IsisCB Explore

Chapter ID: CBB414594872

From Charles and Francis Darwin to Richard Nixon: The Origin and Termination of Anti-plant Chemical Warfare in Vietnam (2017)

Meselson, Matthew (Author)

Springer International
Pages: 335-348
Publication date: 2017
Language: English

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

Google Books

Anti-plant chemical warfare (CW), the use of chemicals to clear vegetation or destroy food crops as a method of warfare, was conducted on a large scale in the Vietnam War of the 1960s and 1970s. Unlike the anti-personnel CW of World War I, which continued until the Armistice, anti-plant CW in Vietnam was terminated while the war was still underway. Already subject to increasing controversy, its limitation and subsequent termination was precipitated by the appearance in late 1969 of a government-sponsored study suggesting that 2,4,5-T, a component of Agent Orange, the herbicide most heavily used for defoliation, might be teratogenic to humans. In consequence, its use in Vietnam was restricted and then prohibited altogether. Although another herbicide, Agent White, remained briefly in use, all large-area defoliation had ceased by May 1970, leaving crop destruction as the remaining form of large-area herbicide operations in Vietnam. After a review of the program requested by the U.S. Ambassador and the Commanding General in Saigon, the ambassador telegraphed Washington in early December 1970 their decision that chemical crop destruction should be phased out. Although secret, the content of the telegram became known to the press and was published a week later, followed shortly thereafter by President Richard Nixon’s announcement that there would be “an orderly yet rapid phaseout of herbicide operations in Vietnam.”

...More

Included in

Book Bretislav Friedrich; Dieter Hoffmann; Jürgen Renn; Florian Schmaltz; Martin Wolf (2017) One Hundred Years of Chemical Warfare: Research, Deployment, Consequences. unapi

Citation URI

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB414594872

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Tran, Thao; Amat, Jean-Paul; Pirot, Françoise; (2007)
Guerre et défoliation dans le Sud Viêt-Nam, 1961--1971: Aux sources de l'histoire (/p/isis/citation/CBB000931367/)

Thesis Krache Morris, Evelyn Frances; (2012)
Into the Wind: The Kennedy Administration and the Use of Herbicides in South Vietnam (/p/isis/citation/CBB001561006/)

Article Martini, Edwin A.; (2012)
Even We Can't Prevent Forests: The Chemical War in Vietnam and the Illusion of Control (/p/isis/citation/CBB001320116/)

Article Fino, Steven A.; (2013)
Breaking the Trance: The Perils of Technological Exuberance in the U.S. Air Force Entering Vietnam (/p/isis/citation/CBB001213864/)

Book Alvin L. Young; (2022)
Agent Orange: The Failure of Science, Policy and Common Sense (/p/isis/citation/CBB579236627/)

Article Moritz J. Feichtinger; (2022)
Computing Counterinsurgency: The Hamlet Evaluation System (HES) and Databasing During the Vietnam War (/p/isis/citation/CBB615498445/)

Book Robert K. Brigham; (2018)
Reckless: Henry Kissinger and the Tragedy of Vietnam (/p/isis/citation/CBB488916133/)

Thesis Bui, Lan Thi Phuong; (2003)
When the Forest Became the Enemy and the Legacy of American Herbicidal Warfare in Vietnam (/p/isis/citation/CBB001562320/)

Article Spinardi, Graham; (2010)
The Rise and Fall of Safeguard: Anti-ballistic Missile Technology and the Nixon Administration (/p/isis/citation/CBB001033658/)

Book Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu; (2021)
Experiments in Skin: Race and Beauty in the Shadows of Vietnam (/p/isis/citation/CBB116774950/)

Article Oatsvall, Neil S.; (2013)
Trees Versus Lives: Reckoning Military Success and the Ecological Effects of Chemical Defoliation during the Vietnam War (/p/isis/citation/CBB001421399/)

Book Hay, Amy M.; (2021)
The Defoliation of America: Agent Orange Chemicals, Citizens, and Protests (/p/isis/citation/CBB039979128/)

Book Martini, Edwin A.; (2012)
Agent Orange: History, Science, and the Politics of Uncertainty (/p/isis/citation/CBB001320939/)

Book Vuic, Kara Dixon; (2010)
Officer, Nurse, Woman: The Army Nurse Corps in the Vietnam War (/p/isis/citation/CBB001020413/)

Book Peter E. Davies; (2021)
B/EB-66 Destroyer Units in Combat (/p/isis/citation/CBB813243626/)

Book Mahnken, Thomas G.; (2008)
Technology and the American Way of War since 1945 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001230638/)

Article Harvey, A. D.; (2013)
Air Warfare in Perspective (/p/isis/citation/CBB001320834/)

Article Wahlberg, Ayo; (2014)
Herbs, Laboratories, and Revolution: On the Making of a National Medicine in Vietnam (/p/isis/citation/CBB001450050/)

Book Jeremy Black; (2017)
Mapping Naval Warfare: A Visual History of Conflict at Sea (/p/isis/citation/CBB558563682/)

Article Xiao, Shao; Zhang, Xiaoming; (2019)
Reassessment of Beijing’s economic and military aid to Hanoi’s War, 1964–75 (/p/isis/citation/CBB483523917/)