This novel takes place on the eve of the full-scale U.S. involvement in Vietnam, when American policy wonks and politicians arrogantly believed that not only were we going to stop the oncoming threat of communism, we were going to "civilize" this little underdeveloped country by building roads and schools, and importing medicine and culture.
    Sydney Parade, an upper-class American, is seduced into becoming a part of the civilian side of the escalating American operations in Vietnam, in part because he has a vague feeling that he wants to be where history is being made at some time in his life.  When he announces his plan to go there for a year, his Czech-born wife, who sees the American involvement as the cultural imperialism it really represents, divorces him. Daniel Rostok, his new boss, pressures him to use his family connections to get to know the French owner of a rubber plantation and his American wife, who have widespread connections on both sides of the conflict in Vietnam.  While seemingly holdovers from the now-absent French colonialists, this couple is tied to the beauty and mystery of Vietnam, and do not want to become involved with the Americans.  When an American soldier, the nephew of a U.S. Senator is captured, however, Sydney prevails upon this couple for help in finding the "big, dumb, blonde" boy.  In doing so, they become exposed and betrayed by the American military, as is Sydney, who had promised them secrecy and safety.  He has become their "dangerous friend", just as America has become Vietnam's.  Sydney leaves Vietnam, looking over his shoulder at Rostok, just beginning to consolidate his little bureacratic empire there.
        Ward Just, a former political reporter, now writes political novels with perfect pitch.  Each of the details of this novel implies layers of meaning.  Things are not stated overtly, but sketched in with expert brush strokes.  Bureaucratic jargon used to describe unspeakable realities, the way in which the Americans resolutely refuse to recognize the Vietnamese as actual people, and the worldy-wise resignation of the French as they watch the Americans blunder their way into disaster, are all portrayed with economy and precision, as is Sydney's gradual awakening to the ugly reality of American military might and arrogance.
    Reading this, I was reminded of reading "The Ugly American" as a child.  This is a very sad book, because we all know the outcome.  The debacle of American foreign policy in that era, and the resulting prolonged nightmare of the Vietnam War and its aftermath, is something any of us who were alive at that time still live with.
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