The Invention of Ecocide

Agent Orange, Vietnam, and the Scientists Who Changed the Way We Think about the Environment

Bibliographic Data

ID5705732
AuthorsGerard J Fitzgerald (0000-0002-0078-9262, George Mason University, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume99
Issue2
Pages677-678
Publication date2012-09-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of American History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/jahist/jas292
OpenAlexW2076771068
LanguageEN
Citations received10

Between 1961 and 1971, U.S. military aircraft sprayed approximately 20 million gallons of various chemical herbicides on the Vietnamese countryside as part of Operation Ranch Hand, a joint U.S.–South Vietnam mission. Covering an area of about 5 million acres (a region roughly the size of Massachusetts), this program sought to defoliate the lush indigenous greenery and make the jungle transparent to U.S. and South Vietnamese military forces. In addition, chemicals were also deployed to destroy the ability of “enemy” forces to cultivate various food crops such as rice. The most infamous of these herbicides was Agent Orange, a mixture of equal parts 2,4-D (2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid) and 2,4,5-T (2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid)—substances that initiate plant death through uncontrolled growth among specific species of broad leaf plants. Agent Orange is the subject of David Zierler's book The Invention of Ecocide on chemical weapons use in Vietnam. This is less an environmental or scientific history of Agent Orange and more a diplomatic and national security history of how the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford administrations formulated policies for introducing, and then ultimately outlawing, military herbicides based on both the downward spiral of the Vietnam War and plans by the Nixon administration to finally push for verification of the Geneva Protocol, a treaty prohibiting the first use of chemical and biological weapons. The author argues that herbicide usage in Vietnam originated with President John F. Kennedy's policy of flexible response, where counterinsurgency (and technological proficiency) would contain global communism without need for nuclear weapons or large-scale troop deployments. “The president's strategy was simple: deny guerrillas their only tactical advantage with chemicals, not infantry” (p. 2). Any limits on the program ended with Kennedy's assassination as 15 million gallons of defoliating chemicals were dispatched between 1966 and 1969

Agent Orange · Biology · Chemical warfare · Indigenous · Orange (colour · Political science · Treaty · Vietnam War · Vietnamese · Ecology · History · Horticulture · Law · Philosophy · Wildlife Conservation and Criminology Analyses

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