Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War 1954-1965 (From Indochina to Vietnam: Revolution and War in a Global Perspective) (Volume 7)

About this book

Hanois Road to the Vietnam War opens in 1954 with the signing of the Geneva accords that ended the eight-year-long Franco-Indochinese War and created two Vietnams. In agreeing to the accords Ho Chi Minh and other leaders of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam anticipated a new period of peace leading to national reunification under their rule; they never imagined that within a decade they would be engaged in an even bigger feud with the United States. Basing his work on new and largely inaccessible Vietnamese materials as well as French British Canadian and American documents Pierre Asselin explores the communist path to war. Specifically he examines the internal debates and other elements that shaped Hanois revolutionary strategy in the decade preceding U.S. military intervention and resulting domestic and foreign programs. Without exonerating Washington for its role in the advent of hostilities in 1965 Hanois Road to the Vietnam War demonstrates that those who directed the effort against the United States and its allies in Saigon were at least equally responsible for creating the circumstances that culminated in arguably the most tragic conflict of the Cold War era.