Download or read book Operation Duck Hook written by T. Clement Robison and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2012-12-26 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an effort to end the Vietnam War, President Richard M. Nixon developed a diabolical plan and placed the United States military on the highest combat alert status while setting in motion one of the most dangerous scenarios ever conceived by a national leader. So dangerous that it could trigger a world war. Stopping a catastrophe now rests in the hands of one man. But time is running out. Faced with accomplishing the near impossible and betrayed by those he once trusted, John Coletrane is called upon to protect a secret and save the United States government from causing the death of tens of thousands of people. Only through courage and determination can this highly trained combat veteran accomplish his mission, protect the secret, while struggling to keep his own past from destroying him. Based in part upon actual events, this is high intensity action and international intrigue at its best.

Download or read book Nixon s Nuclear Specter written by William Burr and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2015-06-15 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In their initial effort to end the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger attempted to lever concessions from Hanoi at the negotiating table with military force and coercive diplomacy. They were not seeking military victory, which they did not believe was feasible. Instead, they backed up their diplomacy toward North Vietnam and the Soviet Union with the Madman Theory of threatening excessive force, which included the specter of nuclear force. They began with verbal threats then bombed North Vietnamese and Viet Cong base areas in Cambodia, signaling that there was more to come. As the bombing expanded, they launched a previously unknown mining ruse against Haiphong, stepped-up their warnings to Hanoi and Moscow, and initiated planning for a massive shock-and-awe military operation referred to within the White House inner circle as DUCK HOOK. Beyond the mining of North Vietnamese ports and selective bombing in and around Hanoi, the initial DUCK HOOK concept included proposals for “tactical” nuclear strikes against logistics targets and U.S. and South Vietnamese ground incursions into the North. In early October 1969, however, Nixon aborted planning for the long-contemplated operation. He had been influenced by Hanoi's defiance in the face of his dire threats and concerned about U.S. public reaction, antiwar protests, and internal administration dissent. In place of DUCK HOOK, Nixon and Kissinger launched a secret global nuclear alert in hopes that it would lend credibility to their prior warnings and perhaps even persuade Moscow to put pressure on Hanoi. It was to be a “special reminder” of how far President Nixon might go. The risky gambit failed to move the Soviets, but it marked a turning point in the administration's strategy for exiting Vietnam. Nixon and Kissinger became increasingly resigned to a “long-route” policy of providing Saigon with a “decent chance” of survival for a “decent interval” after a negotiated settlement and U.S. forces left Indochina. Burr and Kimball draw upon extensive research in participant interviews and declassified documents to unravel this intricate story of the October 1969 nuclear alert. They place it in the context of nuclear threat making and coercive diplomacy since 1945, the culture of the Bomb, intra-governmental dissent, domestic political pressures, the international “nuclear taboo,” and Vietnamese and Soviet actions and policies. It is a history that holds important lessons for the present and future about the risks and uncertainties of nuclear threat making.

Download or read book Vietnam written by John Prados and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2009-04-21 with total page 696 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Vietnam war continues to be the focus of intense controversy. While most people-liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans, historians, pundits, and citizens alike-agree that the United States did not win the war, a vocal minority argue the opposite or debate why victory never came, attributing the quagmire to everything from domestic politics to the press. The military never lost a battle, how then did it not win the war? Stepping back from this overheated fray, bestselling author John Prados takes a fresh look at both the war and the debates about it to produce a much-needed and long-overdue reassessment of one of our nation's most tragic episodes. Drawing upon several decades of research—including recently declassified documents, newly available presidential tapes, and a wide range of Vietnamese and other international sources—Prados's magisterial account weaves together multiple perspectives across an epic-sized canvas where domestic politics, ideologies, nations, and militaries all collide. Prados patiently pieces back together the events and moments, from the end of World War II until our dispiriting departure from Vietnam in 1975, that reveal a war that now appears to have been truly unwinnable—due to opportunities lost, missed, ignored, or refused. He shows how-from the Truman through the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations—American leaders consistently ignored or misunderstood the realities in Southeast Asia and passed up every opportunity to avoid war in the first place or avoid becoming ever more mired in it after it began. Highlighting especially Ike's seminal and long-lasting influence on our Vietnam policy, Prados demonstrates how and why our range of choices narrowed with each passing year, while our decision-making continued to be distorted by Cold War politics and fundamental misperceptions about the culture, psychology, goals, and abilities of both our enemies and our allies in Vietnam. By turns engaging narrative history, compelling analytic treatise, and moving personal account, Prados's magnum opus challenges previous authors and should rightfully take its place as the most comprehensive, up-to-date, and accurate one-volume account of a war that—judging by the frequent analogies to the current war in Iraq—has not yet really ended for any of us.

