The Aggressors: Ho Chi Minh, North Vietnam, and the Communist Bloc

The Aggressors: Ho Chi Minh, North Vietnam, and the Communist Bloc differs notably from the many previous studies of the Vietnam War. The Aggressors delves deeply into the early world of the Communist Vietnamese and studies their activities that unfold from the 1920s through the 1960s and 1970s, developments that create "America's most difficult war," the Vietnam Conflict. Soviet affiliations, Chinese border activities, and covert Communist operations throughout Indochina, rarely mentioned by scholars--much less scrutinized-- take center stage and reveal the aggressive designs of Ho Chi Minh and his supporters.

Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969) is likewise central to The Aggressors. Rather than a nationalist, patriot, and innocent victim of French colonialism, the reader finds "Uncle Ho" to be the ruthless charismatic hardliner whose Communism masterfully trumps the very best leaders of the West, from the struggles with France to the "American War" in the Nixon years.

The author is an adjunct professor at American Military University, where he teaches the course: The Non-State Soldier. He has served in Operation Iraqi Freedom (2009-2010) at Baghdad and Basra, Iraq. Dr. Catino holds two Fulbright research scholarships, a U.S. State Department Visiting Speaker Grant, the Sasakawa Fellowship in Japanese Studies, and a visiting scholarship to Beijing University, China. He has studied United States security and foreign policy in areas such as the Philippines, Vietnam, China, India, and throughout the Middle East (Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia).

The author lives in southeast Arizona with his wife, Lisa, and their two children, Andrew and Anastascia.

He is available for public speaking. E-mail: [email protected]