Category Archives: Vietnam War Policy-Making
JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century by Fredrik Logevall
"To pour money, materiel, and men into the jungles of Indochina without at least a remote prospect of victory would be dangerously futile and self-destructive." What American leader said it and when?
It wasn't Sen. George McGovern, the World War II veteran who opposed the Vietnam War beginning in the early 1960s. Nor was it Sen. Eugene McCarthy, who ran on a strong antiwar platform in the 1968 Presidential campaign. And it wasn't retired Lt. Gen. James Gavin or the architect of the containment doctrine, George Kennan, who spoke out against the war during the 1966 Senate Fulbright hearings.
The speaker, in fact, was Sen. John F. Kennedy, and the year was 1954. The young Democratic senator from Massachusetts was reacting to the Eisenhower Administration's support of France during the First Indochina War, which had been doing on since 1945. The remarks were given in April as Viet Minh forces be sieged the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu and the French frantically pleaded with the Americans to save them from an impending disaster. Eisenhower, whose administration underwrote the majority of French war, ultimately decided not to intervene militarily. In May the French were routed.
That was not the first time a John Kennedy had shown interest in Indochina. In 1951, then Rep. Kennedy went on a fact-finding mission to the Middle East and Asia that included a prominent stop in Vietnam. The news of the trip would burnish his foreign policy bona fides, effectively enhancing Kennedy's credentials his successful run for the United States Senate the following year.
By 1956, Kennedy had changed his tune. He characterized the U.S. as South Vietnam's "godparents," and promised to defend that nation from a communist insurgency. "Vietnam represents the cornerstone of the Free World in Southeast Asia, the keystone to the arch, the finger in the dike," Kennedy proclaimed in the keynote speech he gave to the American Friends of Vietnam, a group created in 1955 to promote and defend democracy in the nascent country of South Vietnam. Kennedy was a charter member.
In JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956 (Random House, 816 pp., $40, hardcover; $20, paper; $14.99, Kindle) Frederik Logevall's magisterial slice-of-life biography of John F. Kennedy, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian searches for answers to this paradox and the other complexities of the thirty-fifth president of the United States.
Though the historiography on Kennedy is voluminous, Logevall's work is the first to fully contextualize Kennedy in his times in this massive book that divided into 22 accessible chapters and supported by 65 pages of endnotes. Logevall, perhaps the foremost scholar of the American war Vietnam, is a professor of history and international affairs at Harvard University. His previous books include Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of the War in Vietnam (1999) and Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam (2012), which won the Pulitzer Prize.
This first volume of a planned two-volume exploration of Kennedy's life spans JFK's first thirty-nine years, ending with his unsuccessful run in 1956 for the Democratic nomination for Vice President. That loss was ultimately a win for Kennedy, though, as it propelled him to prominence as a national political figure and solidified his decision to run for President in 1960.
Despite his domineering father, Logevall's Kennedy is more independent, and—despite his well-documented womanizing—more earnest than he has been depicted in other historians. Logevall does not avoid the many deficits in Kennedy's character—he was a poor friend, exploitative in many of his relationships, and too often favored his public image over his character—but he does tread lightly over two incidents in Kennedy's life that would come to define the young politician: the disputed authorship of his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Profiles in Courage, and his failure to vote for the censure of Sen. Joseph McCarthy in December 1954.
Kennedy's early commentary on the war in Vietnam and private doubts belying his public rhetoric produce a complicated picture that would inform his war policies after he was elected President. But this will have to wait for Logevall's much-anticipated second volume.
I, for one, can't wait.
Posted in Biography, Electronic Book, Nonfiction, Paperback, Vietnam War, Vietnam War History, Vietnam War Policy-Making, Vietnam War political history	| Tagged JFK Coming of Age, JFK Vietnam, JFK Vietnam War, John F. Kennedy biography, John F. Kennedy Cold War, John F. Kennedy Vietnam, John F. Kennedy Vietnam War
The Year of the Hawk by James A. Warren
"We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home," Lyndon Johnson said during the 1964 Presidential campaign, "to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves." In his accessible The Year of the Hawk: America's Descent into Vietnam, 1965 (Scribner, 320 pp. $28, hardcover; $14.99, Kindle) James A. Warren focuses on the American plunge into the Vietnam War from the fall of 1964 through the summer of 1965.
