Orthodox v. Revisionist v. Vietnam-centrism in Vietnam War Histories

**A Note: This summary of key debates between Orthodox, Revisionist, and Vietnam-Centrism understandings of the Vietnam War will without a doubt, be interpreted as contentious. My aim here is not to cast value judgment on the ethics of war, but to push further the responsibility towards understanding HISTORY and its actors. 

A Rough, Flexible Schema of Debates in Vietnam War History

I made the chart below to prepare for my comprehensive exams. I choose to share it because I believe that it can help those new to studying the Vietnam War to understand 1) the key debates and 2) the different ways in which different disciplines and scholarly generations can frame histories of the Vietnam War.

The categories that divide ‘Orthodox’ and ‘Revisionist’ historians operate more as overlapping spectrums rather than concrete divisions. Scholars fall along various interpretation of history depending on the historical issue, their source material, but also the author’s scholarly generation and discipline. For example, did the scholar write during the war period, post-war, post-đổi mới? What disciplinary training did they receive–do they approach scholarship from diplomatic studies, political science, Vietnamese area studies?

Let us not pretend that history is ‘objective.’ Rather, history and historians are small ‘attempts’ by flawed, opinionated, subjective humans to understand the past.

This chart will also reveal my inherent ‘biases’–primarily the strong belief in the importance of centering Vietnam, Vietnamese actors, and a social and cultural history of war–in other words those who have been excluded from dominant narratives of the war.

Contest and challenge this chart and use it as a learning tool to continue a productive discourse of understanding the past.

Orthodox v. Revisionist Schools: Marilyn Young’s The Vietnam Wars (1991) and Guenter Lewy’s America in Vietnam (1978)

The orthodox school of Vietnam War history replaces the complexity of revolutionary, international, and ideological war, to a chronology of America’s inevitable defeat in Vietnam. Marilyn Young’s The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990 (1991) is structured in a similarly methodical fashion; the book appears ‘objective’, straightforward, and compelling because its arguments run parallel to historical stages in the war rather than attempt to understand the logic and uneven influence of actors involved. Although the title suggests a broader perspective into the war, Marilyn Young quickly passes over these periods, positioning them secondary as a backdrop or residual effects of the 1954-1975 war. Aside from the deterministic representation of the end of the war, what in particular makes this text ‘orthodox’ in view? Is it the American-centrism that focuses on American domestic morale and foreign policy, reducing the southern Vietnamese government to corrupt puppets? Similarly, does this view also continue to simplify international socialist movements into a Communist monolith, romanticizing a popular unified enemy, reflecting a Cold War perception of the enemy?

Using new (at the time) source material such as classified records of military reports, war crime investigations, and interviews with refugees, Lewy provides a critical re-examination of United States military buildup and overall political strategy in America in Vietnam (1978). Lewy challenges not only existing explanations for America’s loss but also prevalent criticisms of America’s war strategies as excessively atrocious, abusive, and in violation of norms of human decency during war. Lewy accuses the media to be a “veritable industry publicizing alleged war crimes” (P. 224), influencing the commitment and morale surrounding US involvement.

In the first six chapters, Lewy presents what appears to be a basic chronology of the war, but in fact involved the careful laying out and weighing of countless political, social, military, and economic factors. While Lewy often presents US involvement and decision-making process as cautious and purposeful, he does not dare to assume that military action was always necessary or determined based on reliable intelligence. In this way, Lewy’s revisionist approach to analyzing the Vietnam War also centers around the theme of information and misinformation. From faulty intelligence on inflated body counts to a lack of understanding of Vietnamese society and revolutionary war, Lewy demonstrates how decisions and reoccurring debates for war, buildup, nuclear weapons, civilian security, and local government were built on a shaky understanding of reality. Lewy’s important historiographical revision is his approach to understanding the war as it was fought; America in Vietnam illuminates the ‘on the ground, in the moment’ decision process and value judgments made during the progress of war, rather than a retrospective diagnosis of mistakes, accusations, and regrets.

Further Readings on these Debates

For a very detailed and clear summary of the Orthodox, Vietnam-Centrism, and Revisionist schools of debate, see:

• Peter Zinoman, “Vietnam-Centrism, the ‘Orthodox’ school and Mark Bradley’s Vietnam at War,” H-Diplo Roundtable Review, Volume XII, No. 22 (2011).

Additional Reading:

• Andrew Wiest and Michael J. Doidge, Triumph Revisited: Historians Battle for the Vietnam War (New York: Routledge, 2010).
• Tuong Vu and Edward Miller, “The Vietnam War as a Vietnamese War: Agency and Society in the Study of the Second Indochina War,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Vol. 4 no.3 (Fall, 2009)
• Keith W. Taylor, How I Began to Teach about the Vietnam War,” Michigan Quarterly Review 43, no.4 (Fall 2004).
• Robert Buzzanco, “Fear and Self-Loathing in Lubbock: How I Learned to Quit Worrying and Love Vietnam and Iraq,” published in the Internet newsletter Counterpunch, April 16-17, 2005 and reprinted in the newsletter of the Society of American Foreign Relations, Passport 36, no.3 (June 2005).
• Keith W. Taylor, “Robert Buzzanco’s ‘Fear and (Self) Loathing in Lubbock,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies Vol 1, Nos-1-2, (February/August 2006).
• Edward Miller, “War Stories: The Taylor-Buzzanco Debate and How We Think about the Vietnam War,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies Vol 1, Nos-1-2, (February/August 2006).