A quarter century has passed since the end of the Vietnam War. With the opening of records not only in the United States but also in Vietnam, the former Soviet Union and China, along with the publication of testimony by participants, the image of the war has undergone major revisions. The United States, for example, with the trend toward conservatism in American politics since the 1980s, has seen the emergence of a “hawkish revisionism, ” largely driven by commanders who served in the war, politicians and commentators. These revisionist hawks argue that “America lost a winnable war, ” whether because civilian leaders tied the military's hands by insisting on fighting a “limited war” or because of “interference” by the mass media and antiwar demonstrators.
In response, liberals argued that the war was a tragic over-intervention arising from anticommunism and an illusion of omnipotence in an area where the United States had no compelling national interests. With radicals arguing, meanwhile, that American intervention in Vietnam was inevitable to secure Southeast Asian resources and markets and to liberalize global trade, heated debate over the war flared up again in the United States in 1985 on the 10^th anniversary of the collapse of the Saigon regime.
The end of the Cold War in the early 1990s led to progress in opening the Soviet diplomatic archives, while the adoption of open economic policies in China and Vietnam resulted in partial opening of archives in those countries. As a result, scholars can now research the Vietnam War not only from the American perspective but in a multi-dimensional way, taking into account the North Vietnamese, Chinese and Soviet perspectives as well.
This special issue reflects the expansion in perspectives on the war, with articles drawing not only on English-language sources but on Vietnamese-and Chinese-language sources as well, and analyzing trends in countries in the region such as Japan, Laos and Cambodia. This kind of multidimensional approach based on the mining of diverse sources is characteristic of today's scholarship, and is the reason we have titled this special issue “The Vietnam War as Contemporary History.”

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The Vietnam Workers' Party adopted a policy of political struggle to liberate South Vietnam after the Geneva Agreement in 1954. In that time, it was always necessary for Vietnamese in the North to receive consent and assistance of the two great powers in the socialist camp, China and the Soviet Union. For the Vietnam Workers' Party, these two countries had constituted a center; China had played the role as a great power assisting it in substance and policies to be adopted in North Vietnam, and the Soviet Union had been expected to play a role as an ideological center for its revolutionary action.
In the latter half of 1950s, Vietnamese in the North faced several severe conditions: social disorder brought by land reform, Diem ignoring the election expected in 1956, and ideological problems after the 20^th Congress of the Soviet Union. In these conditions, they had maintained their liberation policy toward South Vietnam. In the Moscow Conference of 1957, they had found their new program of action and promoted two kinds of revolutions in the same time: the socialist revolution in the North and the democratic people's revolution in the South.
In the first half of 1960s, the confrontation between China and the Soviet Union was revealed. Though the Vietnam Workers' Party had made efforts to restore relations between these two countries for the purpose of getting assistance of the whole socialist camp for its revolutionary action against the U. S., the confrontation had been getting more intense. The Soviets had doubted the North Vietnamese loyalty for themselves, for the Vietnam Workers' Party made clear its attitude against revisionism in the 9^th Plenum in 1963. In spite of the lack of support of the whole socialist camp, Vietnamese in the North had to expand their military actions in the South according to the social confusion and American intervention in the South.
Until 1965, when the new Soviet leadership changed policy toward North Vietnam and began active military support for the Vietnamese in the North, the Vietnam Workers' Party had sought both the most effective policy for the liberation of the South and the way to restore the united front of the whole socialist camp. But facing the ideological confusion after the Soviet 20^th Congress and the confrontation between China and the Soviet Union in 1960s, the Vietnam Workers' Party did not abandon its hope for the liberation of the South. This non-changing attitude was characteristic of the policies of the Vietnam Workers' Party in this period.

