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Books > History > Asian / Middle Eastern history > From 1900 > Postwar, from 1945 > Vietnam War
Despite French President Charles de Gaulle's persistent efforts to
constructively share French experience and use his resources to
help engineer an American exit from Vietnam, the Kennedy
administration responded to de Gaulle's peace initiatives with
bitter silence and inaction. The administration's response ignited
a series of events that dealt a massive blow to American prestige
across the globe, resulting in the deaths of over fifty-eight
thousand American soldiers and turning hundreds of thousands of
Vietnamese citizens into refugees. This history of Franco-American
relations during the Kennedy presidency explores how and why France
and the US disagreed over the proper western strategy for the
Vietnam War. France clearly had more direct political experience in
Vietnam, but France's postwar decolonization cemented Kennedy's
perception that the French were characterized by a toxic mixture of
short-sightedness, stubbornness, and indifference to the collective
interests of the West. At no point did the Kennedy administration
give serious consideration to de Gaulle's proposals or entertain
the notion of using his services as an honest broker in order to
disengage from a situation that was rapidly spiraling out of
control. Kennedy's Francophobia, the roots of which appear in a
selection of private writings from Kennedy's undergraduate years at
Harvard, biased his decision-making. The course of action Kennedy
chose in 1963, a rejection of the French peace program, all but
handcuffed Lyndon Johnson into formally entering a war he knew the
United States had little chance of winning.
The conflict in Vietnam has been rewritten and reframed into many
corners of American life and has long shadowed contemporary
political science and foreign policy. The war and its aftermath
have engendered award-winning films and books. It has held up a
mirror to the twentieth century and to the wars of the
twenty-first. Set in wartime Vietnam and contemporary Vietnam, in
wartime America and in America today, the stories that comprise
Memorial Days were written from 1973 to the present. As our
continuing reappraisals of the war's shadow have unspooled over the
last half-decade, so too has Wayne Karlin returned to the subject
in his fiction, collected and published together here for the first
time. A girl in Maryland runs away from Civil War reenactors she
imagines to be American soldiers in Vietnam, while a woman in
Vietnam hides in the jungle from an American helicopter and another
tries to bury the relics of the war. A man mourns a friend lost in
Iraq while a helicopter crewman in Quang Tri loads the broken and
dead into his aircraft. Extras playing soldiers in a war film in
present-day Vietnam model themselves after other war films while a
Marine in a war sees himself as a movie character. A snake coiled
around the collective control of a helicopter in Vietnam uncoils in
a soldier come home from Iraq. The chronology is the chronology of
dreams or nightmares or triggered flashbacks: images and incidents
triggering other images and incidents in a sequence that seems to
make no sense-which is exactly the sense it makes. Some stories
burn with the fresh experiences of a Marine witnessing war
firsthand. Some stories radiate a long-abiding grief. All the
stories reflect and reconfigure the Vietnam War as it echoes into
the present century, under the light of retrospection.
A groundbreaking new history of how the Vietnam War thwarted U.S.
liberal ambitions in the developing world and at home in the 1960s
At the start of the 1960s, John F. Kennedy and other American
liberals expressed boundless optimism about the ability of the
United States to promote democracy and development in Asia, Africa,
the Middle East, and Latin America. With U.S. power, resources, and
expertise, almost anything seemed possible in the countries of the
Cold War's "Third World"-developing, postcolonial nations unaligned
with the United States or Soviet Union. Yet by the end of the
decade, this vision lay in ruins. What happened? In The End of
Ambition, Mark Atwood Lawrence offers a groundbreaking new history
of America's most consequential decade. He reveals how the Vietnam
War, combined with dizzying social and political changes in the
United States, led to a collapse of American liberal ambition in
the Third World-and how this transformation was connected to
shrinking aspirations back home in America. By the middle and late
1960s, democracy had given way to dictatorship in many Third World
countries, while poverty and inequality remained pervasive. As
America's costly war in Vietnam dragged on and as the Kennedy years
gave way to the administrations of Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M.
