Cold War Mandarin – Jacobs Seth

Power with a capital P belonged to Diem. “The President is vested with the leadership of the Nation,” the constitution declared, and granted Diem the prerogative to “harmonize the legislative, executive, and judicial functions.” Article 41 allowed Diem to issue laws by decree and change existing laws. He was moreover free to appoint or dismiss all officers in the armed forces and all civilian officials without concurrence of the legis- lature.

Article 44 gave Diem the right to rule by emergency, and implied that he might declare an emergency whenever he wished. Article 98 delegated “[f]urther extraordinary powers to suspend temporarily certain civil liber- ties,” such as “liberties of movement and of residence, of opinion and of the press, of meetings and of associations, of syndical liberties and the right to strike.” This was hardly town-meeting democracy. Yet Diem had endowed his regime with the trappings of representative government, and the gesture pleased his American sponsors.5 Even the peremptory provisions of South Vietnam’s constitution did not convey the extent to which the nation became, under Diem, a police state and a family dictatorship.

Kinship has always played a prominent role in Vietnamese culture, and loyalty to family members was, unsurprisingly, a core value both north and south of the 17th parallel. Diem, however, took nepotism to a new extreme. Whatever authority he could bring himself to delegate, he placed in the hands of his family. Most influential was brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, whose modest-sounding title of “political counselor” disguised his true importance. Nhu was a graduate of France’s Ecole des Chartes, a school of medieval studies, and had been employed as an archivist in the imperial library at Hue until the end of World War II.

He then became involved in politics, working to whip up sup- port for Diem among noncommunist Vietnamese during Diem’s four-year exile from his homeland. The effectiveness of these promotional efforts was debatable, but Diem believed they had contributed to his installation as pre- mier, and he turned to Nhu frequently for advice and guidance. The bond between the two men grew stronger over the course of Diem’s reign, until by 1963 Nhu was virtually the only person to whom the South Vietnamese leader would listen.

California State University, Monterey Bay The Vietnam War and the tumultuous internal upheavals in America that coincided with it marked a watershed era in U.S. history. These events pro- foundly challenged America’s heroic self-image. During the 1950s the United States defined Southeast Asia as an area of vital strategic importance. In the 1960s this view produced a costly American military campaign that continued into the early 1970s. The Vietnam War was the nation’s longest war and ended with an unprecedented U.S.

failure to achieve its stated objec- tives. Simultaneous with this frustrating military intervention and the domestic debate that it produced were other tensions created by student activism on campuses, the black struggle for civil rights, and the women’s liberation movement. The books in this series explore the complex and con- troversial issues of the period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s in brief and engaging volumes.

To facilitate continued and informed debate on these contested subjects, each book examines a military, political, or diplomatic issue; the role of a key individual; or one of the domestic changes in America during the war. Volumes Published Melvin Small. Antiwarriors: The Vietnam War and the Battle for America’s Hearts and Minds. Edward K. Spann. Democracy’s Children: The Young Rebels of the 19605 and the Power of Ideals. Ronald B.

Frankum Jr. Like Rolling Thunder: The Air War in Vietnam, 1964-1975. Walter LaFeber. The Deadly Bet: LB], Vietnam, and the 1968 Election. Mitchell K. Hall. Crossroads: American Popular Culture and the Vietnam Generation. David F. Schmitz. The Tet Offensive: Politics, War, and Public Opinion. Seth Jacobs. Cold War Mandarin: Ngo Dinh Diem and the Origins of America’s War in Vietnam, 1950-1963. Cold War Mandarin Ngo Dinh Diem and the Origins of America’s War in Vietnam, 1950-1963 Seth Jacobs ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.

Lanham· Boulder· New York· Toronto • Oxford Cold War Mandarin N go Dinh Diem and the Origins of America’s War in Vietnam, 1950-1963 Seth Jacobs ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Lanham· Boulder· New York· Toronto· Oxford ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Published in the United States of America by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowmanlittlefield.com PO Box 317 Oxford OX29RU, UK Copyright © 2006 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jacobs, Seth, 1964- Cold war mandarin: Ngo Dinh Diem and the origins of America’s war in Vietnam, 1950-1963/ Seth Jacobs.

p. cm.- (Vietnam-America in the war years) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-7425-4447-5 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN-IO: 0-7425-4447-8 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-7425-4448-2 (pbk.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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• Title: –
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• ISBN: 9780742544475, 9780742544482, 0742544478, 0742544486
• Pages: 221
• Language: English (en)

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