American Power and the New Mandarins Redux

2020 ◽  
pp. 43-83
Author(s):  
Kurt Jacobsen
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
American Power ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Tet Offensive

Noam Chomsky's landmark essay collection American Power and the New Mandarins was published about five decades ago, just after the Tet Offensive marked a turnaround in the Vietnam War. His superb debunking expedition, along with other early volumes At War In Asia and For Reasons of State, remains disturbingly relevant in its dissection of professional conceits, institutional deceits and booster attitudes in sectors of academe where everyone, says ‘we’ when referring to US foreign policy.

10. The Vietnam War

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W. Young ◽  
John Kent
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Basic Principle ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
North Vietnam ◽  
Tet Offensive

This chapter focuses on the United States’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Lyndon B. Johnson inherited the Vietnam conflict in difficult circumstances. He had not been elected president in his own right and so, perhaps, believed that he should carry on with John F. Kennedy’s policies. It was unclear what exactly Kennedy would have done in Vietnam, but Johnson retained his predecessor’s foreign policy team and did not question the basic principle of America’s foreign policy, which called for communism to be resisted. The chapter first considers the escalation of US involvement in Vietnam during the period 1963–1965 before discussing the conflict between the US and North Vietnam in the succeeding years, along with the Tet offensive and its implications. It concludes with an assessment of Richard Nixon’s decision to restart large-scale US bombing of North Vietnam.

Paul Wolfowitz and the promise of American power, 1969–2001

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Milne
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Intellectual Biography ◽  
American Power ◽  
Bush Doctrine ◽  
Political Evolution ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
The Moment

The study of foreign policy and international relations often takes ideas as rigid and fully formed, being assigned to individuals and categories of school without much attention to the processes by which they change calibre and gain or lose traction. David Milne’s politico-intellectual biography of Paul Wolfowitz from 1969 until he took up service in the administration of George W. Bush focuses precisely on the vagaries as well as the consistencies in the evolution of his thought. Many of the shifts and deepening convictions derived, of course, form the experience of observing and implementing US policy in the latter stages of the Vietnam War and thereafter. Milne takes us through the phases of Wolfowitz’s political evolution up to the moment of 9/11, showing that the “War on Terror” cannot simply be attributed to the trauma of that event; there were many existing tributaries that played into the Bush doctrine, and these have not always been given the recognition they deserve.

10. The Vietnam War

2020 ◽  
pp. 263-283
Author(s):  
John W. Young ◽  
John Kent
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Basic Principle ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
North Vietnam ◽  
Tet Offensive

This chapter focuses on US involvement in the Vietnam War. Lyndon B. Johnson inherited the Vietnam conflict in difficult circumstances. He had not been elected president in his own right and so, perhaps, believed that he should carry on with John F. Kennedy’s policies. It was unclear what exactly Kennedy would have done in Vietnam, but Johnson retained his predecessor’s foreign policy team and did not question the basic principle of America’s foreign policy, which called for communism to be resisted. The chapter first considers the escalation of US involvement in Vietnam during the period 1963–5 before discussing the conflict between the US and North Vietnam in the succeeding years, along with the Tet offensive and its implications. It concludes with an assessment of Richard Nixon’s decision to restart large-scale US bombing of North Vietnam.

scholarly journals Vietnam Syndrome and its Effects on the Gulf War Strategy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Baturay Yurtbay
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gulf War ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
The Us ◽  
Vietnam Syndrome ◽  
The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War killed and wounded many soldiers and civilians. US foreign policy began to shift after the War’s, end including discussions on the level of power to be used for future wars or conflicts. The United States experienced considerable anxiety over its failures in Vietnam, which was coined the Vietnam Syndrome by the media and various political sciences scholars. The Gulf War, the first serious use of US military power after the Vietnam War, began with discussions about the suitable use of force and how the Vietnam War Syndrome could be overcome. While the Vietnam War was a huge failure for the United States, it also paved the way for new discussions on US foreign policy dealing with appropriate use of force, including last resort uses and US vital interests. These discussions are considered as the corner stone for the US success in the Gulf War. This study will briefly explain the effects and consequences of the Vietnam War and the Gulf War as well as analyse US foreign policy discussions between the Vietnam War and the Gulf War. While examining US foreign policy and the US intervention in the Gulf War, this research will mainly focus on the Shultz doctrine and the Weinberger doctrine. This study will show that the Vietnam War started many discussions on  the use of  force and its application in future wars that were part of the US Gulf War military strategy. Even though the United States experienced failure in the Vietnam War, the lessons taken helped to govern future conflicts and the most important clues were seen in the Gulf War.

Vietnamese Adoptions in the Early War Years

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison Varzally
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Racial Equality ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
International Obligations ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Familial Relations ◽  
At Home

This chapter explores the first wave of Vietnamese adoptions against a backdrop of military escalation and growing anti-war sentiment. It examines the language of responsibility, culpability and multiculturalism that came to dominate defences of adoptions in the Vietnam War era as Americans reconsidered the effectiveness and morality of U.S. foreign policy. Integral to such rhetoric was the imagined and real participation of American men and women as soldiers and social workers in Vietnam. The chapter not only elaborates the ways in which Vietnamese adoptions offered Americans an opportunity to engage with gendered notions of citizenship, but also addresses questions about chances for racial equality at home, the extent of the nation’s international obligations, and the power of intimate, familial relations to alter society.

‘Experience is the only teacher’: Academic ambassadors interpret ‘mutual understanding’

2019 ◽  
pp. 130-148
Author(s):  
Alice Garner ◽  
Diane Kirkby
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
National Government ◽  
Mutual Understanding ◽  
Educational Exchange ◽  
Political Interference ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Academic Ambassadors

The Vietnam War posed significant challenges to academics on educational exchange who were expected under the Fulbright program to be ambassadors as well as researchers. The CIA surveillance of the anti-war movement and political interference in the administration of the Fulbright program from government caused academics in both Australia and America to defend the autonomy of the Program. How did scholars interpret the ambassadorial expectation when they were opposed to their government’s foreign policy? Many also found they could not speak critically of their national government without antagonising their hosts. Living up to the Fulbright program’s ideal of achieving ‘mutual understanding’ was very much a matter of learning by experience, to be interpreted by scholars for whom research was actually the priority.

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