Warren is a military historian, foreign policy analyst, and author, most recently of God, War, and Providence, as well as several books on the history of the U.S. Marine Corps. A former acquisitions editor at Columbia University Press, he recently was a visiting scholar in American Studies at Brown University.
Warren divides his book into three sections. The first looks at the crucial military and political decisions made by the Johnson Administration from November 1963, when he assumed the presidency, to the big build-up of American ground forces in July 1965. The second examines the ramifications of those decisions, and the third contains Warren's assessment of, and reflection on, those events. Warren relies heavily on secondary sources and published memoirs to support his analysis.
As way of background, Warren provides an overview of Vietnamese resistance to French colonial rule in the aftermath of World War II, the American support of France during the First Indochina War (1945-54), and the deepening commitment to a noncommunist government in South Vietnam under the Kennedy Administration from 1961-63.
When Johnson became president, he felt it necessary to continue Kennedy Administration's commitment to a non-communist South Vietnam out of fear of damage to his credibility and to American international prestige. Warren rightfully opines that the American commitment and strategy in the Vietnam War was largely shaped by domestic politics. He comprehensively details the nascent antiwar movement, while pointing out that in 1964-65 there was broad support for the war and President Johnson's handling of it.
Warren explains the internecine struggle between the Marine Corps strategy of counterinsurgency and pacification, the so-called "other war," and the Army's preference for big-unit engagements and search-and-destroy operations. Gen. William Westmoreland's insistence on the strategy of attrition prevailed, and—coupled with a flawed and ineffective air campaign—created a doomed American policy.
Westmoreland thought his strategy was justified following the 1965 Battle of Ia Drang— made famous by Lt. Gen. Harold Moore and Joe Galloway's book We Were Soldiers Once, and Young—in which the Moore's 1st Cavalry Division troops inflicted significant battlefield casualties on the North Vietnamese. After that bloody engagement the communists adjusted their tactics and largely avoided large-unit confrontations. Warren argues that Westmoreland's approach was deeply flawed, but believes his treatment by historians has been unfair, saying that any American general with any strategy would have been ineffective in Vietnam.
LBJ, Cam Ranh Bay, 1967
Warren's analysis follows the accepted historical orthodoxy: Ho Chi Minh was a courageous leader uniting his people; South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and his predecessors were corrupt despots; and the U.S. did not understand the revolutionary spirit that was sweeping the countryside.
On the other hand, the North attempted to provoke three general uprisings that would have toppled the unpopular South Vietnamese regime—in 1964, 1968, and 197—and failed each time.
Warren contends that the 1968 Tet Offensive's crucial objective was to inflict a psychological blow on the American public and government. But that was Tet's crucial outcome, not its intent. Tet was designed to incite a revolution in South Vietnam and win the war. Only when the North invaded in 1975 with the conventional forces of the North Vietnamese Army did the communists prevail.
Though Warren's use of headings within each chapter allows the narrative to move quickly, his overuse of long quotations and colloquialisms slows things down. That said, this book is a solid and readable introduction to a conflict that continues to resonate in American politics and culture.
Posted in Electronic Book, History, Military History, Nonfiction, Vietnam War, Vietnam War History, Vietnam War Policy-Making, Vietnam War political history	| Tagged James A. Warren, James A. Warren Vietnam War, Vietnam War 1965, Vietnam War History, Vietnam War policy, Year of the Hawk, Year of the Hawk Vietnam, Year of the Hawk Warren
Drawn Swords in a Distant Land by George Veith
History is not kind to losers. Those who appease, such as British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, or step down like President Richard Nixon, become exemplars of not only defeat, but of moral failing as well. In Drawn Swords in a Distant Land: South Vietnam's Shattered Dreams (Encounter Books, 660 pp. $40.99, hardcover; $9.99, Kindle) the historian George Veith attempts a rehabilitation of South Vietnam's longest-serving president, Nguyen Van Thieu.
Thieu resigned his post in the spring of 1975 as the North Vietnamese advanced on Saigon, ensuring that the nation of South Vietnam was resigned to the pages of history. The military historian Lewis Sorley wrote that Thieu was "arguably a more honest and decent man than Lyndon Johnson, and—given the differences in their respective circumstances—quite likely a more effective president of his country," suggesting that Veith's revisionism is meaningful.
