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Readiness standards comprise
65% of the U. S. History Test
8D&F
Readiness Standard (8)
The student understands the impact of significant
national & international decisions & conflicts in the
Cold War on the United States.
The Student is expected to:
(D) Explain reasons & outcomes for
U. S. involvement in foreign countries
& their relationship to the Domino
Theory, including Vietnam
The Domino Theory
• The domino theory dominated American
foreign policy philosophy from 1950s to the
1980s. The basic argument was that if one state
in a region came under the influence
of communism, then the surrounding countries
would follow that lead, toppling like dominoes
lined up one in front of the other.
• American foreign policy “experts” & diplomats
invoked the domino theory during the Cold War to
justify the need for American intervention around the
world.
• Eisenhower was the first to refer to countries in danger
of Communist takeover as dominoes, in response to a
journalist's question about Indochina in an April 7,
1954 news conference, though he did not use the term
“domino theory.” Referring to communism in
Indochina, President Eisenhower described it thus in
an April 7, 1954 news conference:
“Finally, you have broader considerations that might
follow what you would call the ‘falling domino’ principle.
You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the
first one, and what will happen to the last one is the
certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could
have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the
most profound influences.”
The Domino Theory
• The domino theory seemed to
be at play in Eastern &
Central Europe, as Stalin’s
Soviet Union gobbled up the
nation-states in that region
after the end of World War
II.
• In his famous 1946 “Iron
Curtain” speech delivered at
Westminster College in Fulton,
Missouri explained it thus:
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The Domino Theory
Likewise, after the war, communist governments
gained control in both North Korea and China,
and by the mid-1950s the communists of Vietnam
had established a strong foothold in Southeast
Asia. If Communists succeeded in taking over the
rest of Indochina (Vietnam), Eisenhower argued,
local groups would then have the encouragement,
material support and momentum to take over
Burma, Thailand, Malaya, & Indonesia; all of
these countries had large popular Communist
movements and insurgencies within their borders
at the time.
The Domino Theory
• This would give them a geographical and economic
strategic advantage, and it would make Japan, Taiwan,
The Philippines, Australia, & New Zealand front-line
defensive states. The loss of regions traditionally within
the vital regional trading area of countries like Japan
would encourage the front-line countries to
compromise politically with communism.
• The Kennedy Administration intervened in Vietnam in
the early 1960s to, among other reasons, keep the
South Vietnamese “domino: from falling. When
Kennedy came to power there was concern that the
communist-led Pathet Lao in Laos would provide
the Viet Cong with bases, and that eventually they
could take over Laos.
America’s sustained presence in Southeast Asia
& entry into Vietnam War (December 1956-April
30, 1975) was in large part inspired by sincere
belief in the Domino Theory’s validity
Arguments in
Favor of the
Domino Theory
The primary evidence for the domino
theory is the spread of communist rule
in three Southeast Asian countries in
1975, following the communist takeover
of Vietnam : South Vietnam (by the Viet
Cong), Laos (by the Pathet Lao), and
Cambodia (by the Khmer Rouge).
Arguments against
the domino theory
The primary evidence against the domino theory is the
failure of Communism to take hold in Thailand, Indonesia,
and other large Southeast Asian countries after the end of
the Vietnam War, as Eisenhower's speech warned it could.
However, proponents of this policy argue that this was due
in part to the effects of both the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
Critics of the theory charged that the Indochinese wars were
largely indigenous or nationalist in nature (such as the
Vietnamese driving out the French), and that no such
monolithic force as "world communism" existed. There was
already fracturing of communist states at the time, the most
serious of which was the rivalry between the Soviet Union and
China, known as the Sino-Soviet split, which began in the 1950s.
Readiness Standard (8)
The student understands the impact of significant
national & international decisions & conflicts in the
Cold War on the United States.
The Student is expected to:
(F) Describe the response to the
Vietnam War such as the draft, the
26th Amendment, the role of the
media, the credibility gap, the silent
majority, & the anti-war movement
Readiness Standard (8)
The student understands the impact of significant
national & international decisions & conflicts in the
Cold War on the United States.
The Student is expected to:
(F) 1 Describe the response to the
Vietnam War such as the draft
The Draft-Background
• The institution of America’s second-ever
peacetime draft in 1948 is best understood as a
response to heightened postwar tensions
created by the Cold War.
