by Max Boot
The loss of interest in counterinsurgency and an insistence on pursuing a conventional, firepower-intensive strategy led the United States to the brink of defeat in Iraq from 2003 to 2006. No matter how many insurgents American forces killed, more seemed to pop up. Finally, in desperation, in 2007 the Bush administration tried a different approach under General David Petraeus. Shortly before going to Iraq to take command, Petraeus had coauthored Field Manual 3-24, the U.S. Army/Marine Field Manual on Counterinsurgency.4 Published in late 2006, FM 3-24 did not mention Lansdale’s name—it cited instead other theorists such as David Galula and T. E. Lawrence who by that point were better known, in no small part because they had produced books that had stood the test of time—but, whether the authors knew it or not, his ideas permeated its pages. One can imagine Lansdale nodding in accord if he had been alive to read passages such as “Long-term success in COIN depends on the people taking charge of their own affairs and consenting to the government’s rule,” or “It is vital for commanders to adopt appropriate and measured levels of force and apply that force precisely so that it accomplishes the mission without causing unnecessary loss of life or suffering.” The application of these tenets in Iraq helped to produce the impressive, if impermanent, success of the “surge” in 2007–08.
Lansdale would have been cheered to see American troops finally getting closer to the people, even if he would have disapproved of any large-scale American troop commitment to begin with. “Visually,” he wrote of South Vietnam, “we the donors seemed to overwhelm the recipients with large headquarters complexes and warehouses, hordes of staff personnel, fleets of vehicles, and extensive housing complexes for Americans engaged in economic and social programs as well as in military aid. A journalist aptly commented that it was as though the whole Court of Versailles had come along with Lafayette, Rochambeau, and the French troops in the American Revolution.” The result, he continued, was that “can do” Americans often wound up “stifling the initiative of local Vietnamese” and inadvertently lending credence to enemy claims that “the Americans had designs eventually to seize the whole country for themselves.”5 Substitute “Iraqis” or “Afghans” for “Vietnamese” and this would be a valid description of the massive American commitments in those countries long after Lansdale’s death.
Lansdale wanted Americans to operate in a more modest fashion, as he had done in the Philippines and in South Vietnam in the 1950s. He would have been cheered by the success of American advisory missions in countries such as El Salvador in the 1980s and Colombia in the 2000s, and he would have been particularly satisfied to see the Army’s Green Berets taking the lead in such operations, because he had been instrumental in giving them the counterinsurgency mission in the first place.
FOR ALL the superficial resurgence of “Lansdalism” in the twenty-first century, there were also strong countervailing pressures that led the United States to eschew the kind of political action that the “Ugly American” had advocated. The costly and drawn-out wars in Iraq and Afghanistan led many policymakers to prefer drone strikes and Special Operations raids to kill terrorist leaders. Yet while such operations were more precise and lethal than ever before, groups such as Al Qaeda and the Taliban were able to survive the loss of their leaders. As Lansdale had warned, “kinetic” action could not be decisive in a war among the people. The United States did take steps to promote democracy in both Iraq and Afghanistan—but only up to a point. In both countries real power continued to be exercised by corrupt warlords and sectarian power brokers. Most American representatives preferred to work with these strongmen in order to kill insurgents, turning a blind eye to abuses of power that drove more recruits into the insurgents’ ranks.
Back in 1971, three years after his disheartening return from Vietnam, where his advice had been all but ignored, Lansdale had despaired “that perhaps Americans will never learn the simplicity of fighting a political war, as our forefathers knew so well in the American Revolution and even in the Civil War. Maybe our schooling in power politics à la Disraeli, Metternich, et al and our marriage to the computer have disabled us from acting within our own heritage.”6 If Lansdale had lived to see the wars of the twenty-first century, his sense of frustration would only have deepened.
