US Involvement Research Articles

Civilizing with a Krag: U.S. Counter-Insurgency in Vietnam and Iraq

This thesis examines and compares the effects of counter-insurgency operations in Vietnam and Iraq. It argues that the populous focused approach that centers on the hearts and minds of the locals is more beneficial and effective than conventional strategies. To support this thesis, research has been conducted on the United States’ history with counter-insurgency operations in Vietnam. This includes conventional tactics of the United States Army designed for war with the Soviets and the United States Marine Corps experiments with the Combined Action Platoon. These cases have been compared to the effectiveness of combating the insurgency in Iraq from the 2003 invasion to 2010, examining the resurgence of people-oriented programs such as the Combined Action Platoon compared to the conventional fighting waged early war. Study of these conflicts remains relevant due to the new administration’s promises of action against insurgent groups worldwide. The ability of successful counter-insurgency to be implemented on a large scale with minor variation is also explored. Links should be drawn from past US involvement with insurgency to present due to the similarities in successful and unsuccessful attempts both past and present.

YOUTH POLITICAL AND CULTURAL MOVEMENTS AGAINST THE UNITED STATES INVASION IN VIETNAM IN THE 1960S

History has shown us that the most successful progressive movements have been intergenerational. Thus, this article will deeply examine about youth movements in the U.S specifically on youth movement against the U.S invasion in Vietnam War around 1960s. Vietnam War was the first modern American conflict that seriously affected the United States not only politically, but also socio-culturally. It will be explored how youth generation has become a breakthrough in American history since it was the most significant movement of its kind in the nation’s history. According to Karl Mannheim one generation is not fully continuity of the elder generation, but they could be different and challenging the established form. Youth tend to reject the US involvement in the Vietnam War because there is a gap between the ideals they have learned from older generations and the realities they have experienced.Keywords: U.S. Youth Movement, Vietnam War, and Generational Cohorts.

US Pivot and Stability in the Asia Pacific Region

The US rebalancing strategy in Asia Pacific confirms the importance of AsiaPacific region particularly for the US and her interest. A rapid economicdevelopment in Asia Pacific states coupled with security dynamics thatpotentially triggers instability in the region have become driving factors forthe US involvement in the region. The US (re)-existence as well as her activeengagement obviously gives rise to multiple responses and leads to negativeperception. This article perceives that the US pivot in Asia Pacific including thestrengthening of US influence in the region might provoke tension particularlywith China. Nonetheless, a common and mutual interest in economic andsecurity has forced both states to self-restrain and develop strategicpartnership, which is essential to achieve their common goals together withother Asia Pacific states. To understand the US strategy and the impact of thestrategy, this article analyzes the US official documents as well as otherrelated states’ documents, and using the “post-modern states” approach toexplain the implication of US military strategy

From the Old New Republic to a Great Community: Insights and Contradictions in John Dewey’s Public Pedagogy

This article draws from John Dewey’s philosophy of education, ideas about democracy and pragmatist assumptions to explain how his articles for <em>The New Republic</em> functioned pedagogically. Taking media as a mode of public pedagogy, and drawing extensively from Dewey’s <em>Democracy and Education</em>, as well as from his book <em>The Public and its Problems</em>, the article explores the relationships between communication, education and democracy using the expanded conceptions of all the aforementioned advanced by Dewey. Borrowing insights from Randolph Bourne, who used Dewey’s own ideas to criticize his mentor’s influence on intellectuals who supported US involvement in World War I, the analysis explores the contradictions within Dewey’s public pedagogy. The article suggests Dewey’s relevance as a public intellectual in the liberal-progressive press, his view of the State and some of his related presuppositions produced a tension in his thought, delimiting democratic possibilities while simultaneously pointing toward greater democratic potentials. The essay concludes by suggesting that learning from both Dewey and Bourne prompts us to get beyond the former’s public/private dualism to realize what he called the “Great Community” by communicating and practicing the Commons.

