Abstract
One of the more visible legacies of the recent war in Vietnam has been an ongoing controversy over the lessons that should be drawn from it. Virtually since the fall of Saigon in April 1975, scholars, journalists, government officials and other foreign affairs pundits have debated over the ultimate conclusions that should be drawn from the conflict and how its ultimate outcome should be interpreted in terms of the future conduct of US foreign policy.
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Notes
For an insider’s account of the policy struggle within the Kennedy administration, see Roger Hilsman, ‘Two American Counterstrategies to Guerrilla Warfare: The Case of Vietnam’, in Tang Tsou (ed) China in Crisis: China’s Policies in Asia and America’s Alternatives, vol. II (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968).
A defence of the counter-insurgency strategy can be found in Robert W. Komer, Bureaucracy at War: U.S. Performance in the Vietnam Conflict (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1986).
For a recent study that questions the validity of the entire enterprise, see Gabriel Kolko’s Anatomy of a War: Vietnam: the United States, and the Modern Historical Experience (New York: Random House, 1985).
Harry G. Summers, Jr, On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War (Novato: Presidio Press, 1982).
Bruce Palmer, Jr, The 25-Year War: America’s Military Role in Vietnam (Lexington, Ky: University Press of Kentucky, 1984).
Norman B. Hannah, The Key to Failure: Laos and the Vietnam War (Lanham, Md: Madison Books, 1987).
For a critical analysis of Communist strategy in Vietnam, see William J. Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam (Boulder, Colo: Westview Press, 1981).
The most detailed analysis of the debate in Peking is contained in Donald Zagoria’s The Vietnam Triangle (New York: Pegasus, 1967).
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© 1990 John B. Hattendorf and Malcolm H. Murfett
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Duiker, W.J. (1990). Military Power and Revolutionary War in Vietnam. In: Hattendorf, J.B., Murfett, M.H. (eds) The Limitations of Military Power. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21023-7_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21023-7_10
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-21025-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-21023-7
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