenario, andprompt a new round of responses.
The timeline within the gamewas usually two to four months.
At the end of each game, all participantsgathered for discussion of the outcomes.

(06:14):
Some of the most memorable moments ofthe games occurred during these sessions.
For instance, when one participant,likely Air Force general Curtis Lemay,
who some of you may have as your button,
famously stated that the US shouldbomb North Vietnam into the stone age.
You'll be able to experience some of thesedilemmas throughout this event as we pause
for the poll questions.
Now, let's set the scene of what washappening in Vietnam in April of 1964,

(06:36):
before the first Sigma wargame of that year was played.
By that time, the situation inAmerica's allies, South Vietnam,
had sharply deteriorated.
President Johnson,who had only recently taken office after
President Kennedy's assassination and wasfocused on his own reelection campaign,
described how the conditionshad unquestionably grown worse.
Specifically, weaknesses in security,morale, and political effectiveness.

(06:59):
This was the challenging reality thatthe players of Sigma 164 confronted.
Finally, let's introducesome of these key players.
What set the Sigma series apart wasthe direct participation of high-level
decision makers fromacross the administration.
These include notable figuressuch as national security adviser
Mitch George Bundy, the hawkish chiefof staff of the Air Force Curtis Lemay,

(07:20):
CIA director John McCone, and chairman ofthe Joint Chiefs of Staff Earl Wheeler.
This impressive lineup of officialsdemonstrated the administration's
initial interest in these games, and theirpresence suggested the possibility that
the lessons taken from these games couldpotentially be applied to American policy.
The Sigma war games displayedan almost clairvoyant accuracy

(07:41):
in predicting key eventsof American escalation.
They forecasted that, a major US bombingcampaign would begin in the early spring
of 1965, remarkably close to when itactually was launched during operation
rolling thunder on March 2nd, 1965.
The games also anticipated that AmericanMarines would land at Da Nang on February
26t, 1965, just days before theyactually arrived on March 8th.

(08:03):
More ominously, the games predicted thatAmerica would not be able to contain
the limited war that they wanted to fight.
Instead, they predicted that the US wouldbe forced into a protracted quadmire with
over 500,000 us troopseventually deployed and
massive domestic protestsopposing the war.
These predictions provedto be uncannily accurate.
Despite the accuracy of these games,the lessons from the Sigma wargames were

(08:25):
ultimately not reflected inamerican policy decisions.
The rest of our event will explore why.
Now that we've coveredthe history of wargames,
the deteriorating situation in Vietnam andhow it felt to plan these games,
I'll turn this event overto our esteemed panel.
Thank you for joining us today, and I hopeyou enjoy the insightful discussions and
interactive questions we will beengaging with throughout the event.
Thank you.
>> [APPLAUSE]>> Jacquelyn Schneider: Thank you, Jacob.

(08:51):
We are so excited to have you.
This is the first of our programs thatwe're going to be having this year.
And the reason why the Sigma wargameswere where we wanted to start was
because in many ways, these gamesare such a huge historical puzzle.
I work a lot on how games influenceforeign policy, and I have all

(09:12):
the ingredients of a game that reallyshould have mattered, and yet they didn't.
And so what we have today here onthe panel are a set of experts that'll
help me understand whythese games could be so
successful at predicting outcomes andyet ultimately make so
little impact, potentially onthe future of our Vietnam policy.

(09:35):
So before we start, I wanna kind of get usa little bit into the historical context.
And the first game is 1962 inthe Kennedy administration.
And Mark, you have two books.
So you have a book that covers,was it 61 to-

>> Mark Moyar (09:55):
54 to 65, and
then 65 to [INAUDIBLE].

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (09:57):
Right, so in the first book,
you do a great job of explaining whatis happening in decision-making and
what's happening inthe ground in Southeast Asia.
Can you give us a little background aboutwhat's happening in US foreign policy in
Southeast Asia leadingup to the game in 1962?
And for those of you who haven't donea war game series in the Pentagon, for
something to get a series where we'reinterested in a subject, and now

(10:20):
we're gonna run this game, and then thenext year we're gonna run another game.
That implies that somebody in the kindof bureaucracy thinks that a region or
a problem is important enough todedicate an entire war game series.
So at some point in 1962,somebody in the Pentagon said something in
Southeast Asia is important enough thatwe're gonna build a whole series on it.

(10:44):
We're gonna call it the Sigma series,and that's another thing.
All the games in this time periodwere very arbitrary Greek letters.
It's like a fraternity of war games.
>> [LAUGH]>> Jacquelyn Schneider: So give us
a little context, why are theythinking about Southeast Asia?
What is happening?
What's going on?

>> Mark Moyar (11:03):
Yes, well, I think for those who may not be that familiar,
it's worth going justbriefly to how we got there.
Starting in 1945,when France returns at the end of the war,
the Viet Minh Vietnamese communistorganization is trying to take control.
They go to war 1946, and the US isfairly hands off until you get to 1950.

(11:26):
And that's because you have,well, two things happen.
The Chinese civil war ends, and so
suddenly the Truman administration ispanicked about what's going on in Asia.
Huge countries lost, andthen korean war starts.
There's now this great fear that wehave to contain communism in Asia.
So the US starts supporting the French.
The war goes till 1954.

(11:49):
The US does not intervene directly,but it weighs in with some threats and
ultimately leads to the divisionof Vietnam in 1954.
And then Vietnam's largely at peaceuntil 1960 when the Vietnamese
communists who were controlling the Northdecide to initiate an armed rebellion.
And the end of 1960,you have the North Vietnamese moving

(12:13):
into Laos to take control of whatbecomes the Ho Chi Minh trail.
And so when President Eisenhower leaves,he tells Kennedy that Laos is
perhaps the most importantplace in the world right now.
A lot of times people forgetabout the Laotian angle.
But in 1960, it is the thing Kennedy,and he even tells Kennedy he should send

(12:35):
in American troops if he has to, even ifno allies are gonna go along with this.
So Kennedy in 1961 is weighing,do we send in troops to Laos?
And he comes close.
One of the big reasons he doesn'tis the Bay of Pigs happens,
and that leads to fallout.
He has his falling out with the CIA andthe military, which is gonna continue and

(12:55):
be a problem throughout this period.
But then you have Avril Harrimanconvinces him, we'll neutralize Laos,
we'll get a coalition ofnon-communists and communists.
So that kinda puts Laos onthe back burner for a time, but
then this coalition rapidly breaks down.
And so you have more North Vietnamesecoming through Laos, and you have a lot of

(13:19):
people saying, if Laos doesn't hold,South Vietnam is gonna be untenable.
And so that is the bigpicture when you get to 1962.

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (13:28):
And I think it's probably important to note at this point
that the 1962 game is actually about Laos.
So we always think of these Sigmagames as Vietnam games, but
the 62 game is not that.
The 62 game is the focus on Laos, butthey end up escalating to Vietnam,
and they end up using a lot ofthe similar strategies they try in 64,

(13:53):
65, 66 games as well.
And like the games that come after them,they find that this strategy of bombing
and gradual escalation leads toeventually just kind of a quagmire.
But starts in 62,we start thinking about Laos, and
it variably goes towards Vietnamas we move into the later games.
Now, H.R.,

(14:14):
Mark did a great job of setting up whatthe US cares about in Southeast Asia.
But there's also something big happeningdomestically, which is that in 1963,
we have an assassination and we havea transition between Kennedy and Johnson.
Can you describe how that structureof decision-making changed or

(14:35):
stayed the same between Kennedy andJohnson?
And then I love these characters.
So if you could tell me a little bit,who's who in the zoo, who stays on,
who gets lost, who's fighting forsurvival in the Johnson administration?
And then I'd love to understand a littlebetter that relationship between the joint
Chiefs of Staff and some of thesekind of civilian organizations and

(14:56):
civilian leaders in both the Kennedy andthe Johnson administrations.

>> H.R. McMaster (15:00):
Okay, so I have to go back even a little bit earlier to
the Kennedy administration, which put intoplace a big shift in decision-making and
policy-making processes fromthe Eisenhower administration.
As you can imagine, General Eisenhower,
having been the supremeally commander of Europe,
was used to having kind of a staff, anda staff that organized paperwork and
teed up decisions and allowed himto select from multiple options.

(15:23):
There's a great book called the HiddenHand Presidency by Fred Greenstein,
which talks about Eisenhower'sdecision-making style,
that he wanted debate,he wanted to hear about multiple options.
And he would hide his own hand,
because he didn't want to bias hisadvisors in one way or another.
When President Kennedy comes in,
it's a generational change as wellbetween Eisenhower and Kennedy.

(15:45):
And the first chapter of my bookis the new frontiersman and
the old guard and the newfrontiersmen saw themselves as more
forward-looking, as moreagile as decision makers.
He was more creative, and Kennedy hada much more informal decision making style
which kind of hearkened back to the wayTruman ran things until the Korean War.