• From a program that had just barely passed
Congressional muster during the fearful prelude to
World War II, a more robust draft continued as fears
now focused on the Soviet threat.
• President Kennedy's decision to send military troops
to Vietnam as "advisors" was a signal that Selective
Service would be alive & well throughout the 1960s.
The Draft
The large cohort of Baby Boomers who became
eligible for military service during the Vietnam
War was responsible for a steep increase in the
number of exemptions and deferments, especially
for college students. Besides being able to avoid
the draft, college graduates who volunteered for
military service (primarily as commissioned
officers) had a much better chance of securing a
preferential posting compared to less-educated
inductees.
The Draft Lottery
• On December 1, 1969, the Selective Service System
of the U. S. conducted two lotteries to determine
the order of call to military service in the Vietnam
War for men born from 1944 to 1950. These
lotteries occurred during “the draft” —a period of
conscription, controlled by the President, from just
before World War II to 1973.
• The lottery numbers assigned in December 1969
were used during calendar year 1970 both to call
for induction and to call for physical examination,
a preliminary call covering more men.
The Draft
• As U.S. troop strength in Vietnam increased, more young men
were drafted for service there, and many of those still at home
sought means of avoiding the draft.
• There were 8,744,000 service members between 1964 and 1975,
of which 3,403,000 were deployed to Southeast Asia. From a
pool of approximately 27 million, the draft raised 2,215,000
men for military service (in the United States, Vietnam, West
Germany, and elsewhere) during the Vietnam era.
• Of the nearly 16 million men not engaged in active military
service, 57% were exempted (typically because of jobs
Widespread
including other military service), deferred
(usually
passage
offor
the
resistance
educational
reasons),toor disqualified (usually 26
forthphysical and
the Draftbut also for criminal records including draft
mental deficiencies
Amendment
stimulated . . .
violations).
Readiness Standard (8)
The student understands the impact of significant
national & international decisions & conflicts in the
Cold War on the United States.
The Student is expected to:
(F) 2 Describe the response to the
Vietnam War such as the 26th
Amendment
July 1, 1971
th
26
Amendment
The Twenty-sixth Amendment (Amendment
XXVI) to the U. S. Constitution prohibits the
states and the federal government from setting a
voting age higher than eighteen. It was adopted in
response to student activism against the Vietnam
War and to partially overrule the Supreme
Court’s decision in Oregon v. Mitchell (1970,
ruling that Congress could set voter age
requirements for federal elections but not for
state elections). It was adopted on July 1, 1971.
th
26
Amendment
Congress and the state legislatures felt increasing
pressure to pass the Constitutional amendment
because of the Vietnam War, in which many young
men who were ineligible to vote were conscripted to
fight in the war, thus lacking any means to influence
the people sending them off to risk their lives. "Old
enough to fight, old enough to vote," was a common
slogan used by proponents of lowering the voting
age. The slogan traced its roots to World War II,
when President Roosevelt lowered the military draft
age to eighteen.
Readiness Standard (8)
The student understands the impact of significant
national & international decisions & conflicts in the
Cold War on the United States.
The Student is expected to:
(F) 3 Describe the response to the
Vietnam War such as the role of the
Dan Rather—
media
Walter Cronkite—
1966
“most trusted man in
America”
telecast
The Media & Vietnam—
Background
• Before the 1960s, the news media had no interest in Vietnam.
Those who covered the beginning of the war in Vietnam were
only reporting the rise of communism in the country. The
official agencies that handled the press in Vietnam during the
early years had little control over what those reporters wrote.
• During this period, what was published in the news reflected
what America was most preoccupied with: communism and the
cold war. But if one asks instead how the United States got into
Vietnam, then attention must be paid to the enormous strength
of the Cold War consensus in the early 1960s shared by
journalists and policymakers alike, and to the great
power of the administration to control the agenda and
the framing of foreign affairs reporting.
The Media & Vietnam—
1960-1964
• The correspondents did not question the black and white
assumptions of the time that the war was a part of the larger
struggle between the free world and totalitarianism or whether
the war was beyond America’s ability to win. The media
exhibited the “Cold War myopia, ethnocentrism, cultural bias,
and racism embedded in American ideology.”
• American readers rarely encountered the argument that the
communists were waging a war of reunification rather than “a
campaign to further the interests of a communist conspiracy
masterminded by the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet
Union.”
• The Domino Theory was utilized to justify the American
intervention in order to prevent regional domination by China,
overlooking centuries of hostility between the Vietnamese and
the Chinese.
The Media & Vietnam—
1960-1964
• In the same way after the United States threw its
weight behind Ngo Dinh Diem, who became South
Vietnam’s president in 1955, journals in the United
States ignored the new leader’s despotic tendencies
and instead highlighted his anti-Communism.
• The death of civilians in a coup against President
Diem at the end of 1960 started to change how
Vietnam was viewed by the media. As a result, the
New York Times sent their first reporter to Saigon,
the capital of South Vietnam. This was followed by
other journalists arriving from Reuters, Agence
France Presse, Times and Newsweek.
The Media & Vietnam—
1960-1964
• The American public was also dissatisfied with the course of
events in Vietnam. A January 1965 Gallup poll indicated that
two out of three Americans agreed that the country would
never form a stable government and that four out of five
Americans felt that the communists were winning. Few,
however, wanted a unilateral U.S. withdrawal and 50 percent
believed that the U.S. was obliged to defend independent
nations from communist aggression.
• 1965-1967--Escalation
• The dramatic structure of the uncensored “living room war” as
reported during 1965–1967 remained simple and traditional:
“the forces of good were locked in battle once again with the
forces of evil. What began to change in 1967 . . . was the
conviction that the forces of good would inevitably prevail.”
The Media & 1968 (Tet)
• During a bombing halt in September 1967, Harrison E.
Salisbury of the New York Times became the first
correspondent from a major U.S. newspaper to go to North
Vietnam. His reporting of the bombing damage to civilian
targets forced the Pentagon to admit that accidents and
“collateral damage” had occurred during the bombing
campaign. For his effort, Salisbury received heavy
condemnation and criticism from his peers, the administration,
and the Pentagon.
• Perhaps the most famous image of the Tet Offensive—a photo
that was taken by Eddie Adams—was the photograph that
depicted a Vietnamese man being executed by the Southern
Vietnamese General, General Nguyen Ngoc Loan. The photo
shows the moment of death for the young man. Adams won a
prize for his iconic photo, which was said to be more influential
than the video that was released of the same execution.
The Media & 1968
• The impact that these photos had on the American public was
astounding. Support for the war plummeted, and, though two
hundred thousand troops were requested at the beginning of
the Offensive, the request was denied.
• Withdrawal, 1969–1973
• On November 3, 1969 President Nixon made a televised “Silent
Majority” speech promising to continue to support the South
Vietnamese government (through Vietnamization). He also held out a
plan for the withdrawal of American combat troops.
• This speech, not the Tet Offensive, marked the real watershed of the
American involvement. In it, Nixon permanently altered the nature
of the issue. “No longer was the question whether the United States
was going to get out, but rather how and how fast.” Nixon's policy
toward the media was to reduce as far as possible the American
public’s interest in and knowledge of the war in Vietnam. He began
by sharply limiting the press’s access to information within Vietnam
itself.
The Media &
Withdrawal
• The gradual dissipation of American support for the war
was apparent in changes in the source of news stories. The
traditional sources –press conferences, official news
releases, and reports of official proceedings were less
utilized than ever before. Reporters were doing more
research, conducting more interviews, and publishing
more analytical essays.
• There was also an increase in the number of American
homes that acquired a television set which led to a rise in
people gaining their knowledge of the war from television.
The media never became “acutely critical . . . but more
sober, and more skeptical. It did not, however, examine or
reexamine its basic assumptions about the nature of the
war it had helped to propagate.
The Media &
Withdrawal
• Television’s image of the war, however, had been
permanently altered: the “guts and glory” image of the
pre-Tet period was gone forever. For the most part
television remained a follower rather than a leader. The
later years of Vietnam were “a remarkable testimony to
the restraining power of the routines and ideology of
objective journalism . . . ‘advocacy journalism’ made no
real inroads into network television.”
• As the American commitment waned there was an
increasing media emphasis on Vietnamization, the South
Vietnamese government, and casualties, both American
and Vietnamese. There was also increasing coverage of the
collapse of morale, interracial tensions, drug abuse, and
disciplinary problems among American troops.
The Media &
Withdrawal
Tensions between the news media and the Nixon
administration only increased as the war dragged on.
In September and October 1969, members of the
administration openly discussed methods by which
the media could be coerced into docility. Possible
methods included IRS audits, Justice
Department antitrust lawsuits against major
television networks and newspapers that could be
accused of monopolistic business practices, and the
monitoring incidents of “unfairness” by television
broadcasters that would be turned over to the
FCC for possible legal action.
Readiness Standard (8)
The student understands the impact of significant
national & international decisions & conflicts in the
Cold War on the United States.
The Student is expected to:
(F) 4 Describe the response to the
Vietnam War such as the credibility
gap
The Credibility Gap
• Credibility gap is a political term that came into wide use
during the 1960s and 1970s. At the time, it was most frequently
used to describe public skepticism about the Lyndon B.
Johnson administration's statements and policies on
the Vietnam War. Today, it is used more generally to describe
almost any “gap” between the reality of a situation and what
politicians and government agencies say about it.
• “Credibility gap” was
popularized in 1966 by J.
William Fulbright, a
Democratic Senator from
Arkansas, when he could
not get a straight answer
from President Johnson’s
Administration regarding
the war in Vietnam.
• “Credibility gap” was first used in association with the
Vietnam War in the New York Herald Tribune in
March 1965, to describe then-president Lyndon
Johnson's handling of the escalation of American
involvement in the war. A number of events—
particularly the surprise Tet Offensive, and later the
1971 release of the Pentagon Papers—helped to
confirm public suspicion that there was a significant
“gap” between the administration's declarations of
controlled military and political resolution, and the
reality.
• Throughout the war, Johnson worked with his
officials to ensure that his public addresses would only
disclose bare details of the war to the American
public.
• An example of public opinion appeared in the New
York Times concerning the war. “The time has come
to call a spade a bloody shovel. This country is in an
undeclared and unexplained war in Vietnam. Our
masters have a lot of long and fancy names for it,
like escalation and retaliation, but it is a war just
the same.” - James Reston.
• The advent of the presence of television journalists
allowed by the military to report and photograph
events of the war within hours or days of their
actual occurrence in an uncensored manner drove
the discrepancy widely referred to as “the
credibility gap.”
After the Vietnam War, the term “credibility gap” came to be
used by political opponents in cases where an actual,
perceived or implied discrepancy existed between a
politician's public pronouncements and the actual, perceived
or implied reality. For example, in the 1970s the term was
applied to Nixon's own handling of the Vietnam War and
subsequently to the discrepancy between evidence of Richard
Nixon’s complicity in the Watergate break-in and his repeated
claims of innocence.
Readiness Standard (8)
The student understands the impact of significant
national & international decisions & conflicts in the
Cold War on the United States.
The Student is expected to:
(F) 5 Describe the response to the
Vietnam War such as the silent
majority
The silent majority is an unspecified large majority of
people in a country or group who do not express their
opinions publicly. The term was popularized (though
not
first Nov.
used)3,by
U.S. President Nixon in a November
Nixon’s
1969
3,“Silent
1969, speech
in which he said, “And so tonight—to
Majority”
Speech
you,
the great silent majority of my fellow
A Sword that
Cuts
Americans—I
ask
forboth
your support.” In this usage it
ways
referred to those Americans who did not join in the
large demonstrations against the Vietnam War at the
time, who did not join in the counterculture, and who
did not participate in public discourse. Nixon along
with many others saw this group of “Middle
Americans” as being overshadowed in the media by
the more vocal minority.
x
x
x
A Sword that
Cuts both
ways
Readiness Standard (8)
The student understands the impact of significant
national & international decisions & conflicts in the
Cold War on the United States.
The Student is expected to:
(F) 6 Describe the response to the
Vietnam War such as the anti-war
movement
With the U.S. Capitol in the
background, demonstrators
march along Pennsylvania
Avenue in an anti-Vietnam
War protest in Washington,
on Moratorium Day, Nov.
15, 1969.
The Anti-War
Movement
• The movement against the involvement of the U. S. in
the Vietnam War began in the U.S. with demonstrations in
1964 and grew in strength in later years. The U.S. became
polarized between those who advocated continued
involvement in Vietnam and those who wanted peace.
