Historian Christopher Goscha had an essay published in the New York Times yesterday (7 February 2017) entitled “The 30-Years War in Vietnam.” This essay is about the wars that took place in Vietnam between 1945 and 1975. Goscha has recently published a survey of Vietnamese history, and the essay in the New York Times is based on his more detailed coverage of that same period in that book.
Goscha’s survey is called Vietnam: A New History, and it is indeed a “new” history. It is a history that is based on Goscha’s own research, but also on his extensive reading of the new scholarship that has emerged in the past 30 years in “the West.”
What makes this recent scholarship on Vietnamese history “new”? First, it has largely been researched and written by a generation that did not directly experience the war years, and this “distance” from the object of study has enabled these scholars to maintain a level of objectivity that was at times difficult for scholars in the past.
Second, the scholars who have produced this body of scholarship 1) can read Vietnamese, and 2) base their research on archival work in Vietnam, two elements that were too often absent in a good deal of earlier scholarship, particularly scholarship on the war years.
I realize that a lot of people are unaware of this new scholarship, and that as a result, when they read something like Goscha’s New York Times essay, they might not be able to see what is actually new in what he wrote. So to make that clear, I’ve gone through his essay and added some comments. Some of the points I’m saying are new might be ones that people have “heard” of before, but Goscha’s writing is based on what has been “documented” (and the citations in his book are spectacular!).
That is a very important distinction. It is one thing to sit in a café or a bar and talk about the past, but it is something entirely different to go to an archive, carefully read through documents, and to then record what one finds there in a (peer-reviewed) published text. Goscha’s writing, both in this essay and in his book, is based on that type of painstaking research (his own and that of many others), not on café or bar talk.
So let’s see what Goscha wrote about “The 30-Years War in Vietnam.” What follows is Goscha’s article. I have placed my comments in bold and in brackets.
It should go without saying that the Vietnam War is remembered by different people in very different ways. Most Americans remember it as a war fought between 1965 and 1975 that bogged down their military in a struggle to prevent the Communists from marching into Southeast Asia, deeply dividing Americans as it did. The French remember their loss there as a decade-long conflict, fought from 1945 to 1954, when they tried to hold on to the Asian pearl of their colonial empire until losing it in a place called Dien Bien Phu.
The Vietnamese, in contrast, see the war as a national liberation struggle, or as a civil conflict, depending on which side they were on, ending in victory in 1975 for one side and tragedy for the other. For the Vietnamese, it was above all a 30-year conflict transforming direct and indirect forms of fighting into a brutal conflagration, one that would end up claiming over three million Vietnamese lives.
The point is not that one perspective is better or more accurate than the other. What’s important, rather, is to understand how the colonial war, the civil war and the Cold War intertwined to produce such a deadly conflagration by 1967.
Colonial War
Without World War II, the struggle in Vietnam might have played out very differently [He’s countering the idea, found in many older works (both Vietnamese and French/American) that the Communists’ rise to power was inevitable. David Marr’s Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power thoroughly demonstrated that this was definitely not the case.].
The Japanese had occupied French Indochina (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia) in 1940, and they left the fascist Vichy French government, allied with Tokyo’s German partner after the fall of France in 1940, in charge of day-to-day affairs. This collaboration ended in early 1945, as the Allies terminated the German hold on Europe and prepared to defeat the Japanese in Asia [shows how local events in Indochina can only be understood in a wider, even global, context. This is one of Goscha’s many strengths]. In March, worried that Vichy troops would turn on them, the Japanese overthrew the French, ending 80 years of colonialism. A few months later, the Japanese capitulated, creating a power vacuum in Vietnam.
Ho Chi Minh and his Communist-led Viet Minh nationalist front seized the opportunity. On Sept. 2, 1945, Ho proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Taking power, however, was one thing; holding onto it was another [pointing out how weak the Viet Minh’s control of the country was – a point that you will certainly not find in Vietnamese accounts of this period]. Within days, Allied troops landed to disarm Japanese forces. The British debarked in southern Indochina below the 16th parallel, while Chinese nationalist troops occupied the north. In the wings, the leader of a newly liberated France, Charles de Gaulle, ordered his men to re-establish colonial rule. Unable to maintain order, three weeks later the British allowed the French to dislodge the Viet Minh from Saigon, triggering war below the 16th parallel.
Accompanying the Chinese troops in the north were Vietnamese nationalists long opposed to Ho and his Communist Party [mentions non-Communists, a reference to the fact that there were many political players at this time]. Local Chinese commanders preferred, however, to keep Ho’s Vietnam in place in order to avoid the chaos occurring in the south [counters myths about the period that say that the Chinese wanted to take over Vietnam]. They imposed a coalition government on Ho, but did little more. This uneasy truce between Vietnamese Communist and anti-Communist nationalists broke down when the Chinese withdrew in mid-1946, leaving their allies at the mercy of the Communists, who swiftly defeated them before focusing on the French [great point! Argues that the big “problem” with the Chinese was that they demanded that HCM’s government be “plural,” and that as soon as the Chinese were gone, the Communists put an end to that limited political plurality]. Despite Ho’s sincere efforts to negotiate decolonization peacefully, the French wanted Indochina back. Full-scale war broke out in December 1946.
The French refusal to decolonize enabled the Communists to monopolize the nationalist mantle as they bogged the French down in a guerrilla war. Nationalists working with the French begged them to decolonize before it was too late [counters the myth that the Viet Minh were “the only true nationalists” and shows why other nationalists were unable to gain prominence]. But even when the French finally created the State of Vietnam in 1949, led by the ex-emperor Bao Dai, they refused to grant it full independence.
The arrival of the Cold War in Asia following the Chinese Communist victory in 1949, and the start of the Korean War a year later, strengthened the French hand. By casting themselves as the Asian front line of the free world’s struggle against global communism, the French persuaded the Americans to abandon their anticolonialism in favor of supporting France in Indochina.
This strategy came with a price, though. The French may have used the Americans, but the Americans used the French — their army, their administration, their State of Vietnam and its troops — to indirectly fight the Communists in Indochina. The United States created a Military Assistance Advisory Group in 1950, funded counterinsurgency programs and stepped up C.I.A. operations. By 1954, the Americans were paying for more than 70 percent of the French war — because it was their war, too. Chinese Communists pushed back, directly in Korea by sending in troops, and indirectly in Vietnam by sending their own advisers and arming a new regular army for Ho, the People’s Army of Vietnam, or P.A.V.N. All of this transformed Vietnam into the deadliest war of decolonization of the 20th century.
