Lessons of Vietnam

THE LESSONS OF VIETNAM is an important turning point in America's evaluation of its Vietnam experience. It is the first retrospective, critical examination of the war by a group of statesmen and generals who were themselves prominent in the planning and execution of the war. In papers commissioned for this extraordinary project, and in discussions as they met face-to-face, the causes of the failure of the Americans and South Vietnamese to achieve their goals are considered analytically and candidly. Neither a self-serving memoir nor a carping diatribe from the outside, the study has been organized thematically to incorporate both commissioned papers and a hard-hitting discussion. Problems of Vietnamization, the psychological climate in which the war was conducted, the role of technological innovation in weaponry, and difficulties in force management were examined by the contributors. THE LESSONS OF VIETNAM seeks to analyze the war as it was fought without entering into a discussion of the foreign policy assumptions and premises which provided its underpinning. The inevitability of failure and the possibility that success could have been achieved by conducting the war in a markedly different way are also examined. And, in one astonishing exchange, a systems analyst is challenged by an Air force Intelligence Chief who maintains that war is an art form, not amenable to the style of management derived from the method of data collection established, he purports, by the MacNamara System. Everyone concerned with thoughtful examination of America's most significant foreign policy adventure of the mid-twentieth century should read THE LESSONS OF VIETNAM.