Download or read book Making Foreign Policy written by David Mitchell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-05-23 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 2005. David Mitchell provides a better understanding of the role presidents play in the decision-making process in terms of their influence on two key steps in the process: deliberation and outcome of policy making. The events that have taken place in relation to the Bush administration's decisions to fight the war on terrorism and invade Iraq highlight how important it is to understand the president's role in formulating policy. This influential study presents an advisory system theory of decision-making to examine cases of presidential policy formulation drawn from the Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Bush administrations. Easily accessible to scholars, graduates and advanced undergraduates interested in US foreign policy or foreign policy analysis, presidential studies, and bureaucracy and public administrations scholars, and to practitioners and those with a general interest in International Relations.

Download or read book The Pentagon and the Presidency written by Dale R. Herspring and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2005-03-04 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While presidents have always kept a watchful eye on the military, our generals have been equally vigilant in assessing the commander-in-chief. Their views, however, have been relatively neglected in the literature on civil-military relations. By taking us inside the military's mind in this matter, Dale Herspring's new book provides a path-breaking, utterly candid, and much-needed reassessment of a key relationship in American government and foreign policymaking. As Herspring reminds us, that relationship has often been a very tense, even extremely antagonistic one, partly because the military has become a highly organized and very effective bureaucratic interest group. Reevaluating twelve presidents-from Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush-Herspring shows how the intensity of that conflict depends largely on the military's perception of the president's leadership style. Quite simply, presidents who show genuine respect for military culture are much more likely to develop effective relations with the military than those who don't. Each chapter focuses on one president and his key administrators--such as Robert McNamara, Henry Kissinger, and Donald Rumsfeld-and contains case studies showing how the military reacted to the president's leadership. In the final chapter, Herspring ranks the presidents according to their degree of conflict with the military: Lyndon Johnson received exceedingly low marks for being overbearing and dismissive of the armed forces, further aggravating his Vietnam problem. George H. W. Bush inspired respect for not micromanaging military affairs. And Bill Clinton was savaged both privately and publicly by military leaders for having been a "draft dodger," cutting Pentagon spending, and giving the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" tag an unnecessarily high profile. From World War II to Operation Iraqi Freedom, Herspring clearly shows how the nature of civilian control has changed during the past half century. He also reveals how the military has become a powerful bureaucratic interest group very much like others in Washington-increasingly politicized, media-savvy, and as much accountable to Congress as to the commander-in-chief. Ultimately, The Pentagon and the Presidency illuminates how our leaders devise strategies for dealing with threats to our national security-and how the success of that process depends so much upon who's in charge and how that person's perceived by our military commanders.

Download or read book Nuclear Weapons written by Stuart Casey-Maslen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-04 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers an overview of international law, policy and practice on nuclear weapons.

Download or read book The War Within written by Tom Wells and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2005 with total page 727 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An invaluable record of an unforgettable American calamity." --New York Times Book Review

Download or read book The Columbia History of the Vietnam War written by David L. Anderson and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2010-11-26 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rooted in recent scholarship, The Columbia History of the Vietnam War offers profound new perspectives on the political, historical, military, and social issues that defined the war and its effect on the United States and Vietnam. Laying the chronological and critical foundations for the volume, David L. Anderson opens with an essay on the Vietnam War's major moments and enduring relevance. Mark Philip Bradley follows with a reexamination of Vietnamese revolutionary nationalism and the Vietminh-led war against French colonialism. Richard H. Immerman revisits Eisenhower's and Kennedy's efforts at nation building in South Vietnam, and Gary R. Hess reviews America's military commitment under Kennedy and Johnson. Lloyd C. Gardner investigates the motivations behind Johnson's escalation of force, and Robert J. McMahon focuses on the pivotal period before and after the Tet Offensive. Jeffrey P. Kimball then makes sense of Nixon's paradoxical decision to end U.S. intervention while pursuing a destructive air war. John Prados and Eric Bergerud devote essays to America's military strategy, while Helen E. Anderson and Robert K. Brigham explore the war's impact on Vietnamese women and urban culture. Melvin Small recounts the domestic tensions created by America's involvement in Vietnam, and Kenton Clymer traces the spread of the war to Laos and Cambodia. Concluding essays by Robert D. Schulzinger and George C. Herring account for the legacy of the war within Vietnamese and American contexts and diagnose the symptoms of the "Vietnam syndrome" evident in later debates about U.S. foreign policy. America's experience in Vietnam continues to figure prominently in discussions about strategy and defense, not to mention within discourse on the identity of the United States as a nation. Anderson's expert collection is therefore essential to understanding America's entanglement in the Vietnam War and the conflict's influence on the nation's future interests abroad.

