Transcripts For CSPAN2 Panel Discussion 20141102

It backwards. On behalf of the raw space and hueman bookstore and you, this fantastic audience on this chilly monday, thank you so much for coming up. You have been much, much more than we ever could have hoped for or expected. Enjoyed the book, ask questions and enjoy the rest of the evening. [applause] thank you so much. [inaudible conversations] booktv is on twitter. Follow was to get publishing news, schedule updates, author information and to talk directly with authors during our life programs. Twitter. Com booktv. Up next from this your southern festival of books held in nashville, tennessee, a Panel Discussion on modern complex from the vietnam war to the war on terror. This Event Features three authors. Its an hour and 20 minutes. I want to thank you all for coming today microphone. I want to thank you all for coming today. This panel is entitled the invisible hands of war politics, legality, and tactic in modern conflict. My name is tom schwartz, a professor of history and Political Science at vanderbilt and ive been asked to chair the panel. I have been asked also by the organizers of the southern festival of books to remind you that there is a signing of books afterwards upstairs and outside of the books are available for purchase, and that purchases through the bookstore book event of your, some of the proceeds certainly go towards this event and towards subsidizing that event. We encourage you in that regard. Also another one of the injunctions that we received these past few weeks was to keep our introduction to breathe, and my guess, the actual highlight highlighted. The thi mrs. Napolitano paso undoubtedly with that in mind i will keep my introduction to each of these panelists greek. Ive met them all before, both because mike and ganesh are of vanderbilt for a number of years, im going to introduce an each be for the presentation ideal each of time. Professor lienhang nguyen has a focus on southeast asia. The book she we talk about today is trenton, it is a national hanois war. Should just inform each is also now signed a contract with random house or a book which will be entitled battles to change the vietnam war and the global cold war, and that will be published in 2018 on the anniversary of the tet offensive. That would be i think a very important date and book. The hanois war book won numerous awards from society of military history, the schaeffers prize, society for historians for Foreign Relations, and from a conference on womens historians. I will tell a quick store because i the quick start of each of these. Professor nguyen, at a conference at the state department held in 2010 to generate fortune of final publication of all points on history of the vietnam war, professor nguyen found itself having to negotiate diplomacy between invited representatives of the socialist republic of vietnam and divided armor secretary of state Henry Kissinger, and she did a masterful job handling that and i think that would already call her far the nobel peace prize, which was awarded today as you all know. Anyway, ive asked each of the panelists to speak perhaps 1050 minutes both about the book, some of the themes on the panel and then well open it up for questions afterwards. Professor nguyen. Thank you. Before i start i want to just thank humanities tennessee for organizing the southern festival of books, or pressure schwartz, my copanelist and especially to a you all for showing up on this rainy day. So nearly 50 years ago today actually the training as we all know was pairing to get involved in a faraway conflict in southeast asia. Action over the next 10 years or so the United States will be preparing itself for the 15th anniversary of the signal events of that war. Up until 2025. So basically as a result, since over the past 50 years we have nearly some 35,000 studies on that conflict. But i contend we still do not know a lot about that were. Theres so much that we dont understand, particularly about the vietnamese perspectives. And so based on never before seen archival materials from vietnam, ma i was the first to get into the ministry of Foreign Affairs archives, what i do in this book in hanois war i examine the context in which vietnam went to war and which the United States exited that conflict. And what i tried to do is address some of these questions that still persist and so vexed many customers of that conflict today. So doing so common answering a lot of these questions that someone from that war i challenge people heavily, particularly regarding the enemys war efforts and one want to do in my 10 or 15 minutes or so with you today is talk about those questions that answer. I call them the who what why when and where basically of hanois war, and in answering those questions i also challenge some deeply held convictions, some conventional wisdom we have about that war. Up first in the most general one is that although ho chi minh and the general recently departed last year have been the two leaders most closely identified with hanois war, i shall in fact they were never in charge. And reality it was this man who has never really been that wellknown in the west. He held the general secretary, which is the most important position in the Vietnamese Communist Party from 19571986. But yet we dont know much about that man. I argued the resource he wanted it that way. He lacked ho chi minhs grandfatherly to me. You didnt have the generals military prowess. So instead we had was actually the organizational knowhow, the will and the ruthless determination that perhaps ho chi minh and the general lack that allowed him to control the communist party for those many decades that he was in control. So thats the first and most basic myth i blow which is that it was not ho chi minh and it was not the general in charge of the war. Effect it was this man who was not wellknown. The second myth that i challenge is that and this is linked to our understanding or ugly that ho chi minh was involved or was in charge was that he led what was a harmonious sort of leadership, body of which an Economist Party who all agreed and let a very popular war against the government and saigon and their allies, the United States. What does show is him out there was a lot of intraparty struggles, a lot of the rivalries, a lot of just ugly fights that took place in the top echelon of power in North Vietnam in hanoi. To rather than this harmonious body of leadership to comrades who led and all agree comprises actually a very divisive communist party, not quite as bloody as their counterparts in the soviet union and peoples republic of china but there were a lot of intraparty struggles that we need to understand in order to really get a grasp of how hanoi leaders were able to lead the countrymen to war. And what a show under the general secretary as well as his right hand deputy, a man awarded the nobel prize along with Henry Kissinger so long ago, but they let what i call the police state by promoting the party. What they did was their number one target actually was ho chi minh and the cello, bitumen most closely associate with the flood leadership which were silenced a sleepy little moments during the vietnam war. Basically those two men disagreed with the way he handled the war effort. In addition to sort of competing powers within the Party Leadership, they clamped on any antiwar dissent of which was a lot of in North Vietnam. We hear of course im afterward the same in the other states compete with the will republic of vietnam but with North Vietnam theres been what i show in fact there were many individuals who saw a different route towards reunification to not want to war which is what the leadership under the other one. In addition sort of silencing the top leadership under ho chi minh and general zap as well as any antiwar dissent within the general public in North Vietnam, le duan also wrested control of the southern revolution from what these two men did was they elevated deputies in the south to take over the southern war effort. So even the southern