Skip to main content

American Paramilitary Culture and the Reconstitution of the Vietnam War

  • Chapter
Vietnam Images: War and Representation

Part of the book series: Insights

Abstract

The Vietnam War was the United States’ first military defeat. It was not a small one. When Vietnam declared its independence from French colonial domination in 1945, the United States backed British and French troops in their effort to regain control. From 1946 to 1954 the United States supported France in its colonial war to crush the Vietnamese independence movement, the Vietminh; after 1950 it paid 80 per cent of France’s costs. After the French defeat in 1954, the United States created a government in southern Vietnam, and sent hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance and several hundred advisers and intelligence agents.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 29.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. A. M. Schlesinger, Jr, The Bitter Heritage (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett, 1968) pp. 58–9.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Colonel Harry Summers, Jr, On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War (Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1982).

    Google Scholar 

  3. R. L. Samson, The Economics of Insurgency in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam (Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1970) pp. 54–67.

    Google Scholar 

  4. The Public Broadcasting Service’s Frontline documentary series, 21 June 1983.

    Google Scholar 

  5. M. T. Klare, Beyond the Vietnam Syndrome: U.S. Interventionism in the 1980s (Washington, DC: Institute for Policy Studies, 1981).

    Google Scholar 

  6. R. Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860 (Middleton, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1973) p. 7.

    Google Scholar 

  7. R. Fielding, The American Newsreel 1911–1967 (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972) p. 30.

    Google Scholar 

  8. E. Marri, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, 1979) p. 613.

    Google Scholar 

  9. H. N. Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (New York: Vintage Books, 1950) p. 120.

    Google Scholar 

  10. K. Brownlow, The War, the West, and the Wilderness (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979) p. 32.

    Google Scholar 

  11. R. Jewett and J. S. Lawrence, The American Monomyth (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1977) p. xx.

    Google Scholar 

  12. R. Kovic, Born on the Fourth of July (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976) pp. 42–3.

    Google Scholar 

  13. P. Caputo, Rumor of War (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971) p. 14.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Quoted in R. J. Lifton, Home from the War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973) p. 32.

    Google Scholar 

  15. R. Evans and R. D. Novak, Nixon in the White House: The Frustrations of Power (New York: Random House, 1971) p. 252.

    Google Scholar 

  16. S. M. Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the White House (New York: Summit Books, 1983) p. 506.

    Google Scholar 

  17. O. Fallaci, Interviews with History (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1977) pp. 45–6.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Copyright information

© 1989 Editorial Board, Lumiere (Co-operative) Press Ltd

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Gibson, J.W. (1989). American Paramilitary Culture and the Reconstitution of the Vietnam War. In: Walsh, J., Aulich, J. (eds) Vietnam Images: War and Representation. Insights. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19916-7_2

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics