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3 In Vietnam’s shadow The reaffirmation of US China policy, 1964–65 On the surface, developments in the early stages of the Johnson presidency created an auspicious setting for at least a minor departure in China policy. The positive press reviews of Roger Hilsman’s December 1963 address and the muted reaction from a weakened China Lobby indicated a relaxed political climate, while LBJ’s sweeping victory in the 1964 election afforded an ideal opportunity for providing substance to Hilsman’s words.1 As Johnson committed his nation to war in Vietnam in July 1965
4 The irony of Vietnam The emergence of a two-pronged China policy, 1965–66 The conventional view of Sino-American relations during the Johnson years holds that Washington’s tendency to view China through the prism of Vietnam precluded any policy innovation or movement toward normalization with the mainland.1 Vietnam did in fact remain a constant determinant of the administration’s stance toward Beijing, yet its impact on China policy deliberations changed as conditions on the ground in that war evolved. Indeed, one of the unexamined ironies of Vietnam, a war
In May 1972 five Vietnamese orphans were smuggled out of the war raging in Vietnam by the Australian humanitarian worker Elaine Moir. Moir, who worked in Vietnamese orphanages, took the children without the necessary landing permits or visas to enter Australia, said she ‘got tired of begging the Australian authorities to let the children in so I went over and brought them myself’. The children had
Introduction I n a March 2000 meeting between the foreign ministers of Japan and Vietnam, the Japanese side proposed the establishment of bilateral politico-military consultations ( Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, 2000 ). The proposal marked the entry of security cooperation with Vietnam on Japan’s public and official security agenda. While irregular bilateral working-level security consultations ensued in the decade to come, 2011 marks a turning point, as Japan–Vietnam security relations refocused
3 Village rebellion and social violence in early nineteenth-century Vietnam Vũ Đức Liêm Ban cung sinh dao tac. Misery creates banditry. (Vietnamese proverb) In summer 1834, Nguyen Khac Hai, the lieutenant governor of Bac Ninh province (forty kilometres to the north of Hanoi), led a mission to inspect local dykes. In the middle of the tour, Hai was ambushed by armed men who came to be known in the imperial records as ‘bandits’ (phi).1 Taken by surprise, most of Hai’s escort of officials and troops were killed before he retreated to a nearby village to summon
Jesuit said masses for her, and once he had done so, she made no further appearances. 1 The vision occurred in Vietnam, but readers of de Rhodes’s account in Europe would have quickly understood its significance. 2 They knew the dead could appear to the living to plead for assistance in gaining release from purgatory. The apparition and the success of the masses the Jesuit said would
3 The student movement and the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign Young activists’ attendance at institutions of higher education coincided with the global upheavals that came to be associated with 1968. Against a background of university expansion and reform, their student experiences to some extent reflected official recognition of the importance university institutions were starting to play in the lives of an expanding minority of working- and middle-class sixties youth as environments for social self-making.1 Amidst three years of intellectual discovery, the self
During the 1980s the spectre of the Vietnam War haunted the sites of cinema and popular culture in various forms. Whereas a rich body of scholarly research exists on cinematic iterations of the Vietnam war as trauma, the discursive dynamics between memory, ideology and genre in relation to enemy image construction are somewhat underdeveloped. This article utilises genre studies, conflict studies and trauma theory in analysing how the representations of film villains interact with the construction of cultural trauma and national identity. Considering the American action thriller to be an important site for processes of commemoration and memorialisation, the discursive construction and formal articulation of national trauma are theorised within the genre. Additionally, a thematic and textual analysis was conducted of a sample of forty American action thriller films. The analysis illustrates how the genre operates through a structure of violent traumatisation and heroic vindication, offering a logic built on the necessity and legitimacy of revenge against a series of enemy-others.
Psychological warfare v 4 v Psychological warfare, counterinsurgency and the society of spectacle in South Vietnam The Sacred Sword Patriotic League: Between revolution and liberal democracy In the early stage of the war, then, the primary strategy used by the South Vietnamese state in its anti-communist struggle was a socialist revolution that the Ngos had also sought to employ as an instrument of anti-imperialism against the Americans. The irreconcilable conflict, however, between the aims and objectives of the South Vietnamese and their ally, between the
On first glance, M*A*S*H (1972–83) might not be the ideal text for Gothic analysis. Aesthetically, the traditional dark castles surrounded by black forests in the moonlight are replaced by muted khaki and green canvas Army tents, and the tinny canned laughter punctuating the sardonic jokes echo longer than the terrified screams in the night. Gothic and war are uneasy bedfellows; it is the inclusion of comedy, however, that determines just how horrific the result can be. Using M*A*S*H as a primary example to explore what I refer to as Khaki Gothic this paper will explore how, utilising Gothic tropes, comedy can disguise, diffuse and intensify the horrors of war.