Planning a Tragedy: The Americanization of the War in Vietnam /]clarry Berman

by Larry Berman

Book Overview

A thoroughly researched and highly perceptive study of the decisions that turned the tribal struggle in Vietnam into an American war. Berman's book fully documents the role of domestic policy in our tragic involvement. As one who watched the process at firsthand. I commend Professor Berman's book for its fairness and insight.-- George W. Ball

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393953262
• ISBN13: 9780393953268
• Release Date: August 1983
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 220 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

Starting Down the Dangerous Slope

Larry Berman's "Planning a Tragedy" covers the early critical years when America's Vietnam policy was being planned and executed. It serves as the first installment leading up to the period after Nixon took over as president in 1969 to the conclusion of our Southeast Asian military involvement, which Berman encompasses in his recently published, "No Peace, No Honor."The book is a necessary primer on the "what might have been" aspects of a policy that, like a runaway freight train, developed a pattern and trail of its own, leaving Americans from policymakers on down groping for answers. One observes a Lyndon Johnson, a master of domestic politics and known for his ability to put together compromises to secure needed bread and butter objectives, caught dumbfounded, feeling helpless in an area concerning which he had no expertise. Johnson fell into the trap of rightist Republican thinking of the fifties, which saw Communism as an international monolith. Johnson became convinced that America's survival was at stake in a small Asian nation some ten thousand miles away. He embraced the domino theory, believing that Vietnam constituted a potentially critical loss that would propel thenceforth to an accelerating series of defeats for America. At a time when Johnson needed valuable input from a State Department strategic hand who saw Vietnam from a balanced international perspective, George Ball, the one operative with a broad European portfolio, who advised the president not to get trapped in Vietnamese quicksand, was outranked by his boss, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, as well as hawkish Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. As a result, Ball, who had listened to French President Charles De Gaulle's warnings of the dangers of an extended Vietnam military involvement, saw his advice spurned as the Rusk-McNamara tandem prevailed.Meanwhile speculation continues over what President Kennedy might have ultimately done had he lived. One thing was certain. Had Kennedy, like Johnson, decided to escalate American involvement, he would have made the decision basically on his own. Kennedy used Rusk more as an administrator since foreign policy was one of his major areas of interest, unlike the case with Johnson, who, from Berman's and other accounts, deferred heavily to Rusk and McNamara.

Great study of decision making

This book is about the decision making surrounding the our fateful engagement in Vietnam. Berman adopts a highly analytical approach and dissects the events, players and political back-and-forth behind the scenes. He has access to a trove of recently de-classified documents and cogently builds the following points: 1) While hard analysis of our goals in Vietnam was present, (e.g. what do we do if we get the North Vietnamese to the barganing table? What do we do if limited escalation does not bring about a change from North Vietnam? What do we do if the political situation in South Vietnam does not stabilize?)major policy players chose to ignore this type of anlysis for gretaer and greater involvement. 2) The personality and deportment of LBJ made it much more difficult for dissenting views (other than George Ball's) to get a fair hearing. 3) Dissenters, such as there were, were generally lower level memebers of the state department and were on a drastically unequal footing with the Sect. of Defense and White House staffers in terms of prestige and authority. This made there points of view suspect and thus, disregarded. This is somewhat of a technical book as it deals with the structure of decision making during a very tense and important period of our nations history. However, if one sees it as a description of our road to folly, it is a fascinating read.