Download or read book Deterrence written by Chris Adams and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2009-10 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "While much has been written about the Cold War from the political, diplomatic and overall military perspective, very little has been written about the American warriors who fought and won the war. In Deterrence, Adams tells the story of the U.S. leaders, commanders, enlisted men of the U.S. military strategic nuclear forces that successfully defeated the Soviet war machine. This book goes a long way toward telling how and why the United States prevailed in the Cold War." - Keith D. McFarland, PhD, President Emeritus, Texas A&M University Commerce "In this notable work, Chris Adams has not only captured the essence of national security through vigilant deterrence, but clearly recognizes and honors the leaders, commanders, service members and families who played critical roles in the defense of our country." - Lt. General Edgar S. Harris, Jr. USAF, Retired Fmr Vice Commander-in Chief, Strategic Air Command "I had the privilege of serving with General Chris Adams in Strategic Air Command.During those critical years, SAC's charged "Cold Warriors" and their families were at the center of our deterrent force. Herein, Adams captures the critical mission and importance of those whose professional service behind the scenes made it possible to win the Cold War." - Jim McCoy, Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, Retired Few Americans recognized or paid close attention to the outset of the Cold War and thereafter its enduring years, mainly because it persisted for so long and few alarming situations intruded their daily lives. Only noteworthy events such as SPUTNIK, the shooting down of Gary Powers' U-2 spy plane and the Cuban Crisis brought the potentially threatening circumstances home, and then only briefly until other news items took their place. America has never fallen short of heroes when called upon for the common defense of the nation and the Cold War period of uncertainty called upon America's best and brightest to respond-national leaders, military commanders and an elite force of warriors trained with the most sophisticated war-fighting equipment U.S. technology could provide to create the strategy and deterrent force that endured.

Download or read book The Nuclear Taboo written by Nina Tannenwald and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-12-20 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why have nuclear weapons not been used since Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945? Nina Tannenwald disputes the conventional answer of 'deterrence' in favour of what she calls a nuclear taboo - a widespread inhibition on using nuclear weapons - which has arisen in global politics. Drawing on newly released archival sources, Tannenwald traces the rise of the nuclear taboo, the forces that produced it, and its influence, particularly on US leaders. She analyzes four critical instances where US leaders considered using nuclear weapons (Japan 1945, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Gulf War 1991) and examines how the nuclear taboo has repeatedly dissuaded US and other world leaders from resorting to these 'ultimate weapons'. Through a systematic analysis, Tannenwald challenges conventional conceptions of deterrence and offers a compelling argument on the moral bases of nuclear restraint as well as an important insight into how nuclear war can be avoided in the future.

Download or read book Nixon s Back Channel to Moscow written by Richard A. Moss and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2017-01-17 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most Americans consider détente—the reduction of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union—to be among the Nixon administration's most significant foreign policy successes. The diplomatic back channel that national security advisor Henry Kis

Download or read book No Peace No Honor written by Larry Berman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2001-09-23 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1973, Henry Kissinger shared the Nobel Peace Prize for the secret negotiations that led to the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam. Nixon famously declared the 1973 agreement to be "peace with honor"; America was disengaging, yet South Vietnam still stood to fight its own war. Kissinger promptly moved to seal up his personal records of the negotiations, arguing that they are private, not government, records, and that he will only allow them to be unsealed after his death. No Peace, No Honor deploys extraordinary documentary bombshells, including a complete North Vietnamese account of the secret talks, to blow the lid off the true story of the peace process. Neither Nixon and Kissinger's critics, nor their defenders, have guessed at the full truth: the entire peace negotiation was a sham. Nixon did not plan to exit Vietnam, but he knew that in order to continue bombing without a congressional cutoff, he would need a fig leaf. Kissinger negotiated a deal that he and Nixon expected the North to violate. Ironically, their long-maintained spin on what happened next is partially true: only Watergate stopped America from sending the bombers back in. This revelatory book has many other surprises. Berman produces new evidence that finally proves a long-suspected connection between candidate Nixon in 1968 and the South Vietnamese government. He tells the full story of Operation Duck Hook, a large-scale offensive planned by Nixon as early as 1969 that would have widened the war even to the point of bombing civilian food supplies. He reveals transcripts of candidate George McGovern's attempts to negotiate his own October surprise for 1972, and a seriocomic plan by the CIA to overthrow South Vietnam's President Thieu even as late as 1975. Throughout, with page-turning dialogue provided by official transcriptions and notes, Berman reveals the step-by-step betrayal of South Vietnam that started with a short-circuited negotiations loop, and ended with double-talk, false promises, and outright abandonment. Berman draws on hundreds of declassified documents, including the notes of Kissinger's aides, phone taps of the Nixon campaign in 1968, and McGovern's own transcripts of his negotiations with North Vietnam. He has been able to double- and triple-check North Vietnamese accounts against American notes of meetings, as well as previously released bits of the record. He has interviewed many key players, including high-level South Vietnamese officials. This definitive account forever and completely rewrites the final chapter of the Vietnam war. Henry Kissinger's Nobel Prize was won at the cost of America's honor.

