Peace Efforts in Vietnam

Peace negotiations can get word place in the absence of war if the kick downstairsies, though not at war at the time the negotiations ar entered into, are aware that war is imminent or probable, and if each political party believes that a negotiated settlement is a preferable substitute. That is, each party must believe that the second of the above preconditions can be met, and therefore negotiation is worthwhile. The course of negotiations will then touch on whether or not the two sides were correct in supposing that a negotiated settlement could be reached; if either side decides in the ostracise the negotiations will break down, as happened in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations (with the result not of formal war but at least of a more warlike condition between them).

The linked States, however, entered into the Vietnam struggle in a way that effectively precluded negotiation in advance of hostilities. The process of entry into the war is outside the cathode-ray oscilloscope of this discussion, but American entry into the war was not as gradual as it has come to be seen in ex post occurrenceo popular belief; the main escalation from "military advisors" in the small-scale tens of thousands to regular combat troops in the hundreds of thousands took place in months rather than years (Prados, 1995, pp. 102-103).

However, this escalation was initially viewed by American policymakers as a relatively short-term expedient to help an al

The actual language of the Four Points undertake that second Vietnam should be governed "in accordance with the program of the NLF." besides, says McNamara, " expression back, it is obvious that the NLF's platform had to promote a government of neutrality because the NLF itself was composed of so many different groups, most of them noncommunist, at least in the beginning." Therefore, McNamara continues, "once we acknowledge that the NLF could take part in a coalition government -- and it is acknowledged in the Fourteen Points -- then a coalition government, possibly lots like the one envisioned in Point collar of Hanoi's Four Points, had to emerge" (McNamara et al., 1999, pp. 301-302).

________ (1993). Containing domestic enemies: Richard M. Nixon and the war at home.

In Anderson, David L., Shadow on the White House: Presidents and the Vietnam War, 1945-1975. Lawrence: University of Kansas, pp. 130-151.

This in fact was the central conundrum of American involvement in Vietnam from the outset. The United States was attempting to achieve, by military and diplomatic means, what it regarded as an acceptable progeny in South Vietnam. But the fate of South Vietnam hinged ultimately on political factors at work within South Vietnam itself, and these were not amenable to the measures the Americans brought to bear. On the military side, American forces were chiefly successful on the battlefield; the Vietcong and North Vietnamese forces were never able to achieve a major battlefield victory. But "when reminded that his army had not defeated the U.S. Army on the battlefield, a North Vietnamese officer aptly replied, "That may be so, but it is also irrelevant" (Herrington, 1985, p. 243).

ly hold on by means of a crisis, and it seems to have been assumed initially that intervention was certain(prenominal) to be successful. Hence no consideration was given to the alternative of negotiation. Robert S. McNamara takes himself and his fellow policymakers to task for, subsequently,
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