Veith, a former Army captain, is a PhD candidate who has written two books on American POW/MIAs from the Vietnam War. His most recent book is Black April: The Fall of South Vietnam, 1973-1975 In that 2012 book, he argues that the South Vietnamese were "quite capable of defeating the North Vietnamese," but failed mainly because the U.S. Congress didn't support them adequately because of the influence of "antiwar crusaders," "major media institutions," and the "Left around the world."
Drawn Swords in a Distant Land is a monumental achievement in its breadth and scope. The massive tome is divided into 24 chapters and supported by 43 pages of endnotes. In addition to many American and Vietnamese primary and secondary sources, Veith interviewed an array of former South Vietnamese officials.
In the past two decades, some Vietnam War historians have emphasized the South Vietnamese experience, though most of this literature has focused on the regime of the first President of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem. In his book, Veith covers the Diem regime and the rotation of South Vietnam governments after his 1963 assassination before spending the bulk of the book on Thieu.
The book is primarily a political biography of Thieu and his effort to build a democratic republic with a viable economy and rule of law. He had to accomplish this while fighting a war against an indigenous communist enemy and the well-armed and well-trained conventional forces of the North Vietnamese Army. The book contextualizes the role of the United States through the South Vietnamese perspective, which effectively lessens the American role.
Veith posits that Thieu's role has been unfairly relegated to that of the losing and last President of South Vietnam, effectively devaluing many of his accomplishments. He implemented land reform, returned political power to the local level, oversaw several elections, and held together a fractured nation, all while leading the armed forces. Vieth's sympathetic portrayal of Thieu reveals a resilient individual who was transformed from a modest military general to an inspired yet practical politician.
Though under his regime regional and religious allegiances dissipated, Thieu could never unify the competing groups of South Vietnamese nationalists. Veith portrays him as a model of probity who nonetheless oversaw a government plagued by corruption and scandal that he was unable to control.
LBJ and Nguyen Van Thieu
These issues are endemic to all fledgling democracies, and, though there was dissatisfaction among the South Vietnamese with Thieu's government, it remained preferable to communism. In the end, Thieu could not both build a nation and fight an enemy after it lost the support of its American patron.
Though a generous depiction of Thieu — at times too sympathetic as many historians would challenge Veith's contentions on Thieu's land reforms and fair elections —Veith concedes that when South Vietnam needed Thieu to be at his best, he was at his worst.
Veith's ambitious undertaking is worthwhile in its reassessment and a challenge to the belief that South Vietnam was a corrupt American puppet in a Cold War drama. But this perspective may be slightly off-balance by overly diminishing the American role. Vieth's commitment to his subject leads to indulgent rhetorical flourishes, and the level of detail he provides allows the narrative to meander.
Given the large cast of characters, the book would benefit from a dramatis personae, and would have been enhanced by a more robust conclusion.
But these are minor quibbles in an important revisionist history in understanding America's South Vietnamese ally.
Posted in Electronic Book, History, Nonfiction, Vietnam War, Vietnam War History, Vietnam War Policy-Making	| Tagged Drawn Swords in a Distant Land, George J. Veith, George Veith, George Veith Vietnam War history, Nguyen Van Thieu, South Vietnam
Dien Bien Phu 1954 by Martin Windrow
Martin Windrow's Dien Bien Phu, 1954: The French Defeat that Lured America into Vietnam (Osprey, 96 pp., $24, paper) is an easy-to-follow account of the pivotal May 1954 battle of Dien Bien Phu, which ended the Vietnamese war against France and determined the future of Vietnam. Rich in photographs, illustrations, and maps, and supported with a detailed chronology and order of battle tables, this concise history takes the reader right into the battle.
The French defeat at Dien Bien Phu was a consequence of monumental errors in French operational planning, including misunderstanding the enemy's intentions and capabilities. The French also overestimated their own capability to maintain and defend the remote base with artillery and air support. and forces available—and underestimated the Viet Minh's ability to commit substantial forces to the battle supplemented with artillery and antiaircraft weaponry.
The purpose of the base was to draw Viet Minh forces away from the strategically important Red River Delta, which included Hanoi and Haiphong. Ironically, the misguided plan instead isolated significant numbers of French forces, moving them away from areas where they were essential. Despite heavy losses by the Viet Minh. the French were ultimately crushed.
Although Windrow—a military historian who has written widely about the 20th century wars in Vietnam—does not compare Dien Bien Phu with the siege of the remote Khe Sanh combat base fourteen years later during America's Vietnam War, one cannot help but look for parallels and differences. Some similarities and some important differences come to mind.
