Q&A with former South Vietnamese ambassador Bui Diem

Bui Diem was South Vietnam's last ambassador to the United States. Since 1975, he has lived in the United States.

Q: What do you think of the relationship today between the United States and Vietnam, and what do you expect it will be in the future?

A: In terms of the relations between state and state, it’s a kind of normalization, beginning in 1995. But not yet in terms of strategic relations; it is difficult for a democracy like the U.S. to get along with a communist regime in Hanoi. It is not yet the kind of close relations in terms of strategic relations. Relations between two people, that is another part of it. More than one million Vietnamese are here, enjoying a free society; whether or not they think of a contradiction in American policy is another matter.

As far as relations between the people of the U.S. and the people of Vietnam, it is a kind of improvement too. Vietnamese people including those in North Vietnam did welcome Americans, to the point that some say Vietnamese people adopted the American way of life. In the future, relations would improve between the two people, but taking into consideration the difficult relations between the U.S. and China now—there are complex relations. We have problems in terms of the economic situation, human rights, the U.S. watching China and China watching the U.S. This will be the problem of the 21st century. Vietnam is in a very difficult situation right now. Due to kind of ideological relations between the Communist party in Vietnam and the Communist Party in China, it is very difficult for Vietnam to adopt a very anti-Chinese attitude, despite the fact that they know that the threat from Chinese is real. In the South China Sea, and in Vietnam itself—the Chinese come to Vietnam to do business, joint ventures.

Along with the stress of the Chinese border and the South China Sea, there are threats in terms of … economic/political infiltration. Vietnam is in a very difficult position. Many Vietnamese ask whether we have to get along with the Americans. In Vietnam, they say to go with the Chinese you can lose the country but save the Party. Go with the Americans, lose the Party but save the country.

Q: When were you last in Vietnam? What have been the biggest changes in the years since you left, and what has remained the same?

A: I left Vietnam a few days before the collapse [in 1975], and haven’t been back. There still are many members of my family there—by telephone, video, we are in close relations. I didn’t want to come back, not for fear about my security, but they can embarrass me. Either by kissing me—the kiss of death—or by creating difficulties. My sense is that it changed a lot. In terms of economic development. [There has been] a lot of economic development, no more this kind of extreme difficulties that they had at the end of the ‘80s. Like in China, there is a kind of gap between the very rich people and the very poor people. During the war, the international press talked a lot about corruptions in Vietnam, like in China. The future of Vietnam, the development of Internet, Facebook, Twitter, somehow in the future Vietnam will get rid of the communism. I don’t know when. Either they will realize they need to change, or there will be some cataclysmic change. … Somehow in the next 10-15 years Vietnam could [move away from Communism].

Q: You have written that the Vietnamese and the Americans knew very little about each other. As ambassador, how did that affect your work?

A: They’re still the same. I have my view about American policies. I learned a lot—not only through the time I served here, but [later] watching American policies and politics. I used to say to Vietnamese living here that in spite of its openness, to understand American politics is quite complex. There is no secret, but in the interaction of interest groups, the reaction among them, to try to understand American policies, politics. In many cases I did say that the big problem was a lack of understanding.

In getting in contact with American people, with the American political class, the Americans jumped into a very complex situation in Vietnam…. I remember [as ambassador] I was in Air Force One from a meeting in Guam, getting back in Air Force One with President Johnson. On the flight, the staff of the president invited me to go in the inner part of Air Force One to watch a film [possibly a CIA documentary]—about a Chinese explosion. I would assume it had a big influence on President Johnson and his staff because the war in Vietnam was going on. The problem of a Chinese atomic explosion perhaps gave the idea, not to provoke the Chinese into the war. The policy of the U.S. administration then was very careful, people said it was a gift to the North Vietnamese, we are not going to invade your territory….

Q: Could you describe the period surrounding the fall of Saigon in 1975, and how that affected the lives of you and your family?

A: It is very sad. I was lucky because my two daughters were here already going to school. My wife … brought our young son here when I was traveling between Washington and Saigon. When the crisis erupted in April 1975, I was here. I was looking for emergency aid of $700 million. After the fall of Danang, my friends in Saigon asked me to come back. It was very dangerous then, but I couldn’t [resist] the call from friends. Ten days before the final collapse I left Washington to [return to] Saigon. My wife and children were here, concerned about whether I could get out.