insurgents marginalized. Image at dissing tasha in addition to what they want which is basically the total war for reification versus a peaceful way for reconfiguration, i also challenge the conventional wisdom regarding hanois monthly strategy. For example, take for example, the night to skate at defensive. We understand that our what was common held was that north beanies leaders really tried to strike a psychological political blow to the of caching u. S. War effort and that was in goal. What i show in fact know, they always held the objective of toppling the saigon regime but that was supposed to be their goal from the very start. The way le duan wanted to do this was a strategy called edge on the offensive, general uprising. He believed the north in these forces along with southern troops could attack the cities and towns through surprise chordata effort that this would hold the power to make the people wise up and topple the saigon regime. This was the objective held in 1968 in what we know is the tet offensive, also the objective held in 1964 as well as 19 safeguard aussie the objective held in 1972. We tried this three times and it failed. It basically cost the revolution thousands of deaths in each attempt. I show that it wasnt about sort of the but getting the americans to leave. It was not present americans i have toppled your ally, now go. In addition to showing that it wasnt just the military Balance Power on the ground that influenced hanois decisionmaking, i also revealed that Foreign Relations, hanois Foreign Relations had a lot of influence and impact on the military strategy. In particular it was about the sign of the soviet split. We dont understand how much had an impact on revenue sharing leaders in the third world during the cold war. In many ways it had i would say a more profound effect than eastwest rivalry. Hanoi was appointed when beijing and moscow in many ways being sorted in between those two powers heavily influenced by military strategy in the south. So i reveal that in hanois war. In addition to the who what when and how, i also show that hanois war addresses the period of the peace negotiations and the role of the to the struggle for 19691973. And there i show that this is the controversial but nixons strategy actually worked. In many ways nixon and kissinger, that bad guys in my book, and rightly so but wanted to show is that their strategy to implement superpower offensives, diplomatic offensives against hanois war by giving the chinese and soviets to put pressure North Vietnam to negotiate the working table actually it succeeded. The chinese and the soviets disobey. However, this is the second part to my diplomatic struggle analysis is that a show and a small which included citizen diplomacy that targeted the global antiwar movement, the afroamerican Solidarity Movement and infecting new as was the most impressive struggle and aspect of hanois war effort was the most underutilized because they didnt put much stock in the diplomatic offensive. This action for the most effective but it was able to plug nixon superpower diplomacy. I can talk more about how was able to blog that diplomacy and q a. But in the end what i try to show is that basically, you know, we dont know a lot about the vietnam war particularly, the enemys war. But i try to do is address the big questions. That in the end i think the take away, the take away line of hanois war is that no side was interested in compromising for peace, and leaders on both sides at the 17th parallel in vietnam as well as on both sides of the pacific sacrificed tens of thousands of american lives and millions of the minis to pursue their type of war. Thank you. [applause] thank you very much. Its a good thing i have to keep going because i would love, as many of my students who are here and others, id love to continue this conversation but were moving on. We have a broader set of themes. Our next panelist is very wellequipped to deal and talk about some of the broader themes that emerge from both vietnam war and more recent conflicts and that is Michael Newton who is a professor in the practice of law at Vanderbilt University law school and is the author of proportionality in International Law which will also be on sale upstairs. Michael newton is an expert on accountability and transnational justice and conduct of hostilities issues. Over the course of this group just published more than 80 books, articles and book chapters and reserves as the Senior Editor of Terrorism International case law report, an annual series published by Oxford University press since 2007. Theres a lot to be said about Michael Newton. Ive known him for almost 10 years, since hes been at vanderbilt. What i of course am a significant one to just stretch it is that he was the Senior Member of the team that taught International Law to the first group of iraqis who begin to think about accountability mechanisms any constitutional structure in november of 2000. He assisted in the drafting of the statute of the iraqi high tribunal, newton has taught iraqi jurists on several other occasions both inside and outside of iraq. Is also the coauthor of what is an obsolete thats a book called any of the state. Enemy of the state. Hes been in operation military attorney serving with the u. S. Army special forces command from fort bragg in North Carolina in support of units to spread in desert storm, and he is said numerous experiences in addition to that as well within the army before coming to vanderbilt i want to stop into one of the single contributions are remembered with was teaching a course, him bring into the class or having my class exposed to a number of iraqi figures. It was a group of kurds involved with a profound the impact was on my students to meet people face those issues and were trying to sort out the subsequent postconflict issues on iraq. With the introduction i should stop while im ahead. The truth is that is really a great panel. These are great books, all of them. I havent read completely the hanois war book. Ive gaveled in it. You say what a weird little word, a weird decor. Whats that got to do with politics . Was i got to do with drone strikes . Whats that have to do with counterinsurgency cuba shields and isis . The answer is everything, everything. In the very beginning i tell this story, and our colleague, professor worth is here and she serving to westwood. I going to Start Talking to colleagues and say we want to deconstruct proportionality. We want to tear it apart and document what it is and why it is and why it should be at how each unique. I would get this sharp intake of breath from people. They would say, well, good luck. Have fun. And about my coauthor. Is a very accomplished, precipice get a philosopher in his own right. This book is one part philosophy, where does this concept come from, we are does it mean a document relationships and societal relationships and how we wage war, lots of really good granular, philosophical stop the one part law. Lots of good detailed legal analysis. How do you assess the permissibility of a drone strikes against isis on the Syrian Border today . How do you assess when hamas holds human shields in gaza . What does that analysis look like . Lots of issues in vietnam as well. The book is two parts pragmatist. One of the things im proudest of is the degree to which you in the book with current application fort bragg and from afghanistan. This twist, the title of the panel, politics, like outlook and tactics. Its proportionality that determines how those things in relate and we come out on a particular issue. One of the great scholar said that the term itself is clunky and inexpressive and this book is her answer to try to grab the clunkiness and inexpressive the other term. There is. But it took a whole book to do it. The concept of proportionality is hard in a sense partly because its express the because its always very context specific so context matters which is why to to take the time to really get the depth of where it comes from and what it means and how its been twisted over