The War for South Viet Nam: 1954-1975 - Hardcover

Joes, Anthony James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0275931625 ISBN 13: 9780275931629

Publisher: Praeger, 1989

Synopsis

In The War for South Viet Nam, Anthony James Joes addresses a side not often studied in the range of texts available on the Viet Nam War. Written for a non-military audience, this book chronicles and analyzes the twenty year struggle to maintain South Vietnamese independence. Joes tells the story with a sympathetic focus on South Viet Nam and is highly critical of U.S. military strategy and tactics in fighting this war. He claims that the fall of South Viet Nam was not inevitable, that an abrupt and public termination of U.S. aid provoked a crisis of confidence inside South Viet Nam that led to debacle. Students and scholars of military studies, South East Asia, U.S. foreign policy, or the general reader interested in this fascinating period in 20th-century history, will find The War for South Viet Nam invaluable reading.

The book begins with an historical background to U.S. involvement in Viet Nam. Written with a keen understanding of political, historical, and military factors, The War for South Viet Nam supplies an assemblage of information that was, until now, widely scattered. Joes closely examines the geographical determinants of the war and discusses mistakes in U.S. strategy, including the Americanization of the war, overly destructive methods of combat, and the failure to resolve the problem of invasion through the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Joes maintains that future stragtegy must contain more sophisticated, less destructive anti-guerrilla tactics. The complicated factors involved in the Viet Nam War are here offered in a consolidated, objective form enabling the reader to consider the implications of U.S. experiences in South Viet Nam for future policy in other world areas.

About this title

About the Author

ANTHONY JAMES JOES is the Director of the International Relations Program at St. Joseph's University. Among his previous writings are Facism in the Contemporary World, Mussolini, and From the Barrel of a Gun: Armies and Revolutions.

Review

"This book fills a niche in the increasing number of texts on the Vietnam War as it provides a short, readable volume for the novice student written from a `revisionist' (i.e., centrist/conservative) perspective. Among its many strengths are: (1) it is accessible to the nonspecialist, (2) it provides the background in Vietnamese history and politics and the long origins of the conflict necessary to understand the context of American involvement, (3) it affords balanced insight into the contending military forces without romanticizing the Communist guerillas, (4) it incisively critiques inadequate American military strategy and tactics, (5) it assesses honestly the problems, successes, and failures of building a viable political order in South Vietnam, and (6) it daringly challenges the `prevailing wisdom' on a wide range of issues and offers a provocative conclusion. . . . This is a very useful book in line with new revisionist writings such as Phillip B. Davidson's Vietnam at War and F. Charles Parker's Vietnam: Strategy for a Stalemate (1989). A good volume for high school and public libraries as well as academic collections." -- Choice

About this edition

• Publisher: Praeger
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0275931625
• ISBN 13: 9780275931629
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 186