Content area
Full Text
America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975. Third edition. By George C. Herring. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996. xiv, 354 pp. Paper, $23.65, ISBN 0-07-028393-1.)
The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990. By Marilyn B. Young. (New York: HarperPerennial, 1991. xvi, 394 pp. Paper, $13.50, ISBN 0-06-092107-2.)
Lyndon Johnson 's War: America's Cold War Crusade in Vietnam, 1945-1968. By Michael H. Hunt. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1996. xii, 144 pp. $17.95, ISBN 0-8090-5023-4.)
Where the Domino Fell: America and Vietnam, 1945 to 1995. Second edition. By James S. Olson and Randy Roberts. (New York: St. Martin's, 1996. x, 326 pp. Paper, $23.99, ISBN 0-312-08431-5.)
The four books under review give a comprehensive account of the wars in Vietnam since 1945 and some important glimpses of Vietnam's ancient and modern history. There are now over seven thousand books on the war, and there is intense national debate in the United States over lessons for a better future. Among other things, the debate reminds us of the dissenting views and the unprecedented nationwide antiwar movement in the 1960s and early 1970s. In spite of bitter memories, a number of Vietnamese have come to see all the above as positive qualities of the American nation that encourage them to look to the future with optimism.
There are probably many reasons behind the United States involvement in Vietnam, but I agree with George C. Herring's views that the leaders embarked on the war mainly because of a rigid mind-set of obsolete and inapplicable beliefs, particularly the Cold War doctrine of containment. Therefore, as James S. Olson and Randy Roberts point out, the Vietnam War, from the perspective of the United States, was a "wrong" one because the government saw only communism, not nationalism. The other authors under review also implied that this was a case of misreading United. States interests and Vietnamese realities.
In fairness, it must be said that from 1945 to 1948 some United States officials correctly understood that, while Ho Chi Minh was a Communist, he was first of all a nationalist. After the Korean War, however, United States leaders discarded this view, seeing Vietnam's struggle for independence as part of the Chinese scheme of expansion, and gave all-out help to France in her colonial war. Later,...