(16:08):
So all of these decision making processesreally reflect the personality and
expectations ofthe president fundamentally.
And so Kennedy is more at easewith informal exchanges, and
there isn't the systematicexamination of courses of action or
a consideration of long-term costs andconsequences.

(16:31):
And, Mark, I'm thinking aboutthe Ridgway report for example in 1954,
which led to non intervention onbehalf of the French in Vietnam.
And the contrast between that for example,and the Bay of Pigs, which happens because
I think in large measure of the failure toconsider long-term costs and consequences.

(16:51):
So Kennedy gets burned by that,that's important context,
and what he does is he kind of drawshis advisory group even more closely.
And he has a profound distrustof the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
should have been more distrust ofthe CIA about the Bay of Pigs.
But the Joint Chiefs of Staff gotpainted with that same kind of brush of

(17:12):
dissatisfaction about the Bay of Pigs.
At the same time then, Kennedy is lookingfor other sources of advice other than
the Joint Chiefs cuz he lostkind of confidence in them.
And he hires Maxwell Taylor, who hadretired from active duty after having been
chief of staff of the army and had writtena book called the Uncertain Trumpet.
About how the policies of the Eisenhoweradministration were wrong defense

(17:37):
policies, and we needed kindof this new look in defense.
He has a lot of influence with Kennedy,and
of course the Joint Chiefs of Staffare pretty disgruntled about this,
because they've got a formerly retiredperson in the White House advising them.
What happens after that is that he becomesthe actual chairman of the Joint Chiefs

(17:57):
and has kind of the dominant voice asan advisor from the military side.
But as you've alluded to,another big turning point here, right,
Mark already mentioned a big turningpoint, 1959, with the communist plenum.
And the intensification ofNorth Vietnam support for
the Vietnamese communistsin the Southeast, right, so
the situation is deterioratingin Vietnam as this is happening.

(18:21):
President Kennedy makes a series ofdecisions, one of them is to exceed
the limit on advisors established by theGeneva Accord in 1954, above 600, right?
So it goes from 600 to like 3,600 forexample, those advisors
are doing a heck a lot of fighting andcombat advising as well as advising.

(18:44):
So our involvement's deepening anddeepening in the war under Kennedy,
burned by the Bay of Pigs, then he closeshis advisory circle in even more tightly.
And then of course,he is indecisive though, and
he appoints again, this is forpolitical purposes.
His old Massachusetts political adversary,

(19:07):
Henry Cabot Lodge,to be the ambassador in Vietnam.
And Lodge just startsrunning an operation against
,Ngo Dinh Diem the president andhis brother knew.
And so his hands off allows reallylodge to run amok with the CIA,

(19:27):
and this results in a coupin November of 1963 and
Diem's assassination,right, now what do we do?
Hey, if you organize this now, who'sresponsible for the political successor?
Well, we kind of are deepening again,two weeks later, Kennedy's assassinated,

(19:47):
and Johnson gets thrust into that role.
He inherits Kennedy's advisors,the trauma the country's going through,
he doesn't wanna change outeverybody who Kennedy trusted.
[LAUGH] he hates Bobby Kennedy, and[LAUGH] he doesn't really trust any
of these guys, he was kind of frozenout by Kennedy Johnson, okay?

(20:08):
He needed him to get elected,to get kind of the Southern vote,
but he wasn't an active vice president andwasn't brought into the inner circle.
Now he's got Kennedy's advisors whohave been kind of stiff arming him,
now they're his advisors.
So he's very distrustful, and
he draws his advisory circle in veryclosely, begins to make decisions.

(20:31):
On Tuesdays over lunchwith McGeorge Bundy,
with Walt Rostow and Robert McNamara.
McGeorge Bundy is an academic,he is sort of,
I think takes kind of a lawyerlyapproach to courses of action,
doesn't really advocate forany course of action or another.
But he also doesn't really force or

(20:51):
[LAUGH] encourage the presidentto consider multiple options.
Walt Rostow is not a very aggressiveperson either, he is a sort of a solid
caretaker, Secretary of State Markjump in on any of these personalities.
But the person who appears to besupremely confident, Robert McNamara,
he's the man who's got an answer foreverything.
Everything with him is boiled downto being very quantitative, he and

(21:15):
the whiz kids who he's brought in, thisis civilians in the Department of Defense
have a lot of confidencein their own abilities.
I mean, one of them says, hey,I don't know what the hell there is in
a military career that preparesyou any better for strategy or
strategy making than a graduateof the Harvard business school.
So these are the dynamics, Johnson'sinsecure, he draws the circle in tighter.

(21:37):
McNamara, the man with the answers,is the dominant,
if you wanna say an alpha male orsomething in this Tuesday lunch group.
And it's a setup I think, a setup for
some pretty poor decision makingduring the period of 64 and into 65.

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (21:53):
Gotta love those, the first bros.

>> H.R. McMaster (21:56):
[LAUGH].

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (21:58):
I wanna stick in 63 a little bit because,
I think becomes really important towhether the 64 games matter or not.
So Mai wrote this extraordinary bookabout rand in Southeast Asia, and
the second chapter ofyour book is entitled.
What Makes the Viet Cong tick, can youexplain where that phrase came from?
And then a little bit about the debatethat was occurring in the early in 1963

(22:23):
about the Viet Cong ability to withstanda US or South Vietnamese offensive.

>> Mai Elliott (22:29):
As the United States, even under Kennedy,
got even more deeply into Vietnam.
Vietnam became a national security crisis,and
Rand Corporation think in Santa Monicahad made its name in strategic studies.
Thinking during the Eisenhoweradministration,

(22:53):
when the strategic doctrinewas mass retaliation,
because it's like deterrence.
If the Soviet Union attacked us,
we could retaliate in a massivefashion and destroyed it.
And the most famous thinker wasHerman Kahn, who was the prototype for

(23:15):
the movie Doctor Strangelove.
So in 1963,the National Liberation Front for
South Vietnam, later on,known as the Viet Cong,
was created in December 1960.
And at that time, the Soviet Union andChina in particular,

(23:37):
were espousing limited wars,wars of national liberation,
insurgencies, subversive warfare.
Because they believe that that wasa way to fight the Western Bloc,
the United States, without triggeringa nuclear warfare limited war.
So Kennedy andMaxwell Taylor Thought the theory,

(24:01):
the doctrine of massive retaliationwas too inflexible because
the United States had to finda way to find this bushfire war.
Without escalating to a nuclear warfarewhich would be mutually destructive for
the United States and China and theSoviet, in particular, the Soviet Union.

(24:23):
So limited warfare became the strategyof the Kennedy administration.
And Rand didn't have any realexpertise in limited warfare,
but it wanted to becomea major player in Washington,
advising the Kennedy administrationabout this new form of warfare.

(24:48):
So it sent a team, actuallythe president of Iran, Frank Colbaum,
and Guy Palker, a social scientist whowas actually an expert on Indonesia.
To Washington to findout what it could do to
help the administrationfight this new war.

(25:08):
So they went to see various people,and they went to see William Sullivan,
who was then chairman ofthe intertask force agency.
Which was trying to come up withoptions for President Johnson,
who had not settled yet on a strategy orcourse of action for South Vietnam.

(25:29):
So according to Sullivan, they lookedat options from going in all out,
win or not going in at all,but anything in between.
So he had a list of questions, and
one of the questions was,what makes the Viet Cong tick?
And so they asked Sullivan,they said, who asked this question?

(25:53):
And the answer was McNamara.
He was very interested in knowing moreabout the enemy he was fighting in
South Vietnam at that time.
The Viet Cong werecalled faceless enemies.
They appear, they attack,they ambush, and they disappear.
Nobody knew much about them.
So he wanted to know,who were the Viet Cong,

(26:14):
who were the South Vietnamesewho joined the guerrillas and
fought the Saigon government with somuch tenacity.
Because the Americans were increasingaid to Diem, President Diem.
And the war was getting more violent,and Yazefirkang were growing.
So he wanted to know the answer.

(26:35):
So Rand then sent a teamto Vietnam to do research,
and the best sources ofinformation were the Viet Cong
defectors andViet Congs who had been captured.
So they would go around the country,talk to these people, and

(26:56):
after they did about 145 interviews,they decided that
they had enough data to presentthe findings in Washington.
So their conclusion wasthat the United States was
facing a formidableenemy in the Viet Cong.
Because the Viet Congwere highly motivated.

(27:17):
They felt that they werefighting another occupier.
The Americans thought of themselvesas good guys coming in to help
the South Vietnamese, but the insurgentswere viewing them as the new.
They call them the newcolonialists who were replacing
the French to dominate Vietnam.

(27:38):
So they believed that they should fightthese new imperialists and throw them out,
along with the Saigon government,which they called the puppets.
So they were very highly motivated and
they also believed thatthey were fighting.
There were a lot of grievancesin the countryside and
insurgencies fed on grievances.