Before Vietnam: Understanding the Initial Stages of US Involvement in Southeast Asia, 1945-1949

The Vietnam War, widely considered the worst foreign policy debacle in American history, remains the most controversial event of the twentieth century. Much criticism for Vietnam involvement stems from two sources: 1) disapproval with how American leadership conducted the war, and 2) disagreement over the reason for the conflict in the first place. Few historians, if any, dispute the first criticism. The historical community remains divided, however, in terms of a definitive position on the basis or origin for the conflict. For a holistic approach to the origin of the Vietnam War, one must first elucidate the conception of American intervention in the region, including “why” and “how” it arose. Any analysis of American involvement in Vietnam must begin with President Truman and his administration following the conclusion of the Second World War. This can only be accurately accomplished viewed in the context of US foreign policy during the Cold War. The initial American involvement in Southeast Asia in the context of the developing Cold War must be thoroughly examined to more fully understand the origins of the Vietnam War. Considering the increasingly complex situation in Southeast Asia following the Second World War, Truman and his administration acted consistently, bearing in mind the vested interests of the United States, their Allies, and the people of Southeast Asia, in light of the threat of Communist expansion in the region and across the world.

The United States and the Transatlantic Slave Trade to the Americas, 1776–1867 by Leonardo Marques

Reviewed by: The United States and the Transatlantic Slave Trade to the Americas, 1776–1867 by Leonardo Marques Mary Draper The United States and the Transatlantic Slave Trade to the Americas, 1776–1867. By Leonardo Marques. ( New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2016. Pp. xiv, 313. $40.00, ISBN 978-0-300-21241-9.) The involvement of the Portuguese, British, and French in the transatlantic slave trade is more well known than that of the United States. Drawing on the vast data of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, Leonardo Marques's The United States and the Transatlantic Slave Trade to the Americas, 1776–1867 chronicles the "deep transformation in the nature of US involvement in the transatlantic slave trade between the American Revolution and the Civil War" (p. 3). During those nine decades, "[a]pproximately five million enslaved Africans were disembarked in the Americas" (p.11). And, despitethe United States formally abolishing the transatlantic slave trade in 1807, American participation in transatlantic slaving voyages endured throughout the nineteenth century. Marques uncovers this American collusion, weaving an international, interimperial narrative that integrates the North and South Atlantic. In doing so, Marques demonstrates the importance of viewing the United States from not only an Atlantic perspective but also a hemispheric one, even in the nineteenth century. In each chapter Marques traces slave traders as they strategically adapted to the changing legal, economic, and geopolitical landscapes of the Atlantic world. He begins in the early republic. The years between the American Revolution and the Slave Trade Act of 1807 saw the rapid growth of U.S. slave trading. Tied to a burgeoning maritime sector, slave trading linked American ports such as Bristol, Rhode Island, to Africa, the U.S. South, Brazil, and—of particular importance after the Haitian Revolution—Cuba. Following passage of the 1807 and 1820 anti–slave trade laws, which outlawed the transatlantic slave trade and made involvement in slave trading into piracy, Americans sold their expertise. They worked as captains, crew members, and agents on Spanish and Portuguese slaving vessels destined for the Caribbean and the South Atlantic. Naturalized U.S. citizens were particularly desirable. In the event of capture, they could evade punishment better than native-born Americans. In other instances, American expertise was material; U.S.-built vessels, usually clippers from Baltimore, became a hallmark of the nineteenth-century transatlantic trade. In myriad ways, Americans continued to profit from and be complicit in the transatlantic slave trade decades after condemning it. The American Civil War effectively eradicated the transatlantic slave trade by galvanizing Spanish and Cuban elites to suppress the remaining traffic after the abolition of slavery in the United States. [End Page 442] Those interested in the history of the American South will find the region largely absent from Marques's book. Southern planters, as complicit as they were in the domestic slave trade, were less active in the transatlantic trade. The book's geographic scope, however, is one of its most valuable assets. Attuned to political, economic, and agricultural developments in England, the United States, the Spanish and Portuguese empires, and Brazil, Marques admirably writes a sweeping yet nuanced history that captures the extensive, shifting ties between Americans and their southern neighbors. Developments in Africa, however, are overlooked. Methodologically, Marques's scholarship underscores the immense value of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. Peppered with statistics and charts, the book exhibits empirical rigor. Yet even with this plethora of numbers, Marques incorporates ample narrative as he traces ships and slavers throughout the Atlantic. That narrative takes readers from the High Court of Admiralty to the shores of Cuba and Brazil and the sea lanes in between. In each of these locales, Americans and others debated what constituted legal involvement in a business that many, including some Americans, saw as a crime against humanity. Mary Draper University of Virginia Copyright © 2018 The Southern Historical Association

US intelligence and communist plots in postwar France

In 1946, as the cold war deepened and American officials grew alarmed by the prospect of a communist-dominated France, US intelligence analysts began to report rumors of mysterious ‘parachutages’ of unidentified containers over the French countryside. Alongside equally sensational stories about the resurrection of international brigades and discoveries of hidden arms caches, these reports seemed to provide definitive evidence for widely held beliefs about communist intentions to seize power. This article investigates these claims and reveals the influence of a transnational network of informants hoping to stoke fears of revolutionary activity in order to encourage US involvement in postwar France.

