Analysis Of Vietnam: A Necessary War By Michael Lind
Adam Smith
4/23/2014
HST-122
Historiography Essay
Analysis of “Vietnam: A Necessary War”
“Vietnam: A Necessary War” is a summary of a book of a similar name by author Michael Lind. The book addresses the viewpoint that the Vietnam War was both moral and necessary for eventual victory in the Cold War. Michael Lind graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with honors in English and History, received an MA in International Relations from Yale University, and a JD from the University of Texas Law School. In 1990-1991 he worked as Assistant to the Director of the U.S. State Department’s Center for the study of Foreign Affairs. From 1991-1994 he was Executive Editor of The National Interest, and from 1994-1998 he worked for Harper’s Magazine, …show more content…
Michael Lind takes the approach that this war was something America could not have avoided if we had any hope to eventually win the Cold War over the Soviet Union and emerge as the world’s number one super power. He acknowledges that the administrations involved with the conflict did little to clearly explain our involvement to the public, and would often change their reasoning over time. But he goes on to explain that we had a very real reason to get involved in a conflict that many believed did not involve us. To easily explain why, is to simply bring up credibility. “Credibility, in power politics, is a country’s reputation for military capability combined with the political resolve to use it in order to promote its goals.” (Lind, 1999) In a sense credibility, or perceived power, was one of the most important tools in the Cold War. Allies and small dependent countries had to believe that America would be able to support them in a crisis, and enemies had to be under the impression that we would be able to back up any threats. To back out of Vietnam would have only prepared America to enter another battlefield later. A main reason of entering Vietnam was to avoid a humiliating defeat to our own reputation as a powerful country. Keeping South Vietnam out of Chinese control and permitting the South Vietnamese to enjoy a freer lifestyle were lower down on the …show more content…
There are two main ways of doing so. The more basic one is that the American involvement was an avoidable tragedy and that American policymakers horribly over exaggerated Vietnam’s importance to the United States. Had they more appropriately assessed its value to the economic and security interests of the U.S., recognized the appeal that revolutionary nationalism had within the country, and taken into account the true limits of American power, then it all could have been avoided. This is the dominant interpretation of the Vietnam War, and is widely published by many experts. It is the basic point that the whole thing was a misadventure that would have been avoided if Americans had only been wiser and less attached to misconceptions of the
4/23/2014
HST-122
Historiography Essay
Analysis of “Vietnam: A Necessary War”
“Vietnam: A Necessary War” is a summary of a book of a similar name by author Michael Lind. The book addresses the viewpoint that the Vietnam War was both moral and necessary for eventual victory in the Cold War. Michael Lind graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with honors in English and History, received an MA in International Relations from Yale University, and a JD from the University of Texas Law School. In 1990-1991 he worked as Assistant to the Director of the U.S. State Department’s Center for the study of Foreign Affairs. From 1991-1994 he was Executive Editor of The National Interest, and from 1994-1998 he worked for Harper’s Magazine, …show more content…
Michael Lind takes the approach that this war was something America could not have avoided if we had any hope to eventually win the Cold War over the Soviet Union and emerge as the world’s number one super power. He acknowledges that the administrations involved with the conflict did little to clearly explain our involvement to the public, and would often change their reasoning over time. But he goes on to explain that we had a very real reason to get involved in a conflict that many believed did not involve us. To easily explain why, is to simply bring up credibility. “Credibility, in power politics, is a country’s reputation for military capability combined with the political resolve to use it in order to promote its goals.” (Lind, 1999) In a sense credibility, or perceived power, was one of the most important tools in the Cold War. Allies and small dependent countries had to believe that America would be able to support them in a crisis, and enemies had to be under the impression that we would be able to back up any threats. To back out of Vietnam would have only prepared America to enter another battlefield later. A main reason of entering Vietnam was to avoid a humiliating defeat to our own reputation as a powerful country. Keeping South Vietnam out of Chinese control and permitting the South Vietnamese to enjoy a freer lifestyle were lower down on the …show more content…
There are two main ways of doing so. The more basic one is that the American involvement was an avoidable tragedy and that American policymakers horribly over exaggerated Vietnam’s importance to the United States. Had they more appropriately assessed its value to the economic and security interests of the U.S., recognized the appeal that revolutionary nationalism had within the country, and taken into account the true limits of American power, then it all could have been avoided. This is the dominant interpretation of the Vietnam War, and is widely published by many experts. It is the basic point that the whole thing was a misadventure that would have been avoided if Americans had only been wiser and less attached to misconceptions of the