The Viet Minh, for example, zeroed their artillery in on Dien Bien Phu's two airfields, essentially shutting them down and the North Vietnamese Army essentially did the same thing at Khe Sanh. General Vo Nguyen Giap, the overall commander of attacking forces in both battles, applied the lessons of the first to the second. French tactical airpower at DBP was sorely inadequate and encouraged Giap's tactical boldness. In contrast, U.S. airpower inflicted heavy losses on NVA at Khe Sanh in 1968.
Vietnamese artillery, well concealed and protected, was a key component of the siege strategy at both DBP and Khe Sanh. At DBP it was used to support assaulting troops, wipe out outposts, deny the use of the airfields, and target command and control bunkers. Fuel storage and ammunition dumps also were destroyed at Khe Sanh. The ammunition dump also was destroyed, many aircraft on the ground were hit, and movement within the camp greatly restricted. Yet Khe Sanh, supplied by airdrops, never fell to the NVA.
French troops besieged at Dien Bien Phu
Finally, an important difference: For the North Vietnamese the Siege of Khe Sanh was not the focus of the ensuing 1968 Tet Offensive. The base did not have to be actually taken. The NVA instead succeeded in its goal of drawing key U.S. combat forces (the 1st Cavalry Division) away from population centers on the eve of the South Vietnam-wide Tet Offensive.
As a veteran of the siege of Khe Sanh I wanted to learn as much as possible about Dien Bien Phu from this book. And I was pleased to see that Windrow's narrative, maps, order of battle listings, and timelines allowed me an to "see" the battle of DBP as it unfolded.
This book accomplishes quite a bit. It is well worth reading.
Posted in French Indochina War, History, Military History, Nonfiction, Paperback, Vietnam War, Vietnam War Policy-Making	| Tagged Dien Bien Phu, Dien Bien Phu 1954, French Indochina War, Martin Windrow, Martin Windrow Dien Bien Phu, Martin Windrow Vietnam War, Siege of Khe Sanh, The French Defeat that Lured America into Vietnam
Up to Speed on VIET-NAM by Peter Caldwell
Up to Speed on VIET-NAM (Taote Publishing, 150 pp. $9.95, paper; $4.25, Kindle) is Dr. Peter Caldwell's take on what happened during the American war in Vietnam. He therefore opens the book by asking: "How difficult is it for someone who wants to try and get up to speed on the history of American involvement in Viet-Nam?"
My experience reading this book was just that—difficult. It's a wonderful book, but there is so much diverse material with many outside references in it that I had to re-read a few sections to understand the full picture Caldwell was trying to paint.
He has packed nearly 100 excerpts from publications written by Americans (both war hawks and doves) and Vietnamese (from the South and North) into this short book. The endnotes and bibliography lend credence to his observations and comments, causing me to rethink my opinions about the war.
From 1966-67 Caldwell served as a Navy Battalion Surgeon for the Marines in the Hue-Phu Bai area. He later made several trips back to Vietnam on volunteer medical missions and to visit his in-laws. In 1960, Caldwell's Vietnamese wife Olga Hoang Hai and her family had moved to Hawaii where and met her and they later married.
Here are a few strategic changes that Caldwell believes could have reversed the outcome of the war:
Periodically invading southern areas of North Vietnam and moving into sections of the Ho Chi Minh Trail
Pursuing the enemy into Cambodia and Laos
Continuing support for President Ngo Dinh Diem
Expanding the USMC's Combined Action Platoon program
Integrating the ARVN command structure with ours and giving the South Vietnamese military more autonomous responsibilities
Reducing access to untruthful news outlets
I enjoyed reading Up to Speed on VIET-NAM and feel I now have a more well-rounded understanding of the Vietnam War. I highly recommend it.
Posted in Electronic Book, History, Nonfiction, Paperback, Vietnam War, Vietnam War History, Vietnam War Policy-Making, Vietnam War political history	| Tagged Caldwell Vietnam War, Peter Caldwell Vietnam War, Up to Speed on Vietnam, Vietnam War History
In Good Faith by Sergio Miller
Sergio Miller's In Good Faith: A History of the Vietnam War, Vol. I: 1945-65 (Osprey, 448 pp. $35, hardcover; $21, paper; $9.99, Kindle) a useful reference volume on the war and its origins for today's readers who are removed from the Vietnam War by a half century. Miller, a former British Army Special Forces officer, has stitched together the war's roots starting with the long French colonial phase, through the final years of the World War II, and into the Cold War when the fate of Vietnam had a minimal role in America's national security concerns. The book ends with the beginnings of the full-blown American War.
