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A review by komet2020
Diplomats at War: Friendship and Betrayal on the Brink of the Vietnam Conflict by Charles Trueheart
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
DIPLOMATS AT WAR: Friendship and Betrayal on the Brink of the Vietnam Conflict is a complex and ultimately tragic story of the development and playing out of U.S. foreign policy in South Vietnam between 1961 and 1963. Its author was the son of the U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission (William Trueheart) in Saigon during that time. He explores the complicated relationships between Ngo Dinh Diem (the President of the Republic of Vietnam), his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu (who served as Diem's counselor and exerted a baleful influence in the government), and the Kennedy Administration.
The book also explores the relationship between William Trueheart and his close friend from their university days in the late 1930s (Virginians both) Fritz Nolting, the U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam from May 10, 1961 to August 15, 1963, when he was replaced by Henry Cabot Lodge. Sadly, this was a relationship that was not to survive the changing nature of U.S. policy vis-a-vis Diem's government as the situation in South Vietnam went from bad to worse, culminating in the Buddhist Crisis of the spring and summer of 1963. Indeed, this crisis caught both the Diem government and the Kennedy Administration flatfooted, and led to the latter losing confidence in Diem's ability to govern South Vietnam. With Lodge installed as Ambassador that August, plans were put into effect to foment a coup (one in which the Kennedy Administration could claim deniability) among the leading generals of the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) to depose Diem and Nhu.
Events in South Vietnam would spiral out of control and by year's end, the U.S., now led by a new President (Lyndon Johnson) --- following President Kennedy's assassination in Dallas TX on November 22, 1963 --- would be fated to be ensnared in a full-scale war in Vietnam that would end in defeat for both the U.S. and South Vietnam.
The book also explores the relationship between William Trueheart and his close friend from their university days in the late 1930s (Virginians both) Fritz Nolting, the U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam from May 10, 1961 to August 15, 1963, when he was replaced by Henry Cabot Lodge. Sadly, this was a relationship that was not to survive the changing nature of U.S. policy vis-a-vis Diem's government as the situation in South Vietnam went from bad to worse, culminating in the Buddhist Crisis of the spring and summer of 1963. Indeed, this crisis caught both the Diem government and the Kennedy Administration flatfooted, and led to the latter losing confidence in Diem's ability to govern South Vietnam. With Lodge installed as Ambassador that August, plans were put into effect to foment a coup (one in which the Kennedy Administration could claim deniability) among the leading generals of the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) to depose Diem and Nhu.
Events in South Vietnam would spiral out of control and by year's end, the U.S., now led by a new President (Lyndon Johnson) --- following President Kennedy's assassination in Dallas TX on November 22, 1963 --- would be fated to be ensnared in a full-scale war in Vietnam that would end in defeat for both the U.S. and South Vietnam.