[U.S.] Ambassador [to Vietnam] Graham Martin was in Saigon. After I returned [to Saigon] he called me, said to come and see [him]. My home in Saigon was very close to the embassy. He asked me did I see [South Vietnamese] President Thieu yet? No. …. Graham Martin called me a second time and asked me had I seen the president? I said no. He said to tell him the whole truth. In my mind, the whole truth was that the U.S. had given up Vietnam. I never did see [Thieu]. Thieu, with the help of the Americans, flew to Taiwan. Graham Martin told me that if you have difficulties getting out, call me, and I will do my best [to help you]. Two days before [the end], I called Graham Martin, said I had done what I can. He called a Navy plane, and I flew out with my mother, 90 [years old], just two days before the final collapse. By the time I arrived in Bangkok by Navy plane, then a commercial plane to [the United States]. By then the airport in Saigon was bombed by the communists.

Q: What do you see as the legacy of the Vietnam War?

A: It is very difficult to describe in simple terms. As I have written, it is very likely that history will never render a clear verdict about how the U.S. intervened. First, it was a kind of interest if we talk about the presence of [people] who came to North Vietnam to organize clandestine operations against the Chinese. Later on the interest grew into some kind of commitment. First, help to the French when the first Indochina war was happened. It is a commitment already. First, simply an interest, then a commitment, then it grew deeper with the creation of the SEATO treaty. Little by little in 1954 after the Geneva agreement, it was a commitment to help [South Vietnamese leader] Ngo Dinh Diem.

Even the commitment was beginning, but with the Kennedy administration, the commitment grew deeper with advisors. 1963, the coup in Saigon, the assassination of President Kennedy…the commitment [turned] into intervention. After 1963 and the coup against Diem, it was a mess in Saigon. Military, Vietnamese fighting each other, coup, countercoup, North Vietnam vs. South Vietnam, Buddhists vs. Catholics, Catholics vs. Buddhists, In view of this situation [and] taking into account the consistent policy of containment against communism in Southeast Asia, the Johnson administration intervened massively, landing Marines in 1965…. I have noticed that in the years after the war ended in ’75--convinced me that the Vietnamese people still have good feelings about America despite that the communist regime had propaganda that Americans were imperialist.

Now people welcome Americans as if nothing is going on. At the same time, there is a feeling among South Vietnamese that Americans didn’t behave well at all at end of the war. After 10 years of war in Afghanistan, the Americans and NATO talk in terms of helping the Afghan people more in the future, for stability. In the case of South Vietnam, the decision of the U.S. Congress was very brutal. In 1975 when I returned to Washington to lobby for aid to South Vietnam, I saw a lot of my American [Senate] friends…They seemed to cut off from the…situation in Vietnam, what could be the future of the people in South Vietnam. Very brutal….Americans continue to think in terms of helping people, while in Vietnam there was an abrupt cutting of everything. There is a lingering feeling among South Vietnamese about this sad situation. [On the other hand,]Vietnamese are very grateful for Americans, to welcome them. More than a million Vietnamese can live in prosperity in this country, due to the generosity of the American people. A lot of people, Vietnamese, come with nothing, and their children are good citizens of this country.

Q: Anything else you’d like to add?

A: I am an old man right now. It’s an open window for friends to look through me to the history of Vietnam. Very optimistic thinking I have, about the future and relations between the American and Vietnamese people. ….The Vietnamese were looking at America through the image of John F. Kennedy. I was very enthusiastic about the inaugural address of John F. Kennedy—a kind of idealism…a willingness of American people to promote democracy. How can anyone not be moved by that?...[Getting back to the legacy of the Vietnam War,] the legacy is something long after the war, and if we look at it long after the war, perhaps we have a more balanced view of the situation.

Interview with Deborah Kalb, co-author of Haunting Legacy.