(28:00):
So they found out that the peasants werevery unhappy with the Saigon government,
and the Viet Cong believedthat they were fighting for
what they call the just cause.
Which is to bring social justice,economic equality, reunify the country,
because Vietnam was dividedat the 17th parallel in 1954.

(28:23):
And reunified the country undera government that would bring social
justice, economic equality,to give land to the peasants,
because there were a lot ofpeasants who didn't have land.
So they really believed inwhat they call a just cause.
So the picture they painted wasthat this is a very strong enemy,

(28:47):
very cohesive, very motivated enemy.
And that the, what they callthe steel structure of the insurgency
were these veterans of the waragainst the French who are now
leading the fight againstanother foreign occupier.

(29:09):
So they presented the results in Saigon,and
they presented the results atthe Pentagon to John McNaughton.
Who was then assistantsecretary of defense for
international security affairs forMcNamara.
And McNamara had appointedhim to deal with Vietnam.

(29:30):
So they presented theirresults to John McNaughton.
And John McNaughton, according to thepeople who were present at the briefing,
said that, gentlemen,if what you told me were true.
We are fighting on the wrongside in South Vietnam,

(29:51):
the side that's going to win this war.
So I think that the resultsof the findings
were not followed because by that time
the United States had decided to
intervene directly in South Vietnam.

(30:15):
The Gulf of Tonkin had happened.
The Tonkin Gulf resolutionhad been passed, and
there had been a retaliatoryairstrike against North Vietnam.
And the United States was alreadyembarked on a policy of intervention,
direct intervention.
So I think that the resultsjust show that, yeah,

(30:37):
the United States was going to havea tough road ahead, but we committed.
Our credibility is already on the line.
We should just press ahead.

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (30:47):
So I wanna bring up a few names that you mentioned there
because they end up mattering.
McNaughton ends upplaying the red team for,
I think, both Sigma 164 and Sigma 264.
Sullivan, William Sullivan playsthe red team for Sigma 164.

(31:08):
You also in the book you mentionedHarry Rowan, who also plays.
The reason all these kind of thisRand study is so interesting for
the Sigma games is that a lot ofthe players that either commissioned
the work or were briefed the workactually played the red team.
So they are inputting into the gametheir insights from this study.

(31:30):
And they also become very influentialto how the control team adjudicates
how the Viet Cong are able to withstandthe blue team kind of bombing actions.
So there's this interestingrelationship between a report which,
as you point out in your book, ends up notbeing briefed until really these decisions

(31:50):
about what the US wants to do in Vietnam.
It's actually late, right?
It's a good academic paper.
It's well researched andcomes out a little late.
But it influences theseindividuals that play in the game.
And I think it does havean input into how both
the Sigma 64 series end up unfolding.

(32:12):
So it's an interesting kind ofthe way all these things interact.
And I think it's time forus to step into the war game.
Each one of you,most of you have picked out a character.
I have picked out Curtis LeMay becauseI have spent time in the Air Force,
and I have been trained tolove strategic bombing.

(32:34):
So I like to bomb allthings to the Stone Age.

>> H.R. McMaster (32:38):
It reminds me of Mark Klotzfelder's book, Beneficial Bombing.
Have you read that, anybody?
Great, he's like, hey,it's really good for you, the bombing.
[LAUGH]>> Jacquelyn Schneider: But
some of you may have not picked LeMay.
Some of you may not believe inbombing people back to the Stone Age.
So we also have Earl Wheeler,who Mark is wearing,
as well as McCone, who is the CIAdirector, and McGeorge Bundy.

(33:04):
And as we've heard,McGeorge Bundy was a Harvard man.
So if you wanna hang out withsomeone who has a compound
that they summer in,you would pick McGeorge Bundy.
Okay, so you guys,
we're giving you clues about thesepeople as we're going through the panel.
You're hearing a little bit more aboutwho they are, what their motivations are,

(33:27):
and how their beliefs evolveover this game series.
So I want you to take that andreally become Bundy.
Become LeMay.
I don't think we'reallowed to smoke in here.
But as you answer these questions,so you are now being introduced to
the first kind of question thatyou're gonna need to answer.

(33:48):
So it's July 22nd, 1964.
America is concerned about losingthe international battle for
good press against the communists.
To make matters worse,Ho Chi Minh just flew to New York,
wearing a simple peasant costume,addressed the delegates in fluent English.
With pictures and a disarmingly impressivemanner, the benign looking old gentleman

(34:08):
painted a sordid picture of mangledcivilian corpses, women, and
children who had fallenvictim to US terror bombing.
Millions were impressed and shocked,although it was evident to some that
the pictures were in some cases rigged andfaked.
So the game is introducing youto info ops a la 1964, okay?

(34:30):
So now it's your turn to play.
You are the character that you're wearing.
And if you go to that QR code,where's Jacob?
He's under 30 andknows how to use all technology.
And use your phone to get on the QR code,and then you're gonna
choose your next move in the gamebased on the player that you had.

(34:52):
So you can either go to the Unitednations and refute his claims,
ignore his visit anddownplay America's involvement,
or send President Johnson toSouth Vietnam on a press tour.
So we'll give you guys a few minutes, but
I'd love to hear from the panelist,Mark, what would you do?
And this is a scenario that the playerswere presented with in the Sigma I64,

(35:16):
the first Sigma 164.

>> Mark Moyar (35:18):
Well, I am in general sympathy with General Wheeler.
One thing that Sigma process kindof sweeps under the rug is at this
very moment, you have bitter debatebetween the Joint Chiefs of Staff and
many of the civilians overthe bombing of North Vietnam.

(35:39):
And this question of sort ofpublic relation's interesting.
Gets a lot of play in Sigma.
That's not really whatthey're thinking about.
They're mostly thinking about, how isthis going to influence North Vietnam?
And you have the Joint Chiefs saying,we've got to hit them hard and
hit them right away.

(35:59):
You have a lot of civilians based onpeople like McNamara, Bundy, and Rusk,
who have read these academictheorists that H.R. was mentioning.
They've bought into these ideas of gametheory, that we're gonna send a signal.

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (36:12):
Who is the academic theorists that they're
talking about?
Cuz Marya has kind of->> Mark Moyar: Yes, Herman Kahn is right.
>> [CROSSTALK]>> Mark Moyar: I think Thomas Schelling is
the most influential.
And so he has this idea, and
this supposedly is confirmed by the Cubanmissile crisis, although it is actually,
in my opinion, not because we didn'treally understand what happened.
But the idea is you send a signal, and

(36:33):
this is all based onthis a priori theorizing.
He's an economist, and sorather than using history or
experience, let's do this.
Now, partly they're not using historybecause this is supposed to be for
nuclear war and there's not an actualnuclear war we can look to.
But they're saying in thishypothetical situation,
the North Vietnamese are rational actors.

(36:56):
We send a signal, andwe know they will respond rationally.
They will realize, okay, let's back off.
Whereas the joint Chiefs are saying,that's not how people are,
that's not how they respond.
If you want to send them a message,you hit them as hard as you can.
So I haven't brought this up yet, but
it is the elephant in the room.
And these three are historians.

(37:16):
I'm a political scientist.
What does that mean?
That means that these critiques youhave of Schelling are apostasy.
Like, you can't do that, right?

>> Mark Moyar (37:24):
Yes, I'm a historian.

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (37:25):
This is back for me.
But these ideas that Schelling isespousing in books, Arms of Influence,
The Strategies of Conflict, they endup influencing not just McNamara and
this early generation of civilians,but actually,
if you're a political scientist inthe room, you've read it, right?

(37:45):
If you have gone to professional militaryeducation, you have read some Schelling.
So it's interesting how influential hebecomes in these decisions about Vietnam.
But then we can really see the threat ofSchelling all the way through to today and
the influence that he has on Americandecisions about crisis management and

(38:08):
deterrence.

>> H.R. McMaster (38:09):
Brodie, too, probably.

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (38:11):
Yes, absolutely.
So, looks like the consensusin the room is we are going to
the United Nations to directlyrefute Ho Chi Minh's claims.
We are not ignoring him.
All right, so that moves usinto the actual Sigma series.
So we're now into 1964.

(38:33):
And, okay, two things as the non historianin the room, just to put it out there.
One, my gosh,the dates in 1964 really matter.
I kept flipping between,like, was that March?
Was it September?
Was it June?
So decision making about Vietnamis coming down to weeks.
Reports are coming out, andpeople are visiting Vietnam, and

(38:54):
conversations are happening.
And as somebody who's trying to piece thehistory back together, that year becomes,
these dates are really, really important.
So I want to go throughthe timeline a little.
The other thing that,as a non-historian, boy,
sometimes these characters felt likea Russian, like a Dostoevsky novel.
Like, I needed to have a list that Ineeded to keep going back to because they
keep coming up and changing kind oftheir position when it comes to Vietnam.

