In South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem’s political base consisted of Catholics, the Catholic Church hierarchy, the military’s officer corps (which was also heavily Catholic), landlords, the country’s business elite, and the urban middle class. In a sense, the American Catholic Church, as well as the presidential administrations of Eisenhower and Kennedy represented another important segment of Diem’s base. Without the backing of those groups, he risked losing his hold on power. Because his political influence did not derive from the peasantry, and never had, Diem, during his nine years as the leader of South Vietnam, largely ignored the interests and aspirations of South Vietnam’s rural population. He did not believe he needed the rural populace in order to remain in office. Another factor that contributed to his neglect of the peasantry related to the perceived military threat by the Communist North. Up until at least 1959, neither Diem nor the Americans believed the Communists would conduct a large-scale, rural-based insurgency in the South. The American Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) in Saigon concluded that the northern-based Communists, if they did seek to topple the Saigon regime, would launch a conventional cross-border invasion. MAAG advised Diem that he should train and equip the ARVN to confront North Vietnamese regulars rather than peasant guerrillas. If an insurgency should emerge in the South, MAAG believed conventional ARVN forces could handle it. Continue Reading »
Tagged Agroville, Corvee Labor, David Halberstam, Dean Rusk, Ho Chi Minh, John F. Kennedy, John Kenneth Galbraith, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Maxwell Taylor, Michael V. Forrestal, National Liberation Front, Neil Sheehan, Ngo Dinh Diem, North Vietnam, Operation Sunrise, Robert G. K. Thompson, Robert S. McNamara, South Vietnam, Stanley Karnow, Strategic Hamlet Program, Viet Minh, Vietcong, Vietnam War
The United States and Soviet Union emerged from World War II as the world’s two most powerful nation states. Yet, the United States far surpassed the Soviet Union in economic and military might. For instance, four years after the conclusion of the war, it was estimated that the United States possessed a Gross National Product (GNP) of 250 billion dollars compared to the U.S.S.R.’s 65 billion [May, Interpreting NSC-68, 36]. The larger, diversified U.S. economy translated into an impressive standard of living for its citizens. The American people experienced an unprecedented material abundance. No other society in world history had ever been so wealthy. Nor had any other country developed such high levels of efficiencies in manufacturing and agricultural production. U.S. economic strength underpinned the U.S.’s military might. Continue Reading »
Tagged Containment Policy, Dean Acheson, Dean Rusk, Dwight D. Eisenhower, European Recovery Program, George F. Kennan, Harry S Truman, Hiroshima, Ho Chi Minh, John F. Kennedy, Joseph McCarthy, Kim Il Sung, Korean War, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Mao Zedong, Marshall Plan, Military Assistance Advisory Group, Nagasaki, NATO, Ngo Dinh Diem, NSC 68, Paul Nitze, Richard M. Nixon, SEATO, South Vietnam, Viet Cong, Vietnam War, Wars of National Liberation, World War II, Yalu River
Robert Strange McNamara was born on June 9, 1916, in San Francisco, California, to Robert James McNamara and Clara Nell Strange McNamara. Yes, his middle name, as he so often told others, was in fact “Strange,” which was his mother’s maiden name. In 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, McNamara graduated from Piedmont High School in Piedmont, California. From there he went on to study economics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he graduated with honors in 1937. Following his undergraduate studies, he pursued, and completed, an M.B.A. at the Harvard Business School. He was an exceptional student. One of his professors, Edmund Learned, remembered the young McNamara, “…I almost got the feeling he was ingesting these systems [as part of his studies in systems analysis] as if he’d somehow known them all before, in another consciousness….” [Hendrickson, Living Dead, 86]. Continue Reading »
