>> and at 6:00 p.m., eyewitness accounts from inside the white house during the "apollo 11" lunar landing. >> and we really staked ourselves into the cabinet room there throughout the day. you can see the windows were dark so, you know, we're into nighttime. the module landed at 4:15 in the afternoon and then the astronauts did not walk until later. >> explore our nation's past on "american history tv" every weekend on c-span3. "american history tv's" look at u.s. foreign policy shifts now to southeast asia. after world war ii, western powers hoped to stop the spread of communism to vietnam by fostering anti-communist governments in the region. in his book, "arc of containment," wen qing ngoel argues despite the outcome of the vietnam war, the u.s. was largely successful in its overall regional strategy. the wilson center in washington,

d.c., hosted this discussion. it's about 90 minutes. >> all right, everyone. i would like to call us all to order. good afternoon. and welcome to this afternoon's session of the washington history seminar historical perspectives on international and national affairs. my name is eric arnesen. i'm co-chair of this seminar along with christian ostermann who represents the wilson center. as you may see, we have c-span taping here today so we would like to welcome those of you who are watching on your computers or on your television screens and suggest that you visit our website to learn more about the seminar series and upcoming speakers here at the wilson center. the washington history seminar is a collaborative effort of two organizations, the woodrow wilson international center for scholars and its history and public policy program, and the

american historical association's national history center. we are now in our ninth year of programming. approaching our big decade-long celebration that will come next year. we meet weekly. mostly on monday afternoons during the academic year. the seminar wants to thank a number of institutions that helped to make this seminar possible. and the george washington university department of history. we'd also like to thank a number of anonymous donors whose contributions literally make possible sessions such as this one. and should you, yourselves, be so inclined to join the ranks of anonymous or not so anonymous donors, we would certainly welcome that. details about how to do so can be found on the back of the flyer you may have picked up or is outside of the door of this seminar. behind the scenes a number of folks work very hard to make

this seminar possible. i'd like to extend thanks to the assistant director of the national history center. pete, history and public policy program and our two interns from the wilson center, kyle nichols and suyan kim. thank you very much, folks, for all of your efforts in helping us to pull this off. i'd also like to welcome dane kennedy, thoe director of the national history center and roger lewis, the founding director of the washington history center. before we begin, i'd like to ask everyone, take out this device that you know you have in your bag and turn it to silent or va bra vibrate so it doesn't go off in an inauspicious moment as these devices tend to do on a regular basi basis. all right. all of that said, it's a

pleasure to introduce today oes speaker. wen-q wen-qing ngoel. he did post-doctoral work at northwestern and yale university. his book, "the arc of containment: britain, the united states, and anti-communist in southeast asia," is due to be published, or, rather, released by cornell university press perhaps some time next month. and this book will see -- to shape u.s. policy in the wider region. he's also published essays in diplomatic history in 2017 and a prize-winning essay on the domino theory that appeared in the pages of the "journal of american east asian relations" back in 2004. and with that, we will hear

about "the arc of containment." >> thank you very much. warm greetings to everybody from the trochpitropics. thanks to the wilson center to share my work with you. thanks to christian, eric, the peep behind the scenes, chuck krauss, chuck, peter, also amanda perry who's not here. thanks for helping to take mishap. today i'll be presenting from the title of my book "the arkc f containment." it's available for 50% of the retail price at this time while stock lasts up to the 1st of april. the book's goal is to recast the history of u.s. empire in southeast and east asia through world war ii through the end of american intervention in vietnam. combined with anti-communism nationalist across southeast asia and came together intertwining with pre-existing

local antipathy to what china and the chinese diaspra. it showed how this ushered the region to european dominated colonialism to u.s. hegemony. the cover, you see the cover, a british helicopter and it's deploying what appear to be troops to the borneo territories. the border with indonesia. this happens during the malaysia/indonesia confrontation of 1963 to 1966 and as my talk progresses, the significance of this will become clear. now, let me start off by also saying my book is a response to what's been the dominant story of u.s. foreign relations with southeast asia. these pictures will be familiar to many of us because they capture that spirit of the dominant story. you see the fall of saigon. the artificial state of south vietnam. decline of america. and it's finally abandoned by a humiliated, fl fleeing, superpo.

a vietnamese tank literally gate crashing the party. vietnamese fleeing desperately atop the cia office. u.s. personnel pushing helicopters off ships to make way for more evacuatories coe choppers. imagined the states of southeast asia as a role of teetering dominance in danger of falling to communism. this south vietnamese domino came crashing down if april 1975. it was preceded by cambodia. it was followed by laos. major historical studies of u.s. foreign relations with southeast asia focus on this ill-fated intervention of the united states in vietnam. and accordingly, they generalize that u.s. failure in vietnam is emblematic of u.s. failure in the wider region. in post-clone yolonial southeas, you have a collapse that was supposed to happen in the face of indigenous nationalism. but what about the broader region?

what about the dominos that did not fall? what about britain which won its cold war battle and maintained its military institutions in malaysia and something poingapo decades after the french withdrew from the region? indeed, what about the dominos that are typically consigned to the margins of u.s. foreign relations history and the global cold war? countries like malaysia. countries like singapore. don't we, and this is crucial, don't we lose the fundamental logic of interconnectedness in the domino theory if we confine our attention to the disasters in indonesia? these are the questions that animated my research. that took me back to 1954 when president eisenhower would propose the domino principle to describe the interconnectedness of southeast asia. for many of us, 1954 will probably be an important year. we'll find it familiar. that's when the french met

terrific defeat to the communist-led vietmen. at the beginning of that year eisenhower and his advisers got together. at that time the french were already surrounded. there was anticipation the vietmen would strike and prshl pressure on eisenhower to commit combat troops. eisenhower said, quote, with great force, he could not imagine committing u.s. troops anywhere in south asia except malaya. well, at the time, britain and its local allies in malaya were waging a war against the guerilla fighters of a mostly ethnic chinese malayan communist party. london called it an emergency. eisenhower saw it in broader regional terms. his inaugural speech in 1953 connected this french war in indo-ch ind indo-china to the british struggle to the american commitment in the korean peninsula. these guys, the mcp, had been the backbone of an anti-japanese

resistance during world war ii. and because the chinese population of malaya amounted to almost 40%, there was some level of popularity that these mcp fighters enjoyed. american officials looking at malaya worried that it would become a chinese state. quote, chinese state. they worried, too, about singapore which was 78% ethnic chinese. in fact, singapore affiliates of the nyp had infiltrated chinese language middle schools in the island as well as dominated a lot of the trade unions, but by the mid 1950s in washington's eyes, the situation in malaya had improved certainly. british and malayan forced gained ground against the mcp and sent its tattered remains to the thai border. britain also shrewdly aligned itself with the anti-communist nationalists in malaya. by 19 57, malaya gained its

freedom, for independence, from britain, and it was headed by a fervently anti-communist malaya prince. you see him on the screen. of course, in the records, he's referred to as the prince. helpfully, he won his leadership via the ballot box and was popularly regarded as the father of malaya. also the prince remained very friendly with britain and started reaching out to the united states. some of you may moe what the malaysian flag looks like and you know it resembles america's old glory. this was by the prince's design and his choice. he he called it the stripes of glory. he made a broadcast to the united states saying malaya must tie up its fate. 1958, malaya rendered assistance to the british intelligence services as well as the cia in a plot to topple the left-leaning regime thein indonesia which isy when these two met in 1960, you can see that they're quite

happy, eisenhower was elated, right? he was elated when the malayan leader visited the u.s. eisenhower called him one of america's staunchest friends. a staunch defender of freedom. a partner that the u.s. valued highly in the cold war. and in private, what he said was that malaya should pursue the creation of a regional anti-communist grouping that would be clearly indigenous, not fouled by the fact that the united states got involved just like the southeast asia treaty organization. he said to the prince, malaya could exert terrific force to counter communist influence in asia. with his encouragement, the prince managed to do this by 1961. he formed precisely such a group with pro-u.s. thailand as well as the philippines and this was called asa, the association of southeast asia. asa would lay the foundations for asean created in 1967. the association of southeast asian nations. that would include singapore as well as indonesia and these

three anti-communist founding members, malaysia, thailand, and the philippines. all of these countries were ruled by conservative anti-communist elites and would fully support u.s. intervention in vietnam, and during the '60s and the '70s, they would pursue increasingly intimate ties with the ascendant superpower. these were the vital moments of what is a wider pro-u.s. trajectory across southeast asia. one that would ensconce the majority of the peoples as well as the resources in the u.s. orbit by the height of the vietnam war. now what my book suggests is that this story of the wider region is lost if we focus tightly on the fate of indo-china. america's failure in vietnam is important without being central. whereas a number of scholars judge that u.s. -- the u.s.' humiliating retreat from vietnam is the end of a short-lived american empire. my book considers the dominos that did not fall. these dominos transformed over

time into steady stanchions for u.s. predominance. they created a geostrategic arc that inclosed the south china sea, contained the vietnamese revolution and circled china. that's why my book is entitled "the arc of containment." it reflects what u.s. officials had very early on from the cold war been intending. dean acheson, secretary of state, architect of nato in europe, saw southeast asia as part of a great crescent that connect eed japan to india. the kennedy administration officials believe the creation of malaysia, right, the peninsula of malaysia, singapore island, borneo territories, believed it would create a wide anti-communist arc around the south china sea. the johnson administration saw asean in a, quote, great arc of asian and pacific nations and

nixon fantasized about a long belt of u.s. allies that went around the rim of china stretching from japan to india. this is the arc of containment but what was the base of this empire of former dochl knminos? what was the connecting tissue to mesh with anti-communist nationalism across the nation along with u.s. co-objectives for southeast asia? now, looking at the dominos that surrounded indo-china, i argue the connecting tissue was pre-existing local antipathy to china. throughout the clone yolonialoo tended to utilize anti-chinese to reflect away from therms t. they branded chinese as foreigners. many were creole-ized, intermarried in thailand, malays malaysia, and the philippines.

for the europeans and americans, there's been a long history of -- as a result, the fact is the brief supremacy of japan during world war ii, you can see in the middle with the propaganda posters with the much maligned octopus. that brief supremacy was an interlude in a much longer history of treating the chinese as the -- threatening via immigration, in the top left corner or threatening southeast asia via communist expansion. usually, what the americans, the british, and many conservative southeast asian elites believed was china even when it was ruled by the chinese nationalists, and especially so when it was dominated by the chinese communist party, they believed that china will use its networks to expand its influence. the chinese diaspora by presidethe

1950s numbered millions. o often expressed a concern that the chinese had underlying loyalties to, quote, the mother country, sting that boomething both sides of the atlantic used. the british called them a chinese problem, a state within a state, and the u.s. often used the phrase, chinese penetration, to refer to the problem. now, i published work on this and argue that very basis of the domino theory, the logic of regional interconnectedness, comes from anglo-american imagination of chinese ha jomny in the nation. this anti- chinese prejudice fueled the consolidation of power. local conservative elites tended to weaponize a widespread distrust of their chinese populations. the resentment of ethnic chinese economic success even though, to be very clear, not all of them

were prosperous. and also the belief that ethnic chinese might serve subversive goals. melding this anti-chinese sentiment with anti-communism during the cold war became the power. we turn first to the story of british neocolonial in in malaysia. up there you have pictures of malcome mcdonald on the left, the uk commissioner general for southeast agia. next to him, the founder of the mala chinese association. next to him is the prime minister of malia as well as the head of the united malays organization. finally a wounded mcp fighter. the ethnic chinese and malia made up nearly 40% of the population and the mcp was 95% chinese. the the ethnic affinity couldn't

be denied even though many of the chinese ethnic chinese were necessarily forced to communist there was a group that could be represented especially in a mala dominated system. the may lay tended to be antagonistic towards the chinese. especially following world war ii because the mcp went on a campaign against the malays casing them of being collaborators with the chinese. and they were the single largest producer of rubber and tin. it was a big earner and made america the largest customer for the british the question was how to do the decolonization of malay such to extend british imperial presence in the country as well as defeat the mcp. the answer is what a historian termed national building colonialism. reordered colony, caught,

sponsor local west friender leaders. usher them to the head of the independent regime. guarantee the alignment with the former colonial rulinger. u.s. policy in the philippines was really similar. cultivating elites, maintaining massive bases, crafting trade treaties to link the economies to each other. one journalist much later called this dependent independence. how did this come to pass in may layia. between the 40s and 50s what malcome mcdonald did with the british colonial authorities was remind the anti-communist if you don't get a durable multiracial accord going that turns onomah lay-in communists we will never give you independence. the impetus for malays antagonistic to chinese to get together for the foshag the political to get together there was a great impetus to do so