By 1954, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap commanded a divisional army and was ready to engage the French in a series of set-piece battles. This army carefully organized an epic siege of the fortified French camp at Dien Bien Phu, carrying artillery across mountainous terrain to destroy the air base supplying colonial troops. When the guns fell silent on May 7, 1954, the French Army had suffered its greatest colonial defeat since losing Quebec in 1759, and the Vietnamese Communists had proved they could fight conventional battles — and win [Notice that he says that the Viet Minh won “a battle.” He does not say that they won “a war” or that they “defeated the French.” Why he wrote this way will become clear below.]. No other 20th-century war of decolonization produced a Dien Bien Phu.
But fighting big battles came at a cost, for this type of war required the enormous mobilization of people. In 1953, Ho’s party initiated a land reform program to encourage peasants to support the war. It also harshly overturned the landed and commercial classes as part of the communization of the state. The problem was that this dual military and social revolution exhausted the population. When the Chinese joined the French to reach a cease-fire, Ho agreed that he could push his people no further. The Communists had won a battle at Dien Bien Phu, but not the war. And behind the French, Ho knew, stood the Americans. On July 21, 1954, the Communists accepted a cease-fire at Geneva that separated the country in half at the 17th parallel, with elections to follow in two years. [In a lot of scholarship, the Viet Minh have been depicted as “victims” of Cold War politics. That argument goes that since the Viet Minh “defeated the French,” they should have gained control of the entire country. However, the more powerful parties at the negotiating table (the US, the USSR, the PRC, etc.), had other issues and interest, and the Viet Minh case was “sacrificed.” Goscha is basing this passage on more recent scholarship, including his own, which shows that although the Viet Minh had won a major battle, they still did not control the cities, the population was exhausted, and they were terrified that now that the Korean War was over the Americans would get directly involved. Therefore, the division at the 17th parallel was not “imposed” on HCM and the Viet Minh, but instead, they realized that this was the best they could hope for at that time.]
Civil and Cold Wars Resume
Something else happened as the French looked to exit Indochina at Geneva. One of the few non-Communist nationalists to have refused to collaborate with both the colonialists and the Communists stepped off the fence: Ngo Dinh Diem. Bao Dai had named him prime minister in June 1954, in a last-minute bid to prevent the French from handing over Vietnam to the adversary. The Americans feared the same thing and began rapidly pivoting their support to him. [No mention here of NDD being a “puppet” of the US, or of the US “putting him in power.” Behind this paragraph is the recent work of scholars like Edward Miller and Jessica Chapman who have documented in detail the autonomy and agency that NDD possessed.]
When France and China agreed at Geneva to hold elections to unite the two Vietnams, Diem and his newly enthusiastic supporter, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, took note but signed nothing. Geneva may have ended the French war, but it did not end America’s indirect one. Instead the Americans replaced their reliance on the French colonial state to contain Communism in favor of working through an independent, non-Communist Vietnamese state led by their “miracle man.” As long as Washington did not tread on this new nation’s sovereignty and Diem did not endanger the decade-old American strategic investment in Vietnam, indirect containment could continue.
After Geneva, Communists and anti-Communists focused on taking over their respective states, consolidating their political power and promoting economic development with their allies. The Communists completed land reform in 1956 as part of plans to collectivize the economy along Soviet lines. Dissent was crushed as Ho’s party extended its Communist state to all the north. Diem ordered the French Army out and pushed Bao Dai aside as he created a republic in 1955 under his family’s authoritarian control. He neutralized religious and political groups before going after remaining Communists and anyone else who opposed him. Diem welcomed American aid and advisers, but he rejected direct military intervention. [Right, it’s not just Diem who ignored the election, HCM’s government was focusing on transforming the society in the north through land reform and anti-capitalism campaigns.]
This is where Le Duan, the veteran Communist who had run the party’s war in the south against the French, enters the picture [Until recently, Le Duan was barely mentioned in English-language writings on this period. Now thanks to the archival work of many scholars (Lien-Hang Nguyen, Pierre Asselin, Martin Grossheim, just to name a few), Le Duan has emerged as basically the most important North Vietnamese figure of the war years.]. Since Geneva, he had painted a dire picture of what was happening below the 17th parallel: Not only had Diem and the Americans rejected the idea of holding elections, but Diem’s repression was also destroying what little remained of the party’s southern network. Although Hanoi’s leaders balked at resuming war outright, unsure of Sino-Soviet support and worried that the Americans would send in troops, in 1959 Le Duan persuaded the party to intervene indirectly in the south or risk losing it forever. [This is the beginning of HCM’s loss of power, a fact that historians were not aware of in the past.]
This new strategy reactivated the Ho Chi Minh Trail to bring southward thousands of administrators (most of whom were native southerners sent north after Geneva). They formed a competing southern proto-state in the form of the National Liberation Front, created in 1960, and protected by the People’s Liberation Armed Forces — what came to be known, to its enemies, as the Viet Cong. That same year, Le Duan assumed the party’s leadership. He reactivated the Central Office of South Vietnam to run this indirect civil war to bring down Diem’s state and unify the country on Hanoi’s terms before the Americans could intervene. [This is a critical passage. So much writing in English has portrayed the Vietnam War as essentially something that the Americans instigated. While recent scholarship does not try to exonerate American actions, it nonetheless clearly documents that Le Duan (and the government that supported his policies) is equally responsible for instigating a war.]
Parallel, Direct Wars
Diem did fall, but not his state. In 1963, the Kennedy administration watched in shock as the N.L.F. greatly expanded its hold over the countryside. Diem’s half-baked counterinsurgency projects forcing millions of peasants into strategic hamlets, as well as his relentless attacks on non-Communist opponents, created the red-hot discontent on which the insurgency thrived. In June 1963, a Buddhist monk immolated himself in downtown Saigon in a sign of protest. Worried that Diem’s policies were playing into Communist hands, South Vietnamese generals sought American support for a plan to overthrow their president. The Kennedy White House approved, and on Nov. 2 and 3, 1963, a military coup ousted Diem, killing him in the process.
The question now was whether Washington or Hanoi would intervene directly. Starting in 1963, Le Duan pushed for gradual, direct military intervention, meaning the dispatch of P.A.V.N. troops southward. The hope was that, together with the N.L.F./P.L.A.F., Hanoi could take the south before the Americans could escalate. [Note that North Vietnam made the first move. Again, I mentioned that not to try to exonerate the US. Instead, what this new research does is that it counters a lot of earlier scholarship that essentially puts all of the agency for what happened in Vietnam in the hands of Americans. That was clearly not the case.]
Not everyone in the party agreed, however. Some, including Vo Nguyen Giap, advised caution, pointing out the dangers of provoking the Americans into the conflict head on especially when the Soviets were advocating superpower détente [It is only recently that historians have documented the divisions that existed among the leadership in the North at that time.]. Le Duan, however, knew that he could count on China’s Mao Zedong, who was highly critical of the Soviets and their lack of revolutionary backbone. In early 1964, the party approved direct intervention in the south.
Lyndon B. Johnson also had to choose. Would the new president continue America’s indirect war? Would he cut his country’s losses and get out? Or would he send in American troops to save the South? Like Le Duan, Johnson chose war. [Again, here you have the point that recent scholarship has made: Le Duan and the North were also belligerents in this war.]
Following an attack on an American helicopter base at Pleiku in early 1965, Johnson opened a sustained air war against Vietnamese targets above and below the 17th parallel, and authorized troops to land in the south in March. A few months later, American and P.A.V.N. troops clashed in the highland valley of Ia Drang, the first of many big battles to come. It was in the same area where P.A.V.N. regiments had decimated French mobile groups a decade earlier.
By 1967, almost 500,000 American troops were in Vietnam, as Hanoi sent its own boys southward. The second half of the 30-Years War for Vietnam was now underway, with a vengeance.
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“Goscha is basing this passage on more recent scholarship, including his own, which shows that although the Viet Minh had won a major battle, they still did not control the cities, the population was exhausted, and they were terrified that now that the Korean War was over the Americans would get directly involved.”
To add to that, DRV troops defected during Dien Bien Phu — even in that moment it wasn’t clear to them who would win the battle, much less the war. There’s the story of a captured DRV soldier who, upon being told the war was over, thinks the DRV has lost. Apocryphal or not, this sentiment is backed up by archival documents reporting the numbers of DRV defectors at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, even in March as the garrison was about to fall.
[ How the colonial war, the civil war and the Cold War intertwined to produce such a deadly conflagration by 1967 ? ]
Let’s use common sense to try to give an answer :
_ at first , one would say : ” what ‘s the hell are two white countries are doing in Asia , thousands of miles away from home ” ; their endeavours wouldn’t hold in the long term
_ haven’ t they never hear of the Monroe doctrine ?
What blinded them to those realities ? greed , hubris and arrogance of power , would say Sen. Fullbrigfht
http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/fulbright.html
Then , in 1966 , Fullbright presciently warned of quagmire and failure [ What I do question is the ability of the United States, or France or any other Western nation, to go into a small, alien, undeveloped Asian nation and create stability where there is chaos, the will to fight where there is defeatism, democracy where there is no tradition of it and honest government where corruption is almost a way of life. Our handicap is well expressed in the pungent Chinese proverb: “In shallow waters dragons become the sport of shrimps.” ]
Pr Goscha makes a remark , which is damning for the legitimacy of South VN regime :[ the French refused to decolonize and finally created the State of Vietnam in 1949, led by the ex-emperor Bao Dai ]
About the legitimacy of NDDiêm , I read myself blind to find about it ; I think that at best his credentials are doubtful
At worst , he and his community were traitor’s traitors to the VN independance cause . The USA willingly supported the worst possible choice to counter the Vietminh legitimacy : NDDiêm dumbly antagonized every political , religious , ethnic faction or grouping outside of his Catholic followers instead of using divide and rule tactics
The deposition of the Ngô brothers was greeted with widespread joy by the South Vietnamese public
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_to_the_1963_South_Vietnamese_coup
[According to Mrs. Lodge, the atmosphere was “extraordinary”. She further observed “I had not realized how feared and hated the government was…”. As Lodge walked past the Xá Lợi Pagoda adjacent to the US Operations Mission building, he was warmly received. Lodge and his wife were greeted by cries of “Vive Capa Lodge” . According to Mrs. Lodge, “they were so excited that they nearly squashed us”. Lodge reported that the populace had “lionized” the soldiers, giving them fruit, flowers and garlands of roses ]
Much of what you say about NDD and the South could have been said about Chiang Kai-Shek and Taiwan in the 1950s. . .
Another insightful article!
I do think that Diem and his security forces were quite successful against the “Viet Cong”. The Ministry of Public Security also acknowledged this in an article in An Ninh The Gioi:
“Sau khi đất nước tạm thời bị chia cắt, miền Nam còn khoảng 60.000 cán bộ đảng viên ở lại. Nhưng chỉ trong một thời gian ngắn, chế độ Mỹ – Diệm đã sát hại, bắt bớ, giam cầm hàng chục ngàn người, chỉ còn khoảng 5.000 cán bộ đảng viên có thể hoạt động được!
Trước tình hình đó, tháng 1/1959, Hội nghị Trung ương Đảng lần thứ 15 đã đề ra đường lối cách mạng miền Nam”
To be honest, quite a few had lost or stopped contact, However, the aftermath of Duong Van Minh’s assassination of Diem was the release of most, if not all, Party cadre jailed by Diem. I recall Saigon newspapers in 1964 reporting that ten thousand of the “wrongly arrested” had been released. Again, a number had become disenchanted but many returned to the party fold. Duong Van Minh was the most effective “fellow traveller” manipulated by Hanoi.
One thing that most did not understand was that NVN was always in directly in charge of Central Vietnam. When Trung ương Cục miền Nam was established it had Region 7 (Eastern Nambo), Region 8 (Central Nambo), Region 9 (Western Nambo), Saigon plus Region 6 (Southern Trungbo). Region 5 (Central Trungbo) belonged to NVN). Of course COSVN and Region 5 were both controlled by the Central Committee. The interesting thing of course was that there was little, if any, coordination between Region 5 and COSVN or Region 6. COSVN documents did not list distribution to Region 5. By default, PAVN became the primary military force in that area since there was a population issue, etc.
fyi: In 1968, Tran Ngoc Hien (the brother of Tran Ngoc Chau) told me that in 1956 senior PAVN Military Intelligence analysts (including Hien), were tasked to do an assessment on potential scenarios if NVN were to rev up the revolution in the South. Their conclusion was it would be successful regardless of any actions by the Americans. I chatted with Hien for three days shortly after his arrest as an agent handler (to truong) for the Strategic Intelligence Office under the SVN Liberation Army. The SVNLA was not active in Region 5.
