Author: Harry G Summers
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486121550
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 162
Book Description
A politico-military assessment of the Vietnam War analyzing the U.S. Army's strategic and tactical ideologies. Particularly relevant today, it stresses the futility of any military action without the full support of the people.
Westmoreland's War
Author: Gregory Daddis
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199316503
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
This groundbreaking study offers a major reinterpretation of American strategy during the first half of the Vietnam War. Gregory A. Daddis argues senior military leaders developed a comprehensive campaign strategy, one not confined to 'attrition' of enemy forces. This innovative work is a must for a genuine understanding of the Vietnam War.
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199316503
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
This groundbreaking study offers a major reinterpretation of American strategy during the first half of the Vietnam War. Gregory A. Daddis argues senior military leaders developed a comprehensive campaign strategy, one not confined to 'attrition' of enemy forces. This innovative work is a must for a genuine understanding of the Vietnam War.
American Strategy in Vietnam
Author: Harry G Summers
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486121550
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 162
Book Description
A politico-military assessment of the Vietnam War analyzing the U.S. Army's strategic and tactical ideologies. Particularly relevant today, it stresses the futility of any military action without the full support of the people.
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486121550
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 162
Book Description
A politico-military assessment of the Vietnam War analyzing the U.S. Army's strategic and tactical ideologies. Particularly relevant today, it stresses the futility of any military action without the full support of the people.
US Defence Strategy from Vietnam to Operation Iraqi Freedom
Author: Robert R. Tomes
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135985618
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 430
Book Description
US Defence Strategy from Vietnam to Operation Iraqi Freedom examines the thirty-year transformation in American military thought and defence strategy that spanned from 1973 through 2003. During these three decades, new technology and operational practices helped form what observers dubbed a 'Revolution in Military Affairs' in the 1990s and a 'New American Way of War' in the 2000s. Robert R. Tomes tells for the first time the story of how innovative approaches to solving battlefield challenges gave rise to non-nuclear strategic strike, the quest to apply information technology to offset Soviet military advantages, and the rise of 'decisive operations' in American military strategy. He details an innovation process that began in the shadow of Vietnam, matured in the 1980s as Pentagon planners sought an integrated nuclear-conventional deterrent, and culminated with battles fought during blinding sandstorms on the road to Baghdad in 2003. An important contribution to military innovation studies, the book also presents an innovation framework applicable to current defence transformation efforts. This book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, US defence policy and US politics in general.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135985618
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 430
Book Description
US Defence Strategy from Vietnam to Operation Iraqi Freedom examines the thirty-year transformation in American military thought and defence strategy that spanned from 1973 through 2003. During these three decades, new technology and operational practices helped form what observers dubbed a 'Revolution in Military Affairs' in the 1990s and a 'New American Way of War' in the 2000s. Robert R. Tomes tells for the first time the story of how innovative approaches to solving battlefield challenges gave rise to non-nuclear strategic strike, the quest to apply information technology to offset Soviet military advantages, and the rise of 'decisive operations' in American military strategy. He details an innovation process that began in the shadow of Vietnam, matured in the 1980s as Pentagon planners sought an integrated nuclear-conventional deterrent, and culminated with battles fought during blinding sandstorms on the road to Baghdad in 2003. An important contribution to military innovation studies, the book also presents an innovation framework applicable to current defence transformation efforts. This book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, US defence policy and US politics in general.