time in terms of meanings. The danger in that is is always use in a highly emotional, highly emotive, highly politicized or highly charged atmosphere. Marine rifleman in fallujah, but on employers with them. They dont have philosophers with them but we expect them to do it right. We want to send out with the best equivalent of the best training in the world, the best rules of engagement and expect them to do the job correctly and legally, and proportionality more times than not becomes the fulcrum of which we assess that. How many folks are familiar with sesame street . Grandkids, right . The core premise of the book comes straight from sesame street. You have this word proportionately that pops up in a privately the context, an entire chapter of the ways in politics come in law and philosophy that proportionately is replicated. So that Chapter Seven is a real detailed recitation of how it appears in all these of the context. The two most pointed context for us in modern practice when we Start Talking of human shields by the right to wage war against isis or the right to go to war in vietnam for that matter or any counterinsurgency or any of the context is the just war concept, and the windjammer lawfully go to war . Thats largely portion of the context. When can we use selfdefense . The permissiveness of the use of force inside the conflict. The problem is the sesame street sketch. Remember that song one of these things is not like the other, right . They all lined up, and the outlier in that is the use of proportionality during Armed Conflict. In fact, its not only the outlier, its the intellectual opposite of all of the others and some very, very fundamental and very important ways. Its the difference between a marine or an air commander or a 4star general in prosecuted and accused correctly of having violated laws and customs, or having committed war crimes, and having a lawful defense to be able to say no, my job is to win the war. This body of law allows me a wide range of permissiveness, discretion conduct, and proportionately is the vehicle that carries the weight of that. So you could ask the question, and a lot of people have come he got his wide range of uses, and heres the outline which is the proportionately in the middle of Armed Conflict. Why dont we gain something . Whats the benefits of having some homogenate, some intellectual consistency . Lets make it like all the others. Lets push it that way to be like all the others. I think the most important contributions of the book is to push back strongly against that, that the way to conduct warfare, proportionately which is the simplcentral concept in everythg from human shields to counterinsurgency to cyberwar to drones, the usage inside the context of Armed Conflict is unique. It is different and theres a lot of space devoted to pretty vigorous defense of that principle. So let me summarize the idea and then i will pay why we come out would come out on that. In every other context the actor typically bears the burden of proof. The idea is that you can use force against people and lest you have a very express legal permissiveness to do so, and even didnt think about the Police Officer arresting the bank suspect, for example, in the light of law. Short of that unit will use that degree of force or that degree of coercion that is also a necessary. And as an absolute last resort. And even then only when its absolutely required only to the degree athletes specifically and you, and this is important, you bear the burden of proof at each stage of that. The outlier, the use during the condor tour is exactly the opposite. Its a permissive body of law like so many of the baseline principles in the laws of Armed Conflict. It has many, many principles in them that are rockbound, ironclad, always applicable. You may never intentionally target civilians, for example. Period, full stop to you me, using the principle of proportionality, frequently with absolute Legal Authority potentially launch a strike knowing that it may kill some innocent civilians. And when hamas take human shields, thats the example of what you have to go through. Went isis is an account of human shields, its a proportionality analysis of the we determines what can you do, when can you do, how can you do . Same thing with drone strikes. What is the context, when can use of drones across National Borders in the first place, and theres lots of law and a lot of policy and allow tactics they are, again, the name of the pen, politics, luckily and tactics to proportionality is the principle that carries the weight of that. So in the end the trick is coming heres the paradox of it, that its a fixed standard. Proportionately as its probably understood and properly applied has defended means, definitive application to we know what it is. We can talk about it. We can talk across borders but one of the reasons i love to Sing International is because i can go to other countries, and we can talk about exactly the same principle drawn from, but the newbies look at the same 1949 Geneva Convention and the same 1977 protocol an exact same proportionality rule that i do. We can have those discussions. The problem is its a fixed assessment, but its applied reaching subjective standard, subject to be funny wishing to its very context specific. Its a term that by its very nature does not lead to gross overstatement, doesnt lead to grand statements of principle. But all the weight of so many lives hangs on the proper application of that. So the applications chapter in this book is about drones and cyberwar and counterinsurgency, and a lawful and permissible and political limits of using those forces. Its easy to sort of have a utilitarian view that says whatever gets the job done. Were going to cover up for you and just the point is that thats wrong. On political terms, political grounds, legal terms and the ultimate tactical terms. Military practitioners going back for 600 years want to be empowered to do the job. They want to be given a mission, given the resources, get all the right equipment and the best legal talent, get the job done and everyone of them when you interview them wants to go home. They want to win and go home. Proportionately is enabling principle that allows you to do that, and i dont have time to give you all the details. Thats why we wrote the book, so thank you for coming. [applause] the next panelist i met him directly from an email that got from karen furey, the second of the American Council on germany, who told me that ganesh is coming to bendable and that he was fantastic. Too busy of late of the American Council on germany was a special event thats done with americans and germans brought together every something i had done it back when i could still said i was a young leader, and it was a wonderful experience. But she introduced me indirectly to ganesh. And we had the occasion to meet at another event shortly after. But Ganesh Sitaraman is the assistant professor of law at vanderbilt law school. He is the author of the counterinsurgents constitution law in the age of small wars. So in some respects i think mike newton and ganesh, theres a lot of course of overlap and issues obviously immediately there. His Current Research address issues of constitutional and administrative law. He has a policy or political involvement. He was on leave serving as was the fourth post director for camping for the senate in massachusetts and that he was senior counsel in the senate. He served as a special adviser to her as well and the chair, when she was pitcher of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the troubled assets relief program. Ganesh has a whole set of other issues hes a research the at the transcendent in afghanistan and kabul, visiting a fellow of the center for a new american security. Hes commented on foreign and domestic policy in the new york times, the new republic and the boston globe. He also was a truman scholar, which is something that i find extraordinarily interesting. I headed up the vanderbilt Truman Scholars Program for use. We could never