_ the Diêm regime started the terror “Tố Cộng, diệt Cộng” campaign in 1956 with law 10/59 ., which was the exact
mirror to the “Land Reform ” in north VN
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon/pent13.htm
https://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%E1%BB%91_C%E1%BB%99ng_di%E1%BB%87t_C%E1%BB%99ng
The victims numbered in hundreds of thousands : 250000 imprisoned , 80000 killed ; 2/3 of them were non – Vietminh Diêm ‘s primary target was to smash third -way proponents , to leave no space between him and the communists; the Americans were to do the same strategy , over and over .
_ Duong van Minh ‘s role in the VN war is still unappraised . Was he a VN patriot or a Manchurian candidate ( like Trump ) for the benefit of Hanoi ? One of his brothers was a north VN general
According to Kahin, George McT. (1986). Intervention: How America Became Involved in Vietnam., after Diêm ‘s fall,
he tried to strike a middle way , to win over the NLF by political means , to drive a wedge between the components of the NLF , entice the non- communists to his side
[ Minh, the leading generals and Tho, favored a politically oriented solution, feeling that the deposal of Diệm and Nhu had created new possibilities for ending the insurgency of the National Liberation Front, or Viet Cong, mainly through an outreach program. They thought that military force would not be sufficient for Saigon, and that political means were more effective than using American firepower in making up for this.[ To the junta leaders, the rapid growth of the insurgency in Diệm’s final year was due to it being seen as a rallying point and symbol of opposition to Diệm and Nhu, rather than an endorsement of the communists. The senior junta generals believed that with the Ngô brothers dead, the insurgency was now without its major focus of opposition, and therefore, motivation to operate in a vigorous way. To them, most of the insurgents were non-communist, with heavy elements of Cao Đài and Hòa Hảo religious sects or other opposition that had joined because of passionate anti-Diệm sentiment. Minh thus saw the post-Diệm period as an opportunity for grassroots political strengthening to undercut the NLF support base and force the remainder to integrate into mainstream society due to political realities.]
But the Americans then and later as firemen – arsonists wouldn’t let him try political tactics . Like Diêm , they favored
military means and incited Gen. Nguyên Khanh to overthrow Minh’s junta . Ironically , after some time , Khanh veered to the ” neutralist “side and was ovethrown too . The Americans could act out their ” scorched earth ” policies , as a ” mad physiscian “to force upon their unwilling patient their deadly medecine .As they said , we don’t solve problems , we smash them
So much for the “revisionist ” researchers of Vietnamese agency ; it seems , whatever the VN north or south could have done wouln’t have averted the tragedy suffered by the VN people .
,
Re your comment that Duong van Minh ‘s role in the VN war is still unappraised . Was he a VN patriot or a Manchurian candidate ( like Trump ) for the benefit of Hanoi?
Since you asked the question, MINH’s role in the VN war came in two parts.
In his first role, per a June 2009 lengthy artile entitled The File on General Duong Van MINH” on honvietquochoc.com.vn, Minh promised to launch a coup against Diem during a meeting with his younger brother (Muoi Ty) and a “secret cadre” (in 1963). //Thấy tình hình thuận lợi, đồng chí Mười Ty hướng dẫn cán bộ mật đem ý kiến của lãnh đạo trao đổi với Dương Văn Minh về việc đảo chính Chính phủ Ngô Đình Diệm. Trong lúc Tướng Minh đang bực tức Ngô Đình Diệm độc tài, gia đình trị, phủ nhận công lao của mình (tảo thanh Bình Xuyên và các giáo phái Hoà Hảo). Tướng Minh hứa sẽ tìm cách làm.//
Muoi TY tracked and reported MINH’s coup preparations to COSVN Military Proselyting section.. //Đồng chí Mười Ty nắm được ý định Tướng Minh chuẩn bị đảo chính Diệm và có báo cáo về Ban binh vận Trung Ương Cục.//
During his time as the First Chief of State MINH had a number of progressive actions favorable to the revolution:
+Decided to abandon 16,000 Strategic Hamlets as promised to Muoi Ty.
+ McNamara and General Harkins requested MINH allow the US to bomb NVN dikes on the Hong river but MINH refused. // ném bom nổ chậm trên đê sông Hồng//
+January 1964, Cabot Lodge requested MINH study and approve Plan 34A (sending spied and rangers into NVN). MINH did not reply.
+ //Theo lời kêu gọi của Mặt trận dân tộc giải phóng miền Nam Dương Văn Minh tỏ ý muốn thương lượng để tuyển cử tự do, thực hiện một chế độ trung lập, lập Chính phủ liên hiệp.//
Hon Viet magazine explained that this article was based on material from Pham Van Hung. // Hồn Việt số 11 (tháng 5/2008) đã đăng một số ý kiến về Tướng Dương Văn Minh. Đó là một số ý kiến bước đầu quan trọng, giúp ta tìm hiểu sâu hơn một sự kiện lịch sử, một con người. Kỳ này, Hồn Việt xin công bố bản tóm tắt của một công trình nghiên cứu công phu, nhiều tư liệu mới với độ tin cậy cao của ông Phạm Văn Hùng.//
In his second role, in the same Hon Viet article, (circa 1967) Minh responded outlining his ideas to Muoi Ty (exchanged via family couriers) on ending the war and what role he could play. ” Establishing a coalition government of three parts is quite difficult. THIEU has to be gone, the US must withdraw and that will be the end of war. If we have this government and I lose the elections and Nguyen Huu THO (Chairman NLFSVN) wins, it doesn’t matter as long as the country turns out better. ” //Mười Ty mới chuyển kế hoạch qua em (Dương Thu Vân) và cháu (Dương Minh Đức) truyền đạt ý kiến của cấp trên cho Dương Văn Minh. Sau đó Đức báo lại ý kiến của cha anh với Mười Ty như sau: “Lập Chính phủ ba thành phần là khó lắm, cần đánh cho văng Thiệu, Mỹ phải rút đi là hết chiến tranh. Tôi có ra làm chính phủ ba thành phần khi bầu cử thì ông Thọ (Luật sư Nguyễn Hữu Thọ) cũng thắng cử, tôi có thất cử cũng không nghĩa lý gì, miễn có lợi cho đất nước là hơn”.//
Apparently Hanoi also wondered if Minh would go out to the zone (VC controlled area) which Minh rejected. // ra ngoài (ra khu) lúc này là không có lợi, ở trong này khi cần có lợi hơn…//
Muoi Ty’s younger sister and Minh’s son, Duong Minh Duc, were used to courier ideas back and forth to Minh (while Minh was in “exile ” in Thailand 1965-67 and later).