Planning to Fail
Author: James H. Lebovic
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190935340
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 425
Book Description
The United States national-security establishment is vast, yet the United States has failed to meet its initial objectives in almost every one of its major, post-World War II conflicts. Of these troubled efforts, the US wars in Vietnam (1965-73), Iraq (2003-11), and Afghanistan (2001-present) stand out for their endurance, resource investment, human cost, and miscalculated decisions. Because overarching policy goals are distant and open to interpretation, policymakers ground their decisions in the immediate world of short-term objectives, salient tasks, policy constraints, and fixed time schedules. As a consequence, they exaggerate the benefits of their preferred policies, ignore the accompanying costs and requirements, and underappreciate the benefits of alternatives. In Planning to Fail, James H. Lebovic argues that a profound myopia helps explain US decision-making failures. In each of the wars explored in this book, he identifies four stages of intervention. First and foremost, policymakers chose unwisely to go to war. After the fighting began, they inadvisably sought to extend or expand the mission. Next, they pursued the mission, in abbreviated form, to suboptimal effect. Finally, they adapted the mission to exit from the conflict. Lebovic argues that US leaders were effectively planning to fail whatever their hopes and thoughts were at the time the intervention began. Decision-makers struggled less than they should have, even when conditions allowed for good choices. Then, when conditions on the ground left them with only bad choices, they struggled furiously and more than could ever matter. Policymakers allowed these wars to sap available capabilities, push US forces to the breaking point, and exhaust public support. They finally settled for terms of departure that they (or their predecessors) would have rejected at the start of these conflicts. Offering a far-ranging and detailed analysis, this book identifies an unmistakable pattern of failure and highlights lessons we can learn from it.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190935340
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 425
Book Description
The United States national-security establishment is vast, yet the United States has failed to meet its initial objectives in almost every one of its major, post-World War II conflicts. Of these troubled efforts, the US wars in Vietnam (1965-73), Iraq (2003-11), and Afghanistan (2001-present) stand out for their endurance, resource investment, human cost, and miscalculated decisions. Because overarching policy goals are distant and open to interpretation, policymakers ground their decisions in the immediate world of short-term objectives, salient tasks, policy constraints, and fixed time schedules. As a consequence, they exaggerate the benefits of their preferred policies, ignore the accompanying costs and requirements, and underappreciate the benefits of alternatives. In Planning to Fail, James H. Lebovic argues that a profound myopia helps explain US decision-making failures. In each of the wars explored in this book, he identifies four stages of intervention. First and foremost, policymakers chose unwisely to go to war. After the fighting began, they inadvisably sought to extend or expand the mission. Next, they pursued the mission, in abbreviated form, to suboptimal effect. Finally, they adapted the mission to exit from the conflict. Lebovic argues that US leaders were effectively planning to fail whatever their hopes and thoughts were at the time the intervention began. Decision-makers struggled less than they should have, even when conditions allowed for good choices. Then, when conditions on the ground left them with only bad choices, they struggled furiously and more than could ever matter. Policymakers allowed these wars to sap available capabilities, push US forces to the breaking point, and exhaust public support. They finally settled for terms of departure that they (or their predecessors) would have rejected at the start of these conflicts. Offering a far-ranging and detailed analysis, this book identifies an unmistakable pattern of failure and highlights lessons we can learn from it.
Strategy for Defeat
Author: Ulysses S. Grant Sharp
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780891416722
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
"Admiral Sharp draws a grim and frightening picture of what happened -- and could happen again." -- Union-Leader (Manchester, NH)
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780891416722
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
"Admiral Sharp draws a grim and frightening picture of what happened -- and could happen again." -- Union-Leader (Manchester, NH)
Blowtorch
Author: Frank L Jones
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1612512291
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 418
Book Description
History has not been kind to Robert Komer, a casualty of bad historical analysis and inaccurate information. A Cold War national security policy and strategy adviser to three presidents, Komer was one of the most influential national security professionals of the era. The book begins with a review of his early life that helped shape his worldview. It then examines Komer’s influence as a National Security Council staff member during the Kennedy administration, where he helped set its activist course regarding the Third World. Upon Kennedy’s death, Lyndon Johnson named Komer his “point man” for Vietnam pacification policy, and later General Westmoreland’s operational deputy in Vietnam. The author highlights Komer’s activities during the three years he strove to fulfill the president’s vision that Communism could be repelled from Southeast Asia by economic and social development along with military force. Known as “Blowtorch” for his abrasive personality and disdain for bureaucratic foot dragging, Komer came to be seen as the right person for managing that effort, and in 1968 was rewarded with an ambassadorship to Turkey. The book analyzes Komer’s work during the Carter administration as special adviser to Secretary of Defense Harold Brown and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and credits him for reenergizing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s conventional capability and forging the military instrument that implemented the Carter Doctrine in the Persian Gulf—the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force. It also explores his final role as a defense intellectual and critic of the Reagan administration’s defense policies. The book concludes with a useful summary of Komer’s impact on American policy and strategy and his contributions to counterinsurgency practices, a legacy now recognized for its importance in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1612512291