(39:18):
So, in 1964, if I needed to drawa line that showed kind of,
the McNamara would be easy.
But other characters, like McNaughton,it's hard for me to understand some of his
beliefs as they change throughout 1964 andget these different inputs.
So, on that, Mark,
introduce us to what's happeningin Vietnam in the spring of 1964.

(39:41):
So, you guys, Sigma 1,1964 is run in April, 1960, in April.
And then they decide it's so importantthat they run it again in September.
It's the first time in the seriesthat they do two in one year.
So they run that one in September.
Which means that the outbreaks Soif you're playing in April,

(40:01):
that means the outbreak is in May.
If you're playing in September,the outbreak is in October or so.
What's changing between April andSeptember?
Why do those months matter?

>> Mark Moyar (40:13):
Well,and it's worth keeping in mind,
this has been a great pointof debate among historians.
I think it's pretty clear now thatthe military situation nosedives
at the end of 1963 afterPresident Diem is assassinated.
And it's confused.
You mentioned people whochanged their views.
So David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan,I think, exemplify this because they

(40:35):
actually support this coup in 1963 andthey think the war needs to be won.
And when it becomes unpopular, they changeand then they try to rewrite the history.
But we know by all indicationsthe war goes, falls apart because what
happens after the coup is theypurge many of the military leaders.
They disband the strategic hamletprogram that they've set up and

(40:55):
disarmed the members.
And so the North Vietnamese, we also know,recognize this and they're pushing hard.
So things are getting worsepretty rapidly in early 1964.
And you actually see a coup, another coupend of January, because the existing
government's so bad, but it continuesto get worse under this new government.

(41:16):
And so Lyndon Johnson, you might thinkhe's just simply thinking about what
his strategy is going to be,but he's actually.

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (41:24):
Yeah, because he's got an election, in November, right?
other words.>> Mark Moyar: Yeah, so
the election is actuallywhat he's thinking the most.
A rational actor.
His primary motivation is winningelection in November 1964.

>> Mark Moyar (41:34):
Now he's,
so his primary objective is keepVietnam out of the newspapers.
He'll send more aid, butwe don't want it blowing up.
And it's very clear from all the internalrecords that he knew war was likely, but
he wanted to keep it from happeninguntil after the election.
So what really kind of throws himoff are the Tonkin Gulf incidents,

(41:55):
August of 1964, which we now knowone of them may not have happened,
but anyway,it appears this attack on the high seas.
So Johnson has to respond with what'sa very small, limited response.
And this is, again, where this gametheory and limited war theory comes in.

(42:17):
McNamara and Rusk are telling him and
Bundy little dose of forcethat'll send the right message,
whereas the joint Chiefs are saying,whack them hard, Johnson again.
And at this point he is as H.R. described.
He's really in awe of McNamara.
So whatever McNamara says goes basically.
So they do this little pinprick, andthen we now know, not know the time, but

(42:38):
then this sends the oppositemessage to the North Vietnamese.
They interpret this as american weakness.
So they're going to intensify even more.
But so you have this sort of fairlysteady downward trend as you approach
the end of the year.
And we're ultimately at the end ofthe year as the North Vietnamese,
as soon as Johnson wins his election,they are going to go for broke in 1965.

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (43:01):
So when I started looking into the Sigma games,
I was probably still ama Vietnam amateur dilettante.
And I thought, well, okay,there's a debate happening.
The debate is escalate, not escalate.
The debate is strategic bombing,not strategic bombing.
This is not true.
The debate is far more complicatedthan bombing, not bombing.

(43:24):
Except for Lemay.
Like, Lemay is the easy one.
Lemay's the only onewho's having that debate.
Everybody else is having a lot morecomplicated of a conversation about what
should happen in Vietnam.

>> H.R. McMaster (43:35):
And he makes everybody feel uncomfortable, you know, so,
which is why they gethim out of the picture.
They're talking about, like,setting him on a world tour.
Can we just send him on a world tour?
Will he be the ambassador to Portugal?
Will he take that?
I mean, it's like, you know, they're.
Yeah, I just can't wait.

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (43:47):
Gotta love the air force.
So, can you do us a favor?
Explain these big debatesthat are happening and
then especially the Rosso thesis.
People cite that as the reasonwhy they did Sigma 264, like,
as set up as a validation war game.

(44:08):
I'm not sure if that's true or not.
But can you explain,what are these debates?
What are they debating?
What are the optionsthat are on the table?

>> H.R. McMaster (44:15):
Well, I'll just say the whole thing is bounded by what
Mark already talked about, which isthe president's preoccupation with getting
elected in his own right in 1964, right?
This is an accidental president who cameinto power because his predecessor was
assassinated.
So he really feels a drive toget elected in his own right.
But then also,
he is then later preoccupied with passingthe Great Society legislation in 1965.

(44:36):
As Mark alluded to, he sees Vietnamprincipally as a danger to those goals.
So what he wants are options thatallows him to escape what could be
a controversial decision to eithergo to war in Vietnam or to withdraw.
And so the president's advisors in thisperiod of time give him what he wants.
They developed this strategyof graduated pressure,

(45:00):
which rested on the rostow thesis thata power that is supporting an insurgency
can be dissuaded from providing thatsupport through the threat of force.
Threat of force that iscommunicated by measured, you know,
limited bombing in this case,or actually covert
activity that had been initiated inJanuary of 1964 under OPLAN 34A.

(45:23):
So these limited, limited militaryactions can convince the actor.
And this is where I think the debatereally doesn't ever really happen, Jackie,
because John McNaughton, he might havebeen taken with Iran study and thought,
wow, this is going to be a lotharder than everybody thinks, and
that should force the decision.
Well, okay, either we have to fightharder and more resolute matter

(45:46):
with more resources, or we should withdrawor just remain in an advisory effort.
But instead, what he says is, well,it doesn't matter whether we win or lose.
What we have to be seenis as the good doctor.
And he writes a good doctor memo in 1964,and
he argues that if we lose in Vietnam,it's okay as long as we get bloodied.

(46:10):
He uses that term,we just need to get bloodied so
we can convince the worldthat we did our best.
But like a good doctor who tried to treata patient with an intractable disease,
it's not our fault.
And so this is kind of, you know, I thinkthis is a pretty cynical way to look at
war, and it is actually inconsistentwith the nature of war.

(46:32):
And then the Rostov thesis, of course, isinvalidated in Sigma two, but it doesn't
have any appreciable impact because that'snot the answer that Lyndon Johnson wants.
George Bundy,I got my button on right here.
He says at this period of time,the sigma results were too pessimistic.

(46:54):
And then he also says that,
that what we should do is obfuscate as towhat our objective is in Vietnam, right?
So remember, again, this is talkingyourself out of winning, right?
And this is, we have the sameproblem today, I should say,
with the mantra of de escalation,everything else.
And we want to manage wars.
We want a responsible end that doesn'treally work in war because each side tries

(47:17):
to outdo the other.
And the death,the prospect of death and killing,
that unleashes a psychologicaldynamic that defies this kind of
systems analysis,McNamara type approach to things.
And this is what they're not sensitive to.
But George Pointy says it's betternot to have an objective in Vietnam,

(47:37):
because then if we don't accomplishthat objective, it will, quote,
give the president more flexibilityin the domestic political arena.
So I think we may be jumping ahead,Jackie, but
I think these are some of the dynamicsthat prevent the outcome of the war game,
as prophetic as it was from having anyappreciable impact on the decision making.

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (47:56):
With that, I think it's time to move back into the game.
So we're on Sabami, it is April 15, 1965.
The US has launched the bombingcampaign against North Vietnam,
aimed at deterring their aggression andcrippling their industrial base.
However, the results have notbeen as promising as expected.

(48:17):
Following the airstrikes of the 2nd April,indicators were constantly watched for
evidence that Hanoi was haltingthe offensive, there were none.
On the contrary, Viet Cong activity withinitself, Vietnam immediately increased,
and from its dormant position,the Pathet Lao suddenly came alive.

(48:38):
That leads you to your nextdecision making moment.
So how do you respond to the lack ofsuccess from your initial bombing campaign
against North Vietnam?
Do you scale back, cease the bombingcampaign, and look for political options?
Do you bomb more,double down on the current strategy?
Do you escalate by intensifyingthe campaign, by targeting city and

(49:01):
mining harbors?
And while y'all are doing that,Mai, I wanted to turn to you,
because one of the debates that we'rekind of encapsulating in this vignette
from sigma 264 is the question ofthe role of air power in Vietnam.
And RAND is intimately tied to kind of how
the US Air Force has builtits ideology of air power.

(49:25):
And so it's interested, from yourperspective, how was the Air Force
thinking about air power in Vietnam,and then what inputs did RAND have and
how that thinking evolvedduring that time period?

