CANCELED: Dr. Martin Clemis: “Invasion and Counter invasion: Vietnam, 1976-1979”

The Ft. Leavenworth program scheduled for July 6th has been cancelled. We hope you join us for the next program in the series “The Three Invasions of Serbia in 1914” on Thursday, August 3 at 3 p.m.

On December 25, 1978, soldiers from the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) crossed into Cambodia as part of a punitive expedition against the Khmer Rouge. Three months later, in response to this incursion, the People’s Republic of China sent combat troops into Vietnam’s northern provinces. The Vietnamese invasion of Democratic Kampuchea and Chinese counter-invasion of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam marked the beginning of the Third Indochina War, an unforeseen and unprecedented conflict that pitted three regional communist powers against one another in the pursuit of ethnonationalist objectives. This lecture will examine the origins, conduct, and outcome of these military invasions, and discuss their historical implications on the global Cold War.

Martin G. Clemis is an associate professor in the Department of Military History at the Command and General Staff College. He is the author of The Control War: The Struggle for South Vietnam, 1968-1975 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018), and a contributing author in Beyond the Quagmire: New Interpretations of the Vietnam Conflict (University of North Texas Press, 2019), Drawdowns: The American Way of Postwar (New York University Press, 2017), and War and Geography: The Spatiality of Organized Mass Violence (Ferdinand Schoningh, 2017). Martin has had articles published in Army History and Small Wars and Insurgencies.

The Ft. Leavenworth Series

The Ft. Leavenworth Series is an annual roster of lectures focusing on significant historical events, usually with an emphasis on military history. Each lecture is presented by faculty from the United States Army Command and General Staff College in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. Established by General William Tecumseh Sherman in 1881, the CGSC is the graduate college for U.S. Army and sister service officers. The esteemed faculty and guests of the CGSC provide unique and captivating insights into the history of military conflict from the ancient to the modern ages at the Dole Institute of Politics.

The Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics is dedicated to promoting political and civic participation as well as civil discourse in a bipartisan, philosophically balanced manner. It is located on KU’s West Campus and houses the Dole Archive and Special Collections. Through its robust public programming, congressional archive, and museum, the Dole Institute strives to celebrate public service and the legacies of US Senators Bob Dole and Elizabeth Dole.