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 418
Book Description
History has not been kind to Robert Komer, a casualty of bad historical analysis and inaccurate information. A Cold War national security policy and strategy adviser to three presidents, Komer was one of the most influential national security professionals of the era. The book begins with a review of his early life that helped shape his worldview. It then examines Komer’s influence as a National Security Council staff member during the Kennedy administration, where he helped set its activist course regarding the Third World. Upon Kennedy’s death, Lyndon Johnson named Komer his “point man” for Vietnam pacification policy, and later General Westmoreland’s operational deputy in Vietnam. The author highlights Komer’s activities during the three years he strove to fulfill the president’s vision that Communism could be repelled from Southeast Asia by economic and social development along with military force. Known as “Blowtorch” for his abrasive personality and disdain for bureaucratic foot dragging, Komer came to be seen as the right person for managing that effort, and in 1968 was rewarded with an ambassadorship to Turkey. The book analyzes Komer’s work during the Carter administration as special adviser to Secretary of Defense Harold Brown and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and credits him for reenergizing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s conventional capability and forging the military instrument that implemented the Carter Doctrine in the Persian Gulf—the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force. It also explores his final role as a defense intellectual and critic of the Reagan administration’s defense policies. The book concludes with a useful summary of Komer’s impact on American policy and strategy and his contributions to counterinsurgency practices, a legacy now recognized for its importance in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Withdrawal
Author: Gregory A. Daddis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190691107
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
A "better war." Over the last two decades, this term has become synonymous with US strategy during the Vietnam War's final years. The narrative is enticingly simple, appealing to many audiences. After the disastrous results of the 1968 Tet offensive, in which Hanoi's forces demonstrated the failures of American strategy, popular history tells of a new American military commander who emerged in South Vietnam and with inspired leadership and a new approach turned around a long stalemated conflict. In fact, so successful was General Creighton Abrams in commanding US forces that, according to the "better war" myth, the United States had actually achieved victory by mid-1970. A new general with a new strategy had delivered, only to see his victory abandoned by weak-kneed politicians in Washington, DC who turned their backs on the US armed forces and their South Vietnamese allies. In a bold new interpretation of America's final years in Vietnam, acclaimed historian Gregory A. Daddis disproves these longstanding myths. Withdrawal is a groundbreaking reassessment that tells a far different story of the Vietnam War. Daddis convincingly argues that the entire US effort in South Vietnam was incapable of reversing the downward trends of a complicated Vietnamese conflict that by 1968 had turned into a political-military stalemate. Despite a new articulation of strategy, Abrams's approach could not materially alter a war no longer vital to US national security or global dominance. Once the Nixon White House made the political decision to withdraw from Southeast Asia, Abrams's military strategy was unable to change either the course or outcome of a decades' long Vietnamese civil war. In a riveting sequel to his celebrated Westmoreland's War, Daddis demonstrates he is one of the nation's leading scholars on the Vietnam War. Withdrawal will be a standard work for years to come.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190691107
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
A "better war." Over the last two decades, this term has become synonymous with US strategy during the Vietnam War's final years. The narrative is enticingly simple, appealing to many audiences. After the disastrous results of the 1968 Tet offensive, in which Hanoi's forces demonstrated the failures of American strategy, popular history tells of a new American military commander who emerged in South Vietnam and with inspired leadership and a new approach turned around a long stalemated conflict. In fact, so successful was General Creighton Abrams in commanding US forces that, according to the "better war" myth, the United States had actually achieved victory by mid-1970. A new general with a new strategy had delivered, only to see his victory abandoned by weak-kneed politicians in Washington, DC who turned their backs on the US armed forces and their South Vietnamese allies. In a bold new interpretation of America's final years in Vietnam, acclaimed historian Gregory A. Daddis disproves these longstanding myths. Withdrawal is a groundbreaking reassessment that tells a far different story of the Vietnam War. Daddis convincingly argues that the entire US effort in South Vietnam was incapable of reversing the downward trends of a complicated Vietnamese conflict that by 1968 had turned into a political-military stalemate. Despite a new articulation of strategy, Abrams's approach could not materially alter a war no longer vital to US national security or global dominance. Once the Nixon White House made the political decision to withdraw from Southeast Asia, Abrams's military strategy was unable to change either the course or outcome of a decades' long Vietnamese civil war. In a riveting sequel to his celebrated Westmoreland's War, Daddis demonstrates he is one of the nation's leading scholars on the Vietnam War. Withdrawal will be a standard work for years to come.
The Columbia Guide to the Vietnam War
Author: David L. Anderson
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231507380
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329
Book Description
More than a quarter of a century after the last Marine Corps Huey left the American embassy in Saigon, the lessons and legacies of the most divisive war in twentieth-century American history are as hotly debated as ever. Why did successive administrations choose little-known Vietnam as the "test case" of American commitment in the fight against communism? Why were the "best and brightest" apparently blind to the illegitimacy of the state of South Vietnam? Would Kennedy have pulled out had he lived? And what lessons regarding American foreign policy emerged from the war? The Columbia Guide to the Vietnam War helps readers understand this tragic and complex conflict. The book contains both interpretive information and a wealth of facts in easy-to-find form. Part I provides a lucid narrative overview of contested issues and interpretations in Vietnam scholarship. Part II is a mini-encyclopedia with descriptions and analysis of individuals, events, groups, and military operations. Arranged alphabetically, this section enables readers to look up isolated facts and specialized terms. Part III is a chronology of key events. Part IV is an annotated guide to resources, including films, documentaries, CD-ROMs, and reliable Web sites. Part V contains excerpts from historical documents and statistical data.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231507380
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329
Book Description
More than a quarter of a century after the last Marine Corps Huey left the American embassy in Saigon, the lessons and legacies of the most divisive war in twentieth-century American history are as hotly debated as ever. Why did successive administrations choose little-known Vietnam as the "test case" of American commitment in the fight against communism? Why were the "best and brightest" apparently blind to the illegitimacy of the state of South Vietnam? Would Kennedy have pulled out had he lived? And what lessons regarding American foreign policy emerged from the war? The Columbia Guide to the Vietnam War helps readers understand this tragic and complex conflict. The book contains both interpretive information and a wealth of facts in easy-to-find form. Part I provides a lucid narrative overview of contested issues and interpretations in Vietnam scholarship. Part II is a mini-encyclopedia with descriptions and analysis of individuals, events, groups, and military operations. Arranged alphabetically, this section enables readers to look up isolated facts and specialized terms. Part III is a chronology of key events. Part IV is an annotated guide to resources, including films, documentaries, CD-ROMs, and reliable Web sites. Part V contains excerpts from historical documents and statistical data.
US Defence Strategy from Vietnam to Operation Iraqi Freedom
Author: Robert R. Tomes
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135985626
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219
Book Description
This volume examines the thirty-year transformation in American military thought and defence strategy that spanned from 1973 through 2003.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135985626
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219
Book Description
This volume examines the thirty-year transformation in American military thought and defence strategy that spanned from 1973 through 2003.
The Vietnam War: Vietnamese and American Perspectives
Author: Jayne Werner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317454006
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 360
Book Description
This volume derives from an unprecedented seminar held at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs in November 1990. At the seminar, leading Western diplomatic and military historians and Vietnam scholars met with prominent Vietnamese Communists to reflect on the Vietnam War. The book contains four parts: The Vietnamese Revolution and Political/Military strategy; the war from the American side; the war in the South and Cambodia; and retrospective and postwar issues. In addition to Jane Werner and Luu Doan Huynh, the contributors are Mark Bradley, William Duiker, David Elliott, Christine White, George Vickers, James Harrison, George Herring, Ronald Spector, Paul Joseph, Jeffrey Clarke, Ngo Vinh Long, Benedict Kiernan, Marilyn Young, Keith Taylor, and Tran Van Tra. General Tra was Commander of the People's Liberation Armed Forces of South Vietnam from 1963 to 1975. His eye-opening analysis of the Tet Offensive has never before been available in English.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317454006
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 360
Book Description
This volume derives from an unprecedented seminar held at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs in November 1990. At the seminar, leading Western diplomatic and military historians and Vietnam scholars met with prominent Vietnamese Communists to reflect on the Vietnam War. The book contains four parts: The Vietnamese Revolution and Political/Military strategy; the war from the American side; the war in the South and Cambodia; and retrospective and postwar issues. In addition to Jane Werner and Luu Doan Huynh, the contributors are Mark Bradley, William Duiker, David Elliott, Christine White, George Vickers, James Harrison, George Herring, Ronald Spector, Paul Joseph, Jeffrey Clarke, Ngo Vinh Long, Benedict Kiernan, Marilyn Young, Keith Taylor, and Tran Van Tra. General Tra was Commander of the People's Liberation Armed Forces of South Vietnam from 1963 to 1975. His eye-opening analysis of the Tet Offensive has never before been available in English.