>> Mai Elliott (49:39):
Okay, so once the United States got very deeply involved in
Vietnam, then the question became,how do we win this war?
So the first RAND study was aboutfinding how strong the Viet Cong were,
their strengths.
Now the question is,where are they vulnerable?
How do we hit them andmake them and defeat them?

(50:03):
So RAND reoriented its study tohow to make American operations,
in particular air power, more effective.
So there's an analyst that ranby the name of Leon Goree,
who proposed to study the effectof American operations in Vietnam,

(50:23):
in particular air power.
And he said that airpower was very powerful
because it could do several things.
It could turn the Viet Cong from,
as he put it, hunters into hunters and

(50:46):
then air power couldhamper their movements.
Air power could kill a lot of them,air power could weaken their morale,
air power could destroy their will tofight and erode their faith in victory.
At the same time, air power coulddrive the people who were living

(51:11):
in the Viet Cong control areasto the government areas, so
that they would be controlledby the government.
So basically,it would depopulate the Viet Cong areas,
and it would cut the Viet Congoff from resources,
manpower, economic support, everything.

(51:33):
So Mao Zedong, had said that the gorillaswere like fish swimming in a pond,
so air power would drain the pond, moveall the people to the government side.
So he believed in the power of air power,
the effectiveness of air power,especially B-52.

(51:55):
And he was extremely optimistic,
he would brief McNamara andMcNamara at the time wanted so
much to believe that thingswere working in Vietnam.
So not only McNamara, butother people, like McGeorge Bundy,
Wal Rostow was very receptiveto what he was saying.

(52:18):
And so he would brief McNamararegularly and John McNaughton,
too and so he came to believethat B-52 could win the war.
And that could explain maybe whyair attacks in South Vietnam
were intensified to the extentthat it eventually did.

(52:42):
And it ended up somethinglike 7.5 million tons of bomb
were dropped on Vietnam,Laos and Cambodia.
I think 5 million tonswere dropped in Vietnam,
more than all the ordinances weredropped during World War II.
But Leon Gouré was not, his view was

(53:03):
not shared by a lot of people at rand.
In fact, a lot of people were veryunhappy with his conclusion, and
especially his conclusion that air power,you could use air power with impunity.
Because while the first teamof RAND researchers said

(53:26):
that killing innocentpeoples with artillery and
bombings would anger the population andthey would join the Viet Cong in anger.
So bombing would create more Viet Cong andLeon Goure said, no that's not the case.
When you bomb the villagers,they don't blame us,

(53:47):
they blame the Viet Cong forbeing there and bringing the planes in.
So we could bomb with impunity,It could achieve all these things, and
it would not make more Viet Cong.
So some people around were very unhappywith this, and they said, well,
you advocating a license to kill,and that's not in our value.
And it would createa lot of popular anger,

(54:10):
it would create more Viet Cong,so not everybody believed in it.
And they also said thatthe bombing of Germany in world
War Two didn't actually stiffenthe morale of the people.
And it's happened in North Vietnam,

(54:32):
too air power didn't break the will tofight the morale of the people there.
They just felt that, my gosh,now they're bombing us,
we better fight to the death becausewe should fight to save our country,
our families, ourselves.

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (54:50):
I wanna take a little bit of moderators,
my imperative to spend a littlebit more time on the Air Force.
We'll blame the Air Force for more thingsin dereliction of duty Adri, you had
a quote from historian Earl Tilfordthat the Air Force, like an illegitimate
child at a family reunion felt lessthan comfortable with its origins.

(55:14):
And all the more sosince its primary reason for
being was based on the unprovendoctrine of strategic bombing.
And Mai very nicely laid outsome of these debates and
these strong beliefs that werehappening in the Vietnam time period.
So how do you think the Air Force's needto kind of secure air power emissions
affected the decisions about Vietnam andhow the Sigma games were received?

(55:37):
And then how do you thinkinner service rivalry?
We talk a lot about, your book talksa lot about JCS versus the civilians, but
there's inner service rivalrythat's occurring as well.
How did that affect both the way inwhich these games were received, but
also in how Vietnamdecision making progressed?

>> H.R. McMaster (55:55):
Okay, so it's not just all in the Air Force, right?
I mean, I think a lot of thisthinking about service parochialism.
I mean,that was across all of the services,
I think maybe with the exception ofthe army, because the army relies so
much on the other services andit needed all these joint capabilities.
But under Curtis LeMay and then underGeneral McConnell later, the emphasis was

(56:17):
almost exclusively on air power andagainst North Vietnam in particular.
I mean, of course,
there was bombing in the south and againstthe vietnamese communists in the south.
But it was mainly to coerce North Vietnamunder the kind of theory of strategic
bombing.
But to be fair to the air force,as that air campaign was executed,
it was nothing likethe strategic bombing campaign

(56:39):
that Curtis LeMay would have wanted,or McConnell.
And in fact,it was based on really, again,
this unproven theory that you cancommunicate with bombing, right?
And you can communicate your resolve andyou can coerce the other by
the prospect of more bombing laterif you don't alter your behavior.

(57:01):
And so in around this period of time,William Bundy, was he the cousin, I think.

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (57:08):
Brother.

>> Mark Moyar (57:08):
Brother. >> H.R. McMaster
brother, McCoy.

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (57:10):
Must have been fun Thanksgiving.

>> H.R. McMaster (57:12):
Brother of McGeorge Bundy.

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (57:13):
At the compound.

>> H.R. McMaster (57:14):
Again and another attorney writing these memos because
they tend to look at thingsin a legalistic way.
And I think attorneys, sometimes anypresent companies accept it here.
But for sure, if you're an attorney, theythink if they write it like in a memo,
it's like reality.
And so he writes this memo in1964 talking about establishing

(57:36):
a common law pattern ofbombing against the north.
So you might think, okay,what the heck is that?
What is a common law pattern of bombing?
And what he's referring to isthe reasonable man in English common law.
And he actually makesthe argument that Ho Chi Minh,
like the reasonable man in English commonlaw, will behave in a certain way.

(57:58):
Again, discounting the ideology,the emotion that drives and
constrains the adversary,not thinking about the adversary.
So that was on civilian and militaryfailure of not thinking this through.
The second big parochial issue wasthe chief of naval operations, right?

(58:19):
This is General McDonald, andhe was the chief of naval operations.
And McNamara was gonna replacethe commander of Pacific command,
the crown jewel in the navy, with an airforce officer, Jacob Smart, right?

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (58:36):
Run for it.

>> H.R. McMaster (58:37):
Who was actually universally respected,
officer Jacob Smart was.
And McDonald goes in and goes,you can't do this to me.
I can't be seen as the CNOthat gave up Paycom.
And so McNamara says to him,okay, I'll back down on this.
I'll reverse the recommendationof the Joint Chiefs, but

(58:59):
you're gonna owe me on Vietnam andeverything else.
And it's McDonald who writes orsays in his oral history,
we should have pounded the table aboutthis cuz we knew the strategy would fail.
And he said,I'm ashamed of myself for this.
The Marine Corps,Admiral Wallace General Wallace Greene.
Johnson gives him the treatmentlike when he comes in and

(59:20):
they're about to question the strategy andthis incremental approach,
shakes his hand, puts his arm around him.
I'm gonna need some good recommendationsfrom you today, general.
And had made the promise to him that if hegoes along with Johnson on this strategy
of graduated pressure, they'll geta third Marine division, right?
They'll expandthe Marine Corps by a third.

(59:41):
And so you get an idea about howparochialism played into this.
McNamara calls up Johnsonduring this period of time.
He goes, hey, Mr.
President, I'm taking a divide andconquer approach with the chiefs.
These are the tapes oftelephone conversations, and
it's coming along pretty well.
So Johnson didn't want goodadvice from his military.
He wanted divided advice andjust wanted them to sign up for

(01:00:02):
the program that allowed himto avoid a difficult decision.
So, I mean, this is why we haveGoldwater Nichols to a certain extent.
This is why we now have combatant commandswith commanders who look at the complex
challenges they're facing throughthe lens of joint capabilities, right?
So these were important reforms thatwere made as a result of the failure of

(01:00:22):
civilian andmilitary advice during this period.

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (01:00:25):
And this interservice rivalry and how Johnson and
McNamara used interservice rivalry tokind of keep the JCS out of influencing
these Vietnam decisions.
I think for me, after spending some timewith these documents, I think it's my
primary hypothesis about why the gamesended up not being relevant and yet
were played multiple times.
And you have a quote in your book,H.R., that I wanna bring out here.

(01:00:49):
Because one of the big puzzles forme was why keep playing a game and
putting these important people in the gameif you don't care about the answer anyway,
why not just bury the game andnot play it at all?
And you had a quote on page 94 of thisfantastic book, dereliction of the duty.

>> H.R. McMaster (01:01:06):
Page Turner [LAUGH].