The key American shortcoming, in the early twenty-first century as in the 1960s, was the inability to constructively guide the leaders of allied states in the direction desired by Washington. The Kennedy administration had seen a downward spiral into a hostile relationship with Ngo Dinh Diem after Lansdale’s return home at the end of 1956. Something similar happened with Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai and Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki under the Bush and Obama administrations. What was missing was a high-level American official who could influence those allies to take difficult but necessary steps such as fighting corruption without risking a blowup or backlash. Lansdale believed that such tricky tasks could be accomplished only by “a person who was selflessly dedicated to the ideal of man’s liberty, was sustained by spiritual principles of his own faith, was demonstrably sensitive to the felt needs of the people of a foreign culture and had earned their trust, was an expert in one or more skills necessary for close-in struggle against the subtleties and brutality of Communist operations, and who was known to behave rationally and purposively in the face of chaos and terror.”7
Needless to say, there were few people aside from Lansdale himself who combined all of these characteristics. He was a master—right up there with the legendary Lawrence of Arabia—at what he called “the art of friendly persuasion.” Lansdale explained that this skill was “based upon a realistic assessment of the enlightened self-interests of the one being persuaded and the needs of the persuader. In other words, it’s the ideal operation of friendship or alliance. Admittedly it takes unusual skill in communicating between humans. It’s on a higher skill level than the rather pedestrian and unimaginative use of ‘leverage’ and is on a higher ethical plane than thoughtless generosity to a friend—the two bases upon which the U.S. seemed to operate in Saigon.”8
Unlike T. E. Lawrence, who in 1917 produced an influential essay, “Twenty-Seven Articles,” for guiding military advisers, Lansdale was not enough of a systematic thinker to commit his methods of “friendly persuasion” to paper. When a friend asked him in 1976 how a foreigner could “generate an impact” in an environment such as Latin America, he replied,
Years ago [in 1954], both Admiral [Arthur] Radford and Allen Dulles asked me to write a handbook on the subject. I had only a limited time during home leave to work on it. I remember I got as far as the first rules, filled a couple of pages with exceptions to the first rules, and then my wife jumped me for my first rule, which was to get to know the inhabitants intimately, through picking a mistress with the right background or moving in with a family, etc.—just to get a firm grasp of customs, emotions, etc. Anyhow I discovered then how complex a subject it was. Much of my own behavior abroad was instinctive rather than rational.9
We may nevertheless extrapolate from Lansdale’s experiences a few rules worth studying for anyone intent on exerting influence abroad. Call them “the three L’s”:
1. Learn. Lansdale familiarized himself with the lands to which he had been dispatched. He did indeed, to Helen’s consternation, take a local mistress in the Philippines, if not in Vietnam. In both countries, he traveled widely, made many friends, and talked to many different people. William Colby was later to say, “I think his greatest legacy was his belief that you have to enter into a foreign society and understand how it works, what its motivations are, and what its aspirations are, and then relate a policy to that. Rather than stomp in there and proceed to tell people what to do.”10
Lansdale’s lack of language skills was more of an obstacle in Vietnam than in the Philippines, where English was more commonly spoken. But he believed that there was more to communicating than speaking the local tongue, and he was able to make a connection even if he had to employ sign language with th
e Stone Age tribesmen of Luzon. Even some Americans who could speak Vietnamese, he said, “had the wrong attitude—of haughtiness or brusqueness or even disinterest—when interpreting, which of course subtly spoiled the intention of the U.S. official dealing with the Vietnamese.” Although Lansdale commended Americans such as Calvin Mehlert, who combined “language skill” with “evident empathy for the Vietnamese,” he made clear that the latter was more important than the former: “I know that I had great difficulty myself, thanks to lack of language skill, but tried to make up for it by careful selection of interpreters that Vietnamese would respect, along with empathy and patience in hearing out everything the Vietnamese had to say.”11
2. Like. In the process of talking and traveling widely, Lansdale identified and cultivated influential individuals sympathetic to American interests. In the Philippines, his principal agent of influence was Ramon Magsaysay; in South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem. Lansdale won the loyalty of both men by showing himself to be a devoted and sympathetic friend—one who was utterly devoid of condescension and racism. Knowing that Lansdale liked them personally made Magsaysay and Diem open to Lansdale’s advice.
