Review of Caught in the Draft the Effects of Vietnam Draft Lottery Status on Politicalattitudes

Simon Hall. Rethinking the American Anti-State of war Movement. American Social and Political Movements of the Twentieth Century Series. New York: Routledge, 2012. 208 pp. $130.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-415-80083-9; $26.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-415-80084-half-dozen.

Reviewed past Fabio Rojas (Indiana Academy)
Published on H-Diplo (October, 2012)
Commissioned by Seth Offenbach (Bronx Community Higher, The City University of New York)

Did the Antiwar Movement End the Vietnam War?

Rethinking the American Anti-War Movement is the first volume in Routledge's new series American Social and Political Movements of the Twentieth Century. Written by Simon Hall, of the University of Leeds, the book provides the reader with a thorough education in the history of the American movement to terminate the war in Vietnam. More review than original research, it succeeds in giving the reader a detailed account of the major actors and events that divers the movement to end the American war in Vietnam. Students and readers interested in the 1960s will benefit greatly from this book.

Hall's study is valuable every bit a guide to the anti-Vietnam State of war movement, but it does raise some issues that could be more thoroughly addressed. For case, there is the question of whether the antiwar movement was able to reduce the length or intensity of the war. Hall admits that counterfactual arguments are very difficult questions to address. When examining a single motility, this is certainly the case. Each war emerges from a specific historical context that is difficult to replicate. However, in that location are ways to accost this question that rely on more full general arguments. For example, some scholars have argued that information technology is difficult for movements to change public policy when voters are strongly committed to a position.[one] Equally long as public opinion supported the Vietnam State of war, which it did during much of the 1960s, it would have been hard for whatsoever movement to effectively challenge the disharmonize.

This is not to say that the American state ignored the antiwar motility. Recent research has documented a correlation between antiwar protestation and congressional hearings.[ii] At the very least, the country pays attention to protest. Rethinking the American Anti-War Move touches on this topic. Hall describes how President Richard Nixon'south White Firm was affected by the protestation that occurred during the invasion of Cambodia. Notwithstanding this does not imply that protestation itself was a definitive factor behind the finish of the Vietnam War. It is logically possible that the public just tired of the length of the war and its horrendous toll in human lives. Co-ordinate to this view, protestation is a symptom of an underlying shift in attitudes toward the Vietnam War, not their crusade. The White House only paid attention to the antiwar movement because the excesses of the war were trying the public's patience.

This leads to a major theme in research on antiwar movements. In an essay in The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements (2005), Sam Marullo and David S. Meyer argue that peace movements face an uphill struggle.[3] In that location are many incentives for states to wage war, while there are few restraints. Once it is articulate that a nation-state is moving toward war, it may be too tardily for a movement. Passions are potent and leaders do non wish to expect weak. For these reasons, antiwar movements are reactionary and face massive obstacles.

Hall'south discussion of the movement'south consequences as well deserves mention. He correctly brings attention to the antiwar motion's touch on on elections and political parties. Hall is to be commended for drawing attention to the "spillover" of the antiwar movement into other political movements. I of the more interesting insights of inquiry on postwar political movements is how much they are afflicted past the antiwar move.[4] Information technology is common to detect out that the leaders of the feminist and environmentalist movements were also experienced antiwar activists. Hall also correctly notes that conservative movements sometimes had roots in the antiwar movement. Not only did the Vietnam War drastically touch on American political culture, merely it besides became a focal signal for movement activists for many decades.

The give-and-take of movement consequences could be further strengthened. For example, there is a body of literature suggesting that the antiwar motion had a generally liberalizing effect on American society. Research on antiwar motion participants in the 1980s plant that they tended to be more politically liberal, delayed marriage, and were less probable to have children.[5] Political scientists take also found that having a low typhoon lottery number was associated with heightened political liberalism. In other words, the lottery system randomly exposed some American men to more risk than others.[vi] Men who were more likely to be drafted due to their lottery numbers were more likely to take liberal political views. These studies lend credence to the hypothesis that the fashion that the Vietnam War was waged may have contributed more to the public's turn against the war than any number of protests. A thousand rallies pale in comparing to being drafted for an increasingly unpopular state of war.

The preceding discussion raises a general issue of how historical and social scientific views of protest movements should be reconciled. There is an argument to be fabricated that historical and social scientific approaches simply have different goals. Historians tend to produce thick description and interpretation. In dissimilarity, social scientists are ofttimes happy to apply a positivist mode where they peel away detail and engage in a rather vehement simplification of the available evidence in the search for a convincing correlation. It would be fitting to permit each discipline become its own manner were information technology not for the fact that social scientists and historians often brand overlapping, often alien, claims. Historians are non simply content in describing past events; they wish to talk about outcomes and causes. Hall'southward account of the antiwar motility is a case in point. Rethinking the American Anti-War Movement does non merely describe the antiwar move, but posits at some points that it may have directly affected the beliefs of political leaders, which may have resulted in policy changes.

To fully assess this causal merits would require a corking deal of bear witness, more than this brief review can contain. Indeed, scholars in a wide range of disciplines have been debating the nature of the relationship between the antiwar movement, the American land, and the public for years. Some studies fully mine traditional historical materials, while others rely on quantitative methods to tease out crusade and effect relationships, like the lottery study, which uses an idiosyncratic feature of public policy as a source of experimental data.

The result of this debate should influence how a volume similar Rethinking the American Anti-War Movement is written. If one believes that social movements are merely symptoms of broader cultural shifts, then one would not utilise a "motion centric" approach. In that case, the antiwar move would be seen as a symptom of a broader political process, the tendency for the American public to initially support wars and then turn against them once the war drags. In contrast, if research shows that the move had a more directly effect, then it would be justified to frame the movement as a cardinal role player in the story of the Vietnam State of war, non only an indicator of social strife.

A careful consideration of crusade and effect, and the incorporation of evidence coming from dissimilar fields, would greatly help bring historical and social scientific accounts of protest together. Rethinking the American Anti-War Movement is a fine book that deftly covers the major events of that movement. Future accounts should get beyond the "who, when, where and why?" Instead, we should ask "how do we know that it mattered?" Testify should be drawn from multiple fields of report. Historical analyses of protest, similar the 1960s antiwar movement, volition surely exist part of the respond.

Notes

[ane]. Paul Burstein, "Social Movements and Public Policy," in How Social Movements Matter, ed. Marco Giugni, Doug McAdam, and Charles Tilly (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 3-21.

[2]. Doug McAdam and Yang Su, "The State of war at Dwelling house: Antiwar Protests and Congressional Voting, 1965-73," American Sociological Review 67 (2002): 696-721.

[3]. Sam Marullo and David S. Meyer, "Anti-War and Peace Movements," in The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, ed. David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi (London: Blackwell, 2004), 641-665.

[four]. David S. Meyer and Nancy Whittier, "Social Move Spillover," Social Bug 41, no. two (1994): 277-298.

[5]. Doug McAdam, "The Biographical Impact of Activism," in How Social Movements Matter, 119-146.

[6]. Robert Due south. Erickson and Laura Stoker, "Caught in the Typhoon: The Furnishings of Vietnam Draft Lottery Condition on Political Attitudes," American Political Scientific discipline Review 105 (2011): 221-237.

Rethinking

Rethinking 

Rethinking

(pp. 137-138)

addressing

ies

'

C

(pp. 139-140)

,

Writing i

's text

-

'

,

'

of Rethinking 

south

2

ed. Marco Giugni, Doug McAdam, and Charles Tilly (Minneapolis: the University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 

If there is boosted discussion of this review, you lot may access it through the network, at: https://networks.h-internet.org/h-diplo.

Citation: Fabio Rojas. Review of Hall, Simon, Rethinking the American Anti-War Movement. H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. Oct, 2012.
URL: http://world wide web.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=36758

mixonwhosseem.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=36758

Share this post