KISSINGER'S BETRAYAL

Young, a former MACV/CORDS officer in the Vietnam War, challenges conventional narratives about the conflict.

“Losing the Vietnam War was traumatic for Americans,” writes the author, as the war not only devastated the lives of combatants but left an indelible mark on the national psyche. Young has published multiple books about Southeast Asia, co-translated a Vietnamese novel into English, and spent much of his post-war life advocating on behalf of Southeast Asian refugees. Young reflects on the ways his own life has been shaped by the war and the decisions made by politicians and diplomats in Washington, D.C. While he criticizes U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and other civilian leaders for ineptitude, no figure receives as much ire as President Richard Nixon’s national security advisor and secretary of state, Henry Kissinger. Supported by a treasure trove of archival materials from both American and Soviet sources, the most damning of which are replicated in the book’s appendix, the book makes a convincing case that Kissinger worked unilaterally in secret negotiations with the Soviets that granted unparalleled concessions to the North Vietnamese army. Proceeding from this central thesis, backed by impressive research necessitating nearly 500 endnotes, the book makes an effective case that America not only abandoned South Vietnam, but actively undermined its future as a viable, independent nation. But while trying to correct “the academic narrative that the Vietnam War was both immoral and unwinnable,” the author ignores the violence inflicted upon Vietnamese citizens by the American military; defoliant Agent Orange is only mentioned once in a passing reference, and the My Lai massacre and other atrocities are absent from the book’s narrative. So too are legitimate critiques of the war from outside “college campuses and among elite families,” especially those from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Panthers, who emphasized the war’s disproportionate impact on poor Black youth. Most disappointing and unnecessary is the book’s foray into today’s culture wars, offering clichéd and insubstantial attacks on the Green New Deal and “the reverse racism of critical race theory.”

A well-researched reexamination of the war in Vietnam that is weakened by its political agenda.