Cyberweapons: power and the governance of the invisible

This article explores the non-emergence of a global governance regime for cyberweapons. Cyberweapons are malicious software entities deployed to cause harm to adversaries’ computer networks and systems. They threaten the integrity and functionality of digital systems that enable global circuits of communication and exchange, with significant potential impacts on social, economic and political order. Using a power-analytical approach, this article identifies four areas in which power works to constrain regime formation: the productive power of NATO’s Tallinn Manual Process; the structural power of US involvement in cyberweapons markets; the institutional power of Internet technologies; and diplomatic claims to sovereignty that mask operations of compulsory power. These work together to prevent a unified global approach to the regulation of cyberweapons. The article concludes that there are substantial obstacles to effective cyberweapons governance but that these should not prevent ongoing efforts to tackle this important and ubiquitous security issue.

A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of the Military CIA

A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of the Military CIA. By Joshua Kurlantzick. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017. Hardcover: 323pp. This aptly, but ironically, titled book tells the story of US involvement in Laos from the early 1950s through the secret war of the 1960s and beyond. Like many journalistic accounts, the book relies substantially on interviews with the American participants and the Hmong military leader Vang Pao, but it is also informed by recent scholarship and some documentary sources. Its focus is on events and actions in Laos, though it does not ignore policy in Washington. Joshua Kurlantzick argues that, despite the enormous damage and huge casualties inflicted in Laos and the ultimate triumph of communist forces, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) counted Laos, the first war that the agency directed, among its great successes. Laos provided the template for the militarization of the CIA and its future wars. The author, however, does not think the results were positive for Laos, the CIA or the United States. Although the book provides a more or less comprehensive account, throughout there is particular attention on four individuals: Vang Pao; Bill Lair, a CIA operative who was there in the beginning and became close to Vang Pao; Tony Poe, another CIA operative who attempted to raise an indigenous army from people not connected with the Hmong; and Bill Sullivan, the diplomat who ran the secret war in its more expansive phase beginning in 1965. Among these, Lair is clearly Kurlantzick's favourite. A World War II veteran, Lair had spent the 1950s in Southeast Asia, mostly in Thailand and, after the Geneva Conference settlement in 1954, in Laos as well, as a covert CIA agent. He knew the region, its languages, customs and culture, better than most Americans. And in 1961 it was his responsibility to inaugurate Operation Momentum to prevent a victory in Laos by the communist Pathet Lao and their North Vietnamese allies. Lair's plan was to have a small US footprint in Laos. Working with the talented Vang Pao, he would train Hmong fighters as guerrillas. They, along with some Thai guerrillas that Lair trained, would engage in low level harassing fights with the communists. This would serve Hmong interests, as well as those of the Americans. Lair had no interest in a large American presence in Southeast Asia and thought American objectives could be achieved as long as Asians themselves were engaged in the struggles. The CIA was still small, was not intended to wage wars, and Lair liked it that way. For the first few years Lair was very happy with the progress. President John F. Kennedy was not interested in committing US troops to Laos. And Vang Pao was an effective recruiter and fighter. Lair considered Operation Momentum a success by 1963. Kennedy had allowed Operation Momentum to expand, but his successor, Lyndon Johnson, expanded it even more, making American involvement in Laos almost unrecognizable from its beginnings. By this time Bill Sullivan was running the war. He had no interest in allowing the US military into Laos, but he wanted the CIA to conduct a major war. The new CIA officers coming to Laos had less understanding of Laos and did not respect the Hmong as much as Lair did. Also, increasingly the CIA relied on private contractors, which Lair considered dangerous. Then came massive American bombings, something that Vang Pao wanted. Lair disagreed, but he was overruled, though even Johnson had doubts about the bombings' effectiveness. …

