Mark Lawrence's The Vietnam War: A Concise International History offers a brisk and accessible narrative covering the World War II years, stretching through the American War and even touching on some of the postwar issues pertinent to both Vietnam and the United States. As the text runs to a scant 185 pages, this is a considerable achievement. Having said that, the book is not aimed at resolving any of the outstanding or problematic issues. Rather, the author intends to “embed” problematic issues within “an engaging narrative.” These issues center on Vietnamese motives for resisting the American effort, the motives compelling the Americans to take an interest in Vietnam, explaining US defeat in the war, and an examination of the legacies of the Vietnam War.

From the outset, the book is ambitious. The author promises to make use of recent scholarship growing out of research in newly opened or accessible archives that cast new light on the roles of Vietnamese, Chinese, Russian, and even East European actors. This scholarship, according to Lawrence, has “revolutionized the study of the Vietnam War” (2). As a derivative account, then, and in particular one with “international history” in its subtitle, the reader expects a novel interpretation of new literature that overturns or substantially complicates an older narrative and set of assumptions and one that is centered on an international emphasis.

Unfortunately, Lawrence's study fails on its own terms. Despite its subtitle, the study is not an international history of the Vietnam War. I could identify only a relative handful of paragraphs that dealt with international events, actors, and problems in any kind of substantive and new way. Furthermore, the tone and emphasis of the text is decidedly America-centered. This is understandable for a typical Vietnam War narrative given the preponderant presence and influence of the United States on events. It is less expected in a book that promises to be an international history.

Additionally, the author offers numerous arguments that are quite conventional and cites many sources for them that are now outdated. As an example of the former, the author argues that the US, nobly, attempted to “head off a communist takeover of southern Vietnam,” and that thousands of Vietnamese who had fought against the French and who remained in the south represented the “most threatening of all to the peace.” He describes Vietnamese land reform that resulted in 15,000 executions as a “horrific cost” (53). On the previous page, he used the half-million Vietnamese casualties of the French War to show the communists' grim determination to carry on their struggle to undermine peace (52). And, finally, the author argues that “unquestionably, the Second Indochina War … sprang partly from efforts by the Hanoi government to control developments in the South and bring about unification under communism” (65). The Second Indochina War did not, in other words, spring from American aggression and from American attempts to control the southern half of Vietnam, eight thousand miles from its homeland. Whenever the “communists” gain any ground, Lawrence believes this was the result of “skillful exploitation,” something he reserves for forces he apparently opposes.

There is another troubling aspect to the categorization here aside from the considerable history it misses. To refer constantly, as the author does, to the “Vietcong” and the “communists” reflects an old, traditional Cold War narrative. This is fine, again, except that this promises to be a distinctly different book. Inexplicably, the author cites such work as David Elliott's wonderful and illuminating study The Vietnamese War, which buries those old terms and categories under a mountain of evidence and lends credibility to the genuine revolution taking place throughout Vietnam.

The text never actually deals with the revolution, choosing instead to focus on American-oriented controversies. One of these is the stale argument over whether John Kennedy would have gotten out of Vietnam had he lived. Lawrence argues yes, because of LBJ's “unwavering acceptance of the geostrategic assumptions” – a shortcoming Kennedy did not, we are told, suffer (82–83).

While I wholeheartedly agree that we need an international history of the Vietnam War that is accessible, I cannot conclude that this study is it. There is a genuine interest in telling this international history and we do indeed have access to a much greater evidentiary base than ever. For example, that the USSR was willing to throw its putative Vietnamese allies under the bus to preserve the big-state, Cold War order deserves highlighting for what it reveals about the “communists” and the international Cold War and about Vietnam's relative importance within it. Having said that, what is contained here is not what is most compelling or insightful about the international dimensions of the conflict. It is a concise and accessible and conventional account.