SOME LANGUAGE ASPECTS OF THE U.S. ADVISORY ROLE IN SOUTH VIETNAM

1963 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfred I. Fiks ◽  
John W. McCrary
Keyword(s):  
South Vietnam ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Advisory Role

American policy orientalized

2006 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 331-334
Author(s):  
Edmund F. Wehrle
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Diplomatic History ◽  
National Liberation ◽  
Temple University ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
National Liberation Front ◽  
American Policy ◽  
Reign Of Terror ◽  
Ngo Dinh Diem ◽  
The U.S

America's Miracle Man in Vietnam presents a prime example of the controversial new cultural trend in U.S. diplomatic history. On the surface, the author's depiction of the process whereby Ngo Dinh Diem became America's candidate to head the new country of South Vietnam is familiar (see, for instance, George Herring, America's Longest War, Temple University Press, 1986, 50–69). Echoing others, Jacobs argues that the U.S. promotion of Diem ultimately led to severe setbacks in Southeast Asia. So blatant were Diem's flaws, Jacobs insists, virtually any prescient observer could have predicted his unsuitability to lead nascent South Vietnam. Diem had no political base, was “undeniably an autocrat,” and appeared to be an eccentric loner by virtually all accounts (38). Once in office, Diem predictably launched his “reign of terror and error,” alienating legions of his countrymen and strengthening his opposition, which emerged officially as the National Liberation Front in 1960 (17).

Kissinger, Ford, and Congress: The Very Bitter End in Vietnam

2002 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 439-473 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Christopher Jespersen
Keyword(s):  
American People ◽  
Economic Assistance ◽  
Ford Administration ◽  
Henry Kissinger ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Government ◽  
Working Out ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Do So

Although not elected to the office, Gerald Ford nonetheless had the opportunity to change the nation's course in Vietnam when he assumed the presidency in August 1974. He did not do so, leaving the burden of ending the war there to the U.S. Congress. Contrary to what some policymakers and historians have subsequently argued, Congress did not sell out a healthy, viable South Vietnamese government to the communists in 1974––1975. Instead, the senators and representatives who voted to reduce, not cut off, military and economic assistance to the government of Nguyen Van Thieu made the correct and proper decision in the face of that regime's obviously untenable nature and the overwhelming desire of the American people to curtail support for it. Rather than working out a plan to end the war and remove those South Vietnamese who had worked with the Americans over the years, the Ford administration, led by the President himself, his Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, and Graham Martin, the U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, chose to pursue a deliberate policy of denial, one designed to place the blame for the loss of South Vietnam on the shoulders of Congress. The resulting tragedy left thousands of Vietnamese to face life as the clear losers in a civil war.

Explaining U.S. Military Strategy in Vietnam: Thinking Clearly about Causation

2010 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 124-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan D. Caverley
Keyword(s):  
Explanatory Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
Johnson Administration ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
Lyndon Johnson ◽  
Civilian Leaders ◽  
Cost Distribution ◽  
Intensive Approach ◽  
The U.S

Cost distribution theory suggests that the costs to the median voter in a democracy of fighting an insurgency with firepower are relatively low compared to a more labor-intensive approach. Therefore, this voter will favor a capitalintensive counterinsurgency campaign despite the resulting diminished prospects of victory. Primary and secondary sources show that President Lyndon Johnson and his civilian aides were very much aware that, although they considered a main force—focused and firepower-intensive strategy to be largely ineffective against the insurgency in South Vietnam, it was politically more popular in the United States. Importantly, civil-military agreement on warfighting strategy does not undermine this explanation, which assumes that civilian leaders, and ultimately the public, play an essential role in that strategy's determination. Appointing and supporting Gen. William Westmoreland was just one means by which the Johnson administration ensured that the U.S. military emphasized the fight against conventional enemy units and relied on the use of firepower for the fight against Vietcong insurgents. Civil-military disagreements over strategy, however rare, therefore provide the essential test of cost distribution theory's explanatory power. When officials suggested that the U.S. military adopt more labor-intensive pacification approaches to fight the insurgency, the Johnson administration rejected them.

scholarly journals Military cooperation between the United States of America and the Republic of Vietnam (1969-1973)

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. first
Author(s):  
Le Thi Nhuong
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Cooperation ◽  
Internal Security ◽  
Military Forces ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Military ◽  
The U.S

President M. Richard Nixon took office in the context that the United States was being crisis and deeply divided by the Vietnam war. Ending the war became the new administration's top priority. The top priority of the new government was to get the American out of the war. But if the American got out of the war and the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) fell, the honor and and prestige of the U.S will be effected. Nixon government wanted to conclude American involvement honorably. It means that the U.S forces could be returned to the U.S, but still maintaining the RVN government in South Vietnam. To accomplish this goal, Nixon government implemented linkage diplomacy, negotiated with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) in Paris and implemented "Vietnamization" strategy. The aim of the Vietnamization was to train and provide equipments for the RVN's military forces that gradually replace the U.S. troops, take responsibility in self-guarantee for their own security. By analyzing the military cooperation between the United States and the RVN in the implementation of "Vietnamization", the paper aims to clarify the nature of the "allied relationship" between the U.S and the RVN. It also proves that the goal of Nixon's Vietnamization was not to help the RVN "reach to a strong government with a wealthy economy, a powerful internal security and military forces", served the policy of withdrawing American troops from the war that the U.S could not win militarily, solving internal problems but still preserving the honor of the United States.

Prelude, War, and Aftermath

2018 ◽  
pp. 3-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Turse
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Post Traumatic Stress ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
Post Traumatic ◽  
Human Costs ◽  
New Diagnosis ◽  
North And South ◽  
Official Recognition ◽  
The U.S

This chapter presents a broad summary of this conflict, beginning with its roots in nineteenth-century colonial French Indochina. It details the buildup of U.S. military and economic aid to the South Vietnamese regime after French withdrawal, early U.S. intervention in the ongoing civil war between North and South Vietnam, and the gradual escalation of America’s presence in Southeast Asia under presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. It describes how and where the war was fought, who served and why, and on-going political and social movements in the U.S. throughout the war and after U.S. withdrawal. It summarizes the human costs in Vietnam and the United States. It describes attempts by psychiatrists to create frameworks for understanding and addressing the trauma, anguish, alienation, and rage experienced and expressed by the U.S. veterans who fought this controversial war, including official recognition in the new diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Hanoi and Americanization of the War in Vietnam

2005 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 427-440
Author(s):  
PIERRE ASSELIN
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Intervention ◽  
The North ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
Before And After ◽  
History Of ◽  
The U.S ◽  
The Revolution

The spring 1965 deployment of U.S. ground forces to South Vietnam and initiation of sustained aerial and naval bombardments of the North by the U.S. military marked a turning point in the history of the Vietnamese Revolution. Until recently, Western scholars only vaguely understood Hanoi's attitude toward those developments and what they meant for the revolution it spearheaded. Newly available materials from Vietnam provide a clearer picture of the concerns of North Vietnamese policymakers in the period immediately before and after the American intervention. Based on such materials, this article demonstrates that, when it committed the North to a wider war with the United States, Hanoi did so reluctantly. Having made the commitment, however, it stopped at nothing to guarantee the ultimate success of its efforts.

Colonial Intimacies and Counterinsurgency

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simeon Man
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Hearts And Minds ◽  
Race War ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Anticolonial Nationalism

This chapter reconsiders the origins of the Vietnam War by foregrounding U.S.-Philippine colonial history. It discusses the U.S. counterinsurgency in South Vietnam in 1954–1956 that mobilized the intimacies of Filipino doctors, nurses, and veterans to help win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese. Their military, affective, and ideological labor, I argue, was crucial to the U.S. effort to depict counterinsurgency as a benevolent enterprise, antithetical to a colonial race war. At the same time, these efforts could not contain the rising tide of anticolonial nationalism in the Philippines and South Vietnam that emerged by the end of the 1950s.

Vietnam in America: Our longest war comes home

Worldview ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 22 (6) ◽  
pp. 20-24
Author(s):  
James Finn
Keyword(s):  
The North ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
Entire Country ◽  
Red Flag ◽  
Communist Leader ◽  
North Vietnam ◽  
The City ◽  
The U.S

On September 2, 1945, the Vietnamese Communists raised their red flag in Hanoi to proclaim the independent Republic of Vietnam. The group that saluted the flag included the Communist leader Ho Chi Minh and American officers in uniform.On April 30, 1975, the last helicopter of an evacuation airlift rose from the U.S. embassy in Saigon. As the Americans fled Saigon, forces of the North Vietnam Army entered the city and renamed it Ho Chi Minh. South Vietnam ceased to exist as a separate state; the last official vestiges of American participation in a disastrous, losing war disappeared; and the Communists of North Vietnam consolidated their control over the entire country.

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