get anybody for years but it took years thats such a hard scholarship to get, very impressive. And he received his degree from harvard law school, editor of the harvard law review, another to see which figure in public life who is a former editor of the harvard law forget as well. In any respect i think he offers us, he will offer us a very interesting perspective on counterinsurgency. Ganesh. Thanks so much for that wonderful introduction, and thank you all for coming. Ive like to think the humanities not as well probably put on this event. I want to take you back to the summer of 2009, and if you remember that summer we had a relatively new president at that time. As of june we had a brandnew commanding general in afghanistan, a guy named stan mcchrystal. And in july of that summer general mcchrystal issued a tactical directives for all forces and against it, and that directive, i read you a little part of it. He said we will not win based on the number of taliban we kill. This is different from conventional combat, and how we operate will determine the outcome of more than traditional measures like capture of terrain or attrition of enemy forces. He went on in the directive to stress the importance of limiting civilian casualties, of limiting excessive damage, even limiting the use of air support except without the necessary, and there were no other options to protect our soldiers. Now, i hope this seems somewhat puzzling to you. I think it should be puzzling to most people. Stan mcchrystal is that human rights advocate. Hes the commend general the u. S. And nato forces in afghanistan. But hes taken is very different approach to thinking about warfare. This different mindset is something that back in 2000 we thought of as counterinsurgency. This is a topic people t dont talk as much about now five years later, but i think many of the lessons of counterinsurgency, of the lessons of the war from those days are still very relevant today. What i thought i would use talk about three different lessons, themes i talk to in the book, try to talk about them in the context of vaughn walker, or regular warfare more generally. The first is relationship between strategy and humanity. The conventional understanding, the kind of way invited discourse to think about this relationship is that the strategy for victory in warfare is all about killing and capturing enemy forces. You kille kill and capture the d guys and then you win. Humanitarian interests are to some extent a constraint on the. They limit your ability to kill and capture the bad guys. This is very different in counterinsurgency but its different in the way mcchrystal talked about. Another place he talked about counterinsurgency mass. And what he says is supposed to kill some people, some insurgents and maybe theres even Collateral Damage on top of that. Maybe you kill two of them. How many do you have left . A traditional math would probably say you ate for lunch. But what mcchrystal says is actually thats wrong. You might have 20 insurgents dug why is that . Because the ones you killed, many civilians you may have killed, they have brothers and all goals and cousins and friends, and those people might be angry, radicalized by the fact that the brother, nephew, friend, cousin had been killed. And then they turn into insurgents themselves. So this is a much more complicated scenario if youre trying to figure who to target, how to engage in military operations. This gets exactly to mikes point, which is when we think about proportionality, and ill Say Something about that at risk of mike, who wrote a whole book on the topic. When we talk about how to target someone, the way the proportion of analysis tradition works is you say we balance the military advantage against the commission costs incurred. These are seen as two totally Different Things. Military advantage is the benefit, killing bad guys. Emetic and cost are Collateral Damage. Youre supposed to weigh these against each other. It turns out though incumbents urgency or under the mcchrystal theory you take into account sibling casualties on the military advantage side also. Because it turns out when you kill the bad guys, if you kill some civilians, you might radicalized a number of other people, you might create more insurgents than you do in the first place and that reduces the military advantage gained. In addition you to take into account the humankind costs, the fact there was this Collateral Damage. The result is when you think about targeting in these kinds of complex, its actually more humanitarian differently than it is on our conventional understanding of just kill and capture. The first lesson is that in these kinds of conflicts, strategy and human our online. They are not in conflict. The second thing i think is interesting about these conflicts is the transition from war to peace. The convention when we think about this is there is a clean break between war and peace. You fight the war, the war is over and then theres the peace. We talk about postconflict reconstruction. Postconflict justice. The conflict is apparently over so you think about world war i or world war ii. We can pin point days when things were signed in old warson out on ships often, that kind of thing. But think about our current wars. So did the iraq war in when the constitution was written, when saddam was tried . Day began with the search . Did indian 2011, 2012 . Is it over now . Afghanistan, the soviets were in afghanistan in the 80s and it was a civil war. Then came 9 11 and on and on. So is that one more . Is it many wars . I would argue that in this different kind of warfare we need to think about transition as turbine transitions. War moves in fits and starts towards peace to one area might be in conflict today, peaceful tomorrow, back in conflict the next day. These are much republican and the transition between war and peace coming in a war of this kind isnt as simple because it has much to do with politics as with military might. As illegal medical me think about things like transitional justice, war crimes prosecutions, you perch people from office, not let them serve in the form of the previous regime serving the government. Euphorbia to think about these not as postconflict measures, but as things are happening in the middle of the conflict that might have an impact on how the conflict proceeds and whether it moves towards peace or doesnt. The third thing thats important is how we think about this idea of reconstruction, reconstruction of order, or the construction of order perhaps even in the first place. Is a kind of conventional general way we think about it is have Something Like the social contract. You get together for the war, everybody comes together, and you can design a new constitution. It means starting fresh. You build courts, set up your structure to elect a new government, democratic, you choose your new values or your new society. I think thats more complicated in part because of these turbine transitions. It turns out in these contexts, reconstruction is far more organic and it grows from the bottom up based on the history, based on relationships between people, based on politics, religion the ethnicities, traditions and yes, based on the fact that the war is still ongoing. In history theres a large literature of the relationship between war fighting in statebuilding. And the process of were fighting over centuries in europe, for example, many historians argued is that partly led to the creation of modern states and the interactive nature between these two things. We dont have so much a clean break as we have an ongoing story that is organic and that grows tumultuously over time. So again to bring about the law for a moment, when we think about the rule of law, we all often think its about judges with black robes, prosecutors, or rooms, that kind of thing. Those are all hugely important but if youre any society, and afghanistan is one example, where traditionally there are things like the sure and jerker which are these kind of tribal informal dispute resolutions, those looked