During the Vietnam War, Vietnamese Buddhist peace activists made extraordinary sacrifices—including self-immolation—to try to end the fighting. They hoped to fashion a neutralist government to broker peace with the Communists and expel the Americans.

In the first study in English of this vitally important mass movement, Robert J. Topmiller describes Buddhist efforts to create a non-aligned Third Force. He explores South Vietnamese attitudes toward the war, the insurgency, and U.S. intervention, and lays bare internal dissension in the U.S. military. Far from being ineffective or weak, the Buddhist peace movement caused a crisis within the United States government. The Lotus Unleashed is one of the few studies to illuminate the impact of internal Vietnamese politics on U.S. decision-making and to examine the power of a nonviolent movement to confront a violent superpower.