Vietnam War Research Articles

Thunder Alone Does Not Defeat an Enemy: An Analysis of Airpower in Vietnam

Operation Rolling Thunder is among the most well-known aerial operations in the Vietnam War, if not all of military history. However, that recognition originates more from infamy than achievement. The massive employment of ordinances, manpower, capital and military logistics did not yield the results desired by the American top brass, instead, the war in Vietnam only intensified with mounting American casualties and growing anti-war sentiments. To be concise, it was a failure. This paper aims to analyze 1) how Operation Rolling Thunder was executed, 2) why it was conducted that way, and 3) what therein should be blamed for the disastrous results mentioned earlier. The objective of the paper is to provide relevant suggestions for the use of airpower based on the experiences of Operation Rolling Thunder. This paper dissects Operation Rolling Thunder by its context, execution, and efficacy to demonstrate the usefulness air power had in the war. The operation was poorly planned and done in almost all major aspects, and the results were similarly poor. Airpower failed to be an effective political tool in this case as it failed to bring the North Vietnamese government to the negotiating table. The research employs a qualitative historical analysis, drawing from established military doctrines, primary sources such as U.S. governmental documents, and secondary scholarly discussions. Findings indicate that the gradual escalation strategy, political mismanagement, and lack of coordination with ground forces were key factors contributing to the operation's failure. The study concludes by offering recommendations for the effective use of airpower in modern military campaigns, demonstrating that airpower must be deployed in concert with other military assets to achieve political objectives.

Ethics and Autonomy in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Word for World Is Forest

Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Word for World Is Forest (1972) offers a sustained critique of imperialist doctrine and the American war in Vietnam. It also raises important questions about soldierly autonomy and personal responsibility in action. Drawing on the work of philosopher Jacques Derrida, this paper examines modern-day interpretations of autonomy in a military setting, including the emerging field of drone theory. Given that the novella’s antagonist Don Davidson is accused of “irresponsible autonomy” for the way he mistreats the natives of Athshe, this paper asks: is Davidson really irresponsible, or is he rather an alibi for insufficient state control?

A New Higher Education Model in Nation-Building: The Republic of Vietnam’s Liberal Arts Education and Its Performances during the Vietnam War (1965–1975)

ABSTRACT This study examines liberal arts education model influences in Vietnam’s higher education throughout the Vietnam War (1965–1975). Liberal arts education advanced due to the necessity to match market norms and unite qualified people to oppose communism, as well as US specialists. This research article uses source materials from the former Republic of Vietnam and previous studies to identify two major elements of national liberal arts education. First, South Vietnamese educators stressed academic independence, which allowed students to critically think about varied views and widen their worldview. Second, community colleges combined liberal arts and pre-professional courses to stress educational practicality and social duty. South Vietnamese students were civically responsible and dedicated to research and innovation. However, the Vietnamese Civil War, declining financial backing and international recognition, and internal discord concerning this paradigm hampered the collective attempt to embody the Republic of Vietnam’s liberal arts education during the war.

Unlikely Allies: Lao Insurgent Perspectives of Armed Group Transnational Collaboration in the Emerald Triangle Region during the Third Indochina War

Abstract During the Third Indochina War (1979-1991), the ideological alignments of involved parties differed from those during the Second Indochina War, also known as the Vietnam War. Whereas the Second Indochina War pitted communists squarely against non-communists and anti-communists, the Third Indochina War was more complicated and less ideological or political, with communists often fighting against other communists due to the Sino-Soviet ideological split. The enemy of one's enemy was frequently viewed as a friend, often leading to unlikely alliances not rooted in ideological or political similarities. In this article, I argue that it is important to consider the unlikely alliances that emerged during the Third Indochina War by focusing on the particular cross-border interactions and conflicts between communists and non-communists that occurred in the Emerald Triangle, the tri-border region between Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. Focusing particularly on the Lao insurgent perspective, I consider how Lao anti-communist insurgents, the Khmer Rouge, the Communist Party of Thailand, other armed groups, and the Thai military participated in transnational collaboration in this region during the Third Indochina War. In particular, based largely on Lao-language interviews with key figures in the Lao insurgency conducted for over a decade, I examine how Lao insurgents interacted with Khmer Rouge to oppose a common enemy, communist Vietnam and their allies, the People's Republic of Kampuchea and the Lao People's Democratic Republic, and how the Thai military supported them, but only insofar as it enabled them to maintain control over security inside Thailand.