Miller includes a synopsis of U.S. national security policies starting with the 1930s in an attempt to answer the unending question: How did the United States end up in a conflict that was so costly for all parties and damaging in the long term to America's prestige? To answer that, he analyzes the impact that communist takeover of China in 1948 and the 1950-53 Korean War had on America's post-World War II role as leader of the so-called Free World, as well as on U.S. domestic politics.
This book does not focus on the failure of America's senior civilian and military leaders during the Vietnam War and their deceitfulness in misleading the public. Instead, Miller takes a broader approach by examining the war primarily through its political context. Many personalities who played important roles along the path leading eventually to the American war in Vietnam appear as book moves along.
Of parallel importance, Miller revisits decisions made in the White House and the Pentagon that reveal confused policies and diametrically opposed positions held by senior leadership and their principal lieutenants. He also reports on the seemingly endless American fact-finding missions to Vietnam and their often misleading and politically motivated findings and recommendations. There's also a full account of the Kennedy Administration's complicity in the November 1963 coup and subsequent murder of South Vietnam's president Ngo Dinh Diem (about which Ho Chi Minh supposedly said, "I can scarcely believe that the Americans would be so stupid."), and the downward spiral of the South in its aftermath.
JFK and his Defense Secretary, Robert S. McNamara
What was particularly interesting to this reader was to once revisit the arguments for U.S. military escalation in Vietnam and against commitments that would entangle the country in an almost certain disastrous war in Southeast Asia. Central to Washington's inexcusably poor decision making were the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson's top foreign policy advisers who made supposedly well-informed arguments to take the fight to the Viet Cong North Vietnamese Army. The few voices who unequivocally stated that involvement in the war would be a monumental mistake with grave consequences for both the United States and Vietnam were all but ignored
The single most important event discussed in this book is the August 4, 1964, Gulf of Tonkin Incident, after which the Johnson Administration reported to Congress that North Vietnamese torpedo boats made two attacks on two U.S. Navy destroyers: the Maddox on August 2, and the Maddox and the Turner Joy on August 4, in international waters with no provocation. The resulting Tonkin Gulf Resolution is important for two reasons: First, the second attack never took place; second, Congress' passage of the resolution amounted to a de facto Declaration of War, authorizing the Johnson to conduct combat operations against North Vietnam. Thus began an unnecessary war that America would come to deeply regret.
Reading this book, you might conclude that the wrongheaded arguments leading to the catastrophic U.S. war in Vietnam—what was essentially a war of choice, not necessity—were so transparently fallacious that no president would ever ignore the lessons learned in that war and repeat such a costly error in judgement. Yet, that is exactly what happened just thirty-five years later in the Persian Gulf when, once again, "wise men" who should have known better pushed for a president to go to war.
Posted in Electronic Book, History, Nonfiction, Paperback, Political History, Vietnam War, Vietnam War History, Vietnam War Policy-Making, Vietnam War political history	| Tagged In Good Faith Sergio Miller, Sergio Miller, Sergio Miller Vietnam War, Vietnam War History, Vietnam War History 1945
The Last Brahmin by Luke A. Nichter
Very few people know the burden of being born with a famous name. Some struggle with unfair expectations. Some shun the public and seek anonymity. Of those who enter the same field as their legendary predecessors, few reach the same levels of accomplishment.
Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. (1902-1985) was a three-term U.S. Senator, the longest-serving American Representative at the United Nations, as wall as U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam (twice), West Germany, and the Vatican. He also advised five presidents and was continuously in public service for nearly five decades. As a young man with wealth, looks, and a Harvard degree, he made a curious choice to join the Army Reserve when the military was at its post-World War I nadir. He would serve his entire adult life in the Reserves before retiring with the rank of Major General.
