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ID: 135823

Sir Robert Thompson, strategic patience and Nixon’s war in Vietnam / Fitzgerald, David

Fitzgerald, David	Article
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Counter-insurgency scholars have long been familiar with Sir Robert Thompson’s classic work Defeating Communist Insurgency, which combined analysis of the insurgencies in Malaya and Vietnam with advice for counter-insurgents that emphasised the drawn-out nature of insurgency and the importance of focusing on population security. While historians have called attention to his role with the British Advisory Mission in South Vietnam and his later criticism of the US counter-insurgency campaign in Vietnam in his various books, less has been written about his subsequent role as a pacification advisor to the Nixon administration. This article explores Thompson’s relationship with Kissinger and Nixon and his views on the war in Vietnam from 1969 to 1974. An examination of Thompson’s thinking on Vietnam in the Nixon years reveals a theorist whose optimism on US prospects there was based on assumptions about elite and public patience for lengthy wars that were ultimately misplaced.

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ID: 179196

Warriors Who Don’t Fight: the Post–Cold War United States Army and Debates over Peacekeeping Operations / Fitzgerald, David

Fitzgerald, David	Journal Article
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This article examines post-Cold War debates over the U.S. Army’s participation in peacekeeping operations. Peacekeeping meant different things to policy-makers, army leaders, public intellectuals, and those who served on such missions. Army leaders were generally not enthusiastic about these operations but recognized they were indicative of future trends. Peacekeepers accepted the role, even if they struggled to understand how to navigate the gray zone between peace and war; political commentators sought to use peacekeeping missions to advance their own causes. Participants in these debates articulated not only their thoughts on peacekeeping, but radically different visions of what they wanted the American soldier of the 21st century to be.

Key Words

Peacekeeping Operations ; United States Army ; Post–Cold War

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