Download or read book The Praetorian STARShip the untold story of the Combat Talon written by and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2001 with total page 507 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jerry Thigpen's study on the history of the Combat Talon is the first effort to tell the story of this wonderfully capable machine. This weapons system has performed virtually every imaginable tactical event in the spectrum of conflict and by any measure is the most versatile C-130 derivative ever produced. First modified and sent to Southeast Asia (SEA) in 1966 to replace theater unconventional warfare (UW) assets that were limited in both lift capability and speed the Talon I quickly adapted to theater UW tasking including infiltration and resupply and psychological warfare operations into North Vietnam. After spending four years in SEA and maturing into a highly respected UW weapons system the Joint Chief of Staff (JCS) chose the Combat Talon to lead the night low-level raid on the North Vietnamese prison camp at Son Tay. Despite the outcome of the operation the Talon I cemented its reputation as the weapons system of choice for long-range clandestine operations. In the period following the Vietnam War United States Air Force (USAF) special operations gradually lost its political and financial support which was graphically demonstrated in the failed Desert One mission into Iran. Thanks to congressional supporters like Earl Hutto of Florida and Dan Daniel of Virginia funds for aircraft upgrades and military construction projects materialized to meet the ever-increasing threat to our nation. Under the leadership of such committed hard-driven officers as Brenci Uttaro Ferkes Meller and Thigpen the crew force became the most disciplined in our Air Force. It was capable of penetrating hostile airspace at night in a low-level mountainous environment covertly to execute any number of unconventional warfare missions.

Download or read book On Nixon s Madness written by Zachary Jacobson and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2023-03-28 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Beginning with Nixon's Red-baiting performances as a congressman on the House Un-American Activities Committee, Jacobson details Nixon's repeated reinventions, which were always, but not only, in service to his political goals. Nixon, he argues, must be understood as a person caught between forces of temper and control, protean in a way that makes his whole legacy difficult to assess"--

Download or read book Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War written by David F. Schmitz and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-04-04 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War, accomplished foreign relations historian David F. Shmitz provides students of US history and the Vietnam era with an up-to-date analysis of Nixon’s Vietnam policy in a brief and accessible book that addresses the main controversies of the Nixon years. President Richard Nixon’s first presidential term oversaw the definitive crucible of the Vietnam War. Nixon came into office seeking the kind of decisive victory that had eluded President Johnson, and went about expanding the war, overtly and covertly, in order to uphold a policy of “containment,” protect America’s credibility, and defy the left’s antiwar movement at home. Tactically, politically, Nixon’s moves made sense. However, by 1971 the president was forced to significantly de-escalate the American presence and seek a negotiated end to the war, which is now accepted as an American defeat, and a resounding failure of American foreign relations. Schmitz addresses the main controversies of Nixon’s Vietnam strategy, and in so doing manages to trace back the ways in which this most calculating and perceptive politician wound up resigning from office a fraud and failure. Finally, the book seeks to place the impact of Nixon’s policies and decisions in the larger context of post-World War II American society, and analyzes the full costs of the Vietnam War that the nation feels to this day.

Download or read book To Win a Nuclear War written by Michio Kaku and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To Win a Nuclear War records as fully as we are likely to find what has gone on in the minds of American leaders and nuclear strategists on this awesome subject during these fateful forty years. It is an appalling story... This book compels us to re-think and re-write the history of the Cold War and the arms race."--From the foreword by Ramsey Clark, former Attorney General of the United States. To Win a Nuclear War provides a startling glimpse into secret U.S. plans to initiate a nuclear war from 1945 to the present. Based on recently declassified Top Secret documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, this book meticulously traces how U.S. policy makers in over a dozen episodes have threatened to initiate a nuclear attack. The book also documents the surprising reasons why the war plans were never carried out and discloses the deeper, hidden meaning of the Star Wars program.

Download or read book The Second Indochina War written by William S. Turley and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2008-10-17 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in a thoroughly revised edition, this influential book offers a concise history of the "Vietnam War" as seen by all sides, not just from the American perspective. Retaining its invaluable account of the strategies, perspectives, and internal politics of the Vietnamese Communists based on research in primary documents and interviews in Saigon and Hanoi, this completely updated and expanded edition incorporates the avalanche of documentation and secondary literature in both English and Vietnamese that has appeared over the past two decades. Distinguished scholar William S. Turley traces the conflict from its origins in the colonial period to its aftermath and shows how the local, national, regional, and global layers of conflict blended into a single event of great complexity. He takes a refreshingly objective look at contentious issues and concludes with a penetrating assessment of the claims, justifications, and "lessons" that scholars, statesmen, and strategists have advanced since the war's end. More information is available on the author's website.