Subtexts: The National Liberation Front

1. Robert K. Brigham, Guerilla Diplomacy: The NLF’s Foreign Relations and the Vietnam War.

Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998.

Brigham turns over several stones to reveal the exact strategies and policies used by the NLF which led to the Communist victory in the Second Indo-China War. Brigham’s focal argument is the development of a twin goal strategy by the NLF: socialism in the North and a war of liberation in the South. Brigham uses a number of North Vietnamese documents and personal interviews for his research. Brigham also emphasizes the division of Vietnam at the 17^th parallel at the Geneva Accords was the significant reason for the twin goal ideals.

2. Currey, Cecil, review, Guerilla Diplomacy: The NLF’s Foreign Relations and the Vietnam War

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3821/is_200110/ai_n8957987

(Journal of Third World Studies, Fall 2001)

Cecil Currey’s review of Robert K. Brigham’s Guerilla Diplomacy: The NLF’s Foreign Relations and the Vietnam War brings to light Brigham’s biases throughout his book. Curry criticizes Brigham’s accolades to the NLF for distancing themselves from Hanoi with their foreign relations ingenious. Currey exclaims that the NLF’s foreign relations policies were a smaller part of Hanoi’s big plan. Another critique Currey has of Brigham is his obvious bias against the Diem regime. Currey points out Brigham’s use of “Diem’s reign of terror…” (p. 9) while completely ignoring poor decisions by Ho Chi Minh’s governance such as the Land Reform in 1956. Currey’s last example of a Brigham bias is his overemphasis of the NLF’s international recognition. Brigham makes it seem that the NLF is seen as a legitimate regime world-wide minus the United States. Currey thinks this is an extreme exaggeration. Relatively, obviously Currey concludes by not approving of the book.

3. Curtis, Willie, review, Guerilla Diplomacy: The NLF’s Foreign Relations and the Vietnam War.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/view/2647633?seq=2&cookieSet=1

The Journal of Politics, Vol. 62, No.1 (Feb. 2000), pp. 309-310

In his review of Brigham’s book Curtis solely emphasizes the NLF’s diplomacy during the war and specifically during the Nixon administration as the largest reason for Northern success. Curtis alludes to Brigham’s points of The NLF’s policy of neutrality in its infant years, the NLF offering the biggest promotion of northern propaganda, their ability to keep Johnson and Nixon’s administrations off-balance during “negotiation” talks. Curtis in the end concludes: “For analysts and armchair strategists, Guerilla Diplomacy should be on the must-read list.”

4. Duiker, William, The Communist Road to Power.

In The Communist Road to Power Duiker’s strongest argument arises when speaking about the North’s decision making processes and the adjustments and responses of the Communists to American policy. One major issue with this book is Duiker’s bias toward the communists. This bias has not as much to do with Duiker as it does with the material Duiker used for research. It is extremely difficult for any researcher that uses Communist documents as his or her main source of research due to the socialist bias inevitably contained in them. Duiker’s study focuses mainly on NLF strategy and tactics, both in diplomacy and military. Duiker however, neglects certain aspects of the NLF’s war such as propaganda.

5. Truong Nhu Tang, A Viet Cong Memoir. Assisted by David Chanoff and Doan Van Toai.

New York: Haracourt, Brace, Jovanovich. 1985. Pp. xiv, 350.

Tang’s A Viet Cong Memoir focuses around the author’s own experiences as both an executive of a Southern Vietnamese sugar corporation and an active member of the revolutionary government. Tang rose to the position of Minister of Justice in the newly founded Peoples Revolutionary Government in 1969. Tang’s story does not end with the fall of Saigon as Guerilla Diplomacy does. After the Communist takeover and American withdrawal the PRG was dismantled and replaced with the Saigon Military Management Committee, which was comprised of all Northern Communists. Hanoi and the NLF had made friendly with southern non-communists during the war and essentially abandoned amidst the formation of a self-determined Vietnam.