Tourism, Americanization and the Vietnam War R&R Scheme in Sydney, Australia, 1967–71

Tourism, Americanization and the Vietnam War R&R Scheme in Sydney, Australia, 1967–71

Victimhood in the writings of veterans of the Rhodesian Security Forces

ABSTRACT This article maps the idea of a “victimhood narrative” onto the writings of veterans of the Rhodesian Security Forces (RSF). It will suggest that RSF veterans faced greater challenges of legitimacy than existed even for those of the South African Border War and Vietnam War. It argues that their method of engaging with the complicated moral circumstances surrounding their conflict was to present themselves as the misunderstood, betrayed and vulnerable survivors of a war that has fallen into obscurity. In doing this they are trying to find a narrative about the war that they find palatable in the face of universal moral condemnation of the white Rhodesian regime. In addition, they are attempting to rebuild a sense of nationhood within their international diaspora.

Historical analogies, traumatic past and responses to the war in Ukraine

Abstract This article examines the use of historical analogies by political leaders during foreign policy crises. Specifically, we focus on the German, Polish and Czech leaderships' reactions to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and investigate the historical analogies which leaders invoked to justify their responses to Russia's aggression. The existing scholarship recognizes the importance of historical analogies in foreign policy decision-making, but the literature focuses predominantly on several high-profile analogies (i.e. the Munich Agreement or the Vietnam War) and lacks comparative perspective. We employ a dual-method approach that combines qualitative coding with semantic network analysis, and conduct a comparative analysis of the full spectrum of analogies used by Polish, Czech and German policy-makers. We find that politicians did not focus on a single overarching analogy, but employed a wide array of historical references. We also find that even though the countries' policies largely aligned and that their leaders often invoked the same events, the meaning of analogies and the signals they sent differed substantially across cases. Analysing the full spectrum of analogies demonstrates that justifications for supporting Ukraine were shaped more by these states' own historical traumas than by their sympathy for Ukraine, support for international law, or desire to uphold the rules-based international order.

Emotion, memory and storytelling: postmemorial emotion work in Vietnamese American graphic narratives

The article demonstrates how graphic narratives become a medium for managing inherited emotions in Vietnamese American second-generation works, GB Tran’s Vietnamerica and Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do. Highlighting the intergenerational transmission of emotions in Vietnamese American families through parental stories about the Vietnam War, the article argues that the authors’ attempts to represent these family stories transform graphic literature into a medium for postmemorial emotion work. While drawing theoretical insights from the sociology of emotions, the study employs textual analysis to thematically close read Vietnamerica and The Best We Could Do to understand the graphic strategies that aid emotion work. The graphic recreation of stories, which are narrativised versions of their inherited trauma memories, can offer potential trauma resolution and autobiographical clarity while fostering communal bonding. The analysis finds that in the works, emotion work is facilitated by various literary strategies, such as affective genealogies, affective geographies, affective pasts, and postmemorial re-embodiment. In a broader sense, the study concludes that graphic narrative strategies can aid in postmemorial emotion work for second-generation refugees grappling with inherited trauma, incoherent autobiographical knowledge, and detachment from the community or family.

