Customer Reviews

Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In this masterful study of how the United States committed hundreds of thousands of ground troops to the war in Vietnam, Fredrik Logevall persuasively argues that the war was a choice, not an inevitable outcome of the Cold War. Based on exhaustive research, Logevall conclusively demonstrates that President Johnson had a variety of viable options and that the escalation of the war was not the only possible or feasible course of action. Even at the time, Johnson and his advisers knew that they had a variety of options, yet as Logevall shows, they chose to escalate the war, with terrible consequences. This book is a powerful study of miscalculation and cowardice and a reminder of just how misguided the American war in Vietnam was. A must read.

I have just finished reading this superb book. Of my collection of over 450 books on the Viet Nam War this is without a doubt one of the most outstanding books I own. The author brilliantly demolishes the theory that the was was inevitable. He exposes the flawed thinking of the Johnson Administration as well as the downright deceit of some of Johnson's people. Alongside 'Dereliction of Duty' this book should be required reading for anyone who is serious about understanding the origin and nature of the Viet Nam War. This is the book Robert McNamara should have written instead of 'In Retrospect'. The book is not some stuffy academic treatise but wonderfully readable which I heartily recommend to any any student of history.

CHOOSING WAR makes an important contribution to the literature on the Vietnam War. With cogent analysis, detailed research, and stunning clarity, Logevall has crafted a book that should become the standard account of the "Long 1964." Not only does he illuminate the heretofore understudied international angle of this period, he makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of the role of domestic politics in the making of U.S. foreign policy.

The only reservation I have with the book is a small problem with the thesis. Logevall makes a persuasive argument that Lyndon Johnson (and members of his administration, but mainly LBJ) consciously chose war over other options in Vietnam in an attempt to preserve his personal credibility and domestic agenda. Yet at the end of the book, Logevall backs off this indictment, arguing that Vietnam was, in the end, America's war, with enough responsibility to go around. This is a minor point, but one that Logevall or his editor should have recognized and addressed before publication.

Dr. Logevall does a tremendous job in detailing the events of 1964 and early 1965. However, I disagree with the heart of his thesis. That is, that President Johnson and his advisors were in a position where they could choose something other than "Americanizing" the war. Knowing the temperment of Johnson (based on Caro's biography so far) and the powerful hold that NSC-68 (a loss for freedom anywhere is a loss for freedom everywhere...[I am paraphrasing])had on decision makers of the time, it is clear that there were alternatives to escalation, but there was no CHOICE during this time. The last thing a person like Johnson was capable of was allowing himself to be labeled as weak in the face of communist aggression, especially by Republicans in Congress. Its like trying to instruct a Manichaean about the merits of the color gray. That is my only source of heartburn with the book.

This fascinating, extremely readable, and carefully researched book by historian Frederik Logevall has an intriguing thesis closely paralleling that of several other emerging scholars regarding the origins and prosecution of the Vietnam War. Like David Kaiser's provocative indictment in "American Tragedy; Kennedy, Johnson, & The Origins Of The Vietnam War" of both the military and civilian advisors to Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, the author presents a damning and quite convincing stream of evidence proving that it was in fact a series of individuals like Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense Dean Rusk, and General William Westmoreland who arrogantly chose to pursue a war that many around them actively questioned and discouraged. The author's careful research shows a flood of documentary evidence indicating that these people and a number of like-minded others, deliberately chose to prosecute a war for which they had good reason to believe would not likely succeed.

Unlike Kaiser in his excellent book, Professor Logevall chooses to concentrate impressively on a critical eighteen-month period spanning from the summer of 1963 to the early winter of 1965, and the fateful steps taken during that period toward a policy of escalation and direct involvement of American combat units. The author contends that any one of a number of important opportunities to step aside were deliberately ignored, often based on important information provided by key insiders such as McNamara. As the record also shows, this information was anything but the disinterested and objective assessment of the political, economic, and military situation on the ground in South Vietnam it was presented as. In this sense both President Kennedy and President Johnson were victims of a quite deliberate campaign of misinformation and self-serving worst-case analysis by Rusk, McNamara, and Westmoreland.