Nixon, America became increasingly risk averse and embraced a new
policy of promoting mere stability in the Third World. Paying
special attention to the U.S. relationships with Brazil, India,
Iran, Indonesia, and southern Africa, The End of Ambition tells the
story of this momentous change and of how international and U.S.
events intertwined. The result is an original new perspective on a
war that continues to haunt U.S. foreign policy today.
The defeat of South Vietnam was arguably America's worst foreign
policy disaster of the 20th Century. Yet a complete understanding
of the endgame--from the 27 January 1973 signing of the Paris Peace
Accords to South Vietnam's surrender on 30 April 1975--has eluded
us. Black April addresses that deficit. A culmination of exhaustive
research in three distinct areas: primary source documents from
American archives, North Vietnamese publications containing primary
and secondary source material, and dozens of articles and numerous
interviews with key South Vietnamese participants, this book
represents one of the largest Vietnamese translation projects ever
accomplished, including almost one hundred rarely or never seen
before North Vietnamese unit histories, battle studies, and
memoirs. Most important, to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of South
Vietnam's conquest, the leaders in Hanoi released several
compendiums of formerly highly classified cables and memorandum
between the Politburo and its military commanders in the south.
This treasure trove of primary source materials provides the most
complete insight into North Vietnamese decision-making ever
complied. While South Vietnamese deliberations remain less clear,
enough material exists to provide a decent overview. Ultimately,
whatever errors occurred on the American and South Vietnamese side,
the simple fact remains that the country was conquered by a North
Vietnamese military invasion despite written pledges by Hanoi's
leadership against such action. Hanoi's momentous choice to destroy
the Paris Peace Accords and militarily end the war sent a
generation of South Vietnamese into exile, and exacerbated a
societal trauma in America over our long Vietnam involvement that
reverberates to this day. How that transpired deserves deeper
scrutiny.
In 2002, Governor General Michael Jeffrey stated that 'we
Australians had everything under control in Phuoc Tuy Province'.
This referred not only to military control, but to the policy of
'pacification' employed by the Republic of Vietnam and external
'Free World' allies such as the US and Australia. In the hopes of
stemming the tide of Communism, pacification aimed to win the
allegiance of the populace through political, economic and social
reform. In this new work, Thomas Richardson explores the 1st
Australian Task Force's (1ATF) implementation of this policy in
Phuoc Tuy between 1966 and 1972. Using material from US and
Australian archives, as well as newly translated Vietnamese
histories, Destroy and Build: Pacification in Phuoc Tuy, 1966-1972
challenges the accepted historiography of the Western forces' fight
against insurgency in Vietnam.
Elite units carried out many dangerous operations during the
Vietnam War, the most secret and hazardous of which were conducted
by the Studies and Observations Group, formed in 1964. In the years
since the Vietnam War, the elite unit known as SOG has spawned many
myths, legends and war stories. Special Forces medic Joe Parnar
served with SOG during 1968 in FOB2/CCC near the tri-border area
that gave them access to the forbidden areas of Laos and Cambodia.
Parnar recounts his time with the recon men of this highly
classified unit, as his job involved a unique combination of
soldiering and lifesaving. His stories capture the extraordinary
commitment made by all the men of SOG and reveal the special
dedication of the medics, who put their own lives at risk to save
the lives of their teammates. Parnar also discusses his medical
training with the Special Forces. During his tour with SOG, Parnar
served as a dispensary medic, chase medic, Hatchet Force medic and
as a recon team member. This variety of roles gave him experience
not only in combat but in dealing with and treating the civilians
and indigenous peoples of that area. There is a graphic account of
a Laotian operation involving America's most decorated soldier,
Robert Howard, during which Parnar had to treat a man with a
blown-off foot alongside nearly fifty other casualties. It is a
reminder of the enormous responsibility and burden that a medic
carried. This new edition of SOG Medic makes this highly-praised
and sought-after book available again once more, with additional
photos and maps.