China, Japan and the East China Sea Imbroglio

ABSTRACTThe East China Sea dispute has become a characteristic feature in the defined “hot economics, cold politics” relations between China and Japan. The maritime sphere has gained precedence in the larger realm of diplomacy, thus making the contested waters a primary hotspot of power politics between the two Asian countries. With the growing tensions, in all likelihood the maritime dispute will be high on the political and security agenda of China and Japan. What makes this worrisome is that the dispute does not just make the bilateral relations unstable but holds significant implications for East Asia’s regional stability. In this regard, given the phenomenon of constant testing of each other’s resolve, the possibility of an all-out confrontation in the East China Sea remains a vital concern. What has further added to the power struggle is the US involvement, thus making the dispute a difficult case to resolve. The crux of the paper lies in understanding the volatility of the East China Sea dispute between China and Japan. In doing so, the paper examines the determinants of the dispute, the actors involved and their responses.

Assessing US Influence over India–Israel Relations: A Difficult Equation to Balance?

As India’s Israel policy evolved over time, the US involvement in this bilateral relationship has been constant, albeit neither consistent nor direct. Breaking with traditional state-centric approaches, this article focuses on the key role played in shaping the nature of India–Israel ties by non-state and sub-state actors such as specific political personalities, for example Congressmen Emmanuel Celler in the 1940s and Stephen Solarz in the 1980s, as well as of pro-Israel interest groups based in the US, like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Jewish Committee (AJC). The article shows that the US factor in India–Israel relations has evolved over time depending on the personalities, political constellations in power in India and regional developments in West Asia. Finally, while India, Israel and US interests seem to have converged at some crucial junctures, the article argues that their policies and strategies have rarely aligned over the long term.

"America First": Prospects for Global Health.

In his inaugural speech, President Trump said, “From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first.” The term has an ugly history, which can be traced to the America First Committee that opposed any US involvement in World War II, with undertones of anti-Semitism. As an expression of nationalistic populism, “America First” is in tension with the global common good. While governments have duties toward their citizens, a nation’s health can be effectively secured only through international cooperation. Trump’s political philosophy—erecting walls (literally and figuratively) and distrusting international law and institutions—rejects core values of shared responsibility and mutual solidarity. In particular, the following 5 policies would make America, and the world, less healthy and secure: Mexico City (Reproductive Health), travel and refugee ban, Global Health Security Agenda, PEPFAR, WHO and the UN System.

The Kurds’ precarious balancing act in Syria

The Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party’s (PYD) utility to the US-led coalition against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has bolstered its military capability and territorial position in Syria – despite Turkey's opposition. But if the eventual defeat of ISIS results in a scaling back of US involvement in Syria, the PYD will be weakened and will probably seek a more durable alliance with President Bashar al-Assad's regime and its ally, Russia.

United States Law and Policy on Transitional Justice: Principles, Politics, and Pragmatics by Zachary D. Kaufman

