Even today Americans often react to the word 'Vietnam' with mixed feelings of failure, frustration, and guilt. For 25 years, from the time when the first U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group arrived in Vietnam in August 1950 to the time when the last Marines were lifted by helicopter from the soon-to-be-captured U.S. Embassy in Saigon in April 1975, the United States attempted to create a viable noncommunist state in the Southeast Asian nation. For 25 years, that effort achieved less than desired results, finally ending ignominiously with the rout of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and the collapse of the South Vietnamese state. During the years immediately after the fall of South Vietnam, Americans in general preferred to ignore and to forget the American experience there. Recently, however, new interest has developed about what lessons the U.S. should learn from its Vietnamese experience and to understand how American policy-makers perceived the situation in Vietnam as they made the critical decisions which led to involvement. This book compares American, Soviet, and Chinese perceptions of the Vietnamese War and contrasts the lessons each country learned, and continues to learn, from the U.S. involvement in it. -- from Preface.

1. Vietnamese conflict: an overview : The development of the Vietminh; The Franco-Vietminh War; The inter-war period: creation of two Vietnams; The National Liberation Front of South Vietnam -- 2. Prelude to escalation : The American response; The Soviet and Chinese views: America constrained -- 3. Escalation: 1965-1966 : Americanization: the view from the Oval Office; The Johnson Doctrine: the view from Moscow; Another Korea? the view from Peking -- 4. Continuing commitment: 1967-1969 : Fighting a two front war: problems for Washington; Threat and opportunity: Moscow's quandary; Domestic turmoil and an external threat; the Chinese predicament -- 5. Steps to withdrawal: 1970-1972 : The view from Washington: Vietnamization triumphant-with help; Moscow, Hanoi, and Detente; Peking's change in policy and its impact on Vietnam -- 6. The ceasefire war : Washington and the ceasefire: ignoring the peace; The Kremlin's double vision; China's view: two hostile frontiers? -- 7. The lessons of Vietnam : The United States: lessons of losing; The Soviet Union: socialist globalism; China: encirclement and abandonment.