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A Grand Delusion: America's Descent Into Vietnam
by Robert Mann
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Basic Books (2002-01-08)
ISBN: 0465043704
EAN: 9780465043705
Dewy Decimal #: 959.7043
Paperback: 768 pages
SKU: 01800
Condition: Used: Like New
Comments: Never used but has shelf wear--scuff marks. Remainder mark.
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Editorial Reviews
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Amazon.com
Political biographer Robert Mann minces no words when he characterizes America's "ill-advised military foray into Vietnam" as a sequence of delusions. America's citizens and lower-echelon political leadership, he writes, were deluded about the nature of the communist threat to Southeast Asia, which was less an expression of some grand design on the part of Moscow and Beijing than one of nationalist resistance to colonialism. Several presidents were deluded about the effects of their policies in Vietnam and the prospects for military success. Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon deluded voters into believing that peace was close at hand, while the death toll mounted under their management of the war. Vietnam, Mann suggests, was never vital to U.S. national security, as five presidents once insisted. Political from the outset, the war resisted the military solution those leaders promised. And it nearly resulted in a civil war at home, which, Mann writes, yielded a pervasive distrust of the government at all levels of society. "The Vietnam War," he concludes, "should be remembered as the kind of tragedy that can result when presidents--captivated by their grand delusions--enforce their foreign and military policies without the informed support of Congress and the American people." Mann's book, a useful adjunct to such standard texts as Stanley Karnow's Vietnam: A History and A.J. Langguth's recent Our Vietnam, joins the history of the war in Vietnam to the conduct of the cold war at large. Controversial and provocative, it promises to find many readers. --Gregory McNamee
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Product Description
A Grand Delusion is the first comprehensive single-volume American political history of the Vietnam War. Spanning the years 1945 to 1975, it is the definitive story of the well-meaning, but often misguided, American political leaders whose unquestioning adherence to the crusading, anti-Communist Cold War dogma of the 1950's and 1960's led the nation into its tragic misadventure in Vietnam.At the center of this narrative are seven political leaders-Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, J. William Fulbright, Mike Mansfield, and George McGovern. During their careers, each occupied center-stage in the nation's debate over U.S. policy in Vietnam.This is a piercing analysis of political currents and an epic tragedy filled with fascinating characters and antagonisms and beliefs that divided the nation.
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Customer Reviews
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Thorough Account of the Politics and Policy Behind the War
Rating  (5)
Date: 2006-12-10
Robert Mann, a former congressional aide, fails to disappoint in his comprehensive political history of the nation's longest war. Mann focuses on the politics and policy that led to the worst military defeat in American history.
For the most part, "A Grand Delusion" turns its gaze away from the action on the ground in Indochina, examining instead the decisions that policymakers in Washington faced during the war, the political pressures brought to bear on them, and the choices that they made over the course of twenty-five years. Mann finds the roots of American involvement in the bitter political debates that erupted following the "loss" of China and North Korea's invasion of its southern neighbor, as President Truman suffered mortal political damage from his apparent inability to stem the Communist tide in Asia. From those disasters, American policymakers took the first of several dangerous delusions: no politician could survive if he allowed an Asian country to fall to a communist government.
As the situation in South Vietnam deteriorated in the face of a virulent and effective communist insurgency, US government officials stirred more "delusions" into the policymaking mix: after the debacle at Munich in 1938, the West must always use force against its enemies, regardless of the nature of the threat or the national interests implicated; the VietCong guerillas were communists first and nationalists second, with their foremost goal the spread of global Communism and not national independence from the French; the unification of Vietnam under Communist leadership would threaten other American allies in Southeast Asia; America's national security depended on the success of the South Vietnamese government; and South Vietnam was ultimately capable of mustering the will, the political reforms, and military capability to defend itself, provided that the US stood by it until it could do so. Each of these assumptions, according to Mann, was disastrously wrong. Mann charts how these assumptions, like the progression of a fatal illness, infected every step of the policymaking process, leading five presidents to escalate America's involvement.
Mann guides the reader through the internal debates that led policymakers down this dangerous path, showing how officials from both parties clung to these false assumptions and how these delusions informed their decisions. Mann pays special attention to the relationship between the White House and the Senate, the branch of Congress that the Founders expected to have more of a role in foreign affairs because of its longer terms and power over appointments and treaties. Perhaps the most tragic figure in this book is Senator Mike Mansfield, the majority leader through much of the war, who suppressed his doubts about the war out of political loyalty to the President and the sense that the Senate must not undermine the Commander in Chief in a time of war. Indeed, much of the book is a story of how Congress threw aside its constitutional responsibilities to declare war and provide oversight to the Executive's foreign policy, and how it slowly reclaimed those powers.
