Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction: Inventing Vietnam
- 2 The Cold War, Colonialism, and the Origins of the American Commitment to Vietnam, 1945–1954
- 3 “The Needs Are Enormous, the Time Short”: Michigan State University, the U.S. Operations Mission, State Building, and Vietnam
- 4 Surviving the Crises: Southern Vietnam, 1958–1960
- 5 “A Permanent Mendicant”: Southern Vietnam, 1960–1963
- 6 A Period of Shakedown: Southern Vietnam, 1963–1965
- 7 The Paradox of Construction and Destruction: Southern Vietnam, 1966–1968
- Epilogue: War, Politics, and the End in Vietnam
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - Introduction: Inventing Vietnam
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction: Inventing Vietnam
- 2 The Cold War, Colonialism, and the Origins of the American Commitment to Vietnam, 1945–1954
- 3 “The Needs Are Enormous, the Time Short”: Michigan State University, the U.S. Operations Mission, State Building, and Vietnam
- 4 Surviving the Crises: Southern Vietnam, 1958–1960
- 5 “A Permanent Mendicant”: Southern Vietnam, 1960–1963
- 6 A Period of Shakedown: Southern Vietnam, 1963–1965
- 7 The Paradox of Construction and Destruction: Southern Vietnam, 1966–1968
- Epilogue: War, Politics, and the End in Vietnam
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future.
– Karl MarxThe great problem from now on out [is] whether we [can] salvage what the Communists had ostensibly left out of their grasp in Indochina.
– Secretary of State John Foster DullesI've never seen a situation like this [in southern Vietnam]. It defies imagination.… The government is shaky as all hell. It is being propped up for the moment only with great difficulty. Nothing can help it so much as administrative, economic, and social reforms.… The needs are enormous, the time short.
– Wesley Fishel, 1954By early 1957,… it became evident the newly created nation [in Vietnam] would survive successfully the series of crises which threatened its existence at the outset.
– Michigan State University Vietnam Advisory Group (MSUG), Final ReportAlthough no MSUG member ever expected to find in newly independent Vietnam all the civil liberties firmly established among older western democracies, some members had misgivings lest the project's technical assistance might serve to strengthen an autocratic regime and retard the development of democratic institutions. Most members … believed our activities were valuable … in creating among the Vietnamese a critical attitude for seeking truth and knowledge through systematic research, promoting the study of social sciences from the western viewpoint, raising the general of educational standards, and implanting in the minds of government officials, police officers and teachers the ideas of responsibility and responsiveness to the public, individual dignity and other such concepts, the acceptance of which is a prerequisite for the eventual evolution of free institutions in Vietnam. […]
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- Inventing VietnamThe United States and State Building, 1954–1968, pp. 1 - 19Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008