Perils Of Dominance

Perils of Dominance is the first completely new interpretation of how and why the United States went to war in Vietnam. It provides an authoritative challenge to the prevailing explanation that U.S. officials adhered blindly to a Cold War doctrine that loss of Vietnam would cause a "domino effect" leading to communist domination of the area. Gareth Porter presents compelling evidence that U.S. policy decisions on Vietnam from 1954 to mid-1965 were shaped by an overwhelming imbalance of military power favoring the United States over the Soviet Union and China. He demonstrates how the slide into war in Vietnam is relevant to understanding why the United States went to war in Iraq, and why such wars are likely as long as U.S. military power is overwhelmingly dominant in the world. Challenging conventional wisdom about the origins of the war, Porter argues that the main impetus for military intervention in Vietnam came not from presidents Kennedy and Johnson but from high-ranking national security officials in their administrations who were heavily influenced by U.S. dominance over its Cold War foes. Porter argues that presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson were all strongly opposed to sending combat forces to Vietnam, but that both Kennedy and Johnson were strongly pressured by their national security advisers to undertake military intervention. Porter reveals for the first time that Kennedy attempted to open a diplomatic track for peace negotiations with North Vietnam in 1962 but was frustrated by bureaucratic resistance. Significantly revising the historical account of a major turning point, Porter describes how Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara deliberately misled Johnson in the Gulf of Tonkin crisis, effectively taking the decision to bomb North Vietnam out of the president's hands.

In a new interpretation of how and why the United States went to war in Vietnam, the author challenges conventional wisdom about the origins of the war, arguing that U.S. policy decisions were shaped by an imbalance of military power favoring the U.S. over the Soviet Union and China, a factor that is also relevant to the current U.S. intervention in Iraq.

A masterful account of how sixty years of American militarism created the Cold War, fanned decades of conflict, helped fuel Islamist terror, and now threatens to bankrupt the nation. For most of the twentieth century, the sword has led before the olive branch in American foreign policy, and the United States can no longer afford the dangers provoked. With a struggling economy biting at heels and international affairs in a precarious state of unprecedented scope, American citizens have to wonder; what’s happened? State vs. Defense characterizes figures who crafted American foreign policy, from George Marshall to Robert McNamara to Henry Kissinger to Don Rumsfeld with this underlying theme: America has become increasingly imperial and militaristic. In the tradition of classics such as The Wise Men, and The Best and the Brightest, State vs. Defense explores how and why American leaders succumbed to the sirens of militarism, how the republic has been lost to an empire, and how the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower so famously forewarned has set us on a stark path of financial peril.

Making sense of the wars for Vietnam has had a long history. The question "why Vietnam?" dominated American and Vietnamese political life for much of the length of the wars and has continued to be asked in the decades since they ended. This volume brings together the work of eleven scholars to examine the conceptual and methodological shifts that have marked the contested terrain of Vietnam War scholarship. Editors Marilyn Young and Mark Bradley's superb group of renowned contributors spans the generations--including those who were active during wartime, along with scholars conducting research in Vietnamese sources and uncovering new sources in the United States, former Soviet Union, China, and Eastern and Western Europe. Ranging in format from top-down reconsiderations of critical decision-making moments in Washington, Hanoi, and Saigon, to microhistories of the war that explore its meanings from the bottom up, these essays comprise the most up-to-date collection of scholarship on the controversial historiography of the Vietnam Wars.

The conventional narrative of the Vietnam War often glosses over the decade leading up to it. Covering the years 1954-1963, this book presents a thought-provoking reexamination of the war's long prelude--from the aftermath of French defeat at Dien Bien Phu--through Hanoi's decision to begin reunification by force--to the assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. Established narratives of key events are given critical reappraisal and new light is shed on neglected factors. The strategic importance of Laos is revealed as central to understanding how the war in the South developed.

