Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam is a 1997 book written by H. R. McMaster, at the time a major in the United States Army (he subsequently became National Security Advisor in 2017 after having risen in rank to lieutenant general).

[2][3] Herbert Raymond McMaster, a United States Military Academy graduate and University of North Carolina Ph.D. who was an armored cavalry commander in the Persian Gulf War, authored the book over the course of five years of research and writing.

[8] Unusual for an active-duty officer, McMaster scolded the U.S. government for its "arrogance, weakness, lying in pursuit of self-interest [and] abdication of responsibility to the American people.

"[9] Retired Brigadier General Douglas Kinnard said that the book is built around examining and interpreting four key Washington decisions that were of major influence on the American involvement in Indochina: A review in The New York Times by military historian Ronald H. Spector praised many aspects of the book, but criticized the author's emphasis on the shortcomings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the outcome of the war, as opposed to the strengths of North Vietnamese military strategy and tactics.

[3] In a CNN report on Iraq in October 2006, the influence of the book in military circles is noted: General Pace said he and the other Joint Chiefs were debriefing commanders just back from the front lines, including one colonel recognized as a rising star and creative thinker—Col H.R.