Diem's Final Failure
Subtitle: Prelude to America's War in Vietnam (Modern War Studies)
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Published: November 2002
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 280
ISBN-13: 9780700612208
Subjects: American history: Vietnam War; Asian history: Vietnam War; Biography: general; Political leaders & leadership; c 1945 to c 1960; c 1960 to c 1970; History: World; Political History; Politics and government; Political Science; History - Military / War; Ngão, £áinh Diòãem,; USA; Vietnam; International Relations - General; Asia - Southeast Asia; Military - Vietnam War; United States; Asia - General; History & Theory - General; Vietnam (Republic); 1901-1963; Foreign Relations; Ngo, inh Diem,
Description: "Often portrayed as an inept and stubborn tyrant, South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem has long been the subject of much derision but little understanding. Philip Catton's study provides a much more complex portrait of Diem as both a devout patriot and a failed architect of modernization. In doing so, it sheds new light on a controversial regime.".

"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.".

"Neither an American puppet, as communist propaganda claimed, nor a backward-looking mandarin, according to Western accounts, Catton's Diem is a tragic figure who finally ran out of time, just a few weeks before JFK's assassination and at a moment when it still seemed possible for America to avoid war."--BOOK JACKET.