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (01:01:09):
William Bundy later viewed the planning effort in
the spring of 1964.
So keep in mind, spring of 1964includes the first sigma of 1964
as an emotional safety valve that's inquotes for those who might otherwise
pressure the president into takingactions that he was determined to avoid.
The planning efforts actually served thepurpose of delaying genuine consideration

(01:01:33):
of the situation in Vietnamuntil after the election.
Keeping the JCS busy and at the same timepermitting LBJ to keep the war low key.
And I thought that wasa pretty remarkable insight.
These games, the level ofpeople playing in these games.

(01:01:54):
H.R., have you ever been ata game that the chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff is playsevery single day of the game?
It's very rare.

>> H.R. McMaster (01:02:04):
And run very effectively, Colonel Lincoln,
we didn't talk about him, andhe was universally respected.
He was the head of social sciencedepartment of West Point who sets this
whole thing up.

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (01:02:14):
But this idea for modern day,
for us to have these type of peopleplaying these games, that's crazy.
So the fact that maybe these gameswere used not to influence, but
instead to hedge, to bureaucratthe decision away is a really interesting
use of games to influence policyin a very different direction.

>> H.R. McMaster (01:02:36):
Just a quick point on this.
Johnson's doing this on bothends of the spectrum, right?
Those who would maybebefore withdrawal and
those who would be formore resolute action.
If you just flash forwardquickly here to April of 1965,
when he gives the Johns Hopkins speech,right?
Where he talks about a beautifulvision for Southeast Asia and
the Mekong Delta river project.

(01:02:57):
And historians made a reallybig deal about that for
a long time until the notes becameavailable of those Tuesday lunches.
And he talks about that speech beingaimed, quote, at the Saab sisters and
peace societies, right?
So what he's doing is he'splacating all constituencies.
He's taking this path of releasedresistance on this middle path,

(01:03:20):
which crumbles beneath his feet with everylie and obfuscation that he's telling.

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (01:03:25):
So this is great because it brings me into 1965,
which is where I wanna go.
And actually I wanna read a quotewhich is from the deputy assistant
secretary of state forFar Eastern Affairs, Greene.
Who actually played, I think, in the Sigmatwo, I can't remember if Sigma one in 64.
But he writes this memo tothe assistant secretary of state for
Far Eastern Affairs,which is George Bundy.
So the other bundy, this is February 1965.

(01:03:50):
And the memo says the DRVis not likely to cave out
of fear of furtherbombing of North Vietnam.
Tough old characters likeHo Chi Minh have So, 1965,
there are people whoare influenced by the games,
who have felt like the gamesshowed the future and

(01:04:14):
they're advocating for it, but
it's not making a differencein decision making.
And that brings me, Mark,I want you to help us historically,
we spent a lot of time on Sigma 64.
Really high this people are in Sigma 64,but
the series continued to be played in 65,66, and 67.

(01:04:36):
If you look at the timeline yousee during that time period,
we're just increasing the amount oftroops that are there in Vietnam.
So the 1965 game was played from26th July to the 5 August, but
it was primarily by mid level officials.
The final out brief was scheduled for afew hours with senior decision makers and

(01:04:57):
actually was filmed and we've beentrying to find it unsuccessfully so far.
However, that was shortened tojust a 30 minutes out brief,
which the game directorhighlighted in his final report.
He argued that the game wasgiven too little priority and
therefore would not be a useful input anddecision making.
There's a full three paragraphs devotedto how angry he is about how this got

(01:05:19):
pushed to the side ofthe senior decision makers.
So, okay,this is the 26 July to 5 August 1965,
can you explain to us what'shappening in the Summer of 1965?
Why is a late July,
early August war game maybe not superconsequential to decision makers?

>> Mark Moyar (01:05:38):
Yes, well, so the end of, and by the way, I wanted to comment too on
what you were saying about sortof tying up the Joint Chiefs.
There's a lengthy history of Johnson and
McNamara using all sortsof devious tricks.
And H.R., I think, was the first reallyin dereliction of duty to bring this out.
And he herald General Greene,who was the Marine Corps commandant,

(01:05:59):
his papers got leaked andH.R. was the first.
And so that's helped us understandjust how devious McNamara, and
at the end of 64,right before the election,
the joint Chiefs are furiousbecause there's a bombing.
And McNamara goes to them and
says, well, after the election we're goingto go clobber China like you guys want.
And then after the election, he doesn'tdo anything of the kind, so he's Magnumar

(01:06:23):
is consistently being devious anddeceitful to try to copy cover things up.
And also, if you look at Sigma,
Sigma mostly is looking at graduatedpressure option, not the heavy bombing.
And so this question of doesgraduated pressure versus the heavy
blow work better?
That will be a running themethroughout the war, and

(01:06:45):
the closest we actually get to resolving,I think, is 72 when they bomb full war.
And the North Vietnameseagreed a peace finally,
after everything else didn't work.
But as far as 65, early 65,the United States does not yet
realize that a big invasion is on the way.
So after the election,
North Vietnamese send their firstentire division into South Vietnam.

(01:07:07):
And so this war is alreadybecoming a conventional war,
there's a lot of misperception laterthat this is still a guerrilla war,
it's not primarily, you have big battleswith 1000 people getting killed.
And so not really until April doesthe administration figure out,
because they start to detect these bignorth Vietnamese units in the south
through prisoner interrogations.

(01:07:27):
So then they're really panicked at thispoint, I mean, they're very distraught.
I will say there was fora long time a belief that
Johnson sort of naively believedthis was going to end quickly.
And I think now the information prettyclear is that Johnson, probably more so
than McNamara realized this is notgonna be easy, this is a tough fellow.

(01:07:48):
This is going to be long and bloody, and
I'm going to lose politicalsupport over this.
Generally, to the question ofthen why don't you just leave?
Well, the answer to that, I think,
is that the consequencesof leaving are even worse.
Now, another thing that's interesting theydidn't include in this is the broader
Southeast Asia picture.
Most people this time are sayingdominoes are going to fall, and

(01:08:11):
that's ultimately the rationale forwhy the US goes in.
If Vietnam falls, they're going to loseIndonesia, Thailand, Malaya, maybe Japan.
And so Johnson thinks this war is going tobe awful, but it's going to be even worse
because a lot of people are saying you'regoing to lose basically East Asia.
Now, there's a lot of controversy overthat, and I actually think there's

(01:08:33):
a pretty compelling case to be madethat the domino theory is valid.
Other people disagree,but Johnson at this point,
the big meetings are July 21 and 22.
So his mind is pretty much madeup that he's going to go in and
fight this war by the timeyou get to this next Sigma.
So I think at this point, I thinkthey feel basically we are now set on

(01:08:57):
the course and it's a little too late for.

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (01:09:00):
Yeah, it wasn't like they were all like,
just happened to be busy that day.
It's like, why waste an hour anda half of our afternoon when we already
know the decision is going to be>> Mark Moyar: Yes, and
it gets announced on July 28 publicly.
So that brings us to our final moment of the game,
which is the troops, sowe're on to escalation.
It's Monday, July 26, 1965,

(01:09:22):
three months since your last decisionabout US strategy in Vietnam.
The situation in South Vietnam appears tobe going badly as the Viet Cong forces
are having it pretty much their own way,particularly in the Northern area.
Your team proposes to introduce largenumbers of additional us forces in
South Vietnam.
About 250,000 menare considered necessary,

(01:09:44):
their mission would beto secure us bases and
to engage in active counterinsurgencycombat operations against the Viet Cong.
They would not engage in pacificationrather they would seek out and
render ineffective the Viet Cong unitsnow allowed to operate unimpeded.
Now you need to make a decisionas a member of the blue team how
you respond to this proposal.

(01:10:04):
Are you going to approve andsend in 250,000 troops for
the mission as described, reject it andcancel the deployment or escalate,
double the troop deployment to 500,000 andlaunch an invasion.
So the 66 and 67 games end up focusing on negotiation,

(01:10:28):
so 64 is, should we escalate?
How do we escalate?
65 is actually very similar about bombingbrings China in, but 66 and 67 are trying
to figure out how we bring them tothe table and get the heck out of Dodge.
What's happening in Vietnam?

(01:10:49):
Mark Mai, can you explainwhat's happening in 66 and 67?

>> Mark Moyar (01:10:54):
Well, I can give the big picture, one thing I should have mentioned
too, in the 65 timeline you do have,the bombing starts in the February of 65.
It is done very much according tothe McNamara graduated pressure.
Some troops are sent in in March, but
the Americans don't think they'regoing to get involved in the war.
It's not until June that it's clear you'regoing to have American troops getting in,

(01:11:18):
you're going to have to facethis decision, ultimately,
Johnson does decide to send in the troops.
McNamara still is hopingthrough late 65 that mutual
limitation, this is againa game theory idea.
If we limit our commitment into SouthVietnam, the North will limit theirs.