malcome mcdonald encourage- you can guess what he was niefted fop tong cheng locke came together with the tonku to create the alliance. what's ironic about the alliance political port is tong cheng locke created the malay no other from other races joined the parties. united may la organizations sed headed by the ton can you pure machlt lay no others joining the party. the alliance fought for interracial unity. interracial unity while keeping parties racially pure. but in produced the multiracial coalition that appeared to be durable in the 1950s that made the british confident enough to release malaya and give independence. what's critical is in the midst of this they whipped up

anti-chinese sentiment in a anti-communist package. malcome mcdonald took to the airwaves because radio malaysia was popular in the malaysia as well as singapore. historians have shown a large number owned radios. malcome mcdonald would visit people's home saying communist parties are alien. chinese tyrants probably linked up with the international communist movement. but if you have patriotic love for malaysia then you especially chinese in malaysia would turn against those fellows in your ethnic fellows in the malaysia communist party. he did it constantly. did it work? all the propaganda? well, by the time mccormack om mcdonald was coming to the end of the radio broadcast campaign malaysiaens in the civil service complained about the increasing number of chinese in the constib

layer saying don't trust niece guys. the malaysia communist party complained saying all the chinese would join in the fight against us are traitors against the cause. so there was some effectiveness there. but even more crucial was sir cheng lock ton a and being a prominent chinese businessman in the rubber industry he was able to get pretty much all of the political grass roots leaders to line up behind him and take on an anti-communist stance. one of the biggest things he said was that to be a good chinese is to be a good malaysiaen join in the anti-communist campaign. once this alliance came together with the tonku and sir cheng locke tong it was possible for the coalition to go ahead to destroy essentially the malaysiaen communist party the result is the time picture. wounded in what is essentially a extermination campaign.

because in fact more mcp fighters were killed than even started the revolt in the first place. it was a huge extermination campaign. this was prosecuted by malaysiaen of all races. so malaysia rose to independence in this way. the mcp crushed and britains chosen allies became dominant. the fact is that the u.s. was very inspired by this. american diplomats that were come to the region and visiting and everything were really quite inspired by british tensity and decolinization sfraegs especially since the other european powers were fading fast in the region. and they watch the nation building colonialism as well as the counterinsurgents campaign and i'll talk about that later. u.s. diplomat john mel by met with malcom mcdonald pan called him the most constructive man i've met. he brought back to the u.s. a tract written by sir cheng locke ton in which he talked about how the best person to catch the

chinese bandit and the chinese chief is the chinese policeman. now thinking back to how british methods seemed to be working in the 1950s john mel by penned this in his report to the state department. it is time that we learn the trick of at least having asians fight asian battles that yellow men killed by yellow men rather than white men alone. it sooms superfluous to explain this but the point is that his observation captured the heart of british neocolonialism in malaysia which allowed the power to persist. outside of malaysia this violent act the committed by a royal marine commanderer against the mcp bee heading them one a woman one a man all of the violent acts in malaysia were paralleled anti-chinese policies standard fare of southeast asian elites elsewhere. next to the royal marine commander you have the thai

leader from 1930s onwards he started to craft a thai identity and he drew on a notorious early 20th century tract written by the king that described chinese as the jews of the east. what he went out of his way to do was arrest and deport chinese activists that were alleged or known to be chinese nationalist operators. he conducted a thai campaign to eject chinese from critical sectors of the economy. and importantly knowing this would earn the ire of chinese diaspora and chinese he turned to the united states in 1950 adopted anti-communist and anti-chinese stance. became a u.s. client and enjoyed american military and economic aid which entrenched the thai military elite for decades to come. the philippine leader and his predecessors also turned ethnic

chinese out of crucial economic sectors very much like the thai program and into the 1950s mixing anti-cheenz national imt imt and being part of the broader anti-communist campaign from the united states. now sbonzen history is littered with many examples of and i kmienz pogroms substantially more brutal than in the philippines and thailand but simply it was us versus them mentality. indigenous nationalists targeted chinese from the 1910s as greedy capitalist, infy kjells, aliens collaborate raters with the dutch. in the 1930s chinese nationalists attacked chinese business -- indigenous nationalist attacked chiends businessmen in the 30s and under sukano chinese economic activities were restricted and some 100,000 ethnic chinese fled cy for fear of persecution. i want to say this is a kissing

cousin to what was happening in malaysia. during the emergency, the and i mcp campaign some 40,000 ethnic chinese were deported while the war was going on. now wab was sukano partial to the china and left leaning leader? here is the neocolonialism is long shadow that britain cast over the u.s. now i mentioned earlier that there was a prem american fachgs with british counterinsurgents. obsessed about learning from it. this article by william leaderer comes out in the readers digest in 1962. william leaderer some know is the co-author of the ugly american, the big best seller. this article praises let british for kor aling half a million chinese malaysiaens into camps called new villages. to hive them off from mcp

guerillas. because of that the new villages made it easier and easier for britain and its malaysiaen allies to track mcp fighters trying to acquire supplies from the new villager. leaderer in this article called the new villagers the wonders of the war. this preoccupation went obviously beyond just the readers digest. the u.s. army was very fast nature with the malaysiaen emergency how the british conducted counterinsurgents by december 1960 produced this, the handbook for the suppression of communist guerilla and terrorist operations. it makes no secret of what its goal is, you know, based on what the picture is there. and what this book cited what that handbook cited was the british in malaysia are the only other successful example other than the american campaign against the peasant rebellion in the philippines. so because the british are the only fading colonial power that

somehow managed to do this there is something to learn. jfk is said to have asked immediately after his inauguration -- supposed to be a urban legend but many reported he said this. he asked after his inauguration, what are we going to do about guerilla warfare? and soon enough the kennedy administration becomes indone u.n. dated with study was the huk rebellion or the greek rebellion and so on. basically studies of counterinsurgents kept turning up in the white house in the early years, 1961 to 1963. the u.s. army would get its hands on the british counterensurjts manual, called aa.t.o.m. and i terrorist operations in malaysia. once it got it parcelled it oh units for indoctrination. by 1961 did shall did shall this was moving quickly. the u.s. paerm had almost 70

nations as clients of american counterinsurgents indoctrination training wri which drew on the british model process number grew throughout the cold war. it was the transmission belt of counterinsurgents there was undisguised glee in the records that more and more countries would sign up to get the counterinsurgents training. every year in the 60s, late 1960s american policy makers demanded more studies of counterinsurgents practices and back to the british example. and it wouldn't stop really. in 1926 rand corporation, the thing tank commissioned by the the state department had to do another study, multiple reports about food, control, population control, how to use the air force, how to use scouts, et cetera. about 60 oh odd pages of this, longer than my dissertation, completed in september 1964. soon after president lyndon johnson acquired the

