The Myth of Inevitable US Defeat in Vietnam (Strategy and History) [Paperback]

Dale Walton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 3, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0714681911 | ISBN-13: 978-0714681917 | Edition: 1

This book offers a dispassionate strategic examination of the Vietnam conflict that challenges the conventional wisdom that South Vietnam could not survive as an independent non-communist entity over the long term regardless of how the United States conducted its military- political effort in Indochina.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (January 3, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0714681911
• ISBN-13: 978-0714681917
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,022,312 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Interesting, a Solid Read., April 27, 2002

By 

Graham Phillips (Westford, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Myth of Inevitable US Defeat in Vietnam (Strategy and History) (Hardcover)

Many works on the American involvement in Vietnam focus on the innumerable mistakes we made over the course of nearly 15 years and conclude that the war was unwinnable from the start and America was doomed to failure. In this well-researched work, Dale Walton also examines numerous American mistakes, but draws the opposite and more logical conclusion: America was not doomed to fail in Vietnam and only did so as a result of numerous bad (and more importantly, avoidable) decisions on the part of policy-makers and military leaders. Had any number of these decisions been reversed at various points during the conflict, South Vietnam might still be a viable, democratic nation to this day.

Walton's book is extremely well organized and features 7 main chapters, each of which focuses on one aspect of the conflict and the associated problems. For example, Chapter 4 discusses US involvement and non-involvement in Laos and Cambodia. In July of 1962, President Kennedy signed the Laos Accords, a treaty which required that both the US and North Vietnam respect Laos' neutrality and prohibited any actions therein. Walton argues that it was bad enough to treat Indochina as a divided theater, but what was worse was that the US continued to honor the treaty long after it was clear to everyone that North Vietnam was violating the agreement and resupplying guerrillas in the South through the Ho Chi Minh trail. This was one of many instances in which the US government wished to have the best of both worlds: extremely limited involvement but also definite victory. It was not to be. Chapter 5 discusses how American policy was severely limited in its thinking because of an unnecessarily high fear of Chinese involvement. US fear of PRC involvement (as had occurred in Korea) stopped many potentially successful policies from being implemented. And yet intelligence showed that the PRC neither wanted to start a war with the US nor would it have been militarily ready (due to the disastrous reforms of Mao) for much of the period of America's involvement.

Ultimately, Walton's analysis is counterfactual and therefore open to debate. Perhaps success in Vietnam would've been more difficult than his book suggests, and maybe it could've been easier! But even if complete success in American terms would've been nearly impossible, the war could have been fought more efficiently and effectively. I found Walton's chapter on airpower to be the most interesting example of this inefficiency. Quite frequently you hear that the US dropped more tons of bombs in Vietnam than it did in all other wars combined. This is true, but as Walton notes, the tonnage is less important than the targets, and in Vietnam the US dropped 70% of its high-explosives in the South! Moreover, he states, the idea that the North was undeveloped and had nothing to bomb was a myth. The North wasn't as industrialized as many countries, but there were still industrial targets in Hanoi and Haiphong which weren't attacked by Johnson. Also, the low level of industrialization simply meant that the NVA had to import their military technology from the PRC and USSR. Thus the railroads and highway networks were an extremely important target for a strategic bombing campaign and yet the US stayed its hand. Johnson believed that a system of graduated pressure, bombing some targets but holding back from others as a gesture of peace, would bring the North to the bargaining table. He also implemented 16 bombing halts which he hoped would accomplish the same objective. But rather than tempting the North into accepting a settlement, these actions only proved that the US was not fully committed to Vietnam and wished to get out. Walton examines this topic and many others in great detail, providing a plethora of citations and commentary in the excellent footnotes.

I give the book four stars instead of five simply because it is written in a somewhat dry, scholarly tone. The book feels like a collection of academic essays, which is not a bad thing, but the prose isn't thrilling and a reader unfamiliar with Vietnam may not be drawn in. But to anyone with a good background in the history will certainly find this an informative and intriguing read.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Clear argument, April 14, 2007

By 

Scholar "18th century student" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Myth of Inevitable US Defeat in Vietnam (Strategy and History) (Paperback)

Very concise, lucid argument thatthe war could have been won, and how. Focus is on America's flawed way thay waged the war. Brief too.

11 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Vietnam War as science fiction..., April 6, 2006

By 

David L. Cassidy - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Myth of Inevitable US Defeat in Vietnam (Strategy and History) (Paperback)

Walton's book's first conclusion is that it was a "failure of logic" to have ever introduced American troops into Vietnam. Then, he elegantly explains all the other failures finally resulting in losing the war. He correctly surmises that China would not have likely entered the war with combat troops because Vietnam was not like Korea in many significant ways. The same can be said for any other comparison of South Vietnam to South Korea. Walton defines winning the war, for the purpose of his book, as "preserving" South Vietnam as a free country independent of North Vietnam. But, he never says how long GVN might be preserved by any different military strategy. What makes him think any delay in the collapse beyond 1975 would be very long lasting? He correctly surmises that, by 1974, Watergate made it impossible for Nixon to "enforce" the Paris Peace Accords, which he most likely would have tried to do by repeated Linebacker-type bombing campaigns. On the other hand, the Case-Church amendment prohibiting further military aid to GVN was independent of Watergate. In any case, without Watergate and Nixon's resignation, I concede that GVN could be preserved until January 1977 at the end of Nixon's second term. Then what? Who would have been the next President? All of this is like a science-fiction novel where time travel is part of the plot. When an event in the past is altered, nothing that happened afterward in real history can be predicted to happen the same way thereafter. For example, if the US invaded the North, cut across to Laos and parked on the Ho Chi Minh Trail before 1968, the Tet Offensive cannot be predicted to occur. The Viet Cong would not be destroyed as they were in early 68. Then on one hand, he dismisses the limited, interrupted bombing campaign of Johnson. On the other hand by definition, he espouses a limited bombing campaign that would not destroy the DRV dikes and would be non-nuclear, for much the same reasons as Johnson's. He can't have it both ways. And even if his less limited bombing campaign worked to preserve GVN. For how long would it be preserved? How long would it have to be carried out? Linebacker II cost a B-52 every day or 2. I contend that the Vietnamese communists who wanted unification and the rural peasants who wanted land ownership were not going to give up their causes while any significant number were still alive. Any of Walton's plans would require a high level of casualties and become just another version of what actually happened, which was that an awful lot of Vietnamese were killed for nothing. For the enemies of GVN, it was an all or none case, and for as long as it took, whether it was another 25, 50 or 100 years. That's how the Communists approached it. By 1975, they had been at it for, at least, 35 years. Every US President approached it like he had to get it done by his next election. And he was right. So, the war was lost exactly the way it happened and the application of any other set of tactics or strategy, no matter how fantastic, would eventually have had the same result.