Vietnam S Strategic Thinking During The Third Indochina War

"Why did Vietnam invade and occupy Cambodia in 1978? And why did it eventually change its approach, shifting from military confrontation to economic reform and reconciliation with China in the late 1980s? Drawing on rarely accessed archival documents, Kosal Path explores this major change in Vietnamese leaders' objectives and strategies. Unlike most studies, which attribute the invasion to political elites' paranoia and imperial ambition over Indochina, Path argues that Hanoi's move was rational and strategic, intended to resolve its economic crisis and counter imminent threats posed by the Sino-Cambodian alliance by cementing its own alliance with the Soviet Union. As these costly efforts failed in the 1980s, Vietnamese thinking shifted from the doctrinal Marxist-Leninist ideology that had prevailed during the last decade of the Cold War to the approach that would come to characterize the post-Cold War era. Path traces the moving target of Vietnam's changing priorities: first from military victory to Socialist economic reconstruction in 1975-76; then to military confrontation in 1978-1984; and finally, in 1985-86, to the broad reforms dubbed Doi Moi ("renovation"), meant to create a peaceful regional environment for Vietnam's integration into the global economy. Path's sources include internally circulated reports from provincial authorities, ministries, and ad hoc Party committees--materials that have been largely masked by the Vietnamese nationalist history of Vietnam's selfless assistance to Cambodia's revolution and glossed over by the Cambodian nationalist narrative of Vietnam's longstanding imperial ambition in Cambodia"--

This new collection explores the origins and key issues of the Third Indochina War, which began in 1979. Drawing on unique documentation from all sides, leading contributors reinterpret and demystify the long-term and immediate causes of the Vietnamese-Cambodian and Sino-Vietnamese conflicts. They closely examine how both the links between policies and policy assumptions in the countries involved, and the dynamics - national, regional and international - drove them towards war. Rather than explaining the conflicts as determined by age-old resentments and suspicions or seeing war between the former allies as the necessary outcome of the conflicts of the 1970s, the contributors to this volume look at the concrete causes for the breakdown in cooperation and the road to war. This volume includes even-handed assessments of the roles of the major players, including a look at the beginnings of Thai-Chinese military cooperation in support of the Khmer Rouge. The subjects covered remain highly relevant to inter-state relations in South East Asia, where border issues are still a cause of tension. An updated chronology of events leading to the outbreak of hostilities is also included. This book will be of immense interest to all students of the Third Indochina War, Southeast Asian history and of international relations and war studies in general.

This well-researched volume examines the Sino-Vietnamese hostilities of the late 1970s and 1980s, attempting to understand them as strategic, operational and tactical events. The Sino-Vietnamese War was the third Indochina war, and contemporary Southeast Asia cannot be properly understood unless we acknowledge that the Vietnamese fought three, not two, wars to establish their current role in the region. The war was not about the Sino-Vietnamese border, as frequently claimed, but about China’s support for its Cambodian ally, the Khmer Rouge, and the book addresses US and ASEAN involvement in the effort to support the regime. Although the Chinese completed their troop withdrawal in March 1979, they retained their strategic goal of driving Vietnam out of Cambodia at least until 1988, but it was evident by 1984-85 that the PLA, held back by the drag of its ‘Maoist’ organization, doctrine, equipment, and personnel, was not an effective instrument of coercion. Chinese Military Strategy in the Third Indochina War will be of great interest to all students of the Third Indochina War, Asian political history, Chinese security and strategic studies in general.

This new collection explores the origins and key issues of the Third Indochina War, which began in 1979. Drawing on unique documentation from all sides, leading contributors reinterpret and demystify the long-term and immediate causes of the Vietnamese-Cambodian and Sino-Vietnamese conflicts. They closely examine how both the links between policies and policy assumptions in the countries involved, and the dynamics - national, regional and international - drove them towards war. Rather than explaining the conflicts as determined by age-old resentments and suspicions or seeing war between the former allies as the necessary outcome of the conflicts of the 1970s, the contributors to this volume look at the concrete causes for the breakdown in cooperation and the road to war. This volume includes even-handed assessments of the roles of the major players, including a look at the beginnings of Thai-Chinese military cooperation in support of the Khmer Rouge. The subjects covered remain highly relevant to inter-state relations in South East Asia, where border issues are still a cause of tension. An updated chronology of events leading to the outbreak of hostilities is also included. This book will be of immense interest to all students of the Third Indochina War, Southeast Asian history and of international relations and war studies in general.

By tracing the evolving worldview of Vietnamese communists over 80 years as they led Vietnam through wars, social revolution, and peaceful development, this book shows the depth and resilience of their commitment to the communist utopia in their foreign policy. Unearthing new material from Vietnamese archives and publications, this book challenges the conventional scholarship and the popular image of the Vietnamese revolution and the Vietnam War as being driven solely by patriotic inspirations. The revolution not only saw successes in defeating foreign intervention, but also failures in bringing peace and development to Vietnam. This was, and is, the real tragedy of Vietnam. Spanning the entire history of the Vietnamese revolution and its aftermath, this book examines its leaders' early rise to power, the tumult of three decades of war with France, the US, and China, and the stubborn legacies left behind which remain in Vietnam today.

The French withdrawal from Vietnam in 1954 was the product of global pressures and triggered significant global consequences. By treating the war as an international issue, this book places Indochina at the center of the Cold War in the mid-1950s. Arguing that the Indochina War cannot be understood as a topic of Franco-US relations, but ought to be treated as international history, this volume brings in Vietnamese and other global agents, including New Zealand, Australia, and especially Britain, as well as China and the Soviet Union. Importantly, the book also argues that the successful French withdrawal from Vietnam – a political defeat for the Eisenhower administration – helped to avert outright warfare between the major powers, although with very mixed results for the inhabitants of Vietnam who faced partition and further bloodshed. The End of the First Indochina War explores the complexities of intra-alliance competition over global strategy – especially between the United States and British Commonwealth – arguing that these rivalries are as important to understanding the Cold War as east-west confrontation. This is the first truly global interpretation of the French defeat in 1954, based on the author’s research in five western countries and the latest scholarship from historians of Vietnam, China, and Russia. Readers will find much that is new both in terms of archival revelations and original interpretations.

"Using new and largely inaccessible Vietnamese sources as well as French, British, Canadian and American archives, Pierre Asselin sheds valuable light on Hanoi's path to war. Step by step the narrative makes Hanoi's revolutionary strategy from the end of the French Indochina War to the start of the Anti-American Resistance Struggle for Reunification and National Salvation (the Vietnam War) transparent. The book reveals how North Vietnamese leaders moved from a cautious policy emphasizing nonviolent political and diplomatic struggle to a far riskier pursuit of military victory"--

"Essential reading to understand why and how Vietnam's political elite-forged by revolution, war, and Marxist ideology-altered their thinking and policies to make the dramatic shift to a market economy. An important book."--Richard A. Hunt, author of Pacification: The American Struggle for Vietnam1s Hearts and Minds "Changing Worlds is a profound and eloquently written account of changes in Vietnamese elite thinking that led them to abandon communist ideology and 'take the plunge' into the currents of globalization. This work is enhanced by Elliott's command of Vietnamese sources."