Vietnam: The Necessary War: A Reinterpretation of America's Most Disastrous Military Conflict
by Michael Lind
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A quarter century after its end, the Vietnam War still divides Americans. Some, mostly on the left, claim that Indochina was of no strategic value to the United States and was not worth an American war. Others, mostly on the right, argue that timid civilian leaders and defeatists within the media fatally undermined the war effort. These "lessons of Vietnam" have become ingrained in the American consciousness, at the expense of an accurate understanding of the war itself. In this show more groundbreaking reinterpretation of America's most disastrous and controversial war, Michael Lind demolishes the stale orthodoxies of the left and the right and puts the Vietnam War in its proper context -- as part of the global conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States. The Cold War, he argues, was actually the third world war of the twentieth century, and the proxy wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan were its major campaigns. Unwilling to engage each other in the heart of Europe, the superpowersplayed out their contest on the Asian front, while the rest of the world watched to see which side would retreat. As Lind shows, the Soviet Unio show lessTags
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Member Reviews
3329. Vietnam The Necessary War / A Reinterpretation of America's Most Disastrous Military Conflict, by Michael Lind (read July 20, 2000) This I found a startling and thought-provoking book, arriving at conclusions not "in vogue" but some of which make sense and some of which disturb. Lind concludes the war was a just, constitutional, and necessary proxy war in the Third World War which was waged by methods that were often counterproductive and sometimes arguably immoral, but that the war had to be fought in order to preserve the military and diplomatic creditability of the U.S. in the Cold War. but that when its costs grew excessive the war had to be forfeited in order to preserve the political consensus within the U.S. in favor of the show more Cold War. A fascinating but disturbing book. show less
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Author Information
17+ Works 1,121 Members
Michael Lind, a senior fellow of the New America Foundation lives in Washington, D.C. (Bowker Author Biography)
Common Knowledge
- People/Characters
- George Kennan; Lyndon Baines Johnson; Dean Rusk; Richard M. Nixon; Mao Zedong; Joseph Stalin (show all 7); Ho Chi Minh
- Important places
- Vietnam; Laos; Cambodia
- Important events
- Vietnam War (1959 | 1975); Cold War
Classifications
- Genres
- History, Nonfiction, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 959.704 — History & geography History of Asia Southeast Asia: Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam Vietnam 1949-
- LCC
- DS558 .L565 — History of Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania Asia History of Asia Southeast Asia French Indochina Vietnam. Annam Vietnamese Conflict
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 163
- Popularity
- 200,310
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (4.06)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 3
- ASINs
- 1
