Few analysts of U.S. involvement in Vietnam would agree with the
provocative conclusion of this book. The thesis of most postmortems
is that the United States lost the war because of the failure of
its foreign policy decisionmaking system. According to Gelb and
Betts, however, the foreign policy failed, but the decisionmaking
system worked. They attribute this paradox to the efficiency of the
system in sustaining an increasingly heavy commitment based on the
shared conviction of six administrations that the United States
must prevent the loss of Vietnam to communism. However questionable
the conviction, and thus the commitment, may have been, the authors
stress that the latter "was made and kept for twenty-five years.
That is what the system -the shared values, the political and
bureaucratic pressures -was designed to do, and it did it." The
comprehensive analysis that supports this contention reflects the
widest use thus fare of available sources, including recently
declassified portions of negotiations documents and files in
presidential libraries. The frequently quoted statement of the
principals themselves contradict the commonly held view that U.S.
leaders were unaware of the consequences of their decisions and
deluded by false expectations of easy victory. With few exceptions,
the record reveals that these leaders were both realistic and
pessimistic about the chances for success in Vietnam. Whey they
persisted nonetheless is explained in this thorough account of
their decisionmaking from 1946 to 1968, and how their mistakes
might be avoided by policymakers in the future is considered in the
final chapter.
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