Customer Reviews

Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam

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Gareth Porter has written a unique, insightful and marvelous structural analysis of the Vietnam War quagmire. He convincingly posits that unfettered, naked American power is the primary causal force on events of the time, thus disputing the now conventional "Domino Theory" and related ideological theories. US power so far superseded Soviet military and economic strength by the 1950's that total world strategic dominance had been attained. Porter argues that the US didn't stumble into the quagmire of Vietnam. We were propelled there by the belief that we couldn't lose and had much to gain by inserting ourselves, first by being the paymaster for the French and then by our own military intervention. The book fits nicely into an analytical tradition begun more recently by C Wright Mills in "The Power Elite." Porter's book is carefully crafted and well documented so he doesn't attempt to draw out a historical tradition of power abuse in America. One would hope for a Porter follow-on book about this sordid American tradition, probably beginning just after the American Civil War and accounting for more than 200 military interventions up to and including present day Iraq.

Review by Phillip Butler, PhD

Does not present any new eveidence, but looks at everything
that has been known for some time in a very different light,
casting doubts not only as to how we have viewed the conflicts
in Southeast Asia, but the entire Cold War as well, right up to
the "perils" of the present American dominance

Vietnam is the red flag of modern American history and it has been done to death, usually by ax-grinders, memoirists, Restorationists, and Halberstams. There are exceptions: David Kaiser's "American Tragedy", Howard Jones's "Death of a Generation", John Newman's "JFK and Vietnam", Frederik Logevall's "Choosing War". Still, what can one possibly bring to this subject new in terms of information or interpretation? Gareth Porter has the answer.

"Perils of Dominance" takes a topic of mind-boggling complexity, weaves a clear and consistent narrative from all the elements, and presents a picture staggering in its basic indictment of back-stabbing, endless lying, high crimes and misdemeanors, and outright treason. The traitors were the Hawk extremists who did all they could to drag John F. Kennedy(who successfully resisted until his execution) and Lyndon Johnson(whose resistance weakened under his huge domestic goals) into the war that killed 60,000 American soldiers and 3,000,000 Southeast Asians. Perhaps the most surprising and moving part of "Perils" is the picture of Lyndon Johnson, a strong opponent of expansion from Dallas through his defeat of Goldwater. We know of Tonkin Gulf, of course. And LBJ has been crucified for 40 years because of the deceptions involved. Porter shows us that it was Johnson himself who was most skeptical of the torpedo lies. And it was Johnson himself who trashed the attempts of the Hawks following the initial incident to fabricate more Tonkin Gulf-type phony attacks to justify the bombing of the North and takeover of the war by the U.S. military. Once elected, of course, LBJ gave up the ghost and the rest is genocidal history.

The real hero of the book is John F. Kennedy. Kaiser, Jones and Newman had gone pretty far in making the case that if not for Dallas, there would have been no wider war. And the horrors of the 60s and 70s for Southeast Asia would have been avoided. (At least the U.S. generated part of it.) Gareth Porter clinches it. Kennedy here is a true Machiavellian, outflanking and trumping opponents of his anti-war policy, playing things very close to the vest. Until Diem. The murders of Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother shocked Kennedy. And -- perhaps for the first time -- he understood exactly what he was up against. In the weeks that followed, he spoke often of his own death and possible assassination. Including the morning of November 22, 1963.

One hopes for a sequel from Porter, taking us through the anguish of Johnson's second term, and into the intentional genocide of the Whittier Vampire and his Nobel Peace Prize-winning lapdog.

In the first place, Gareth Porter was 'on the ground' as an independent scholar, un-armed and un-protected in Vietnam's I Corp in '68. It was already notorious as scene of the heaviest fighting, and it was later infamous as the locale of the My Lai massacre. His courage and commitment cannot be matched by the plethora of chicken hawks who attempt to obfuscate the causes of the debacle and justify the taking of 3 million lives.

How could the disastrous consequences of the exercise of power be taken on so blindly? I think of another folly now openly admitted, which was exposed by the same methods of investigation. "I did it just because I could" is the simple reason President Bill Clinton gave Larry King as to why he went at it with Monica - and he called his rationale the worst of all reasons humans can use for immoral conduct.

