Customer Reviews

The Cambodian Campaign: The 1970 Offensive and America's Vietnam War

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I did not complete this book so I cannot say how bad it is but just glancing at the first few chapters and the aftermath analysis, I noticed several glaring errors and faulty analysis that turn me off from completing the whole book. For instance, the author claimed that the NVA did not used Cambodia to attacked South Vietnam from 1969-1970, yet if the author have read MACV documents for that period he should have known that the South Vietnamese were forced to moved several outposts and camps away from the Cambodia-Vietnam border such as Bu Prang and Duc Lap in 1969 due to constant NVA artillery attacks from Cambodia. During the battles at Tay Ninh and Trang Bang in 1969 and the Toan Thang offensive in 1970 (before the Cambodian campaign), the NVA troops and materiel did came from Cambodia, so how any "historian" can claimed that the NVA/VC did not use Cambodia to attack South Vietnam from 1969 to 1970 is puzzling.

The author also claimed that general ARVN Do Cao Tri used three several regiments because he did not trust his own division, I have no idea where this author arrived at his analysis. General Tri emphasis was on mobility not holding ground, that is why he use a combination of armor and attached infantry. Also, most ARVN divisions consists of three regiments spread out over several provinces that is why general Tri uses several regiments from different divisions when these regiments have intersect area of operation.

a good read for anybody interested in the US's breif involvement in Cambodia during the Vietnam conflict. Detailed and informative.

This book covers an important aspect of Cambodian history but does so rather ineffectively. It is even less effective in elucidating the events of the Vietnam war. This Shaw is enough to make Shawcross very cross! Excellent piece of revisionist history and this does a disservice to the Vietnamese people on both sides of the conflict. The understanding of the role the Vietnamese played in this period is limited, but more seriously there is a complete lack of understanding of Cambodian history - it is almost as if the Cambodians were irrelevant to the situation, no more than inconvenient collateral damage. The book should have had rather more editorial work to weed out some astoundingly obvious errors (to take just one example - the repeated claim that Sihanoukville was renamed Kamong Speu - a very quick glance at a map would be enough to show that this was Kampong Soum - not actually an easy mistake to make for someone purporting to know the area. Deeply unsatisfying book which had the opportunity at this distance from events to open up some real actual analysis but failed.

This is an excerpt of a book review published in Proceedings Magazine, March 2006

In 1985, former President Richard Nixon called the Cambodia incursion "the most successful military operation of the Vietnam War." Tell that to the veterans of the Ia Drang Valley, Khe Sanh, and Hue City. So why haven't we heard more about this offensive? According to historian John M. Shaw who taught in the history departments at West Point and the U.S. Air Force Academy, the decision to invade Cambodia decidedly stirred the antiwar movement and galvanized Congress. Its military lessons were lost.

Shaw looks at the soldiers by comparing the backgrounds of young ARVN leaders to their American counterparts, the former much weaker administratively because they were "shortchanged in their former professional military education and staff time at higher levels." Corruption, inept leadership, and poor pay plagued the ARVN.

As do a number of American historians, Shaw harshly criticizes the South Vietnamese leadership and society in general. "They were neither as unified nor as zealous as their counterparts to the north." He believes that the successful Cambodian invasion saved American and South Vietnamese lives. More importantly, it bought time for the pacification program championed by General Creighton Abrams Jr., the U.S. commander in Vietnam. He concludes that President Nixon chose the best course of action at the time.

Yet Army General Bruce Palmer countered after the war that "Cambodia eventually resulted in a drastic diminution in the U.S. military advisory effort and military aid for South Vietnam. . . the most damaging blow of all for Saigon."