The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam

by Max Boot

Neither Nixon nor Kissinger had much interest in fostering representative government in South Vietnam—a goal that Lansdale believed was imperative if the Saigon regime was ever to stand on its own. They had already made their disdain for democracy plain when, separately, each had denigrated Lansdale’s plans to hold free and fair National Assembly elections in 1966. In 1971, with South Vietnam scheduled to hold a presidential election, they ignored pleas from Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker not to let Nguyen Van Thieu rig the results. Thieu wound up running unopposed with tacit approval from the White House. Following the example of Ngo Dinh Diem, he even formed his own ruling party, known ironically as the Democracy Party. Bui Diem, South Vietnam’s ambassador to Washington, thought that the United States was making a fundamental mistake: “Kissinger invited the blossoming of one-man rule. Eventually, this would prove the most destructive and destabilizing factor of all.”