For almost a decade, the tyrannical Ngo Dinh Diem governed South Vietnam as a one-party police state while the U.S. financed his tyranny. In this new book, Seth Jacobs traces the history of American support for Diem from his first appearance in Washington as a penniless expatriate in 1950 to his murder by South Vietnamese soldiers on the outskirts of Saigon in 1963. Drawing on recent scholarship and newly available primary sources, Cold War Mandarin explores how Diem became America's bastion against a communist South Vietnam, and why the Kennedy and Eisenhower administrations kept his regime afloat. Finally, Jacobs examines the brilliantly organized public-relations campaign by Saigon's Buddhists that persuaded Washington to collude in the overthrow—and assassination—of its longtime ally. In this clear and succinct analysis, Jacobs details the "Diem experiment," and makes it clear how America's policy of "sink or swim with Ngo Dinh Diem" ultimately drew the country into the longest war in its history.
Seth Jacobs is assistant professor in the Department of History at Boston College. He is the author of America's Miracle Man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, Religion, Race, and U.S. Intervention in Southeast Asia. In 2001, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations honored him with its Stuart Bernath Prize for the best article published in the field of diplomatic history.
Table of Contents
Introduction Chapter 1: "The Kind of Asian We Can Live with": Diem Wins American Support Chapter 2: "Let Our People Go!": The Geneva Accords and Passage to Freedom Chapter 3: "This Fellow Is Impossible": The Collins Mission Chapter 4: "Miracle Man": Diem's Regime in Myth and Reality Chapter 5: "Truth Shall Burst Forth in Irresistible Waves of Hatred": Cracks in the Facade Chapter 6: "A Scenario of Torture, Persecution, and Worse": The Diem Experiment in Decline Chapter 7: "No Respectable Turning Back": Collapse of the Diem Experiment Conclusion Bibliographic Essay