Review: The Vietnam War in the Pacific World, edited by Brian Cuddy and Fredrik Logevall

Review: <i>The Vietnam War in the Pacific World</i>, edited by Brian Cuddy and Fredrik Logevall

Repatriation via Saigon

The South Korean Vietnam War deployment (1965–73), typically understood as a mercenary expedition, was also an exercise in the management of refugees and other displaced populations. While the South Korean Army managed its own refugee villages in South Vietnam, the overseas dispatch of military labor also promised to ameliorate the problem of mass displacement at home, an ongoing legacy of the Korean War (1950–53). The northern exile writer Sŏnu Hwi (1922–86) was a notable proponent of this vision of the war as a frontier, framing Vietnam as a surrogate for an inaccessible North Korea and an outlet for the social contradictions of Cold War developmentalism in South Korea. Focusing on the embedded novel Wave to the Mekong River (1966–67), this article argues that Sŏnu's expansionist fantasy deviated from official justifications of Vietnam as a war for development. At the same time, it suggests, Sŏnu's ideological equalization of exile and displacement also informed an emergent antiwar literature showing that the deployment aggravated, rather than resolved, the marginalization of mobilized youth.

Trauma Narratives: Collective Memories as Literature by Indochinese Refugees in the United States

Indochinese refugees in the United States are part of Asian Americans, whose narratives portray their life in their home countries, journeys to the new world and life in the United States, their new world. This study investigates three primary texts by American authors of Indochinese descent, including Lan Cao’s Monkey Bridge, Sichan Siv’s Golden Bones and Sucheng Chan’s Hmong Means Free. These three texts are highly historicised, portraying traumatic experiences of Indochinese refugees who suffer from war and communist persecution in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, respectively. These texts are considered trauma narratives serving as collective memories of those people, which help them to remember their pasts and constitute their group identity. The narratives in the three primary texts also explain how Indochinese subjects come to be Asian Americans and reveal that in fact the United States is considered an important cause of their diaspora and trauma. The authors of those narratives are unable to eradicate the traumatic memories from their psyche, so they yearn for voices to vent out those memories as a form of healing. Their trauma narratives have become part of American culture which is partially constituted by trauma suffered by different groups of people in this country.

Later-life social network profiles of male war survivors in Vietnam: Implications for health behaviors

Emerging research emphasizes early-life war exposure as a key determinant of later-life health in older adults from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Yet, the linkages between war exposure, social networks, and later-life health behaviors have received little attention. Using data from the 2018 Vietnam Health and Aging Study, we investigate how early-life war experiences relate to the social networks and health behaviors of 1195 Vietnamese men aged 60+ who survived the Vietnam War (1965–1975). We utilize latent class analysis to identify men's network types and examine the associations between military service, war trauma, PTSD, and later-life network profiles. Furthermore, we assess the linkages between war experiences and risky health behaviors (physical inactivity, frequent alcohol and tobacco consumption) and the moderating effect of social networks on these behaviors. Our findings reveal that exposure to wartime malevolent living conditions, as opposed to direct war violence, and recent PTSD symptoms are linked to lower support levels in respondents' network profiles. Moreover, although diverse and supportive networks correspond to a reduced risk of physical inactivity, they are associated with higher risks of frequent alcohol consumption and are marginally associated with tobacco use. Importantly, social network profiles moderate the relationship between PTSD symptoms and the risk of frequent alcohol consumption. This evidence underscores the need for policymakers to consider the historical and social contexts of LMICs when deploying social support as a health intervention.

Education, health-based selection, and the widening mortality gap between Americans with and without a four-year college degree.

Gaps in life expectancy between Americans with and without a college degree have widened markedly over the past three decades. One explanation points to increasing educational attainment changing the type of people with and without a degree. If pre-existing health in the two education groups changes as the fraction with a degree changes, health selection might explain the widening mortality gap. We examine this explanation using (a) education and mortality in each birth cohort of men and women from 1940 to 1988, and (b) the natural experiment caused by the Vietnam War, which increased the fractions of men with a degree in affected birth cohorts. For each cohort, we examine the relationship between the mortality gap and the fraction with a degree. We find no relationship between the fraction of a birth cohort with a degree and the corresponding mortality gap. For men, the large increase in college going spurred by Vietnam has no perceptible counterpart in the mortality gap. The evidence from the natural experiment induced by the Vietnam War does not support a health-selection explanation for the widening mortality gap.

