Articles

95 Items

François Sully in foxhole at Binh Gia

UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES & SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, HEALEY LIBRARY, UMASS BOSTON

Journal Article - Journal of American-East Asian Relations

To Each His Turn … Today Yours, Tomorrow Mine: François Sully's Turn in History

| 2023

François Sully (1927–1971) is an underreported figure in the critical period of U.S.-South Vietnamese relations between 1960 and 1963. As one of the earliest journalists the First Republic of Vietnam expelled in 1962, his reporting introduced Vietnam to American readers, and his journalism influenced a generation of Western reporters covering the intervention of U.S. forces in Vietnam. However, despite his extensive reporting for Newsweek and other outlets, little is known about Sully or how his contentious relationship with President Ngo Dinh Diem of the Republic of Vietnam contributed to political turbulence before Diem's assassination on 2 November 1963. This is the first article to focus exclusively on Sully's reporting on Vietnam and the first to assess his efforts using primary sources.

Newspaper Article - The New York Times

From George to Barack: A Look at Secret Bush Memos to the Obama Team

    Author:
  • Peter Baker
| Feb. 14, 2023

WASHINGTON — The world was a volatile place when President George W. Bush was leaving office. So on the way out the door, he and his national security team left a little advice for their successors:

India is a friend. Pakistan is not. Don’t trust North Korea or Iran, but talking is still better than not. Watch out for Russia; it covets the territory of its neighbor Ukraine. Beware becoming ensnared by intractable land wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. And oh yes, nation-building is definitely harder than it looks.

U.S. Army Soldiers share tactics and training with Nigerian Army Soldiers, Nigeria, February 8, 2018.

Capt. James Sheehan, U.S. Army

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

The Cult of the Persuasive: Why U.S. Security Assistance Fails

    Author:
  • Rachel Tecott Metz
| Winter 2022/23

Why does the U.S. Army rely on persuasion to influence military partners to improve their forces despite repeated failures that undermine U.S. foreign policy goals? The army prioritizes its role as a fighting force, not an advisory group. U.S. leaders have developed an ideology—the cult of the persuasive—to advance army bureaucratic interests.

Journal Article - Pacific Affairs

Book Review: The Saigon Sisters: Privileged Women in the Resistance

| September 2022

In his review of The Saigon Sisters by Patricia D. Norland, Nathaniel L. Moir writes, "In this informative collection of oral histories, nine women provided Norland with their personal stories and comprehensive thoughts; the author conducted the interviews in French, beginning in 1989.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, second from right, inspects the preparation of the launch of a Hwasong-14 ICBM in North Korea on July 4, 2017.

AP Photo

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Defending the United States: Revisiting National Missile Defense against North Korea

| Winter 2021/22

The costly Ground-based Midcourse Defense system remains unproven and unreliable in deterring North Korea’s threat to use intercontinental ballistic missiles. An airborne boost-phase intercept system may offer an alternative defense against North Korea without threatening Russian or Chinese deterrents.

Journal Article - Journal of Vietnamese Studies

Review: Vietnam's Communist Revolution: The Power and Limits of Ideology, by Tuong Vu; Mass Mobilization in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1945–1960, by Alec Holcombe

| Winter 2022

During the Cold War, debates and questions among Western citizens and scholars concerning the communist world simmered: Among communist leaders, what was the level of ideological commitment to Marxism-Leninism and Stalinist thought in their regimes? Were independence movements in Asia and elsewhere more nationalistic or entirely controlled by communists? With the publication of landmark works of scholarship by Tuong Vu and Alec Holcombe, those debates now appear resolved: in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), communist ideology guided and shaped nationalism as a tool.

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a video call with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, June 30, 2020. Shoigu reported to Putin that the Defense Ministry plans to complete clinical tests of a coronavirus vaccine next month. (Alexei Druzhinin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

AP Photo/Alexei Druzhinin

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Putin, Putinism, and the Domestic Determinants of Russian Foreign Policy

    Author:
  • Michael McFaul
| Fall 2020

Why did Russia’s relations with the West shift from cooperation a few decades ago to a new era of confrontation today? Tracing the causal influence of domestic determinants—individuals (President Vladimir Putin), ideas (Putinism), and institutions (autocracy)—reveals Putin’s significant influence in the making of Russian foreign policy.