at very different. You cant say on day one youve been doing something for decades from now were going to change at all and its going to be something totally different as a matter of rule of law. You have to engage in transition between different systems and have something gross from the bottom up into the kind of society that people want to create. So those are three different lessons. And i think they are important because we are still engaged in conflict. We are still thinking about conflicts all over the world and are not the kinds of complex that look like world war i with trench warfare, world war ii and take warfare. They are these a regular kinds of conflicts where people are interspersed with insurgents, and worked very hard and break a chunk of whats going on is politics as much as it is military. These kinds of wars are messy, difficult. But there is i think an upside, which is when we do fight them, you have a strong, positive thing on our side which is our values turnout at least in the waging of the military side not to be a drawback. They are an asset and we can use the humanitarian side to support our strategic aims. [applause] im going to steal the chairs prerogative to ask three quick questions of each of the panelists, but i promise one of the things i really do want is to have an opportunity for all of you to ask questions, but it would ask each panelist one quick question and then go right down to the first question, we now have a situation which the United States is using airpower to do with isis in syria. Airpower was a huge issue during the vietnam war, and im wondering if your own Research Lead you to have any reflections on this current vogue of using airpower, airstrikes, and whether, in fact, researching from the four North Vietnamese citation perspective on or a sense of what airpower met in the vietnam war. That is for you, for having. For mike, im of the public historians hat on, has proportionately ever been an american way of war, at least in the store the unthinkable were to, i think we were disproportionate by the end of world war ii if you think of atomic bombings and the war. Im wondering if proportionately has a problem with democratic desires to get wars over as quickly as possible with the idea that thats the way you avoid casualties, you get them as fast. You dont care about the proportionately. You care about ending the war. And, finally, to ganesh, im curious both in your experience and your own work, its clear to me now in reading some of them to account iraq situation and others that does the pushback by the military against counterinsurgency as a nation and the warfare, that theres very strong resistance to that. And im wondering if they can be overcome or if you feel like this is, because i think this is also, one saw this in the aftermath of vietnam, military also, the famous powell doctrine and others of using overwhelming force and not the type of nation building that, of course, was to be engaged in. I just want to run those. Thank you. Thats a great question. I get that question a lot because i sure that there wasnt agreement amongst the Party Leaders about how best to institute reunification, that there were some that said maybe not go to war. Maybe lets try economic competition, peaceful coexistence and we will defeat the saigon regime by just the sheer power of our party, of sort of the communist way to building the nation. And so when the bombs came to North Vietnam, these north first leaders pointed out computer, this is devastating our socialist revolution, lets stop the war. Now, had the United States, you know, there is the what if questions, had the United States on faster, bombed more right from the start, not do this gradual escalation that lbj undertook, with this have strengthened his north first faction, ma and my answer is just no. All it did was, in fact, row the people around the flag, around the party. It was devastating to the northern economy, to the nation, to the democratic republic of vietnam. But they were able to rebuild the bridges, the storage facilities, the Transportation Networks that the americans did devastate and destroy, but it never had a tipping point. It never convinced the leaders to abandon the southern war. In that sense thats my perspective in terms of what i drew from the vietnam war, that all it did was, in fact, create more enemies for the United States. Humble appreciative that i will and part as a let and partly as a historian. The short answer in terms of the law is, and i was to this question everybody wants to go back to world war ii, and its a different world culture, technology and legally. Huge amount of legal and philosophical development in this field since then. Partly in response to that the partly because of this conference of so many other factors, but the historian in me says that some things never changed and this has to be court understood, which is that the be those of professional war fighting, you know, ganesh asked the question and answer the question what is the rule of law look like. I would estimate will dash military lawyer, the laws and customs of Armed Conflict the back to the very roots of warfare. The rule of law look looks looke people with too little sleep, too much stress, too much pressure, incredible adrenaline run. It looks like a set of norms that both constrained in but also allow them to conduct the conflict globally. That is the law of war. That is the principle of proportionality, is this very complex personal that comes from philosophical roots, legal route, and its changed over time but its been there all along, is what i would say. And the question is, how does it apply in a particular setting . We can debate that but we cant debated if we dont understand what it is, where it comes from, what it means, what the values are, et cetera. So the law has changed and thats what we need a very fine grained and its also tactical but again the feet of this panel, politics, right . Legality, tactics. Those of the results of these kind of detailed analyses. So you asked a great question about kind of were is can introducing up in the military and where is it going. There is resistance to counterinsurgency as an i. T. I think theres two types of resistance. The first is resistance to counterinsurgency as a theoretical matter. Its not a strategy, who knows what it is, its complicated. And then theres a second kind of resistance and even some people who are practitioners and scholars of counterinsurgency have or at least hint at occasionally, which is its really hard. Its really resource intensive and got to know about about the local area. And so maybe we shouldnt do it for those reasons in the payment of whether we think its workable as a kind of a radical matter. Now, wheres the military now and where is it going . I think theres two possibilities, two things that i said maybe think that counterinsurgency is here to stay, at least on some level. Actually, three possibilities. The first is there is a man who has a great quote and he says, you might not be interested in insurgency, the insurgency is interested in you. We live in a world where thats the case to we might not be interested but it is interested in us, it seems. To some extent we have to be interested in insurgency and counterinsurgency, whether or not we want to be. The second thing though is we have a generation of people who have fought in two wars and to have seen up close and whose defining experience both in the lives and in their military careers is this kind of new or different warfare. And i think those folks are soldiers, marines who have been through it and who in the future will end up being our leaders, our generals, our admirals. They are going to internalize and understood some of this which means will keep many of these lessons just as a function of that. Because if you talk to them, or at least the ones ive talked to, they really get there Something Different about this, and they have seen and tried to do it. A third difference is the military has internally tried to learn from some of these