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A concise and well organized assessment of the major military conflicts in post-colonial Vietnam. -- International Migration Review Illuminates aspects of conflicts that other surveys have ignored. -- Historian An excellent, instructive survey of the Vietnam conflict that will provide informative commentary for anyone interested in that troubled period in American history. -- (Bowling Green, KY) Daily News A compact overview of a country and its wars that provides insight into one of US history's most traumatic periods. -- Military Review Army History A study undoubtedly richly deserving of the readers' attention. -- Archiv Orientalni

A concise, analytical survey of Vietnamese military history that concentrates on the French and American 20th-century wars. Former US Army captain Tucker (Military History/Virginia Military Institute) presents a readable, fact-filled examination of the military history of Vietnam. He begins with a brief history of the Southeast Asian nation, starting with its legendary founding in the third century B.C. Tucker clearly shows that the dominant feature of Vietnam's first thousand years was nationalist rebellion against Chinese domination. Tucker offers detailed examinations of the French colonization of Vietnam and the 1946-1954 French Indochina War-two areas that most American Vietnam War histories treat perfunctorily at best. His treatment of the American war takes up more than half the book. Tucker sticks mainly to military matters in his analysis of that controversial, highly political war. He makes a case that, from the beginning, the American military strategy was flawed because it focused on conventional warfare and paid too little attention to counterinsurgency. The inability of the American military establishment to forecast the [guerrilla] military threat in the late 1950s was the first great US military mistake in Vietnam, he says. Tucker strongly criticizes commanding general William Westmoreland and officials in Washington - especially President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger - for drastically underestimating the will of the North Vietnamese. Westmoreland's attrition strategy, Tucker says, was particularly ill suited against the Communist strategy of protracted warfare. Tucker uses a good deal of statistical information throughout this well-documented book. A military historian's approach to Vietnam's wars. (Kirkus Reviews)

<p> A compact overview of a country and its wars that provides insight into one of US history's most traumatic periods. -- Military Review

A compact overview of a country and its wars that provides insight into one of US history's most traumatic periods. -- <i>Military Review</i></p>

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