Vietnam

Coming nearly a year after the Pulitzer Prize winning Halberstam (The Making of a Quagmire, 282, 1965) and Browne (The New Face of War, p. 407, 1965) reports on Vietnam, Jean Lacouture presents as up-to-the-minute an account and assessment as book publication permits. While he is a French Journalist, his is an opinion and idea book rather than straight reportage. As such, a certain reserve in acceptance of a viewpoint is essential. Lacouture has frequently been to Vietnam since serving on General Leclerc's staff in 1945. He knows the leading figures on both sides, indeed on the three sides as he reveals them, and he is familiar with the Geneva truce and the deviations, therefrom. His text clarifies the place, the people, the issues and the struggle in political rather than military or sociological terms. The author views the entry of the Americans into the conflict, the artificiality of the creation of the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam in the U.S. image; the emergence of the Viet Cong regime in reaction to the absolutism of the Diem regime; the communists of the South loyal to the regime of the North and the establishment of the National Liberation Front, political arm of the Viet Cong. Witness to the changing American involvement, he comments on the U.S. blindness to the one solution that must ultimately be faced--a settlement of local issues on a local level. His book gives the facts, but is more important as an interpretation of them, and is to be recommended to any seriously concerned reader. It is unfortunate that (possibly, the fault of translation) the style is often difficult and requires close reading for comprehension.