Douglas Pike

Vietnam-on-the-Potomac

Series Foreword Introduction Historical Background and Decision-Making Arena The Shakedown Cruise: Launching the New Frontier Spinning Webs of Significance: The Language and Norms of 1961 Vietnam Decision Making, 1962 and 1963 Entangled in Webs of Significance, 1962-1963 Lyndon B. Johnson Becomes President Strengthening Webs of Significance: Language and the Johnson Administration Normative Behavior and the Johnson Administration The Johnson Group and Vietnam Decision Making, January 1964-July 1965 Epilogue Selected Bibliography Index

Vietnam in 1990: The Last Picture Show

Hanoi watchers tracking the performance of the tough and determined men of the Vietnam Politburo over the years have long known of one enduring principle in their operational code: when the going gets tough, the tough hunker down. The year 1990 was a tough one for the leadership, and predictably, the ruling Politburo returned to the bunker, driven there primarily by the influence of those astounding changes in the Leninist political systems of the world now widely labeled the Revolution of 1989. For Vietnamese leaders, the policy dilemma centered on how to give the people a prosperous life without significantly altering the Leninist political construct achieved at such a high price in blood, treasure, and wartime sacrifice. Their policy response, in a word, was judiciously to do nothing-to make no policy changes in any sector, on any matter, if such could be managed. This is characteristic of any highly defensive governmental policy position, not unknown in other world capitals. Often it is seen as indecisiveness, but it is not. Rather, it is the determination to seek systematically to buy time, pending some hopedfor turn of events. The leaders in Hanoi implemented their policy of judiciously doing nothing with consummate skill. Looking back on Vietnam during 1990, it is clear that there were virtually no significant policy changes in any state or party sector-economic, internal political, or foreign relations-and that this had been accomplished with no great sacrifice. In those few instances where change did occur, it was either for defensive purposes (the crackdown on intellectuals), because of irresistible outside pressure (Cambodia policy), or was apparent change rather than changed reality (foreign-China, U.S-.policies).

Communist vs. Communist in Southeast Asia

I A scarcely contemplated strategic condition has burgeoned in Southeast Asia since the fall of South Vietnam in April, 1975. This condition is the no-holds-barred power struggle among communist nations; it includes a bitter cold war between two communist superpowers and fratricidal hot wars among regional communist nations. Four events in particular provide the context for an examination of this situation: (1) the end of the Vietnam War, culminating in total victory for the various Indochinese communists; (2) the outbreak of intra-communist, internecine warfare, with nationalistic and ideological overtones; (3) the new, developing relationship between the United States and China, which, in addition to having obvious meaning for the Soviet Union, will have indirect impact on Southeast Asia, Japan, Korea, and others; and (4) the socio-economic improvement, psychological resiliency, and plain good luck enjoyed by ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines). These four developments are most important in determining the current and future course of events in Southeast Asia. Douglas Pike

The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79

The Khmer Rouge revolution turned Cambodia into grisly killing fields, as the Pol Pot regime murdered or starved to death a million and a half of Cambodias eight million inhabitants. This book - the first comprehensive study of the Pol Pot regime - describes the violent origins, social context, and course of the revolution, providing a new answer to the question of why a group of Cambodian intellectuals imposed genocide on their own country.

South Vietnam: Autopsy of a Compound Crisis

The brief twenty-year existence of the Government of Vietnam (GVN) (1956–1975) actually comprised two still briefer periods: the formative era of Ngo Dinh Diem’s presidency (1956–1963) during which civil war was sporadic and the U.S. presence limited, and the full-fledged wartime era (1963–1975) from Diem’s death to the fall of the South Vietnamese government, during which the U.S. presence was very large. Perceptions of the Government of Vietnam as a tyranny grew in direct proportion to the severity of the war, the size of the American presence, and the U.S. domestic interest in South Vietnam that flowed from both. For the most part, these perceptions reflected a superficial understanding of conditions in Vietnam, and the distortions of political partisanship in and around the antiwar movement.

Soviet Foreign Policy and Southeast Asia.

Introduction: On the Assessment of Foreign Policy 1. Priorities and Interests in Soviet Third World Policy 2. The Soviet Collective Security Proposal and ASEAN Reactions 3. Soviet Policy Towards ASEAN after the Fall of Indochina 4. The Soviet Union and Vietnam: Alliance Formation 5. The Soviet Union and Vietnam: Alliance Consolidation 6. Soviet Policy Towards ASEAN after the Vietnamese Invasion of Kampuchea 7. The Soviet Union and the Regional Balance of Power Appendix: Soviet-ASEAN Trade 1970-1982 Bibliography Index