It was in such a poisonous and duplicitous environment that Lyndon Johnson made a fateful series of decisions to escalate the war by "Americanizing" it, something Kennedy before him had quite insistently denied permission to do. The author also argues quite persuasively that both Kennedy and Johnson had stepped away from opportunities for disengaging from the involvement in Vietnam for domestic political reasons, including a concern with being seen as "soft" on communism in the period preceding the coming national elections of 1964. This is substantiated by Johnson's actions after Kennedy's assassination; while secretly initiating actions to escalate the war, Johnson self-consciously campaigned saying exactly the opposite. He understood the potential firestorm American involvement could have for both liberal and conservative criticism, and was therefore careful to mitigate his vulnerability by neutralizing it as a political factor until after the Presidential elections of 1964.

Likewise, once committed to a policy of massive American participation in the war, Johnson feared the personal consequences both domestically and internationally were he to decide to withdraw and admit defeat. Yet world leaders almost uniformly distanced themselves from American involvement, and privately counseled Johnson to "cut and run". In addition, Johnson's own lack of appreciation for the potential damage our involvement in Vietnam might have on international relations resulted in a number of lost opportunities for détente and improvement in relations with both the Soviet Union and China. Based on his own personal frailties and the bad counsel of both his military and civilian advisors, he pursued the single most disastrous course imaginable; further escalation, condemning not only his own domestic program but nearly 60,000 American soldiers to untimely (and absolutely unnecessary) death.

This is am intriguing, insightful, and important book, and the author writes both in an entertaining and accessible style. He mirrors the evidence presented in other recent books such as the aforementioned Kaiser tome, and also in Major H.R. McMaster's absorbing recent book, "Dereliction Of Duty; Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, The Joint Chiefs Of Staff, And The Lies That Led to Vietnam", and handily helps to put the lie to the kind of neo-revisionist saber-rattling of armchair conservatives like Michael Lind ( one wonders if Lind was ever in the military; or if he is a "George W. Bush" kind of born-again macho clebrant of combat who has never had a shot fired at him, an armchair enthusiast who cheered from the sidelines as a passive noncombatant member of the Texas Air National Guard). Gee, let's fly planes over the vacant Texas tundra and we can call ourselves patriots! Lind would have us believe this was all God's work in his silly and wrong-headed narrative "The Necessary War". Since he was likely still in his nappies when the firestorm was raining all over the heads of the more than half million uneducated, largely blue-collar men and women we deployed at any one time to Vietnam, I wonder how he would know. Did he read about it at Yale? "Choosing War", on the other hand, is an excellent and carefully crafted work of scholarship, and one that helps to nail together a much more comprehensive understanding of how it was we were so badly and quite unnecessarily led into this most unfortunate of American wars.

This interesting and well written book is a close examination of the decision to "Americanize" the Vietnam War. Logevall provides a close analysis of what he calls the long 1964, the period from the late summer of 1963 to the spring of 1965, to examine the dynamics of the decision to make the American Vietnam commitment essentially an American war with Vietnamese assistance. Logevall's thorough research includes careful analysis of documentation about the American decision makers, study of international responses to the Vietnam situation and American choices, and domestic American discussion of Vietnam, the last focusing on important Congressional figures and influential journalists.

Logevall begins with the general failure of the Diem regime and the American-Kennedy administration decision in 1963 to support a coup against Diem in the hope of finding a more vigorous, but paradoxically less independent, client administration in South Vietnam. This decision was made against the background of the failure of Diem to erect a creditable defense against the NLF, the considerable challenges to Diem from other groups in South Vietnam like the Buddhist clergy, and concerns on the part of the Kennedy administration that Diem would attempt to negotiate with the NLF or the Hanoi government to pursue a "neutral" policy. The fear that Diem's or a successor government would attempt to make a separate deal with Hanoi and/or the NLF would be a recurrent concern of American policy makers. This fear was reinforced by recurrent suggestions made by American allies and influential members of the American establishment that neutralization of Vietnam would be the most effective policy. Something like the original 1954 Geneva process that resulted in the partition of Vietnam would have been used to cover the withdrawal of American involvement in Vietnam. While in most of these scenarios, South Vietnam would have been at least nominally independent, it was anticipated that Hanoi would reunify Vietnam as a communist regime. The prediction, generally borne out by later events, was that reunified Vietnam would have been a "Titoist" independent communist state, generally hostile to China. The most prominent advocate for this type of solution was Charles De Gaulle, whose open support for this option would consistently infuriate American policy makers.