Reviewed by: United States Law and Policy on Transitional Justice: Principles, Politics, and Pragmatics by Zachary D. Kaufman Samantha Lakin (bio) Zachary D. Kaufman, United States Law and Policy on Transitional Justice: Principles, Politics, and Pragmatics (Oxford, Oxford University Press). ISBN: 9780190243494, 383 pages. In his new book United States Law and Policy on Transitional Justice: Principles, Politics, and Pragmatics, Zachary D. Kaufman establishes a novel framework to explain how and why the United States government (USG) has made decisions in the aftermath of mass atrocities. His framework is based as much on politics and pragmatics as it is on legal tradition and commitment to norms. In his introduction, Kaufman outlines his central research questions, which he addresses through relevant case studies throughout the book. The book centers around two such questions: (1) Why did the USG support particular transitional justice (TJ) [End Page 257] options in the immediate aftermaths of World War II and the Cold War? and (2) What theoretical framework best explains USG policy on TJ? In addressing these two questions, Kaufman introduces his new theory, “prudentialism,” which contrasts with the theory of “legalism” that Gary Bass presents in his book, Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals. In his first three chapters, Kaufman outlines the different policy options that the USG has considered and taken in the aftermath of genocide and other mass atrocities, and he argues how these policy decisions stem from prudentialism rather than legalism. Kaufman defines his theory of prudentialism as based in realism by focusing on the relationship between three factors: normative beliefs, politics, and pragmatics. Kaufman describes Bass’ contrasting legalism theory as grounded in a liberal and normative commitment to due process and other legalistic principles and traditions. By introducing prudentialism as a case-specific balance of normative beliefs, politics, and pragmatics, Kaufman challenges the legalistic proposition that liberal states will generally choose to prosecute perpetrators of atrocity crimes. Kaufman therefore introduces greater—and more accurate—nuance to our understanding of policy decisions during and after atrocity crimes. His theory is compelling, for without completely discarding the influence of normative values of liberal states, Kaufman demonstrates through his case studies that politics and pragmatics matter at least as much when states make TJ decisions. Kaufman chooses a case study approach to test and compare prudentialism and legalism. The cases Kaufman chooses are Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan; the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland; the 1990 to 1991 Iraqi offenses against Kuwaitis; the atrocities in the Balkans in the 1990s; and the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994. In his discussion of these six cases, Kaufman impressively uses an enormous amount of primary source data, including hundreds of previously classified USG documents he obtained and elite interviews conducted with key decision-makers. His meticulous research and sophisticated analysis of these cases reveal that, instead of consistently supporting prosecutorial TJ mechanisms, as legalism would suggest, the USG considered and implemented a range of TJ options—legalistic and not. Kaufman thus demonstrates the confluence of norms, politics, and pragmatics driving USG policymaking on TJ. For example, in the case of atrocities committed by Japan during World War II, the USG implemented amnesty and lustration as TJ options in addition to prosecution. Kaufman describes the prominent role the USG played in the Tokyo Tribunal, serving as the most prominent convener of discussions on creating the court, producing the initial draft of the tribunal’s charter, dominating the prosecution team, assisting the defendants, and presiding over the trials. Based on his new theory of prudentialism, Kaufman offers the following explanations for this central US involvement. First, the US was highly sensitive to the fact that Americans suffered at the hands of the Japanese during the war, as the Japanese abused American POWs and attacked the US itself at Pearl Harbor. In addition to retrospective concerns, the US wished to assert its presence in Asia, where American and Soviet spheres of influence were emerging at a time when the US sought to stem the spread of communism. Finally, racism likely also drove American decision-making. [End Page 258] Alongside the Tokyo Tribunal, the USG provided amnesty to...

Iraqi Notes: A Personal Reflection on Issues of Governance in Iraq and US Involvement

The author of this article uses eyewitness account, historical narrative and personal reflection to examine governance from a dual perspective – that of an Iraqi native having suffered the oppression, violation of personal freedom and liberty administered by the regime of Saddam Hussein, and that of a US citizen that has experienced firsthand and explored the contradictions to be found in the freedom of American “democracy.”

Lessons on Political Violence from America’s Post–9/11 Wars

A large literature has emerged in political science that studies the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This article summarizes the lessons learned from this literature, both theoretical and practical. To put this emerging knowledge base into perspective, we review findings along two dimensions of conflict: factors influencing whether states or substate groups enter into conflict in the first place and variables affecting the intensity of fighting at particular times and places once war has started. We then discuss the external validity issues entailed in learning about contemporary wars and insurgencies from research focused on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars during the period of US involvement. We close by summarizing the uniquely rich qualitative and quantitative data on these wars (both publicly available and what likely exists but has not been released) and outline potential avenues for future research.

"Nicaraguan Words": José Coronel, the Vanguardia, and Whitman's "Language Experiment"

