Abandoning Vietnam: How America Left and South Vietnam Lost Its War

Bìa trước
University Press of Kansas, 2004 - 377 trang
Did America's departure from Vietnam produce the "peace with honor" promised by President Richard Nixon or was that simply an empty wish meant to distract war-weary Americans from a tragic "defeat with shame"? While James Willbanks doesn't offer any easy answers to that question, his book convincingly shows why America's strategy for exiting the Vietnam War failed miserably and left South Vietnam to a dismal fate.





That strategy, "Vietnamization," was designed to transfer full responsibility for the defense of South Vietnam to the South Vietnamese, but in a way that would buy the United States enough time to get out without appearing to run away. To achieve this goal, America poured millions of dollars into training and equipping the South Vietnamese military while attempting to pacify the countryside. Precisely how this strategy was implemented and why it failed so completely are the subjects of this eye-opening study.





Drawing upon both archival research and his own military experiences in Vietnam, Willbanks focuses on military operations from 1969 through 1975. He begins by analyzing the events that led to a change in U.S. strategy in 1969 and the subsequent initiation of Vietnamization. He then critiques the implementation of that policy and the combat performance of the South Vietnamese army (ARVN), which finally collapsed in 1975.







Willbanks contends that Vietnamization was a potentially viable plan that was begun years too late. Nevertheless some progress was made and the South Vietnamese, with the aid of U.S. advisers and American airpower, held off the North Vietnamese during their massive offensive in 1972. However, the Paris Peace Accords, which left NVA troops in the south, and the subsequent loss of U.S. military aid negated any gains produced through Vietnamization. These factors coupled with corruption throughout President Thieu's government and a glaring lack of senior military leadership within the South Vietnamese armed forces ultimately led to the demise of South Vietnam.







A mere two years after the last American combat troops had departed, North Vietnamese tanks rolled into Saigon, overwhelming a poorly trained, disastrously led, and corrupt South Vietnamese military. But those two years had provided Nixon with the "decent interval" he desperately needed to proclaim that "peace with honor" had been achieved. Willbanks digs beneath that illusion to reveal the real story of South Vietnam's fall.
 

Nội dung

Implementing the New Strategy
21
The RVNAF in Action
43
Raising the Stakes
67
Lam Son 719
94
The Ultimate Test of Vietnamization
122
CeaseFire and Peace with Honor
163
The Fateful Year
199
Collapse in the North
223
The Fall of Saigon
256
Conclusion
277
Bibliography
339
Index
363
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Giới thiệu về tác giả (2004)

James H. Willbanks is director of the Department of Military History at the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. His other books include The Tet Offensive: A Concise History and The Battle of An Loc. An infantry officer for twenty-three years, he survived the devastating two-month-long artillery siege of An Loc during North Vietnam's 1972 Easter Offensive

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