The Vietnam War
eBook - ePub

The Vietnam War

A Study in the Making of American Policy

  1. 208 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

The Vietnam War

A Study in the Making of American Policy

About this book

The war in Vietnam achieved almost none of the goals the American decision-makers formulated, and it cost more than 56,000 American lives. Yet, until recently, Americans have preferred to ignore the causes and consequences of this disaster by treating the war as an aberration in United States foreign policy, an unfortunate but unique mistake.

What are the "lessons" of Vietnam? Many previous discussions have focused on narrow or misleading questions, rehashing military decisions, for example, or offering blow-by-blow accounts of Washington infighting, or castigating foreign-policy decision-makers. Michael Sullivan undertakes instead a broad and systematic treatment of the American experience in Vietnam, using a variety of theoretical perspectives to study several aspects of that experience, including the decision-making process and decision-makers' perceptions of the war; public opinion and "mood" before, during, and after the war; and the Vietnam War in relation to the Cold War and to power structures and patterns of violence in the international system.

The major goal of The Vietnam War: A Study in the Making of American Policy is to show that the American experience, not only in Vietnam but elsewhere in the world, must be understood as an integral part of the processes of both American foreign policy and international politics. Sullivan demonstrates the importance of using a variety of empirical and quantitative evidence to study foreign policy and of relating a specific historical situation like the Vietnam War to broader theories of international relations.

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Yes, you can access The Vietnam War by Michael P. Sullivan in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Politics & International Relations & Vietnam War. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half title
  3. Title
  4. Copyright
  5. Contents
  6. Figures and Tables
  7. Acknowledgments
  8. 1. Vietnam: Competing Perspectives
  9. 2. Vietnam as Vital: Myth or Reality?
  10. 3. Decision-Making Models: Rational Policy or Quagmire?
  11. 4. Moods and Public Opinion: Background for Decisions
  12. 5. The Vietnam War, the Cold War, and Long-Term Trends
  13. 6. The Lessons of Vietnam
  14. References
  15. Index