The Myth of Inevitable Us Defeat in Vietnam

ISBN-13: 9780714651873 / Angielski / Twarda / 2002 / 192 str.

C. Dale Walton; W. W. Rostow

Opis

This volume offers a dispassionate strategic examination of the Vietnam conflict that challenges the conventional wisdom that South Vietnam could not survive as an independent non-communist entity over the long term regardless of how the United States conducted its military-political effort in Indochina. In reality, the Vietnam War was far from an unwinnable war for the United States: the latter possessed enormous military, financial, and other advantages over its foes. However, US officials made a multitude of predictable, avoidable strategic mistakes over a long period of time and certain key figures displayed an inability even to understand the significance of their errors and learn from them. The book considers US strategic decision-making at a number of levels and shows how American errors created the military and political conditions that made North Vietnamese victory possible. If the United States had conducted its political-military effort in a fashion that did not negate its advantages - indeed, if it had avoided only a small number of many strategic errors - the outcome of the Indochina conflict would likely have been very different.

Spis treści

Walton has provided diplomatic and military historians with a provocative and creative view of the Vietnam War...the book should spur debate on the causes of the United States military failure in South-East Asia."

- The International History Review

O autorze

Dale Walton