Roger Hilsman Jr. (November 23, 1919 – February 23, 2014) was an American soldier, government official, political scientist, and author. He saw action in the China-Burma-India Theater of World War II, first with Merrill's Marauders, getting wounded in combat, and then as a guerilla leader for the Office of Strategic Services. He later became an aide and adviser to President John F. Kennedy, and briefly to President Lyndon B. Johnson, in the U.S. State Department while he served as Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research in 1961 to 1963 and Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs in 1963 to 1964.

There, Hilsman was a key and controversial figure in the development of U.S. policies in South Vietnam during the early stages of American involvement in the Vietnam War. He was an advocate of a strategy that emphasized the political nature of the conflict as much as the military aspect and was a proponent of the removal from power of South Vietnamese president Ngô Đình Diệm. Hilsman left government in 1964 to teach at Columbia University and retired in 1990. He wrote many books about American foreign policy and international relations. He was a Democratic Party nominee for election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1972 but lost in the general election.

Early life

Hilsman was born on November 23, 1919, in Waco, Texas, He lived in Waco only briefly, Hilsman spent part of his childhood in the Philippines, where his father was a company commander and later commandant of cadets at Ateneo de Manila, a Jesuit college.

After spending a year at Millard's Preparatory School in Washington, DC, Later reports reflected his retreat to Malaybalay after he had faced overwhelming Japanese forces, followed by another move onto the island of Negros and he was captured by the Japanese once all the islands had surrendered in 1942. Hilsman wanted to deploy his unit farther south into the Inle Lake area but was constrained by orders to help hold the road between Taunggyi and Kengtung. At some point, Hilsman was promoted to captain.)

Returning from the war, Hilsman served in the OSS as assistant chief of Far East intelligence operations in 1945 to 1946, and once the Central Intelligence Agency had been created, he served in it in the role of special assistant to executive officer in 1946 to 1947

Hilsman turned to academia and became a research associate and lecturer in international politics at the Center of International Studies at Princeton University from 1953 to 1956 and a part-time lecturer and research associate at the Washington Center of Foreign Policy Research, which was affiliated with the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, from 1957 to 1961. In line with this, Hilsman was selected to be the Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research for the U.S. Department of State, It stated that the war was primarily a political struggle and proposed policies that emphasized that the Vietnamese in rural areas were the key to victory.

In 1962, reports from American journalists in South Vietnam about the progress of the conflict with the Viet Cong, and the characteristics of the South Vietnamese government under President Ngô Đình Diệm, differed from the picture that the American military was portraying. It described weaknesses in the South Vietnamese government; the corruption of Diệm, his brother Ngô Đình Nhu, and their cohorts; and the increasing isolation of and lack of support for the Diệm regime from the South Vietnamese people. The report thus contributed to the escalation of American involvement in Vietnam and to growing doubts in U.S. government circles about the usefulness of the Diệm regime. Hilsman had risen quickly in the government bureaucracy, partly because Kennedy liked his willingness to challenge the military.

On August 24, 1963, in the wake of raids against Buddhist pagodas across the country by Nhu's special forces, Hilsman, along with Forrestal and Harriman, drafted and sent Cable 243, an important message from the State Department to U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. In South Vietnam. The message declared that Washington would no longer tolerate Nhu remaining in a position of power and ordered Lodge to pressure Diệm to remove his brother and that if Diệm refused, the United States would explore the possibility for alternative leadership in South Vietnam. The cable had the overall effect of giving tacit American approval for a coup against the regime. The events have also long been criticized as at best an example of a bizarrely poor decisionmaking process

On November 1, the 1963 South Vietnamese coup came. Although it was conducted by South Vietnamese generals, they had been encouraged by the United States and so there was shared responsibility. American decisionmakers did not want the coup to involve assassination of the current leaders, Guenter Lewy portrays Hilsman as being "farsighted and correct" in his perspective from 1964 and on, while the scholar Howard Jones views the coup against Diệm that Hilsman acted in favor of as "a tragically misguided move." Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff disliked Hilsman for his constant questioning of military estimates and forthrightness, Secretary of State Dean Rusk had been angered by Hilsman's tendency to circumvent proper channels and by the friction Hilsman caused with the military, and as vice president, Johnson had not liked Hilsman's brashness or his policies. Not liking anyone to quit outright, the president offered the position of Ambassador to the Philippines, but Hilsman declined.

In any case, on February 25, 1964, the White House announced that Hilsman had resigned; the statement was front-page news in The New York Times with Hilsman claiming he had no policy quarrels with the current administration. As his tenure ended, Hilsman argued in favor of continued perseverance in the conflict using a pacification-based counter-insurgency strategy, but against increased military action against North Vietnam, saying that until the counter-insurgency efforts had demonstrated improvement in the South, action against the North would have no effect on the Communists. joining the Department of Public Law and Government within its School of International Affairs. and his office at Columbia was adorned with Kennedy-era mementos. Hilsman lived in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, but he and his family also became longtime residents of the Hamburg Cove area of Lyme, Connecticut, for weekends and summers. The New York Times Book Review called it a "highly informative study of the internal and external forces that shaped much of American foreign policy" and said that "Hilsman makes many wise and perceptive comments on the politics of policy-making." and has been viewed as influential. He consistently maintained that had Kennedy lived, he would not have escalated the war the way Johnson did. He was part of a large "brain trust" of advisers to Kennedy during the crucial Democratic California primary in June 1968; that ended with another Kennedy assassination.

Hilsman later tried his own hand at electoral politics: In the 1972 Congressional elections, he ran for election to the United States House of Representatives as the Democratic Party nominee for Connecticut's 2nd congressional district. He secured the Democratic nomination in a race where few Democrats wanted to run or thought the party had much of a chance of winning. He campaigned on domestic issues as well as those of foreign policy, presenting a five-point plan for increasing employment in eastern Connecticut. McGovern lost in a landslide, and Hilsman lost the congressional general election to the Republican incumbent, Robert H. Steele, by a wide margin (66 to 34 percent).

Hilsman retired from Columbia in 1990 upon reaching the then-mandatory retirement age of 70. Reflecting upon his life, he said, "I've been doing the same thing in the military, on Capital Hill, and at Columbia. The content is the same. ... Of all my careers, I think university teaching is the most satisfying."

Hilsman remained active in local politics, where he was a member of the Democratic Town Committee in Lyme for over two decades. and Ithaca, New York.

Hilsman died at the age of 94 on February 23, 2014,

Books

Hilsman wrote a number books about 20th century American foreign policy as well as a few on other topics. His works include:

  • Strategic Intelligence and National Decisions (Free Press, 1956; reprinted by Greenwood Press, 1981)
  • Foreign Policy in the Sixties: The Issues and the Instruments (Johns Hopkins Press, 1965) [co-editor with Robert C. Good]
  • To Move a Nation: The Politics of Foreign Policy in the Administration of John F. Kennedy (Doubleday, 1967)
  • Politics of Policy Making in Defense and Foreign Affairs: Conceptual Models and Bureaucratic Politics (Harper & Row, 1971; Second Edition Prentice-Hall, 1987; Third Edition Prentice Hall, 1993 [with Laura Gaughran and Patricia A. Weitsman])
  • The Crouching Future: International Politics and U.S. Foreign Policy – A Forecast (Doubleday, 1975)
  • To Govern America (Harper & Row, 1979)
  • The Politics of Governing America (Prentice Hall, 1985)
  • American Guerrilla: My War Behind Japanese Lines (Brassey's, 1990; republished by Potomac Books, 2005)
  • George Bush vs. Saddam Hussein: Military Success! Political Failure? (Presidio, 1992)
  • The Cuban Missile Crisis: The Struggle Over Policy (Praeger, 1996)
  • From Nuclear Military Strategy to a World Without War: A History and a Proposal (Praeger, 1999)
  • A Layman's Guide to the Universe, The Earth, Life on Earth, and the Migrations of Humankind (Publishing Works, 2003)
  • Classical Chinese Cooking: For the Occasional and Amateur Chef (Publishing Works, 2005) <!-- does this one really exist? web listings are spliced with another book, could all be a mistake? -->

See also

  • Krulak Mendenhall mission
  • McNamara Taylor mission
  • Reaction to the 1963 South Vietnamese coup

References

  • Official page at Department of State Office of the Historian
  • Hilsman–Forrestal Report of January 25, 1963
  • Interview with Roger Hilsman on the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, 1981
  • Roger Hilsman Personal Papers, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum
  • Roger Hilsman interview part of Frontline Diplomacy: The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, a site at the Library of Congress