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Gareth Porter

Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam Paperback – September 20, 2006

by Gareth Porter (Author)

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Perils of Dominance is the first completely new interpretation of how and why the United States went to war in Vietnam. It provides an authoritative challenge to the prevailing explanation that U.S. officials adhered blindly to a Cold War doctrine that loss of Vietnam would cause a "domino effect" leading to communist domination of the area. Gareth Porter presents compelling evidence that U.S. policy decisions on Vietnam from 1954 to mid-1965 were shaped by an overwhelming imbalance of military power favoring the United States over the Soviet Union and China. He demonstrates how the slide into war in Vietnam is relevant to understanding why the United States went to war in Iraq, and why such wars are likely as long as U.S. military power is overwhelmingly dominant in the world.

Challenging conventional wisdom about the origins of the war, Porter argues that the main impetus for military intervention in Vietnam came not from presidents Kennedy and Johnson but from high-ranking national security officials in their administrations who were heavily influenced by U.S. dominance over its Cold War foes. Porter argues that presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson were all strongly opposed to sending combat forces to Vietnam, but that both Kennedy and Johnson were strongly pressured by their national security advisers to undertake military intervention. Porter reveals for the first time that Kennedy attempted to open a diplomatic track for peace negotiations with North Vietnam in 1962 but was frustrated by bureaucratic resistance. Significantly revising the historical account of a major turning point, Porter describes how Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara deliberately misled Johnson in the Gulf of Tonkin crisis, effectively taking the decision to bomb North Vietnam out of the president's hands.

Print length

421 pages
Language

English
Publisher

University of California Press
Publication date

September 20, 2006
Dimensions

6 x 1 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

0520250044
ISBN-13

978-0520250048
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Stephen Kinzer
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"This will be the most important contribution to our understanding of the war in Vietnam since the Pentagon Papers. I am not exaggerating or speaking for effect. Porter challenges--by and large successfully--most of the accepted views, especially on the importance of the domino theory, the belief that U.S. policy was driven by a perception of its weakness on the world scene, and the belligerence of Johnson and, to a lesser extent, Kennedy."

From the Inside Flap

"This will be the most important contribution to our understanding of the war in Vietnam since the Pentagon Papers. I am not exaggerating or speaking for effect. Porter challenges --by and large successfully--most of the accepted views, especially on the importance of the domino theory, the belief that U. S. policy was driven by a perception of its weakness on the world scene, and the belligerence of Johnson and, to a lesser extent, Kennedy."--Robert Jervis, author of American Foreign Policy in a New Era

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of California Press; First edition (September 20, 2006)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 421 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0520250044
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0520250048
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.3 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #694,707 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #629 in Southeast Asia History
- #932 in Globalization & Politics
- #1,270 in Vietnam War History (Books)

Customer Reviews:
14 ratings

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Old Tim

A unique perspective on our involvement in Vietnam

Reviewed in the United States on April 3, 2018

Verified Purchase

This book provides an interesting and, I believe, valid rationale about how we got into the war. In a nut shell, the author contends that our overwhelming military dominance in the 1950-60 led us to believe we could get away with most anything. The author included some great research into documents recently released by the Russians and the Chines to bolster his arguments. I really recomend this for a unique perspective.

2 people found this helpful

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j

The Delusional American

Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2020

Verified Purchase

Gareth’s sings it real. We think we are anti-colonialists. With over 500 American installations in the middle of each country we are supposedly there to ‘serve.’ You figure it out.

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Eddie Kasica

Brilliant, Most Valuable, and Proven

Reviewed in the United States on April 21, 2006

Verified Purchase

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.

40 people found this helpful

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Chad David Anderson

Perils of Dominance

Reviewed in the United States on August 5, 2005

Verified Purchase

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

18 people found this helpful

Helpful

I. Kayak

Hidden Costs to Dominance

Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2017

The main theme of Porter's book was that there was an actual power dominance by the US relative to our Cold War adversaries, the USSR and China. Porter goes on to detail how this dominance affected how the US addressed Viet Nam. Where many reviewers may question whether this dominance was actual, what's relevant is that it this perception was accepted by US policy makers and evidently shared by the USSR and PRC.

Interesting to this reader was how our real or perceived power dominance was applied to our Cold War Viet Nam decision making. It's generally assumed the stronger our military the safer and better off we'll be. But Porter shows how the perception of having the upper hand led us into danger, loss and defeat while dismissing an early option for a peaceful resolution we'd have been thrilled to accept later.

Another notable message here is that although our leaders' repeatedly claimed the domino theory meant a defeat in South Viet Nam would lead to a path of losses worldwide eventually threatening us at our borders, even our leaders didn't accept this theory. The more genuine reasons were much more political and involved "motivational bias" in which things are perceived as threats not because they actually are but because it serves interests to regard them as threats. Probably neither LBJ, McNamera and most of the NSC then believed South Viet Nam itself had value to us. What they believed was that the loss of South Viet Nam would reduce our world influence and credibility in our dominance, and have profoundly adverse domestic political consequences.

3 people found this helpful

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