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A Grand Delusion: America's Descent Into Vietnam
A Grand Delusion is the first comprehensive single-volume American political history of the Vietnam War. Spanning the years 1945 to 1975, it is the definitive story of the well-meaning, but often misguided, American political leaders whose unquestioning adherence to the crusading, anti-Communist Cold War dogma of the 1950's and 1960's led the nation into its tragic misadventure in Vietnam.At the center of this narrative are seven political leaders-Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, J. William Fulbright, Mike Mansfield, and George McGovern. During their careers, each occupied center-stage in the nation's debate over U.S. policy in Vietnam.This is a piercing analysis of political currents and an epic tragedy filled with fascinating characters and antagonisms and beliefs that divided the nation.
848 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 19, 2019
A thorough, well-researched and very readable political history of the American war in Indochina.
Mann begins with the fall of China to the communists, and how the political fallout in the US led to American politicians becoming reluctant to be labeled as soft on communism, and how this led to America’s political, economic and military support of the Saigon government.
He describes how anti-war dissent dated back to the mid-1960s, and how it was ignored or how the dissenters choose to defer to the president. He shows how members of Congress both actively participated in and chose to stay out of decisions on entering and escalating the war. Although the book is largely a political history, Mann doesn’t spend much time on the civil rights movement. Most of the blame seems reserved for Johnson; Mann uses the classic picture of LBJ doubting that the war could be won but refusing to pull out for political reasons.
The narrative is vivid and engaging, and does a great job making the descent into war human and understandable. Unfortunately, the narrative can get a bit superficial; Mann often covers the speeches made, debates held, minutes taken, memos written, etc. without much analysis. After Nixon gets elected, the book is basically just about the actions of congressional war opponents.There is little coverage of the military aspect or the war protests except to the extent that they influenced major policy decisions. There is little on the North or South Vietnamese leadership
Still, an accessible and very well-written work.
Mann begins with the fall of China to the communists, and how the political fallout in the US led to American politicians becoming reluctant to be labeled as soft on communism, and how this led to America’s political, economic and military support of the Saigon government.
He describes how anti-war dissent dated back to the mid-1960s, and how it was ignored or how the dissenters choose to defer to the president. He shows how members of Congress both actively participated in and chose to stay out of decisions on entering and escalating the war. Although the book is largely a political history, Mann doesn’t spend much time on the civil rights movement. Most of the blame seems reserved for Johnson; Mann uses the classic picture of LBJ doubting that the war could be won but refusing to pull out for political reasons.
The narrative is vivid and engaging, and does a great job making the descent into war human and understandable. Unfortunately, the narrative can get a bit superficial; Mann often covers the speeches made, debates held, minutes taken, memos written, etc. without much analysis. After Nixon gets elected, the book is basically just about the actions of congressional war opponents.There is little coverage of the military aspect or the war protests except to the extent that they influenced major policy decisions. There is little on the North or South Vietnamese leadership
Still, an accessible and very well-written work.
December 3, 2021
This is a superb book. As far as political histories of the Vietnam War from the American side goes, this has to rank among the best, really.
It's quite hefty at 733 pages, but never feels it is dragging out too long on some aspects or some period of time. Although at first, you may be a little impatient with the first 200 pages of the book that cover the period going up to the beginning of the 60s and the Kennedy presidency. You may be like, "let's go on with it already!" But hang on, because for me personally this part illuminated the whole Vietnam war that follows in a very different light.
You see, the subtitle of the book is "America's Descent Into Vietnam", and this imperative to understand how America sunk in and broke its self-confidence that had kept on growing since the beginning of the century, is the main subject of interest of Robert Mann and he chases it unmercifully like a silver lining throughout the book.
Like any Vietnam War history amateur, I had read and heard many times about the vaunted "Domino Theory" that supposedly explains why the U.S. got involved in Vietnam. It postulates that after China went communist, it would put pressure on Vietnam to go communist too, and that if it happened, it would be like a row of standing dominoes that fall on each other, and pretty soon all the countries of Southeast Asia would turn communist one after the other: it would be Vietnam, then Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia... Hundreds of millions of people of a rich region of the globe would fell into the lap of the Moscow-Beijing communist axis. Pretty easy to understand, and a powerful analogy, right? Of course, we now know it didn't happen, and that countries are very different from dominoes and that the whole analogy was far too simplistic.
Robert Mann explains that powerful political currents, far more important than a domino theory, were at work in the American political landscape that over the course of 15 years (1950-1965) slowly but surely nudged the U.S. into a full-scale war in Vietnam. The trauma in American politics of China becoming communist in 1949, just at the time that the idea of a communist, Soviet-led global conspiracy was taking firm roots in the U.S., closely followed in 1950 by the invasion of South Korea by North Korea supported by Mao's China, is the original source of the problem. It put Democrats on the defensive while Republicans accused them of being "soft" on communism and losing the Cold War. Add to that the McCarthy anti-communist craziness and paranoia in the beginning of the 1950s, and it durably impugned on Democrats that never again should they be seen as being soft on communism. And that's why Kennedy, also pushed on by his boy-scout optimism in the Manifest Destiny of the U.S. as a beacon of liberty and democracy in the world, accepted to increase gradually the U.S. advisory forces in South Vietnam, and then Johnson got himself swallowed up whole and even compounded and aggravated the problem by trying to hide the scale of the buildup in order to protect his beloved Great Society programs, while at the same time trying to appear "tough" on communism. Mann goes up right to 1975, nicely covering in details the schizophrenic-like way Nixon managed the war from 1969.