(01:11:40):
So he's not going to send as manytroops as the Joint Chiefs want.
Well, late 1965 intelligence revealsclearly North Vietnam is flooding
South Vietnam with troops.
So finally, and this is when McNamarastarts to agonize because finally dawns
on him that the enemy is not going tolimit itself when we limit ourselves.
And so then he's looking forways to negotiate a peace and repeatedly

(01:12:02):
pauses the bombing, hoping that'sgoing to entice the North Vietnamese,
which it doesn't have that effect at all.
And so you have the American forces awry,
they stop the North Vietnamesefrom taking the cities, and
you have sort of a war of attritionwith a lot of casualties on both sides.

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (01:12:23):
Maya, actually,
I'm gonna ask you a different questionbecause I realize I want to open up for
questions, and there's two questionsI want to get to on this panel.
And maybe these questions are actually forall three of you so
they can shorter answers aboutyour thoughts, summing up.
So one of the overarching lessonsthat I've taken from the games
that I've executed andthat I've analyzed and

(01:12:46):
that I've played is that players,especially my American players,
really want these elegant escalationstrategies that have these.
I'm going to signal with thistype of bomb on this B-52,
and they're gonna know thatit's that type of bomb.
And therefore, this kind of ideathat you can estimate what you need

(01:13:10):
to do to get the other side to backdown without you having to escalate,
it's just very complicated strategies.
And as I read through the Sigma games,
they feel like strategies I've seenin games I've played about AI and
Cyber, name your emerging technology.

(01:13:32):
So I guess the question, andthis is for all of you, and
we'll start with my,what is so compelling for
American decision makers aboutstrategies like graduated pressure or
graduated escalation that they continueto be played all these years later?

>> Mai Elliott (01:13:51):
Yeah, I think the graduated response appeal to the Americans
because, basically,according to Schelling,
the origin thinker of thisstrategy is that in a war,
the side that has the most credible force,

(01:14:11):
the most credible threatshas an advantage.
And this advantage is reinforcedby the fact that he could dish out
even more if you don't dowhat he wants you to do.
And the other side, faced with this,being hammered, has to make a decision.

(01:14:31):
Do I keep going andI'm going to get hammered even more,
I have to suffer more death anddestruction?
Or do I back down?
And the American belief was thatthe North Vietnamese would just
back down because the United States atthat time was a superpower in the world.
And Vietnam, Johnson said at one point,was a piss and country,

(01:14:55):
an army of coolies, there's noway they could resist our power.
So this strategy appealed tothe McNamara and Johnson,
because they think that theycould force the North Vietnamese
to stop supportingthe Viet Cong in the south and

(01:15:15):
just stop altogether orsuffer the consequences.
But the problem was thatthe North Vietnamese and
the Viet Cong were not going to give up.
They had fought all theirlives to achieve their aims,
which is to reunify the country.
In 1954,when the Geneva accords took place,

(01:15:35):
the communists under Viet Minh underHo Chi Minh were on the virtue of winning.
But Russia, the Soviet Union andcommunist China forced him
to accept the partition ofthe country because they wanted to
have a peaceful coexistence withthe United States and the western rock.

(01:15:57):
So Ho Chi Minh and his lieutenants andthe communists in general,
the North Vietnamese, the Viet Cong,
believed that victorywas snatched from them.
So they were not going to give up,they had fought so long.
And Ho Chi Minh knew that there was noway he could defeat the United States,
because the United Stateswas just too strong.

(01:16:19):
But he told his people, just fight untilthe Americans got tired and leave.
And then the puppet government,the Saigon government,
would fall and then the war would be over.
So he knew that Americans would eventuallytire of this war because Vietnam
was not really important as nationalinterest to the United States.

(01:16:43):
Vietnam was only important becausethe United States thought it was fighting
proxy of communist China which was usingNorth Vietnam to expand to Vietnam,
Laos, Cambodia andeventually to other countries.
He was right, because in 1970 or72, when Nixon had

(01:17:05):
a rapprochement with China that undercutthe rationale for fighting in Vietnam,
and the war eventually,the United States eventually got out.
But Ho Chi Minh knew thathe would just have to
keep fighting because the timewould come when this would happen.

(01:17:25):
And that the history of Vietnam,which the Americans didn't know about,
is that Vietnam was occupiedmany times by China, by France.
And the Vietnamese would fight,they fought protracted wars,
they fought guerrilla warfarebecause they were weak.
That was the only tactic they could useand waited for the enemies to either.

(01:17:51):
Like in China, things happened,China fell apart and had to withdraw.
Or in the case of the France, Algeriawas becoming a more dominant issue,
and the French,people were getting tired of the war too.
So Ho Chi Minh knew time was on his side.
And he had the support of China and theSoviet Union, and he knew they could keep

(01:18:15):
supplying him with what he needed forthe war, so he was not gonna give up.
So I think the Americansmisread the situation.

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (01:18:23):
Well, I mean [LAUGH] you're talking about Vietnam.
But I feel like you could replace Vietnamwith a whole slew of other conflicts
that we have tried to use some form ofgraduated escalation and limited war,
and often underestimated the will ofthe countries that we're fighting.

(01:18:44):
One word answer, final question forall three of you.
This panel is ostensibly aboutwhether war games did or
could have changed the course of decisionmaking when it comes to the Vietnam War.
Did these war games stand a chance?

(01:19:05):
Is there a way in which these war gamescould have been more influential,
or were they always just kindof an exercise in a futility?
Mark.

>> Mark Moyar (01:19:15):
Can I say a few words?

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (01:19:17):
You can say a small few words.

>> Mark Moyar (01:19:19):
I think they would have been much more useful if they explored
more options.
And one, intensified bombing, and
another thing we didn't really get to,but invading North Vietnam is
a big option that would havechanged the dynamics a lot.
That would take a lot more to explain, but
I think it would have been more usefulif there had been more options.

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (01:19:40):
Okay, Mike?

>> Mai Elliott (01:19:43):
I really don't know what the assumptions were or these were,
I only looked at the conclusionsbecause that's what interested me.
But I think that, again, the assumptionshave to be more realistic because,
like signal war games who assumethat the North Vietnamese Is
irrational you pummel them andthey're going to say, my gosh,

(01:20:04):
we can't fight the United States andwe negotiate.
Negotiate means surrendering becausenegotiate on the terms favorable to
the United States, on the termsdictated by the United States.
So I think that maybe the assumptionsabout your opponent should
be more realistic.

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (01:20:24):
All right and H.R..

>> H.R. McMaster (01:20:26):
I would say, yes, it can have an impact, but
it depends on the president.
The president can getthe advice that he or
she wants based on their predilections,their character and so forth.

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (01:20:37):
All right, now I want to open up for question and answer.
So we have a roaming mic.
You guys want to raise your hand andwe will open up for questions.

>> Audience 1 (01:20:48):
Just curious, I'm very happy to have so many historians and
wondered, are there any lessonsfrom the Vietnam conflict that
you would take in looking at today'ssituation in either Ukraine or Gaza?
Doesn't have to be lessons for the US,but just for the parties involved.

>> H.R. McMaster (01:21:10):
God, how long do you have?

>> Presenter (01:21:12):
[LAUGH] >> H.R. McMaster
when I listen to the mantraof de escalation today,
I think it's Robert McNamara'sthrowing his voice, right?
And there's this idea that weshould have a ceasefire, right, and
then get to a political settlement.
When in history has there beena favorable political settlement
to a war that does not reflectthe military realities on the ground?

(01:21:35):
We have neglected history, right?
We have, I would just say that,
it goes back to Clausewitz'sobservation that the first duty of
the statesman is not try to turn warinto something alien to its nature.
That's what we did in Afghanistan.
Remember Afghanistan we kept saying,there's no military solution here.

(01:21:56):
Well, you know,the Taliban came up with one, right?
Or that we need to come up witha good political outcome, in Gaza,
before we defeat beforeIsrael destroys Hamas.
Hey, it's Hamas who says they want todestroy Israel and kill all the Jews.
I mean, does that get you ona path to a two state solution?
I don't think so.
I think that it's reallyimportant to understand history.

(01:22:21):
And I think that these sort ofsocial science theories that so
many have imbibed in andwho are now in our government,
I think leads them to try to turn warinto something alien to its very nature.
And in war,each side tries to outdo the other.
And winning in war requires convincingyour enemy that your enemies defeated.

(01:22:44):
There's not really kind ofa nifty way to do that.
I feel better now.
>> [LAUGH]>> H.R. McMaster: Thank you for
asking that question.
I'm sorry I'm sorry to go.

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (01:22:53):
Let's go ahead and move to another question so
that we can get some more.

>> Audience 2 (01:22:59):
Thanks very much.
I was wondering if you couldput the decisions of 1964-65
that you've been talkingabout into a broader context,
which must have been the context thatdecision makers were thinking about.
Communist China wins in 1949,there's the Korean War,

(01:23:21):
but then there's the Malayanemergency during
the 1950s where the communistinsurgent there.
There was communistinsurgency in Thailand and
Indonesia wouldn't have these issues.
And the broader,as they perceived it at the time,
sounds a bit anachronisticto talk about it now.

