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Title: Planning a Tragedy: The Americanization of the War in Vietnam by Larry Berman ISBN: 0-393-95326-2 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 August, 1983 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Starting Down the Dangerous Slope
Comment: Larry Berman's "Planning a Tragedy" covers the early critical years when America's Vietnam policy was being planned and executed. It serves as the first installment leading up to the period after Nixon took over as president in 1969 to the conclusion of our Southeast Asian military involvement, which Berman encompasses in his recently published, "No Peace, No Honor."
The book is a necessary primer on the "what might have been" aspects of a policy that, like a runaway freight train, developed a pattern and trail of its own, leaving Americans from policymakers on down groping for answers. One observes a Lyndon Johnson, a master of domestic politics and known for his ability to put together compromises to secure needed bread and butter objectives, caught dumbfounded, feeling helpless in an area concerning which he had no expertise. Johnson fell into the trap of rightist Republican thinking of the fifties, which saw Communism as an international monolith. Johnson became convinced that America's survival was at stake in a small Asian nation some ten thousand miles away. He embraced the domino theory, believing that Vietnam constituted a potentially critical loss that would propel thenceforth to an accelerating series of defeats for America.
At a time when Johnson needed valuable input from a State Department strategic hand who saw Vietnam from a balanced international perspective, George Ball, the one operative with a broad European portfolio, who advised the president not to get trapped in Vietnamese quicksand, was outranked by his boss, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, as well as hawkish Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. As a result, Ball, who had listened to French President Charles De Gaulle's warnings of the dangers of an extended Vietnam military involvement, saw his advice spurned as the Rusk-McNamara tandem prevailed.
Meanwhile speculation continues over what President Kennedy might have ultimately done had he lived. One thing was certain. Had Kennedy, like Johnson, decided to escalate American involvement, he would have made the decision basically on his own. Kennedy used Rusk more as an administrator since foreign policy was one of his major areas of interest, unlike the case with Johnson, who, from Berman's and other accounts, deferred heavily to Rusk and McNamara.
Rating: 4
Summary: Great study of decision making
Comment: This book is about the decision making surrounding the our fateful engagement in Vietnam. Berman adopts a highly analytical approach and dissects the events, players and political back-and-forth behind the scenes. He has access to a trove of recently de-classified documents and cogently builds the following points: 1) While hard analysis of our goals in Vietnam was present, (e.g. what do we do if we get the North Vietnamese to the barganing table? What do we do if limited escalation does not bring about a change from North Vietnam? What do we do if the political situation in South Vietnam does not stabilize?)major policy players chose to ignore this type of anlysis for gretaer and greater involvement. 2) The personality and deportment of LBJ made it much more difficult for dissenting views (other than George Ball's) to get a fair hearing. 3) Dissenters, such as there were, were generally lower level memebers of the state department and were on a drastically unequal footing with the Sect. of Defense and White House staffers in terms of prestige and authority. This made there points of view suspect and thus, disregarded.
This is somewhat of a technical book as it deals with the structure of decision making during a very tense and important period of our nations history. However, if one sees it as a description of our road to folly, it is a fascinating read.
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Title: Lyndon Johnson's War: The Road to Stalemate in Vietnam by Larry Berman ISBN: 0393307786 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 April, 1991 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger, and Betrayal in Vietnam by Larry Berman ISBN: 0743223497 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Surprise, Security, and the American Experience (The Joanna Jackson Goldman Memorial Lectures on American Civilization and gOvernment) by John Lewis Gaddis ISBN: 0674011740 Publisher: Harvard University Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam by Brian VanDeMark, Robert S. McNamara ISBN: 0679767495 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 March, 1996 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Into the Quagmire: Lyndon Johnson and the Escalation of the Vietnam War by Brian VanDeMark ISBN: 0195096509 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 1995 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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