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‘Lyndon Johnson’s War’. Is this a fair comment on US involvement in the War in Vietnam?
Lyndon Johnson’s decision to “Americanize” the Vietnam war resulted in failure. Popular thought seems to suggest that his inability to judge the situation in South East Asia caused America to suffer the biggest military embarrassment in its history to date. However, a closer look at the facts, suggest that the blame should be shared with his predecessors, in particular Ike Eisenhower.
U.S.-Cuban Relations in the last two decades of the 20th Century: Just a trailing footnote?
Whoever now reflects upon the conduct and valour of Agathocles will find in them little or nothing that can be attributed to fortune… Still, if we consider the valour of Agathocles in encountering and overcoming dangers, and his invincible courage in supporting and mastering adversity, we shall find no reason why he should be regarded inferior to any of the most celebrated captains. But with all this, his outrageous cruelty and inhumanity, together with his infinite crimes, will not permit him to be classed with the most celebrated men.
How important was the so-called ‘domino theory’ in forming US policy towards Indochina during the Cold War? Were other factors more important?
Indochina was a central battleground of the Cold War for more than two decades in which poorly-armed Vietnamese guerrillas fought successfully against the USA. Some saw it as an ideological struggle between capitalism and communism, and others, as a misinformed US attack on anti-colonial nationalism. The reasons for American involvement are unclear and have led to fierce debate among academics.
Do nuclear weapons still have a role in international relations in the post-Cold War era?
For those that lived through the Cold War, nuclear weapons are synonymous with the superpower rivalry of the USA and USSR. Although never used, they were central to the conflict. Now, in the post-Cold War environment, this rivalry has been removed and the question of the utility of nuclear weapons is being reviewed.
The Transition to Democracy in Spain and Portugal
During the 1970′s, Spain and Portugal made the political transition from corporatism to democracy. Spain is often viewed as the paradigm case for the transition to democracy model. If Spain’s experience was the generalizable case for the transition to democracy, wouldn’t Portugal’s path to democracy be similar because of the two nations’ similarities? Both countries shared a common geographical setting, history, religion, and corporatist dictatorships. However, markably different factors caused the political changes, producing different government and social structures in each society. Spain and Portugal may have similarities, but these factors cloud the very different processes that occurred in each country’s transition to democracy, bringing the appearance of correlation when in fact there is little.
What can the Vietnam War tell us about the current war with Iraq?
The Vietnam War represents the nadir in American military history, its legacy forever ‘scar[ring] the American psyche.’[1] Thus, the Iraq War has been fought in the midst of apocalyptic references to ‘another Vietnam,’[2] as the rejectionists, the Saddamists, and the terrorists[3] continue to derail the American strategy for victory in Iraq. The Vietnam War has fundamentally changed the overall mindset of American leaders and the American public; the result is a different type of war, aimed at minimising casualties and reducing the length of war in a bid to capture ‘hearts and minds.’ In seeking to understand American behaviour in Iraq, there is an implicit assumption that lessons have been learned from Vietnam, but have they?
What factors facilitated the communisation of Eastern Europe?
With 1945, an entirely new era begins. In that year the flame of independence, where it had still flickered on throughout the war, was blown out in all ‘Eastern Europe’ except in the four peripheral states of Finland, Austria, Greece, and Turkey. By 1948 the countries which comprised Eastern Europe had become ‘communised’. Their bureaucracies, political machinery, and economies had become tarred with the Stalinist brush.
Why did the issue of race become more controversial in British society in the 1850s and the 1860s?
The 1850s and the 1860s saw the procession of a number of cataclysmic events both within the nation and in the colonies. These included the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the Morant Bay uprising in 1865 as well as an upsurge in fenianist extremism. In the shadow of these events, Britain was in the process of fiery parliamentary debates as to who should be included and who should be left on the periphery of the nation. The ideal of citizenship was represented by the vote which throughout the late 1850s and 1860s had become the nuclei of controversy, in which racial discourse set the agenda for those who were classified as citizens and those who were peripheral to the nation.
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