The Columbia Guide To The Vietnam War

The Columbia Guide to the Vietnam War COLUMBIA GUIDES TO AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURES Columbia Guides to American History and Cultures Michael Kort, The Columbia Guide to the Cold War Catherine Clinton and Christine Lunardini, The Columbia Guide to American Women in the Nineteenth Century David Farber and Beth Bailey, editors, The Columbia Guide to America in the 1960s The Columbia Guide to the Vietnam War David L. Anderson columbia university press new york Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex Copyright © 2002 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Anderson, David L., 1946– The Columbia guide to the Vietnam War / David L. Anderson. p. cm. — (Columbia guides to American history and cultures) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–231–11492–3 1. Vietnamese Conflict, 1961–1975. I. Title. II. Series. DS557.5 .A54 2002 959.704
3—dc21 2002020143 ∞ Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 contents Introduction xi List of Abbreviations xiii part i Historical Narrative 1 1. Studying the Vietnam War 3 2. Vietnam: Historical Background 7 Roots of the Vietnamese Culture and State 7 The Impact of French Colonialism 10 The Rise of Vietnamese Nationalism 11 The Origins of Vietnamese Communism 12 3. United States: Historical Background 15 Idealism and Realism in U.S. Foreign Relations 15 The United States and the Open Door in Asia 16 The World Wars: The Legacies of Wilson and Munich 18 The Origins of the Cold War 20 vi Contents 4. The French War in Vietnam 22 The August Revolution 23 Outbreak of the Franco-Vietminh War 24 U.S. Support of France in Indochina 25 Dienbienphu and the Geneva Conference 27 5. The Diem Years: Eisenhower 30 The Decision to Back Ngo Dinh Diem 31 The Non-election of 1956 32 The Illusion of Nation Building 33 NLF: Rise of the Southern Insurgency 34 6. The Diem Years: Kennedy 37 Counterinsurgency Warfare 38 The Buddhist Crisis 39 The Diem Assassination 40 What If Kennedy Had Lived? 41 7. The American War in Vietnam: Escalation 43 The Gulf of Tonkin Incident 45 Rolling Thunder 46 Johnson Decides on a Land War in Asia 46 Theories of Causation 48 8. The American War in Vietnam: Strategy 55 The Draft 56 Attrition Strategy and Body Count 57 Humpin’ It: The American Soldier 58 The Air War 59 Contents Diplomacy 60 The Resilient Enemy 61 9. The American War in Vietnam: The Limits of Power 63 The Tet Offensive 63 The Antiwar Movement and the Media 65 Johnson’s Decision to Stop Escalation 67 The Presidential Election of 1968 68 10. The American War in Vietnam: De-escalation 70 Vietnamization and More Bombing 71 Cambodia and Kent State 72 Negotiations and the Paris Peace Accords 73 DRV Victory in 1975 75 11. The War That Will Not Go Away 78 The Postwar Wars in Southeast Asia 79 American Vietnam Veterans 81 Films, Fiction, and Poetry 83 Postmortems 84 part ii The Vietnam War from A to Z 87 part iii Chronology 177 part iv Resource Guide 195 vii viii Contents 1. General Works 197 Bibliographies and Historiographical Essays 197 Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, and Atlases 198 Surveys and Syntheses 199 Document Collections