Duc’s role as a clandestine courier between the Party and his father was confirmed by Vo Van Sung, the first DRV Ambassador to France and a participant in the Paris peace talks, [in http://www.baomoi.com/Nuoi-thu-han-can-tro-hoa-hop-la-co-toi-voi-tuong-lai/122/4179688.epi%5D. In a August 2010 interview Sung said “Among the political solution projects, I know that we had separate contact with Dương Văn Minh to exchange thoughts on the possible roles he could hold in various possibilities through our arrangement and through the people we would place in his cabinet.” Sung also identified Duc as their clandestine bridge to Minh //tôi muốn nói rõ rằng Đức là cầu nối kín đáo giữa ta với ông Dương Văn Minh.//
When TY returned to Hanoi, Le DUAN invited Ty and the Chief of Enemy Proselyting to lunch. After hearing TY’s report on his activity in France, Le DUAN complemented TY and said: “For MINH to say that is sincere, we can work with that. Its better than someone who promises everything… “Dương Văn Minh trả lời như vậy là thành thật, nói như vậy là làm được, chứ hứa hết có khi không làm được…”
At a late March 1975 meeting of key A10 (espionage cluster) leaders with Mai Chi THO, then Secretary of the Saigon City Party Committee, THO directed that they “must seek any way to have MINH replace THIEU and then transfer the government to the revolution. That is the Party’s program to avoid bloodshed and losses to the people.
//Đồng chí Mai Chí Thọ chỉ đạo: “…Phải bằng mọi cách để Dương Văn Minh thay Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, rồi giao chính quyền cho cách mạng. Đó là chủ trương của Đảng nhằm tránh đổ máu, tránh tổn thất cho nhân dân”.//
I think this just about sums up Minh or as Vo Van Sung noted: ” I am sure that his relatives had a great influence and effect on MINH’s actions and thoughts.” // Tôi chắc rằng những người thân đã có ảnh hưởng và tác động nhiều đến suy nghĩ và hành động của ông Minh.//
Thanks for the information about Duong van Minh . I think , he wasn’t a North VN agent .
His life story is iconic of the fate of the ” third force ” which ended being crushed between the
Americans and the Communists
Dr Quinn Judge just published “The Third Force in the Vietnam War: The Elusive Search for Peace 1954-75 published by I.B.Taurus
http://www.ibtauris.com/en/Books/Humanities/History/The%20Third%20Force%20in%20the%20Vietnam%20Wars%20The%20Elusive%20Search%20for%20Peace%20195475?menuitem=%7BE8ADA562-D7CD-4449-901D-558593EBFA74%7D
Does Dr Quinn consider him as a member of the third force ?
riroriro: I do have to say, I think you are guilty of believing in “Vietnamese exceptionalism.” Yes, it is true that the US “methods” in Vietnam were horrifically destructive, but the “motive” was the same as that which led the US to support South Korea, Taiwan, and West Germany. What were white people doing in Asian countries like South Korea and Taiwan? The answer there probably lies somewhere between idealism and realism. On an idealistic level they were seeking to oppose tyranny. On a realistic level they were trying to ensure that there were areas of Asia where American businesses could profit, and from which America could import cheap products. What is the result of those “interventions”? As far as I can tell, it has resulted in a lot of good. By whatever standard you want to use, places like Taiwan and South Korea are among the best places to live in Asia today. So why was Vietnam an exception to this? Why is it that it was a mistake for the US to not want at least 1/2 of Vietnam to be part of the same world? I don’t think there was anything wrong with the “motive” for US involvement. I think the “methods” that were used in the 1960s were inexcusable, but once we get to that point we have to start wondering why people like Le Duan were unable to do what leaders like Kim Il-Sung and Mao Zedong were able to do.
There is an expression – “it takes 2 to tango.” Kim Il-Sung and Mao Zedong chose not to tango with the US, and South Vietnam and Taiwan benefited from that. Le Duan, on the other hand, did choose to tango. . .
_ Pr Kelly , I don’t see what you mean by ” my VN exceptionalism ” or [ Lê Duân chose to tango ] or [ people like Le Duan were unable to do what leaders like Kim Il-Sung and Mao Zedong were able to do ]
_ the “realistic ” motive would be quite consistent with the American government ‘s past actions since the end of the 90s : the replacement of the Spanish and their ” first Vietnam ” exploits ,namely their Filipino exactions ( or Cuban or Puertorican ones ) , the seizure of Hawaii
_ the Philippines precedent is a debunking of the post- fact ” Korean , Taiwanese prosperity ” rationalizations of US intervention . Yes , why are the Filippiinos who “benefited “from US benevolence since 1900 unto the 21st century in such dire straits ? Korea , Taiwan and West Germany are prosperous ; in main part thanks to the massive financial investments
made by the US to turn them into propaganda showcases . Filipinios didn’t benefit from US
generosity because they were in a backwater place with no propaganda value
I don’t think it’s possible to compare US involvement in the Philippines/Hawaii in around 1900 with US involvement in Asia after WW II as there are too many differences.
In 1900, the US was still in the process of creating the boundaries and states that today make up the continental US. Imperialism was something new, and it was hotly debated in the US. From a realistic perspective, what some people saw in the Philippines was cheap agricultural products. That was good for a while, but by the 1930s when Philippine sugar was being produced cheaper than Hawaiian sugar, the sugar barons in Hawaii put pressure on the US government and the US government established a plan for the Philippines to gain independence in 10 years. During that time, tariffs on Philippine exports to the US gradually increased, whereas similar taxes on US imports into the Philippines were not allowed. The number of Filipinos who were allowed to migrate to the US dropped drastically, but sugar plantations in the US got an exception to that rule as they still wanted cheap labor.
