Sino-American Relations and the Vietnam War, 1964–66

1976 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 293-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank E. Rogers
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
International Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Public Signals ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
The 1960S

Perceptions as well as realities have always played an important role in international politics and it is frequently difficult to separate the two. By the 1960s the realities of increased American involvement in South east Asia and a more militarily and politically influential China heightened the possibility of a Sino-American confrontation. It is the thesis of this study that the United States and the People's Republic of China, both fearful of that possibility as a spill-over from the conflict in Indochina, reached a tacit understanding limiting their involvement. This understanding was transmitted through a series of subtle public signals and, quite possibly, by a number of confidential communications. The primary motive was to prevent an unwanted Sino-American con frontation which could have resulted from a misperception of intentions. As will be demonstrated in this study both Peking and Washington sought, on a number of occasions, to transmit their intentions in order to prevent misperceptions and possible over-reactions.

Epilogue

2021 ◽  
pp. 150-168
Author(s):  
Uta A. Balbier
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Business Culture ◽  
American Business ◽  
Political Protest ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Political Landscapes ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter explores the transformed religious, economic, and political landscapes in Europe and the United States at the time of Graham’s return to Berlin and London in 1966. It explains why Graham was now facing sharper criticism: the theological climate had shifted even further away from Graham’s rather fundamentalist theology, which now appeared outdated. The 1960s counterculture articulated an increasing consumer critique that zoomed in on Graham’s unconditional support for American business culture and the American way of life. And the Vietnam War, from which Graham never really distanced himself, loomed large over his revival meetings, where he now faced open political protest. But even more so, the increasing secularization of crusade cities such as London and Berlin made it significantly harder to rally support for Graham’s revival work at the same time when Graham’s highly professionalized revivalism was increasingly perceived as secular and formulaic.

From Escalation in Vietnam to Sino-American Rapprochement, 1964–72

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Christensen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
The United States ◽  
People's Republic Of China ◽  
Coercive Diplomacy ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Vietnam War

This chapter examines how Sino-Soviet tensions served the United States' regional and global interests and facilitated rapprochement between Washington and Beijing during the period 1964–1972. The competition between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China for the loyalties of the Vietnamese communists would begin in earnest following U.S. escalation in the Vietnam War from late 1964 to early 1965. Ho Chi Minh was able to exploit Chinese and Soviet jealousies of one another to gain maximum support for his revolutionary goals in South Vietnam. From 1965 until early 1968 the rivalry between Beijing and Moscow also served to scuttle multiple Soviet-inspired proposals for peace talks between the Vietnamese communists and the United States. The chapter shows how the intensifying disillusionment and competition between the Soviets and the Chinese rendered the containment of communism through coercive diplomacy more difficult for the United States, particularly in Indochina.

‘Staring into All Their Yellow Eyes’: Where the Wild Things Are, the 1960s, and the Vietnam War

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-73
Author(s):  
Michelle Ann Abate ◽  
Sarah Bradford Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
Psychological Perspective ◽  
Literary Representation ◽  
Military Involvement ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Alternative Reading

Since its release in 1963, Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are has been viewed from a psychological perspective as a literary representation of children's inner emotional struggles. This essay challenges that common critical assessment. We make a case that Sendak's classic picturebook was also influenced by the turbulent era of the 1960s in general and the nation's rapidly escalating military involvement in Vietnam in particular. Our alternative reading of Sendak's text reveals a variety of both visual and verbal elements that recall the conflict in South East Asia and considers the significance of the book's geo-political engagement.

scholarly journals Dirty tricks on the underground press

1981 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-50
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Rips
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Freedom Of Information ◽  
Underground Press ◽  
General Terms ◽  
The Us ◽  
Psychedelic Drugs ◽  
Us Constitution ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
The 1960S

What was known in the United States as the ‘underground press’ – self-published newspapers of the youth counterculture sold at street corners and around campuses in American cities during the 1960s and early 70 s – was once a significant network estimated at over 400 publications. Their hallmark was opposition to US involvement in the Vietnam War, criticism of the authorities, of uncontrolled technology and big business, advocacy of sexual freedom and artistic experimentation and, frequently, the advocacy of marijuana, LSD and other psychedelic drugs. Few of these publications have survived the past ten years, and their disappearance has been variously attributed to the cooling of radical interest after the American withdrawal from Vietnam, as well as to the vague and shifting nature of the ‘hippie’ scene. Complaints by their publishers during the early and mid-seventies that printers refused their business, that office rents suddenly doubled, that advertising was cancelled, that papers were lost – these were seen as local accidents and were rarely reported by the established media. Claims of official or officially-sanctioned harassment were dismissed – even by fellow radicals – as paranoid. Recent research by Geoffrey Rips of the PEN American Center has revealed the extent and variety of official pressure exerted against alternative publications during the Vietnam War period. Using evidence from government hearings like the Church Committee, which reported in 1976, actual FBI documents released to American PEN under the Freedom of Information Act, and other sources, Mr Rips argues that such harassment contributed materially to the closure of certain publications and in general terms constituted a gross infringement on the protection afforded to dissenting opinion and to a free press under the US constitution. We publish edited extracts here from Geoffrey Rips' report which will be published in full by the PEN American Center and the City Lights Press.

Washington will engage more with South-east Asia

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
East Asia ◽  
The United States ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
National Unity ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Set Up

Significance She addressed two key issues during her trip: tensions in post-coup Myanmar and China’s growing regional footprint. Shortly after she left the region, the United States announced that it would donate unused COVID-19 vaccines abroad, including to South-east Asia. Impacts Washington will tighten its sanctions on the Myanmar military while supporting ASEAN’s five-point plan to ease the country’s crisis. The National Unity Government, a parallel administration to Myanmar’s junta set up by its opponents, will try to attract greater US backing. Manila and Washington may extend negotiations over renewing their Visiting Forces Agreement to prevent the pact expiring in August.

The Myth of the Troubled and Scorned Vietnam Veteran

1992 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric T. Dean
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Vietnam Veteran ◽  
War Zone ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
One Year

In the United States since the conclusion of the Vietnam War, the Vietnam veteran has become known as a neglected, troubled, and even scorned individual. According to this view, the Vietnam veteran's problems began in Vietnam where he was forced to participate in a brutal and disturbing war in which he was under fire twenty-four hours a day. The enemy, the wily and tenacious Vietcong and North Vietnamese regulars, were not always clearly defined nor were they above hiding behind or using civilians, leading to the unintentional – and sometimes intentional – killing by American forces of noncombatants, including women and children. Due to the military's policy of limiting the tour of duty in the war zone to one year, combat groups lacked cohesion and suffered from low morale, resulting in the excessive use of marijuana and heroin and an eventual breakdown of discipline, leading to the “fragging” of officers who attempted to reimpose order.

About Ghost Stories: The Vietnam War and “Rememoration”

PMLA ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 123 (5) ◽  
pp. 1700-1702
Author(s):  
Yen Le Espiritu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Social Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sociological Imagination ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Ghost Stories ◽  
The People ◽  
The Vietnam War

In her book Ghostly matters: Haunting and the sociological imagination, avery gordon writes that “to study social life one must confront the ghostly aspects of it”—the experiential realities of social and political life that have been systematically hidden or erased. To confront the ghostly aspects of social life is to tell ghost stories: to pay attention to what modern history has rendered ghostly and to write into being the seething presence of the things that appear to be not there (Gordon 7–8). By most accounts, Vietnam was the site of one of the most brutal and destructive of the wars between Western imperial powers and the people of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Yet public discussions and commemorations of the Vietnam War in the United States often skip over this devastating history, thereby ignoring the war's costs borne by the Vietnamese—the lifelong costs that turn the 1975 “fall of Saigon” and the exodus from Vietnam into “the endings that are not over” (Gordon 195). Without creating an opening for a Vietnamese perspective of the war, these public deliberations refuse to remember Vietnam as a historical site, Vietnamese people as genuine subjects, and the Vietnam War as having any kind of integrity of its own (Desser).

Interlude V

2021 ◽  
pp. 143-148
Author(s):  
Trevor Davis Lipscombe
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legal Case ◽  
Wild Ass ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Intelligent Life

I’m sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It’s just been too intelligent to come here. ARTHUR C. CLARKE (reproduced from an interview http://www.scifi.com/transcripts/aclarke.txt) The Vietnam War, during which American casualties ran extremely high, remains controversial in the United States. During the conflict, US forces estimated the strength of enemy forces based on the “SWAG” principle. At the war’s end, in a legal case, Colonel John Stewart took the stand. Lawyers grilled him, asking what, exactly, SWAG stood for. His reply, generating much amusement in the courtroom, was “Scientific Wild-Ass Guess.”...

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