authorization of the fateful gulf tongan resolution to wage war in vietnam. in fact it's hard to downplay how important it is because it started to seep into the silver screens. this movie is based on from the united artist is based on an australian novel. it sounds like not a particularly enticing movie title. they retitled it the seventh dawn. starring william holden slightly past his prime. it's about malusi. the malaysiaen emergency and the fight against the mcp. in the book it's about an australian counterinsurnlts expert during world war ii hangs around with the mcp and becomes the expert that helps the british to destroy the mcp after world war ii. so of course you can't have an australian doing this. it's william holden, an american who against all historical information stayed back in malaysia worked with the mcp and

eventually helped the british defeat the mcp. a movie from 1964. i watched it so you did not have to. that's why by the time we get to 1963 even though washington officials worried about the chinese population of singapore and apprised of the fact gnat singapore prime minister was strugs struggling against those deemed extreme leftist chinese chaufennist jfk and close advisers seemed to expect that the creation of malaysia. the absorption of singapore into a large frags against anti-communism that would snuff out that one u.s. official called the singapore reds. indeed, 12 days after leeann the british incarcerated many prom then leaders of left wing. kennedy said this about the creation of malaysia. the best hope for security no the vital part of the world. furthermore as i alluded to

earlier kennedy advisers envisioned malaysia completing the the wide anti-communist arc enclosing the south china sea. we come back to sukano. he was ideologically speaking probating in the sign o soviet rivalry. also his power base depended on the massive political heft of the sbonzen communist party, the pki, the third largest communist party in the world. how does this connected to colonialism u.s. hegemony. in 1963 he officially launched what he called the confrontation. to crush malaysia which was due to be formed in september 1963. he opposed the creation of malaysia. he called it a british neocolonial plot to encircle indonesia. and he said that the tonku was a colonial stooge in league with

the british. and singapore's military bases run by the british were going to be used against indonesia. even "the new york times" called malaysia a giant and mentioned that it might be a counterweight to indonesian aggression from the south. by the time the campaign of indonesia had started li kqoun yu. you see him was on the move through the non-aligned world to make the case against sukam burma india, egypt egypt, all to plead the case for malaysia. and he won over the former friends of sukan 307 egypt and india were friendly. yugoslavia apologized for criticizing malaysia. burma agreed the federation of malaysia would allow mall states like singapore to succeed. as depictsed on the cover of my book. british animalsen forces raided borneo to keep sbonzen forces on

the back food. animalsia funneled tort to is he sessionist to destabilize the country. waging against the british economy. the indonesian economy went into free fall. indonesians diplomats -- i think this is a bit too small but the point is it's africa. let me explain what's happening in the african continent crucially indonesians couldn't match what li did in early '64. li and a team of malaysians went on a 17-nation tour of africa to convince them that the actions were unwarranted animalsia was the legitimate fulfillment of the self-determination aspiration of malaysiaens and singaporeans. li found himself hon a roll. many agreed he struck a vain of distaste for tukano. they were callingment sukano a

hitler. the ivory coast and kania agreed to support the entry into the restating membership of united nations security council. this helped lock in malaysiaen legitimacy in the world body by early 1965. months before in jimt afor nations had condemned the tukano campaign. outflanked he withdrew from the ungs. and he he said in his had memoirs of 1965 colonialism was in not retreating in his backyard just changing shape. and he was right. there was something else he didn't see coming. major general suhato, the pro u.s. sbonzen army was courted, trained and equipped by washington since the late 1950s. deeply anti-communist and very distrustful of the pki. only needing a pretext to self seize power from sukano. it was as one called it a

government in waiting. the pki rightly worried about the army tripped up by trying to seize the initiative. mounting an operation to sequester sukano to the protect him from the republican army and it became easy for the army to make the bid for power. what did he do? he and his team utilized anti-chinese sentiment mixed it into a deadly cocktail with anti-come nimt blamed china fore the pski move and this powered the indonesian communist party. the faith is that sukano laid the foundations for in because he condeend the last spate of anti-chinese violence in 1963. he had only recently enacted the discriminatory laws against ethnic chinese. empowering officials to evict sbonzen chinese from homes if the considered a security threat. while the massacre was going on with the sbonzen army destroying the pki some 20,200,000 ethnic

chinese were let coerced into leaching for china a land they didn't know. many thousands of chinese which was not chinese were massacred in 1965 jakarta bureaucrat relations with beijing. this was the greatest transformation in east and southeast age in the 1960s. herein lie the the important iron with. this is 1967 the massacre occurs. the important irony as the u.s. is committing its combat troops to vietnam to prevent the dominos to falling from come many nims you have southeast agy already shifted to the american orbit. as british influence waned following conference. singapore followed the northern neighbor in malaysia in gravitating to the united states. li kwon yu became an a aapologizist for vietnam war.

criticalically, siding with the u.s. was very beneficial. military prokurmt nas singapore provided for the vietnam war amounted to 15% of singapore's national income. u.s. investment in singapore flowered there after. filling the vacuum that britain would leave behind. but the by the late the '60s, the founding enemies of asean. philippines, thailand, singapore were to the right of the cold war divided and the overall pro u.s. trajectory of the region was clear. now, did the americans downcast over the falters efforts in vietnam even notice? well that's why i put this picture up with president johnson pan li qon the yu by august 1967 president johnson announced that the u.s. had on its side quote what i said earlier the great arc of asian and pacific nations, i.e., the asean states, japan and south korea.

he understood o stood and in please conferences he said that age willing nations were suspicious of china. they saw communism as anti-nationalist. lyndon johnson argued that a reverse domino effect was already in play. and he wasn't the only one that noticed. from '68 to '69, the soviet lead you can see breeze nef admitted to the american official that american predominance in was a fact and a valuable check against the concommon enemy china. now breeze nef tried to. the asean countries were not interested in the soviet band wagon np in 1969 you can see this man responsible for the day to day running of chinese foreign policy expressed frustration that something that american intelligence discovered. he expressed frustration that china was encircled and isolated on most key policy issues.

