War Council

McGeorge Bundy, the NSC, and Vietnam

Häftad, Engelska, 2010

399 kr

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Was the Vietnam War unavoidable? Historians have long assumed that ideological views and the momentum of events made American intervention inevitable. By examining the role of McGeorge Bundy and the National Security Council, Andrew Preston demonstrates that policymakers escalated the conflict in Vietnam in the face of internal opposition, external pressures, and a continually failing strategy.Bundy created the position of National Security Adviser as we know it today, with momentous consequences that continue to shape American foreign policy. Both today's presidential supremacy in foreign policy and the contemporary national security bureaucracy find their origins in Bundy's powers as the first National Security Adviser and in the ways in which he and his staff brought about American intervention in Vietnam. Presidents Kennedy and Johnson were not enthusiastic about waging a difficult war in pursuit of murky aims, but the NSC's bureaucratic dexterity and persuasive influence in the Oval Office skewed the debate in favor of the conflict.In challenging the prevailing view of Bundy as a loyal but quietly doubting warrior, Preston also revises our understanding of what it meant--and means--to be a hawk or a dove. The War Council is an illuminating and compelling story with two inseparable themes: the acquisition and consolidation of power; and how that power is exercised.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2010-04-10
Mått156 x 235 x 23 mm
Vikt476 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor336
FörlagHarvard University Press
ISBN9780674046320
UtmärkelserNominated for OAH Frederick Jackson Turner Award 2007

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Andrew Preston is W. L. Lyons Brown Jr. Jefferson Scholars Foundation Distinguished Professor in Diplomacy and Statecraft at the University of Virginia. He is the author of The War Council: McGeorge Bundy, the NSC, and Vietnam and the prizewinning Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the London Review of Books, and Foreign Affairs.

Acknowledgments Introduction 1. The Mentor: Henry L. Stimson's Influence on Bundy 2. A Foreign Office in Microcosm: Creating the National Security Adviser and Recreating the NSC Staff 3. Learning to Fear the Bomb: Kennedy's Crises and the Origins of Detente 4. The Hawk: Walt Rostow and the First Attempt at Americanization 5. The Soft Hawk: Michael Forrestal and Non-Military Escalation 6. Bundy the Adviser: The Drift to War 7. Bundy the Advocate: The Rush to War 8. Bundy Ambivalent: Rolling Thunder, Student Unrest, and the Decision to Commit Troops 9. Bundy Resilient: The Bombing Pause and the Continuing Search for a Successful Policy Epilogue: Legacies Abbreviations Notes Bibliography of Primary Sources Index

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