Research Catalog
Vietnam : the early decisions
- Title
- Vietnam : the early decisions / edited by Lloyd C. Gardner with Ted Gittinger.
- Publication
- Austin : University of Texas Press, 1997.
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| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Text | Request in advance | DS558 .V55 1997 | Off-site |
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Details
- Additional Authors
- Description
- 228 pages; 23 cm
- Summary
- More than twenty years have passed since American military personnel finally withdrew from Vietnam, yet haunting questions remain about our involvement there. Perhaps the most persistent of these - and certainly the most unanswerable - is the question of what would have happened if President Kennedy had lived beyond 1963. Would he have ended American involvement in Vietnam?
- For many Americans, Oliver Stone's powerful film JFK answered the question by leaving no doubt that before his assassination Kennedy had determined to quit Vietnam. Yet the historical record offers a much more complex answer. In this fresh look at the archival evidence, noted scholars take up the challenge to provide us with their conclusions about the early decisions that put the United States on the path to the greatest American tragedy since the Civil War.
- The tensions and turmoil that accompanied those decisions reveal the American presidency at the center of a storm of conflicting advice.
- The book is divided into four sections. Part one delves into the political context in which the early decisions were made, while part two considers the military context. Part three raises the intriguing questions of Kennedy's and Johnson's roles in the conflict, particularly the thorny issue of whether Kennedy did, in fact, intend to withdraw from Vietnam and whether Johnson reversed that policy.
- Part four reveals an uncanny parallel between early Soviet policy toward Hanoi and U.S. policy toward Saigon.
- Subjects
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Contents
- Introduction / Lloyd C. Gardner -- Vietnam: An Episode in the Cold War / Robert A. Divine -- A Way of Thinking: The Kennedy Administration's Initial Assumptions about Vietnam and Their Consequences / Brian VanDeMark -- From the Colorado to the Mekong / Lloyd C. Gardner -- Hanoi's Response to American Policy, 1961-1965: Crossed Signals? / William J. Duiker -- The Zen of Escalation: Containment and Commitment in Southeast Asia / John Prados -- Conspiracy of Silence: LBJ, the Joint Chiefs, and Escalation of the War in Vietnam / George C. Herring -- Lyndon Johnson and the Legacy of Vietnam / William Conrad Gibbons -- The Kennedy-Johnson Transition: The Case for Policy Reversal / John M. Newman -- NSAM 263 and NSAM 273: Manipulating History / Larry Berman -- Turnabout? The Soviet Policy Dilemna in the Vietnamese Conflict / Ilya V. Gaiduk.
- ISBN
- 029272800X (cloth : alk. paper)
- LCCN
- 97002031
- OCLC
- 36207574
- ocm36207574
- Owning Institutions
- Columbia University Libraries