Lodge, out of now-antiquated notions of probity, wrote two autobiographical sketches of his life, but no memoir. Luke A. Nichter's The Last Brahmin: Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. and the Making of the Cold War (Yale University Press, 544 pp. $37.50, hardcover; $22.99, Kindle) is the first complete biography of this consequential American statesman. Nichter is a History professor at Texas A&M University–Central Texas and the co-editor of The Nixon Tapes, 1971-1972. In The Last Brahmin Nichter mines the wealth of secondary scholarship and Lodge's archived material, as well as those of all the presidents from Eisenhower to Ford. The exhaustive nature of his research is evidenced by the book's ninety pages of endnotes.
Lodge was the grandson—not the son—of Henry Cabot Lodge, the contemptuous Massachusetts Senator notorious for his stand preventing the United States from joining the League of Nations after World War I. The Cabots and the Lodges were the epitome of the Boston Brahmin aristocracy. Their forbearers gained wealth in shipping before turning to public service. Lodge's forefathers included a Secretary of State, a Secretary of the Navy, and six U.S. Senators.
At age 42, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. became the first sitting U.S. Senator since the Civil War to resign his seat and enter active military service and fight in a war. As it did for a generation of Americans, World War II changed Lodge from an isolationist (like his grandfather) to a zealous internationalist. He was re-elected to a third term in the Senate in 1946, but continuously clashed with the conservative Republican Old Guard. Determined to prevent another Republican loss in 1952, he convinced Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower to run. Lodge spent so much time working as Ike's campaign manager that he neglected his own re-election campaign and lost his Senate seat to a young Congressman named John F. Kennedy.
After eight years at the UN, Richard Nixon tapped Lodge to be his running mate in the 1960 presidential election. They narrowly lost to the Kennedy-Johnson ticket. After the election Lodge considered himself too old to run for political office, but too young to retire. He crossed party lines and agreed to become Kennedy's Ambassador to South Vietnam in the summer of 1963. It would seem a curious move for the patrician politician—working for a man who had defeated him twice in a remote, violent land with a fledgling government.
Lodge & Ngo Dinh Diem, 1963
Despite an impressive career, the first three months Lodge served as Kennedy's ambassador in Saigon are the most renowned of his life and the rightful cornerstone of Nichter's work. A secretly recorded conversation implies that JFK gave Lodge approval to support a coup against South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. Politically, Lodge was a nationalist in the best definition of the word; he valued loyalty and discretion, and did as well as he could in an extremely volatile situation. Lodge never explained his actions in Vietnam, but Nichter's work is an important contribution in understanding America's early involvement in what would become the nation's most controversial overseas war.
In his effort to include as much as detail as possible, Nichter's prose, though consistently accessible, can periodically be uneven. This is minor problem, though, given the scope of Nichter's important work.
hgjkThe Last Brahmin is an impressive and authoritative account of a leading figure of the Cold War.
Posted in Biography, Diplomatic History, Electronic Book, History, Nonfiction, Vietnam War, Vietnam War biography, Vietnam War History, Vietnam War Policy-Making	| Tagged Henry Cabot Lodge Biography, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., Henry Cabot Lodge Nichter, Luke Nichter, The Last Brahmin, The Last Brahmin Luke Nichter
Storms Over the Mekong by William P. Head
William P. Head's fascination with the Vietnam War stemmed from the number 176 he drew in the 1969 Selective Service lottery, which put him on the verge of being drafted into the U.S. Army. Many of his friends did serve, and some never came home, he says. Head had entered college in 1967, eventually earned a doctorate degree, and became a United States Air Force historian—as a civilian—and Chief of the Office of History at Robins AFB, Georgia. Over the past thirty-plus years, concentrating mainly on the Vietnam War, he has written and edited many books and articles about warfare.
Head's latest book, Storms Over the Mekong: Major Battles of the Vietnam War (Texas A&M University, 480 pp. $40.00, hardcover; $24.99, Kindle), approaches the war by presenting and analyzing "the most significant and game-changing combat events" as he sees them. Head chose the events he says, based on the consensus of "the opinions of reputable participants, scholars, and analysts."
The book begins in 1963 with the Viet Cong defeating the South Vietnamese Army at Ap Bac. It ends with the North Vietnamese Army capturing Saigon in 1975. The battles fit into two categories: "War on the Ground" and "War in the Air." Head presents them chronologically, thereby pretty much telling the story of the entire war. He looks at ground encounters at Ia Drang Valley, Khe Sanh, Saigon and Hue during the 1968 Tet Offensive, Hamburger Hill, the 1972 Easter Offensive, and Xuan Loc. Interspersed air battles describe Rolling Thunder, Arc Light, Commando Hunt, and Linebackers I and II.