So in other words, the US involvement in the Philippines was something like a first attempt at imperialism (which brought both warfare and some development to the Philippines) with a limited economic purpose that didn’t work out, and was abandoned (in a manner that the US could still benefit from).
By the end of WW II, on the other hand, after over 100,000 Americans were killed in the Asia-Pacific region fighting the Japanese, and with not only that entire region but other parts of the world, particularly Europe, suffering from the consequences of the war, and with the US as the only major country in the world that had not suffered as directly as others, with anti-colonial movements gaining strength, etc., both the US and the world were very different at that time and the kind of imperialism that emerged was likewise different from imperialism in 1900.
The postwar imperialism was both larger in scale and more indirect. Rather than gaining a colony and exploiting it directly, the US sought to create a capitalist world order in which many countries would participate, and of course with the US economy being the most powerful in that world order, the participation would not be equal, but would work to the US’s advantage (like the original economic arrangements that led to Philippine independence did). Nonetheless, for that to happen, the other countries had to be successful enough to benefit the US.
Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, South Vietnam, etc. were all seen as countries that could fit in that new economic world order. Again, for this world order to work, those societies had to be economically successful, and that was a goal from the beginning. The economic success of Taiwan, South Korea, etc., is not a “post-fact” observation. That was the aim from the start.
As for what I’m referring to as “Vietnamese exceptionalism,” it is the idea that Vietnam somehow should have been an exception to these larger global processes, and that US policy makers should have known that they should stay away from South Vietnam. I don’t see people saying the same thing about South Korea or Taiwan or West Germany – the other countries in the world that were divided after WW II into communist/non-communist halves – but that idea has repeatedly been made about the US and Vietnam. Of course people in the PRC and North Korea think that the US had no right to get involved in those places (and there is some anti-American sentiment in South Korea), but in places like North America, that is not a widely held sentiment. However, the idea that the US had no right to get involved in South Vietnam IS an idea that has long been expressed and is still very potent in places like North America. It was of course a major tenet of the anti-war movement, and because of that it continues to exist, but is there anything that made South Vietnam different from Taiwan, Korea and West Germany? Not that I can see. So why is there the idea that there is something wrong with “white countries” being “thousands of miles away from home” when it comes to South Vietnam, but not to South Korea or Taiwan. Ultimately it’s because of the war that ended up taking place (i.e., it’s a “post-fact” view), but that war, like I said, “took two to tango.”
The comment about it taking two to tango was in reference to your comment that “What I do question is the ability of the United States, or France or any other Western nation, to go into a small, alien, undeveloped Asian nation and create stability where there is chaos. . .” That’s a good point to question. I likewise doubt the ability of one country to bring stability to another, but I think we can agree that it definitely won’t work if there are others who are actively trying to make that “small, alien, undeveloped Asian nation” even more unstable. Mao Zedong and Kim Il-Sung ultimately decided to leave Taiwan and South Korea alone. That’s the difference I was pointing out.
Having written all of this, I just realized that my first response was in response to a comment you made to another post, where you stated that, “A manichean outlook is most of the time quite wrong in appraising historical events but in the case study of the Vietnam war , it applies: according to my (biased) opinion ,the USA has absolutely not a single straw of legitimacy in intervening in Vietnam.”
https://leminhkhai.wordpress.com/2017/02/09/the-other-north-american-view-of-the-30-years-war-in-vietnam-the-view-that-will-never-change-as-long-as-academics-only-speak-to-fellow-intellectuals/#comment-58705
The point of what I’ve written is to say that a manichean outlook IS still wrong in the case of the Vietnam War. To believe that it isn’t is to believe in Vietnamese exceptionalism, and American exceptionalism as well. The US has never been all-powerful or all-evil, and Vietnamese are not all victims or all angels. Once we understand that, then we can start looking at the past in all of its complexity, with all of its glorious moments, mistakes, triumphs, human failings, positive developments, destruction, joy and tragedy, and that’s precisely what Christopher Goscha does in his new book.
I find your commentaries unfocused and confusing :
_ you seem to condone American exceptionalism ; you seem to consider as a given , Americans have rights to intervene over the whole world and as a given , their agency has always benevolent designs to bring prosperity to faraway peoples , a kind of global Monroe doctrine .
_ after some persuading ( or pummeling ) Mao and Kim saw the light and desisted of annoying South Korea and Taiwan , they chose to tango ( one step forward and two stepd backward
VN exceptionalism as you explain it is a very new concept and most outlandish : [ why is there the idea that there is something wrong with “white countries” being “thousands of miles away from home” when it comes to South Vietnam, but not to South Korea or Taiwan ( or Germany )] Has somebody ever asks these countries what they really want ??
_ contrariwise , the North Vietnamese through the stalinist Lê Duân stubbornly didn’t bow ( like Korea , Taiwan , Germany ) to the ( beneficial ) wind , because of a ill-conceived « exceptionalism « !!! One would think , they were simply fighting for independance , they ‘d better eat roots than having a golden leash
南 國 山 河 南 帝 居 Nam quốc sơn hà Nam đế cư,
截 然 定 分 在 天 書 Tiệt nhiên định phận tại thiên thư
Replace Nam by Korean or German
To paraphrase Keats « Second Coming « verses :
« the best and brightest lost their convctions , while the worst ( Lê duân ) are full of passionate intensity «
I stand by my assertion , it is not manichean to state that the USA is all wrong , they had not a single straw of legitimacy to intervene in Vietnam or in Korea
Among many conclusions , this work http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/4050/1/uk_bl_ethos_550339.pdf says that on the aspects of « ius ad bello « ( justification of war ) and « jus in bello « ( conduct of war ) the US is quite wrong although the North Vietnamese through their all- out war strategy and levée en masse put civilians in danger
The American Bar Association Journal , july 1966 , is of the opinion that US unilateral intervention in VN violates the UN charter , the US constitution , the Geneva accords , the Seato treaty , ….
No, I don’t condone American exceptionalism, I just think the debate about legitimacy is beside the point.
The US and the USSR expanded their respective influence all over the globe after WWII. Can we say that the Americans had no legitimacy to be in a given country at that time? Sure, on some levels. Can we say that the Soviets had no legitimacy to be in a given country at at that time? Sure, on some levels. But what does that achieve other than make us feel good because we think we are morally right? In the realpolitiks of the day was it possible for either one to say “you know what, we don’t have any legitimacy to be in that country, so we’re just going to leave it alone.” No, of course not. So saying that either of those two superpowers had no legitimacy to be in a certain place is beside the point.
