Douglas Pike and the NLF

Abstract

Our tragically mistaken policy in Vietnam is in part at least the result of scholarly misapprehension of Vietnamese reality. Experts have not been totally lacking; but too many of these experts have distorted, consciously or unconsciously, the Vietnamese reality they report. Douglas Pike, our “most careful student of the Viet Cong” (Schlesinger, The Bitter Heritage, 36), is a case in point. His book, Viet Cong: The Organization and Techniques of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (M.I.T. Press, 1966), received broad praise when it was issued. Bernard Fall called it “excellent” (Two Vietnams, 357); the APSR reviewer described it as “among the very, best (books) on any aspect of contemporary Vietnam” (American Political Science Review, LXI.2.495 (June 1967)). In this brief review of Viet Cong I shall indicate Pike's general bias, specific points in his argument, and objections to his framework.