Some of the accounts previously appeared in other places, Head says, but he has revised them with "current data and historical information." His studies of Rolling Thunder and the Easter Offensive are new work.
The book repeatedly claims that, despite America's extravagant investment of manpower and money at the start of its military commitment, national unwillingness to fight a protracted war against a determined enemy was the fundamental reason for the conflict's outcome.
Head recreates the self-defeating hesitancy of President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to apply air power over North Vietnam during Rolling Thunder in 1965-68. Head describes the operation as "Too Much Rolling and Not Enough Thunder."
Johnson's fear of greater Chinese or Soviet intervention in the war dictated his reticence throughout this time, Head says. Paralleling that feeling was Johnson's contemptuous disregard for his generals' opinions, which contradicted the respect shown to them in past wars. At the same time, Head faults the generals' acceptance of unimaginative and ineffective strategies.
The voices of political and military leaders from the U.S., South Vietnam, and North Vietnam are heard throughout the book. Background on North Vietnam's planning and execution of Tet are particularly enlightening.
Head typically analyzes battles from high levels of command. Even the 1969 Battle of Hamburger Hill, in which American infantrymen paid an enormous toll, is overwhelmingly viewed from the battalion commanders' level. In recalling the "senseless nature" of eleven attacks in ten days, Head quotes just two sentences from grunts.
When editorializing, Head stays within reason, and his conclusions are to the point. For example, in the chapter about Hamburger Hill, he calmly names and indicts certain commanders for starting—but mostly for continuing—a battle in which significant casualties resulted and nothing was gained. He concludes that the defeat at Ap Bac was "a wake up call that the United States would have to take over the fight, the path American leaders chose twenty months later." He summarizes the frustration bred by presidentially decreed air strategy as "what you get when airmen do not fully control air assets and run an air war."
His assessment of the battle of Ia Drang Valley concisely consolidates the opinions of American and North Vietnamese thinkers. McNamara's perceptive interpretation of the battle's outcome is a high point of the book.
Bill Head's overall conclusion about the war chastises America for not learning the primary lesson from its involvement and thereby committing itself to duplicating similar protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He judges this as a betrayal of all those killed in the Vietnam War.
Storms Over the Mekong provides a package of facts supported by voluminous footnotes and an extensive bibliography. Well-placed maps and photographs enhance the discussions. The book should serve as a handy reference for old timers, as well as a textbook for students and others newly interested in the Vietnam War.
Posted in Electronic Book, History, Military History, Nonfiction, Vietnam War, Vietnam War History, Vietnam War military history, Vietnam War Policy-Making	| Tagged Storms Over the Mekong, Storms Over the Mekong Head, Vietnam War military history, William Head Vietnam War, William Head Vietnam war book, William P. Head
The Dragon in the Jungle by Xiobing Li
Xiaobing Li, a professor of history and the director of the Western Pacific Institute at the University of Central Oklahoma, served in China's People's Liberation Army from 1970-72. His new book, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War (344 pp. Oxford University Press, $34.95), is rooted in his military experience—along with sixteen years of research on the subject.
Li's goal is to provide an international perspective to help readers gain a better understanding of the the Vietnam War and China's role in it. He offers answers to questions about China's objectives, the planning and carrying out of its fighting methods, why the nation withdrew its forces from Vietnam before the war ended—along with the impact China's intervention ultimately had on the modernization of the its army.
What this book brings to the discussion is a better understanding of the ground-level actions of the Chinese army in the Vietnam War. It also provides a view of the war through the eyes of Chinese officers and soldiers, obtained by interviews with the author.
Historically, China had once dominated both Vietnam and Korea, and entered the second-half of the twentieth century with the view that both countries were still within its defense orbit. China and Vietnam fought with the Allies against Japan in World War II. The Chinese supported the North Vietnamese in their 1946-54 war against France, known as the French Indochina War and First Indochina War, and then continuing supporting the communist North during the 1955-63 civil war.
The worlds' two largest communist nations, China and the Soviet Union, openly split with each other during the 1956-64 period, known as the Sino-Soviet Rift. Each nation saw the other as a rival for the support of the North Vietnamese. North Vietnam always tried to remain neutral in this rivalry.
