Suchergebnisse

Allen Spekulationen über seinen Rücktritt auf dem kommenden 6. Parteitag, bereitete Le Duan ein jähes Ende. Er starb. Zwar war bekannt, daß er an einer schweren Krankheit litt, aber daß er so plötzlich die politische Bühne verlassen würde, hatte doch niemand erwartet. (.)

Die Beziehungen der VR China zu Zaire werden von der gemeinsamen Frontstellung gegen die Sowjetunion geprägt, wie auch die chinesischen Kommentare zum Zaire-Konflikt, die in zahlreichen Auszügen wiedergegeben werden, zeigen. (DÜI-Sch)

This article concentrates on the North Vietnamese official who became the driving force within the Vietnamese Workers' Party (VWP) and was crucial in shaping the Vietnamese Communists' protracted war strategy. A great deal has been written about the personality and policies of Ho Chi Minh, but Le Duan's powerful influence on strategy has been largely overlooked. The article covers Le Duan's background and rise to power as the VWP First Secretary, as well as his strategic thinking about the United States from the 1950s through the deployment of U.S. ground troops in 1965. Although other VWP leaders influenced wartime strategy, Le Duan as First Secretary carried the greatest weight within the Politburo and exerted the strongest influence over the southern Communists, who were pivotal in fighting both U.S. and South Vietnamese forces. In his role as head of the southern Communists Le Duan developed strategies for defeating the United States and then implemented them as his power grew. The article spotlights several recurrent themes in his thinking: the nature of a protracted war, the role of casualties, and U.S. global standing. Each of these subjects influenced how the North Vietnamese intended to defeat the United States over the long term and offers insights into how Hanoi understood its enemy.

The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/JCWS_a_00598 ; Some decisions make no sense at first glance. Why did Adolf Hitler send troops into the Rhineland in 1936, when German forces were so much weaker than the French? Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor if the United States was so much stronger in military and economic might? Although scholars have puzzled over many such perplexing strategic gambits, few investigators have considered an equally peculiar decision in the Vietnam War. Why did Hanoi condone attacks against U.S. forces after the Tonkin Gulf incident? Hanoi's policy had been to avoid a U.S. escalation. The last thing Hanoi should have wanted was to provoke a full-scale invasion by the United States, especially at such a precarious time. Nevertheless, Communist forces in South Vietnam continued to strike U.S. bases after Tonkin, when the risk of escalation was at its peak. Could Hanoi have actually believed these attacks would deter the United States? Was Hanoi not able to control southern Communists at so pivotal a moment? Or did party leaders egregiously misread their primary foe?

AbstractSince the end of the Vietnam War thirty years ago, Western scholars have made countless attempts at explaining that conflict's course and rationalizing its outcome. These attempts have considered a wide variety of elements ranging from the personalities of those involved in the decision- making process in Washington to the technologies used by American forces against their enemies in Indochina. Ironically, few scholars have considered the element that may have been most important in determining the outcome of the war, mainly the North Vietnamese leadership. As a result, little is known about the nature of that leadership. For many Western scholars, Ho Chi Minh inspired the North Vietnamese war effort, Vo Nguyen Giap coordinated it, and Pham Van Dong, as prime minister of the Democratic Republic of (North) Vietnam (DRVN), supervised the implementation of Ho and Giap's policies. That others may have been involved and influential in the decision-making process in Hanoi is rarely considered in Western scholarship. We accept the notion that the Ho-Giap-Dong axis led the effort against the United States, and the zeal of the North Vietnamese people carried Hanoi to victory.