Michael Lind’s unorthodox but well-argued thesis that the “necessary” Vietnam War sought to ensure American Cold War credibility and diverted communist aggression from other more strategically important U.S. allies and vulnerable neutrals.
The latter thesis is typically ignored.
British Commission for Military History, January 2023, page 38
British Commission for Military History » Mars & Clio, January 2023 (bcmh.org.uk)
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W. R. (Bob) Baker, Break in the Chain: Intelligence Ignored: Military Intelligence in Vietnam and why the Easter Offensive should have turned out differently. Casemate: Philadelphia and Oxford, 2021. pp. 251.
Bob Baker’s Break in the Chain is difficult to categorize. It is, in part, an American soldier’s Vietnam memoir and, as such, one of a vast number, though accounts by enlisted men such as Baker, are rarer than those by officers. In addition to personal recollections, however, Baker aims to offer unprecedented depth of analysis of aspects of one of the war’s greatest events: the massive Communist offensive that commenced at Easter 1972.
Though, in November, the vast majority would vote for a presidential candidate who claimed to offer “peace with honor”, there was, on the part of the American public in 1972, an increasing sense of detachment from the war in Vietnam and a growing desire to be rid of it. Under pressure of public opinion, the vast majority of American infantry and artillery units had, by the beginning of the year, already been withdrawn, though some logistical units, combat aircraft and helicopter units remained. In addition, American advisors (though far fewer than previously) were still serving with the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces (RVNAF) - troops belonging to the anti-Communist government of South Vietnam. Finally, and often forgotten, while many American intelligence personnel had gone, some remained, and Baker was one of these.
It is well documented that, in what was, for them, the final phase of the war, 1968-1972, there was a profound decline in the morale of American armed forces. By the early 1970’s, they exhibited widespread problems of indiscipline: alcohol and narcotic abuse; racial hostility and violence; combat avoidance and combat refusal; and, at the most extreme end of the spectrum, the practice known as “fragging”: murderous attacks on officers and NCOs. The picture was, however, very mixed, with some combat units apparently continuing to function reasonably well as late as 1971.