Three former government officials take to task the foreign-policy decisions of the past five presidents and detail their failures and inadequacies

Our Own Worst Enemy: The Unmaking of American Foreign Policy (A Touchstone Book)

Politics & Social Sciences

Gelb, Leslie H.

Lake, Anthony

Destler, I.M.

Politics & Government

Simon&Schuster

The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked (A Brookings Classic)

"If a historian were allowed but one book on the American involvement in Vietnam, this would be it." — Foreign Affairs When first published in 1979, four years after the end of one of the most divisive conflicts in the United States, The Irony of Vietnam raised eyebrows. Most students of the war argued that the United States had "stumbled into a quagmire in Vietnam through hubris and miscalculation," as the New York Times's Fox Butterfield put it. But the perspective of time and the opening of documentary sources, including the Pentagon Papers, had allowed Gelb and Betts to probe deep into the decisionmaking leading to escalation of military action in Vietnam. The failure of Vietnam could be laid at the door of American foreign policy, they said, but the decisions that led to the failure were made by presidents aware of the risks, clear about their aims, knowledgeable about the weaknesses of their allies, and under no illusion about the outcome.
 The book offers a picture of a steely resolve in government circles that, while useful in creating consensus, did not allow for alternative perspectives. In the years since its publication, The Irony of Vietnam has come to be considered the seminal work on the Vietnam War.

History

Betts Arnold A. Saltzman Profes, Richard K.

Military

Brookings Institution Press

Designed to reach a wide audience of scholars and policymakers, the Brookings-Wharton Papers on Urban Affairs 2000 is an annual series that serves as a forum for cutting-edge, accessible research on urban policy. The editors seek to integrate broader research into the urban policy discussion by bringing urban studies scholars together with economists and researchers studying subjects with important urban implications. The six papers in this inaugural volume are divided into two sections. The first three assess the state of urban research and policy. The others address important aspects of the urban economy: education, racial segregation, and federal housing policies.

The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked

Few analysts of U.S. involvement in Vietnam would agree with the provocative conclusion of this book. The thesis of most postmortems is that the United States lost the war because of the failure of its foreign policy decisionmaking system. According to Gelb and Betts, however, the foreign policy failed, but the decisionmaking system worked. They attribute this paradox to the efficiency of the system in sustaining an increasingly heavy commitment based on the shared conviction of six administrations that the United States must prevent the loss of Vietnam to communism. However questionable the conviction, and thus the commitment, may have been, the authors stress that the latter "was made and kept for twenty-five years. That is what the system —the shared values, the political and bureaucratic pressures —was designed to do, and it did it." The comprehensive analysis that supports this contention reflects the widest use thus fare of available sources, including recently declassified portions of negotiations documents and files in presidential libraries. The frequently quoted statement of the principals themselves contradict the commonly held view that U.S. leaders were unaware of the consequences of their decisions and deluded by false expectations of easy victory. With few exceptions, the record reveals that these leaders were both realistic and pessimistic about the chances for success in Vietnam. Whey they persisted nonetheless is explained in this thorough account of their decisionmaking from 1946 to 1968, and how their mistakes might be avoided by policymakers in the future is considered in the final chapter.

Asia

Brookings Institution

The book is in good condition. No damages or anything

Intervention and American Foreign Policy (Foreign Affairs Editors' Choice)

Legal Theory & Systems

Council on Foreign Relations

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