Schwab examines America's decision to stand in Vietnam with a fresh perspective provided by new archival materials and the intellectual synthesis of institutional, political, and diplomatic history. Vietnam policy is shown at many different levels, from the presidency down to the level of CIA operatives in the field and public opinion specialists on the White House staff. The views of State Department officers, foreign public opinion, editorials in major U.S. newspapers, and the powerful leaders of both Congressional houses reveal an informed and highly conflicted public leadership well...

The Vietnam War was in many ways defined by a civil-military divide, an underlying clash between military and civilian leadership over the conflict's nature, purpose and results. This book explores the reasons for that clash--and the results of it.

The relationships between the U.S. military, its supporters, and its opponents during the Vietnam War were both intense and complex. Schwab shows how the ability of the military to prosecute the war was complicated by these relationships, and by a variety of nonmilitary considerations that grew from them. Chief among these was the military's...

Schwab's work is five-part analysis of US policy and strategy in the Persian Gulf from 1990-2003. He begins the work by analyzing the prominence of the Persian Gulf in US global strategic thinking during the last decade of the Cold War. By that time, gulf oil had secured a paramount place in the minds of the Reagan and Bush administrations. Part two dissects the relationship that individuals and regional governments in the Persian Gulf shared with the US. Here, Schwab also examines US perceptions of those entities and demonstrates how they helped shape the policies of the US and define the...