| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Howard Jones. Death of a Generation: How the Assassinations of Diem and JFK Prolonged the Vietnam War. New York: Oxford University Press. 2003. Pp. x, 562. $35.00.
Had John F. Kennedy lived, it is unlikely that he would have committed U.S. troops to the defense of South Vietnam. So concludes Howard Jones, the author of a number of highly regarded books on U.S. foreign relations, who turns his attention here to the Vietnam War. Like many, if not most, historians of the conflict, Jones views America's involvement in Vietnam as a tragic error resulting from mistaken Cold War assumptions. In a detailed but engaging narrative, he adds his voice to those who argue that the events of November 1963 represent a key moment in this unfolding tragedy because they foreclosed the possibility of a U.S. withdrawal and paved the way for the war's escalation under Kennedy's less cautious and less cerebral successor.	1
Jones portrays JFK as a committed Cold Warrior, but one far less gung-ho than his senior advisers. On the one hand, he believed in containing communism and preserving an anticommunist South Vietnam. On the other hand, his "visceral distrust for military figures" (p. 114) tempered his approach to the Cold War and the burgeoning Vietnamese insurgency. Consequently, Kennedy sought to keep the U.S. response in Vietnam within manageable limits. Although he agreed to send more aid to the government of Ngo Dinh Diem, he was leery of militarizing the conflict and opposed his advisers' calls for the introduction of U.S. combat forces. The war, he insisted, could only be won or lost by the South Vietnamese.	. . .

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