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Approaching Vietnam: From World War II Through Dienbienphu, 1941-1954
“An extremely solid history of Indochina in the Viet Minh War era. Essentially a diplomatic history, but one that carefully weaves in developments on the battlefield. Makes use of new knowledge and is a useful corrective to some of the earlier works on the subject by the French. Recommended.” ―Douglas Pike, Indochina Chronology The first Vietnam War, a war of diplomatic maneuver and decisions made from afar, began in 1941, while the fires of World War II raged. With masterly command of documents never before analyzed in a book, Lloyd C. Gardner paints an absorbing picture of the events of that fateful period.
- GenresHistory
444 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 2, 2022
I was impressed by Lloyd C. Gardner's work, for he is the first of all authors I have read so far to point out that to begin the story of America's involvement in Vietnam in the Johnson or Kennedy era is like "coming into a darkened theater in the middle of the picture." I have come the same conclusion: it is impossible to find out the whys and hows of the Vietnam disaster without tracing the origins of American involvement there.
While Gardner's work revealed to me little I did not know from other studies, it proved to be by far one of the most graspable analyzes of post-WWII American foreign policy in Asia, and would have been a great introduction to the subject, had I read it earlier.
The author identifies several major themes and tendencies in US diplomatic policy that prompted the decision-making of American policy-makers.
The first of those themes was the Cold War. As early as 1945, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's advisers, including Harry Hopkins, urged him to drop his UN-trusteeship-for-Indochina plan that sent the French government into conniption fits. Recognizing the underlying theme of a potential Soviet-American confrontation in the future, they put the case simply – the United States would need France in any conflict with the USSR. When the Cold War actually dawned and resulted in a preoccupation with "drawing the line [of Communist aggression", especially after the fall of China to Mao Zedong's Communists, other concerns emerged. The American strategy for post-war Europe – containment – proved to be inadequate for the conditions in Asia. Although most difficulties would become apparent later, in the Eisenhower and Kennedy years, George Frost Kennan, the author of the famous Long Telegram, warned Truman in a letter that the Soviet Union was going to take advantage of any break-up of colonial ties. Such considerations prompted the President to reconsider his eminent predecessor's anti-colonial aspirations and allocate financial and material aid to ensure the continued existence of colonial governments in Southeast Asia, and especially in Indochina, which had become a vital bulwark between the whole region and Red China.
The second main theme was liberation – the 1952 Republican battlecry. Like "drawing the line," liberation was hard to define and impose. Overall, however, it characterized the Eisenhower administration's policy toward Southeast Asia: not liberating Asian peoples from Communist regimes, but attempts to liberate American foreign policy from the bad reputation of colonialism that clung to it, and – the administration worried – ruined its chances of establishing an anti-Communist movement in the region. The problem was that Ike Eisenhower could not think of how to implement united action in Southeast Asia without the French and the British and not look like yet another imperialist foreign force. This confused him and his advisers, and the course of action he eventually stumbled towards further undermined America's standing: he refused to support the French in the critical battle of Dien Bien Phu, but he also did not back the nationalist aspirations of the Vietnamese, which assigned the United States the role of France's substitute.
The third main theme is what Gardner calls "holding the center." It explains why American policy-makers did not just get out of Indochina together with the French in 1954. From the beginning, Vietnam figured in the plans of policy-makers to reconstruct the pre-war global order into a Capitalist, liberal one that would ensure stability and peace. Southeast Asia was to play a vital economic role in the plan, for by 1950 it became clear that Japan's recovery depended on it. If Japan was to emerge as a free-world force, it needed an export market, so US policy-makers wanted to provide her with such in Southeast Asian countries. That is why the American government could not give up Vietnam.
The trouble with such reasoning was that it was based on the false assumption, which came to be know as "domino theory," that the loss of one Southeast Asian country would inevitably lead to the loss of the whole region. American policy-makers recognized the red flags as early as the 1940s, when France's "cleaning-up" operation in its former colony turned into a prolonged, bitter war. Had they also acknowledged the fall of Vietnam might not mean the fall of Southeast Asia as a whole, they might have not entangled their country in the Vietnam mess. Instead, they, ignorant of Southeast Asia, failed to notice that eache country in the region has its own specifics, and blindly put them all under a single category of what they considered to be colonies whose people were too lazy and inept to govern themselves.