(01:23:44):
But as they perceived it,the broader threat of
Southeast Asia becomingcommunist being the main issue,
not just the details of IndoChina orspecifically Vietnam.
It wasn't just about Vietnam.
It was about defeatingcommunism in Southeast Asia.

>> Mark Moyar (01:24:06):
And that's what I was the domino theory basically refers to
Southeast Asia, butit can be applied more broadly.
But that was the overarching rationale.
And I spent a lot of time, because whatsome people do is they say, well, 1975,
Vietnam, when Vietnam falls,you don't have all the dominoes falling.
Well, that's largely true,although Cambodia falls and

(01:24:28):
Khmer Rouge murders a few million people.
But in 1965,the world's a vastly different place.
China is on the same side as North Vietnamin 65, so is the Soviet Union,
although they're fighting each other, and
Indonesia is considered the mostimportant country in Vietnam.
I've written at length abouthow the Indonesians are telling

(01:24:50):
Americans in 1965, if Vietnam falls,you're gonna lose Asia.
And in September, October 1965, Sukarno,
the pro communist leader,tries to wipe out his military leadership,
and they fight back anddestroy the Communist Party.
And there's a lot of evidence toindicate that this is actually

(01:25:10):
influenced by Vietnam.
So I argue, in some sense, the US doesachieve the broader strategic objective of
saving Southeast Asia, which,of course, has implications for today.
Because Indonesia andThailand, Malaya, Philippines,
etc, Japan,are big allies in the region yes.

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (01:25:29):
I think the interesting thing about the war game is
that most of the war games in the Sigmaseries assume domino theory is not tested.
It is assumed the early, the 62 game.
And we don't have the 63 game, by the way,
the 63 game was scheduled tobe run on Halloween of 1963.
So October 31, and in November,we have two assassinations.

(01:25:52):
And so for whatever reason,we can't find the 63 game.
But the 62 game gets at thisquestion a little bit and
tries to look at kind of how USforeign policy in Laos affects other
areas in the region, but it becomesan assumption in the later games.
And so instead of testing them,it becomes,

(01:26:14):
like the motivation behindwhy you're doing the action.
And I think that's interesting in terms ofkind of game design and how games end up.
Their outcomes are influencedby the assumptions and
the theories in which wecreate the game themselves.

>> Mai Elliott (01:26:28):
I think that in that period, you're right,
because as US president, you look down andyou see all these unstable countries,
corrupt, poor, ripe for the picking bythe communists if they use subversion.
Warfare to nibble, taking one countryafter another in a domino fashion,

(01:26:50):
and pretty soon the United States andEurope would be surrounded.
So when you look at that,yeah, Vietnam looked like,
in a bigger context that it was.
Especially if you believe that Chinawas behind it and China was using
a proxy to win in Vietnam andthen expand to the rest of Southeast Asia,

(01:27:12):
I think you would look atVietnam in a different context.
You were right.
Yeah, I agree.

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (01:27:18):
I think we have time for one last question.

>> Audience 3 (01:27:20):
Seems to me this is a perfect example of what H.R.
would call strategic narcissism andNeil Ferguson would say a lack of
understanding ofthe contingency of history.
Because sitting in Washingtondoing these war games,
[COUGH] no one even thought about the factthat Indonesia might suddenly turn
strongly anti communist aftera really bloody awful internal event.

(01:27:44):
No one would have foreseen thatVietnam today would become
the strongest opponent of China,and no one would have foreseen.
I'm sorry, there's a third one in my head.
What I'm thinking about is,the fact is Lee Kuan Yew believes that
the United States saved Southeast Asia andSingapore by buying ten years for

(01:28:07):
the Sino-Soviet split, forthe Vietnamese-Chinese split,
and for Indonesia to turnpeaceful in Southeast Asia.
And no war game can capture thatkind of prediction about the future,
especially if it believes thateverything's gonna be affected by how
many bombs the Americans drop on Vietnam.
Sorry, that's a speech.
What do you think of that?

(01:28:27):
There's the question.

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (01:28:28):
[LAUGH] >> H.R. McMaster
because I've beencritical of George Bundy.
But George Bundy, actually,the rest of that quotation,
when I talked about reallynot having a clear objective.
He said that what we could then say isour objective wasn't to win in Vietnam,
but to buy time for other southeast Asiancountries to develop their own democracies
and to become bulwarks against communism.
So, this idea was in the minds ofsome of the critical policymakers and

(01:28:53):
advisors at that time.
And Lee Kuan Yew, that's a fantasticperspective that he has.
I'm familiar with that.
I mean, it's worth reading.
It's worth reading his longformat interview with him and Dr.
Kissinger and I forget his name,the former US ambassador in India.
Anyway->> Mai Elliott: Blackwell.

>> H.R. McMaster (01:29:14):
No, I can't remember.
Yeah, Blackwell.
So, Blackwell and Kissinger did this longform interview with Lee Kuan Yew very
late in his life, Lee Kuan Yew's life,and it's retrospective on Vietnam and
then on the US-China relationship andso forth.

>> Jacquelyn Schneider (01:29:29):
And I think I'm gonna use that as the segue to say,
why do we care about war games?
What is their purpose?
In these games, I kind of set up thispuzzle where, look, they got it right and
then we ignored it.
How could that happen?
But they got it right in many waysbecause they made the right hunch.
The decisions that they made aboutthe adjudication, about domestic opinion,

(01:29:52):
international opinion, Viet Cong will,
they mostly got it right because theyhunched in the correct direction.
But as my husband would say,even a blind squirrel finds a nut.
And if this game had been run 20, 30,100,
200 more times, it might haveled to very different outcomes.

(01:30:13):
And so, as somebody who usesgames as a part of my research,
I would say that we should not thinkof whether a game predicts the future
accurately as whether a gameis a good game or a bad game.
Instead, games are a way in whichwe understand the uncertainty
in the world we live.
And as historians and
[COUGH] political scientists looking atgames from a historical point of view,

(01:30:37):
they help us understandthe reasoning behind decisions and
the beliefs that people bring intothe important questions of the day.
And they often reveal to us almost moreabout the bureaucratic politics and
the maneuvering behind the scenes thanthe outcomes might reveal about what could
have or what did happen.

(01:30:58):
So, with that, I want to highlightall the extraordinary work that
we're bringing into the collection.
So, the wargaming collection is housedwithin the Hoover library and archives.
We have Talia sittingin the room right here.
I think we have 1300 documents thatwill be published over the next year.

(01:31:19):
And what we're doing right now is we'republishing them in kind of tranches of
materials.
So, every two weeks,we'll upload a new tranche of material,
and then there's a lot ofmanual behind the scenes.
We're tagging documents where wehave documents that we pulled in for
the SGMA war games that weresupposedly about SGMA 63,

(01:31:40):
because that's how they showup to us from the archives.
And then as you start looking atthe historiography and realize, my gosh,
absolutely not.
So, all to say,we want you to engage with the materials.
If you find that some material shouldbe associated with something else,
let us know.
And so, part of what we're doing inorder to encourage people to engage with

(01:32:02):
materials is we've launched a scavengerhunt for the SGMA series, for
these two weeks.
And every two weeks,we'll have a different scavenger hunt.
But I posted the scavenger hunt on myLinkedIn, my Twitter, my Instagram.
I'm trying, you all, I'm trying.
But it's got three questions.
I'll tell you them right now.
And if you guys find thosethree questions the answers,

(01:32:24):
you can email them to us [e-mail].
So, the questions are,
the original dates of SGMA 1963 hadto be delayed because of what events?
The second question is, and I think H.R.
already even knows this one,who was the game director for SGMA 265?
And the third question is,
what time of the day did the seniorpolicy team meet for SGMA 164?

(01:32:50):
So, whoever gets the first answerto those questions correctly,
we have signed books byour esteemed panelists.
You send us your name and your address,we will send them to you.
So, thank you all for coming today.
Before you guys leave here,
I wanna highlight the extraordinarywork that goes into an event like this.

(01:33:12):
So we have Lilliansitting in the back here.
Lillian has done an extraordinary job.
Hillary may be making surethat the party is going.
And the events team, Talia,who has painstakingly uploaded each and
every one of these documents andmoved them.
And we were like, no, no, no,don't put it there, put it somewhere else.

(01:33:34):
And Jacob and Shawna,the marketing team, and
we want you to engage,we want you to interact.
And anything that we can do,if you guys have research questions or
interests, let us know.
We're happy to help you guys usewar games as part of your data and
part of how you understand history.

(01:33:55):
So, with that, we have food.
So, please join us for a receptionafterwards out in the Trades Hill lobby.
And I wanna thank theseextraordinary panelists.
Thank you for coming andengaging with these games and
having such a wonderful conversation.
>> [APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC]