Text: The National Liberation Front
Robert K. Brigham’s Guerilla Diplomacy: The NLF’s Foreign Relations and the Viet Nam War is an enlightening account of both military and diplomatic strategies implemented against the puppet regimes and Americans in South Vietnam.
Brigham’s focal point is the examination of ‘the development and implementation of the NLF’s international strategy and assess its impact on the war” Another key point Brigham addresses but doesn’t come to a definitive answer on is the level of control Hanoi had over their southern liaisons, the NLF. Guerilla Diplomacy provides an intensely non-ethnocentric view of the Second Indo-China War. Brigham draws his research and evidence from mainly communist documents from Hanoi as well as some personal interviews. Brigham delves into specific NLF strategies such as: Neutrality, a twin goal policy for socialism in the North and to liberate the South, and a strategy of fighting while negotiating later in the war.
The book opens with unhappy Lao Dong officials in Hanoi who vastly believed Vietnam was heavily shorted at the negotiation tables of the Geneva Conference. The reinstallment of the Diem regime revealed to the Lao Dong what must be done. The Lao Dong congregated in 1960 stirring with bitterness as the Catholic Diem had regained his power the Communists forged the National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam at this meeting. Knowing the NLF would be under close watch by the French and United States they quickly decided to adopt a policy of neutrality. The adoption of this policy was the first of many which would aid Hanoi in discrediting and wearing down imperialism in Vietnam. Propaganda was also an incredibly useful tool the Front would utilize repeatedly.
When the U.S. and L.B.J. upped the ante in 1965 with Operation Rolling Thunder and the addition of ground troops the Front realized they could abandon their neutral policy in favor of an anti-American one. This policy existed in twin goals: the development of Socialism at home, and the liberation of Southern Vietnam. Brigham also goes in depth addressing the success of the NLF’s implementation of foreign policy. Hanoi realized that making the Americans look bad in the media and to other world leaders was almost as important as defeating them on the battlefield. NLF leaders toured friendly countries separately from Lao Dong officials in an attempt to distance the Front from the Communists in Hanoi.
Brigham successfully illustrates the hoops that Hanoi made the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford administrations jump through. After the fall of Saigon it was clear that the Communists had clearly implemented far superior strategy and diplomacy compared to the Americans.
2 comments:
Your text section is pretty good, I would only suggest to go through and make sure you spellcheck some things but that's a minor detail.
I think some of the information you give in your Context part can be transferred and would work better if it were in your Text part. I think that your Context should give us the general knowledge and controversies so a reader could understand the situation and the subject and then when they scroll down to your Text part you can give more details from the book to help illustrate your point and your arguments, that way they aren't becoming aware of the subject in the Text portion but have already acquired the knowledge through the Context section, thus it eases their ability to understand the problems and discussion.
I also believe if you address some of the key policies that are mentioned in your text that were implemented by the NLF and helped contribute to their success, I feel it would help flesh out your text portion more and give a more detailed analysis of the main arguments of the book as well as enlightening the reader to new information.
I like your introduction; already I am grabbed by a hand and sucked in to see what the rest of your passage states. I want a little more historical information as I read on. Check a little on your grammar, like commas, some sentences need them. Take out the word intensely. Restructure the sentence dealing with "catholic Diem". The sentence is a little vague. In your last paragraph check the spelling of one of your words and restructure your sentences. The body of this passage is formal and informative.
Explain what the U.S. was up to before they "Upped the Ante". Upped the Ante just sort of jumped out of nowhere. If I were not aware that the U.S. fought a war in Vietnam, I would not understand what you mean. Build a stronger conclusion that lives up to your good introduction. This passage is way better then your contex passage, just, again, add some more history of the NLF so people who read this, who are not historians like yourself, will understand it what you are talking about. Here is some advise, put your argument here and take your argument out of the context. Just state what some arguments are in your context, argue with or against them in your text, but also let the text version present your information. Keep it up bro, you can do it.
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