America After Vietnam

First published in 1997, this volume explores the twenty years it has taken the United States to decide where Vietnam belongs on its mental landscape, as indicated by the establishment of official diplomatic relations between the two countries on August 5, 1995. Having won the Cold War, but lost a skirmish in Vietnam, America’s defeat can now be set in context against subsequent campaigns in Afghanistan, Angola, El Salvador, Eritrea, Nicaragua, Somalia, Sudan and elsewhere which suggest that the best any outsider can expect by intervening in Third World domestic conflicts is a hugely expensive, bloody stalemate. Tai Sung-An identifies that, despite America’s painful, deep and very expensive involvement in Vietnam for a lengthy two decades, Americans fought, failed and left while remaining ignorant of the most elementary knowledge of Vietnam, symptomatic of a cultural gap, isolationism and even intellectual complacency.