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Laos was thrown into civil war in late 1960, and when the Kennedy administration took over the Laotian crisis from the Eisenhower administration, the possibility of U. S. intervention in Laos created much controversy within the administration. In March 1961, the Kennedy administration adopted a two-track policy toward Laos. One course was pursuing negotiations for a political settlement among the Laotians or the “neutralization” of Laos. The other was providing military support to the anti-communists in Laos as well as planning for military intervention in case the negotiations failed. It has been generally believed that Kennedy opted for a neutral Laos abandoning the military option as soon as he became president. In fact, the military option was deemed no less important than the political option for some time, and there was much heated discussion within the U. S. government during the first several months of 1961 over executing some sort of intervention plan for Laos.
As part of its military intervention planning for Laos, the U. S. sought support from its major international ally—Great Britain. Two things have become clear that were little known in the past. First, the British government was formally and strongly committed to planning for intervention in Laos within the framework of SEATO and, however reluctantly, felt obliged to intervene into Laos with the U. S. when the negotiations for political settlement failed. At his meeting with President Kennedy at Key West, Florida, on March 26, 1961, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan made such a commitment, and consultations ensued between the American and British military. The consultations centered on detailing SEATO Plan 5—a military intervention plan for Laos. Second, despite the U. S. -U. K. agreement on SEATO intervention planning for Laos, subsequent discussions over U. S. military action in Laos within the Kennedy administration went far beyond what the British agreed to or SEATO Plan 5. A variety of intervention plans were proposed within the administration from April through August 1961. The nature of these plans and the discussions on them between President Kennedy and his officials throw into question their real understanding of the U. S. -U. K. alliance and foreshadow unilateral U. S. intervention in Southeast Asia.

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China sent total of 32, 000 troops as “rear-services” to North Vietnam during the Vietnam War. This fact has been paid far less attention to as a case of dispatch and garrison of troops among the socialist countries, especially when compared with the former Soviet Red Army in the East European socialist camp countries.
This study examines the course of the dispatch, of Chinese troops to North Vietnam in the 1960's, and discusses the general relation features, contradictions and managements among the socialist countries.

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After massive U. S. Army forces arrived in the summer of 1965, the Vietnam War became the American War perfectly. The purpose of this paper is to explore how the U. S. made its strategic decisions between July 1965 and the end of January 1968 when the Vietcong's Tet (old calendar's New Year in Vietnamese language) attacks occurred.
Since Christmas Day of 1965, the U. S. had continued the pause (tentative stop of bombing against North Vietnam) for about one month. The message by this act was that the U. S. would continue the pause if Hanoi did stop its support to guerrillas in South Vietnam, but would escalate bombings if Hanoi did not accept the U. S. proposal. Secretary of Defense McNamara had in mind that the U. S. was ready to try the pause again one year later.
In 1966, the Vietnam War became a stalmate and was struck in the quagmire for the U. S.. In the spring, President Johnson replaced McGeorge Bundy, who shared his opinion with McNamara, by Walt Rostow, whose opinion was close to the military, as the Assistant for National Security Affairs. Between June and September, U. S. kept the bombing against the POL (Petroleum, oil, lubricants) storages which were located in the northern part of the 20 degree line in North Vietnam. The POL bombing was not successful in itself. However, it could remove obstacles in the bombings of Hanoi and Haiphong.
At the end of 1966, McNamara proposed another bombing pause in order to start negotiations for peace. President Johnson, however, rejected that proposal. Instead, Johnson strongly supported Rostow's “Winning Strategy” plan in 1967. The ultimate goal of the plan was to make Johnson win the presidential election of 1968. Rostow insisted that to achieve the goal, it was indispensable to keep a winning atmosphere in the Vietnam War.
The words “winning atmosphere” did necessarily mean a victory. It was enough to show that the enemy would never win and that a victory of the U. S. would come in the near future. In that sense, we may say that the “Winning Strategy” was a defensive strategy.
Based on the strategy, President Johnson allocated most ground forces near the border where they anticipated that the enemy's main forces would attack. He then declared “We can see the light at the end of the tunnel”. However, in the last day of January (Tet days) 1968, the enemy made unanticipated attacks not to the border areas but to almost all cities in South Vietnam.

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The purpose of this paper is to examine the Johnson Administration's attitudes toward the “Russell Tribunal” which was formed on the initiative of Bertrand Russell and was held in Stockholm and Copenhagen in 1967. The Tribunal accused the United States and its allies of committing “war crimes” in the war in Vietnam. The Tribunal is now being considered to be worth notice since the International Tribunal on Crimes against Women was recently organized after the model of the “Russell Tribunal.” In addition, the U. S. government has paid little attention to the moral responsibility for the civilian casualties in such recent wars as the Gulf War, the War in Kosovo, and the War in Afghanistan. So, we now need to reexamine the most significant feature of the Tribunal: accusing the “American War” of “genocide.” This paper deals with the Johnson Administration's attitudes toward the Tribunal's accusation, based on the recently declassified primary documents.
The Johnson Administration deliberately ignored the Tribunal in order not to raise the Tribunal's stature as well as to limit its impact on world opinion. The Administration totally ignored the invitations from Russell, who asked the U. S. to appear and state their case. During the Tribunal, the Administration had tried to avoid making the Tribunal the subject of official U. S. notice. However, the State Department instructed the American Embassies to discuss the matter on an informal basis and ask the host governments not to support the Tribunal. It should be noted that as the result of efforts by the American Embassies, most of the heads of state who were the sponsors of the Russell Peace Foundation publicly disavowed the Tribunal.
In the Tribunal, many witnesses gave extensive evidence on the use of the anti-personnel bombs called CBU as well as the massive and deliberate bombardment of civilian populations and civilian targets. Even though the Johnson Administration acknowledged that CBU bombs had been dropped on North Vietnam, it denied that they were directed against civilians. The Administration felt that the Tribunal appeared to have a very limited attention from the press and to have only a negligible impact on world opinion. The Administration paid little attention to the accusation that the U. S. was guilty of “genocide.” Johnson took this attitude mainly because he continued to justify the U. S. war in Vietnam to defend South Vietnam against the communists. We can see the continuity between the Johnson and the current administrations in terms of their little concern about their attack against the civilian populations and civilian targets. Therefore, it can be said that it is still an unfinished journey for American policy makers to come to terms with the moral responsibility for their war conduct.

