Description
Book SynopsisWhen he took office in 1969, the term that Richard Nixon embraced to describe his plan for ending the American war in Vietnam was “Vietnamization,” the process of withdrawing US troops and turning over responsibility for the war to the South Vietnamese government. The concept had far reaching implications, both for understanding Nixon’s actions and for shaping U.S. military thinking years after Washington’s failure to ensure the survival of its client state in South Vietnam. In this book, Vietnam War expert David L. Anderson explores the political and strategic implications and assesses its continuing, significant impact on American post-Vietnam foreign policy.
Trade ReviewAn outstanding blend of memoir and historical research from one of the nation’s leading scholars on the American war in Vietnam. David Anderson had produced a one-of-a-kind book on Nixon’s Vietnamization policy that initiated the withdrawal of US forces from Southeast Asia. It is an immensely insightful read that is both personal and fair, a work that will become indispensable for understanding why and how the United States departed from the longest, most unsatisfactory conflict of the Cold War era. -- Gregory A. Daddis, author of Withdrawal: Reassessing America’s Final Years in Vietnam
Based on recently declassified records, the latest scholarship, and his own experience serving in Vietnam, David Anderson’s Vietnamization, is an original and welcome study of President Richard Nixon’s Vietnam policy and how the Vietnam War ended. Anderson analysis of Nixon’s policy demonstrates that Vietnamization did not work and could not work given the realities of the war. In the process, he successfully rebuts the “revisionists” claims about victory. Moreover, Anderson shows the parallels with Iraq and the misunderstanding of the lessons about counterinsurgency from the Vietnam War. Vietnamization should be read by scholars and students of the Vietnam War, and practitioners of American foreign policy, alike. -- David F. Schmitz, Robert Allen Skotheim Chair of History, Whitman College
David Anderson solidified long ago his renown as one of the best Vietnam War scholars of his generation. This latest book is a testament to his erudition. It sheds revealing new light on a critical aspect of the war on the basis of an impressive array of pertinent sources. It also reminds us that despite the passage of time, the Vietnam War still matters a great deal to American civilian and military decision-makers. -- Pierre Asselin, Dwight E. Stanford Chair in US Foreign Relations, San Diego State University