cho admitted the containment of southeast asia was more numerous than any other area of the world. combined about the destabilizing effects of the cheyennes society. china would to have to admit to u.s. hegemony in the pacific from outside of the white house looking in richard nixon in october 1968 was trying to prove the foreign policy chops because he was running for president again. he articulated the same sentiments writing in foreign affairs an article entitled asia after vietnam he encouraged u.s. policy makers to look beyond vietnam for possibilities. vietnam was a small nation, he said. it filled our minds, the screen of our minds but did not fill the map. in fact all around the rim of china were u.s. allies. age willing nations seeing the u.s. as a protector and concerned instead about chinese

expansionism. he described the long belt of pro u.s. nations as i've said before, stretching for japan, through southeast asia, the 3,000 mile arc of indonesian islands to india. anchored by australia appear new zealand linked by the sea to the united states. basically it was a pivot asking for a pivot to wider asia that described what i say is a more characteristic pattern of the region as path following the pacific war. now what did they all behold? johnson, breznev what did they see. >> the map in my book, the arc of containment around the south china sea. containing the revolutions of indochina. the arc connected asean to u.s. allies in japan and south korea. so take in the early cold war. southeast ageening nations were we are speefd at dominos teeters to communist but by the end of

the sheet are vietnam war they had stable regime was depend gli pro u.s. leaders process this condition produced by neocolonialism. the anti-cheyennes foundations of southeast asia and the eagerness with which the u.s. sought to consolidate the advantage and build deem are deeper economic and military advantages with friends in the region. the fact is the anti-communist nationalists of region had not cast off the colonial order. instead they established a new imperial system in collaboration with the u.s. to preserve the new found independence and did so during the cold war which i suggest is really a bloody chapter in a much longer and continuous history of western imperialism in southeast asia, a transition phase between european dominated colonialism and u.s. hegemony. thanks very much.

[ applause ] >> i think i have we have much to discuss. just a few ground rules. we -- if you would wait until you get called upon, wait for the microphone to see pu. please identify yourself when you get the microphone as well. so let me start off with a basic question, if i could. and it has to do with the lessons that american policy makers drew from the malaysiaen counterinsurgents example you spoke about a few moments ago and occupies an important chapter and more of the book. what strikes me is americans obsess about the success the british have in suppressing the malaysiaen communists. they generate report after report. they study it want to apply this to vietnam. they even import for a time sir

robert thompson, a leading british counterinsurgents specialist to advise them. yet in the end you call it a fantasy. it's not a silver bullet. they don't replicate the example. so how and why do the americans get it so wrong? they don't replicate the village program from malaysia and the strategic hamlets in vietnam. there is a lot that doesn't work. yet they think they are following the guidelines. why do they get it wrong? >> well, we have the very various reasons obviously one of them is i think that the british found a way to charm the american policy makers and convince them that they were indispensible to u.s. policy in south vietnam. so the british understood -- like sir robert thompson understood that the south vietnamese leadership was not

interested in the british model of malaysia. but continued to persuade and represent to american officials that in fact it was the british model that was being applied. and the enthusiasm with which british officials spoke about their model, even though it wasn't be applied convinced a lot of u.s. officials that this would be the way to go, that they were actually winning the war and that the british model was actually being applied. so one part of it was the british charm offensive on american policy makers. and british -- and u.s. policy makers willingness to go along with this because they thought that something could be brought out of malaysia and put -- brought to bear inside vietnam. getting it wrong though -- this is the second thing i want to say. getting it wrong is a question of is it really applicable in the first place? it's not clear really that the malaysiaen model was in any way truly relevant to vietnam.

there were numerous things that critics attempt to apply the british model have ticked off. they have said things like how the malaysian communist party didn't have help the way the vietnamese communists did. the malaysian the communists were a rag tag bunch to begin with not several tens of thousands the way the vietnamese communists were. this is all true. it becomes a moot question after a while as to whether or not it's applicable because it was never applied. right? and because they labored -- the americans labored unthe illusion it was being applied over time. and i would just attribute that to this really problematic anglo american relationship of wanting to learn from the british and thinking of them as the imperial example that they needed to get some cache of knowledge from. >> thank you. >> christian.

>> thanks. great presentation. thank you so much for your inspired talk and i think this was probably the most dashing picture ever seen of leon leonid brezhev. you're here at the cold war national history project. i'd like to ask you to talk a little bit to us in the audience and viewers out there about what kind of sources what kind of news sources led you to a new take on this history? in particular, were you able to get into non-western, non-u.s. sources? thank you. >> okay. so first of all i would say that the diplomatic records of countries like malaysia, singapore, indonesia, philippines, thailand, all of

them, are pretty much not available. for various reasons which i went go into here. but when you don't get those diplomatic records then you ask yourself, how can you get at some of these actors who played a very important role if exercising a great amount of agency but don't necessarily turn up in official records. and those where i get the story of sir cheng locke teng. i was able to get his private papers that have not been featured in a international history, not been thought of in a foreign policy dimension. instead he was always pictured and written about in a domestic story of race relations animals yan independence. what i was able to find when i put it in the larger context of anti-chinese anti-communist nationalism was the things he did to drive a bargain with the

uniteds malaysia organization. these had wider ramifications and able to get that out of the the private this was available at the southeast asian studies on the internet. another of the operative papers was the foreign minister of singapore s. roger ratnun crucial here. as the u.s. is pulling out -- i didn't mention this -- pulling out of vietnam and many of the policy makers are despairing feelings sad. other countries are tried trying to persuade the u.s. to remain in the region that's what you get from the private paper. roger ratnan goes for the asia is society, american organization of businessmen, to the international press institute and basically he says, can you really opt out of asia? if you opt out of agy and the pacific aren't you opting out of

world history. sort of cajoling abwe'dling and cokesing at the same time. and he says, so maybe the cold war is over because you have pulled out of vietnam. but, you know, why don't you do a second intervention and you can win the cool war. and the cool war is economic investment, trade, something completely separate. of course this is a fantasy right completely separate from any kind of imperial misadventure just trade with us and invest with us you will surely win the cool war. i get a lot of this very exciting stimulating words of southeast asians getting their agency because of things like private papers and the way they push their agenda. yeah. >> back here against the wall. >> steve coffee retired diplomat. i'd like to go back to the first

question. if i understood your -- your clear presentation, the reason -- the real reason for the british success in malaysia and in fact sort of the premise it was based on it was a political strategy of reconciling the -- the two communities. >> um-hum. >> and was it that -- it appears that the united states overlooked that fundamental reality and really the lessons it took from that experience were a series of techniques. and it -- it failed to pay any attention to -- to the fundamental -- you know, the fundamental premise that had to be put in place if anything was going to succeed in vietnam. so that's -- my first question, is my interpretation of what your thesis is correct?

and my second question is, do you see any contemporary application of this history as we contend -- as the united states contends with a growing chinese power? >> okay. yes, i think that your interpretation is correct. i think what was ironic for me was finding that very often the studies of the british model paid quite close attention to the political solutions, the fact that the british were able to ally themselves with the appropriate anti-communist nationalists and to reconcile the different races together. so there was attention paid when the original reports, you know, are being generated. but the real problem then becomes what do we do with the reports so we can produce out of the many reports a general counterinsurgency doctrine. here what i argue -- and i think

that's where a lot of debates will be. here i argue that out of all the many reports the desire was to turn it into something that was modular, something that could be infinitily replikable. as a result a huge amount of watering down occurred. instead of talking about the peculiarities it got diluted into just there is to be a political accord. there must be some way to ally yourselves with the anti-communist nationalists in that particular situation. but the rest of it is techniques, techniques, techniques. i think that there was that problem of diluting as they moved from the multiple particularized reports into a general doctrine. so i think that that- that was part of the problem. with respect to the second question, so first of all, my caveat, i'm a historian. i worry a lot about saying stuff about policy today because i'll probably be wrong. and that's why i'm not a policymaker. what i would say is if we look at the surveys that institutes

for southeast asian studies has done recently, you find that a lot of southeast asians still deeply distrust china. they don't see it as a benign power. a lot of ordinary southeast asians are trying to communicate to their governments about the belt and road initiative and saying don't get into what they perceive, whether rightly or wrongly, to be an indebtedness trap. the networks are going to be problematic maybe malicious. ordinary malaysians are reflecting this in sprays i thing i talked about earlier about how southeast asian in many i ways see chinese expansionism as as anti-nationalist, infringing sovereignty, i think that persists into today. and that distrust tells me something about how china may maybe doesn't have the political

capital that -- that maybe people have overlooked as a question. i mean, i suggest if you look at south china sea problem much being militarized by many, many, artificial militarized islands, that show of force, that saber rattling is i think a symptom of understanding the inadequacy of chinese political capital in the region. they don't really have that kind of purchase with southeast asian politics, even though i would say southeast asian politicians seem to be trapped in their new cycle of insecurity worrying about whether to choose between the united states or china. they are freaking out over the inevitability which i think is a myth of the inevitability of the rise of china. so is it applicable? i think there are a lot of things that persist, a lot of continue unit that is you might be able to discern. whether or not that turns into doctrine, i don't know.

yeah. >> yes, over here. and then we'll come back to this side. >> hi, glenn marcus, johns hopkins. just to follow up on the question, robert thompson, did he give advice that was ignored? >> yes. so the person who was actually in charge of the strategic hamlets is the brother of ziem, nu and he only met nu once or never met him at all, ever. and what nu wanted was to adapt a french counterinsurgency model used in allege algeria to the strategic hamlets, the genealogy of strategic hamlets comes from a french model. it seems obvious that strategic hamlets comes from that and not

nu villages. robert thompson actually spent more of his time doing self-promotion, i would say, more self-promotion, more propagandaizing, the validity of the british model for american ears that were more than willing to pay attention to it. the fact is he -- he -- he only appeared to get the ear of ziem. ziem in fact performed a willingness to listen, knowing his american backers would probably pay attention and think he was open to advice. the fact is i don't think it ever got far. yeah process. >> on this side. >> from the co. i have two questions. first so i'm thinking what you say that if i my understanding correctly is you say and i

chinese sentiment or anti-chinese national imism you blame them for the british economy or u.s. hegemony responsible to cultivating thes chinese sentiment to what degree do you think we should extremist this centsment to the majority -- the majority in southeast asian countries because there are two cases as in case kinning took over the power in cambodia and the vietnam they're also towards chinese in comboia and vietnamese as they are they are not supported by the u.s. my second question is about the war and you just talk about the cool war. the southeast age j countries about the trade investment in the southeast asians to kpet with other forces. so my questions is if we out of the the u.s. intervention in

indochina how is this independent unstable southeast asian countries can have time and space to develop the colony and the power. and the they both argue that. always with u.s. intervention it they achieved goals to become modern nation state. thank you very much. >> okay. >> thanks for the questions. and maybe i'll address the second first about the buying time. you are exactly right. what li, rasto, in order to support the american have intervention in vietnam saying this is buying time tor the southeast asian nations to buy time so they won't be victims to communist subversion. what i say in my book is f3 they needed any time at all it wasn't much. because the whole buying time argument is something that is

happening from 1966, 1967, into 1969. as i've said, the ierpy of american intervention with combat troops in '65 is that the majority of the regions peoples and resources reside within the u.s. orbit. what then does the buying time argument -- what role does it play? well what i argued in my book is that it plays a role for fending off criticisms for just a very short while maybe about one and a half and two years. and during that time the deepening intimacy of the american and southeast asian economies happens quickly. i wouldn't say they were in danger in many ways. i think the buying time argument was an attempt to constantly fend off press criticism because the reality is very much of it was already towards the side of the u.s. now to answer the first

question, if i understood you right, you are saying in the sign o vietnamese war as well, chinese refugees -- ethnic chinese refuge he is are being expelled. >> sorry my question is because in the the 60s it's like because of this neoindependent countries they want to complete the relation building proj. independent they went to build a identity for all populations all kinds of ethnic cleansing around the area. anti-chinese injury it's kind of natural for the chinese population, the majority ethnics in around the southeast asian countries so it's not to me it's not kind of the u.s. intended to cultivate this sentiment it's more instead the centsment. >> i understand. and i completely agree with you. that's why i say it's a

preexisting local anti-pathy. that's why part of the project is decenter the united states if we continue to privilege just the u.s. as the major actor and completely month op. lices our attention wheat get stuck in vietnam in terms of intellectual horizons if we go beyond vietnam and that's why i talk about british neocolonialism which unfolds with malaysia and singaporean allies outside of what the u.s. is kerp with. so many of those processes have such consequence that is reverb rate towards the prospect for u.s. power. i totally agree. this preexisting local anti-pathy it operates on its own. the fact the u.s. was able to take advantage of it has to do with the fact that the u.s. is not even central to a lot of this action. and for indonesia specifically though i think a lot of the newly declassified documents suggest to us that when sohato was rolling the massacre machine

he was getting assistance from the united states who knew very well the anti-chinese prejudice was being weaponized in order to do this. i would call it exploiting it. but to say it was actually from the get go being alk to cultivate it, you are right, definitely not. yeah. >> let's go back here since the microphone is there and then cross over to here. >> i'm john martin public policy fellow here. your energy is infectious. let me see a terrific presentation. is there a reliable biography of robert thompson. >> robert thompson. >> the -- or have you written it? >> no. no. i don't think so. i think that what we get are the traces of his self-promotion and so we get more myth than man. that is a self-evident sham at the same time. i don't know it. and i didn't seek it out.

