Author: Latham Michael
Publisher: Routledge Ltd
ISSN: 1360-2241
Source: Third World Quarterly, Vol.27, Iss.1, 2006-02, pp. : 27-41
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Abstract
This article will examine the ideology and practice of the USA's nation-building campaign in South Vietnam in the 1960s. Specifically, it will analyse the way in which US officials and social scientists conceived of development and promoted it as a weapon for anti-communist counter-insurgency. Convinced that they could modernise South Vietnam in ways that would undercut the sources of the revolution and create a liberal, capitalist state, they embarked on a comprehensive programme of social engineering with disastrous results. The article will also reflect on the reasons why, despite growing evidence of policy failure, US officials continued to promote a strategy that ignored Vietnamese history. In closing, it will reflect on the degree to which US assumptions about the basic malleability of the Vietnamese and their institutions have found echoes in the recent US attempts to reconstruct Afghanistan and Iraq.
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