The First War on Terrorism: Counter-Terrorism Policy during the Reagan Administration (review)

cow. The book also highlights the tragic origins of America’s involvement in this ongoing struggle in Indo-China. The United States, in letting itself be pulled into France’s vainglorious attempt to reestablish its empire, was trapped into picking up the pieces and continuing the struggle after the French defeat. Readers are apt to and it galling that the French (President Charles de Gaulle, in particular) and the British arst successfully conned the United States into this misbegotten war and then became harsh critics of the American effort. Despite the book’s considerable strengths, it has its limitations. In the conclusion, when Lawrence goes beyond the bounds of his narrative, he overreaches with more casual scholarship in some of his assertions of follow-on effects. He asserts, for example, that John F. Kennedy would have surely de-escalated the American war in Vietnam if he had been elected to a second term. This remains a highly contentious point in the literature. Lawrence’s discussion about Dien Bien Phu fails to mention the extensive Chinese involvement in that anal battle. In fact, in his focus on British and American intervention, his narrative fails to acknowledge how international the “French war” had become with the substantial Chinese assistance that came both in 1950 and especially in 1953 after the end of the Korean War. The book is not always easy to read. The paragraphs and chapters are long, and the account itself goes back and forth over the same material so that, despite the tight three-year period of Lawrence’s account, readers can become confused about where they are in the story. All said, however, Assuming the Burden is an important addition to the large body of scholarship on the Vietnam War. Lawrence presents an important perspective in the narrative itself. But this is also a narrative that carries broad implications for an understanding of the larger war awaiting the Americans a decade later. I salute Mark Lawrence for this contribution.