3. Listen. Rather than lecturing his friends, as Westerners in the developing world are still wont to do, Lansdale listened intently to what they had to say. When Magsaysay would stop talking and look into the distance, lost in thought, Lansdale did not feel compelled to fill the silence. He would simply sit there “silently, companionably” until Magsaysay was ready to resume talking, leading the Philippine president to wonder why others felt compelled to talk nonstop in his presence.12 Lansdale’s patience would be tested by Diem, given his penchant for rambling, hours-long monologues, but Lansdale professed to find the Vietnamese leader’s lectures fascinating. He then would reformulate what he had just heard, subtly changing his summary to get across more of his own message. Lansdale made sure that his protégés got full credit for his own ideas.
Because of his congenital contempt for bureaucracy and its irksome demands, Lansdale’s skill at “strategic listening” failed him when it came to working with other American officials. Rather than win them over, he tended to get their backs up—and as a result his influence was less than it might have been. But when it came to Asians, his sure touch seldom deserted him. As Joe Redick, Lansdale’s longtime translator, put it, “He was actually a genius at it. . . . A lot of the things he did or said seemed to be really rather simple, even simplistic. But they seemed to go down, they seemed to work. He was good, there was no question about it.”13 Or as Fritz Kraemer, Henry Kissinger’s mentor and a longtime Pentagon official, put it, “Lansdale was a mystic. . . . He didn’t say very much . . . [but] he radiated this personal influence.”14
This same low-key approach might have been effective with Karzai, Maliki, and others if only the United States had had more “operators” as skilled as Lansdale in the lost art of “friendly persuasion.” The United States and its allies would be well advised to cultivate this skill set in a world where insurgency, now of the Islamist rather than Communist persuasion, continues to threaten their interests.
The American public will not often support massive military interventions abroad. But few will notice if Washington sends to a distant and embattled land a skilled political operative—someone well versed in the country, able to establish an intimate connection with its leaders, and cognizant of the all-important X Factor, the feelings of the local populace—to subtly influence the course of an important, if obscure, conflict. Such an operative could do far worse than to study the life of Edward G. Lansdale for lessons on what to do—and what not to do.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Ed Lansdale (left) in 1914, aged six, with brothers Phil and Ben. (GBPP)
Edward Philips, Lansdale’s maternal grandfather, was a larger-than-life character with little tolerance for polite society. He left a large imprint on his grandson’s personality. (GBPP)
The Lansdale boys with their parents in Bronxville, 1920. Ed is in the middle rear between mother Sadie and father Harry. (GBPP)
Lansdale as a student at UCLA. He worked as an extra in Hollywood to help pay for college. (GBPP)
Young Lansdale was an aspiring cartoonist. This is one of the cartoons he drew for UCLA’s satirical newspaper, The Claw. (PCLPP)
One of the advertisements that Lansdale developed for the Theodore Segall Advertising Agency in San Francisco, 1940. He is at left in the inset photo. (MSFRIC)
Ed and Helen Lansdale around the time of their marriage in New York, 1933. Shared family secrets helped to bring them together amid the misery of the Great Depression. (ECLPP)
Major Lansdale (center) on a “very ratty, dirty and ancient” boat exploring the Ryukyu Islands, 1946. After spending the war years working for the OSS in the United States, this was his initiation to the heady realm of nation building. (HI)
Pat Kelly and Lansdale on a beach, Lingayen Gulf in the Philippines, 1946, shortly after they met. (PYPP)
Huk military leader Luis Taruc. With Pat Kelly’s help, Lansdale tried repeatedly to meet him and almost lost his life in the attempt.(Getty)