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During this period, Prime Minister Eisaku Sato faced three important challenges: the U. S. escalation of the Vietnam War, the extension of the U. S. -Japan security treaty in 1970, and the reversion of Okinawa. These three issues were inter-related, having an impact on each other. Sato had several reasons to support the U. S. Vietnam policy: the war made it difficult for Japan to play a larger non-military role in Asia; it made the reversion of Okinawa extremely difficult with the U. S. bases playing an essential role in the U. S. war efforts. Moreover, with the war continuing, Sato feared, the opposition would take advantage of the mounting anti-war sentiments to repudiate the security treaty in 1970 by linking B-52s' bombing missions from Okinawa and the Vietnam War with the security treaty. The Johnson administration, on the other hand, also wanted Japan to play a larger role in Asia for its own reasons: their need to reduce U. S. over-commitments, especially in view of the deteriorating balance of payments; their desire for Japan's expanding role to accommodate the rising nationalist sentiments among Japanese; above all, the administration's desire for Japan's public support for the U. S. war efforts as well as her increased aid to Southeast Asian countries including South Vietnam.
The Japanese government's effort at mediation was part and parcel of his over-all efforts to meet such U. S. expectations. Sato not only supported the U. S. Vietnam policy but also responded positively to expanding Japan's role in Asia as had been urged by Washington. Sato hoped that such cooperative efforts would make a good impression on President Johnson and his advisors, thus creating a favorable atmosphere for negotiations for the Okinawa reversion. Sato's tactics worked but at the cost of eroding Japan's role as a mediator. His closer identification with Washington and Saigon beginning in the summer of 1967 further eroded Japan's role as a mediator in the Vietnam War. The Okinawa reversion was achieved at the expense of the inhabitants on Okinawa. Given Sato's own convictions, he found no difficulty accepting Washington's rationale that the bases on Okinawa contributed not only to regional security in Asia but also to that of Japan. This logic, however, required that the U. S. bases on Okinawa be reinforced rather than reduced against the wishes of the Okinawans. His linking of the security of Japan with that of regional security in Asia marked a significant departure from his predecessors who had been prudent enough to confine the role of the U. S. bases primarily to the defense of Japan. It should be also noted that, given the opposition's intention to make the Okinawa problem the focal point of their political campaign, the reversion of Okinawa substantially helped smooth out the political process of extending the security treaty in 1970 by depriving them of a potentially explosive issue to mount a campaign for the repudiation of U. S. -Japan security relations based on the treaty arrangements.

