Vietnam Anatomy Of A Conflict

Vietnam has experienced huge political and economic development since the war. In Anatomy of a Peace, Gabriel Kolko looks at the main economic phases the Communist Party has embarked upon since 1986 and outlines the transition to nascent capitalism. He also explores Vietnam's relations to its neighbours and the US in the light of social and psychological national features. Based on extensive research and over 30 years first hand experience, Anatomy of a Peace is a timely examination of recent history and developing economies in Asia. Gabriel Kolko argues that neither an intentional socialist or market strategy have determined recent Vietnamese history and, in fact, the Communist Party has little control over development during peace time.

Drawing on recently declassified materials, this study chronicles and analyzes the political, economic, and military history of the Vietnam War through incisive critiques of decision-making in Washington, Saigon, and Hanoi.

En meget detaljeret analyse af årsagerne til Vietnamkrigen og til det amarikanske engagement samt af krigens gang 1965-1975 både på internationalt topplan, i Saigon og på slagmarken.

This groundbreaking book provides the first systematic comparison of America’s modern wars and why they were won or lost. John D. Caldwell uses the World War II victory as the historical benchmark for evaluating the success and failure of later conflicts. Unlike WWII, the Korean, Vietnam, and Iraqi Wars were limited, but they required enormous national commitments, produced no lasting victories, and generated bitter political controversies. Caldwell comprehensively examines these four wars through the lens of a strategic architecture to explain how and why their outcomes were so dramatically different. He defines a strategic architecture as an interlinked set of continually evolving policies, strategies, and operations by which combatant states work toward a desired end. Policy defines the high-level goals a nation seeks to achieve once it initiates a conflict or finds itself drawn into one. Policy makers direct a broad course of action and strive to control the initiative. When they make decisions, they have to respond to unforeseen conditions to guide and determine future decisions. Effective leaders are skilled at organizing constituencies they need to succeed and communicating to them convincingly. Strategy means employing whatever resources are available to achieve policy goals in situations that are dynamic as conflicts change quickly over time. Operations are the actions that occur when politicians, soldiers, and diplomats execute plans. A strategic architecture, Caldwell argues, is thus not a static blueprint but a dynamic vision of how a state can succeed or fail in a conflict.

More than most post-1970 conflicts involving US forces, the conflict in Iraq has been fought out against a background of frequently invoked memories from the era of the Vietnam War. The essays in this book offer a series of perspectives on connections and parallels between the Vietnam War and the 2003 invasion of, and conflict in, Iraq. The contributors particularly examine the impact of the Vietnam analogy on the War in Iraq, assessing the military tactical lessons learned from the Vietnam War and exploring the influence and persistence of its legacy in US politics, culture and diplomacy. The volume holds up to original interrogation some commonly held assumptions about historical analogy, and several distinguished authorities on the Vietnam War era, in particular, offer their thoughts on the value and applicability of Vietnam-Iraq parallels. If most contributions point out some obvious dissimilarities between the two eras, notably the transformed post-Cold War international environment, the similarities, particularly those relating to the problems of cultural misunderstanding, are also apparent. Vietnam in Iraq will be of great interest for all students and researchers of the Iraq War, strategic studies, international relations and American politics.

Another Century of War? is a candid and critical look at America’s “new wars” by a brilliant and provocative analyst of its old ones. Gabriel Kolko’s masterly studies of conflict have redefined our views of modern warfare and its effects; in this urgent and timely treatise, he turns his attention to our current crisis and the dark future it portends. Another Century of War? insists that the roots of terrorism lie in America’s own cynical policies in the Middle East and Afghanistan, a half-century of real politik justified by crusades for oil and against communism. The latter threat has disappeared, but America has become even more ambitious in its imperialist adventures and, as the recent crisis proves, even less secure. America, Kolko contends, reacts to the complexity of world affairs with its advanced technology and superior firepower, not with realistic political response and negotiation. He offers a critical and well-informed assessment of whether such a policy offers any hope of attaining greater security for America. Raising the same hard-hitting questions that made his Century of War a “crucial” (Globe and Mail) assessment of our age of conflict, Kolko asks whether the wars of the future will end differently from those in our past.