Bui Diem

Q&A with writer Bich Minh Nguyen

Award-winning writer Bich Minh Nguyen is the author of a memoir, Stealing Buddha's Dinner, and a novel, Short Girls. Born in Saigon, she left Vietnam as a baby with her family, and grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She now lives in Chicago and in West Lafayette, Indiana, and teaches at Purdue University.

Q: In your memoir Stealing Buddha's Dinner, food plays an important role. Could you discuss the impact food--both American and Vietnamese--had on you and your family during your childhood in Grand Rapids, and the role food can play in the lives of immigrants trying to learn about a new culture?

A: In many ways Stealing Buddha’s Dinner really is all about the role that food played in my family, my childhood, and the formation of my identity. Growing up in the Midwest in the 1980s, I wanted to be as “American” as possible, and to me Americanness came through music, television shows, movies, and food—everything from Kraft Macaroni and Cheese to Pringles to Hershey’s Kisses. I thought that if I consumed Americanness then I would become it, transforming myself from the inside out. Food also marked a sharp difference between my life at home, where we mostly ate Vietnamese food, and my life outside the home, where I wanted to be as white American as my friends. It took me many years to understand all of this!

And today I don’t eat or desire all that junk food I pined for as a kid. I suppose that’s kind of when I realized I was a grown-up, or at least someone who had a better understanding of identity: when those foods no longer held symbolic power for me. But I’m still obsessed with food of all kinds. Cooking it, eating it, reading about it, traveling for it. Food—what people eat (and want to eat), and how, and why—is one of the best ways to learn about a culture and become a part of it.

Q: You write in Stealing Buddha's Dinner about a trip you made to Vietnam in 1997. Have you been back there since, and what is your sense of the dynamic between the United States and Vietnam today?

A: It seems like it’s never been easier or faster (though not less expensive!) to travel between Vietnam and the U.S. Not only does this allow family and friends to see each other more often, it also allows for a greater flow of communication and culture between the two nations. I haven’t had the chance to go back to Vietnam since my first visit, unfortunately, though I would love to do so. That first trip was incredible for so many reasons, but mostly because I was with my grandmother Noi. I’ll always remember seeing her reunite with her siblings in Hanoi; she hadn’t seen them in 40 years.

Q: You created some wonderful characters in your novel Short Girls, the story of two Vietnamese-American sisters and their family. Why did you move from non-fiction to fiction, and what do you like about working in each genre?

A: I studied and wrote fiction and poetry before I ever thought about writing nonfiction, so after Stealing Buddha’s Dinner it made sense to return to fiction. I love novels—reading them, rereading them, getting caught up in them, spending time with the characters. Fiction provides the great freedom of getting to make everything up. Though Short Girls is about a Vietnamese American family, the characters and conflicts are all fiction. At the same time, nonfiction provides the great freedom of not having to make things up—of getting to tell the truth. So to me it’s beneficial to work in two genres, because when you get exhausted with one the other one feels liberating. It’s also helped me figure out which ideas and images should belong in which genre. Some things feel too true for fiction; some memories are too hazy for nonfiction.

Q: What is different about the Vietnamese immigrant experience in the United States from that of other groups, and what is similar?

A: Pretty much all of the Vietnamese immigrants in the U.S., including my family, came here as refugees (or as relatives of those refugees); they fled Vietnam because they had lost the war. I don’t think I began to realize or understand what that meant until I was in high school and college. What it must have meant for my father and uncles to fight in a war alongside Americans, to lose that war, and to have to leave their country—suddenly, with almost nothing—and start over on the other side of the world.

Still, I really think that all immigrants, regardless of country of origin, or whether they were pushed or pulled to emigrate, go through very similar feelings and experiences: outsiderness, navigation of different cultures, changes between first and following generations. Immigrants have to do a lot to adapt, from language to clothing to manners. But one thing immigrants keep is their food heritage. The keeping of this, and then the eventual sharing of it through friends, communities, and restaurants, is what defines America’s overall, and growing, food culture.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: My second novel, Little Gray House in the West, will be published by Viking Penguin by 2014. The novel is about a scholar, Lee, who stumbles across a literary secret involving Laura Ingalls Wilder’s legacy. Lee’s family has spent years moving from town to town, running Asian buffet restaurants. Lee is finishing her dissertation in English literature when she uncovers a startling link between Wilder’s family and her own. Basically I’m drawing a kind of parallel between the pioneer’s westward search and the immigrant’s westward search. I’m also working on another nonfiction book, kind of a sequel to Stealing Buddha’s Dinner.

