Road to Disaster: A New History of America’s Descent into Vietnam

VanDeMark, a historian specializing in the Vietnam War, investigates at length how and why the Kennedy and Johnson administrations made the decisions that set the course of the Vietnam War. Drawing from numerous, in some cases exclusive, primary and secondary sources, he all but tells his story through defense secretary Robert S. McNamara’s eyes, giving the reader innumerable details about the former Ford executive’s war planning processes, his trips to Vietnam, meetings with Johnson and the national security team, bitter battles with the Joint Chiefs and other military brass, and his painful disillusionment after realizing in November 1967 that the war effort he oversaw was doomed. By not speaking out to the president or publicly for years, McNamara, VanDeMark writes, “effectively placed loyalty to the presidency above loyalty to the national interest” and “implicitly, if unintentionally, supported the continuation of a disastrous war that claimed” hundreds of thousands of lives. Throughout, VanDeMark brings in the work of social scientists—decision and negotiation researchers, sociologists, cognitive researchers, psychologists, behavioral economists, and others—to illuminate McNamara’s decision-making processes. Some of their ideas, such as the sunk cost fallacy, clearly apply; others, including the Ikea effect, which reputedly causes people to overvalue things they have contributed to making, seem less relevant. This book is sure to appeal to those still searching for Vietnam War answers that even McNamara, Johnson, and their best and brightest advisers never found. (Sept.)