IN A 1953 memoir, Jose Coronel Urtecho, the founder of the Nicaraguan avant-garde, recalls the shock of a US visitor who noticed a portrait of Walt in Coronel's isolated estate along the San Juan River, near the border of Costa Rica. Coronel wrote that for his Yankee guest to find in rural Nicaragua surprised him as much as finding a caiman on Beacon Street or a tapir tranquilly in Boston Common.1 Coronel's surreal language frames a strange, exotic-animal Walt who can somehow nonetheless (notice that he is grazing tranquilly) be calmly and easily translated into any new context (Rapido 27). Indeed, the relations between the US and Latin America, of which this portrait-encounter represents an intriguing instance, have often been shaped by both this mutual exotic fascination and by countless literary and cultural translations, intersections, and crosscurrents.2What was doing in Nicaragua? In fact, US and Nicaraguan histories have been inextricably linked since the mid-nineteenth century, when traffic from the California Gold Rush (1848- 1855) across Nicaragua's short inter-oceanic route brought a sudden influx of US capital and culture.3 Later in the 1850s, Tennessee filibuster William Walker took advantage of civil war in Nicaragua to seize power and become-in one of the stranger moments in US history-president of Nicaragua until he was expelled by a Central American coalition. By the early twentieth century, a painful contradiction lay at the heart of Nicaraguan culture: Michele Gobat persuasively argues that while Nicaragua sought to imitate the prosperity and power of the US, many Nicaraguans fiercely resented the United States' frequent military, cultural, and financial interventions into their national affairs.4 And in fact, Jose Coronel himself evinced a conflicted attitude, writing: My personal attitude towards the United States was for many years ambivalent: found myself attracted, would almost say fascinated, and at the same time repelled by them.5But if US involvement in Nicaragua repelled Coronel, US literature had attracted him from a very early age. Having as a child first encountered in Spanish translation and then in Whitman's native tongue, Coronel once claimed, I can almost say that learned to read English reading Poe and Whitman (Rapido 51).6 From 1924 to 1927, while many of his peers went to Europe, the young Coronel chose to live and study in San Francisco, California, where he immersed himself in US literature. When he returned, however, he founded an avant-garde movement that vocally denounced the continued US intervention in Nicaragua, and called for the creation of an authentic, autochthonous Nicaraguan literature and culture. Yet despite this agenda, Coronel's Vanguardia, as it came to be called, remained strongly (and paradoxically) permeated by US literary culture, for Coronel had begun what would be a lifetime of serious engagement with US writers, with Walt occupying a prominent place.Indeed, among Latin American avant-garde writers, Jose Coronel stands out for his depth of reading in Whitman's work. As a poet and a translator, Coronel knew Leaves of Grass, and anthologized poems from it in three different collections.7 Yet few scholars have studied this long trans-continental literary relationship.8 So what did Coronel find compelling in Whitman's work? At stake here is not only an accurate vision of hemispheric literary history, but also an understanding of the real overlap between aesthetics and politics in twentieth-century US-Nicaraguan relations, because the texts of Coronel's group, and the politics of its members, would seriously impact the course of Nicaraguan literature and history. A reading of Coronel's later writings on Whitman, alongside the texts of his Vanguardia, reveals Whitman's presence, as the Nicaraguan avant-garde forged a nationalist, autochthonous literature that sought at the same time to be aesthetically new. …

K. W. Taylor, ed. Voices from the Second Republic of South Vietnam (1967–1975)

Voices from the Second Republic of South Vietnam (1967-1975)K. W. Taylor, ed.Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program Publications, Cornell University, 2015, 180p.Four decades removed from the fall of Saigon, now is perhaps the right time to revisit the Vietnam conflict, for no longer pressing is the impulse to assign blame, discredit others, or find excuses (p. 159). So begins Lan Lu's contribution to the collection Voices from the Second Republic of South Vietnam (1967-1975). Edited by Keith Taylor, it consists of chapters by 10 different contributors, each of whom played a role in the administrative, political, and military milieu of the Republic of Vietnam based in Saigon from 1955 to 1975.The collection can be situated in two different contexts. One is the growing interest in the Republic of Vietnam and the efforts of scholars to develop more nuanced accounts of the Second Indochina War that situate the struggle in local as well as global contexts and highlight the agency and ideologies of participants on all sides. Key works in this emerging body of scholarship include Ed Miller's (2013) and Philip Catton's (2002) works on Ngo Dinh Diem and Nu-Anh Tran's work on nationalism in the First Vietnamese Republic (2006). An equally important context is the scholarly trajectory of Keith Taylor, Professor in Cornell's Department of Asian Studies and a renowned historian of Vietnam. In a very personal account published in 2004, Taylor described how over the course of his career he came to contest the three axioms in the dominant interpretation of the U.S.-Vietnam War, namely that the government in Saigon was illegitimate, that the U.S. had no grounds to be involved in Vietnamese affairs, and that the fall of the Republic of Vietnam was inevitable (Taylor 2004).1) Together with his History of the Vietnamese (Taylor 2013), the present volume can be seen as part of the exposition of Taylor's theses that the Vietnamese are characterized by a fundamental North-South division, that their history is driven not by nationalism or resistance to foreign aggression, but rather an inescapable connection to the Chinese political world, and that the struggle of Vietnamese and their allies to create and sustain a non-Communist Vietnamese government after 1945 was a just one (ibid., 620-626).It is an uneven collection, with entries ranging from Bui Diem's 5-page A Vietnamese Perspective on US Involvement, to Tran Quang Minh's 49-page A Decade of Public Service. text could have benefitted from closer editing that would have tightened up some chapters and avoided such things as flights in beach craft [sic. Beechcraft] airplanes (p. 27). In some places, contributors attempt to gloss 2,000 years of history in a few pages; in others, they veer into questionable attempts to refute commonly-held beliefs about the nature of the regime, as in Nguyen Ngoc Bich's description of the so-called Tiger Cages used for solitary confinement in the prison at Con Son island (p. 34).Nevertheless, the accounts provide important insights into life under the Second Republic, reminding us it was a functioning regime attempting to create institutions, build capacity, and carry on the day-to-day operations of governments everywhere. Over the course of the 1960s and early 70s, the Republic came to be shaped by a new generation of highly trained and motivated young officials and activists. As Tran Quang Minh explains, The Vietnam War was not all about killing and maiming, battles lost and won, and American and Vietnamese frustrations. . . . It was for us very much about building a nation and changing lives, about social revolution, rural reconstruction, agricultural development, economic improvement, and building a happy future for our children (p. 87).Moreover, this new generation achieved results that are often ignored. Programs like the Land To Tiller Program (LTTTP), the Accelerated Miracle Rice Production Program (AMRPP), and the National Food Administration (NFA), detailed in Tran Quang Minh's chapter A Decade of Public Service, created millions of new smallholders in the Vietnamese countryside and reintroduced market mechanisms, contributing to an increase in food production so that after years of wartime shortages by 1974 the country was once again largely self-sufficient. …