yeah. >> back here. microphone is coming. >> hello. i'm british. and i think i know the mess that britain left behind in india because my grandfather actually wrote up legalese for the independence he was the chief justice in mumbai and initially had to put ghandy in prison but his last project was to write up the legalese for that half of south asia, if you like. >> right. >> it's really exciting -- really illuminating to me to hear your picture of if you like the other half of -- i mean not just the islands and the coastline, but obviously we do end up with two absolutely huge

populations, a fifth of the world in india and fifth of the world in china. i wonder going forward -- i know you said you were a historian. but are there some things we shouldn't be doing next or some things we can be doing next? because i've mainly spent my life researching people's -- what people want in southeast asia. and my impression is that they are very much more sort of community-based. and actually they don't necessarily like any of the national leaderships that they have sometimes inhurted. they just want to get on with good stuff at the community level. i sometimes feel we don't actually quite understand just bha ordinary people want. i don't know if -- anyway any comment you'd like to add or if i just completely misunderstand. >> i don't know what the people

want. i'd be a politician if i knew. but maybe what i would say is this. if there was something to do more of for the united states it would be i think to stop confusing southeast asians as to where the u.s. stands. and i don't think it takes very much effort to clarify where the u.s. stands. i think the problem here is what is the trade war about with china? is the u.s. still interested in being committed to its southeast asian allies? what's going on with challenging the chinese navy and the artificial islands? does it mean you really want to stay or does it mean this is just sort of like an ego competition or something like that? i think the clarity is -- the reason i bring this up is because, again, with the surveys of southeast asians, you know, what they are saying is we don't

know whether or not the u.s. is truly committed. and i think that this echos the kind of thing that southeast asians were saying in the '70s and '60s. the vietnam war is damaging american pride and hurting in terms of blood and treasure. so they don't have the guts. they don't have the determination. they all leave. these are similar, you know -- a similar ethos is there. and i think the clarity that the elites are looking for. and clearly it seems that even the non-elites are also looking for that as well. i mean, the surveys suggest that even even non-elites are looking for it that maybe parallels what the elites were looking for in the late '60s and '70s. anything that would help would be clarity as opposed to confusion. >> right here. >> yes mike anderson, retired state department.

could you comment as a historian could you comment on how your fellow malaysians. syrupening with sbonzen young people are learning history high pressure are the schools doing much teaching of history? or is it all science and math and technology and english? >> there are singaporeanings in this room. i won't put any of them on the spot. is math and science a big focus? yes, it is. but is history part of the curriculum for middle school and high school? very much so. i've already been asked by the ministry of education to be consulted for the rerevision the textbooks taking students through the time that 13, 14, 5

and 16. all right so that chunk of their lives, history is something that you know they can run away from and what i'm hoping also is that my book coming out at just in right time will also be one of the sources that the curriculum you know draws on. so i would say that's what i understand from singapore. i can't tell you with great confidence what's happening in other parts of asean. i do know some of my exstudents have gone to teach in vietnam for example. and when it comes to history it's pretty quick. you know, it's high gloss. goes through it very, very -- you know they go through stuff very, very quickly, the importance really is you know the math and science. but really just impressionistic. i can't tell you for sure what exactly all the ministries of education are doing. yeah, sorry. >> that sounds like american universities today. this is all they are talking about. >> yes, right over here.

>> joanmaybe you already said t are you saying that there was a political solution for vietnam, like there was in malaysia that we didn't need to go into vietnam. >> oh, well, the what if is so so problematic. was there a political solution? i think there are so many steps along the way. i don't know if i can comment with tremendous confidence into the being a vietnam war historian specifically. but from everything i understand it. about there are so many steps along the way where what seemed like the obvious thing to do was not done. right. like this is a majority buddhist nation. why choose the minority catholic politician to be the representative. that seems to be a misstep that was completely needless, rate.

of course there are many other force that is built up to this. and i'm sure historians of the vietnam war will tell me it's far more complicated as to how it happened. but if you have missteps of that nature, i don't know if there was ever a good moment to rescue it. i think it's more a question of what steps along the way that were mistakes could have been steered away from? i don't know if you could save it. but, yeah. >> it sounds like from what your argument was that -- that's why i was thinking during your talk is, this political solution you talked about in malaysia and the british used or that -- why wasn't that -- i kept thinking way did we go in vietnam then if this was so successful with the other southeast asian countries? >> well i think the british lucked out by having really popular community leaders. so when it comes to sir cheng

locke teng. they were fortunate. but there are contingencies because when he started out after world war ii. he had already done activism for a malaysian in the 70s. but he was inspired by india. so he led a massive strike that shut down the malaysian economy in 1947, in cooperation with malaysian communists. the british -- a lot of british were ready to black ball him for good. forget about him, he is either too dumb to know he was working with the communists or he is working with the communists and doesn't think that's a problem. forget about him. but it took malcom mcdonald to say can you give him a chance? because he is in popular in ways we can't possibly understand. you've got to give him a chance. he sort of forces the candidacy into the picture so that other british officials already trying to dismiss opheim, right, incorporate him into the story.

