Robert S. McNamara was Secretary of defence to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, 1961-1968. James G. Blight is professor of international relations (Research), Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies, Brown University. Robert K. Brigham is associate professor of history, and director of the Program in International Relations, Vassar College. Thomas J. Biersteker is director, Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies, and Henry Luce Professor of Transnational Organizations, Brown University. Colonel Herbert Y. Schandler (USA Ret.) is professor in the Department of Grand Strategy, Industrial College of the Armed Forces, National defence University, Washington, D.C.
McNamara, the former secretary of defense under presidents Kennedy and Johnson, argues that the war was a tragedy for both sides primarily because American and North Vietnamese leaders missed opportunities for avoiding war and later for ending it earlier. He and his coauthors detail the sometimes intense talks they and other American scholars and former officials had with 16 of their former Vietnamese adversaries in meetings held in Hanoi, from 1995 to 1998. The authors' presentation of Vietnamese analyses and other documentation greatly aids American understanding of the war and prevents the book from merely restating McNamara's In Retrospect (LJ 4/15/95). This work, bound to be controversial, is a crucial addition for public and academic libraries.ÄCharles L. Lumpkins, Pennsylvania State Univ., State College Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Erroneous mindsets, mutual ignorance and misunderstandings between Washington and Hanoi drove the escalation of of the Vietnam War, concludes former Secretary of Defense McNamara in a challenging report full of revelations both fascinating and appalling. Based on six sets of talks held in Hanoi between 1995 and 1998 that brought together U.S. and Vietnamese scholars, policy makers and former military officers, this major reappraisal of the war is presented as a critical oral history. Among the meetings participants were McNamara, Nicholas Katzenbach (former deputy secretary of state), General Vo Nguyen Giap (ex-North Vietnamese defense minister) and Vietnams retired foreign minister Nguyen Co Thach. During the talks, McNamara writes, he was amazed to learn that Hanoi saw U.S. peace initiatives as part of a sinister plot to establish a permanent colonial regime in Saigon. Washington, misperceiving North Vietnam as a communist puppet bent on conquering all of Southeast Asia, let a mind-boggling number of opportunities slip by that might have averted war or brought a negotiated settlement. We learn that elements within Hanois top leadership wanted to accept a neutral Saigon coalition government; we are told that key escalation points (e.g., the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin attack) were not ordered by Hanoi to target Americans, as Washington assumed, but were decentralized decisions made for essentially local reasons. While it would be easy to dismiss this book as a self-flagellating exercise in hindsight, its unprecedented testimony by key players on both sides makes it an invaluable sequel to McNamaras 1995 bestseller, In Retrospect. Photos not seen by PW. (May)
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