Interview with Deborah Kalb, co-author of Haunting Legacy.

Bich Minh Nguyen

Q&A with journalist Andrew Lam

Andrew Lam, journalist, essayist, and NPR commentator, came to the United States from Vietnam at age 11. He is the author of "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres" and "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora."

Q:  As someone who arrived in the United States at age 11 from Vietnam, what do you think of the current debate over immigration in this country?

A: It’s unfortunate that the country of immigrants turned its back on immigrants. The atmosphere after 9/11 is toxic. In the war on terrorism, the immigrant is often the scapegoat. He becomes a kind of insurance policy against the effects of recession. By blaming him, the pressure valve is regulated in time of crisis. Instead of a larger narrative on immigration--from culture to economics, from identity to history--what we have now is a public mindset of us versus them, and an overall anti-immigrant climate that is both troubling and morally reprehensible.  Missing from the national conversation are voices of pro-immigration reformers and civil rights leaders, who can speak on behalf of those who have no voice. Where are the leaders who can speak to the idea that it is not alien to American interests, but very much in our socioeconomic interest--not to mention our spiritual health--to integrate immigrants, that our nation functions best when we welcome newcomers and help them participate fully in our society?

Q: You have written many essays dealing with your life between two cultures. Looking back, what was the most difficult part of your adjustment to life in the United States? What was one of the easiest parts?

A: I learned English really quickly and within two years time fully integrated myself in American life. But what was difficult a few years later was to make sense of my incongruous past. How does the totally Americanized teenager reconcile with his Vietnamese childhood, one filled with extraordinary wonders and violence, with moments of high dramas—escaping from a city about to be taken over, watching his father coming home from the battlefield caked in mud, visiting scenes of battlefields in the aftermath where bodies are half-buried in rice fields, the temple dances; familial love, the insularities of clanship—all these beckon me to return. I would say the most difficult part of my Americanization process is my struggle to appropriate my Vietnamese memories. I think were it not for my abilities to render them into stories, in words, I would be an incomplete person.

Q: When you return on trips to Vietnam, what is your sense of the attitude among your relatives and others toward American culture?

A: Let me tell you a story. A few years ago, for instance, I went back to Vietnam to make a documentary called “My Journey Home” and I did the touristy thing: I went to Cu Chi Tunnel, near Tay Ninh Province, bordering Cambodia, a complex underground labyrinth in which the Viet Cong hid during the war many years ago. There were several American vets in their late 60s there – they fought in Vietnam and lost friends. They were back for the first time. They were very emotional. They went to Vietnam to look for the meaning of the past.But the young tour guide saw it completely different: The old tunnels had mostly collapsed, she told me. It was tourism that forced the Vietnamese to dig up the old hideouts. The young tour guide then told me: “It was a lot smaller back then. But now the New Cu Chi Tunnel is very wide? You know why? To cater to very, very big Americans.”

The young Vietnamese guide does not see the past: She has a dream for a cosmopolitan future. She spoke fluent English, made lots of friends overseas due to her job and dreams of Disneyland. She crawled through the same tunnel with foreigners routinely but she emerged with different ideas. Her head is filled with the Golden Gate Bridge and cable cars and two-tiered freeways and Hollywood and Universal Studios. “I have many friends over there now,” she said, reflecting the collective desire of Vietnamese youth. “They invite me to come. I’m saving money for this amazing trip.” I stood there looking at the mouth of the tunnel, and in the end there may never be final conclusion about that war.

There can never be one story about that war. Here’s a young woman who looks at a tunnel that was the headquarters of the Vietcong and what does she see? Disneyland. The Cu Chi tunnel leads some to the past, surely, but for the young tour guide it may very well lead to the future. It’s complicated by multiple points of view, many-sided versions of the same thing, and many stories. In that sense when we talk about Vietnam we should not simplify but expand, so much so that it becomes the story of people, of human beings rather than metaphor of tragedy.