Thanks to Kenneth Starr, we even know which senator Clinton was on the phone with during one of his assignations, because mundane documents were meticulously interrelated until no one could hide much of anything.

To a much higher purpose, Gareth Porter has sifted through day by day logs of the Kennedy & Johnson era White House and examined relevant notes, memoirs and meeting transcripts kept by the players and staff. His investigation is no less meticulous, and we see how both JFK and LBJ tried to be more in tune with larger political issues and more worthwhile national agendas as they sought viable alternatives. But Perils also reveals how `the Whiz Kids' were able to throw in more and more firepower and destruction through a series of short term, dispassionate maneuverings of their `Commander in Chief.'

It was fascinating to have this glimpse of the inner workings of two administrations as the events played out into rivers of blood. Time after time after time, JFK especially would be assured that certain things would be done along the more diplomatic lines he wanted; that new possibilities for peace, or at least for de-escalation, would be opened and new options explored. He would think this, as we can see from various eyewitness accounts laid out in `Perils' because the assignments he made and agreements he entered into were documented and are recounted here. And time after time after time, we see how the players would walk out of the meetings and do the opposite of what they'd just assured the President they would do for him, and do it in his name.

Then you look at the players who kept JFK impotent, and you realize that they all had connections to that `military industrial complex' of which Ike had so recently warned. Gareth calls that the `National Security Apparatus' and it has only grown stronger.

The relevance of Perils of Dominance is striking as we stand on the verge of yet another escalation. As with Vietnam to Laos to Cambodia, we're seemingly to be taken from Afghanistan to Iraq to Iran, with no one to hold a candle to Kennedy's brilliance in attempting to stop the madness.

Gareth Porter has written an controversial account of the origins of the Vietnam War. According to Porter, the origins of US involvement in the Vietnam War, was not the domino theory but a fear of American allies such as Thailand switiching sides from a strong US ally toward having a neutral position with the Chinese if South Vietnam fell.American national security adivisors feared that if Thailand was to become neutral than Chinese infleunce would expand in the region. Another ineteresting contention of Porter's book is that the Vietnamese, Chinese, and the Russians would have signed on to a treaty that would have left a neutral but non-Communist South Vietnam due to their fear of American power. But the American national security establishment thought any neutral South Vietnam could be under the influence of the Chinese and rejected such offers. I would reccomend this book for anyone who are interested in not only the origins of the Vietnam War, but the Second Iraq War as well.

Gave four stars only because book ends with the big build up of 1965. Excellent on the behind the scenes political activity that got us into the full scale war. Interesting that both Johnson and Kennedy tried to get us out but wanted to do so without getting blamed for "losing the war" and suffering the political ramifications. Well researched, written with great depth and highly readable for anyone interested about the history of the war. Makes a good case that the president doesn't so much make national security policy as the national security apparatus of the various agencies and the National Security Council control the information that he gets and they bend it towards the outcome they wish.

Do you believe the President sits atop the government as an independent judge of what should be done by the executive branch - a final point at which group-think might be turned aside?

Read this book to find out how it really works. The President can easily be a captive of the political system and is not free to act, simply because he is as afraid as anyone else of being blamed if things go wrong. He can be managed by those below him by skillful use of, or cover-ups of essential documents and studies. Words and phrases in reports can be ordered to be changed, an honest report can be rewritten by a superior, meetings can be called off or scheduled to reinforce or diminish the importance of an issue.

This history of the lead-up to full involvement by the United States in the war in Vietnam shows how the national security establishment (JCS, DoD, CIA and State) can be blinded by a particular vision of a situation that, to their thinking, dictates a course of action, in this case, the involvement of U.S. troops in combat in Southeast Asia. Obsessed with the suppression/containment of Communism at a time when the US was unchallenged, no one could see that those opposed to the partition of Vietnam would continue to fight no matter what the United States decided to do. Despite the eagerness of North Vietnam to avoid a U.S. combat role, the possibility of compromise and negotiation was resolutely shut off.