even malcom mcdonald says i don't think he is exceptionally wise but he is really popular. maybe this is something we can do. what i want to say about for example the malaysian model. it's not as if the right decisions were made from the beginning. it's a bunkle from one minute to the next, a lot of chances. but it's the problem of a backward lacking assess many wow, so successful. surely there is something that -- some seed or germ you can take out and put somewhere else. and that's exactly the attitude of counterinsurgency experts and planners in the u.s. going like what can we distill from this package, lightning in the bottle and send it out elsewhere? i think to me it's a risky train of thought because of the -- because we then lose sight of the accidental nature of some of this, right. i mean give you another chafrm

with the tonku what he did was he displaced the original founder of the united malaysia national o-by actually being very pro malayp the original founder said can we open up the membership to non-malays and tonku said you got to be kidding off with his head. that was the end of the guy who wanted to create a multiracial party to turn it into a united malayan national organization. it became confined to only malaysians. but any looked at the malaysian chinese association and decided you know we are going to win the election f2 we do this interracial unity while por docksically not being ooufrd. that produced the alliance. contingencies accidents, bunkles, unexpected turns produce success. and i think we spend more time

going, wow what was the recipe when in fact it was what a bunch of miss ups we survived, you know, so i think that's -- that's something to think about, yeah. >> in the back here. >> thank you that was great. i have a question about. >> yeah. >> i'm cameron store. i have a question about singapore's history. just looking at the story that you are weaving, do you think that the rise of singapore over the 20th century is perhaps -- and its history and success is -- is as attributable to the cold war and u.s. support as it is to li q the on yu and all the other factors? how would you sift through the other actors. >> one of the thiks i don't want to get into is going into the trap of which is more important and is there a factor you can

isolate from everything else? i guess the copout answer is to say well it was a combination of all factors. but i don't want to disappoint you. i also want to say that i don't think possible for the success of singapore to be as gigantic as it was without the cold >> as i mentioned earlier, it

is altogether, 35% comes from the military that is colonial and american empire. yes, there is expert production and the economy, it's got low cost labor and everything. the u.s. is getting quite irritated about instead of constantly trying to get it is coming in very cheaply. there is no doubt that that expert driven is happening, but it happens alongside this huge military context. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. the post you put up of the william holden film, could you

say something about him and his role in the movie? >> she is a lady and her model and quite tragically she committed suicide several years after this. the role that she plays is, you're free to check this out because i can't go into a literary analysis, but she is a representative of the malaya and she is indefinable in terms of her ethnic background and she is the lover of william holden. here is a local malaysian of indeterminate race, some kind of malay and chinese who was in a love relationship with

william holden. there is a struggle and a very gentle low-key love triangle between this british girl who is the author of the high commissioner and competing for william holden's affections. it is marginal. >> [ inaudible question ] >> one of the striking scenes is that her character with many other ethnic chinese get on bicycles to protest the policies of the high commissioner and this whole army of bicycles comes to the british high commissioner's home regain their bells and everything. the reason why this is a big deal is because that's how the japanese came down invading. one is called -- that is a

moment in this film and i have watched it several times. it is overall, not that good of a film. but there were scenes where i thought, look at these bicycles. >> i get the impression were going to rush out and rent this tonight, but thank you for watching it for us. >> could you talk a little bit more about, echoes of some of the sentiments, talk a bit about this country and the

relationship and the role of the [ indiscernible ] trick >> when they talk about the chinese emperor, they notice very broadly a lot of the family set of been there for multiple generations. part of that is why the malaya [ indiscernible ] for example in indonesia you've got so much it's what we call straight chinese. people have adopted so many malay cost of funds, customs. one of the things i did not mention was that he did not

speak a word of mandarin at all. his family have been there since the 1700s. a whole group of chinese, that word is problematic but a group of chinese thrived under the colonial system. that is why a person like him would not one of malaya governed by a person like that. they are out and out s. there is no future for him and his family and when she began campaigning in the country, during one of his speeches, it sealed his will for being pro- british. there is one group that has been in india for a very long time. then there were also recent immigrants and for a lot of recent immigrants, china took advantage of them.

in indonesia, for example, china wanted to prove that beijing is for real china is and they competed for the affiliation of chinese in the region. echo indonesia there were attempts for propaganda throughout the chinese language school of indonesia with a lot of propaganda. this book actually i think probably striking fear into the hearts of the indonesian regime. many recent immigrants who are ethnic chinese decided to not take indonesian citizenship and many of the went to china to become civil servants and diplomats. one group that is been there a very long time and has a deep interest in the colonial system

and another very recent group that were more susceptible. they might've considered new order of being pro-china and everything. i think this is a simplification and like i said it becomes problematic. one thing i want to say about this, it is not as if observers have no sense of. here are some who have been here their whole life and they're not going to be the ones that jump on the bandwagon. they do not have a vast trojan horse for china. that is a crazy way of thinking about things which is why u.s. policies was to let's win over as many of ethnic chinese as we can by making them love taiwan. it's the u.s. funded money into

trying to build the cultural exchanges with taiwan to make it seem as if it could be a hub around which the spokes could be connected. it was a monolithic [ indiscernible ]. >> on that note, i unfortunately have to draw this to a close. i will invite you back next week for a rather different stock when devon fergus speaks on his new book, land of deceit, hidden costs and the decline of the american middle class. you may join us for a light reception immediately after the seminar. and thank you for today seminar. >> [ applause ]

>> this is a special edition of american history tv. a sample of programs that air every weekend on american history tv like lectures and history, american artifacts, the civil war, oral history, the president days and special event coverage about our nations history. enjoy american history tv now and every weekend on c-span three. >> here is a look at our primetime schedule on the c- span network. at 7 pm 2020 democratic presidential candidates attending the iowa wing ding in clear lake. at 8 pm on c-span 2 it is book tv with authors. at eight eastern it's american history tv with programs on the

50th anniversary of the cuyahoga river fire which started clean water movements. >> saturday at 8 pm eastern on lectures in history, activists in the 1960s civil rights movement. women were instrumental in helping to organize and put the march together. the event was purely dominated by men. >> sunday 4:30 p.m. eastern the global significance of the declaration of independence during and after the american revolution. >> multiple translations also made their way to columbia, venezuela and ecuador over the course of the 50 year period after 1776. it was known as the age of revolution. >> at 6 pm, eyewitness accounts from inside the white house during the apollo 11 lunar

landing. >> we really staked ourselves into the cabinet room throughout the day. you can see that the windows were dark. the module landed at 4:15 in the afternoon of the astronauts did not walk until later. >> explorer nation's path on american history tv every weekend on c-span 3. >> sunday night on q&a, we were taken out of the hall and confronted with a mob of angry people. >> allison sanger talks about being physically attacked in 2017 after an appearance by author charles murray on campus. >> at the end of your discussion you left that room and went where? >> the fact is, i don't really remember much of it. i could not even tell you what door we went out.

but we were taken out of the hall and confronted with a mob of angry people. they were wearing masks and shoving the jostling and their target was charles murray. >> american history tv continues now with a look at the cuban revolution. tony parra tate discusses fidel castro's childhood and the role of women and young people in the cuban revolution. this is a one hour 20 minute discussion. >> tonight we are very pleased to welcome