For the Vietnamese, whose population is now 90 million and two-thirds of whom were born after the war ended, America is the future. It represents the trajectory so many of their countrymen have taken and have achieved great transformation and success. America barely registers as a war to the new Vietnam – it represents what it does to all poor countries in this world: glamour and material wealth and possible cosmopolitan conversion.

Q: What do you think about Secretary Panetta's recent trip to Cam Ranh Bay and Secretary Clinton's recent stop in Laos? How significant were these visits?

A: I suppose from the point of view of national interests, it cannot be helped. The futures of empires are in the balance in regards to the Pacific Region. The South China Sea carries over more than half of the world trade. Under it lie untold oil pockets and natural gas, the stuff that could make or break an empire for the next 100 years. It is why the United States has moved from a strategy of appeasement toward one of deterrence. Hillary Clinton said it as much in an essay last November in Foreign Policy titled "America's Pacific Century," which came with this sub-headline: "The future of politics will be decided in Asia, not Afghanistan or Iraq, and the United States will be right at the center of the action."

For me the developing story is one steeped in irony, and a signal for a major shift in the long, if arduous, U.S.-Indochina relations. Uncle Sam’s back! Nearly four decades have passed, but America is barely recovered from its psychic wounds. Vietnam, after all, was our "hell in a small place." It spelled America's ignominy. The country known for its manifest destiny was soundly defeated by what former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once called a "fourth-rate power."

Still, here we are, at the turn of the millennia, seeking a return. For Vietnam, a country that “kicked” out the Americans the new attitude is “Uncle Sam, we need you. When are you coming back”? But such is the fate of a weak country stuck between vying empires. There can never be true independence. Vietnam has gone so far as pleading with the U.S. to let them buy high-grade weapons. In Vietnam, often I hear young people posing this question: “If we want America so badly, why the hell did we fight Americans in the first place?” It’s a question that many struggle to answer.

Q: You have a new book coming out next year. Does it touch on some of the same themes as your previous works, or are you heading in a different direction?

A: “Birds of Paradise Lost” is a collection of short stories. It’s significantly different in that it’s a genre I’m not necessarily known for, being a journalist for many years. Epic loss and American conversion. In some way it’s a meditation on losses and gains for newcomers to the new shore. It’s played out in all the characters in “Birds of Paradise Lost” as they struggle to redefine themselves in the New World. In other words, it’s a story of Vietnamese refugees going through their process of integration with various growing pains and degrees of successes.  It’s different than my literary journalism because it’s all imagined, and it’s liberating for someone who had for two decades to deal with facts.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: Well, I am working on a novel. And I would love to teach at some point. I’ve much to share.

Interview with Deborah Kalb, co-author of Haunting Legacy.

Andrew Lam

Q&A with writer and performance artist le thi diem thuy

le thi diem thuy, author of the acclaimed novel "The Gangster We Are All Looking For," is a writer and performance artist. She was born in Vietnam; she and her father left in 1978 and made their way to the United States.

Q: Your novel "The Gangster We Are All Looking For" depicts a Vietnamese father, mother, and daughter who become refugees and end up in San Diego. In what sense was this book based on your own family's experiences, and in what sense could it reflect the experiences of other Vietnamese-American families as well?

A: The question of how the past troubles or complicates the present is one that interests me.  I see The Gangster We Are All Looking For as a work that tells a story of aftermath and new beginnings, simultaneously.  The aftermath is of the Vietnam war, as experienced by a family of Vietnamese refugees in San Diego.  The new beginnings is how these Vietnamese refugees become Americans. The novel is autobiographical in part--the parents have my parents' names and jobs, the houses and neighborhoods are all places my family lived in--but I used facts from my own life only as points of departure, and have taken so many liberties a reader would be mistaken to look for me here. 

Having said that, I will allow that every element in this book came from a personal passion, to wrest Vietnam the place (homeland) back from Vietnam the war, and to show Vietnamese people who carry entire worlds--of grief, of longing, of love-- within them, and have something to say about those worlds.  Who they are, what they have to say, and how they say it, is not incidental to the story, it is the story. 