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The Tet Offensive, from January to February 1968, was a “Turning Point” in the Vietnam War, which led to the beginning of the Paris Talks in May 1968. In fact, it had a great psychological influence on the Johnson Administration, toward “de-escalation” of war. This article is an attempt to reconsider the connections with the Tet Offensive and the Paris Talks, through a view from the Vietnam Labor Party' diplomatic struggles.
The VLP had adopted “the Resolution of Promotion for Diplomatic Struggles” at 13th Central Committee on January 1967. This Resolution had two objects; 1) to obtain a victory against U. S. on “the peace talks”; 2) to combine “diplomatic struggle” with “armed struggle” and “political struggle, ” that is to say, to promote “three prongs of struggle” of the armed, the political and the diplomatic. And the combination of “armed struggle” and “political struggle” was intended to execute a “general offensive and general uprising” in Southern Vietnam. Therefore, this resolution meant that North Vietnam would obtain “a final victory” on “the negotiation table” after “a decisive victory” on “the battlefield.” In other words, the VLP had planned that Hanoi would begin the peace talks with Washington after the victory of the Tet Offensive.
Hanoi, however, failed to obtain its objects on the battlefield for the frustration of the Tet Offensive. After that, President Johnson declared to hold peace talks with Hanoi at March 31st, and Hanoi accepted his proposal. Then the Paris Talks begun on May 13th. Therefore, Hanoi had to sit the negotiation table without obtaining a decisive victory through the Tet Offensive.
For Hanoi, the failure of Tet led to some changes of “military issue” and “political issue.” Concerning the “military issue, ” Hanoi thought that the “military issue of North, ” as “completely stopping the bombing of North” issue, had priority position to the “military issue of South, ” as “withdraw of U. S. forces” issue. Concerning the “political issue, ” Hanoi thought that the recognition of the NLF by U. S. had priority over the foundation of a coalition administration in South. In its background, there were “North Vietnamization” in armed struggles and political struggles for a reason of the weaken NLF with Tet's blow.
For Washington, on the other hand, its scenario for peace was affected not by the Tet Offensive but by the decision for the beginning of the Paris Talks. In “fighting while negotiating” situation, the increasing military saturation from North to South could have a bad influence on the battlefield in South and Saigon's existence. Therefore, Washington had to suspend “mutual” reduction of both side forces for the reason of no recognition of U. S. forces withdraw. Because Washington needed to reinforce Saigon as strong political substance, for the plan of using Saigon as a core of “political issue” settlement.
Afterward, the Paris Agreement had a separate solution for “military issue” and “political issue” in January 1973. Eventually, there had been the complexity of Vietnam issues in the different intentions of both sides at the beginning of the Paris Talks.

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In 1965, when U. S. military forces intervene in South Vietnam directly, Vietnam Worker's Party (VWP) started a large military build up in South Vietnam. The combination of northern personnel and Chinese military equipments via Cambodia, and Cambodian rice became indispensable for VWP's war in the south. Using this combination, VWP initiated “general offensive and general uprising” in 1968 and failed. Chinese supplies and Cambodian rice continued to be vital to the VWP.
U. S. military leadership recognized VWP's supply pattern and with Cambodian anti-Sihanouk group, they organized anti-VWP riots in 1970. Sihanouk reacted violently and Cambodian government leaders decided on a coup d'etat.
As an aftermath of the coup, an unstable Sihanouk-Cambodian Communist Party (CCP) Alignment was formed by China and VWP, but CCP leader-ship led by Pol Pot directed independent external policy, while utilized China and VWP aid and assistance.
U. S. -Chinese detente and Vietnam peace accords did not include Cambodian peace because of CCP's intransigency and U. S. minunderstanding of the CCP's independency. The Cambodian army of Lon Nol confused after massive expansion and unable to defend the main roads and countryside, was defeated by the CCP's forces in 1975.

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It is wildly believed that Japan conducted an “autonomous” diplomacy during 1970's and it was well demonstrated in its foreign policy toward Vietnam. At the same time, Japan sought to contribute to the peace and security in Southeast Asia by using its world's second largest economic power as a carrot for Vietnam. Thus, I would like to characterize this movement as the “diplomacy of an economic power” and would like to demonstrate how Japan played a political role to balance the enlargement of China and Soviet powers on Vietnam by satisfying its economic needs.
After the fall of Saigon in April 1975, the US became indifferent to Indochina. In contrast, China and the Soviet Union had begun to seek to gain a hegemonic power. Both of them regarded Vietnam as a key factor to formulate their foreign policies in this region as it took a relatively neutral position in the Sino-Soviet conflict. The Soviet Union aided Vietnam both military and financially with the expectation that Vietnam could bring great pressure on China from the south. In the same manner China aided Vietnam in order to encourage Hanoi to avoid the development of Soviet-Vietnamese relations, especially their security cooperation against China. At the same time, China also supported the Pol Pot regime, an anti-Vietnamese government in Cambodia, to be a friendly “buffer state” to block complete Soviet-Vietnamese security cooperation in Indochina.
Japan was concerned about who would fill the “power vacuum” in Southeast Asia. If Vietnam tilted towards China or the Soviet Union, then ASEAN countries might align with the other in order to counter-balance its power in the region. As a result, the influence of communist powers on Southeast Asia would be inevitable. That is what Japan feared the most.
Vietnam needed economic assistance for post-war reconstruction, not only from communist countries but also from Western and ASEAN countries. Vietnam also demanded the US to make war reparations pledged by Nixon, which was a prerequisite condition for the normalization of ties with the US. Under these circumstances, Japan took two major foreign policies toward Vietnam. One was to offer ODA. Another was to play an intermediary role to normalize the diplomatic relations between the US and Vietnam.
Japan encouraged Vietnam to maintain a neutral position toward the Sino-Soviet conflict. Since the outbreak of the Sino-Vietnamese conflict made Vietnamese dependency on the Soviet Union, Japan discourage Vietnam to depend on it. Japan regarded itself as a “counterweight” to the powers of China and the Soviet Union.

