A First Book on Vietnam

Joseph Buttinger, ex-European, author of In the Twilight of Socialism, wrote The Smaller Dragon, A Political History of Vietnam, in part because he had experienced “something of the quality of a conversion” during his first brief visit to Viet Nam from October through December, 1954. He had gone to that country after the Geneva Agreement because he “wanted to see Saigon before it became a Communist city,” that is before it would be lost to the Communist Viet Minh, an event he expected “in less than two years.” Two weeks after his arrival in Saigon he changed his views. He had felt the “unexpected emotional impact that so many Westerners feel when they first come in contact with the Vietnamese people,” an unforgettable impact of “strength, charm and intelligence.” He therefore resolved “to communicate to others what had been revealed to him.” He had first planned to write a political interpretation of the 20th century Vietnamese struggle for independence and the implications of that partial victory—the 17th Parallel accounts for this—in the continuing contest between the Communist and the Free Worlds. It appears that this will be his promised se...