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Explain the importance of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident in the growth of US intervention in Vietnam in the period 1954-1968. The Gulf of Tonkin incident marked the turning point in US policy towards Vietnam. Up until then, the Kennedy and Johnson administrations had been wavering between the desire to stop the spread of communism in Indochina and the determination to keep American ground troops out of the region. The events of August 1964 set the US on a path which led, almost inexorably, to war. Within seven months, marines were storming the beaches of Da Nang. Within a year, a veritable army was on its way. South Vietnam was a creation of the United States – brought into being by the Eisenhower Administration with the sole intention of preventing Ho Chi Minh from seizing all of Vietnam. At that time, world politics were seen entirely in the context of the Cold War – the ideological, political, economic and military struggle between the capitalist and communist worlds. As such, Ho Chi Minh was seen by the US as an instrument of Soviet aggression, rather than a nationalist leader with strong domestic support. The US became convinced that a Vietminh victory would unleash a wave of communist revolutions across Asia – a view known as the Domino Theory. In response, President Eisenhower provided economic, political and military support to Ngo Dinh Diem’s regime in South Vietnam. When these efforts proved ineffective, the Kennedy Administration was reluctant to accept defeat. Such an outcome would mean a significant loss of face, reducing the ability of the United States to defend its interests in other, more vital, parts of the world. This fear explains why Kennedy sent 16,000 US advisers to South Vietnam, despite having reservations about the importance of the region to America’s interests. President Johnson faced a similar dilemma when he assumed office, following Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. The US advisers had failed to stabilise the South. If anything, their presence only played into the NLF’s hands, allowing it to portray the conflict as a struggle against foreign intervention. The situation continued to deteriorate until August 2nd 1964, when North Vietnamese gunboats fired on the USS Maddox. The ship was in international waters, allowing the US government to portray the attack as unprovoked aggression. In fact, the North Vietnamese were retaliating against a series of raids on their coastal facilities, carried out by South Vietnamese navy commandos, under the supervision of the CIA. As far as they were concerned, the Maddox was a part of these raids, so they had good reason to attack the ship. Two days after the attack, the Maddox and another US warship (the Turner Joy) reported being attacked again. The US Navy itself was doubtful as to whether this second attack had taken place, but Johnson used it as a pretext to send a message to his enemies in North Vietnam and to his political rivals in Washington (in particular, Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican candidate for president). He did not want to look weak in the face of “communist aggression”. The president‘s first action was to present Congress with a resolution giving him the power to “respond instantly and with appropriate force” if US personnel were attacked. This was the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. Then he authorised a series of air strikes against North Vietnam. Politically, the plan worked precisely as Johnson had hoped, and his domestic critics were silenced. He went on to win the November election in a landslide. However, the bombing and Johnson’s bold declaration that he would retaliate against any attacks on American personnel in Southeast Asia locked him into having to defend South Vietnam against further incursions by the Viet Cong. The reason is that any such incursions would almost certainly result in American casualties, given that there were 25,000 ‘advisers’ in South Vietnam (many of whom were carrying out combat missions). Matters came to a head in January 1965, when the president’s advisers recommended a round-the-clock bombing campaign against the North – Operation Rolling Thunder – as a means of persuading Ho Chi Minh to end his support for the insurgency in the South. If anything, however, this had the opposite effect. Guerrilla attacks on US airfields increased, forcing Johnson to send in Marines to defend the planes. These troops now found themselves under attack, and were soon given permission to conduct offensive operations against the Viet Cong. Of course, their numbers were insufficient for the new role they were assigned, so Johnson was obliged to send more troops to provide support. Johnson now found himself on a slippery slope, having to escalate the war just to avoid defeat. Within two years, he had authorised the dispatch of half a million men to South Vietnam, with no means of retreat short of victory or humiliating defeat. Hence it can be seen that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was pivotal in America’s intervention in Vietnam, by locking President Johnson into a policy that precluded military retreat.