I think it is much more helpful to look at what was happening and to examine the decisions that people made in the context of the times. The US/USSR not trying to get involved in the affairs of other countries was not a possibility. That’s the world that countries had to survive and try to prosper in. I’m not condoning what the US/USSR did, but just pointing out that in that context, legitimacy, as we might think of it, wasn’t an issue that could really sway either power, as they had their own interests and their own definitions of legitimacy (and by their own definitions, the US had just as much legitimacy to be in South Vietnam, South Korea, Taiwan, etc. as the Soviets did to be in Poland, East Germany and the Mongolian People’s Republic, etc.). The other countries in the world then had to find a way to deal with that, and they did that in various ways, and some were more successful than others.
I find Pr Goscha’s NYT article disappointing . I had the feeling , he is an erudite historian but an impartial one ; but his article buys into the usual American narrative , that North VN attacked the South and the US justifiably went to their rescue .The article adds a new twist to the narrative , it elevates Lê Duân to the exalted position of the arch villain who ” chose ” agression to deflect from internal problems .
Being of a suspicious mind , I think there ‘s a conspiracy afoot to revisit Vietnam war history . It began in 2012 with the start of the Commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War, which extends from May 28, 2012 to November 11, 2025 . Then appears new historians like Nguyen lien Hang , Asselin , Tuong Vu whose line of approach is putting the limelight on Vietnamese ( whether north and south ) agency for the purpose of lessening US
involvement .
As Bacevich in his review of CH. Appy ‘s American reckoning http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/did-reagan-win-the-vietnam-war/ acutely analyzes some sections of American people are bent on ” misremembering and reimagining ” the War . The new history is trying , slowly and over many years , to redraw , small touch after small touch to turn the War into a purely Vietnamese matter and push Americans out of the picture
I can understand your suspicions, but I don’t think what you fear is actually happening. The young scholars you mention and many others, myself included, grew up in a world in North America where there was 1 version of Vietnamese history: the Vietnamese have always been fighting off foreign aggression, the Vietnamese have always hated the Chinese, the US lost an opportunity in 1945 to work with Ho Chi Minh who was really more of a nationalist than a communist, Ngo Dinh Diem was an American puppet who was picked from obscurity in Vietnam. . .). This version of Vietnamese history was created by a generation of scholars who were opposed to the war (and there were certainly many reasons to be opposed to the war, so there was nothing wrong with that), and it is a version of history that was “colored/tainted/biased” by the time in which it was created. I learned this history starting in high school, and believed it 100%, and agreed with the perspective of this scholarship 100% (the US had absolutely no reason to be in VN, etc.). It’s only when I started to conduct my own research that I started to realize that there are a lot of problems with this view/narrative of Vietnamese history. And I think the other scholars that you mention probably experienced something similar.
From our (if I can speak for the other scholars that you mentioned) perspective, we are just trying to show that the past was more complex than it has been written about so far. However, given that the previous generation’s writing took such a strong political/ideological stand, it is understandable that any effort to suggest something other than the “orthodox narrative” could be seen as “revisionist” or having an “agenda.” However, I don’t think that is the case.
That said, the emergence of scholarship that shows complexity or grayness, when people are so used to seeing the past in black and white, is a challenge to deal with. When I teach about the war years now, I do worry that introducing this new scholarship will lead people to think simplistically that US intervention was completely justified, but so far that hasn’t happened. To their credit, students tend to see the entire war as a mess that multiple parties contributed too. At the same time, things like agent orange (tested here in Hawaii), and the bombing of Laos and Cambodia are such striking examples of US mistakes that I don’t think anyone who learns about the war ends up thinking that it was entirely a Vietnamese matter and Americans can be pushed out of the picture.
I do, however, think that seeing the grayness is much more instructive than imagining that everything was black and white. We live in a world of grayness (and that has always been the case), It’s much more beneficial to learn from the grayness of the past than to try to learn from some invented black and white models. I don’t see anything conspiratorial in that. I see it as an accurate assessment of reality and a sincere effort to teach human beings about reality.
In reference to your comment regarding “the autonomy and agency that NDD possessed”, and how many people have over the past several decades made the foolish (not to mention imperialist and racist) assumption that Ngô Đình Diệm was merely a puppet, controlled by the U.S. Government or factions thereof, I came across an interesting bit of information recently while reading ‘The War In Indo-China 1945-54’ by Jacques Dalloz. On page 155, Dalloz states the following (words within brackets were added by me in the interest of clarity): “The departure of [Bao Dai and Nguyen Van Tam] led to a revolt instigated by the sects. On 5 September [1953], their representatives got together with a leading Buddhist and a Catholic prelate and signed a document denouncing the government in the strongest of terms. The bishop in question was [Ngo Dinh] Diem’s brother, Ngo Dinh Thuc. Thus the Ngo clan had now entered the picture. On the next day, the intellectual of the family, Ngo Dinh Nhu, led a gathering of about fifty people which culminated in a front aimed at achieving unity, independence and peace. It intended to group together the forces opposed to Tam and set itself up as the uncompromising defender of Vietnamese sovereignty.”
M. Dalloz did not indicate any sources for this information, which may simply have been either a mistake in the English-language edition or an oversight in the original work; he may have been under the impression that the events to which he referred were common knowledge, at least within the milieu of Indo-China scholars. In any case, presuming the accuracy of the account, it seems clear that there was some sort of plan, or at least much more co-ordination than was previously thought, among the Ngô brothers in this regard. In addition to underlining the complete and total lack of U.S. control, this would seem to cast the events around Diệm’s “exile” in a somewhat different light as compared with many accounts in English-language works from the 1960s, 1970s & 1980s. Obviously, there is the usual caveat that I am almost completely ignorant of anything that Vietnamese-language and even most French-language sources may have to say on the subject, and in this particular case I am also years behind in reading the recent English-language scholarship on the “Ngô Đình Diệm era”, i.e. Shaw, Miller, Chapman, Jacobs, Stewart and even back to Philip E. Catton’s (2003) book on the subject…
If anyone is interested in reading it, my review of ‘The War In Indo-China 1945-54’ can be found here: (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/139284055?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1).