From the evidence presented by Logevall, it appears that neutralization was a real possibility and that such negotiations could have been pursued effectively at several times during the long 1964. This type of policy was urged upon Kennedy and Johnson repeatedly by a succession of American allies, neutral parties like the UN General Secretary U Thant, and quite a few influential American figures such as Walter Lippmann and several experienced Congressional leaders. All these individuals feared that greater American involvement in Vietnam would lead to a fruitless and destructive major conflict that would greatly impair American interests. These issues were also laid out well by a number of administration figures in the White House, the State Dept., and the CIA.

Throughout 1963, the Kennedy administration continued to support South Vietnamese clients and deflected opportunities for a negotiated settlement. Following Kennedy's death, Johnson did much the same. Johnson, however, not only resisted the idea of a negotiated withdrawal but also became increasingly attracted to the option of increased involvement, pursuing contingency plans for such involvement and setting the stage with the notorious Tonkin Gulf resolution. Wary of appearing too aggressive to the American voting public, the Johnson administration pursued what was essentially a duplicitous course, trying to reassure Congressional skeptics and the public that major US involvement in Vietnam was not in the offing while preparing for major involvement. Many influential Democratic Party figures with fears of larger US involvement in Vietnam and serious concerns about Johnson administration policies were publicly silent because of the perceived need for solidarity prior to the 1964 elections.

After the 1964 elections, Johnson felt secure enough to embark on an aggressive Vietnam policy, even though he essentially adopted the approach of the defeated Goldwater. In Logevall's analysis, the personal characteristics and rigidity of the major American policy makers - Johnson, McNamara, Rusk, and Bundy - appear paramount. Johnson, in particular, with his dogmatic anti-communism and fear of appearing weak, is the key figure. Logevall suggests that if Kennedy had not been killed, the outcome would have been different. Another competent historian who has been over much of the same ground, David Kaiser, reached much the same conclusion. Logevall is very careful to note that deferential environment with respect to Presidential foreign policy primacy and domestic political concerns were key factors in this disastrous decision.

Logevall's final conclusion is that the concentration of foreign policy decision making in the White House and the lack of responsible actions on the part of Congress is intrinsically dangerous. His conclusion, published in 1999, turns out to be prescient.

In Choosing War, Mr. Logevall presents a very cogent and deeply reasoned assessment of America's entry into the futile and eventually tragic landscape of an Americanized war in Vietnam. There are so many commonly held beliefs about the necessity of America's involvement there was to prevent the spread of Communism, that it is refreshing, but painful, to read about how and why America went so wrong - and how many chances we had to change direction. It is most infuriating to see the steady drumbeat of the military generals and like-minded advisors twisting and subverting the information coming out of Vietnam that was shifted to show that American military might was making a positive and meaningful difference in pursuit of our goals for a non-communist South, knowing full well this was not the case. As in JFK and Vietnam [by John Newman], it paints a frightening picture of how at the mercy of others are the president's choices.
A most interesting and prescient comment occurs in the final chapter and paragraph of the book that equates lessons unlearned from Vietnam allowing similar mindsets to erupt, engaging America in a similarly foolish military incursion in a foreign country whose population and conditions we also don't understand.
A very well written, well researched and easily readable book.

As the war in Vietnam escalated in 1994 and 95, I was a young naïve supporter of the war simply because I believed that whatever it took to stop and fight communism was justified. My first doubts about the justification of this war came when I would hear the causality figures at the end of each week on the nightly news. I can remember these figures e.g. 946 VC killed in the fighting this week; 94 Americans died. I simply did not believe that anyone knew how many VC were killed, and questioned the figures reported including those of American causalities. As things developed, I began to reassess my thoughts about the American involvement in this war. I read McNamara's "In Retrospect," Neil Sheehan's "A Bright Shining Lie," Stanley Karnow's "Vietnam: A History," But it was Fredrik Logevall's "Choosing War," that really gave me the insight to this conflict. It's the most enlightening account of the American involvement in Vietnam I've read to date. Last year I visted Ho Chi Minh City (formally Saigon). This is in itself was more of education than any of the books. It's my recommendation to all who are interested in the American involvement in Vietnam, to read this detailed and comprehensive account.

This book is well written, well argued, and fascinating. It's especially timely now as we try to understand the forces that led us into the Iraq war. My students liked it too.

