Product Description

One of America's leading intellectuals presents a startling thesis sure to provoke controversy: that the Vietnam War was the right war at the right time, with the wrong military strategy. The Vietnam War still divides Americans. Some claim that Indochina was of no strategic value. Others argue that timid civilian leaders denied the U.S military permission to win. In this paradigm-shifting book, Michael Lind explodes both of these myths and puts the Vietnam War back in the context of Cold War power politics and American domestic politics. The Cold War, Lind argues, was the third world war, and the proxy wars in Korea, Indochina, and Afghanistan were among its major campaigns. However, the cost of the U.S military's misguided tactics in Vietnam undermined American public support for the Cold War on all fronts. The result was the forfeiture of Indochina, a resurgence of American isolationism, and a worldwide wave of Soviet bloc expansion checked only by the Second Cold War of the 1980's. Challenging the stale orthodoxies of the antiwar left and prowar right, VIETNAM: THE NECESSARY WAR offers a major reinterpretation of America's most disastrous foreign war.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #423394 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

About the Author
Michael Lind lives in Washington DC and is the Washington Editor of HARPER'S magazine. He is the author of five previous books, including THE NEXT AMERICAN NATION (0684825031) and UP FROM CONSERVATISM (0684831864). His work has appeared in THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST and THE ALTANTIC MONTHLY. He holds a master's degree in international relations from Yale and a law degree from the University of Texas.

Customer Reviews

It will rock your mind
Did you read Karnow, Fitzgerald, Sheehan and the other critics of the Vietnam War? Michael Lind turns their analysis upside down. Even if there certainly are points were I would disagree, he states facts that were not known at the time. Many statements of the 60-70s, about the nationalism of Ho Chi Minh, about the NLF, about the role of the Soviet Union and China, have been mentioned in other books. Lind puts these facts uncovered in the last decades into perspectice. Suddenly the domino theory does not sound as daft as described by war critics. Suddenly LBJ appears less of a crook and Kennedy as less of a dove. The comparison of US policy in Korea and in Vietnam also may not be entirely new, but is put in a light that provokes thought. Too bad that the book was written in 1999, it would have been interesting to discuss the historical line into 9/11.

For those rejecting even the thought of a superpower struggle for hegemony, Linds reasoning may be difficult to swallow. He is unsentimental about war, althou mentioning the moral aspect several times. With a down-to-the-core practical view of the world it does at least make me look upon the wars of the US in a new, more favorable way.

vietnam uncovered
an excellent political analysis of a often misunderstood conflict. Lind manages to combine an astute analysis with excellent political analysis of the cold war era.