Oftentimes, I had flashes of the Iraq/Afghanistan wars, slowing shaking my head, thinking people really seem condemned to repeat History because a lot of what went wrong in Iraq and Afghanistan is eerily similar to what happened in Vietnam.
Highly recommended.
It's quite hefty at 733 pages, but never feels it is dragging out too long on some aspects or some period of time. Although at first, you may be a little impatient with the first 200 pages of the book that cover the period going up to the beginning of the 60s and the Kennedy presidency. You may be like, "let's go on with it already!" But hang on, because for me personally this part illuminated the whole Vietnam war that follows in a very different light.
You see, the subtitle of the book is "America's Descent Into Vietnam", and this imperative to understand how America sunk in and broke its self-confidence that had kept on growing since the beginning of the century, is the main subject of interest of Robert Mann and he chases it unmercifully like a silver lining throughout the book.
Like any Vietnam War history amateur, I had read and heard many times about the vaunted "Domino Theory" that supposedly explains why the U.S. got involved in Vietnam. It postulates that after China went communist, it would put pressure on Vietnam to go communist too, and that if it happened, it would be like a row of standing dominoes that fall on each other, and pretty soon all the countries of Southeast Asia would turn communist one after the other: it would be Vietnam, then Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia... Hundreds of millions of people of a rich region of the globe would fell into the lap of the Moscow-Beijing communist axis. Pretty easy to understand, and a powerful analogy, right? Of course, we now know it didn't happen, and that countries are very different from dominoes and that the whole analogy was far too simplistic.
Robert Mann explains that powerful political currents, far more important than a domino theory, were at work in the American political landscape that over the course of 15 years (1950-1965) slowly but surely nudged the U.S. into a full-scale war in Vietnam. The trauma in American politics of China becoming communist in 1949, just at the time that the idea of a communist, Soviet-led global conspiracy was taking firm roots in the U.S., closely followed in 1950 by the invasion of South Korea by North Korea supported by Mao's China, is the original source of the problem. It put Democrats on the defensive while Republicans accused them of being "soft" on communism and losing the Cold War. Add to that the McCarthy anti-communist craziness and paranoia in the beginning of the 1950s, and it durably impugned on Democrats that never again should they be seen as being soft on communism. And that's why Kennedy, also pushed on by his boy-scout optimism in the Manifest Destiny of the U.S. as a beacon of liberty and democracy in the world, accepted to increase gradually the U.S. advisory forces in South Vietnam, and then Johnson got himself swallowed up whole and even compounded and aggravated the problem by trying to hide the scale of the buildup in order to protect his beloved Great Society programs, while at the same time trying to appear "tough" on communism. Mann goes up right to 1975, nicely covering in details the schizophrenic-like way Nixon managed the war from 1969.
Oftentimes, I had flashes of the Iraq/Afghanistan wars, slowing shaking my head, thinking people really seem condemned to repeat History because a lot of what went wrong in Iraq and Afghanistan is eerily similar to what happened in Vietnam.
Highly recommended.
August 13, 2020
More detailed than “The Best and the Brightest” but without the sizzle.
October 29, 2009
Extraordinarily engaging read. Part I outlines the role of Republican electoral politics in establishing in the minds of voters an irrational fear of communist take-overs in Asia in order to defeat the Democrats in 1950, 1952, a manipulatory tactic that laid the foundations, i.e. yet another opportunity for fear-mongering, for decisions in later administrations to intervene in Vietnam, where absolutely no objective risk to US national security was at stake. Imagine Joe McCarthy and Robert Taft - the sources of a decision to "take a stand" in Vietnam, all to placate and manipulate an empty-headed American public. Fortunately the public paid a very heavy price. So will Republican manipulation of public opinion, i.e. Dick Cheney, in the name of a war on a fictional terrorist threat cause Obama to commit more ground troops to fight a war in a country where absolutely no real threat to US national security exists? Interesting. If yes, then I hope the public is willing to accept another $5-6 trillion addition to the national debt.
This book should be considered along with Francis Fitzgerald's "Fire in the Lake," one assumes the perspective of US politics, the other the perspective of the war and related politics as viewed by the Vietnamese. And never the twain shall meet.
This book should be considered along with Francis Fitzgerald's "Fire in the Lake," one assumes the perspective of US politics, the other the perspective of the war and related politics as viewed by the Vietnamese. And never the twain shall meet.
July 25, 2013
Fresh perspective on the collective tragedy that was the Vietnam War. I hadn't explored Vietnam much before, and I enjoyed the focus here on the mechanisms of policy-making rather than on combat or tactics. The author does a more than credible job of revealing the personalities of those figures central to our agonizing slide into war, especially the presidents who were ultimately responsible. However, potential readers are forewarned that the author's bias against the warmongers is transparent from page one. This is far from a cold, passionless account of the War. At times the skewed perspective is a definite distraction, although I wouldn't go so far as to say any of Mann's commentary is unfair or disingenuous. I'm just used to a more passive narration from a piece of historical nonfiction.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews