Revisiting the Vietnam War and International Law


Book Description

This collection of scholarly and critical essays about the legal aspects of the Vietnam War explores various crimes committed by the United States against North Vietnam: war of aggression; war crimes in bombing civilian targets such as schools and hospitals, and using napalm, cluster bombs, and Agent Orange; crimes against humanity in moving large parts of the population to so-called strategic hamlets; and alleged genocide and ecocide. International lawyer Richard Falk, who observed these acts personally in North Vietnam in 1968, uses international law to show how they came about. This book brings together essays that he has written on the Vietnam War and on its relationship to international law, American foreign policy, and the global world order. Falk argues that only a stronger adherence to international law can save the world from such future tragedies and create a sustainable world order.




Revisiting the Vietnam War and International Law


Book Description

This collection of scholarly and critical essays about the legal aspects of the Vietnam War explores various crimes committed by the United States against North Vietnam: war of aggression; war crimes in bombing civilian targets such as schools and hospitals, and using napalm, cluster bombs, and Agent Orange; crimes against humanity in moving large parts of the population to so-called strategic hamlets; and alleged genocide and ecocide. International lawyer Richard Falk, who observed these acts personally in North Vietnam in 1968, uses international law to show how they came about. This book brings together essays that he has written on the Vietnam War and on its relationship to international law, American foreign policy, and the global world order. Falk argues that only a stronger adherence to international law can save the world from such future tragedies and create a sustainable world order.




Revisiting the Geneva Conventions: 1949-2019


Book Description

The book is designed to provide an overview of the development, meaning, and nature of international humanitarian law (IHL). It presents a critical review of the protection of the injured, sick and shipwrecked, prisoners of war (POWs) and civilians during times of war, the prevention of forcible transfer of civilians, the four Geneva Conventions from a Third World point of view, the ideals of distinction, proportionality and precaution from the point of view of Islamic law and the issues faced in implementing IHL. This lucidly written and timely book will greatly benefit anyone interested in the protection of victims of armed conflict. Contents: Notes on editors; Notes on contributors; List of acronyms and abbreviations; Preface; Foreword; International Legal Protection of Persons Affected by War: Challenges and the Way Forward, Md Jahid Hossain Bhuiyan and Borhan Uddin Khan 1 The Development of the Geneva Conventions, Borhan Uddin Khan and Nazmuzzaman Bhuian 2 The Legal Status and Protection of the Rights of Prisoners of War, Md Jahid Hossain Bhuiyan 3 The Prohibition of Deportation and Forcible Transfer of Civilian Populations in the Fourth Geneva Convention and Beyond, Etienne Henry 4 Combatants Aboard Medical Aircraft Who Fall into the Hands of a Neutral Power – the Scope of Their Liability to Detention Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the 1977 Additional Protocol I, Yutaka Arai-Takahashi 5 Forced Transfer of Aliens during Armed Conflicts, Pablo Antonio Fernández Sánchez 6 The Geneva Conventions and Non-International Armed Conflicts, Noelle Higgins 7 Four Geneva Conventions of 1949: A Third World View, Srinivas Burra 8 Criminalising Rape and Sexual Violence in Armed Conflicts: Evolving Criminality and Culpability from the Geneva Conventions to the Bangladesh International Crimes Trial, M Rafiqul Islam 9 Principles of Distinction, Proportionality and Precautions under the Geneva Conventions: The Perspective of Islamic Law, Mohd Hisham Mohd Kamal 10 Implementation of International Humanitarian Law and the Current Challenges, Borhan Uddin Khan and Nakib Muhammad Nasrullah 11 The Geneva Conventions and Enforcement of International Humanitarian Law, Derek Jinks Index.




Ghosts of War in Vietnam


Book Description

This is a fascinating study of the Vietnamese experience and memory of the Vietnam War through the lens of popular imaginings about the wandering souls of the war dead. These ghosts of war play an important part in postwar Vietnamese historical narrative and imagination and Heonik Kwon explores the intimate ritual ties with these unsettled identities which still survive in Vietnam today as well as the actions of those who hope to liberate these hidden but vital historical presences from their uprooted social existence. Taking a unique approach to the cultural history of war, he introduces gripping stories about spirits claiming social justice and about his own efforts to wrestle with the physical and spiritual presence of ghosts. Although these actions are fantastical, this book shows how examining their stories can illuminate critical issues of war and collective memory in Vietnam and the modern world more generally.




