Out of Balance: Evaluating American Strategy in Vietnam, 1968–72

Abstract

This paper examines the ineffective implementation of American military strategy in the Vietnam War’s final years. While the Nixon administration conceived a comprehensive strategic concept aimed at winding down the war in South Vietnam, civilian and military leaders struggled to realize, in an effectual manner, Nixon’s wide-ranging political objectives. American officials in Saigon and Washington found it near impossible to balance the competing strategic imperatives of combat operations, diplomatic negotiations, Vietnamization, and the withdrawal of US forces from South-east Asia. This inability to reconcile imbalances within the American strategic framework helps explain more fully the outcome of US political and military efforts in South Vietnam.     

The politics of neutrality: the American Friends Service Committee and the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939

Abstract

From the early months of the Spanish civil war (1936–9) the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), the American Quakers’ central service organization, was engaged in a large-scale relief operation on both sides of the front line. While Quaker aid workers on the ground were running hospitals, orphanages and child feeding stations on the Republican and Nationalist side, the operation triggered a sometimes heated debate at home. Quakers had to bridge the tension between the universalist ethos of a transnationally connected and internationally active religious group whose individual parts, in turn, closely integrated into, and were largely dependent on a national framework of action consisting of governments, the media and national-based groups of donors and supporters. Against this backdrop the article will reflect on the complex and shifting meaning of humanitarian neutrality. In the article the author will show how the claim to neutrality, always contested and precarious, could work as a gate opener for humanitarian aid vis-à-vis state and non-state actors alike, as a platform for co-operation with international institutions as well as a deliberately used capital on an increasingly competitive ‘humanitarian market place’.     

‘A Billion Dollar Racket’: the United States,South Vietnam,and Global Currency Manipulation during War, 1968–9

While most historians have discussed corruption as a key factor leading to South Vietnam's downfall, they have not fully analysed the US and international dimensions of South Vietnamese corruption. This article argues that economic, political, and diplomatic circumstances of the Vietnam War encouraged widespread US participation in currency manipulation, an economically destructive form of corruption that had serious implications for the stability of the South Vietnamese state. The US inability to shape South Vietnam's setting of the official exchange rate allowed South Vietnam to overvalue the piaster at the cost of US taxpayers. Combined with the structural economic problems produced by the war, such as inflation, the favourable exchange rate encouraged Americans, Vietnamese, Indians, Chinese, Koreans, and other internationals to make quick profits through illegal transactions. From bookstores in Saigon to banks in Hong Kong, Dubai, and New York, currency manipulation involved a host of individuals and organisations around the globe. Although many critics of the war cited South Vietnamese corruption in their arguments for US withdrawal, congressional investigation into currency manipulation revealed that without the direct contributions of US soldiers and civilians, the magnitude of illegal economic transactions would not have existed as it did.     

Science and Technology at the World Bank, 1968–83

The World Bank was an important supporter of science and technology during the period 1968–83. President Robert McNamara’s poverty oriented strategy created challenges that led to technological research, technology assessment and technological innovation in agriculture, forestry, civil works construction, sanitation, and many other fields of development. The Bank also pioneered in financing governmental mechanisms to stimulate industrial innovation. On the other hand, its support to science and technology was limited by lack of an overall policy and systematic support from top management, as well as by cumbersome procedures designed for large infrastructural projects. Even so, its financial independence, its strong leadership, its experienced and non‐political technical staff, and its ability to scale up successful innovations through its project lending, made it an important promoter of appropriate technology in the developing world.     

The Great War,the child’s body and the American Red Cross

Abstract

This article examines the child-relief activities of the American Red Cross in Hungary in the aftermath of the Great War, offering an insight into the workings of humanitarianism in interwar Europe. A close look at this one Central European ‘playground’ of transatlantic intervention helps us understand the logic and the underlying political, economic and ideological motives behind Allied humanitarian aid to ‘enemy’ children. Analysis of the ways in which the war’s aftermath affected children, their bodies and their relief throws light on the relationship between violent conflicts, children in need and humanitarian intervention. The article looks particularly at the role of the child’s damaged body and its photographic representation, making it what Cathleen Canning calls an ‘embodied experience of war’. Exploration of the humanitarian discourse around the suffering child helps us identify the humanitarian reaction to the unforeseen social consequences of wartime confrontation. The article argues that the harmed body of the ‘enemy child’ served to mobilise transnational compassion that challenged the war’s deeply anchored ‘friend–foe’ mentality. The child turned into a means of configuring and translating human suffering beyond ideological and political borders. At the same time humanitarian child relief helped to further consolidate asymmetric international power relations.     

The Liverpool Economy during the War of American Independence, 1775–83

Much has been written about how the American War of Independence, a key imperial event, affected the British Isles. However, within this body of work there is limited reference to Liverpool, which was arguably becoming ‘the second city of empire’. This article attempts to fill this gap in the historiography, and addresses the economic impact of the war upon this key port town. It shows that there were four overall stages to Liverpool’s foreign commerce during this period—initially trade remained broadly steady, then there was a noticeable decline, the penultimate stage marked a sluggish improvement, and finally it was not until the post-war years that a sustained recovery took hold. That said, despite these overall trends, individual markets such as the trans-Atlantic slave trade often had their own dynamics. Although privateers (private ships of war) contributed towards the town’s eventual commercial recovery, this activity was by no means the only factor in explaining this rebound. Furthermore, the American war had an impact upon other sectors of the Liverpudlian economy, including shipbuilding and infrastructure projects. Combined, this evidence suggests that eighteenth-century warfare had positive and negative repercussions for the UK economy. As a result, we learn more about being ‘at home with the empire’.     

The Wireless World at War, 1939–1945

F. H. HINSLEY. British Intelligence in the Second World War, abridged version.New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Pp. xiii, 628. $39.95 (US);

F. H. HINSLEY and ALAN STRIPP. Codebreakers. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Pp. 321. £17.95;

RALPH BENNETT. Behind the Battle: Intelligence in the War with Germany, 1939–1945. London: Sinclair Stevenson, 1994. Pp. xxiv, 328. £20.00;

CARL BOYD. Hitler's Japanese Confidant: General ōshima Hiroshi and Magic Intelligence, 1941–1945. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993. Pp. xviii, 271. $25.00 (US);

DEREK HOWSE. Radar at Sea: Tlie Royal Navy in World War Two. London: Macmillan, 1993. Pp. xviii, 383. £25.00;

JOHN WINTON. Ultra in the Pacific: How Breaking Japanese Codes and Ciphers Affected Naval Operations against Japan. London: Leo Cooper, 1993. Pp. 247. £17.50