Road to Disaster: A New History of America's Descent into Vietnam

by Brian VanDeMark

Overview

"The most thoughtful and judicious one-volume history of the war and the American political leaders who presided over the difficult and painful decisions that shaped this history. The book will stand for the foreseeable future as the best study of the tragic mistakes that led to so much suffering."--Robert Dallek. Many books have been written on the tragic decisions regarding Vietnam made by the young stars of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Yet despite millions of words of analysis and reflection, no historian has been able to explain why such decent, brilliant, and previously successful men stumbled so badly. That changes with Road to Disaster. Historian Brian VanDeMark draws upon decades of archival research, his own interviews with many of those involved, and a wealth of previously unheard recordings by Robert McNamara and Clark Clifford, who served as Defense Secretaries for Kennedy and Johnson. Yet beyond that, Road to Disaster is also the first history of the war to look at the cataclysmic decisions of those in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations through the prism of recent research in cognitive science, psychology, and organizational theory to explain why the "Best and the Brightest" became trapped in situations that suffocated creative thinking and willingness to dissent, why they found change so hard, and why they were so blind to their own errors. An epic history of America's march to quagmire, Road to Disaster is a landmark in scholarship and a book of immense importance"--

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062449757
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	09/17/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	656
Sales rank:	1,028,873
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Brian VanDeMark teaches history at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, where for more than twenty-five years he has educated students about the Vietnam War. A Ph.D. graduate of UCLA and an elected visiting fellow at Oxford University, he served as research assistant on Clark Clifford's bestselling autobiography, Counsel to the President, and coauthor of Robert McNamara's number one bestseller, In Retrospect. A Texas native, he now lives in Maryland.

Table of Contents

Maps xii-xiii

Prologue: A Very Human Culprit xv

Chapter 1 The Danger of Unquestioned Assumptions (January-April 1961) 1

Chapter 2 The Limits of Imagination (April 1961-October 1962) 47

Chapter 3 The Failure of Anticipation (October 1962-November 1963) 113

Chapter 4 The Peril of Short-Term Thinking (November 1963-July 1965) 203

Chapter 5 The Hazard of Sunk Costs (August 1965-May 1967) 295

Chapter 6 The Jeopardy of Conflicting Loyalties (May 1967-February 1968) 379

Chapter 7 The Difficulty of Ending War (March 1968-January 1969) 457

Epilogue: The Burden of Regret 521

Acknowledgments 543

Notes 547

Select Bibliography of Published Sources 593

Index 603

Editorial Reviews

Beautifully written…the story has been untangled by a skillful historian who has laid it out in a way that makes the madness relatively easy to follow. It was impossible to put the book down.

War History Online

★ 07/23/2018
VanDeMark, a historian specializing in the Vietnam War, investigates at length how and why the Kennedy and Johnson administrations made the decisions that set the course of the Vietnam War. Drawing from numerous, in some cases exclusive, primary and secondary sources, he all but tells his story through defense secretary Robert S. McNamara’s eyes, giving the reader innumerable details about the former Ford executive’s war planning processes, his trips to Vietnam, meetings with Johnson and the national security team, bitter battles with the Joint Chiefs and other military brass, and his painful disillusionment after realizing in November 1967 that the war effort he oversaw was doomed. By not speaking out to the president or publicly for years, McNamara, VanDeMark writes, “effectively placed loyalty to the presidency above loyalty to the national interest” and “implicitly, if unintentionally, supported the continuation of a disastrous war that claimed” hundreds of thousands of lives. Throughout, VanDeMark brings in the work of social scientists—decision and negotiation researchers, sociologists, cognitive researchers, psychologists, behavioral economists, and others—to illuminate McNamara’s decision-making processes. Some of their ideas, such as the sunk cost fallacy, clearly apply; others, including the Ikea effect, which reputedly causes people to overvalue things they have contributed to making, seem less relevant. This book is sure to appeal to those still searching for Vietnam War answers that even McNamara, Johnson, and their best and brightest advisers never found. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Engrossing…. Absolutely first-rate.” — USA Today (four stars)

“Why do smart people do stupid things? That is the tragic question at the heart of this brilliant exploration of American leaders and the Vietnam War.” — Evan Thomas, author of Ike’s Bluff, Robert Kennedy, and Being Nixon

“Monumental…a landmark… This is the book I’ve been waiting for — a thorough and thoughtful history of what led to the war that shaped my life.” — Washington Independent Review of Books

“The most thoughtful and judicious one-volume history of the war and the American political leaders who presided over the difficult and painful decisions that shaped this history. The book will stand for the foreseeable future as the best study of the tragic mistakes that led to so much suffering.” — Robert Dallek, New York Times bestselling author of An Unfinished Life and Franklin D. Roosevelt

“An immensely readable and richly informative book, the best study to date of those fateful years when the Kennedy and Johnson administrations Americanized the war in Vietnam.” — George C. Herring, University of Kentucky, author of America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975

“A monumental achievement….Brian VanDeMark shows that we still have much to learn about America’s war in Vietnam. Road to Disaster is an excellent and accessible history of decision making in the Kennedy and Johnson years.” — Robert K. Brigham, Vassar College, author of Reckless: Henry Kissinger and the Tragedy of Vietnam

“A hard look at the flawed decision-making that figured in America’s misadventures in Southeast Asia...VanDeMark turns in some surprising observations...A fresh but sobering approach to the disastrous war in Vietnam.” — Kirkus Reviews

“This book is sure to appeal to those still searching for Vietnam War answers that even McNamara, Johnson, and their best and brightest advisers never found.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[An] exceptional work.…VanDeMark offers a valuable corrective to the Good Guys/Bad Guys theory of war making, and there’s no doubt he knows his research. Will interest military history buffs and anyone still trying to understand America’s most outstanding military fiasco.” — Library Journal (starred review)

“Brian VanDeMark’s Road to Disaster: A New History of America’s Descent into Vietnam is a startling read, a book that puts America’s leaders on the couch and analyzes the psychology behind the decisions that led us into an unwinnable war in Southeast Asia.” — Military.com

“An important book. … This book deserves attention and will appeal to those still searching for Vietnam War answers that Robert S. McNamara, Lyndon Johnson, and their best and brightest advisors never found.” — Vietnam Veterans of America Magazine

“Beautifully written…the story has been untangled by a skillful historian who has laid it out in a way that makes the madness relatively easy to follow. It was impossible to put the book down.” — War History Online

“Original and thought provoking....The sense of introspection it provides adds poignancy to the records of meetings and field trips by U.S. civilian and military leaders, who never quite came to grips with the unfolding tragedy.” — Foreign Affairs

From the Publisher

Brian VanDeMark’s Road to Disaster: A New History of America’s Descent into Vietnam is a startling read, a book that puts America’s leaders on the couch and analyzes the psychology behind the decisions that led us into an unwinnable war in Southeast Asia.

Military.com

Engrossing…. Absolutely first-rate.

USA Today (four stars)

The most thoughtful and judicious one-volume history of the war and the American political leaders who presided over the difficult and painful decisions that shaped this history. The book will stand for the foreseeable future as the best study of the tragic mistakes that led to so much suffering.

Robert Dallek

Monumental…a landmark… This is the book I’ve been waiting for — a thorough and thoughtful history of what led to the war that shaped my life.

Washington Independent Review of Books

An immensely readable and richly informative book, the best study to date of those fateful years when the Kennedy and Johnson administrations Americanized the war in Vietnam.

George C. Herring

Why do smart people do stupid things? That is the tragic question at the heart of this brilliant exploration of American leaders and the Vietnam War.

Evan Thomas

A monumental achievement….Brian VanDeMark shows that we still have much to learn about America’s war in Vietnam. Road to Disaster is an excellent and accessible history of decision making in the Kennedy and Johnson years.

Robert K. Brigham

An important book. … This book deserves attention and will appeal to those still searching for Vietnam War answers that Robert S. McNamara, Lyndon Johnson, and their best and brightest advisors never found.

Vietnam Veterans of America Magazine

Original and thought provoking....The sense of introspection it provides adds poignancy to the records of meetings and field trips by U.S. civilian and military leaders, who never quite came to grips with the unfolding tragedy.

Foreign Affairs

An immensely readable and richly informative book, the best study to date of those fateful years when the Kennedy and Johnson administrations Americanized the war in Vietnam.

George C.-Herring

An immensely readable and richly informative book, the best study to date of those fateful years when the Kennedy and Johnson administrations Americanized the war in Vietnam.

George Herring

2018-06-27
When good people make bad decisions, millions die.VanDeMark (History/U.S. Naval Academy; American Sheikhs: Two Families, Four Generations, and the Story of America's Influence in the Middle East, 2012, etc.), who co-authored Robert S. McNamara's memoir In Retrospect, takes a hard look at the flawed decision-making that figured in America's misadventures in Southeast Asia. Usefully, he forges strong connections between Vietnam policy and efforts to contain communist expansion elsewhere in the world, particularly Cuba. The U.S. defense strategy that informed responses to the Cuban missile crisis and the Bay of Pigs was much in evidence on the other side of the world. That military doctrine, writes the author, was too often based on imperfect information, to say nothing of a certainty of American right; the decision-makers, too, "had not gotten to where they were by being iconoclasts or troublemakers" but instead supported each other in error. It came as a surprise to all those company men that when, in 1966, America stepped up its bombing campaign, communist infiltration actually increased. VanDeMark turns in some surprising observations that indicate that some of those involved were uneasy about their assumptions and the consequences of them. For instance, Lyndon Johnson admitted after the fact that he should have brought in his own advisers to replace John F. Kennedy's and to rethink the situation, while McNamara retreated from his technocratic approach to the conduct of the war and came to see it as a mistake. "Ironically," writes the author, "the man who had sought a precise metric for each situation could only measure his legacy by that most plaintive and nebulous claim that it ‘could have been worse.' " Recognizing the limitations and human failings of strategists in Vietnam, VanDeMark closes by offering pointed lessons for modern war planners on such matters as "harnessing cognitive diversity" and favoring long-term thinking over short-term expedients.A fresh but sobering approach to the disastrous war in Vietnam, of considerable interest to all students of military history and policy.

Kirkus Reviews