History 485A

Maddux/Devine

Fall 2011

Final Exam Study Guide

The final exam will consist of two parts: In Part I (70 points), there will be ten short essay questions; you will answer seven of your choice. The ten questions for Part I will be taken from the first 44 questions below.  In Part II (30 points), there will be three long essay questions; you will answer one. The questions for Part II will be taken from the last four questions below. There will be no questions on the exam that do not appear below.

1. Why does Gareth Porter suggest that Presidents Kennedy and Johnson did not have as much power to determine their own Vietnam policies as some historians have claimed?  What kept them from having such power?

2. Pick one of the three “central assumptions” of the dominant “Cold War consensus” paradigm and explain how Porter challenges the validity of this assumption.

3. What are some of the weaknesses in Porter’s alternative thesis that the primary goal of U.S. policy in Asia was keeping steady pressure on China?

4. Why did the Tonkin Gulf incident end up having broader significance? Was this, as some have argued, a deliberate deception on the Americans’ part that Johnson used as an excuse to widen the war?

5. Some historians have argued that Johnson’s decision to escalate the U.S. commitment in Vietnam was “inevitable” or “unavoidable.”  Why does Logevall disagree and even argue that, given what Johnson knew at the time, that it is actually surprising he chose to escalate the war?

6. According to Logevall, what factors led Lyndon Johnson to approve escalation in Vietnam – including bombing North Vietnam and sending in ground combat forces? If U.S. military and diplomatic officials including LBJ were not very optimistic about what escalation would accomplish in 1965, why did they escalate anyway?

7. How do the articles by Logevall and Porter revise early historians’ arguments that Lyndon Johnson was eager to expand U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war and used the Gulf of Tonkin incident as an excuse for doing so?

8. What evidence does Sandra Taylor introduce in arguing that LBJ’s racial stereotypes played a significant role in determining his policy decisions in 1965? How does she make the case that these factors were just as important as domestic political considerations and Cold War calculations?

9. In what ways did Le Ly Hayslip’s views of Americans evolve from her first encounter with them as a young girl to her eventual departure from South Vietnam with an American soldier? Does she come to have a more nuanced understanding of Americans or are her views shaped by a concern for survival or part of an opportunistic response to the ebb and flow of the conflict?

10. Drawing on your reading of Hayslip (and citing specific examples from the book), explain why, initially, the Vietcong was successful and why the Americans had difficulty achieving success in winning over the rural population of central and south Vietnam.

11. How does Hayslip’s account of her involvement with the Vietcong reveal both the strengths and weaknesses of their political-military strategy? Why did her own attitude toward the Vietcong change?

12. Drawing on the material in Hayslip’s memoir, explain how the war affected traditional Vietnamese cultural values and gender relations.

13. Drawing on the material in Hayslip’s memoir, make a case for what you believe were the most profound changes that occurred in Vietnam as a result of the war.

14. Citing specific anecdotes from Hayslip’s memoir, explain how her gender shapes her point of view of the war.

15. According to Ilya Gaiduk, what was the Soviet perspective on U.S. escalation in 1965? What are the major considerations shaping the Soviet response?

16. According to Chen Jian, what role did the Sino-Soviet conflict play in Mao’s calculations regarding his response to US escalation in Vietnam?

17. Why was there such tension between Hanoi and Beijing regarding Chinese assistance to the DRV? What motivated Chinese aid to the DRV? Why was the DRV ambivalent in accepting aid?

18. According to Chen Jian, how did China’s sense of moral superiority affect its relations with Vietnam?

19. How does Robert Brigham present the relationship between DRV officials in Hanoi and the NLF’s southern based leaders? Why did they differ on the crucial issues of military strategy and negotiating with Washington?

20. During his year in Vietnam, to what extent did Caputo change his views of the Vietnamese and his view of the conflict between the Vietnamese and the Americans? What specific experiences precipitated this change?

21. How did Caputo view U.S. strategy in Vietnam and the officers he encounters such as the “Officer in Charge of the Dead”?

22. Caputo is critical of the “myths” about America and the mythmakers (like JFK) who propagated them. What were these myths? Why were they significant and what effects did they have on the marines?

23. How did the nature of a war of attrition, the physical environment in which combat took place, and the specifics of U.S. strategy affect Caputo’s (and other marines’) attitude toward violence and their Vietnamese enemy?

24. How did Caputo’s experience in Vietnam challenge his beliefs about himself and his country?

25. Revisionist historians have criticized Lyndon Johnson and his advisers for failing to exploit the military defeat of Hanoi and the NLF in the wake of the Tet Offensive. What five specific critiques do they make?

26. How do orthodox historians answer the revisionists’ critiques regarding Tet? Why do they maintain that Tet marked a continuing stalemate rather than a victory?

27. How does one’s perspective – military officer, ground soldier, policy planner, NLF, US, or DRV – shape how one interprets the Tet Offensive?

