Understanding Vietnam


Book Description

The American experience in Vietnam divided us as a nation and eroded our confidence in both the morality and the effectiveness of our foreign policy. Yet our understanding of this tragic episode remains superficial because, then and now, we have never grasped the passionate commitment with which the Vietnamese clung to and fought over their own competing visions of what Vietnam was and what it might become. To understand the war, we must understand the Vietnamese, their culture, and their ways of looking at the world. Neil L. Jamieson, after many years of living and working in Vietnam, has written the book that provides this understanding. Jamieson paints a portrait of twentieth-century Vietnam. Against the background of traditional Vietnamese culture, he takes us through the saga of modern Vietnamese history and Western involvement in the country, from the coming of the French in 1858 through the Vietnam War and its aftermath. Throughout his analysis, he allows the Vietnamese—both our friends and foes, and those who wished to be neither—to speak for themselves through poetry, fiction, essays, newspaper editorials and reports of interviews and personal experiences. By putting our old and partial perceptions into this new and broader context, Jamieson provides positive insights that may perhaps ease the lingering pain and doubt resulting from our involvement in Vietnam. As the United States and Vietnam appear poised to embark on a new phase in their relationship, Jamieson's book is particularly timely.




Understanding Vietnam’s Foreign Policy Choices Amid Sino-US Rivalry


Book Description

Vietnam’s foreign policy towards China and the United States (US) involves a delicate process of reconciling and balancing competing perceptions, goals and interests within the country. This leads to foreign policy decisions that may respectively lean towards either China or the US, depending on specific circumstances and issues, while trying to maintain an overall equilibrium between the two powers. Vietnam’s foreign policy adopts the paradigm of “cooperation” and “struggle” in its relations with major powers, and defines “national security” as encompassing both national sovereignty and regime security. Given the common ideology and imperative of preserving political control of their respective communist parties, China may be a critical partner for Vietnam in terms of regime security but is often an “object of struggle” on national sovereignty. On the other hand, the US is Vietnam’s partner in the South China Sea but an “object of struggle” when it comes to regime security. The Vietnamese public’s favourable sentiments towards the US, contrasted with their distrust towards China, pose a challenge for the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) in mobilizing public opinion to bolster its legitimacy while preventing any potential threat to its political authority. A friendly relationship with China is essential for Vietnam’s favourable external environment, warranting Hanoi’s accommodation and deference to Beijing on non-critical issues. However, it has meticulously avoided dependencies and vulnerabilities to China through diversifying economic ties and engaging in “soft balancing” with other powers and through ASEAN. Party-to-party links provide China with powerful access to Vietnamese leaders, but the US is catching up by giving assurances to respect Vietnam’s political system, and strengthening “party diplomacy” with the CPV. In its relationship with the US, Vietnam prioritizes economic ties, addressing war legacy issues, leveraging US support to build capacities in traditional and non-traditional security, and avoiding geopolitical posturing that could provoke China. Vietnam-US relations are characterized by pragmatism, with both sides prioritizing shared geopolitical and economic interests over ideological differences. The sustainability of this approach is uncertain, given the CPV’s tightening of domestic control and the “securitization of the Vietnamese state” in the anti-corruption campaign. Vietnam has thus far benefited from the US-China rivalry but it faces substantial challenges ahead, including heightened vulnerabilities to an assertive China in the South China Sea and Lower Mekong, potential trade tensions if Donald Trump is re-elected as US president, and risks in balancing its ideological ties with Beijing while maintaining its strategic alignment with the US.




Hanoi's War


Book Description

While most historians of the Vietnam War focus on the origins of U.S. involvement and the Americanization of the conflict, Lien-Hang T. Nguyen examines the international context in which North Vietnamese leaders pursued the war and American intervention ended. This riveting narrative takes the reader from the marshy swamps of the Mekong Delta to the bomb-saturated Red River Delta, from the corridors of power in Hanoi and Saigon to the Nixon White House, and from the peace negotiations in Paris to high-level meetings in Beijing and Moscow, all to reveal that peace never had a chance in Vietnam. Hanoi's War renders transparent the internal workings of America's most elusive enemy during the Cold War and shows that the war fought during the peace negotiations was bloodier and much more wide ranging than it had been previously. Using never-before-seen archival materials from the Vietnam Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as materials from other archives around the world, Nguyen explores the politics of war-making and peace-making not only from the North Vietnamese perspective but also from that of South Vietnam, the Soviet Union, China, and the United States, presenting a uniquely international portrait.




