Forging a Fateful Alliance

Forging A Fateful Alliance is an important study of American higher education's role in the Vietnam War -- revealing how secret and semi-secret institutional involvement in that conflict led to public disclosures that undermined the integrity of academe. After Indochina's de facto division in 1954, [...]
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Forging A Fateful Alliance is an important study of American higher education's role in the Vietnam War -- revealing how secret and semi-secret institutional involvement in that conflict led to public disclosures that undermined the integrity of academe. After Indochina's de facto division in 1954, MSU offered South Vietnam an array of technical support as part of the nation-building program. This support included developing a viable national public administrative structure and, at the same time, training South Vietnam's notorious military police. In return for these services, the U.S. government provided the university with generous clandestine and open financial remuneration -- money that the school would use to expand academic programs, construct new facilities, and fuel its dramatic growth. In the end, however, the arrangement proved a Faustian bargain. Like many universities, MSU was accused of being a tool of Cold War foreign policy, of sending professors abroad to staff grandiose outreach programs that were based more on ideology than on scholarship or research. Ultimately, flaws inherent in the nation-building scheme, including its failure to address cultural differences or recognize the massive corruption in South Vietnam's government, foreshadowed the enormity of the tragedy that occurred in Southeast Asia after 1965.