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The Vietnam War had hardly ended when intensive efforts to “correct” the war narratives were commenced within the United States. The challenge to the once seemingly established fact that the United States had suffered a humiliating defeat came to its peak in the middle of the 1980s. Revisionists such as the former and incumbent Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan aimed to cure the Americans of the Vietnam syndrome, and to help them regain their self-confidence and a sense of national integrity.
The withdrawal of American troops, the revisionists insisted, should never be portrayed as a surrender, instead merely as an American unilateral decision to leave Vietnam. The defeated, if any, were the South Vietnamese, not the Americans. The United States was actually a winner there, for it helped the anti-Communist regime in South Vietnam survive for two decades so that other nations in Southeast Asia could develop their economic and political strength. Moreover, American soldiers were always victorious in any encounter with the Communist guerrilla or regular forces.
The revisionists believed that the United States could have won at an earlier stage if only it had used its military power in an overwhelming way. The United States was on the verge of triumph by the end of 1972, almost forcing the leaders in Hanoi to accept American terms in peace talks through its massive bombing attacks in central North Vietnam. Then, suddenly, the revisionists argue, the U. S. Congress, intimidated by an unjustified fear of United States inability to win the war, threw in the towel.
Political leaders in Washington came under the attack of the revisionists. The United States lost this war for several reasons, namely because the government was unable to offer the American people a definite war objective, placed exceedingly unnecessary restrictions upon the military, failed to demonstrate sufficient will to win, and was unsuccessful in fully mobilizing the public behind the war effort.
American mass media, including television, was another target. The correspondents were criticized for being too young and too inexperienced to grasp the reality of battleground and sometimes too naive to shelter themselves from the influence of the Communists' propaganda. Hence, their reporting across the Pacific contributed to serious increases in anti-war sentiment back home, which in turn caused extreme damage to the American war strategy.
The majority of the American people were, however, far from being persuaded by such revisionist arguments. They knew that they had never fulfilled their objective of building a strong and viable anti-Communist regime in Vietnam, that they had been responsible for the South Vietnamese deficiencies, that winning in a shooting war had been irrelevant to the political future of the country, that the results of truce negotiations could hardly have been American triumph, and that blaming politicians and reporters merely was a means to protect the military from further criticism. That is why, to the regret of the revisionists, the memory of defeat in Vietnam still haunts the American people.

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The purpose of this article is to examine the formation process which successfully created the Convention to Ban Anti-Personnel Landmines and thus think about the implication of this process. The formation process of this convention was unique in that middle-and small-power countries and civil society effectively cooperated to realize this convention. In addition to this, the discourse “AP landmines are inhumane and should be abandoned” was put up, and countries which could not agree with this disquisition were excluded from the convention negotiations. This exclusive process made it easier to form a very stringent convention to ban landmines. However, one problem with such a process is that the number of participants was severely limited since countries which could not agree with the discourse were not permitted to attend the negotiations. In fact, only 50 countries attended this process from the beginning, and as such, this process was criticized as being too idealistic.
But as a result of active campaigns by propelling countries and NGOs, support for the discourse put up at the negotiations gradually spread. This discourse found great favor among public opinion, for the inhumanity of landmines could be easily understood. With this strong public support, this discourse has become the dominant view of landmine issue, replacing the former prevalent discourse that “AP landmines are legal and indispensable weapons for national defense”. This change of the paramount discourse about the landmine issue may be one reason why more than 130 countries signed the convention despite its strict criterion.
However, whether the dominant discourse really affected the decision by many countries to sign the convention remains unclear. To further examine this, I have attempted to grasp the general characteristics among signatories by using a statistic method, namely logistic regression. Also, I examined some countries' decision-making process about landmine issue to complement the statistical analysis. The results of the regression as well as the analysis of each country's decision-making process are consistent with the above hypothesis that the dominant discourse played an important role in spurring many countries to sign the convention. It follows from this analysis that the unique formation process of the Convention to Ban AP Landmines could be applied to other issue areas, especially in issue areas of interest and importance to civil society.

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