28. How did John Paul Vann respond to Tet and what was his new post-Tet strategy? Why does Neil Sheehan suggest that Vann was unwilling to accept the “death” of the U.S. quest in Vietnam?

29. How did Nixon and Kissinger employ diplomacy with China and the Soviet Union to salvage the US position in Vietnam? Why did this “great power diplomacy” strain relations between the US and its South Vietnamese ally?

30. Revisionists maintain that, thanks to Nixon’s policies, the South Vietnamese government and military were becoming more effective and gaining legitimacy. What evidence do they cite to support this contention? What evidence have orthodox historians cited to refute such claims? Why do they believe Nixon’s policy of Vietnamization proved a failure, not a success?

31. Why did the US launch an incursion into Cambodia and support the overthrow of Prince Sihanouk? What were the unintended consequences of this US-South Vietnamese incursion?

32. Why do revisionist historians (echoing Nixon and Kissinger) claim that Congress “betrayed” the South Vietnamese? Why do orthodox historians claim that Nixon and Kissinger – and not Congress – “betrayed” the South Vietnamese?

33. According to Melvin Small, how did domestic opposition to the war contain or limit Nixon’s ability to pursue his strategy for ending US involvement? On the other hand, what steps did Nixon take to undermine the antiwar movement? How did the movement at times undermine itself?

34. According to Melvin Small, how did the slow US withdrawal from Vietnam undermine both the antiwar movement and Nixon’s pursuit of “peace with honor”?

35. How did Truong Nhu Tang’s upbringing and experiences as a young man shape his vision of how the revolution would be waged and what the future of Vietnam would be like? How did his upbringing fortify him against becoming a dogmatic Communist?

36. What role did Ho Chi Minh play in attracting Tang and other young southern Vietnamese into the revolutionary movement? Why did Tang admire Ho but deplore the revolutionary violence he saw in the streets of Saigon?

37. How did the non-communist members of the PRG differ from the Communists? What differences made their alliance an uneasy one?

38. How did the Communists “use” people like Tang and his associates in the Alliance and PRG? Why were they so successful in doing so?

39. How does Tang assess Henry Kissinger? According to Tang, how did Kissinger’s “triangulation” diplomacy miss the reality within Vietnam?

40. What is Tang’s central criticism of how the US waged war in Vietnam? How does the fact that the Vietnamese and the US saw the war in entirely different terms help to explain what Tang sees as Washington’s errors?

41. What is “revolutionary heroism” and how was the Vietnamese Communist Party able to use this concept to link Vietnam’s past with its present and future? To what extent did the concept help the Party to sustain its legitimacy or simply to mask its weakness?

42. Why has the Communist party begun to lose the favor of the Vietnamese people? What groups have challenged the Party’s legitimacy? How have they done so and how has the Party responded?

43. How did the Vietnam war affect the subsequent conduct of American foreign policy? What assumptions that had been taken for granted now seemed questionable?

44. What were some of the conflicting “lessons” Americans drew from the Vietnam war? What evidence did they cite to support their conflicting points of view?

45. As they began their involvement in the Vietnamese conflict, Philip Caputo, Le Ly Hayslip and Truong Nhu Tang – though their roles and perspectives were quite different – all expressed optimism and believed they were fighting for a just cause. Choose TWO of these three individuals and answer the following questions: What accounts for their initial optimism? How are they able to remain hopeful even when it appears their hopes and ideals may be illusions? Why does their optimism ultimately turn to disillusionment?

46. From 1945 through 1975 and beyond, Vietnam was arguably a “pawn” in the larger game of global power politics. The Cold War and other international rivalries that had little to do with Vietnam itself had a significant impact on the prolonged conflict in that country. Choose TWO of the following four periods and explain how the policies of the major participants, including France, the U.S., the Soviet Union, and China, affected what happened in Vietnam. A) the French return to Vietnam after World War II; B) the Geneva Conference and the end of the first Indochina conflict; C) the 1968 Tet Offensive and its aftermath; and D) the Nixon-Kissinger attempts to end the war during the 1969-1973 period.

47. Between 1954 and 1975, the United States-South Vietnamese alliance was a source of continual frustration for both parties and, in the end, both Washington and Saigon accused the other of falling short on its commitments. Drawing on specific evidence from our course readings and discussion, indicate the main reasons why this relationship did not work – or, perhaps, could not work.

48. The ancient Greeks defined tragedy as a great man brought to a bad end by the very trait or traits that had made him great in the first place. Choose one of the following a) the DRV Communists and their leader, Ho Chi Minh; b) the NLF and its leaders including Truong Nhu Tang; or c) the United States and its citizens and elected representatives and apply this definition of “tragedy” to their experience during the Vietnam war. In answering, be sure to identify clearly the trait or traits you believe made your choice “great” yet also led to their downfall. Then, citing pertinent evidence from the assigned readings and class discussions, explain how this process worked over the course of the Vietnamese conflict between 1945 and 1975.