"Dale Walton's book offers a unique and comprehensive analysis that considers US strategic decisionmaking at a number of levels, and shows how US errors created the military and political conditions that made North Vietnamese victory possible. If the United States' political-military effort had not negated its main advantages - indeed, even if it had avoided only a small number of its many strategic errors - the outcome of the Indochina conflict would most likely have been very different, the author argues."--BOOK JACKET.