This book narrates the history of the different peoples who have
lived in the three major regions of Viet Nam over the past 3,000
years. It brings to life their relationships with these regions'
landscapes, water resources, and climatic conditions, their
changing cultures and religious traditions, and their interactions
with their neighbors in China and Southeast Asia. Key themes
include the dramatic impact of changing weather patterns from
ancient to medieval and modern times, the central importance of
riverine and maritime communications, ecological and economic
transformations, and linguistic and literary changes. The country's
long experience of regional diversity, multi-ethnic populations,
and a multi-religious heritage that ranges from local spirit cults
to the influences of Buddhism, Confucianism and Catholicism, makes
for a vividly pluralistic narrative. The arcs of Vietnamese history
include the rise and fall of different political formations, from
chiefdoms to Chinese provinces, from independent kingdoms to
divided regions, civil wars, French colonies, and modern republics.
In the twentieth century anticolonial nationalism, the worldwide
depression, Japanese occupation, a French attempt at reconquest,
the traumatic American-Vietnamese war, and the 1975 communist
victory all set the scene for the making of contemporary Viet Nam.
Rapid economic growth in recent decades has transformed this
one-party state into a global trading nation. Yet its rich history
still casts a long shadow. Along with other members of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Viet Nam is now involved in
a tense territorial standoff in the South China Sea, as a rival of
China and a "partner" of the United States. If its independence and
future geographical unity seem assured, Viet Nam's regional
security and prospects for democracy remain clouded.
Failed strategy and reality collide in Peter Fey's descriptive
narration of air craft carrier USS Oriskany's three deployments to
Vietnam with Carrier Air Wing 16 (CVW-16). Its tours coincided with
the most dangerous phases of Operation Rolling Thunder, the
ill-fated bombing campaign against North Vietnam, and accounted for
a quarter of all the naval aircraft lost during Rolling Thunder-the
highest loss rate of any carrier air wing during Vietnam. The
Johnson Administration's policy of gradually applied force meant
that Oriskany arrived on station just as previous restrictions were
lifted and bombing raids increased. As a result, CVW-16 pilots paid
a heavy price as they ventured into areas previously designated
"off limits" by Washington DC. Named after one of the bloodiest
battles of the Revolutionary War, the Oriskany lived up to its
name. After two years of suffering heavy losses, the ship caught
fire-a devastating blow due to the limited number of carriers
deployed. With only three months allotted for repairs, Oriskany
deployed a third and final time, losing more than half of its
aircrafts and more than a third of its pilots. The valor and battle
accomplishments of Oriskany's aviators are legendary, but the story
of their service has been lost in the disastrous fray of the war
itself. Fey resurfaces the Oriskany and its heroes in a
well-researched memorial to the fallen of CVW-16 in hopes that the
lessons learned from such strategic disasters are not forgotten in
today's sphere of war-bent politics.
Patricia L. Walsh grew up the eighth of fifteen children in a poor
Minnesota farm family and worked her way through nursing school and
anesthesia training. In 1967, she volunteered to go to Vietnam to
care for civilians caught in the crossfire. She injured her back in
the Tet Offensive and returned home in denial of the severe Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) she had developed. RIVER CITY
chronicles the dedication, self sacrifice, trials and triumphs of
practicing combat medicine.
In the Tet Offensive of 1968, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese
forces launched a massive countrywide attack on South Vietnam.
Though the Communists failed to achieve their tactical and
operational objectives, James Willbanks claims Hanoi won a
strategic victory. The offensive proved that America's progress was
grossly overstated and caused many Americans and key presidential
advisors to question the wisdom of prolonging combat.
Willbanks also maintains that the Communists laid siege to a
Marine combat base two weeks prior to the Tet Offensive-known as
the Battle of Khe Sanh--to distract the United States. It is his
belief that these two events are intimately linked, and in his
concise and compelling history, he presents an engaging portrait of
the conflicts and singles out key problems of interpretation.
Willbanks divides his study into six sections, beginning with a
historical overview of the events leading up to the offensive, the
attack itself, and the consequent battles of Saigon, Hue, and Khe
Sahn. He continues with a critical assessment of the main themes
and issues surrounding the offensive, and concludes with excerpts
from American and Vietnamese documents, maps and chronologies, an
annotated list of resources, and a short encyclopedia of key
people, places, and events.
An experienced military historian and scholar of the Vietnam
War, Willbanks has written a unique critical reference and guide
that enlarges the debate surrounding this important turning point
in America's longest war.
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