lessons and adapt them, not necessarily to kind of occupation of iraq or take style nationbuilding. But to a more limited footprint version of the same set of lessons. And i think the best examples of this are, you know, the army recently released a new counter such as a field manual just this past you. Its the new revision of the version that general petraeus famously worked on about eight years ago. And in this new edition the focus has shifted a little bit. Theres still discussion of what it means to be big reconstruction of other countries, but a lot of it is how do you actually work with partners, train and help and assist and advise . A model here is not the occupation of iraq or afghanistan. Its actually a mission that most people dont really know much about which is the philippines. And in the philippines our forces have been helping filipinos with insurgency, but we are not taking the lead. In fact, its all run by the filipinos. But the knowhow, the knowledge, experience, the strategic understanding is something we can help with. And that is a very different kind of model that retains the lessons but without having United States forces as the kind of main player on the ground. Theres a microphone over here, one over there, and why dont u. Feel free to ask questions. Im going to ask a civil question the use a simple illustration. One evening i came upon a couple fighting in focus, and i thought it my duty as a citizen and declared you to try to stop this. I did but he needed to both chased me and i had to run for my life. Seems to be many of our wars have been recently, especially since vietnam, of our trying to step into someone elses fight. I would like to the panel respond to that. So a big part of the answer, surprisingly enough, is proportionality, right . When the lovely get engaged . What are the limits of that . The reason thats important both as a tactical matter and as a legal matter is because thats what informs the politics. Its very difficult to conceive of a political groundswell of support, Decision Making it is not any good faith articulation of a legal basis or strategic basis to thats not what happens. What happens is, and theres a big chunk of our book dedicated to these tearing apart these ideas, how is the basic concept applied, sometimes how is it misapplied, how is it misunderstood . These are vitally Important National consequences oath for the life of the nation, but when we come from centered, the center of gravity of her book, yes, its these weighty, legal concepts and the philosophy, but at ground level its individual americans that have to bear the price of that and the people that were conducting Armed Conflict against the thats why this stuff matters and thats why to some of this entire book, weve got to get it right. We cant afford to say this is hard and complex, so well just kind of wing it. This is never to try to extend that with great precision. So my question for the panelists centers around this idea of accountability within the United States, especially in regards to work. And the question is, if we as a nation are so secretive about our various methods of military conflict, for instance, targeted killing, drone strikes, et cetera just as one example, then how can the american populace kind of regular the government and kind of ensure this proportionality . You want to handle the first or shall i . So the drone chapter, i mean, thats the drone chapter. Its not a political chapter. Its a design to answer the exact question. What is the basis of accountability, what are the purported legal bases that have been publicly articulate, and the reason it matters at a very basic funding level is because we can conceive of solutions where we stay there has to be complete transparency, and after bears the burden of proof to show that its an absolute last resort and gaps with minimum degree of source force was used to theres a competing paradigm that says no, and this other set of applications, the very meaning and, therefore, the law and the politics and the tactics and the look out is very, very different. And that chapter deconstructs all that and comes up with saying you can have it every way. You cant say we got a legal justification that were not going to do what it is. To the extent we do tell you what it is, its like a hybrid animal, right . Its got zebra spots but an Elephant Trunk and a hyena reader. No. What is that . Tried to describe it. The point is when you talk about drone strikes, the legal analysis and the political analysis is all over the map. So that particular part of her books is lets understand exactly what is there, what would be permissible, and lets decide which one of these bases is permissible and then you play it through to its logical conclusion, which we make some suggestions about. So one of the ways people talk about counterinsurgency is you have to win over the population. And i think if you take that seriously, part of what that story is his legitimacy of the kind of actions you are taking. Thats not just legitimacy with the people in the country affected, so say iraq or afghanistan, know that certain part of the story from its also legitimacy at home. It turns out that you need to have Popular Support for whatever it is that youre doing, whether thats domestic policy or foreign policy. And so part of this idea of winning the population, of having popular legitimacy i think is explaining things, is having transparency around the kinds operations that are going on now. Obviously, there are some limits to the. You cant declare to more were going to have, were going to go off normandy beach, right . You do want to telegraph that before you Something Like that is our way jeanette transparency both around the legal side and around operations that are very important to this, and i think those are places where, you know, the right understanding of the lessons of the last decade would push us to place more attention and try to do more to set ourselves up better for the future. And keep things secret from the American Public at a time when it looks like the United States was deescalating a war. There were troop withdrawals. In in fact, in many ways, nixon and kissinger escalated the war. Thats a way to really get at your answer, look at these sort of concrete examples of the way the United States government has been able to do it. Can i briefly add to that with the permission of the next questioner . Just one thought to extend that. You go back to kosovo, previous military operations when you didnt have drones, and there are both positive and negative examples of transparency and explaining things. And this really matters in terms of the perception of the American People and the perception of the enemy. But whats better . To have transparency, to be talking about why it is what youre doing, but doing it in such a way that nobodys quite sure. And the problem is you have very differing in one path, one set of parameters, absolutely permissible, absolutely understand and to use the term absolutely legitimate, and another set of parameters. But the problem is the way you talk about it in public particularly drones in this day and age is that its all over the map. Youre drawing from all these different varieties of law in a way that sounds transparent, but were saying so many Different Things in so many different ways that have flatly contradictory results. In the end, thats another form of obfuscation. I heard the word tribal used, and i wonder how much you feel that our ability to look at situations primarily in this case as looking at other nations in the case of, say, North Vietnam and South Vietnam or afghanistan as nations when in reality were dealing with groups of tribes. And their cultures, their law, what they do are more tribal than any artificial boundaries that were drawn primarily by western nations which have very little to do with the Real Organization of those areas which was tribal and still is. Okay. Yes, and this is linked i have an answer to the very first question, and so ill take those two together. In many