Q:  Could you explain the significance of the book's title?

A: The title comes from a moment in the book where, after her parents have had a spectacular fight--fish tank pitched out the front door, rice bowls sent sailing out the window--the narrator, a young girl, states, "When I grow up, I am going to be the gangster we are all looking for."  The statement is both matter-of-fact and touched with bravado.  Since the narrative doesn't allow us to see much of her as a grown up, we don't know if her proclamation comes true. People often ask, Who is the gangster of the title?  Is it the father (who was a gangster during his youth in Vietnam, but is no longer so in the U.S.), is it the mother (who is certainly willful), is it the girl, or is it a longed-for figure who never arrives?   I often say, I don't know.  It could be you.

Q: When were you last in Vietnam, and do you still have family members there? What is your sense of the relationship between the United States and Vietnam today?

A: I last visited Vietnam in the spring of 2010.  I do still have family there. Part of my visit was to meet with the editors of the Women's Publishing House in Hanoi.  They are working on a Vietnamese translation of the novel, something I hope can be seen to completion.  While the war between Vietnam and the US is part of the history books there, the civil war, between the north and the south Vietnamese, remains largely untouched.  I think this is the greater challenge, of course, to face what brothers have done to one another, and the very deep fractures that come out of that.  Without discussing the civil war, as well as the environmental and economic devastation that the American war left the country in, we can't appreciate the context of why so many Vietnamese would flee the only home they have ever known, and set out, in the open water, toward a multitude of unknowns.

Right now the relationship between the United States and Vietnam is one facilitated primarily by tourism.  Which, in one sense might be seen as a good thing, because it loosens the lens of how Vietnamese and Americans  approach each other, i.e. allowing for a sense of remove from the war itself, and in another sense might not be so great, as the living memory of the war, and the many questions it raised, are replaced with having a nice visit to a beautiful place. 

Q:  You are a writer, but also a performance artist. Which of these art forms came first for you, and how do you blend them?

A: One of my favorite scenes from a film occurs at the end of Claire Denis' Beau Travail, when Denis Lavant dances through the closing credits.  I love how he throws his body around, falls, pulls back, sways.  I watch and hear the music, then don't hear the music at all, just see him.  Something about his body reminds me of when I saw Long Nguyen dance in Seattle, summer of 1991.  He was a dancer with the Mark Morris Dance Group.  He was doing a solo performance separate from the company, a piece about growing up in South Vietnam during the war.  I saw the poster somewhere, and decided to go, alone. 

I remember sitting in the theater at the university there, seeing this little man come on to the stage in a tank top and white swim trunks and the feeling of recognition was so strong, I sat utterly still.  Then leaving the theater immediately after his performance, not feeling able to stay and watch whatever followed (the program mentioned something about a piece to do with vampires).  I'm not sure how I got home that night.  That was the night I saw and understood that it was possible, to be a performer, to move and speak, to tell such stories. 

His body reminded me of my father's body, and his voice of the voices of some of the men/uncles in my life, and the contrast/tension between the words and the movements opened up this other space for the truth, one that can't be clearly spoken, only shown, or rather, only shown to be borne within the body of the person moving across the stage.  It was as if the lesson was there, completely distilled, and I took it all in, in one sitting.  Then I stumbled out of the theater and was on my way...  It took me three years to fully realize the momentum of that night in the development of my first performance piece, Mua He Do Lua/Red Fiery Summer.  I have moved back and forth between poetry, prose, and solo performance.   Poetry came first.  I don't blend the forms so much as engage with a question across different forms. 

It's as if I follow the question from form to form, failing a little each time.  I don't think I'm trying to get anything 'right' so much as get closer, not to an answer, but to the question itself.  For instance, the first piece I ever wrote about Vietnam is a poem titled "shrapnel shards on blue water".  I wrote it for my younger sister, Trinh.  It ends with the line: let people know Vietnam is not a war.  So then the question became, What is Vietnam, if not a war?  Both the novel and the performance works are how I went on to engage with that question.

Q:  What project are you working on now?