The book has a few defects. The book contains far too many spelling and grammatical errors. Also, at times, the narrative bogs down in bureaucratic minutiae, leaving some passages as interesting as a typical inter-office memo. Still, the book is a noteworthy addition to the literature of the Vietnam War by reminding us how it came about and why. If anything, it has only become more relevant since it was first published: readers will find haunting parallels, for instance, between Vietnamization and "As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down."
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Informative yet superficial
Rating  (3)
Date: 2005-09-18
0 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
This book is a highly detailed narrative as to how the political leadership of the United States involved the country into the tragic Vietnam quagmire. It actually begins with the end of World War 2 and the conquest of China by Mao, an event which resulted in Republican accusations of treason against the Truman administration for "losing China". Henceforth American political leaders would be fearful of being labled "soft on Communism" and would thus militantly support any political action opposed to Communist rule, begining with mistakingly supporting French imperialist aspirations in Vietnam.
The book chronicles how American presidents and congressional leaders became ever commited to supporting inept corrupt incompetent and therefore unpopular South Vietnamese leaders...first politically, then economically and finally militarily. But the author's approach is rather superficial. He recounts the contents of speeches, presidential cabinet and advisory meetings, congressional debates, government memos etc with little analyses. Through much of the book it feels as if one were reading segments from old newspapers simply recounting the endless words spewed by disingenuous or misguided politicians.
Since the book does focus on high level American politics, relatively little discussion is also directed at the political or military situation in Vietnam, although as mentioned the author does admit much of the reason for American failure was the inept corrupt nature of the South Vietnamese leadership. But overall while there is much information here, the focus is narrow and there is little depth.
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Full Coverage
Rating  (4)
Date: 2005-06-25
As comprehensive an analysis of the political aspects of the Vietnam conflict as I have ever read. Mann's focus is on Congress and the particular members who took on the Johnson and Nixon administrations. Mann goes into great detail concerning Congress' abdication of power and responsibility in its passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. This theme of abdication forms the lense which all subsequent action is viewed. The bitter divisions in Congress and amongst the American people are on full display. Heavily researched and written in an easy to read style, I highly recommend this to anyone interested in the subject.
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A war now relegated to history
Rating (4)
Date: 2003-07-11
4 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
Robert Mann offers a well-researched account of the Vietnam War, beginning with its Cold War roots. He meticulously charts the progress of the war from the French attempt to re-annex Indochina after World War II to its conclusion in 1975 when the Americans finally pulled out of this quagmire. It was a 25 year ordeal that left over 3 million Vietnamese dead. But, it was the continual loss of French and American soldiers that wore down the resolve of these two nations. Mann begins by noting the early protest to the war in the Senate chamber in the mid 60's. He shows how this dissent was ignored for the most part by the various presidential administrations over the years, as the US found itself locked into a battle with communism and was bound and determined not to lose Vietnam, as it had China and North Korea. Even those who had their reservations early on, such as Mike Mansfield, chose to defer to the president, assuming he had information Congress was not privy to. If all this sounds like the Iraq War, then take note because Mann states that the lessons have yet to be learned from America's most humiliating war. Yet, Mann avoids making too much commentary, relying instead on a wealth of material to present one of the best overall pictures of the war. If there is one shortfall to the book it is that Mann divorces Vietnam from all the other events going on at the time. The Civil Rights movement gets scarcely any mention, which was Johnson's main concern. Yet, it was Johnson who made the plunge into Vietnam following the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Mann uncovers information that casts sufficient doubt if any attack on American vessels ever took place in the Gulf of Tonkin, yet is careful to note that Johnson was acting on what he believed to be good authority. From that point on, it was a series of battles which the US felt it was winning, yet the Vietcongs continued to hold their ground. Mann notes the savvy of Vietnamese generals in this war of attrition, and how American generals continually underestimated their opponents. The book lacks the immediacy of "Dispatches," and other first hand accounts. Mann has firmly placed this war in history, allowing the reader to view it at a distance. For those who still view Vietnam as a part of the present, this book might lack punch, but it makes up for it with a thorough body of research that helps the reader understand some of the reasons for the decisions that were made, as ill-fated as they were.
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Insightful Look Into Our Decent Into The Vietnam Quagmire!