AP reporter Spencer Davis (left), Lansdale, and Major Napoleon Valeriano of the Philippine army (right), with captured Huks, July 18, 1947. (MSFRIC)
Ed and Helen Lansdale leaving the Philippines in 1948 with their boys, Pete and Ted. After three years, Lansdale could boast that that he was known on a first-name basis by everyone from the president of the republic “down to farmers in [the] provinces.” (ECLPP)
Lansdale’s eccentric deputy, Charles T. R. “Bo” Bohannan (left), and his superior, CIA operations chief Frank Wisner (right), with Ramon Magsaysay. (HI)
A typical coffee klatsch at Lansdale’s bungalow in Manila, December 1950. He is at the head of the table; New Yorker correspondent Robert Shaplen is at right; Bohannan has his back to camera. The ideas generated at such informal gatherings catalyzed the anti-Huk campaign. (MSFRIC)
Lansdale (center) and some of his closest associates in the Philippines, December 1960. Left to right: Dario Arellano, Manny Manahan, Johnny Orendain, Oscar Arellano. He used them to help his nation building efforts in Vietnam. (MSFRIC)
Lansdale in Hanoi, June 1953, on his first trip to Indochina. Like Graham Greene and many other Westerners, he was instantly smitten with this alluring country. (MSFRIC)
Lansdale with Ngo Dinh Diem, the shy, bookish nationalist politician who was appointed prime minister in 1954. Together they created the state of South Vietnam. (HI)
Filipino doctors and nurses treating Vietnamese civilians. Lansdale created Operation Brotherhood with covert CIA funding as one of his signature civic-action initiatives. (HI)
Trinh Minh Thé, the controversial Cao Dai warlord whom the French reviled as a terrorist and many Vietnamese saw as a freedom fighter. Lansdale became so close to him that he stood in for him when his son was married years after his death. (Image Works)
General J. Lawton “Lightning Joe” Collins, a former U.S. Army chief of staff who clashed with Lansdale during his tenure as ambassador to South Vietnam, 1954–55. (Getty)
South Vietnamese troops advancing during the battle of Saigon, April 1955, pitting Diem’s forces against three French-backed sects—the Cao Dai, the Hoa Hao, and the Binh Xuyen. (HI)
General John W. “Iron Mike” O’Daniel, the commander of the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group (left), Ambassador G. Frederick Reinhardt (center), Diem (right), and Lansdale (behind Reinhardt). (MSFRIC)
Three members of Lansdale’s Saigon Military Mission. Left to right: CIA officers David Smith, Lou Conein, and Rufus Phillips. Conein would later become infamous as the architect of the 1963 anti-Diem coup. (RPPP)
A regular party-giver, Lansdale used the tinikling, a Philippine pole dance, to break down social barriers. This party was in 1956 at his Rue Duy Tan villa in Saigon. (HI)
Pat Kelly (right) visited Lansdale in Vietnam and, in 1956, went swimming with Madame Nhu (left). (HI)
Ngo Dinh Diem’s c
onspiratorial brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, and his wife, Madame Nhu, who served as first lady for the bachelor president. After Lansdale left Vietnam at the end of 1956, their hold on Diem increased—and conflict with Washington grew. (Image Works)
One of Lansdale’s greatest propaganda coups was turning Graham Greene’s anti-American novel The Quiet American into a pro-American movie. He was often identified, wrongly, as the model for the naïve protagonist, Alden Pyle. (Image Works)
Vice President Nixon awards Colonel Lansdale a medal (possibly the National Security Medal for intelligence work) in the mid-1950s as Helen Lansdale looks on. Nixon championed Lansdale’s work as vice president but not as president. (MSFRIC)
Lansdale with, left to right, CIA director Allen Dulles, the CIA’s deputy director, Lieutenant General Charles Cabell, and the Air Force vice chief of staff, General Nathan Twining. Allen and his brother, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, were Lansdale’s greatest supporters in Washington. (MSFRIC)
Lansdale at home in Washington with his poodle, Koko, late 1950s. (ECLPP)
