NCJ Number
137675
Journal
Studies in Conflict and Terrorism Volume: 15 Issue: 2 Dated: (April-June 1992) Pages: 99-123
Date Published
1992
Length
25 pages
Annotation
This article traces the policy choices that successive American presidents faced regarding Vietnam in the context of World War II and the ensuing cold war.
Abstract
The author identifies three errors in judgment that led to the United States' military failure in Vietnam. First, Federal policymakers overestimated the patience of the American people in support for a lengthy war and underestimated the tenacity of the North Vietnamese. Secondly, policymakers erred in equating North Vietnam's aggression against South Vietnam as part of the Sino-Soviet thrust for world domination, rather than as part of a historic thrust of Vietnamese nationalism against European colonialism. Thirdly, policymakers allowed the war to become more important to the United States than to the South Vietnamese. The military failure in Vietnam, however, did not mean a failure of U.S. objectives in the region. Communist expansion has been confined to Indochina as the rest of southeast Asia is stable, peaceful, and prosperous, while Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia are isolated, economic wastelands that have been set adrift by the collapse of the Soviet empire. Also, wars of communist "liberation" have become a vestige of the past instead of the wave of the future. 37 notes