Diems Final Failure

Editora:

University Press of Kansas

Código:

491_9780700612208

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Often portrayed as an inept and stubborn tyrant, South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem has long been the subject of much derision but little understanding. Philip Cattons penetrating study provides a much more complex portrait of Diem as both a devout patriot and a failed architect of modernization. In doing so, it sheds new light on a controversial regime.Catton treats the Diem government on its own terms rather than as an appendage of American policy. Focusing on the decade from Dien Bien Phu to Diems assassination in 1963, he examines the Vietnamese leaders nation-building and reform efforts-particularly his Strategic Hamlet Program, which sought to separate guerrilla insurgents from the peasantry and build grassroots support for his regime. Cattons evaluation of the collapse of that program offers fresh insights into both Diems limitations as a leader and the ideological and organizational weaknesses of his government, while his assessment of the evolution of Washingtons relations with Saigon provides new insight into Americas growing involvement in the Vietnamese civil war.Focusing on the Strategic Hamlet Program in Binh Duong province as an exemplar of Diems efforts, Catton paints the Vietnamese leader as a progressive thinker trying to simultaneously defeat the communists and modernize his nation. He draws on a wealth of Vietnamese language sources to argue that Diem possessed a firm vision of nation-building and sought to overcome the debilitating dependence that reliance on American support threatened to foster. As Catton shows, however, Diems plans for South Vietnam clashed with those of the United States and proved no match for the Vietnamese communists.Catton analyzes the mutually frustrating interactions between Diem and the administrations of Eisenhower and Kennedy, highlighting personality and cultural clashes, as well as specific disagreements within the American government over how to deal with Diems programs and his hostility tow

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