Rating (5)
Date: 2003-07-03
9 out of 13 customers found this reveiw helpful
In an interesting, provocative, and well-written addition to the growing body of thoughtful monographs about how the American imbroglio in Vietnam came to pass, Author Robert Mann has extended the circle of unindicted co-conspirators to include both houses of Congress and shows how through active participation as well as cravenly benign neglect they allowed the executive branch of the federal government to run amok. In so doing he has raised the level of intellectual discussion regarding the origins and prosecution of the war in Vietnam. Using a range of new archival materials only now available, he carefully constructs an intriguing and disturbing portrait of both individuals and governmental institutions out of control. Not one to quibble over words, Mann early on describes the perspective of American officials leading us into the quagmire was nothing more than a fateful series of delusions. In this sense this book is a worthy companion piece to both David Kaiser's wonderful "American Tragedy" as well as David Halberstam's memorable book, "The Best And The Brightest", in the fact that it argues that it was a number of specific individuals with their own personal credos, private agendas, and belief systems that led to the deepening involvement in Southeast Asian affairs. Unlike previous tomes such as Halberstam's as well as Stanley Karnow's excellent book, "Vietnam", that portrayed President Eisenhower's policies of global containment of communism as extremely cautious and careful, Mann uses an approach that, like Kaiser's, presents a veritable wave of documentary evidence which serves to indicate that it was precisely those decisions and policy predispositions established by Eisenhower, including a willingness to use nuclear weapons tactically, that later led to the fateful moves toward greater involvement by Lyndon Johnson. Even more interesting, Mann offer credible evidence regarding a number of policy changes President Kennedy enacted which serve to illustrate his own deep concern and reticence regarding involvement in the former French Indochina. While JFK did in fact sanction escalation by way agreeing to more military advisors, he repeatedly quite specifically denied, (both verbally and in documented minutes of meetings with advisors) specific authorization to escalate through introduction of any direct combat involvement. With Kennedy's assassination in late 1963, events moved quickly and fatefully toward a blind involvement in a situation we neither appreciated the complexity of nor had any real strategy to deal with. Instead, Mann contends, we deluded by the so-called facts that officials like Robert McNamara twisted and turned to support his policy decisions and recommendations to Lyndon Johnson. In this fashion, then Lyndon Johnson became the single worst possible foil for the efforts by McNamara and Army General William Westmoreland to massively escalate the war by introducing forty-four combat battalions to the conflict. Likewise, Johnson's successor, the erstwhile Cold Warrior Richard Nixon, did no better. After shamelessly interfering in the internal political disposition of the South Vietnamese government through Madame Chennault in order to ensure his place in winning the closely contested 1968 elections, Nixon soon found himself stuck to the waist in the sucking quicksand of continuing involvement in the war and a terrifying related national debate approaching a revolutionary fervor. He waited four long and painful years before finally ending American involvement. Against all evidence to the contrary, he deluded himself and his advisors that an "honorable Peace" was achievable. This is a wonderfully written book, and the author's style is both entertaining and edifying. He handily deals with a myriad of issues, complexions, and countervailing situations with aplomb, honesty and verve. He makes the otherwise inexplicable descent into national madness and the nightmare of Vietnam all too understandable and human. Personally, I am not as magnanimous; I still believe that Robert McNamara, General William Westmoreland, and a number of others should be tried as war criminals for crimes against humanity; after all, otherwise to try Serbians and Croats for their detestable deeds in the former Yugoslavia is utter hypocrisy). Books like this one can help us understand how the ritual abuse of power by officials not democratically elected can itself become an anti-democratic force profoundly affecting not only the lives of our citizens, but people everywhere in the developing world. Hopefully books like this will help us to come to understand and accept the reality of what the American government did in our name to Vietnam. We need to understand how we came to export our darkest emotional suspicions and a sense of national paranoia about a monolithic communist threat into an incredibly murderous campaign that almost exterminated a whole generation of Vietnamese by way of indiscriminate carpet bombing, deliberate use of environmentally horrific defoliates, and creation of so-called "free-fire" zones, where everything and anything moving was assumed to be hostile, whether it be man, woman, child, or beast. All of this was visited on the world in general and the Vietnamese in particular for little or no reason other than the extremely aggressive and ultimately dangerous can-do macho world-view of the power elite. The sooner we recognize this, the better it will be for us as citizens of a democratic government, and the more likely it is we will stop the next set of so- inclined bureaucratic monsters from acting in this way again. I highly recommend this book. Enjoy!
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