Download or read book Antiwar Transnationalism written by Nguyet Nguyen and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Vietnam War the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) and the National Liberation Front (NLF) conducted an elaborate, vigorous, and sustained diplomatic campaign aimed at "peoples of the world," a strategy it called "people's diplomacy," to discredit the US war effort in world opinion. Because US leaders often dismissed this campaign as DRV state-directed propaganda, they failed to realize the complex nature of the phenomenon of People's Diplomacy (state-related apparatus) and people's diplomacy (spontaneous grassroots movement) that involved a large number of methods, organizations, and individuals both in Vietnam and overseas. Based on research in Vietnam, France, and the US, including archival research and interviews, my dissertation produces the first transnational history of efforts by the Vietnamese diaspora to promote an international antiwar movement and examines their implications for foreign policy. By adding the perspective of a Vietnamese-led transnational antiwar movement, my work helps explain why US policy in Vietnam failed and Washington was not better able to move public opinion during the "global sixties." Bringing to the forefront the agency of ordinary people, my study also speaks to a core concern in the field of US foreign relations: the role of non-state actors in influencing relations between states, especially in a complex setting that links together events in the United States, Asia, and Europe.The vigorous and often successful People's Diplomacy agenda conducted by the DRV and NLF stemmed from Ho Chi Minh's and his revolutionary colleagues' groundwork during the French War and was systematically developed during the American War (chapters 1, 2, and 3). These chapters investigate the methodical use of gender, culture, and media by the DRV/NLF leadership and the self-discipline and unrivalled dedication of both People's Diplomats and people's diplomats. My dissertation is the first to uncover a group of South Vietnamese students who were sponsored by USAID to study in the US to become future leaders of South Vietnam and yet who later turned into vocal antiwar activists (chapter 4). Chapter 5 is where the state's People's Diplomacy and grassroots people's diplomacy intersected and helped win to the side of the Vietnamese revolutionaries worldwide support.