What Was the Vietnam War?


Book Description

Learn how the United States ended up fighting for twenty years in a remote country on the other side of the world. The Vietnam War was as much a part of the tumultuous Sixties as Flower Power and the Civil Rights Movement. Five US presidents were convinced that American troops could end a war in the small, divided country of Vietnam and stop Communism from spreading in Southeast Asia. But they were wrong, and the result was the death of 58,000 American troops. Presenting all sides of a complicated and tragic chapter in recent history, Jim O'Connor explains why the US got involved, what the human cost was, and how defeat in Vietnam left a lasting scar on America.




The American War in Contemporary Vietnam


Book Description

Christina Schwenkel's absorbing study explores how the "American War" is remembered and commemorated in Vietnam today -- in official and unofficial histories and in everyday life. Schwenkel analyzes visual representations found in monuments and martyrs' cemeteries, museums, photography and art exhibits, battlefield tours, and related sites of "trauma tourism." In these transnational spaces, American and Vietnamese memories of the war intersect in ways profoundly shaped by global economic liberalization and the return of American citizens as tourists, pilgrims, and philanthropists.







War and Aftermath in Vietnam


Book Description

This book, first published in 1991, attempts to combine a broad understanding of the background to the conflict in Vietnamese and world history with detailed material on US military tactics and the failure of pacification. There are chapters on the US presidential administrations of Johnson, Kennedy and Nixon; religion, culture and society in North and South Vietnam, and the nature of the ‘People's Revolutionary War’.




Fodor's See It Vietnam, 3rd Edition


Book Description

Full-color photography and a host of practical information highlight this series of user-friendly travel guides, which also include descriptions of local sites, restaurants, hostels, shops, and nightspots; ratings of sites for value, historic interest, family friendly appeal, and other criteria; local itineraries and shopping suggestions; travel suggestions; transportation options; and colorful maps.




Vietnam


Book Description

The only handbook on Vietnam that combines colorful, discursive chapters and supporting reference materials. Beginning with a lengthy introduction to Vietnam's past, this book traces the historical context that serves as a foundation for the present-day society and culture of this Southeast Asian nation. Intended for nonspecialists and other Asian enthusiasts, this work gives readers a thorough understanding of this diverse, richly storied land. From Vietnam's indigenous dynasties to outside influences including Buddhism, Confucianism, Western imperialism, and the Chinese bureaucracy system, the long path to a Vietnamese identity is traced—one that showcases a people's resilience, creativity, and intense love of freedom. This volume includes translations of numerous primary documents. From the narrative sections on Vietnamese history and society to the A–Z format of significant people and events, Vietnam: A Global Studies Handbook brings Vietnam to life.




Vietnam


Book Description

The definitive history of modern Vietnam, lauded as "groundbreaking" (Guardian) and "the best one-volume history of modern Vietnam in English" (Wall Street Journal) and a finalist for the Cundill History Prize In Vietnam, Christopher Goscha tells the full history of Vietnam, from antiquity to the present day. Generations of emperors, rebels, priests, and colonizers left complicated legacies in this remarkable country. Periods of Chinese, French, and Japanese rule reshaped and modernized Vietnam, but so too did the colonial enterprises of the Vietnamese themselves as they extended their influence southward from the Red River Delta. Over the centuries, numerous kingdoms, dynasties, and states have ruled over -- and fought for -- what is now Vietnam. The bloody Cold War-era conflict between Ho Chi Minh's communist-backed Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the American-backed Republic of Vietnam was only the most recent instance when war divided and transformed Vietnam. A major achievement, Vietnam offers the grand narrative of the country's complex past and the creation of the modern state of Vietnam. It is the definitive single-volume history for anyone seeking to understand Vietnam today.