APPROACHING VIETNAM is, needless to say, a well-written study. Had I read it an earlier stage, it would have undoubtedly proved useful and engaging to me. Now that I have become familiar with many other works on the subject it seemed to me to be rather repetitive, for the author does not present any novel conclusions. I recommend this book as a graspable, compelling introduction to the origins of American involvement in Southeast Asia.
While Gardner's work revealed to me little I did not know from other studies, it proved to be by far one of the most graspable analyzes of post-WWII American foreign policy in Asia, and would have been a great introduction to the subject, had I read it earlier.
The author identifies several major themes and tendencies in US diplomatic policy that prompted the decision-making of American policy-makers.
The first of those themes was the Cold War. As early as 1945, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's advisers, including Harry Hopkins, urged him to drop his UN-trusteeship-for-Indochina plan that sent the French government into conniption fits. Recognizing the underlying theme of a potential Soviet-American confrontation in the future, they put the case simply – the United States would need France in any conflict with the USSR. When the Cold War actually dawned and resulted in a preoccupation with "drawing the line [of Communist aggression", especially after the fall of China to Mao Zedong's Communists, other concerns emerged. The American strategy for post-war Europe – containment – proved to be inadequate for the conditions in Asia. Although most difficulties would become apparent later, in the Eisenhower and Kennedy years, George Frost Kennan, the author of the famous Long Telegram, warned Truman in a letter that the Soviet Union was going to take advantage of any break-up of colonial ties. Such considerations prompted the President to reconsider his eminent predecessor's anti-colonial aspirations and allocate financial and material aid to ensure the continued existence of colonial governments in Southeast Asia, and especially in Indochina, which had become a vital bulwark between the whole region and Red China.
The second main theme was liberation – the 1952 Republican battlecry. Like "drawing the line," liberation was hard to define and impose. Overall, however, it characterized the Eisenhower administration's policy toward Southeast Asia: not liberating Asian peoples from Communist regimes, but attempts to liberate American foreign policy from the bad reputation of colonialism that clung to it, and – the administration worried – ruined its chances of establishing an anti-Communist movement in the region. The problem was that Ike Eisenhower could not think of how to implement united action in Southeast Asia without the French and the British and not look like yet another imperialist foreign force. This confused him and his advisers, and the course of action he eventually stumbled towards further undermined America's standing: he refused to support the French in the critical battle of Dien Bien Phu, but he also did not back the nationalist aspirations of the Vietnamese, which assigned the United States the role of France's substitute.
The third main theme is what Gardner calls "holding the center." It explains why American policy-makers did not just get out of Indochina together with the French in 1954. From the beginning, Vietnam figured in the plans of policy-makers to reconstruct the pre-war global order into a Capitalist, liberal one that would ensure stability and peace. Southeast Asia was to play a vital economic role in the plan, for by 1950 it became clear that Japan's recovery depended on it. If Japan was to emerge as a free-world force, it needed an export market, so US policy-makers wanted to provide her with such in Southeast Asian countries. That is why the American government could not give up Vietnam.
The trouble with such reasoning was that it was based on the false assumption, which came to be know as "domino theory," that the loss of one Southeast Asian country would inevitably lead to the loss of the whole region. American policy-makers recognized the red flags as early as the 1940s, when France's "cleaning-up" operation in its former colony turned into a prolonged, bitter war. Had they also acknowledged the fall of Vietnam might not mean the fall of Southeast Asia as a whole, they might have not entangled their country in the Vietnam mess. Instead, they, ignorant of Southeast Asia, failed to notice that eache country in the region has its own specifics, and blindly put them all under a single category of what they considered to be colonies whose people were too lazy and inept to govern themselves.
APPROACHING VIETNAM is, needless to say, a well-written study. Had I read it an earlier stage, it would have undoubtedly proved useful and engaging to me. Now that I have become familiar with many other works on the subject it seemed to me to be rather repetitive, for the author does not present any novel conclusions. I recommend this book as a graspable, compelling introduction to the origins of American involvement in Southeast Asia.
October 14, 2019
So much detail so little of it is helpful
April 22, 2013
I may come back to it later.
May 22, 2016
it was interesting when i learned new information that i did not know of.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews