This is a study in failed colonialism and an evocative exploration of a number of questions that go to the heart of explaining the tragedy that engulfed Vietnam in the postwar era. Drawing upon a wide range of archival sources that have only recently become available, Scott McCon-nell examines the causes and consequences of the Vietnamese student migration to France after World War I.When the student exodus from Vietnam began, a victorious France was more conscious and proud of its status as an imperial power than ever before. It commanded the loyalty of many of its subjects: during World War I, hundreds of thousands of soldiers from the colonies had served France in the trenches, and afterwards many came to study in French schools and universities. But some of the leading figures among them learned not to appreciate French values, but to have contempt for them, and they sought to turn the knowledge they had gained in France against French rule.How did this occur? Why did so many Vietnamese who came to France during the Stalin era join the Communist movement? Why was the Communist party so much more successful than other parties in recruiting Vietnamese students? And why were the Vietnamese so much more receptive to the Communist message than students from other French colonies? McConnell believes the answers lie in the kinds of experiences that young Vietnamese had when they came to France. He shows that the French government's policies uere inconsistent and ineffectual, and French attitudes toward these young men changed from pride to hostility as they began to seem less the flowering of the French imperial idea than an ungrateful cadre of rebels.Leftward Journey records the birth of "Third World" politics on the Parisian Left Bank, and shows how its first echoes fed into allegiance to communism. The book vividly portrays the superior energy and sense of direction of the French Communist party during the thirties, and shows how the Communists outdid their socialist and bourgeois rivals in winning Vietnamese recruits. As a contribution to Vietnamese history, this book will be of intense interest to professional scholars. Students and teachers of twentieth-century European colonialism will also find it useful. It provides important background to American intervention in Vietnam and to those who are interested in Third World Communist and nationalist movements.

The 1999 National Security Strategy (NSS) defines significantly different roles and priorities for the U.S. military. One of the very obvious roles is the use of the military as intervention forces to secure national interests. As military and civilian leaders develop the National Military Strategy (NMS) that supports and achieves the NSS, they must fully understand the contemporary system of conflict and armed conflict. Civilian casualties in armed conflict in the last decade amounted to ninety percent of all casualties. Given that Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC) are meant to prevent civilian casualties, there ought to be an explanation of the conduct of armed conflict in the Post-modern Warfare (PMW) era. This monograph determines the basis of and purpose of LOAC in order to be able to identify when LOAC are violated. Using three criteria, political conditions, military, civilian casualties and refugees, and world interest, three historical case studies, the civil war in Sudan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo, are analyzed to investigate and identify trends in the treatment of non-combatants in armed conflict. The trends that are identified suggest that when they conduct armed conflict, belligerents ignore LOAC. Trends also indicate that there are linkages between certain actors and circumstances that result in second- and third-order effects in armed conflict. These relationships suggest, among other things, that Clausewitz' trinity, long used by military and government leaders to plan and conduct armed conflict, no longer explains the conduct of armed conflict LOAC. These trends have significant implications for U.S. military and are discussed. The discussion concludes that there must be greater linkages between the elements of national power in order for the NSS to be achieved and that the U.S. military has several shortcomings in its training, doctrine, planning and employment concepts. The monograph concludes that the current NSS can be achieved, but only if na

An extensive collection of never-before-published interviews reflecting on Ayn Rand's life and character.
Drawing on 100 never-before-published interviews, Scott McConnell presents a unique portrait of a larger-than-life literary giant and a fascinating individual, Ayn Rand. Focusing on the private Rand, McConnell talked to the author's family, friends, fans, and associates, as well as Hollywood stars, university professors, fiction writers, and many more. Arranged in chronological order, these interviews cover a broad range of years, contexts, relationships, and observations on one of the most influential- and controversial-figures of the twentieth century. From Ayn Rand's youngest sister to the woman who inspired the character of Peter Keating in "The Fountainhead," the subjects interviewed offer fresh, sometimes surprisingly candid, affectionate, and intriguing insights into a complex and remarkable writer, philosopher, and human being.

Ayn Rand remains a truly significant figure of modern philosophy. Her unique vision of a world in which man, relying on reason, acts wholly for his own good is skillfully developed and illustrated in her most famous novels, Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. But Rand's first novel, We the Living, a lesser-known but no less important book, offers an early form of the author's nascent philosophy the philosophy Rand later called Objectivism. Robert Mayhew's collection of entirely new essays brings together pre-eminent scholars of Rand's writing. In part a history of We the Living, from its earliest drafts to the Italian film later based upon it, Mayhew's collection goes on to explore the enduring significance of Rand's first novel as a work both of philosophy and of literature. For Ayn Rand scholars and fans alike, this collection is a compelling examination of a novel that set the tone for some of the most influential philosophical literature to follow."