The Invention of Ecocide: Agent Orange, Vietnam, and the Scientists Who Changed the Way We Think about the Environment by David Zierler (review)

Based on the title, one might expect David Zierler’s The Invention of Ecocide to be an environmentalist polemic against Agent Orange and the Vietnam War. Such an assumption would be mistaken. Instead, Zierler has produced a scholarly, nuanced analysis of the political and military rationales behind the U.S. military’s use of chemical defoliants during the Vietnam conflict and the heretofore ignored role of academic scientists in successfully putting a stop to the practice. Zierler’s study is deeply researched, clearly organized, and written in an accessible, engaging manner. His argument is novel and compelling and, most importantly, adds new insight to our understanding of the Vietnam War by showing that the conflict was a crucible not only for U.S. military and diplomatic history, but also for global environmental history.

Central to the story is the notion of “ecocide,” which Zierler is careful to use in its original context and its prominent role in the rhetoric used by the scientists who spoke out against the U.S. military’s use of herbicides in Vietnam (codenamed Operation Ranch Hand). Zierler credits the Yale University plant biologist Arthur W. Galston with coining the term in a 1970 conference paper that defines “ecocide” as “the willful and permanent destruction of environment in which people can live in a manner of their own choosing” (p. 19). Galston compared ecocide to genocide and claimed it, too, should be considered “a crime against humanity” (p. 19). This latter part of Galston’s definition is especially important to Zierler’s argument because Galston and other scientists who joined him in his critique of herbicidal warfare did not base their opposition solely on concern for the environment itself but were instead focused primarily on the consequences for human beings of widespread, potentially long-term ecological destruction. By intentionally linking human and environmental health, Zierler argues, these scientists brought about global political change that “transcended—and helped to discredit—the bipolar cold war divisions that engendered herbicidal warfare in the first place” and that led to the codification of global environmental issues within the United States and at the level of international diplomacy (p. 3).

One of the book’s primary strengths is Zierler’s meticulous, wide-ranging research. He has obtained useful materials from the collected papers of relevant scientists and statesmen, from the files of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Friends Service Committee, and the Dow Foundation, and from collections in the U.S. National Archives and the United Nations Archives. Zierler also has incorporated numerous government documents, personal interviews, and extensive secondary sources. His notes are extensive and complete.

Another strength of the book is its organization. Zierler carefully outlines his thesis in his introduction, then turns to the etymology of the term “ecocide” and the history of the development of chemical herbicides in chapters two and three, providing essential context for the crux of his argument. Chapter four analyzes John F. Kennedy’s rationale for instituting the limited use of herbicides in Vietnam, which Zierler suggests epitomized the Kennedy administration’s “flexible response” policy, and chapter five examines the origins of “ecocide” under Lyndon B. Johnson. Chapter six focuses on the scientific opposition that arose in response to the broadened use of Agent Orange as a weapon of war, linking it to the earlier controversies over nuclear radiation and domestic overuse of chemical pesticides led by biologists Barry Commoner and Rachel Carson, respectively. Chapters seven and eight focus on the findings of the scientific studies conducted in 1968 and 1970 of areas affected by Operation Ranch Hand and the subsequent political repercussions of those findings, particularly with regard to the Nixon administration’s attempts to ratify the 1925 Geneva Protocol proscribing the use of chemical and biological weapons. In chapter nine, Zierler summarizes his thesis that...