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mburnamfink's review against another edition
5.0
Bui Diem had a front row seat to some of the most important historical events of the Vietnam War. As ambassador to the United States from 1965-1972, he was South Vietnam's representative in Washington during the most intensive period of intervention. From 1972-1975 he served as a representative to the Paris peace talks and ambassador at-large. Always one of the top civilians in the military government of President Thieu, Bui Diem advocated for nationalist and constitutional policies to little avail.
Bui Diem was born and raised in Hanoi, in a family with a legacy of academic excellence in the Confucian tradition. An uncle, Trần Trọng Kim, wrote an influential history of Vietnam and briefly served as Prime Minister under the Emperor Bao Dai. Instead of Confucian classics, Bui Diem was educated at Thăng Long School, where his history teacher as Võ Nguyên Giáp (yes, that Giap), and later studied mathematics. Hanoi in the 40s was roiling fervent of secret political groups, and Bui Diem joined a embryonic nationalist party. He was repelled by the overt manipulations of Communism, and became a hardened anti-Communist when his faction was systematically liquidated by Communist secret political assassination squads. Bui Diem only escaped with his life by running and hiding, reemerging in public life in 1955 in Saigon.
Bui Diem was locked out of the autocratic rule of Ngô Đình Diệm, garnering some influence as a newspaper editor. With the acccession of Thieu and Ky, and a stable military government, he was appointed ambassador to the United States.
This book is at its best when Bui Diem talks about his job. He tried to foster good relations between Johnson, Theiu, and Ky, sound out Johnson's "Best and the Brightest", and get a sense of political currents in Congress.
In The Jaws of History covers two major bombshells. The first is that the decision to dispatch Marines to Danang in 1965, the most significant escalation of the war, was made as a fait accompli with no consultation of South Vietnam. Bui Diem admires Johnson as a committed friend to South Vietnam, but admits that serious strategic considerations of the intervention, like how victory was to be defined, were known as early as 1965, and never seriously clarified by Johnson. The second is the Anna Chennault affair, which to summarize a great deal of complexity, is the theory that Richard Nixon used Anna Chennault and Bui Diem as a channel to tell President Thieu to scuttle peace negotiations in the runup to the 1968 election in order to increase his odds of winning. Diem both confirms and denies this theory. He did pass along messages from the Nixon campaign, but he doubts they influenced Thieu's decision. Theiu was a deeply suspicious man, and already doubted the intentions of North Vietnamese negotiators, with some justification.
This is an important and interesting book, and it also showcases the weaknesses of Bui Diem's side, particularly when read against Trương Như Tảng A Vietcong Memoir. Bui Diem certainly suffered, particularly during his childhood under French occupation, and in the desperate guerrilla days during the First Indochina War, but I don't get the sense of marginal existence from his memoir that less privileged Vietnamese had; where starvation and/or death by violence were ever present enemies. Bui Diem's elite diplomacy could take the temperature of public opinion, but Trương Như Tảng deliberately aimed to influence it. This account is ultimately a penetrating look at the failures of the American-South Vietnamese alliance, and the limited imagination that America had for the future of South Vietnam.
Bui Diem was born and raised in Hanoi, in a family with a legacy of academic excellence in the Confucian tradition. An uncle, Trần Trọng Kim, wrote an influential history of Vietnam and briefly served as Prime Minister under the Emperor Bao Dai. Instead of Confucian classics, Bui Diem was educated at Thăng Long School, where his history teacher as Võ Nguyên Giáp (yes, that Giap), and later studied mathematics. Hanoi in the 40s was roiling fervent of secret political groups, and Bui Diem joined a embryonic nationalist party. He was repelled by the overt manipulations of Communism, and became a hardened anti-Communist when his faction was systematically liquidated by Communist secret political assassination squads. Bui Diem only escaped with his life by running and hiding, reemerging in public life in 1955 in Saigon.
Bui Diem was locked out of the autocratic rule of Ngô Đình Diệm, garnering some influence as a newspaper editor. With the acccession of Thieu and Ky, and a stable military government, he was appointed ambassador to the United States.
This book is at its best when Bui Diem talks about his job. He tried to foster good relations between Johnson, Theiu, and Ky, sound out Johnson's "Best and the Brightest", and get a sense of political currents in Congress.
In The Jaws of History covers two major bombshells. The first is that the decision to dispatch Marines to Danang in 1965, the most significant escalation of the war, was made as a fait accompli with no consultation of South Vietnam. Bui Diem admires Johnson as a committed friend to South Vietnam, but admits that serious strategic considerations of the intervention, like how victory was to be defined, were known as early as 1965, and never seriously clarified by Johnson. The second is the Anna Chennault affair, which to summarize a great deal of complexity, is the theory that Richard Nixon used Anna Chennault and Bui Diem as a channel to tell President Thieu to scuttle peace negotiations in the runup to the 1968 election in order to increase his odds of winning. Diem both confirms and denies this theory. He did pass along messages from the Nixon campaign, but he doubts they influenced Thieu's decision. Theiu was a deeply suspicious man, and already doubted the intentions of North Vietnamese negotiators, with some justification.
This is an important and interesting book, and it also showcases the weaknesses of Bui Diem's side, particularly when read against Trương Như Tảng A Vietcong Memoir. Bui Diem certainly suffered, particularly during his childhood under French occupation, and in the desperate guerrilla days during the First Indochina War, but I don't get the sense of marginal existence from his memoir that less privileged Vietnamese had; where starvation and/or death by violence were ever present enemies. Bui Diem's elite diplomacy could take the temperature of public opinion, but Trương Như Tảng deliberately aimed to influence it. This account is ultimately a penetrating look at the failures of the American-South Vietnamese alliance, and the limited imagination that America had for the future of South Vietnam.
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