America's Miracle Man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, Religion, Race, and U.S. Intervention in Southeast Asia, 1950-1957

Abstract

Seth Jacobs's America's Miracle Man in Vietnam poses a simple question: why did the United States select such a deeply flawed leader as Ngo Dinh Diem to rule South Vietnam in 1954 and then stand by him for several years despite his obvious unsuitability for the task of creating a robust state? It is a question, Jacobs readily admits, that historians of the Vietnam War have asked previously. But Jacobs promises to do something new. Rather than focusing on the Eisenhower administration's geostrategic calculations, he promises to explain Americans' dedication to Diem as a result of ideological currents that pervaded the United States during the 1950s. The book, like others on the cutting edge of diplomatic history, “historicizes a connection between domestic culture and foreign policy,” asserts Jacobs (p. 17). Through six richly detailed, engagingly written chapters, Jacobs succeeds brilliantly in evoking the two elements of domestic culture that, he argues, did most to condition American enthusiasm for Diem. First, Jacobs describes the powerful surge of religious fervor during the 1950s. This heightened religiosity, Jacobs argues, predisposed Americans to back Diem, a devout Catholic who won praise for his supposed determination to hold the line against atheistic Communists and wimpy Buddhists. Second, Jacobs explores the racist attitudes that Americans typically held about Asians. American certainty that the childlike Vietnamese were unprepared to participate in a democracy or resist Communism led Washington to view Diem's authoritarianism and bullheadedness as an asset rather than a liability, Jacobs maintains. “Viewed through the prism of American racism,” he insists,