Revisiting the Vietnam War and International Law
Views and Interpretations of Richard Falk

This collection of scholarly and critical essays about the legal aspects of the Vietnam War explores various crimes committed by the United States against North Vietnam: war of aggression; war crimes in bombing civilian targets such as schools and hospitals, and using napalm, cluster bombs, and Agent Orange; crimes against humanity in moving large parts of the population to so-called strategic hamlets; and alleged genocide and ecocide. International lawyer Richard Falk, who observed these acts personally in North Vietnam in 1968, uses international law to show how they came about. This book brings together essays that he has written on the Vietnam War and on its relationship to international law, American foreign policy, and the global world order. Falk argues that only a stronger adherence to international law can save the world from such future tragedies and create a sustainable world order.

Foreword: the harmful legacy of lawlessness in Vietnam Richard Falk; Preface; Acknowledgments; Part I. The US Role in Vietnam and International Law: 1. A Vietnam settlement: the view from Hanoi; 2. US in Vietnam: rationale and law; 3. International law and the United States role in the Vietnam War; 4. International law and the United States role in Vietnam: A Response to Professor Moore; 5. The six legal dimensions of the United States involvement in the Vietnam War; Part II. War and War Crimes: 6. Appropriating Tet; 7. Son My: war crimes and individual responsibility; 8. The Cambodian Operation and international law; Part III. The Vietnam War and the Nuremberg Principles: 9. The Nuremberg Defense in the Pentagon Papers case; 10. A Nuremberg perspective on the trial of Karl Armstrong; 11. Telford Taylor and the legacy of Nuremberg; Part IV. The Legacy of the Vietnam War: 12. Learning from Vietnam; 13. The Vietnam syndrome: from the Gulf of Tonkin to Iraq; 14. 'The Vietnam Syndrome' the Kerrey Revelations raise anew issues of morality and military power; 15. Why the legal debate on the Vietnam War still matters; Index.

Stefan Andersson studied religion and philosophy at Lund University, Harvard Divinity School, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Toronto, and McMaster University, Ontario, where the Bertrand Russell Archives are located. In 1994, he defended his doctoral thesis in the philosophy of religion at Lund University; it was published as In Quest of Certainty: Bertrand Russell's Search for Certainty in Religion and Mathematics up to 'The Principles of Mathematics' (1903). Andersson then turned to Russell's political activism and started a project about student protests against the Vietnam War and the Russell–Sartre Tribunal on the United States War Crimes in Viet Nam.