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Between 1995 and 1998, Robert S. McNamara led a series of blunt conversations between American and Vietnamese scholars and officials. "The discussions were frank and tough throughout, as befits the first-ever discussion by former enemies of this tragic war," writes McNamara, author of the controversial bestseller In Retrospect and the U.S. secretary of defense from 1961 to 1968. "Had this dialogue occurred in real time, rather than in retrospect, I believe the tragedy could have been prevented." That's probably an overstatement, but it's a useful starting point for this inquiry, in which many contributors probe the causes of the war and try to draw lessons from them.
The structure of Argument Without End is unconventional, with McNamara writing introductions and conclusions to most of the chapters, which sometimes read like excerpts of transcripts and often like pieces of analytical history. Readers will get the sense of observing a graduate-level seminar on the war, with some of its most knowledgeable participants and critics making presentations. The result is a provocative text eager to challenge assumptions. McNamara's presence hangs over everything--this really is his book, despite the numerous coauthors sharing credit--and his sense of optimism is eerie. "Both Hanoi and Washington could have accomplished their purposes without the appalling loss of life," he writes. A statement like that shows 20/20 hindsight, yet it's an awfully candid remark from a man who had much to do with America's humiliation in Southeast Asia. This is an important contribution to our understanding of that terrible conflict. --John J. Miller
From Publishers Weekly
Erroneous mindsets, mutual ignorance and misunderstandings between Washington and Hanoi drove the escalation of of the Vietnam War, concludes former Secretary of Defense McNamara in a challenging report full of revelations both fascinating and appalling. Based on six sets of talks held in Hanoi between 1995 and 1998 that brought together U.S. and Vietnamese scholars, policy makers and former military officers, this major reappraisal of the war is presented as a critical oral history. Among the meetings participants were McNamara, Nicholas Katzenbach (former deputy secretary of state), General Vo Nguyen Giap (ex-North Vietnamese defense minister) and Vietnams retired foreign minister Nguyen Co Thach. During the talks, McNamara writes, he was amazed to learn that Hanoi saw U.S. peace initiatives as part of a sinister plot to establish a permanent colonial regime in Saigon. Washington, misperceiving North Vietnam as a communist puppet bent on conquering all of Southeast Asia, let a mind-boggling number of opportunities slip by that might have averted war or brought a negotiated settlement. We learn that elements within Hanois top leadership wanted to accept a neutral Saigon coalition government; we are told that key escalation points (e.g., the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin attack) were not ordered by Hanoi to target Americans, as Washington assumed, but were decentralized decisions made for essentially local reasons. While it would be easy to dismiss this book as a self-flagellating exercise in hindsight, its unprecedented testimony by key players on both sides makes it an invaluable sequel to McNamaras 1995 bestseller, In Retrospect. Photos not seen by PW. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
McNamara, the former secretary of defense under presidents Kennedy and Johnson, argues that the war was a tragedy for both sides primarily because American and North Vietnamese leaders missed opportunities for avoiding war and later for ending it earlier. He and his coauthors detail the sometimes intense talks they and other American scholars and former officials had with 16 of their former Vietnamese adversaries in meetings held in Hanoi, from 1995 to 1998. The authors' presentation of Vietnamese analyses and other documentation greatly aids American understanding of the war and prevents the book from merely restating McNamara's In Retrospect (LJ 4/15/95). This work, bound to be controversial, is a crucial addition for public and academic libraries.ACharles L. Lumpkins, Pennsylvania State Univ., State College Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The New York Times Book Review, Jack F. Matlock Jr.
The specific lessons and conclusions set forth in Argument Without End are well reasoned and highly relevant to decisions being made today.
From Booklist
Former Defense Secretary McNamara received as much criticism as praise for In Retrospect (1995), his effort to understand Vietnam. But his quest has not ended. Over the last several years, McNamara has participated in meetings of U.S. and Vietnamese leaders and military figures from the '60s as well as contemporary scholars on the war, struggling to identify and clarify "missed opportunities, either for avoiding war before it started or for terminating it before it had run its course." (The Cuban missile crisis was subjected to a similar process.) The Americans came to Hanoi with five issues: the mind-sets of the two nations in 1961; the potential of taking a neutral position; escalation of the war from 1961 to 1965; negotiating initiatives, 1965^-67; and the possibility of a military victory for the U.S. A sixth issue was added at the Vietnamese's insistence: Washington's and Hanoi's missed opportunities to prevent war between 1945 and 1960. This book takes up these subjects by summarizing the views of each nation on the issue and then providing excerpts from the dialogues. Each chapter reveals key misunderstandings and miscommunications; in a final chapter, McNamara summarizes lessons the U.S. must learn for the future. A vital source of insights on history; an appropriate acquisition for all libraries. Mary Carroll
From Kirkus Reviews
The former secretary of defense and company offer a long-winded, overanalyzed, yet shallow look at the Vietnam War based on McNamara's interpretation of a series of meetings with former North Vietnamese officials. McNamara still doesnt get it. His heartless, arrogant, number-crunching management of the Vietnam War 196168 was a colossal failure. In an effort, he claims, to figure out why the war was ``a tragedy for both sides,'' McNamara (In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, not reviewed) in 1995 orchestrated a series of meetings with his former enemies. In doing so, he set up a ``process'' for the meetings, complete with rigid rules and procedures focusing on ``mindsets'' and ``missed opportunities.'' By working through this process, McNamara hoped to get answers to the Big Questions about the war. What he got was this bloated, artless book by committee (his co-authors, James G. Blight, Robert K. Brigham, Thomas J. Biersteker, and Col. Herbert Y. Schandler, are scholars in international affairs) that sheds very little instructive light on the tragedy of Vietnam. McNamara claims that the Vietnamese cooperated at the meeting and that ``revelations'' were uncovered. The book, however, offers precious few examples of Vietnamese cooperation. The ``revelations'' consist mostly of rehashed reconstructions of well-known events (the 1954 Geneva Treaty, the 1964 Tonkin Gulf incident, et al.), along with repetitive, not very revealing analyses of the ``mindsets'' of leaders of both sides. Yes, it is a wise thing to hear the often-neglected Vietnamese communist leaders' voices. But despite McNamara's claim that the meetings contained ``real dialogue,'' the Vietnamese stick mainly to the party line and the Americans often come off as naive and soft-headed. ``You should have asked these questions thirty-five years ago,'' former Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach says to the Americans. ``Then, maybe the war could have been avoided. Now, it is too late.'' Too late, indeed. The Vietnamese communists outfoxed McNamara during the Vietnam War; they do it again in this forgettable book. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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