Customer Reviews

A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941-1975

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This book is a very good political (not military) history of the war. It's based on U.S. archives, so it's told entirely from the perspective of U.S. policymakers, even when discussing French or Vietnamese events. Also, although the book is about as objective as possible, you really can't leave politics behind when you write about Vietnam. Schulzinger believes that the United States could not have won the war; that we got involved out of misguided good intentions rather than evil motives; and that the Vietminh and Vietcong were homegrown liberation movements, not puppets of the Soviets or Chinese. Those are common and reasonable views, so I'm just saying know what you're getting. Overall, I preferred Karnow's Vietnam to this book. Karnow's politics and focus (U.S. policymakers) is similar. Schulzinger, a historian, has better command of the written source materials, but Karnow, a journalist in Vietnam during the war, is a better writer and rounds out the story with his own observations. Still, with all those caveats, this is a very readable and informative book.

The conflict in Vietnam was one of the most divisive foreign policy issues in our nation's history. The events which led up to full-scale American involvement in Vietnam vividly illustrated this divisiveness; a divisiveness which would change politics in America and the way in which Americans would look at their government. Robert D. Schulzinger's book, "A Time for War:The United States and Vietnam, 1941-1975", presents a comprehensive and analytical narrative on a war which is still hard for historians and the public to fully understand and interpret. Schulzinger brilliantly portrays U.S. involvement in Vietnamese affairs by analyzing how presidents and their national security teams from Roosevelt to Ford handled foreign policy concerning Vietnam. The objectivity of the book is very important and refreshing and interestingly points out how so many politicians and foreign policy experts predicted the eventual outcome of U.S. military involvement. Schulzinger's analysis of Johnson and his relations with advisors such as Robert McNamara, Walt Rostow, and McGeorge Bundy, tell of a president who knew what he was getting the country into but could not look beyond the short term effects of his decisions. By 1967-68, the war totally consumed Johnson and a point of no return was reached. Schulzinger also points out that the various South Vietnamese regimes failed to give proper support and encouragement to U.S. efforts. U.S. involvement in Vietnam was much too often taken for granted and this was a serious flaw in relations between Saigon and Washington. Unity and sense of nationalism were severely lacking in South Vietnam. Schulzinger's book provides a well-rounded and comprehensive analysis of a difficult time in American history. His primary source research was well done and the objectivity of the book was truly refreshing. The only drawback to the book is that one can easily get lost in his discussions of politics and diplomatic maneuvering. It also might have behooved the author to cover the American soldiers' experiences a little more as well. But, overall, this is a book which definitely stands out among Vietnam historiography.

Dr. Schulzinger's book is the first of a two-part series on the history of Vietnamese resistance. While A Time For Peace is still being written, the prequel, A Time for War clearly describes the hows and whys that caused, first the French, and then the Americans to become embroiled in a controversial conflict that would divide their nations. Although some of Shulzinger's conclusions can be considered suspect (who could ever say that President Diem was not corrupt?), overall, the treatment is well-done.

This is worth while reading for anyone interested in how the U.S. and it's political leaders, step by step, led the country into the tragedy that was Vietnam. The antecedents really go back to the end of WW II and is a long complicated story that involves the administrations of six presidents. Although this book is a fairly high level look at Vietnam (it would take more than one book to do otherwise), the author does do a good job of pulling the many threads together in to a fairly coherent story. The war in Vietnam generated strong emotions then and still does for some people, but I appreciate that the author tells the story of the war in a fairly straight forward manner. I have over 30 books on Vietnam in my book collection (I'm a Vietnam vet) and this book is a solid addition to that collection and I would recommend to anyone who is interested in the subject.

In his account of the war in the last months of 1963, the author contradicts himself and reveals a right-wing bias. He acknowledges that Kennedy never committed combat troops to Vietnam, and never committed to commit them, and says rather that Kennedy simply "retained the option of ordering just such a deployment at a later date." But the author then contradicts himself and reveals his anti-Kennedy bias by asserting that "Kennedy bequeathed a terrible legacy to his successor, Lyndon Johnson. The United States was committed to participation in a civil war in Vietnam without guarantees of success." This opinion is rubbish. The United States was not committed to any course of action in Vietnam when Johnson took over. Johnson, not Kennedy, bears the responsibility for the decisions Johnson made as President.
The author recites but ignores the fact that, when Kennedy was assassinated, there were only 16,000 U.S. military personnel in Vietnam--all advisors or support personnel, no combat troops--as opposed to the 565,000 combat troops Johnson committed. The author acknowledges that, shortly before he was killed, Kennedy told a top aide and the Senate Majority leader that he intended to withdraw completely from Vietnam after the 1964 election. The author dismisses these statements as "represent[ing] more the musings born of the frustrations of dealing with Diem than an acceptance of a communist triumph." Absolutely no factual basis is provided for this assertion.
If you hate Kennedy and enjoy revisionist histories, buy this book. Otherwise, keep looking for a real history.