Fuelling the war : revealing an oil company's role in Vietnam /

As a Dutch business executive who ran Shell Oil's operations in Vietnam from 1972 to 1975, Wesseling offers a perspective that has so far been missing in the vast Vietnam War literature: that of a well-compensated, well-connected corporate higher-up living and working in Saigon. Much of the book is a re-creation of Wesseling's life and times among the business, military and political elite in Vietnam during the war's last three years. His well-drawn portraits of some of the characters he worked and rubbed shoulders with are among the book's high points. Less successful are Wesseling's sketchy history of Vietnam and anti-Communist critiques of the way the French and Americans fought their wars in Indochina from 1945 to 1975. The book's most notable absence, however, is the lack of a full account of how Shell and other oil companies actually fueled the American war machine in Vietnam. Given the well-known rampant corruption in South Vietnam during the American war, the 7% of Shell Oil that Wesseling estimates wound up in the enemy's hands seems low. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved