Pt. 1: This volume describes those JCS activities related to developments in Vietnam during the period 1960-1963, when the United States expanded its initial military commitment to Southeast Asia. In 1960, the United States increased its military advisory strength in South Vietnam in response to increased Communist infiltration and to more sustained guerrilla attacks in the south and its contingency planning effort to deploy regular US forces to both Laos and South Vietnam to counter any threat by Communist Army units from the north or from China. President Kennedy's called for a new emphasis upon guerrilla warfare at first received only lukewarm support from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After the failed Bay of Pigs episode very early in the Kennedy administration, the President lost faith in the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and appointed General Maxwell Taylor to serve as his intermediary with the Joint Chiefs, until he assumed the Chairman responsibilities in October 1962. The Kennedy administration's policy was marked by clashes between factions in the Defense Department, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the State Department, and the White House. By 1963, these differences involved the support the US should provide for the Republic of Vietnam under its President, Ngo Dinh Diem. The history ends with the killing of Diem by a coup followed by the coincidental murder of President Kennedy a short time later.

"Catton treats the Diem government on its own terms rather than as an appendage of American policy. Focusing on the decade from Dien Bien Phu to Diem's assassination in 1963, he examines the Vietnamese leader's nation-building and reform efforts - particularly his Strategic Hamlet Program, which sought to separate guerrilla insurgents from the peasantry and build grassroots support for his regime. Catton's evaluation of the collapse of that program offers fresh insights into both Diem's limitations as a leader and the ideological and organizational weaknesses of his government, while his assessment of the evolution of Washington's relations with Saigon provides new insight into America's growing involvement in the Vietnamese civil war.".

Pt. 1: This volume describes those JCS activities related to developments in Vietnam during the period 1960-1963, when the United States expanded its initial military commitment to Southeast Asia. In 1960, the United States increased its military advisory strength in South Vietnam in response to increased Communist infiltration and to more sustained guerrilla attacks in the south and its contingency planning effort to deploy regular US forces to both Laos and South Vietnam to counter any threat by Communist Army units from the north or from China. President Kennedy's called for a new emphasis upon guerrilla warfare at first received only lukewarm support from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After the failed Bay of Pigs episode very early in the Kennedy administration, the President lost faith in the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and appointed General Maxwell Taylor to serve as his intermediary with the Joint Chiefs, until he assumed the Chairman responsibilities in October 1962. The Kennedy administration's policy was marked by clashes between factions in the Defense Department, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the State Department, and the White House. By 1963, these differences involved the support the US should provide for the Republic of Vietnam under its President, Ngo Dinh Diem. The history ends with the killing of Diem by a coup followed by the coincidental murder of President Kennedy a short time later.

In October 1963, President Kennedy proposed withdrawing from Vietnam, gaining him a durable reputation as a skeptic on the war. However, drawing on secret White House tapes, Marc Selverstone reveals that JFK never had a firm intention to withdraw. The real value of the proposal lay in obtaining political cover for his open-ended Vietnam policy.

The conventional narrative of the Vietnam War often glosses over the decade leading up to it. Covering the years 1954-1963, this book presents a thought-provoking reexamination of the war's long prelude--from the aftermath of French defeat at Dien Bien Phu--through Hanoi's decision to begin reunification by force--to the assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. Established narratives of key events are given critical reappraisal and new light is shed on neglected factors. The strategic importance of Laos is revealed as central to understanding how the war in the South developed.