What were the origins and inspiration of the book?

The origin goes back to the 2004 presidential campaign. At that time, a group of Vietnam veterans – the Swift Boat group - attacked Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic candidate who served in Vietnam. They attacked him for treason – in particular going after him for the testimony he gave in 1971 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in which he said there were reports that there were American soldiers who raped Vietnamese women, cut off the genitals of Vietnamese men – and he compared them to Genghis Khan.

The Swift Boat Veterans launched a vigorous campaign against Kerry – and they ended up carrying the day. As a result of their aggressive campaign, I think Kerry lost the election. I have always been fascinated by Vietnam as a story but particularly, as we saw with the role of the Swift Boat vets, the lingering power and vitality of that memory.

What is it about the Vietnam war that would do this? I began to think there was a book here, and began to get started on it. My daughter, Deborah, who has always been interested in Vietnam, had an idea about the way in which negative advertising is used in presidential campaigning, using the Swift Boat vets as an example. As a result of conversations between us that lasted over a year, we came up with a formula that resulted in the Haunting Legacy book.

What is the lingering power of this lost war? That is, how does the Vietnam war continue to influence U.S. policymaking?

The single most important fact is that Vietnam was the only war in U.S. history that we lost. And we lost it in a most humiliating way. Then-President Lyndon Johnson referred to North Vietnamese as a “raggedy-ass little fourth-rate country” – and that’s who triumphed over us. We had no respect whatsoever for the Vietnamese. We saw the war through the Cold War context – we were fighting against communism. Meanwhile, the Vietnamese were fighting for their national right as they saw it. And the fact that a great country like our own could be beaten and humiliated by a “raggedy ass” country like North Vietnam left a bitter residue of anger, resentment and humiliation. And it took the U.S. a long time to get over a lost war.

No president wants to be in the position of losing another war. Politically, that’s unacceptable and in terms of the position of the U.S. in the world, it’s untenable. So, presidents will do anything to avoid the loss of another war.

I have been told by my Asian and European friends that their countries have lost and won wars. It’s part of the natural cycle of a nation’s life. But, they’d say, you never lost anything until Vietnam, so you don’t know what it means to lose. And a legacy of the war is that we are learning to cope with something other than a complete success.

How do you see this playing out in the Obama administration, with the two major wars underway?

Take for example the Afghan war. At the American embassy in Kabul, the goal accepted by everybody – military and civilians alike – is “good enough.” In other words, the people there are prepared to settle for just about anything that will allow us to get out without looking as though we had been defeated and without us looking humiliated once again. And, some of them sardonically will add, “good enough, Afghan.”

The president hinted at this in his recent speech when he said that we are not looking to leave Afghanistan as the perfect place. So, the legacy of Vietnam has constricted our vision as well as our capability and so we are just delighted to get out of there. It’s “good enough, Afghan.”

Will this haunting stop?

I would like to believe that the haunting will stop. I wanted to believe that when President George H.W. Bush -- after the first Persian Gulf war -- said we had buried the ghosts of Vietnam in "the sands of Arabia." And it proved to be wrong. And the question here is why?

I think the answer is that today you don’t have to discuss Vietnam, the war – you have to discuss the war’s legacy. And we do that over and over again.

When the president sends troops to fight, and the question is -- are we sending too many or too few troops -- he’s talking about Vietnam. When he talks about an exit strategy, he’s talking about Vietnam. When he talks about fears of being trapped in a quagmire – he’s talking about Vietnam.

I tend to believe the legacy will continue, but with different wording. Obama had nothing to do with Vietnam, he was too young. As a presidential candidate, he proclaimed "I am post-Vietnam," and yet, at one of his first national security meetings, he said, "Afghanistan is not Vietnam." Why did he even raise Vietnam? Because it’s on his mind.

What do you hope younger generations will take away from this book?

The book is written as a series of case studies on the presidents and the role of Vietnam in their foreign policies. As a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, I would like students to have a series of case studies that ask the fundamental questions of why?; what did we know?; and, was it worth it? I would hope new generations would look at the legacy of Vietnam and develop lessons for their time. And I hope they will seriously address the Vietnam legacy and apply it to their own problems. That would be my hope as a citizen and a teacher.

How is this book different from other books about the Vietnam war?

There have been many wonderful books on the war in Vietnam, but this is the only one that addresses the legacy of the war. Thirty-six years have passed and at this particular time we are asking the question, what have we learned?

What does this book suggest about current and future global conflict prevention efforts? And for the field itself?

I would love to say: how can we take the war’s legacy and apply it to peacekeeping and that we can come up with a formula for post-conflict zones around the world.

The answer is: I don’t know. My gut feeling is that people have been fighting one another for thousands of years. There’s a limited amount of land and resources – and people struggle over control of the land and resources. And this will continue.

But that isn’t good enough. There has to be a continuing effort that could be applied in the areas of peacekeeping and peacemaking. And that is why I am such a fan of USIP. That’s why I want it to continue to do its work despite the fact that I am unable to come up with the formula. Some hatreds run so deep that it’s difficult to crack through – but the effort must be made.