Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam - History Book on Vietnam War & US Foreign Policy | Perfect for Students, Historians & War History Enthusiasts

The twilight of colonialism -- during which the French really did very little to improve the lot of the Vietnamese other than educate a small percentage of the indigenous population to assist them in their exploitation of that Asian country. Under the Truman Administration, when colonialism was on the wane in India, the United States did not want to alienate the French, whose help was needed to confront the Soviet threat in Europe. It was also believed by U.S. officials that even if the Vietnamese were to obtain independence from France, they would be susceptible to Chinese and Soviet communist influence. Hence the United States, under President Truman, lost an opportunity to adopt a softer tack in its dealings with Vietnam at the end of WW II. Fredrik Logevall thoroughly and extensively covers these issues in a masterly style. In the days of the French, there was as yet no North or South Vietnam. The country would only be split in half, as a result of the Geneva Conference of 1954, following the battle of Dien Bien Phu, when the defeated French were striving to extricate themselves from their debacle, while saving what little face remained to them; each half contained 16 million people, and each half was slightly smaller than the State of Florida. In essence the French were still striving to hold on to some small pseudo-colonial bastion in the south while vacating Hanoi in the north, which had become untenable, primarily because the Vietminh in the north, around Hanoi, were less than a hundred and fifty miles from the Chinese border, and thus they could more easily obtain their supplies, as well as seek sanctuary in China, not to mention the Soviet Union, both of which were supporting their cause. The French were able to count on American fear of communism to elicit U.S. support for splitting Vietnam in two. Ironically, both the Chinese and the Soviets also supported the resolution to divide Vietnam. So, even though the French had been defeated and the Vietnamese had prevailed against the French, the world's three major powers of China, the Soviet Union and the United States ultimately determined that the country of Vietnam should be "provisionally" divided until countrywide elections, as sanctioned by the Geneva Accords, could be conducted inside of the next two years [anticipated during 1956] to determine the political fate of the Vietnamese people. The Accords also prohibited foreign powers from having any military presence in the area. The Vietnamese were reluctantly compelled to acquiesce to this superpower pressure in order to diffuse tensions between the Cold War adversaries who were still licking their wounds from the Korean War that had ended in a stalemate just the year before, though the inconclusive ending to the war in Korea no doubt boosted the confidence of the Vietnamese communists in pursuance of their goals. Here again Logevall thoroughly covers these issues. By 1954 the United States, which was already taking over from the French, endorsed Ngo Dinh Diem (who had spent the previous three years at a Catholic seminary in New Jersey) to lead southern Vietnam, initially as Prime Minister until he won election to the newly created office of President in 1955, after which he hastily proclaimed southern Vietnam the "Republic of Vietnam," and refused to participate in any all-Vietnam elections as prescribed by the Geneva Accords. Diem received American support primarily because he was an anti-communist, although he was also a Catholic, which stigmatized him as a product of French colonialism in the eyes of most of his countrymen, who were Buddhists. Consequently, Diem was compelled to apply draconian measures against his fellow Vietnamese in the south in order to remain in power.I tend to be open to a new slant provided by Lien-Hang Nguyen, Ph.D. from Yale, who writes [in August 2012], "One of the greatest misconceptions of the Vietnam War is that Ho Chi Minh was the uncontested leader of North Vietnam. In reality, Ho was a figurehead while Le Duan, a man who resides in the marginalia of history, was the architect, main strategist and commander in chief of North Vietnam's war effort. The quiet, stern Mr. Duan shunned the spotlight but he possessed the iron will, focus and administrative skill necessary to dominate the Communist Party. . . Mr. Duan constructed a sturdy militarist empire that still looms over Hanoi today. Their hawkish policies led North Vietnam to war against Saigon and then Washington, and ensured that a negotiated peace would never take the place of total victory. Mr. Duan ruled the party with an iron fist and saw Ho and Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, renowned for defeating the French at Dien Bien Phu, as the greatest threats to his authority. He sidelined Ho, General Giap and their supporters when making nearly all key decisions." However Eisenhower and his hard-line Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles were convinced that Ho Chi Minh was aligned with Moscow and Red China, and thus represented a burgeoning communist expansionism that posed a threat to the Free World. This view has been shown in later years to not be entirely true. Eisenhower had pledged, during his campaign, to adopt a more aggressive anti-communist policy, and thus move beyond the passive containment policy of the Truman Administration, which many conservatives alleged had resulted in the loss of China to the communists in 1949, which in turn had encouraged the North Korean communists to invade South Korea in 1950. During 1954, Eisenhower's second year in office, the United States commissioned the world's first nuclear-powered submarine in order to confront the Soviet nuclear threat while also funding nearly 80% of France's total military costs in Indochina. It was during April of 1954, while the battle of Dien Bien Phu was still raging, that President Eisenhower made use of a powerful metaphor, referred to as the domino theory, to effectively convey his belief that if Vietnam were to fall to the communists, it would set off a domino effect, whereupon the other countries of Southeast Asia would also fall to the communists -- like "a row of dominos." After the spilling of so much American blood in Korea, Eisenhower came to the conclusion that the United States should avoid the expenditure of American manpower to fight any more land wars in Asia, while alternatively emphasizing the strategic nuclear deterrent. Nevertheless, in 1955 Eisenhower approved the dispatch of U.S. military advisors to Vietnam to assist the South Vietnamese Army in its fight against the communists. Ironically, when Eisenhower briefed Kennedy during January 1961, just before leaving office, he was more concerned about communist Pathet Lao expansionism in Laos than anything going on in Vietnam. For Laos, which had been granted full independence in 1954 as a result of the Geneva Conference, was in the midst of civil conflict between the Royal Laotian Army and the communist Pathet Lao that had broken out in 1959 and would continue into 1962, ending with the formation of a coalition government and the declared neutrality of that country. Now that there was a U.S. military presence in neighboring South Vietnam, President Kennedy felt obliged to increase military aid to South Vietnam during 1961. There is no denying that Kennedy was a World War II military veteran and a true-blue Cold War warrior who viewed communism as a global threat, against which he was prepared to use military force. Years later McNamara claimed that President Kennedy had begun to have doubts about U.S. involvement in Vietnam and was determined to pull the military advisors out just as soon as he was elected for his second term, which would have commenced during January 1965. Unfortunately we will never know about this potential turn of history, because Kennedy was assassinated during his first term after less than three years in office. In one sense, we were not truly at war until after Kennedy was gone, and Johnson had been elected in his own right and began sending combat troops, in large numbers, to Vietnam during the spring and summer of 1965.Logevall has written a superb book that illuminates a sizable slice of history that begins with the Japanese occupation of Indochina during 1940 and proceeds through the liberation, the commencement of hostilities between the Vietminh and the French in 1946, up through the culminating Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, which essentially ended the first Indochina war during which French Union Forces (made up of Frenchmen, French Foreign Legionnaires, and French Colonial troops from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Senegal, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) suffered more than 74,000 deaths, of which 20,685 were Frenchmen, the best soldiers that France could put in the field, and they were beaten soundly. Logevall goes on to detail American involvement up through 1959, ending with an epilogue that extends to 1965. And through it all, there is Ho Chi Minh, who Logevall brings to life, while fleshing out this complex and mystifying character. A remarkable historical achievement of a subject that is of continuing interest to those who are still striving to better understand America's involvement in Southeast Asia. The book is extremely well written and can be enjoyed by academics and by the casual reader who wishes to have a broader understanding of actions that led up to America's Vietnam War.A. T. Lawrence, author of Crucible Vietnam