Book Review/Heather Seggel

Reckless: Kissinger and the Vietnam War

In 2003, Henry Kissinger wrote a book, Ending the Vietnam War, that was a mildly self-reflective but mostly self-aggrandizing discussion of how he saved the world yet was still so terribly misunderstood. At the time, Vassar College history professor Robert K. Brigham reviewed the book for the Washington Post. The restraint he exercises in giving an overview quickly gives way to incredulity at the extent to which Kissinger scatters blame, misrepresents his own role in history, and yet still seems to sleep well at night.

“Critics should line up against this book in droves,” he wrote, allowing that if one can stomach the “mean-spirited” nature of Kissinger’s writings, it’s possible to at least understand the Nixon administration’s thought process at the time of the war. The review is fascinating; you can feel Brigham accumulating more counterpoints than he can possibly shoehorn into this review. What will he do with them?

We have an answer now. Brigham studied materials from the Nixon Presidential Library, Kissinger’s personal papers, and material from archives in Vietnam, much of which has just been made available for the first time, and has written Reckless: Henry Kissinger and the Tragedy of Vietnam (Public Affairs). It’s a clapback 15 years in the making, and offers insight into how Kissinger’s machinations were less brilliance than guesswork and ego, with disastrous results.

Full disclosure: During much of the time period this book covers, this reader was a developing fetus. My education about Vietnam was scattershot at best, but emphasized how much lying and misdirection went into keeping the conflict going. So while this was an interesting and certainly well-researched account, all of its meticulous chronologies never pointed to an obvious “aha!” or “Gotcha!” moment; readers who lived through the war will almost surely find it vindicating in a way it simply can’t be for me. That being said, parallels to the present day (which Last Week Tonight host John Oliver has wryly christened “Stupid Watergate”) stand out. Kissinger used his close connection with Nixon to continually insert himself into negotiations, but each man thought the other was paranoid and prone to histrionics. Rather than act as checks on one another, they provoked each other’s worst impulses.

Brigham follows Kissinger from meeting to meeting, where negotiations show potential, break down, then are reformulated slightly and tried again. America had been in Vietnam for eight years by the time his negotiations bore fruit, but the terms of the truce were approximately the same as those Nixon had been offered four years earlier, in 1969. Those four years cost America dearly — 35,000 deaths and casualties, and of course billions of dollars. Three hundred thousand Vietnamese people lost their lives during that period. Exactly what did Kissinger’s efforts accomplish?

It has been hard to tell, and that’s by design. By concealing the historic record of the war and instead publicly playing any two sides he could against one another, Kissinger was able to proclaim himself instrumental to the process while keeping attention off his actions. Much easier to blame liberal idealists, student protestors, and both the Nixon administration and those who critiqued it for whatever perceived failings he was eager to deflect. It didn’t help that the Watergate scandal limited Nixon’s ability to accomplish much, and Kissinger was happy to have yet another fine mess to point to while polishing his halo.

Brigham reviewed oceans of documentation, including National Security Council files and transcripts of the secret negotiation meetings held in Paris and Kissinger’s phone conversations, to piece together this account of his combined hubris and ineffectiveness. Reckless may not change the most calcified views of a war that still haunts our conscience as a nation. It does, however, shed new light on why it took so long to end, and squarely assigns the blame for that to the man at the center of it all.

Heather Seggel is a writer living in Northern California. Email heatherlseggel@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, November 15, 2018

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