ABSTRACT
Southeast Asia remained an enigma to most intellectuals. Even the relatively few remaining ardent Cold Warriors did not uniformly endorse a policy of military intervention in Southeast Asia or anywhere else. Except for recent converts to an antiCold War policy who tended toward an isolationist posture, many were willing to consider some continued American presence short of direct military aid. The .. Doctrine of Vietnamese Exceptionalism" seemed to be held by more members of the American intellectual elite than cared to admit it. As Robert Tucker pointed out in a review of published opinion:
It is by now commonplace that the war in Vietnam led to a breakdown in the foreign policy consensus of the past generation. But commonplaces can be misleading. The lasting effects of the debate occasioned by Vietnam remain far from apparent.1
