Suchergebnisse

Teaching the Vietnam experience as a whole course (D. Pike), S. 144-151; Teaching Vietnam: a critical military analysis (H.G. Summers), S. 152-160; Using and misusing media resources in teaching on Vietnam (P. Braestrup and L. Hiraoka), S. 161-168; Vietnam and the teaching of Congress and foreign policy (S. Tillman), S. 169-180; Vietnam in the curriculum (J. Israel), S. 181-186; Official histories of the war in Vietnam: why they are produced and what is available for classroom use (D.F. Trask), S. 187-194; annotated bibliography by T. Van Klaveren, S. 195-198

In the wake of the Tet offensive, on March 31, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson announced a partial halt to the bombing of North Vietnam, initiated peace talks with Hanoi, and declared he would not run for a second term. In that election year, Richard Nixon called for "peace with honor" and defeated Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who could not attack Johnson for waging what had become a hugely unpopular war. Many Americans assumed that peace would come in short order. But, though the peace talks had begun, fighting in Vietnam continued for another seven years. In those years, Nixon gradually withdrew American troops from Vietnam but expanded the war to Cambodia and Laos, and with extensive bombing campaigns wreaked more destruction on the Indochinese than had been visited upon them in all the preceding years of war. More than twenty thousand American troops died, and upheavals in the United States tore the country apart, creating divisions that remain with us today.

"This paper addresses the question as to how and to what degree the form of political order in Vietnam has been influenced by China. How and to what extent have Vietnam's governance structures been converged toward or diverged from the Chinese model of political organization and rule? Similarities of governance structures in Vietnam and China are primarily the result of analogy or the fact that both regimes have faced comparable challenges first with regard to their respective national revolutionary struggles and later the establishment and institutional fostering of communist rule, acted under similar conditions and pursued similar goals which have resulted in the part convergence of the two countries' political institutions, structures, and practices that occurred without the direct exercise of influence. The most prominent example of chasing analogous objectives certainly refers to the economic reform processes toward market systems and the integration in global economic structures without touching the main pillars of the respective political orders. Overall, the convergence of governance systems in Vietnam and China lies in principles and policy (the value system of reform) rather than in structures and polity. Vietnam's learning from China is more a 'path imitation' than 'model imitation'." (author's abstract)