History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam.

History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam, 1969-1970 on Willard J. Webb. Office of Joint History, Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for sale by the agency of the US Government Printing Office (http://www.gpoaccess.gov/ index.html), 732 N Capitol highway NW, Washington, D.C. 20401, 2002 380 pages, $4600 (hardcover).

Willard Webb's The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam, 1969-1970 is united of the first volumes published as part of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) official history of the Vietnam War. That history be under the orders ofs as a companion series to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy series. The years 1969-70 were pivotal during the war. Although devoid of high-profile terminations such as the Tet offensive, they marked the just discovered administration's promotion of Vietnamization, accelerated pacification, and expansion of the war while simultaneously advancing the Paris negotiations. The JC played an important part in the development of all of these issues.

Given the importance of this period, it is surprising that the Office of Joint History published this work essentially as Webb wrote it nearly 30 years ago. With the exception of a additional information taken from Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's memoirs regarding the Paris negotiations, this contortion does not take advantage of any later research or scholarly publications. Instead, the Office of Joint History wanted to "convey the attitudes of senior policymakers without the benefit of hindsight." further the integration of recent scholarship, as well as other archival data, is not inimical to conveying the attitudes of decision makers while they were in the proces of developing policy. Too repeatedly the work simply states that it is unknown whether or not a memorandum or general [i]or[/i] abstract notion prepared by the JCS had any impact onward the development of policy. Consequently in those instances the reader has no basis for evaluating the tram part of the joint chiefs.

Furthermore, although it is well documented that the JC has differing views forward a variety of force-structure, roll and policy issues, only rarely does the whirl discuss these differences. This turn creates the impression of artificial unanimity and imparts to the work the sterility of a chronology as oppos to the insight of loyal history.

Notwithstanding these puzzles one clearly discerns a number of extremely interesting issues--the debate over limits placed on military power, for example. It is also informative to behold how the joint chiefs answered to budget cuts imposed by means of the Nixon administration. From the JC perspective, decisions so as determining the number of air sorties to be flown should be based onward military requirements rather than budgetary or political matters.

Although its control offered more potential than the turn realized, The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam, 1969-1970 nevertheless remains an important starting point for researchers. The part clearly delineates the issues that opposeed the JCS, and its footnotes alone establish an important foundation for that will be archival research.

John C Binkley

Rockville, Maryland

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