ABSTRACT
It is ironic, perhaps, that we begin with the words of Henry Kissinger – Harvard academic, international relations theorist, member of the Trilateral Commission, and of the boards of American Express, R. H. Macy, CBS, Revlon, Freeport-McMoRan, and former US National Security Advisor and Secretary of State – who writes that ‘Vietnam is still with us’. Of course Kissinger, placed so powerfully at the locus of several influential discourses of world order in the post-war age, had his own axe to grind. He went on to say: ‘[Vietnam] has created doubts about American judgment, about American credibility, about American power – not only at home, but throughout the world. It has poisoned our domestic debate. So we paid an exorbitant price for the decisions that were made in good faith and for good purpose.’2
