A concise, analytical survey of Vietnamese military history that
concentrates on the French and American 20th-century wars. Former
US Army captain Tucker (Military History/Virginia Military
Institute) presents a readable, fact-filled examination of the
military history of Vietnam. He begins with a brief history of the
Southeast Asian nation, starting with its legendary founding in the
third century B.C. Tucker clearly shows that the dominant feature
of Vietnam's first thousand years was nationalist rebellion against
Chinese domination. Tucker offers detailed examinations of the
French colonization of Vietnam and the 1946-1954 French Indochina
War-two areas that most American Vietnam War histories treat
perfunctorily at best. His treatment of the American war takes up
more than half the book. Tucker sticks mainly to military matters
in his analysis of that controversial, highly political war. He
makes a case that, from the beginning, the American military
strategy was flawed because it focused on conventional warfare and
paid too little attention to counterinsurgency. The "inability" of
the American military establishment "to forecast the [guerrilla]
military threat" in the late 1950s "was the first great US military
mistake in Vietnam," he says. Tucker strongly criticizes commanding
general William Westmoreland and "officials in Washington" -
especially President Richard Nixon and his national security
adviser Henry Kissinger - for drastically underestimating the will
of the North Vietnamese. Westmoreland's attrition strategy, Tucker
says, was particularly ill suited against "the Communist strategy
of protracted warfare." Tucker uses a good deal of statistical
information throughout this well-documented book. A military
historian's approach to Vietnam's wars. (Kirkus Reviews)
The Vietnam War was a traumatic event for America and a lesson for
Americans on the limits of power. For the Vietnamese, however, it
was but one in a series of struggles against foreign domination.
This fascinating study puts all of this in perspective by providing
a comprehensive overview of warfare throughout Vietnamese history,
from the early efforts of the Vietnamese to establish their own
state and free themselves from Chinese domination, down through the
Indo-China and Vietnam Wars, the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia
and the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, to the present.
Vietnam provides an overview of the causes, course, and effects
of the numerous wars in Vietnamese history, many of them not
generally known to Westerners, such as the Black Flag/Tonkin Wars
and the Franco-Thai War. Concentrating on the period after the
Second World War, it treats matters from the Vietnamese perspective
as much as from the French and American, and seeks to clarify the
missed opportunities and false perceptions that led to warfare.
Encompassing overviews of socio-political, economic, diplomatic,
and cultural issues, Vietnam provides an excellent introduction to
Vietnamese history as well as an in-depth look at the long record
of warfare in that country. It will prove essential reading for all
students of twentieth-century American and Asian history.
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