ways, the United States did not know what was going on at all in vietnam, and thats quite apparent when they began showing interest. That was definitely the case under truman, under eisenhower, kennedy, johnson is, so on and so forth. And what was taking place, there was, you know, vietnamese war, there was a lot of fighting between vietnamese parties that stretched back from the french and the china war. As the vietnamese were trying to expel the french colonialists out, they were also fighting among themselves. And there were different factions, paramilitary groups, but there was a lot of vietnamese on vietnamese violence. So you cant say one had any sort of greater nationalist aspirations than the other. They were all national u. S. Es. They were all fighting the french, but they were fighting each other, and that was the case, you know, when the americans were also, when they became involved. So in many ways all i want to kind of underline is that when the United States became involved, they didnt understand the sort of divisions that were in place prior to their entry. So, you know, i think in any of these situations, but its not even limited to vietnam or afghanistan or iraq. But if you pick any country, theres a lot of texture and a lot of understandings, historical, groups, differences. And i think theres a danger for any of us historians, policymakers, members of the public in kind of characterizing any particular group or plus as all one type or another. So i dont want to say afghanistans all tribal or not. Its obviously complicated in a lot of different ways. But in a sense, thats the point. Its very complicated. Theres a lot of history. Theres lines that have been drawn by different political powers, namely the british. Different ethnicities, different religions. And in fact, in difference provinces in the country you may have completely different causes of why people are choosing to be insurgents. In some places more economic, in some places less economic. And the factors then, turns out, its very granular. And so in a way this gets back to, again, the first question which is we may think that there are military solutions to everything, but it turns out there may not always be, or they certainly may not be the first best solution. In fact, political solutions, Diplomatic Solutions and other things might be important as a way to start. And i think gets to a second kind of important part that im partly happy all of you are here today. But part of whats important here is that we have to be engaged in learning about the world. And we should know more. We should travel more, we should learn languages, we should be engaged as citizens in the world around us. We live in an increasingly connected world, and that becomes more and more important, and this is just one of the ways in which its more important. We should know more about other places. Let me just add to that, because the original question was about the role of tribal structures and tribal leaderships and tribal sensitivities. One of the classic counterinsurgency theorists called this warfare, its complex. Its all context. And when you talk in the abstract about what a military objective is, thats contextual. Its not determined in a boardroom, in a conference room. It is all contextual. And its partly based on personality, its partly based on politics. Let me tell you a story about general mccristal, because ganesh talked earlier about the air constraints. Theres an airstrike, it killed some civilians. General mcchris call, based on his policy went to the village to apologize. Now, this is an american fourstar general going to directly confront talk about transparency . Thigh did we do what we did . Why did we do what we did . The village leaders said, you dont understand. We cant protect ourself from these people, speaking of the taliban. We need you to kill them. Please, do can it more, be more aggressive. And you see, its all context. And the point is that, you know, we say this is contextual, and its complex. It really is. And a lot of it is how uninformed we are about the historical trends and the different, the different fissures within a society and the different f heck, we dont understand american politics, much less they are politics. Okay. I guess a twopart question. You partially addressed it a moment ago, professor newton. It seems to me all this has to be considered in the context of going in in the first place, its a deterrent, conquest, enrichment . And then on the back end, georgiaer ganesh, whatever rises out of the conflict organically, what does that look like . If were involved in that, it seems to me that presupposes we have a notion of a rule of law. We have a notion of the way fundamentally human relations should be conducted. And what grows up organically may not accept that notion. You know, maybe entirely different. And so how do we act . Id be interested in hearing the discussion of context in relation to those two issues. Thank you. As ive said, proportionality is a contextual term. I saw a couple of people muttering, well, newtons kind of simplistic because he didnt give us the rule. You may never intentionally take a particular action, conducting the action in the knowledge that its going to cause these other consequences. Ganesh simplifies them and i think correctly to military objective versus. But the key contextual stuff here, which is what youre getting at, its got to be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct, heres the keyword, overall military advantage anticipated. So you can see theres the breadth of permissibility, theres the breadth of deference to the war fighter whos caught in these very difficult, sometimes almost impossible choices. Its whats anticipated, so theres permissiveness for mistake, but theres also the requirement built into the law and poll the ticks that were very politics that were very clear. There are participants of our book that are parts of our book that are, and i think this may be the measure that a we did something constructive here, parts that the Legal Community say thats crazy, in the philosophy community, people say thats crazy, how can you say that . This is one of the controversial things in the book, the lives of your own citizens, your own soldierings do have fundamental meaning soldiers do have fundamental meaning and value. Weve passed the era in World Politics in the conduct of war where we say, oh, theyre all just cannon fodder. Thats wrong as a matter of fundamental human rights law. The problem is at the other extreme you didnt you cant say, oh, weve got to win the war, so we can do everything. I like ganeshs words, granular, texture. Theres a lot of texture to these decisions. We cant oversum mify. Weve got to go through in a very sophisticated kind of way those decisions. Again, those are political decisions in part, theyre tactical in part, and in the end, theyre legal decisions. But one of the things that im just adamant about is we cant make those decisions at a very high strategic level, and yet the people at the tactical level are completely in the dark. Theyre the ones that bear the consequences of those decisions, and we owe it to them to make them in good feint based on in good faith based on what really is the law. So in terms of, you know, once youre in there, once youre coming out, how do you think about navigating the local and the differences between our involvement and others . And ill give you two examples of this. The first is in afghanistan after a few years they started a program that was designed to try to break down this idea that economic aid and development was going to be topdown decided by formers and instead was going to be decided by local communities to what they actually needed because they have a much better sense. You know on your street if theres a pothole, and you know it probably faster than the people in city hall know it. And similarly, the idea is at the local level people know what they actually need, so they created this decentralized program to try to have people deliberate and vote about what they wanted as economic development, and those things got funded, and it turned out to be hugely successful. So thats one example, you can create ways to encourage kind of deliberation at the lower level. A second higher level is when we think about constitutional design. We dont actually, if you look at, you know, some of these cases, we dont always say everybody should have a u. S. Constitution exactly like ours with 50 states regardless of how many provinces you have in your country with two senators per state. You know, the way constitutions are designed reflect features of the country depending on, you know, the different groups in the country, the size and various other factors. And so i think theres a lot of ability for variation in different places. And one of the benefits of thinking about it this way is what you want is for the people themselves in a place to be able to support their government. And if people dont and this goes for our government too if people dont support your government, youve got a bigger problem on your hands than, you know, how you design it. The in the ancient world, the law giver of athens is said to have remarked when he wrote the constitution for the athenians, he said, somebody asked him is this the best constitution . He said its not the best one i could create, but the best you could receive. The idea is not to be philosophers and come up with a utopian constitution, to deal with the world that we have. People need to come up with government that works for them. Britain is not america, and they have different systems than we do, and thats a good thing. I just want to add quickly that, you know, the history of the global cold war shows that whatever, you know, whatever americas intentions, objectives when they went in and decisions they made, you know, during the duration of the war doesnt always dictate what will happen. And, in fact, it usually lies in the hands of the ally, americas ally or enemy. So it doesnt matter what the United States decides and when it will begin, how long it will fight or when it wants to leave. It wont, basically, in the end, you know, have the final say in many cases. Well, taking your lead with that comment, it seems to me that since the 1940s our enemies each time are less and less powerful; eg, nazi germany and imperial japan, then to korea, North Vietnam, iraq. But it seems like the results we get from each involvement are less and less satisfactory. And i know the concept of proportionality has to be tied up in this somewhere, and it seems like almost the more intemperate our response; eg hiroshima, and id like to hear professor newtons applying of proportionality to that, the more intemperate our response, the better final result we seem to get. And i hate to think that thats the way it should work, but what do you say . Well, theres a great, theres a great book on counterinsurgency, max boots book, which traces the history of counterinsurgency. The shorthand version is the more brutally you fight a war in classic counterinsurgency going back a long time in ancient history, the more effectively and quickly you win as the only way to crush a counterinsurgency truly. And historically, thats sometimes true. I think its dramatically changed now. Theres a wonderful sentence in this book on proportionality that ill read, only one sentence. Proportionality so frequently invoked and so frequently misunderstood in application, listeners are prone to [inaudible] due to its very familiarity. The cause proportionality is to so textured, its prone to debate. Its imprecision carries the risk that it will be honored in name only. Thats the probable. Were thats the problem. Were not consistent enough. And what proportionality ultimately does is both serve as an affirming, empowering principle to say this is permissible up to these bounds and, therefore, anything within those bounds, why do we stop short of that . Its often tactics or often just perception. Theres all kinds of reasons. And the point is and one of the key themes of this book is to say where proportionality applies, let that be the constraining restraint. But lets be very clear about what the constraint because then we can have the debate about what the right end result or what the desired end result is and what are the true constraints. Sometimes it is just politics, sometimes it is just perception, sometimes it is our allies, sometimes it may very well be history. But we need to be clear about what it is and in a nutshell, this book is essentially saying dont hide behind proportionality, understand it in its complexity and apply it properly. So i have a question about, you know, to what degree does proportionality once again apply to the israel palestine dispute . Because it a lot of the people who study Israeli Security services basically, you know, mange the case that make the case that israels strategy is to exact a high price, you know . If the plo hijacked an airplane, israel would bomb a refugee camp. If, you know, a soldier gets kidnapped, lebanon gets invaded. So i guess my question, to what degree does this apply to the israeli case in. Yeah. I think you have to be extremely careful of the conflations in the media, because even a couple of those examples involve other principles and other things. And theyre not true proportionality calculations. The biggest thing about proportionality, and theres a section in the book that deals with israel and hamas and gaza and hezbollah and lebanon and some of those kinds of things, but the biggest thing is its absolutely not and seldom, if ever, is simply proportionality, theres a reason im a lawyer, because i can stay as far away from mathematics as possible. But, you know, the propassionaltybased theorum is going toking paneled at a constant rate. And so i could show you dozens of opeds, you could google them and find this particular thing was disproportionate because it was this many civilians versus this much. Thats absolutely and almost always an absolutely incorrect application of proportionality. Its far more knew januariesed. Nuanced than that. And thats important because the very foundation of the principle, the very foundation of the laws of Armed Conflict is not mathematical. It is subjective. It is shifting. It is contextspecific based on tribal sprurs, etc. So the short answer is i mean, the easy answer is to say proportionality is always applicable with respect to israel, but ill always add with a caveat that its always controversial and always pretty sized and politicized. And thats why the israelis, and i think the United States military and the United States politicians, need to do a much better job of clearly understanding it and clearly applying it. And where it doesnt apply, dont hide behind it. Call it what it is. And most of the time theres another principle at play or another constraint. When it is a proportionality constraint, lets call it what it is which is what we do in the targeting process. Of we change that. We have a targeting, a very complex targeting process by which we inject proportionality at the appropriate point and then change it. You can tweak a variable, and its going to change this analysis. And thats largely in the history of the israeli conflict, thats whats going on. One more, we have time for one more question. All right. So, sorry. Ive been up here once before, but this question revolves around education surrounding these issues. Being born in 1996, i have no memory of the vietnam war, i didnt learn about it, didnt live through it in in any majory or any way, for that matter. And thats, to a degree, reflected in our schools. I spent, you know, maybe a day learning about the vietnam war in all of high school, and i think there was a sentence on the mele massacre despite the extreme, you know, the deplorable happenstance of it, i guess. And really just in american schools i feel like theres next to no education on the vietnam war and, you know, wars currently which we havent necessarily so clearly succeeded in. So my question is, how do we better improve education of americans in th