People of the Revolution and the USSR

United States state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1908–1987 ○ Heart disease

The Mongoose architect whose six-phase Cuba overthrow plan convinced the Soviets invasion was coming

When McNamara asked what the 'x-factor' on his metrics list was, Lansdale replied: 'The feelings of the common rural Vietnamese people.' McNamara erased it and said he couldn't measure it.

A U.S. Air Force major general who turned advertising into a doctrine of psychological warfare, Lansdale first made his name helping crush the Hukbalahap rebellion in the Philippines by weaponizing local folklore, then ran the Saigon Military Mission as a close confidant of Ngô Đình Diệm. In February 1962 he submitted to President Kennedy the six-phase Cuba Project, a schedule that aimed for open revolt and overthrow of the Castro government by the first two weeks of October. The document became a crucial piece of Soviet intelligence: it convinced Moscow that a U.S. invasion of Cuba was imminent and helped trigger the missile crisis. Forced to retire in 1963 after refusing to abandon Diệm, Lansdale was later recognized as a founding figure of modern counterinsurgency and psychological operations.

France state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1909–1993 ✕ Assassinated

Vichy police chief who negotiated with the occupier

On 2 July 1942, he agreed to place the French police at the occupier’s disposal for the arrest of Jews.

René Bousquet was a senior French civil servant who pursued Vichy police collaboration while presenting it as a defense of French administrative sovereignty. He negotiated with German security officials for room to operate a French police force, while supplying that force to the persecution and deportation of Jews. His decisions helped make the July 1942 Vélodrome d'Hiver roundup possible, after which he escaped the main force of the post-Liberation purge and returned to influential business and political circles.

Counter-revolutionary forces 1911–2000 ○ Died in Paris

Cambodian anti-communist resistance leader

On 22 June 1982 in Kuala Lumpur he joined Sihanouk and the Khmer Rouge in forming the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea, became its prime minister, and helped it retain Cambodia's UN seat.

Cambodian politician and anti-communist resistance leader. Born at Phnom Penh in 1911 into a Khmer Krom family, he studied in Paris and entered the civil service in 1935. He held the vice-premiership and finance posts in 1946–48, was foreign minister in 1950–51, president of the National Bank of Cambodia in 1955–68, and prime minister of Cambodia in 1967–68. Placed under house arrest after the 1970 coup, he later left for France, formed the Khmer People's National Liberation Front (KPNLF) in 1978–79 and became prime minister of the 1982 Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea. He founded the Buddhist Liberal Democratic Party in 1992, was elected in 1993, served as President of the National Assembly that year, and left for Paris in 1997, dying there of heart failure on 19 December 2000.

United States state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1911–2004 ○ Natural causes

The Cold War's last American president, who genuinely believed in nuclear abolition but would not yield on SDI

On the afternoon of October 12, 1986, Reagan and Gorbachev agreed to eliminate every nuclear weapon on earth by the year 2000. Forty minutes later, the talks collapsed when Reagan refused Gorbachev's condition that SDI research be confined to the laboratory.

Ronald Reagan went from Hollywood actor to governor of California to the 40th president of the United States, inaugurating the 1980s with Reaganomics and the largest peacetime military buildup in American history. Early in his first term he denounced the Soviet Union as an 'evil empire,' yet he also held a genuine, long-standing conviction that nuclear weapons should be abolished, a conviction he brought to four summit meetings with Mikhail Gorbachev. At Reykjavik in October 1986 the two leaders came within reach of eliminating all nuclear weapons, only for the talks to collapse when Reagan refused to confine his Strategic Defense Initiative to the laboratory. A year later they signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the first abolition of an entire class of nuclear weapons, and the Cold War ended months after he left office.

Hungary state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1912–2009 ○ Natural causes

The general and contested witness of 1956

“I was skin and bones coming out of five years of imprisonment.”