A: I'm working on a novel that is related to The Gangster We Are All Looking For.  The less I say about it, the better or else we'll be here all day.  It writes in to the many silences of the first book, one of which is the war itself.  One of the main characters is based on the English photojournalist Larry Burrows, whose photo essays for Life Magazine provide a framework to look at the war from the point of view of someone who is neither Vietnamese nor American, yet whose job was to capture what was happening, from the ground up and the sky down.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: I find it interesting that the title of your book has the word 'haunting' in it.  So much about the war in Vietnam seems to summon ghosts.

Interview with Deborah Kalb, co-author of Haunting Legacy.

"The Gangster We Are All Looking For," by le thi diem thuy

Q&A with Prof. Donald Zillman

Donald N. Zillman is the Edward Godfrey Professor at the University of Maine School of Law. Among his areas of expertise is the military background of lawmakers. He served in the U.S. Army, Judge Advocate General’s Corps, Active Duty 1970-74, Reserve Duty 1974-84.

Q: You have studied the impact of military service on lawmakers. How does it affect a lawmaker to have served in the military, and what are some examples of the impact?

A: Since 1992, I have tabulated the military service (or not) of all members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.  I draw my data from the Congressional Quarterly’s post-election profiles of members of Congress.   Military service is one biographical detail listed. My research has not included individual interviews with legislators who are also veterans.  (I hope one day to have the time to undertake such a study.) 

In a 1997 article, I indicated some of the attributes that military service would give to a federal legislator.  I repeat and elaborate on those conclusions.  1) The military embodies national virtues.  Those virtues include courage, fortitude, selflessness, and respect for discipline. 2) Military service remains the significant “school of the nation.”  It exposes the service member to a wide slice—racial, religious, socio-economic, geographical-- of the American community. I recall the eminent military sociologist Charles Moskos’ observation of the 1990s that the U.S. military is the only part of American society in which blacks regularly boss around whites. Also, no other profession has a dedication to national service above self as its primary ethic.  3) For certain high-ranking military members, their service may give them genuine expertise on important military issues that face the Congress.   This is highly valuable in the Congress’ dealing with the military.  4) Even lower-ranking veterans have perspectives on military issues that non-veterans will lack.  These may include such issues as the value of aspects of new weapons systems or matters related to unit efficiency or morale.  5) Prior military service provides valuable perspective on a legislator’s most consequential military votes—to commit American forces to combat.  The veteran brings a perspective to the implications of such a vote that the non-veteran lacks.  The veteran also may be perceived to have a greater moral authority to make that decision—“I’ve done what I’m asking our troops to do.” 

In the 15 years since those observations, I would add two more likely expectations of prior military service.  Neither is the exclusive province of veterans.  But, on average, I suspect the veteran is more likely to bring these attributes to his or her legislative service than the non-veteran.  The first is a familiarity with international affairs.  Whether the congressional veteran was a low-level enlisted member or a high-ranking officer, he or she has experienced some consequences of the United States being a part of a complex and increasingly interconnected world. 

Second, the military experience on balance has educated the veteran on the need to work collaboratively with a wide variety of superiors, equals, and subordinates.  That is badly needed in today’s Congress.  Former Senator Warren Rudman, a Korean War veteran, appropriately titled his autobiography “Combat:  Twelve Years in the U.S. Senate.”  One of Senator Rudman’s more telling observations was the ability of veterans of both parties to unite on major issues as fellow Americans.  He also suggested the quiet contempt combat veteran legislators had for legislators who were ready to equate partisan political battling with actual military experience.

Q: This is the first election since 1944 in which neither major-party candidate for president has military experience, and in addition, fewer members of Congress have military service these days. What does this mean for the country, and will this trend continue?

A: During the Vietnam War era, approximately two-thirds of members of Congress were veterans.  In 1992, when I first studied veterans in Congress, that percentage had dropped to one-half.  In every election since then (including 2010), the fraction has continued to declined.  Now, less than one-fifth of the members of Congress have military service. The reasonable likelihood is that percentage will continue to decline in future elections.

