H. R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997)
Doctoral dissertations rarely become New York Times bestselling books, but H. R. McMaster has accomplished just that with Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam. McMaster, currently a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general and former National Security Advisor in the Trump administration. In the 1980s, the author entered an army that remembered little of its experiences in Vietnam. After experiencing combat in Operation Desert Storm, McMaster wanted to know how, and why, the United States entered a war it could not win, and what decisions led to that outcome. Sometimes more political than purely military history, this book is a superb exploration of civil-military relations at the highest levels of government while examining the process that led to America’s involvement in Vietnam.
McMaster’s thesis is that the United States failed in Vietnam because of the character and motivations of President Lyndon B. Johnson as well as his relationships with his principle advisors—including the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In essence, everyone on the National Security Council was responsible for the failure of Vietnam. What began as an attempt to contain the northern communists became a strategy of “graduated pressure” designed to compel North Vietnam to capitulate to US demands. The pressure continued until over half a million American soldiers found themselves in South Vietnam by 1968 in an unwinnable war. The war, McMaster concludes, was lost in Washington—well before large numbers of American troops arrived in the country.
The author begins by arguing that the Bay of Pigs incident and the Cuban Missile Crisis eroded President Kennedy’s trust in his military mentors, namely the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Elected on the premise of reinvigorating the military following Eisenhower’s “New Look” policies, Kennedy turned to a new idea for a national military strategy—flexible response, and its chief proponent, General Maxwell Taylor. In theory, flexible response gave the President a menu of options short of nuclear war with which to influence world affairs. To implement the policy, Kennedy recalled the recently retired Taylor to active duty and appointed him Military Representative to the President, before installing him as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1962. Kennedy’s reliance on Taylor reduced the influence of the Joint Chiefs, and as McMaster writes, further eroded their relationship with the office of the President.
After Kennedy’s assassination, McMaster depicts Johnson as a very insecure leader, who did not want Vietnam to impede his Great Society domestic programs. Rather than foster an environment of openness, Johnson created one of obedience—designed to achieve consensus rather than divergent opinion. The author argues that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was able to dominate the space, which further pushed the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the background. The Joint Chiefs did offer military advice when asked; however, this often went against the President or the Secretary of Defense’s preconceived ideas and, therefore, they summarily dismissed it. The President thus offered little strategic leadership, and the executive branch was unable to direct clear and concise strategic guidance to its operational commanders. This failing is particularly problematic in a counterinsurgency predicated on merging other forms of government power with military operations.
In his research, McMaster took advantage of newly declassified documents, paper collections, and perhaps most importantly—the official history of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Vietnam War. He also conducted many oral history interviews with key decision-makers still alive at the time of his research. Thoroughly researched and meticulously written, McMaster’s prose makes an otherwise complex book accessible. Composed chronologically from the Bay of Pigs incident through July 1965, this book is organized into fifteen digestible chapters. Dereliction of Duty adds to the conceptualization of the Vietnam War by bringing the actions of those at the highest level into focus to show the role the Joint Chiefs have in nurturing the strategic relationship between politics and operations. This book frames the question of failure in Vietnam around policy and strategy, rather than the typical discourse on the failings of operational commanders. Without clear guidance from Washington, commanders on the ground have no hope of success. The most frustrating part of this book is that the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the rest of President Johnson’s advisors knew the war was unwinnable, especially when given so little attention compared to domestic policies, and they continued to escalate regardless. As an example of an epic failure in US civil-military relations, this book is ideal for scholars studying the Vietnam war or American civil-military relations in the 20th Century.