Béla Király was a Hungarian officer whose career crossed the Second World War, the construction of postwar socialism, and the 1956 Revolution. Sentenced to death by the postwar regime and later commuted and released, he became the highest-ranking military commander of the Hungarian armed forces that resisted the Soviet intervention. In exile he became a historian and teacher in the United States, while his memoirs and writings on the Tito–Stalin split argued that Stalin had prepared to invade Yugoslavia. Archive-based scholarship later disputed or qualified that claim, making Király both an important witness to 1956 and a contested author of Cold War memory.

Cambodia state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1913–1985 ○ Natural causes · United States

Cambodian military officer and politician who led the Khmer Republic as prime minister and president

Lon Nol held senior military and government posts in Cambodia and was a principal architect of the March 1970 coup that removed Norodom Sihanouk. As premier of the new government, he abandoned Sihanouk’s neutrality and aligned closely with the United States and South Vietnam, permitting their forces to operate in Cambodia. He assumed total power in 1972 and became president; as Khmer Rouge forces neared the capital, he left Cambodia for the United States in April 1975.

United States state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1913–1994 ○ Stroke

The Cold Warrior who opened détente with Moscow and Beijing, then became the only U.S. president to resign

At the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow, standing before a model kitchen, Nixon told Khrushchev, "There may be some instances, for example, color television, where we are ahead of you," in an impromptu debate that became known as the Kitchen Debate.

A tenacious politician who rose from anti-communist congressman to vice president, Nixon overcame two bitter defeats to capture the presidency in 1968. The quintessential Cold Warrior, he unexpectedly became the architect of détente, visiting Moscow in May 1972 to sign the ABM Treaty and the SALT I Interim Agreement with Leonid Brezhnev; the first legally binding limits on the superpowers' nuclear arsenals. He ended U.S. combat involvement in Vietnam and opened relations with Mao's China, yet his presidency collapsed in the Watergate scandal; on August 9, 1974, he became the only U.S. president to resign. He spent his final decades rehabilitating his image as an elder statesman, but his legacy remains suspended between the achievement of détente and the crimes that destroyed his presidency.

Vietnam state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1913–1997 → Died in exile

Last emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty, who abdicated in 1945 and returned as head of the French-backed State of Vietnam

Bảo Đại abdicated in August 1945, returned as head of the State of Vietnam in 1949, and was ousted in a 1955 referendum organized by Ngô Đình Diệm’s government.

The thirteenth and last emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty, he came to the throne in 1926 as nominal ruler of the French protectorates of Annam and Tonkin. When Japan overthrew the French in March 1945 he became emperor of the Japanese-sponsored Empire of Vietnam; after the August Revolution of 1945 he abdicated in Huế on the 30th and became “supreme advisor” to Ho Chi Minh’s government. Soon in exile, he returned under the Élysée Accords of 1949 as Chief of State of the French-backed State of Vietnam, criticised as too close to France and too often abroad. Ousted by Ngô Đình Diệm in a 1955 referendum, he died in Paris in 1997.

United States state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1914–2005 ○ Natural causes

US Army general who commanded American forces in South Vietnam from 1964 to 1968 and pursued a strategy of attrition measured by body count

Westmoreland adopted attrition and “search and destroy” in Vietnam, treating enemy body counts as a key measure of success. U.S. forces grew to more than half a million, but the enemy replenished its losses; his optimistic claims of progress lost credibility after the 1968 Tet Offensive.

From South Carolina, he graduated first in his West Point class in 1936 and served in the European theatre of the Second World War and in Korea. Sent to South Vietnam in January 1964, he took command of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam in June. After the Marines landed he argued for abandoning a defensive posture in favour of an attrition war in which US forces sought out and destroyed the enemy, using artillery and air power on a huge scale. In November 1967 he said “the end comes into view”; after the Tet Offensive his request for 200,000 more troops leaked and he was replaced in March 1968. He was Army Chief of Staff from 1968 to 1972.

