Abstract
Since 1975, following the U.S. military withdrawal and political disengagement from Indochina, there has been a slow but steady growth in scholarly literature devoted to the U.S./Indochina War and the problems of postwar reconstruction. While it is difficult to classify these studies unambiguously, it is perhaps useful to group them into two broad categories. On the one hand, one group of authors address questions such as “What went wrong?” “Why didn't the United States win the war?” and “How could things have been different?” These studies are essentially normative, that is, they embrace the underlying premise that Vietnam was indeed a noble cause, and even if the war was not winnable in a conventional sense, communism could have been contained if only a different set of strategies had been used. Despite their ideological biases, these studies are useful sources of information and should not be dismissed as postwar Pentagon-style propaganda. What is interesting to note is how the State Department, Defense Department, and Pentagon followed the advice presented by many of these authors in conducting the Gulf War in 1991.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Martin J. Murray
Notes
Guenter Lewy, America in Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); Harry Summers, On Strategy: The Vietnam War in Context (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1981); Stephen Hosmer, Konrad Kellen, Brian Jenkins, eds., The Fall of South Vietnam: Statements by Vietnamese Military and Civilian Leaders (New York: Crane Russak, 1980); and W. Scott Thompson and Donaldson Frizzell, eds., The Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Crane, Russak and Company, 1977).
References
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