There are several reasons for this. The military itself has declined in size over the last 40 years.  Our total population of all the armed forces today is smaller than the Army alone at the height of the Vietnam War.  Second, the era of the draftee or draft-induced volunteer has almost ended.  No congressional candidate today under age 55 will have faced a military draft.  Their decision to enter the armed forces was a voluntary one.  Third, while the prospective veteran congressional candidate offers attractive features to party selectors or to voters, he or she also presents some disadvantages because of military service.  Military service is likely to have removed the veteran from a political home base, have precluded the acquisition of any significant personal wealth, and have disqualified the veteran from most political activity while in uniform.

Q: Have you found a difference between Democratic and Republican members of Congress in terms of the percentages that have served, and, if so, how does that affect the two parties?

A: In 1997, I noted that while more veterans were Republicans than Democrats, the numbers did not appear out of proportion with GOP majorities in both houses of Congress.  Things have change since then.  Elections between 1998 and 2004 added to the Republican margin.  Democrats made some gains in the 2006 and 2008 elections.  But the large GOP gains in 2010 turned the “veterans bloc” heavily Republican.  As of the 2010 election, the total of 105 military veterans in Congress were composed of 70 Republicans and 35 Democrats.  Newly elected legislators from the 2010 election included 22 Republicans with military experience and only one Democrat.  All veterans with military service later than 1973 (roughly the start of the Volunteer Army era) follow the same divide—14 Democrats and 28 Republicans.

Q: What about women with military experience in Congress--how many are there, and are they likely to increase in number?

A: Rep. Sandra Adams (R-Fla.) is the only female veteran in Congress.  She follows New Mexico Republican Heather Wilson who served in the House of Representatives for the better part of a decade.  Ms. Wilson is presently the GOP candidate for a New Mexico Senate seat.  If victorious, she would be the first woman senator with military experience. 

The near total absence of female veterans from Congress is surprising.  The 2010 election resulted in 73 women representatives and 15 senators.  Women approach or exceed 15 percent of the membership in the various armed forces.  The service academies have been gender-integrated for over a quarter of a century.  A woman with a credential including honorable and distinguished military service should be an attractive congressional candidate from either political party.  Interesting bellwether elections in 2012 should be the New Mexico Senate contest between veteran Republican Wilson and non-veteran Democrat Martin Heinrich and the Illinois House race between incumbent, non-veteran Republican Joe Walsh and veteran and Democrat Tammy Duckworth.

Q: Could you describe your own military service and how it affected your subsequent career and research choices?

A: My own military service shaped my career in ways that I wouldn’t have imagined when I first entered the Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps.  The opportunity to teach and research in the fields of military law at the JAG School in Charlottesville, Virginia, led to a civilian law school teaching career.  A portion of my civilian academic work has included military issues.  The JAG School base also allowed me to take advanced degree work in international and energy law at the University of Virginia Law School.  Energy law teaching and research has been a large portion of my teaching and research life.  The military experience and the Virginia Law experience also exposed me to international issues that have been a major part of my professional life.  Later in my career when I moved to university administration, my military experiences shaped my performance as a dean, provost, and president in both many ways.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: I close with two random observations.  First, military service is hardly a guarantee of election.  The 2010 elections defeated several incumbent congressmen with strong military records.  Almost certainly, they didn’t lose because of their veteran’s status.  But, that wasn’t enough to save them when other issues weighed against them.  Likewise, the irony of presidential elections since 1992 is that the candidate with the less impressive military resume has always defeated the candidate with the stronger resume (non-veteran Bill Clinton over World War II combat veterans George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole; stateside National Guardsman George W. Bush over Vietnam vets Al Gore and John Kerry; non-veteran Barack Obama over Vietnam combat hero and POW John McCain). 

Second, the narrow issue of the presence of veterans in Congress is a part of the larger question of civil-military relations that has been part of the American experience since colonial days.  With rare exceptions, the military has been respectful of the citizenry and the civilian leadership.  Less certain has been the obligation of the citizen or the civilian leader towards the military.  Today, a very small proportion of the citizenry (and an even smaller proportion of its elites) has any familiarity with the military.  That isn’t healthy for American democracy.

Interview with Deborah Kalb, co-author of Haunting Legacy.

Don Zillman