You’re dead on the money here. One of Edward Miller’s big contributions is in documenting how wrong the idea that Diem was “plucked from obscurity” is.
_ people always forget to mention NDDiêm ‘s Catholic names , Jean Baptiste
He was foremost a Catholic ; was he a Vietnamese , did he consider himself as one ?
I doubt seriously that , this is no biased assertion . The Catholic church had an
exceptionalist , supranational state of mind ; like the Communists later , it considered itself as an internationalist entity , denying all kinds of nationalisms .
_ after 100 years of rule , all the VN Catholics have to put forward as standard bearer was NDD , that reflects of the sad level of the VN community .
NDD was well known for his devoutness , bordering on fanaticism ; Bernard Fall
wrote of him in ” Two Vietnams” :
[ Ngo Dinh Diem’s militancy is of that kind: His faith is made less of the kindness of the apostles, than of the ruthless militancy of the Grand Inquisitor; and his view of government is made less of the constitutional strength of a President of the republic than of the petty tyranny of a tradition-bound mandarin. To a French Catholic interlocutor who wanted to emphazise Diem’s bond with French culture by stressing « our common faith, » Diem was reported to have answered calmly: « You know, I consider myself rather as a Spanish Catholic, » i.e., a spiritual son of a fiercely aggressive and militant faith rather than of the easygoing and tolerant approach of Gallican Catholicism.]
_ nearly unmentioned was the checkered past of the VN Catholic community :
they were the French colonialists henchmen and quartermasters . They didn’t look upon the other Vietnamese as fellow countrymen but as heathens to be converted
willy- nilly or to be massacred ” to save their souls ” ( we had to destroy the town in order to save them ) [Cao Huy Thuân : Christianisme et colonialisme au Viêt-Nam]
_ also hardly mentioned is the overwhelming role of the Vatican in the making of the VN tragedy
The Italian , later US immigrant , scholar Avro Manhattan (1914-1990) , the world’s foremost authority on Roman Catholicism in politics was the author of over 20 books including the best-seller ” The Vatican in World Politics ” twice Book-of-the-Month and going through 57 editions. He risked his life daily to expose some of the darkest secrets of the Papacy. His books were #1 on the Forbidden Index for the past 50 years . He wrote “Vietnam ! Why did we go ? ”
!!https://endrtimes.blogspot.com/2013/10/vietnam-why-did-we-go-by-avro-manhattan.html
With an immense collection of facts, photos, names and dates, Manhattan proves that the Vietnam War began as a religious conflict. He shows how America was manipulated into supporting Catholic oppression in Vietnam supposedly to fight communism.
It is not a matter of forgetting, riroriro, but rather that within this particular venue (specifically Professor Kelley’s blog, but more broadly the worldwide community of Indo-China & SEA scholars), I for one simply take it for granted that, for example, the full name of Jean Baptiste Ngô Đình Diệm’s oldest surviving brother, Pierre Martin Ngô Đình Thục, is well known and that it is therefore unnecessary to render it in full every single time. In other words, this is not a political statement of any kind, and I very much doubt that anyone would seriously entertain the idea that not using the Ngô brothers’ baptismal names would have the effect of de-emphasizing the fact that they were Catholic.
The VN Catholics were not another community or ethnie among others writhing under colonial boot , they were co- oppressors ; in the Philippines , they were given the overwhelmingly upper hand over Spanish civil administration so that Spanish rule was termed a ” friocracy ” ot theocracy . In Vietnam , they were held in check by their sworn brother – enemies , the anticlerical Republicans who blocked their ambitions , otherwise , all of the Vietnamese would have been converted by force .
I’ve found a letter from Ngô dinh Thuc written to Amiral Decoux ( maybe a forgery
or not ? ) . https://sachhiem.net/BUIKHA/BuiKha.php
The two other brothers Diem and Nhu had run afoul of french colonial rule by making contacts with the Japanese ; they were threatened with imprisonment . Thuc begged Decoux for forgivance , recalling the numerous deeds that their family accomplished in support of the French , starting with their father Ngô dinh Kha , boasting of their status of ” meritorious running dogs ” (走 tẩu 狗 cẩu in Chinese )
So how could the VN Catholics in general and the Ngô clan could pretend to be nationalist anti – french independance fighters .
The Yankees did a cruel joke on the VN people supporting the worst possible
henchmen as anti communist fighters , inventing the Republic of ( south) VN to co-me and steal the VN people ‘s independance as they did with the Philippines .
They were adept of that kind of subversion while they ritually and self righteously denounce the Communist similar misdeeds ; they perpetrated dozens of rescue missions ( Greece , Panama , Irak , Haiti , Libya , …. ) ever since the conquest of Hawaii and the Philippines to this day ; watch the latest episodes of “Uncle Sam goes saving democracy ” playing these days in Venezuela .
How could there have been tons of studies arguing about the legitimacy ot NDDiem and the USA in the Vietnam war , they had the same legitimacy as for Hitler and Pétain .
Several of the official C.I.A. histories related to the conflict in Indo-China were de-classified roughly a decade ago, in response to FOIA requests filed by John Prados, Emma Best and probably others as well. While reading one of them earlier today, I came across some more information relevant to the above post & comments. According to this history (‘C.I.A. And The House Of Ngo: Covert Action in South Vietnam, 1954-63’ by Thomas L. Ahern Jr.), Ngô Đình Nhu was the C.I.A.’s “main political action contact” from some point in 1951 to early 1953, and remained in regular contact with agency personnel even after that time. Obviously, this lends even more credence to the idea that there was not only a great deal more coordination between the Ngô brothers themselves, but also between them and their various contacts within the U.S. government long before Bảo Đại appointed Ngô Đình Diệm Prime Minister. Of course, the caveat I mentioned above still applies, but when juxtaposed against previous (i.e. 1990s and earlier) works, this information presents a very different picture of the way things played out politically in Viet Nam during the 1950s…
Recently, I have encountered two books about the wars, written by George J. Veith (listed here: https://www.amazon.com/George-J-Veith/e/B000APURX0 – “Black April …” and “Drawn swords …”). I wonder if those books follow the “new” consensus you mentioned in the post, and by extension, if the author is a “reliable narrator” (trivia: he was a Army captain and wrote 4 books about the war, the first one was kind of endorsed by Kissinger).
P.S: If possible, please briefly review those two books.