Strategy For Defeat: Vietnam in Retrospect

Sea Power, Nov 1998 by Price, Jennifer M

STRATEGY FOR DEFEAT: Vietnam in Retrospect, by U.S. Grant Sharp. Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1998 (reprint of 1978 hardcover edition). 352 pp. $17.95. [Phone: 1(800) 966-5179; Internet: www.presidiopress.com] Foreword by Hanson W.

Baldwin. Originally published 20 years ago, Strategy for Defeat stimulates debate even today. Sharp, who wrote a new introduction for this edition, provides a still timely analysis of the uses and misuses of America's air power during the Vietnam War. "This chilling narrative of how to lose a war must have particular poignancy to anyone who saw at first hand the courage and sacrifice of so many of the men who fought in Vietnam," Baldwin states in his foreword. But, as Sharp points out, "for many in this new generation [of media, politicians, policy makers, analysts, historians, scholars, military, and the public] our Vietnam defeat is only a dim memory." This book is important for providing the post-Cold War United States with an understanding of the lessons of the not-so-distant past. Sharp, a retired U.S. Navy admiral, served as commander in chief Pacific (CINCPAC) from July 1964 through July 1968. With chapter notes, index, two charts, four maps, eight appendixes, and 19 black-and-white photographs.