Interview with Keith Saliba
Keith Saliba
author of "Crucible 1972: The War for Peace in Vietnam"
Michael Carter
Co-Host
Keith Saliba, author of "Crucible 1972: The War for Peace in Vietnam"
Keith Saliba's Website
J. Keith Saliba is the author of Crucible 1972: The War for Peace in Vietnam (2025). Crucible tells the story of America’s last fateful year in Vietnam, as Washington and Hanoi waged war to impose an acceptable peace” on the other. Caught in the middle was South Vietnam, forced to fend off its enemy to the north while retaining the support of an increasingly indifferent American ally. As the fate of the fledgling republic hung in the balance, the 1972 machinations of friend and foe alike would determine its fate.
Saliba’s first book, Death in the Highlands: The Siege of Special Forces Camp Plei Me (2020), won the 2021 Military Writers Society of America’s gold medal in history. His work has appeared in Vietnam magazine, On Point: The Journal of Army History, and in the edited volume book series Indochina. Saliba is an associate professor at Jacksonville University and lives in Florida with his family.
1972…the Year of the Rat. America is on its way out. Troop strength plummets to its lowest ebb since early 1965. President Richard Nixon’s Vietnamization program to train and equip the South to stand alone continues apace. All that remains is to secure his “honorable peace.” But the president’s overtures fall on deaf ears. Convinced military victory is at last within reach, North Vietnam’s ruling politburo instead launches a massive, three-pronged invasion of the South. As tanks roll and artillery thunders, the plan is brutally simple: crush South Vietnam’s military, depose its “puppet” regime, and drive the Americans into ignominious retreat. Yet communist leaders severely underestimate their adversary in Washington. Despite overwhelming public and Congressional pressure to call it quits in Vietnam, Nixon instead vows to destroy Hanoi’s very ability to wage war. What follows is the most devastating air and naval campaign of the conflict, drowning the North’s military, industrial, and economic infrastructure in a deluge of fire and steel. Can Hanoi’s massive invasion be rolled back before South Vietnam collapses? And what of Nixon’s “honorable peace”? After sacrificing so much blood and treasure, would America’s nearly two-decade effort to realize a stable and non-communist South Vietnamese republic finally come to pass? The answers would decide the fate of the Indochinese people for decades to come. Drawing on archival research, interviews with combat veterans, and perspectives from all sides, Saliba takes you into the heat of the last desperate fight for peace in Vietnam.