Communist Revolutionary Warfare: From the Vietminh to the Viet Cong

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This volume in the Praeger Security International (PSI) series Classics of the Counterinsurgency Era was among the first major published analyses by an American expert on the insurgency in Indochina. In addition to tracing the Chinese influence on the Vietminh cadres and the French military response, the book describes the organization, logistics, and tactics of the communist movement. The author, George Tanham, managed the U.S. rural development program in South Vietnam and later served as special assistant for counterinsurgency at the U.S. Embassy in Thailand during the mid-1960s. With a new foreword by Richard A. Shultz Jr.

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The late Tanham, who managed the US rural development program in South Vietnam during the Vietnam war, first published this work in 1961 in an effort to understand the describe and analyze the military strategy, operations, and tactics of the Vietminh nationalist fight against the French from 1946 to 1954. Not many years after, he updated the work to describe the military aspects of the Viet Cong struggle against the US up to 1967. The two parts are united by the central theme: the Communist integration or orchestration of political, economic, psychological, and military means in order to achieve their goals. * Reference & Research Book News *

Author Bio

GEORGE K. TANHAM (1922-2003) graduated from Princeton, served as an artillery officer in Europe during World War II, and then earned a doctorate in history and political science at Stanford. He taught military history at the California Institute of Technology where became a tenured professor and master of student houses. Dr. Tanham spent most of his career with the RAND Corporation, serving as the corporate vice president in charge of the Washington office. He managed rural development efforts in Vietnam for the U.S. Agency for International Development, a program designed to pacify the countryside. Afterward he was special assistant for counterinsurgency at the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, coordinating a campaign to defeat Chinese-inspired guerrillas in Thailand, an experience he recounted in Trial in Thailand. Among his other books are Securing India: Strategic Thought and Practice and Islam and Conflict Resolution: Theories and Practice.