President Gerald R. Ford's 1975 decision to use force after the Cambodians seized the SS Mayaguez merchant ship is an important case study in national security decision making. It was the first test of the War Powers Act and the only time a president ever directly managed a crisis through the National Security Council. Significant differences existed between the military and the White House over the use of force during the crisis. While often viewed as the last battle of the Vietnam War, the Ford administration was mainly driven by concerns over Korea. The Mayaguez crisis is one of the best documented but least-understood crises in US history. Copious documentation, including declassified White House meeting minutes and notes from private conversations, has not produced a good, consensus explanation for US behavior. The event is still explained as a rescue mission, a defense of freedom of the seas, an exercise in realpolitik, a political gambit to enhance Ford's domestic political fortunes, and a national spasm of violence arising from frustration over losing Vietnam. Widespread confusion about what happened and why it did contributes to equally confused explanation for US behavior. Even President Ford never understood the exact roles his two strongest advisors, Henry A. Kissinger and James R. Schlesinger, played during the crisis. Now, however, with new sources and penetrating analysis, Christopher J. Lamb's The Mayaguez Crisis, Mission Command, and Civil-Military Relations demonstrates how three decades of scholarship mischaracterized US motives and why the allegation of civilian micromanagement is wrong. He then extracts lessons for current issues such as mission command philosophy, civil-military relations, and national security reform. In closing he makes the argument that the incredible sacrifices made by US servicemen during the crisis might have been avoided but were not in vain. -- Dust jacket flap.

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Preface --Key Figures in the Mayaguez Crisis -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- Part I: Crisis Behaviors. Day One: Monday, May 12 ; Day Two: Tuesday, May 13 ; Day Three: Wednesday, May 14 ; Day Four: Thursday, May 15 -- Part II: Crisis Explanantions. Critical Crisis decisions ; Explaining Decisions, Behaviors and Outcomes ; Refining the Explanation: Rationality, Bureaucracy and Beliefs ; Findings, Issues, Prescriptions -- Conclusion.