This Time We Win


Book Description

Most of what Americans have heard about the Tet Offensive is wrong. The brief battles in early 1968 during the Vietnam conflict marked the dividing line between gradual progress toward possible victory and slow descent to a humiliating defeat. That the enemy was handily defeated on the ground was considered immaterial; that it could mount attacks at all was deemed a military triumph for the Communists. This persistent view of Tet is a defeatist story line that continues to inspire America’s foreign enemies and its domestic critics of the use of force abroad. In This Time We Win, James S. Robbins at last provides an antidote to the flawed Tet mythology still shaping the perceptions of American military conflicts against unconventional enemies and haunting our troops in combat. In his re-examination of the Tet Offensive, Robbins analyzes the Tet battles and their impact through the themes of terrorism, war crimes, intelligence failure, troop surges, leadership breakdown, and media bias. The result is an explosion of the conventional wisdom about this infamous surge, one that offers real lessons for today’s unconventional wars. Without a clear understanding of these lessons, we will find ourselves refighting the Tet Offensive again and again.




The Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation


Book Description

A History of the Manila Pact and the Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO) from its establishment in 1954 until its dissolution in 1977. The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) has received meagre scholarly attention in comparison to other key events and global developments during the duration of the Cold War, due to its perceived failure early in its existence. However, there has been a renewed interest in the academic study of the organization. Some scholars have argued that SEATO was not an outright failure. New literatures have also shed in detail the workings of SEATO, such as operational-level contingency plans and counter-insurgency plans. This book aims to reconstruct a comprehensive life cycle of SEATO using declassified archival documents which were unavailable to scholars studying the organization from the 1950s through the 1980s and provide a nuanced assessment of it. In addition, in recent years, there is also an emerging interest in the possibility of a multilateral military alliance in Asia, for instance the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue morphing into an "Asian NATO". As such, it is therefore crucial to study how previous multilateral alliances in the context of Asia were formed, how they functioned, and subsequently dissolved. A groundbreaking reference on a key element of the United States’ Cold War strategy in Asia, which will be a valuable resource to scholars of twentieth century diplomatic history.




The Chinese/Vietnamese Diaspora


Book Description

Over three decades have passed since the first wave of Indochinese refugees left their homelands. These refugees, mainly the Vietnamese, fled from war and strife in search of a better life elsewhere. By investigating the Vietnamese diaspora in Asia, this book sheds new light on the Asian refugee era (1975-1991), refugee settlement and different patterns of host-guest interactions that will have implications for refugee studies elsewhere. The book provides: a clearer historical understanding of the group dynamics among refugees - the ethnic Chinese ‘Vietnamese refugees’ from both the North and South as well as the northern ‘Vietnamese refugees’ an examination of different aspects of migration including: planning for migration, choices of migration route, and reasons for migration an analysis of the ethnic and refugee politics during the refugee era, the settlement and subsequent resettlement. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of globalization, migration, ethnicities, refugee histories and politics.




Afghanistan and the Vietnam Syndrome


Book Description

Great powers have often found that military adventurism to force their will in distant lands comes with the risk of spending excessive military, economic, and moral capital to the extent that war is no longer sustainable. Written by a former BBC Afghanistan correspondent who set up the corporation’s bureau in Kabul in the early 1990s, this book draws both from scholarly knowledge as well as first-hand insights on how the Americans met that fate in Vietnam, and the Soviets and Americans in Afghanistan. America’s 1975 retreat from Vietnam was a consequential event, prompting US commentators to explain it as reluctance to get involved in foreign wars, a mindset described as the Vietnam Syndrome. As Deepak Tripathi points out, the Vietnam experience made the Americans determined to give the Soviets their own Vietnam. The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and retreat after a decade of occupation, represented the revenge America sought. However, President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks was the beginning of a long military venture that ended in retreat in 2021. Addressing an academic as well as a general audience, Tripathi explores parallels between wars in Afghanistan and Vietnam, and shows how the United States and the Soviet Union met the same fate.







International Law in Public Debate


Book Description

A history of international law in public debates and its resulting popular language of international law.