Book description
The Vietnam War has been analyzed, dissected, and debated from
multiple perspectives for decades, but domestic considerations -- such
as partisan politics and election-year maneuvering -- are often
overlooked as determining factors in the evolution and outcome of
America's longest war.
In Vietnam's Second Front: Domestic Politics, the Republican Party,
and the War, Andrew L. Johns assesses the influence of the Republican
Party -- its congressional leadership, politicians, grassroots
organizations, and the Nixon administration -- on the escalation,
prosecution, and resolution of the Vietnam War. This groundbreaking
work also sheds new light on the relationship between Congress and the
imperial presidency as they struggled for control over U. S. foreign policy.
Beginning his analysis in 1961 and continuing through the Paris Peace
Accords of 1973, Johns argues that the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon
administrations failed to achieve victory on both fronts of the
Vietnam War -- military and political -- because of their
preoccupation with domestic politics. Johns details the machinations
and political dexterity required of all three presidents and of
members of Congress to maneuver between the countervailing forces of
escalation and negotiation, offering a provocative account of the
ramifications of their decisions. With clear, incisive prose and
extensive archival research, Johns's analysis covers the broad range
of the Republican Party's impact on the Vietnam War, offers a
compelling reassessment of responsibility for the conflict, and
challenges assumptions about the roles of Congress and the president
in U. S. foreign relations.
""His wonderfully written examination explores how
domestic political considerations, especially those posed by hawkish
Republican conservatives, made it highly unlikely, if not impossible,
for Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon to disengage in Vietnam by
deescalating or negotiating an end to the war with North Vietnam....
The author is insightful about hawkish congressional Republicans
supporting Johnson more than congressional Democrats, as long as
Americanization of the war was not too gradual....
recommended"--Choice" --
Andrew L. Johns, associate professor of history at Brigham Young
University, is coeditor of The Eisenhower Administration, the Third
World, and the Globalization of the Cold War. He lives in Provo, Utah.