South Korea state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1916–1950 ✕ Killed in action

A general whose colonial military career met failure at the war’s outbreak

At dawn on 28 June 1950, the Han River bridges were destroyed on his order.

Chae Byeong-deok was a general who moved from an officer career in the Imperial Japanese Army into the founding and expansion of the South Korean armed forces after liberation. When the Korean War began in June 1950, he was Army Chief of Staff and failed to organize adequate forward readiness and command, while bearing responsibility for the order that led to the premature destruction of the Han River bridges during the retreat from Seoul. Dismissed soon after the outbreak, he was sent to the southern front and killed in action at the Battle of Hadong in July.

Vietnam state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1916–2001 ○ Natural causes

South Vietnamese general who led the 1963 coup and ordered the 1975 surrender

On 30 April 1975, as Saigon fell, he ordered the surrender that ended South Vietnam's war.

Dương Văn Minh was a general in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and served under Ngô Đình Diệm. He led the 1963 coup that overthrew Diệm and headed the junta, but Nguyễn Khánh displaced him in 1964. Minh became president in April 1975 and ordered the surrender to North Vietnamese forces on 30 April, as Saigon fell. He later emigrated to France and died in California.

United States state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1916–2009 ○ Natural causes

The quantitative defense secretary who led the Vietnam War and helped prevent nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis

The major lesson of the Cuban missile crisis: the indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will destroy nations.

The eighth U.S. Secretary of Defense (1961–1968), and its longest-serving holder, leading the Pentagon under both Kennedy and Johnson for over seven years. In the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, he was the first in EXCOMM to propose a naval 'quarantine' over an airstrike and became its fiercest advocate, arguing it would show Khrushchev resolve while remaining a controlled choice that need not escalate into military conflict. Yet in Vietnam, the same quantitative analyst who championed escalation grew privately skeptical, and 27 years after leaving office he confessed in his memoir that the war was 'wrong, terribly wrong.' He later served as president of the World Bank (1968–1981), redirecting its focus from infrastructure to poverty reduction.

United States state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1917–1963 ✕ Assassinated

The youngest U.S. president, who took the world to the brink of nuclear war and back

Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

The 35th president of the United States (1961–1963), elected at 43 as the youngest president and the first Catholic. He authorized the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, and later that year his tense Vienna summit with Khrushchev helped convince the Soviets to place nuclear missiles in Cuba. In the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, he chose a naval 'quarantine' over an airstrike and, through his brother Robert, secretly traded the removal of Jupiter missiles from Turkey for the withdrawal of Soviet missiles, pulling the world back from nuclear war. He was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963; after his death, his civil rights and tax-cut agenda passed through Congress.

Vietnam state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1923–2001 → Died in exile

General who was president of South Vietnam from 1967 to 1975, opposed the Paris Peace Accords and resigned days before the fall of Saigon

Nguyễn Văn Thiệu headed South Vietnam’s military regime from 1965 and became president in 1967, serving until 1975. He resigned on 21 April 1975, denounced the United States for betraying South Vietnam, and left the country.

Born in Phan Rang, he joined the Viet Minh in 1945 but left after a year for the army of the State of Vietnam. He joined the November 1963 coup against Diệm, was made a general and in 1965 became the junta’s nominal head of state. He won the presidency in a rigged election in 1967 and was re-elected unopposed in 1971 after rivals were barred or withdrew. He opposed the 1973 Paris Peace Accords but signed them. On 21 April 1975 he resigned, declaring that the United States had betrayed South Vietnam, and left for Taiwan; he later lived near Boston and died in 2001.

United States state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1928–2017 ○ Natural causes

Carter's National Security Advisor who drew the Soviet Union into the Afghan trap

That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap… The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.

Polish-born American political scientist and strategist, National Security Advisor under President Jimmy Carter (1977–1981). He drove the human-rights campaign against the Soviet Union, normalization with China, and the Camp David Accords, and articulated the Carter Doctrine committing U.S. force to the Persian Gulf. On July 3, 1979, he signed the finding authorizing covert aid to the Afghan mujahideen while warning Carter it could induce Soviet intervention; in 1998 he called it an 'excellent idea' that drew the USSR into 'its Vietnam war,' fueling the debate over whether the U.S. deliberately trapped the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. After the Cold War, his book The Grand Chessboard (1997) championed Eurasian geostrategy and NATO expansion, exerting a lasting influence on American statecraft.

Laos state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1929–2011 ○ Died of illness in the US

Royal Lao Army general who led the CIA-backed Hmong army

Sources differ on the endpoint in May 1975: one has 5 May, when he was ordered before Souvanna Phouma to cooperate with the Pathet Lao; another has 14 May, when he left Long Tieng by helicopter as the shelling began.

A Hmong soldier from Nonghet in Xiangkhouang Province, Laos, and the only ethnic Hmong to reach general officer rank in the Royal Lao Army. During the 1960s and 1970s he commanded the CIA-trained and -supported irregular 'Secret Army' based at Long Tieng, fighting the Pathet Lao and the People's Army of Vietnam. Evacuated to Thailand in May 1975 amid the communist takeover, he then emigrated to the United States, settling in California by way of Montana, and became a leader of the Hmong American community, helping halt the forced repatriation of Laotian and Hmong refugees from Thailand in the late 1980s and 1990s. In 1981 he was among the founders of the United Lao National Liberation Front (Neo Hom). Charged in the United States in 2007 with plotting to overthrow the Lao government, he saw all federal charges dropped in 2009.

Russian Federation state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1966–

A Russian general shaped by obedience and uncompromising war

In August 1991, three protesters died when the armored column he commanded collided with a barricade in a Moscow tunnel.

Sergey Surovikin is a Russian military commander who began as a late-Soviet officer and rose to the highest levels of the post-Soviet armed forces. During the August 1991 coup attempt, he led a Taman Division BMP battalion into a Moscow tunnel where three protesters died in the confrontation; he was detained, but charges were dropped on the grounds that he had followed orders. He later commanded in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Syria, and Ukraine, gaining recognition for operational effectiveness alongside scrutiny over civilian harm. His career traces one route by which the Soviet command structure survived its state’s dissolution and reappeared in Russia’s militarized power.

Independent activity Counter-revolutionary forces c.1885–1919 ✕ Murdered

Ukrainian otaman who took Odesa for the Reds, then turned to revolt and pogrom

Proclaiming revolt in his May 1919 Universaл, he cried: "Ukrainian people! Take power into your own hands. Let there be no dictatorship of any one man or any one party."

The Ukrainian otaman who took Odesa for the Soviets in the spring of 1919, he rose against them in May and his troops massacred Jews at Yelysavethrad and elsewhere. He was shot by Makhno's men in July.

Counter-revolutionary forces c. 1953–2001 ✕ Assassinated (al-Qaeda; ISI alleged)

Panjshir Valley guerrilla commander, the "Lion of Panjshir," who fought Soviet forces and the Taliban

In an interview: "We thought the CIA knew everything. But they didn't. They supported some bad people."

Born in Jangalak village, Bazarak, in Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley, into an ethnic Tajik family; his father, Dost Mohammad Khan, was a colonel in the Royal Afghan Army. Educated at the Lycée Esteqlal in Kabul, he studied engineering at Kabul Polytechnic Institute and joined Burhanuddin Rabbani's Jamiat-i Islami. After the 1979 Soviet invasion he fought Soviet and Afghan communist forces with guerrilla warfare; during a 1983 truce with Soviet commanders he created the Shura-e Nazar, uniting 130 commanders from 12 provinces. Civil war with Hekmatyar devastated Kabul, and the Afghanistan Justice Project and Human Rights Watch held his forces responsible for abuses including the 1993 Afshar operation. From 1996 he led the Northern Alliance's military resistance to the Taliban, and was assassinated by al-Qaeda operatives on 9 September 2001.