|
Description :
As America confronts an unpredictable war in Iraq, Stephen Randolph returns to an earlier conflict that severely tested our civilian and military leaders. In 1972, America sought to withdraw from Vietnam with its credibility intact. As diplomatic negotiations were pursued in Paris, President Richard Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger hoped that gains on the battlefield would strengthen their position at the negotiating table—working against the relentless deadline of a presidential election year.
In retaliation for a major North Vietnamese offensive breaking over the Easter holidays, the President launched the all-out air campaign known as Linebacker—overriding his Secretary of Defense and clashing with the theater commander in whom he had lost all confidence. He intended to destroy the enemy with the full force of America’s “powerful and brutal weapons” and thus shape the endgame of the war. Randolph’s narrative, based not only on the Nixon White House tapes and newly declassified materials from the National Security Council, the Pentagon, and the White House but also on never before used North Vietnamese sources, re-creates how North Vietnam planned and fought this battle from Hanoi and how the U.S. planned and fought it from Washington.
Randolph’s intimate chronicle of Nixon’s performance as Commander-in-Chief gains us unprecedented access to how strategic assessments were made, transmitted through the field of command, and played out in combat and at the negotiating table. It is a compelling story about America’s military decision-making in conflicts with nontraditional belligerents that speaks provocatively to our own time.
Content :
List of Maps
Abbreviations Used in the Text
Introduction
1. Nixon’s War
2. The Politburo’s Strategic Calculus
3. The NVA Prepares
4. Commando Hunt VII
5. The Initial Surges
6. Nixon Takes Charge
7. The Forces Flow Forward
8. B-52s over the North
9. Attack in the Highlands
10. The Fall of Quang Tri
11. The Path to Linebacker
12. Closing the Ports
13. Linebacker Planning and Direction
14. The Initial Strikes
15. The DRV Responds
16. Nixon Triumphant
17. The Siege of An Loc
18. The Defense of Hue
19. The Center Holds
20. Stalemate at the My Chanh River
21. Reactive Adversaries
22. The View from Hanoi
23. “One of Those Days”
24. Toward the Peace Path
Conclusion
Weapons Systems and Tactics
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
Books by the same Author :
|
ADVERTISING
