Lecture on Vietnam, James Carter, 23 July 2004  

Why Vietnam? 
World War II & French Indochina
US & "trustreeship"
Colonialism, Triangular Trade & the "Dollar Gap"

French recovery
Europe
NATO

The First Indochina: 1946-1954
US aid: ca. $10 million in 1950
$385 million in 1953

Dien Bien Phu, 1954

The Geneva Conference (map) 

US policy toward Vietnam?


End of colonialism & "underdevelopment"
Bretton Woods Conference

The birth of the 3rd World

"Modernization" & the University and Empire


Nationalism, Neutralism, & Non-alignment
The Bandung Conference, 1955


The US, Vietnam and State Making: 1954

Ngo Dinh Diem
The MSUG
The USOM
The CIP

The National Liberation Front, 1960

Kennedy & the "new frontier"
Strategic Hamlets & "counterinsurgency"
The AID
southern Vietnam as a "permanent mendicant"

The Buddhist crisis, 1963 (immolation)
The Coup, November, 1963

Lyndon Johnson & Vietnam
political atrophy in Saigon
The Tonkin Gulf Resolution
Operation Roling Thunder
"you don't send a widow to slap Jack Dempsey"
"stable government or no stable government"

"The Construction Miracle of the Decade"    (image)   (image)
The RMK-BRJ & inventing Vietnam

refugees, pacification, urbanization
"a national symphony of theft, corruption, and bribery"
the Congress & Donald Rumsfeld


1968 & the Tet Offensive

Richard Nixon & "Vietnamization"
fighting and talking: negotiation & stalemate
The "Madman" theory, the "back channel," & "Nixinger" foreign policy
the "peace with honor" thesis & the end of the Vietnam War, 1973

Outlines