Vietnam: Getting In, Getting Out, Getting Back

Event Details

As the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon and the 20th anniversary of U.S. diplomatic recognition of Vietnam approach, MARC SELVERSTONE, KEN HUGHES, and BRANTLY WOMACK, three Miller Center experts, will examine the evolution of the U.S.-Vietnam relationship from the 1950s to the present. The panel will consider three questions: how did the U.S. become embroiled in the conflict, how did it extricate itself, and how did it reengage – economically, politically, and culturally – with Vietnam, particularly in the context of the rise of China? Panelists will also consider lessons that the Vietnam experience may offer for ongoing American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as for potential involvement in other hotspots. 

Public seating will be available on a first come, first serve basis. The RSVP deadline for lunch has passed.

MARC SELVERSTONE is Chair of the Presidential Recordings Program at the Miller Center and University of Virginia Associate Professor. He is editor of A Companion to John F. Kennedy and author of Constructing the Monolith: The United States, Great Britain, and International Communism, 1945–1950, which won the Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations in 2010. He is presently at work on The Kennedy Withdrawal: Camelot and the American Commitment to Vietnam, which is under contract with Harvard University Press.

KEN HUGHES is an academic researcher with the Presidential Recordings Program at the Miller Center. He is the author of Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, the Chennault Affair, and the Origins of Watergate and Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, the Vietnam War, and the Casualties of Reelection.

BRANTLY WOMACK holds the Miller Center’s C. K. Yen Chair and is Professor of Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia. He is the author of China Among Unequals: Asymmetric International Relationships in Asia and China and Vietnam: The Politics of Asymmetry, as well as over a hundred articles and book chapters. He is the editor of China’s Rise in Historical Perspective and Contemporary Chinese Politics in Historical Perspective.