Early in the American War, also known as the Second Indochina War (1965-73), Chinese troops entered North Vietnam in response to the U.S. Rolling Thunder bombing campaign. Eventually, more than 300,000 Chinese service personnel would serve, mostly in air defense, railroad and highway construction, and combat engineering. China wanted to avoid a major war against the United States, but did not want Vietnam
to be under Western control. China also supported North Vietnam to reduce its need for aid from the Soviet Union.
As the war went on, the Soviet Union began significantly increasing its military aid to the North. China then saw itself as battling two superpowers, the U.S. militarily, and the Soviet Union politically. Eventually, China withdraw all its troops from Vietnam. The nation was dealing with economic limitations, a serious technological gap and continuing rivalry with Moscow, as well as serious concerns of getting into a war with the U.S.
"Oppose the American infringement upon the Vietnamese Democratic Republic!" – February 1965 Chinese Propaganda Poster
The Dragon in the Jungle is an especially important book because, while it focuses on China's military, it also analyzes the military actions of the U.S., Soviet Union, North Vietnam, and South Vietnam. That's a lot of ground covered.
Xiaobing Li frequently uses newly available sources to take this deep dive into the Chinese military's strategy and planning, tactical decisions, and problem-solving efforts. This is a major work that unearths new and important information about China's role in the American war in Vietnam.
Posted in French Indochina War, History, Military History, Nonfiction, Vietnam War, Vietnam War History, Vietnam War Policy-Making	| Tagged China in the Vietnam War, Chinese Army Vietnam War, Dragon in the Jungle Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle, Xiao-bing Li, Xiaobing Li
Vietnam Reconsidered by John Ketwig
John Ketwig's 1985 book and a hard rain fell…: a GI's True Story of the War in Vietnam stands among the top American Vietnam War memoirs. And that's saying something as that conflict's literary canon contains dozens of memoirs that are among best writing on war—any war.
Ketwig's sprawling, ambitious new book, Vietnam Reconsidered: The War, the Times, and Why They Matter (Trine Day, 480 pp., $24.95, paper; $9.99, Kindle), is his attempt, as he puts it, "to say more about the war and modern-day militarism in America." And say more Ketwig does in this lengthy book that contains what he calls "a mosaic of historic fragments," along with his analysis of that history and the lessons he takes from the American war in Vietnam and other U.S. "military adventures." Ketwig also includes first-person accounts of his life before, during, and after serving in the Vietnam War, an experience, he says that "devastated my heart and soul."
Ketwig—who joined the Army in December 1966 with the draft breathing down his nineteen-year-old neck—deserves credit for some compelling writing and some well-executed parts of the book. The long history part, however, which includes many statistics, is presented with little attribution and without footnotes or end notes. Why? Because, Ketwig says, "most readers ignore them and they impede the joys of reading." He does include a very long bibliography—nine pages of books, some of which he recommends, but none of which are annotated. So this is not the book to go to for a fact-checked history of the Vietnam War or the Vietnam War era.
Some of the facts he presents, in fact, do not check out. For example, Ketwig states as fact that there have been "200,000 suicides" by Vietnam veterans since the war. In reality, there are no reliable statistics on suicide in the U.S., much less on Vietnam War veteran suicides. Those who have looked into the subject trace extremely high suicide figures (such as 200,000) that people cite to a thoroughly debunked myth that sprung up in the early 1980s that more Vietnam veterans had killed themselves after the war than were killed in the war.
John Ketwig
Another example: In Ketwig's short section on R&R he says that American troops "were allowed a five-day R&R… once a year." There may have been a once-a-year rule, but it was regularly broken. And some of the R&R destinations, such as Sydney and Honolulu, were for seven days. He also writes that GIs "disembarking from the R&R center" were "immediately accosted by a huge throng of 'agents' or pimps…"
That may have happened to Ketwig and others of his acquaintance, but for thousands of others nothing remotely like that occurred.
At its heart, Vietnam Reconsidered is a smart, well-read, highly political Vietnam War veteran's interpretation of that still-controversial war, replete with John Ketwig's strong antiwar opinions and some strong writing.
Posted in Antiwar Movement, Electronic Book, History, Nonfiction, Paperback, The Sixties, Vietnam veterans, Vietnam War, Vietnam War History, Vietnam War Policy-Making, Vietnam War political history	| Tagged and a hard rain fell, John Ketwig, John Ketwig Vietnam War, Ketwig Vietnam Reconsidered, Vietnam War History