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RAND IN SOUTHEAST ASIA: A History of the Vietnam War Era. By Mai Elliott. Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 2010. xxii, 672 pp. (Figures, maps, B&W photos.) US$35.00, paper. ISBN 978-0-8330-4754-0.
From the 1950s through the final American withdrawal in 1975, the RAND Corporation conducted an enormous amount of social scientific research about the war in Vietnam. Studies of counterinsurgency programs, the impact of US bombing, the structure of the National Liberation Front and many other topics provided US policy makers with a wealth of information about the South Vietnamese government and the revolutionary enemy. In assessing this prolonged scholarly engagement, Mai Elliott makes two primary arguments. First, she holds that RAND was not simply an instrument of the US military, populated by analysts with uniformly hard-line perspectives that justified the conduct of an increasingly destructive war. RAND was instead "similar to a university-a community of thinkers with disparate views, ranging from the supportive to the critical of U.S. government policies in Vietnam" (vii). Second, Elliott argues that despite this diversity of views, the impact of RAND's research was ultimately constrained by the prevailing ideological currents in Washington. Where the conclusions of RAND's experts reinforced official assumptions, elite policy makers...