"Scott's brilliantly perceptive account of the underpinnings of American governmental authority should be made required reading. The book vividly depicts the political forces that have pushed this country toward an abyss, threatening constitutional democracy at home and world peace abroad. Its central message can be understood as an urgent wake-up call to everyone concerned with the future of America."—Richard Falk, author of The Great Terror War "Peter Dale Scott is one of that tiny and select company of the most brilliantly creative and provocative political-historical writers of the last half century. The Road to 9/11 further secures his distinction as truth-teller and prophet. He shows us here with painful yet hopeful clarity the central issue of our time—America's coming to terms with its behavior in the modern world. As in his past work, Scott's gift is not only recognition and wisdom but also redemption and rescue we simply cannot do without."—Roger Morris, former NSC staffer "The Road to 9/11 is vintage Peter Dale Scott. Scott does not undertake conventional political analysis; instead, he engages in a kind of poetics, crafting the dark poetry of the deep state, of parapolitics, and of shadow government. As with his earlier work Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, Scott has no theory of responsibility and does not name the guilty. Rather, he maps out an alien terrain, surveying the topography of a political shadow land, in which covert political deviancy emerges as the norm. After reading Scott, we can no longer continue with our consensus-driven belief that our so-called 'liberal' order renders impossible the triumph of the politically irrational."—Eric Wilson, Senior Lecturer of Public International Law, Monash University, and co-editor of Government of the Shadows "Peter Dale Scott exposes a shadow world of oil, terrorism, drug trade and arms deals, of covert financing and parallel security structures-from the Cold War to today. He shows how such parallel forces of the United States have been able to dominate the agenda of the George W. Bush Administration, and that statements and actions made by Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld before, during and after September 11, 2001, present evidence for an American 'deep state' and for the so-called 'Continuity of Government' in parallel to the regular 'public state' ruled by law. Scott's brilliant work not only reveals the overwhelming importance of these parallel forces but also presents elements of a strategy for restraining their influence to win back the 'public state', the American democracy."—Ola Tunander, International Peace Research Institute, Oslo "A powerful study of the historic origins of the terrorist strikes of September 11, this book offers an indispensable guide to the gluttonous cast of characters who, since Watergate and the fall of Nixon, fashioned an ever more reckless American empire. By exposing the corrupt U.S. 'deep state'-transfer of public authority to America's wealthy and to the nation's unaccountable secret intelligence agencies-Peter Dale Scott's The Road to 9/11 illuminates the path toward a more democratic and inclusive republic."—David MacGregor, King's University College at the University of Western Ontario "The Road to 9/11 provides an illuminating and disturbing history of the American government since World War II. Scott's account suggests that the 9/11 attacks were a culmination of long-term trends that threaten the very existence of American democracy, and also that there has been a massive cover-up of 9/11 itself. This book, which combines extensive research, perceptive analysis, and a fascinating narrative, will surely be considered Scott's magnum opus."—David Ray Griffin, author of Debunking 9/11 Debunking "'The America we knew and loved. Can it be saved?' That question opens this book, and getting to the answer called for the honed intellect of a scholar and the sensitivity of a poet. Peter Dale Scott has both, in spades, and here gives us much, much more than a book about 9/11. In a time of fear, he speaks for sanity and freedom."—Anthony Summers, author of The Arrogance of Power

Revisiting the racial origins of the conflict between “civilization” and “savagery” in twentieth-century America The atomic age brought the Bomb and spawned stories of nuclear apocalypse to remind us of impending doom. As Patrick Sharp reveals, those stories had their origins well before Hiroshima, reaching back to Charles Darwin and America’s frontier. In Savage Perils, Sharp examines the racial underpinnings of American culture, from the early industrial age to the Cold War. He explores the influence of Darwinism, frontier nostalgia, and literary modernism on the history and representations of nuclear weaponry. Taking into account such factors as anthropological race theory and Asian immigration, he charts the origins of a worldview that continues to shape our culture and politics. Sharp dissects Darwin’s arguments regarding the struggle between “civilization” and “savagery,” theories that fueled future-war stories ending in Anglo dominance in Britain and influenced Turnerian visions of the frontier in America. Citing George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil,” Sharp argues that many Americans still believe in the racially charged opposition between civilization and savagery, and consider the possibility of nonwhite “savages” gaining control of technology the biggest threat in the “war on terror.” His insightful book shows us that this conflict is but the latest installment in an ongoing saga that has been at the heart of American identity from the beginning—and that understanding it is essential if we are to eradicate racist mythologies from American life.

"The Republic in Peril sees a threat to American institutions and liberties in the emergence of a powerful national security state. It offers a panoramic view of America's choices in foreign policy, with detailed analysis of the vested interests and ideologies that have justified a sprawling global empire over the last 25 years"--