The Vietnam War Revisited

Résumé du livre

"This book offers a unique approach to understanding the progression of U.S. diplomacy in an age when the Cold War had reached a stasis based on Mutually Assured Destruction. The outcome of the Vietnam War was decided by the four big powers at the First Geneva Conference in 1954. The political and military performance of leaders and generals in Saigon or Hanoi was irrelevant to the outcome because, in this global chess game, Saigon and Hanoi were just pawns. The Kennedy administration abandoned Indochina as a condition of opening a dialogue with the Kremlin leaders on the basis of co-existence in "detente". The Nixon team forced Hanoi to accept a loser's peace in order to open China to the West. Put simply, the United States did not seek a military victory in Vietnam, but it sought and achieved a diplomatic victory, for the sake of peace for Asia and for world peace.