Frederik Logevall's work is definitive and unparalleled in his meticulous tracing of Johnson's escalation of the US "commitment" in Vietnam. Of course, the US was really committed to nothing beyond itself and its need to maintain the face of empire in Asia. There are a couple of points I believe Professor Logevall slighted in his beginning and final analyses.

The overwhelmingly important one is, why Asia as a cold war theater, and twice? Not exploring this question results in a blinkered focus, a common tendency in academia to narrowly exclude all other considerations beyond one's given subject, rather than integrating it into a "big picture." This was obviously framed by the US' self-proclaimed mission of countering Communism. The "fall" of China in 1949 sealed East Asia's fate as the perfect, proxy battleground for World War III for the next quarter century - remote from either main cold war power. No direct intervention in Hungary or Cuba was possible for geo-political reasons. And, secondly, because there was no Communism present at the time in other remote but strategic regions, the Middle East and Africa. And last but by no means least, because Vietnam in particular was the kind of weak vessel suitable for a bully/hero to flex his might.

Professor Logevall also neglects a key background rationale in President Kennedy's May, 1961, escalation of US "commitment", even though Kennedy had earlier brokered a settlement in Laos. This elephant in the room was, of course, the Bay of Pigs. Having America's face egged - however symbolically - by "Communism" in Cuba, Washington (in particular the Democratic Party) needed a comeback strategy to show it took "the great challenge" to America seriously. "Standing tall" in the Republic of Vietnam seemed the perfect foil: unlike Cuba, remote, unknown to the general public, thus seemingly easy to manage. The beginning of the Berlin Wall in August of that year also poured fresh gas on the fires of frustration. That Lyndon Johnson advocated direct invasion of Cuba after the Bay of Pigs should also come as no surprise. With Kennedy's cooler head shattered by election time of 1964, there was no one to restrain Johnson from taking Kennedy's turn all the way.

The attitudes of the North Vietnamese, although beyond the book's target, seem to have undergone the same dynamic. The North knew it could not defeat the US in any meaningful military way, but it could lure the US into a main-force commitment which it couldn't win but wouldn't avoid for reasons of "face": the classic "tar-baby effect." The backlash within the US and around the world would essentially do Hanoi's fighting for it, a sort of reverse immolation in the style of the Buddhist protests of '63.

But in discounting several theories for escalation - direct economic imperatives, etc. - Logevall attempts to reduce them to Johnson's personal worldview and political needs, and to "mission creep". This is still unsatisfactory, because it remains essentially superficial and specific. The needs of empire, of "the great game" in the Asia of the early '60's, do not lend themselves to crude economic determinationism, but they do transcend a given leader's personal needs. Even though Johnson was in power and the key decisions were his, and his choice a foregone conclusion, he still did not act alone. Without other key vested interests, public and private, standing with him he could not have gone forward over his critics. Johnson was playing Texas politics here: rather than an adversary of the "Imperial" party of the Republicans, he was their competitor: after the same constituents of oilmen and defense contractors as Goldwater. Hence his unwillingness to choose non-escalation, his false choice of "going ahead with this damn war" or seeing American empire rolled back to the Pacific coast.

For all my criticism, still one of the most worthwhile studies of the Vietnam era. Considering that this book was published in 1999, two years before the "War on Terror," its prophetic conclusion is worth quoting for a prospective reader: "And there is this, finally, to say about America's avoidable debacle in Vietnam: something like it could happen again. Not in the same place, assuredly, and not in the same way, but potentially with equally destructive results. This is the central lesson of the war. The continued primacy of the executive branch in foreign affairs - and within that branch of a few individuals, to the exclusion of the buraucracy - together with the eternal temptation of politicians to emphasize short-term personal advantage over long-term national interests, ensures that the potential will exist. . . . A leader will assuredly come along who, like Johnson, will take the path of least immediate resistance and in the process produce disastrous policy - provided there is a permissive context that allows it. Lyndon Johnson's War was also America's War; the circle of responsibility was wide. If future Vietnams are to be prevented, the American people and their representatives in Congress will have to meet their responsibilities no less than those who make the ultimate decisions. Otherwise, Ametican soldiers will again be asked to kill and be killed, and their compatriots will again determine, afterward, that there was no good reason why."