Anyone the least bit interested in international affairs should read this book because it reveals the inner workings of power. It presents, heavily documented with notes, a detailed account of such things as the Tonkin Gulf incident and the domino theory, a useful ploy known in the 1960's not to be based in reality.

Anyone interested in American Presidencies will also find illumination here. Both Kennedy and LBJ were very much against rushing into the Vietnam conflict, yet both uninthusiastically took the necessary steps to make it happen. The fact that each of them could have stopped the process using their authority, but instead yielded to relentless pressure shows how human they were and reinforces the tragedy of the conflict for the country, the soldiers and the commander in chief.

This book makes structural what too many on the fake left like Chomsky Hersh Cockburn mock with namecalling when the same point is actually brought up with the JFK assassination: the CIA WAS NOT ALWAYS AN POLICY INSTRUMENT OF THE PRESIDENT. There are plenty of instances when it was doing its own thing, via connections to the State Dept and other permanent intelligence agencies, with which it formed links in the crucial Dullification and Nelson Rockefication --1953-56. On this topic also see the incredible and incredibly hushed up about book Thy Will Be Done.

Porter shows that this subverting of Presidential policy was going on under Eisenhower, and not only Kennedy. Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon : Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil

This book sure shatters a lot of Old Wives' Tales about the political situation and the Balance of Power in the 50s and early 60s.

Of course, we have had and still have the Mainstream Media working to perpetuate the myths -- after all, many of those involved are paid good money and/or foster long careers by doing so. Thus, we're forced to swallow the Gulf of Tonkin/Vietnam War in one generation and 9-11/Irag in the next.

Leaving most of us bewildered and "wondering" what happened to our 35th president (who saw the Cold War for what it really was, i.e., 5% truth & 95% bunk) as well as to why America was in Vietnam (or Iraq) in the first place.

The truths will eventually come out but unfortunately only at a time when nobody cares anymore, the result being (in the words of one historian) nothing more than a historical footnote.

In the meantime, it's no surprise that they do such a crummy job of teaching history in our schools, obviously they don't want too many people asking too many questions ....

Porter's latest piece of revisionism fails for the same reason most others do: Construct a theory based off of prejudices, find information to validate, ignore information that does not validate, and "creatively interpret" where no material exists.

Porter is only partially correct in describing the balance of US Soviet power as decidedly on America's side. While the US had significantly more tactical and strategic nuclear weapons than the Soviets, all the way into the late 60's, the Warsaw Pact outnumbered NATO forces in Europe by over 2:1 with a comparable level of capability in its forces. Considering the known ramifications of even a "limited" nuclear exchange, this was not an option except in the most dire of circumstance. US military dominance was anything but "total" in the early days of the cold war and in many ways was at a distinct disadvantage in many military areas, a scenario that played in the Korean War. The books' contention that US involvement in Vietnam was fairly new until Kennedy, the fact is that US confrontations with communism in Asia had a long history including support of the French against communist guerrillas in Vietnam, the Philippines an Burma in the late 40's and early 50's.

"Perils of Dominance" also bases its "novel" interpretation of postwar Vietnamese history and politics almost exclusively from North Vietnamese sources along with their decidedly apologetic conclusions. These sources are retrospective justifications for the brutal policies of Hanoi, and do not stand up to scrutiny, but Porter eagerly regurgitates their analysis of the political situation in post WWII Vietnam. This simple version of history where Hanoi is an innocent victim of western Imperialism, driven to extremes by unwarranted provocation is not a new one for Porter. For example, Porter repeats the line that the VC were a completely indigenous and independent movement in South Vietnam flies in the face of the fact that the VC were controlled and orchestrated from Hanoi since at least the early 50's.

This book sounds suspiciously like another widely praised piece of Porter's brand of revisionism on Pol Pot:

"The U.S. and government and news media commentary have gone to great lengths to paint a picture of a country ruled by irrational revolutionaries, without human feelings, determined to reduce their country to barbarism. This study is aimed at setting the record straight on these crucial events."

In short, Porter needs to give up his 30 year fantasy.