The Vietnam War a study in the making of American policy / Michael P. Sullivan.

Includes bibliographies and index.

Vietnam : competing perspectives -- Vietnam as vital : myth or reality -- Decision-making models : rational policy or quagmire? -- Moods and public opinion : background for decisions -- The Vietnam War, the Cold War, and long-term trends -- The lessons of Vietnam.

The war in Vietnam achieved almost none of the goals the American decision-makers formulated, and it cost more than 56,000 American lives. Yet, until recently, Americans have preferred to ignore the causes and consequences of this disaster by treating the war as an aberration in United States foreign policy, an unfortunate but unique mistake. What are the ""lessons"" of Vietnam? Many previous discussions have focused on narrow or misleading questions, rehashing military decisions, for example, or offering blow-by-blow accounts of Washington infighting, or castigating foreign-policy decision-makers. Michael Sullivan undertakes instead a broad and systematic treatment of the American experience in Vietnam, using a variety of theoretical perspectives to study several aspects of that experience, including the decision-making process and decision-makers' perceptions of the war; public opinion and "mood" before, during and after the war; and the Vietnam War in relation to the Cold War and to power structures and patterns of violence in the international system.

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