Col. Harry Summers Jr.; Author, Analyst

Col. Harry G. Summers Jr., a career soldier who was a respected student of U.S. involvement in Vietnam and a highly visible television analyst during the Gulf War, has died.

Summers, the author of numerous books and a military affairs columnist for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, died Sunday at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington. He had been battling diabetes, heart disease and the effects of stroke, and a leg recently was amputated. He was 67.

A native of Michigan, the 6-foot-2, 200-pound Summers joined the Army at age 15, passing for older. He had no plan to make the military his career but thought the G.I. Bill a good way to finance college. Three years later, however, his enlistment and all others were extended because of the Korean War. After five Korean campaigns, Summers decided to make the military a career, and in 1957 he was commissioned as a lieutenant.

Summers did get the education he was seeking, graduating from the Army War College. He later received a bachelor’s degree in military science from the University of Maryland and a master of military arts and science from the Army Command & General Staff College.

In the mid-1960s, Summers was wounded twice in Vietnam and twice was decorated for valor. “I was the second-to-the-last Army guy out of Vietnam,” Summers later recalled. “Flying from the roof of the embassy . . . was quite a searing experience.”

He returned to Saigon in 1974 as one of the U.S. negotiators with North Vietnam on prisoner of war issues.

Summers began teaching at the Army War College and studying the war. In 1982, the college published his “On Strategy: The Vietnam War in Context,” which advanced the theory that the major American failing was seeking the destruction of the Viet Cong guerrillas operating in South Vietnam rather than the North Vietnamese army.

Summers contended that on the battlefield itself, the U.S. military was tactically superior, and cited a number of key victories. But strategically, he added, it failed in taking on the mission of pacification while trying to defeat the Viet Cong.

The theory was embraced by many in the military but was roundly criticized by some officers who had left the Army and were more critical of U.S. strategic planning.

Summers retired from the Army in 1985, but his interest in the Vietnam experience continued. In 1988, he became editor of Vietnam Magazine, which, he said, was committed to trying “to tell the truth about Vietnam in all its complexities . . . with the realization that there’s not one truth about Vietnam but many.” Published by the Cowles History Group, the bimonthly magazine has an estimated 80,000 circulation.

In the 1990s, Summers was a highly sought lecturer throughout the military education system on the subject of warfare. He held the War College’s Gen. Douglas MacArthur Chair and the Marine Corps University’s 1993-1994 Brig. Gen. H.L. Oppenheimer Chair of Warfighting Strategy and the 1994-95 Chair of Military Affairs.

In 1996, he held the Fleet Adm. Chester W. Nimitz Lectureship at UC Berkeley. He also lectured at Stanford, Harvard, Georgetown and Vanderbilt.

A member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Summers testified before Congress on strategic military issues and lectured at the White House and State Department.

During the Gulf War, he acted as a military analyst for NBC News, making more than 250 network television appearances, and was a frequent guest on Voice of America and National Public Radio.

A prolific and prize-winning writer, Summers turned out a weekly military affairs column for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate and frequent commentaries for The Times. Formerly U.S. News & World Report’s chief military correspondent and contributing editor of the late Defense and Diplomacy magazine, he wrote articles and reviews for American Heritage, Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s and New Republic.

He won New York University’s 1990 Olive Branch Award, the VFW’s 1991 News Media Award and the Vietnam Veterans of America’s 1993 Excellence in the Arts award.

His 1995 “Vietnam War Almanac” was voted one of the outstanding source books, and his 1990 “Korean War Almanac” and 1995 “Persian Gulf War Almanac” won critical acclaim. The New York Times Book Review called “On Strategy” “the best of any Gulf War book to date.” And Gen. Colin Powell called Summers’ 1995 “New World Strategy” “must reading.” His “Historical Atlas of the Vietnam War” was published in 1996.

He is survived by his wife, the former Eloise Cunningham; their two sons, Army Reserve Lt. Col. Harry G. Summers III and Army Lt. Col. David C. Summers, and five grandchildren.