Unease at Home: Evading and Resisting the Draft during the Vietnam War

Unease at Home: Evading and Resisting the Draft during the Vietnam War

The Complexities Faced by South Korean Vietnam War Veterans: The Impact Towards Agent Orange Exposure

The Complexities Faced by South Korean Vietnam War Veterans: The Impact Towards Agent Orange Exposure

Queering the Vietnam Trauma Narrative in Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

Veteran memoirs, imbued with white, masculinist bias, dominate US perceptions of the Vietnam War. Drawing from an intersectional approach to trauma studies, this article examines Ocean Vuong’s novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019) as a rewriting of the paradigmatic Vietnam trauma narrative. Vuong challenges normative understandings of traumatic events by shedding light on the effects of the war upon female civilians and their descendants, as well as on the traumatogenic aftermath of all-American masculinist violence for its queer, Asian American protagonist. Vuong also calls for an alternative model to working through trauma based on empathy and relationality.

Prosthetic Memory: Children Remembering the Remnants of Suffering

This study draws on site observation and worksheets from a field trip to examine children’s narratives of the exhibitions at the War Remnants Museum in Hô Chí Minh City, Vietnam, with a specific focus on the portrayal of the victims of Agent Orange through both “photographic” and “life” exhibitions. In applying Landsberg’s concept of “prosthetic memory,” the findings reveal how the photographic exhibition with its visual documentary evidence, and the life exhibition, through its interactive engagement, play important roles in the formation of children’s prosthetic memories of the US war in Vietnam. These exhibitions provide context, depth, and immediacy to the portrayal of the ongoing suffering of the Agent Orange victims, enabling children to integrate historical and personal memory. This dual approach influences their perceptions, interpretations, and remembrance of the war, enhancing their learning experience by offering a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the historical event.

Regional bombs and firm investment decisions: Evidence from the Vietnam War

This study examines the impact of historical bomb density on the investment decisions of Vietnamese firms, particularly in infrastructure. Employing an instrumental variable approach, this study examines the causal relationship between bomb density and tangible asset investments. The findings indicate that bomb density significantly influences these investments, with infrastructure quality and literacy rates as mediating factors.

Maroon Rice Genomic Diversity Reflects 350 Years of Colonial History.

Maroons in Suriname and French Guiana descend from enslaved Africans who escaped the plantations during colonial times. Maroon farmers still cultivate a large diversity of rice, their oldest staple crop. The oral history and written records of Maroons by colonial authorities provide contrasting perspectives on the origins of Maroon rice. Here, we analyzed the genomic ancestry of 136 newly sequenced Maroon rice varieties and found seven genomic groups that differ in their geographical associations. We interpreted these findings in light of ethnobotanical and archival investigations to reconstruct the historical contexts associated with the introduction of rice varieties to the Guianas. We found that two rice groups trace to West Africa, which we propose are linked to the transatlantic slave trade (c. 1526 to 1825). We posit that the Maroon rice stock additionally contains varieties that derive from rice introduced by indentured laborers from Java (1890 onwards), USA rice breeders (1932 onwards), and Hmong refugees who fled the Vietnam War (1991). Furthermore, on the Maroon fields, we found rice types never documented before that were derived from crosses. Overall, our results demonstrate that the Maroon farmers prioritize maintenance of a high stock diversity, which we posit reflects the expertise they inherited from their (African) ancestors. Ignored by agricultural modernization initiatives, Maroon farmers today are custodians of a unique cultural heritage. Notably, the genomic findings underline many Maroon stories about their past. We anticipate that a similar study approach can be applied to other heirloom crops of (Indigenous) communities that may have preserved their history on their farms to reconstruct, acknowledge, and honor the past.

The Vietnam War, Imperial Presidents, and Limited Democracy

The Vietnam War, Imperial Presidents, and Limited Democracy