In Search of the Amazon. Brazil, the United States and the Nature of a Region - by Garfield, Seth

Garfield, Seth (2013) In Search of the Amazon. Brazil, the United States and the Nature of a Region, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), xi + 368 pp. £71.00 hbk, £17.99 pbk. During the Estado Novo (1937–1945) the Brazilian authorities discovered the Amazon as a region that could, and maybe should, be incorporated in Brazilian development. This required a concerted effort to change its image from a ‘tropical inferno’ into a world of opportunities. To this end the government used the new media, from literature to radio and movies. Under the Vargas government the Amazon became a metonym of Brazil's natural treasures, ‘a region teeming with untold economic potential’. After the War started, this new imagery came to be connected to the need for primary resources of the allied powers, and especially the US need for a secure supply of rubber. When the Japanese forces invaded the Malayan peninsula in May 1942, the USA lost access to more than 90 percent of its rubber supply. The Amazon seemed to be the obvious region to replace this production region and between the two governments a concerted effort developed to increase Amazon rubber production. Due to the gathering methods of the seringueiros this was not an easy task and the conclusion that we can draw from Garfield's book is that this effort failed miserably. This is, however, not the core theme of his book. Rather Garfield sets out to understand how different perceptions of nature and society in the Amazon came about and changed due to these different (geo)political projects. The book starts with two chapters describing first the origins of the ‘estado novo’ project and then the changing US perceptions under the influence of their rubber dependency. These are rich texts that show how strongly the search of the Amazon was taken place in the context of, and determined by global transformations. Then the attention shifts to the issue of labour, which was indispensable for the development of the Amazon rubber production. The chapter delves into the social history of rubber tapping nicely showing how traditional practices were confronted by the new modernist ambitions of policy makers. The latter were convinced that the traditional, ‘inert’ rubber tapper had to be replaced by a modern and reliable worker who would be able to provide a steady amount of rubber. These ideas connected to the Vargas-regime's insistence on formalising labour (trabalhismo). The new rubber tapper should be soldiers, soldados da borracha [rubber soldiers], in the fight for Amazon development and war against Nazism. Part of the solution for finding this new working force was migration. The Brazilian government actively stimulated inhabitants from the dry and crisis-infested Northeastern provinces, especially Ceará, to migrate to the rubber producing areas in the Amazon. Ceará experienced a terrible drought in 1941 and 1942 and the desperate population was offered a solution in the rubber sector. This migration is the topic of Chapter 4, which may well be the most interesting one of the book, because it shows the contradictory effects of international pressures and national policies geared towards both more efficient production and the construction of a national identity. These goals were mixed with clear ambitions to ‘civilise’ the working poor. Garfield points at the repressive and authoritarian dynamics of these ambitions, but also emphasises that this migration was a genuine effort to implement social policies by the Vargas government. At the same time he stresses that, especially for the adolescents, migration also offered a way out of misery and paternalist control. The last chapter explicitly looks at US involvement in the Amazon and the contradictory images created in the process. The rubber soldiers were never really capable of providing enough rubber for the USA and with the end of the War they were left behind without any more support or attention. The book ends with an epilogue that analyses the imagery around the Amazon in the remainder of the twentieth century when environmental themes like deforestation and global warming took pride of place and replaced the focus on social and cultural improvement of the workers. It connects to the book's focus on imageries of the Amazon but for the rest does not connect very clearly to the previous chapters. This is an extremely rich and well-researched historical study that will be a benchmark for Amazon history for a long time. The focus on the international events playing out in a region that has often be portrayed as isolated is illuminating. A drawback may be that the last chapters show less coherence and seem to be more determined by the sources than the focus on the competing imageries of the region. This lack of focus is also reflected in the title which in many ways does not do justice to the rewarding historical analysis of the book.

