In this new collection of essays on the Vietnam War, eminent scholars of the Second Indo-china conflict consider several key factors that led to the defeat of the United States and its allies. The book adopts a candid and critical look at the United State's stance and policies in Vietnam, and refuses to condemn, excuse, or apologize for America's actions in the conflict. Rather, the contributors think widely and creatively about the varied reasons that may have accounted for the United State's failure to defeat the North Vietnamese Army, such as the role played by economics in America's defeat. Other fresh perspectives on the topic include American intelligence failure in Vietnam, the international dimensions of America's defeat in Vietnam, and the foreign policy of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. None of the essays have been previously published, and all have been specifically commissioned for the book by its editor, Marc Jason Gilbert.

This controversial and timely book about the American experience in Vietnam provides the first full exploration of the perspectives of the North Vietnamese leadership before, during, and after the war. Herbert Y. Schandler offers unique insights into the mindsets of the North Vietnamese and their response to diplomatic and military actions of the Americans, laying out the full scale of the disastrous U.S. political and military misunderstandings of Vietnamese history and motivations. Including frank quotes from Vietnamese leaders, the book offers important new knowledge that allows us to learn invaluable lessons from the perspective of a victorious enemy. Unlike most military officers who served in Vietnam, Schandler is convinced the war was unwinnable, no matter how long America stayed the course or how many resources were devoted to it. He is remarkably qualified to make these judgments as an infantry commander during the Vietnam War, a Pentagon policymaker, and a scholar who taught at West Point and National Defense University. His extensive personal interviews with North Vietnamese are drawn from his many trips to Hanoi after the war. Schandler provides not only a definitive analysis of the American failure in Vietnam but a crucial foundation for exploring the potential for success in the current guerrilla wars the United States is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This monograph analyzes the effectiveness of operational campaign design against an asymmetrical threat during the 1968 Tet Offensive. The focus is on conceptual elements of campaign design that are derived from theory, which incorporate the particulars of military history to the general truth of warfare. Effective campaign execution is dependent, in part, on effective campaign design that set of theoretical and doctrinal precepts that define the concerns of the operational planner. The monograph identifies lessons learned from this period that are applicable to current U.S. Joint and Army doctrine as well as lessons for planners and executors of U.S. military action under the American system of civilian control of the military. First, the monograph demonstrated the complex nature of asymmetric warfare. Finding and creating vulnerabilities and attacking those vulnerabilities with inherent strengths is the key to asymmetric warfare. Secondly, the monograph discussed the elements of campaign design that are derived from theory, which incorporate the particulars of military history to the general truth of warfare. Some of the more common conceptual actions are to understand the type and scope of conflict, define the enemy and friendly center of gravity, identify possible culminating points, select lines of operation, determine decisive points, and understanding the dangers of paralysis commonly known as cyber shock. The third section identifies the strategy and identifies particular military objectives identified by the North Vietnamese.

Vietnam was the first war America lost on the ground. In this fascinating account, historian Nigel Cawthorne traces the conflict from its inception to its traumatic end. He looks at the political events that led tot he war and examines its impact upon both the Americans and the Vietnamese, whose battle for the independence of their country was to leave lingering scars upon the American psyche. Vietnam: A War Lost and Won is an even-handed assessment of a conflict whose wounds would take a generation to heal.

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.

If the costs of the Vietnam War were great to Americans and staggering to the South Vietnamese, they were even worse for the North. And those costs were borne largely by the individual soldiers—the soldiers who won the war. Based on interviews, soldiers’ diaries, letters, and government documents, this book, first published in 1992, gives a classic, soldier’s-eye account of the war our opponents fought and the men who fought it.