"Failure and Deception: US Nation-Building in South Vietnam"

The story of US intervention in South Vietnam's internal affairs is a story of failure after failure to establish a viable South Vietnamese state. Seeking to control perceived communist expansion and to destroy the eventual communist insurgency in South Vietnam, the US attempted to create a political alternative to the popular communist regime in the North. In doing so, the US was fighting an uphill battle, a battle it was neither able nor equipped to …

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