Spies and Diplomats in US Soviet Policy

Spies and Diplomats in US Soviet Policy Jörn Happel Mark A. Bradley, A Very Principled Boy: The Life of Duncan Lee, Red Spy and Cold Warrior. 348pp., illus. New York: Basic Books, 2014. ISBN-13 978-0465030095. $29.99. Lorraine M. Lees and William S. Rodner, eds., An American Diplomat in Bolshevik Russia: DeWitt Clinton Poole. 332pp., illus., map. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014. ISBN-13 978-0299302245. $26.95. DeWitt Clinton Poole (1885–1952) stands in the center of a group of men and women dressed in fur coats and fur hats. Leaning on his cane, he gazes directly into the camera through his thin glasses. While some people of the group are smiling, he has a rather serious look in his eyes. The American diplomats together with their consul Poole had their picture taken in front of a representative building in Arkhangel´sk in midwinter 1918/19. The photograph is impressive.1 It adorns the front as well as the back cover and is also prominent in the memoirs of DeWitt Clinton Poole, published by Lorraine M. Lees and William S. Rodner. The confident look and posture, standing in the midst of his colleagues, and the respect shown to him capture one of the pioneers of American Soviet Union policy on his best behavior. His memoirs, laid out in this fine edition for review, cover the years 1917–20 in the young Soviet Union. The source of the memoirs is Poole’s interviews, recorded as part of Columbia University’s Oral History Project just before he died in 1952. Poole’s thoughts offer an apt analysis of the circumstances in revolutionary Russia, plagued by civil war. There is great merit in commemorating this important pioneer with the publication of his writings. The American spy [End Page 918] Duncan Lee also emerges in A Very Principled Boy, by Mark A. Bradley, which describes the life of a Cold War agent. Despite the differences between Poole and Lee, their lives give us an inside take on how US government offices perceived Lenin’s and Stalin’s empire, how the Cold War started, and how it changed the living environments of numerous experts on the East. DeWitt Clinton Poole is a well-known figure in the emergence of the Cold War. In contrast to other cold warriors, Poole as yet has no biography based on archival documents, although he played an important role in the development of the United States’ Soviet policy after 1917/18 and after 1945. He knew what was right and how to fight the Soviet antagonist. From another perspective, Duncan Lee exemplifies the problems of fighting for the “right thing”—for leftist ideas but against Soviet communism—and of working as a spy against the US motherland to create a better world based on a communist outlook. In summary, Poole’s memoir and Bradley’s study of Lee help us understand how to learn about the Soviets.2 Lee was one of thousands of European and American idealists who made pilgrimages to experience the Soviet Union in the 1930s.3 But unlike many of the others, he was ready to spy for the Soviet Union after World War II. In contrast to the diplomat Poole, who recognized during his years in Russia that the Soviet regime was an antagonist of every democratic government, Lee believed in communist ideas. For many years, historians focused on the big players in US diplomacy, such as George F. Kennan or Charles E. Bohlen.4 Alternatively, scholars had only to look for the history of popular spies at the beginning of the Cold War: Igor S. Gouzenko, Klaus Fuchs, Harry Gold, David Greenglass, Ethel and [End Page 919] Julius Rosenberg.5 What we learn from Poole’s memoirs and from the biography of Duncan Lee lies beyond the often told story of how Russia became a Bolshevik enemy after the revolution and how leftists became involved in the Cold War spy game. These two studies offer new insights into the history of the Russian Revolution, US involvement in the Russian Civil War, and early American domestic troubles in fashioning a Soviet policy during and after World War II.6 It...