• Many in the peace movement were students, mothers,
or anti-establishment hippies , but there was also
involvement from many other groups, including educators,
clergy, academics, journalists, lawyers, physicians (such
as Benjamin Spock), even some military veterans, and
ordinary Americans. Expressions of opposition events
ranged from peaceful nonviolent demonstrations to radical
displays of violence.
Reasons Driving the
Anti-War Movement
• The reasons behind American opposition to the
Vietnam War fell into the following main categories:
opposition to the #1) draft; #2) moral concerns, #3)
legal & pragmatic arguments against U.S.
intervention; #4) reaction to the media portrayal of
the devastation in Southeast Asia.
• #1 The Draft, as a system of conscription which
threatened lower class registrants and middle class
registrants alike, drove much of the protest after 1965.
• The prevailing sentiment that the draft was unfairly
administered inflamed blue-collar American and
African-American opposition to the military draft
itself.
Reasons Driving the
Anti-War Movement
• Opposition to the war arose during a time of
unprecedented student activism which followed the free
speech movement and the civil rights movement. The
military draft mobilized the Baby Boomers who were most
at risk, but grew to include a varied cross-section of
Americans. The growing opposition to the Vietnam War
was partly attributed to greater access to uncensored
information presented by the extensive television coverage
on the ground in Vietnam.
• #2 Anti-war protesters also made moral arguments against
the United States’ involvement in Vietnam. This moral
imperative argument against the war was especially
popular among American college students.
Reasons Driving the
Anti-War Movement
• Opposition to the war arose during a time of
unprecedented student activism which followed the free
speech movement and the civil rights movement. The
military draft mobilized the Baby Boomers who were most
at risk, but grew to include a varied cross-section of
Americans. The growing opposition to the Vietnam War
was partly attributed to greater access to uncensored
information presented by the extensive television coverage
on the ground in Vietnam.
• #2 Anti-war protesters also made moral arguments against
the United States’ involvement in Vietnam. This moral
imperative argument against the war was especially
popular among American college students.
Reasons Driving the
Anti-War Movement
• In an article entitled “Two Sources of Antiwar Sentiment in
America,” Howard Schuman found that students were more likely
than the general public to accuse the United States of having
imperialistic goals in Vietnam. Students in Schuman's study were
also more likely to criticize the war as “immoral.”
• #3 Another element of the American opposition to the war was the
perception that U.S intervention in Vietnam, which had been
argued as acceptable due to the Domino Theory and the threat
of Communism, was not legally justifiable. Some Americans
believed that the Communist threat was used as a scapegoat to
hide imperialistic intentions, while others argued that the
American intervention in South Vietnam interfered with the “selfdetermination” of the country. In other words, the war in Vietnam
was a civil war that ought to have determined the fate of the
country and, therefore, America was not right to intervene.
Reasons Driving the
Anti-War Movement
• #4 Additionally, media coverage of the war in
Vietnam shook the faith of citizens at home. That
is, new media technologies, like television, brought
images of wartime conflict to the kitchen table.
• For the first time in American history the media
was privileged to dispense battlefield footage to
public. Graphic footage of casualties on the nightly
Malcolm
Browne’s
news eliminated any myth of the glory
of
war.
Photo of Vietnamese
With no clear sign of victory in Vietnam,
theBuddhist
Mahayana
Monk Immolating
media images of American military casualties
Himself (June 11,
helped to stimulate the opposition of the war
1963)in
Americans.
Rationale of the AntiWar Movement
• Military critics of the war pointed out that the
Vietnam War was political and that the military
mission lacked any clear idea of how to achieve its
objectives
• Civilian critics of the war argued that the government
of South Vietnam lacked political legitimacy, or that
support for the war was completely immoral.
• The media established a sphere of public discourse
surrounding the Hawk versus Dove debate. The Dove
was a liberal and a critic of the war. Doves claimed
that the war was well–intentioned but a disastrously
wrong mistake in an otherwise benign foreign policy.
Rationale of the AntiWar Movement
• It is important to note the Doves did not question the U.S.
intentions in intervening in Vietnam, nor did they question
the morality or legality of the U.S. intervention. Rather,
they made pragmatic claims that the war was a mistake.
• Contrarily, the Hawks argued that the war was legitimate
and winnable and a part of the benign U.S. foreign policy.
The Hawks claimed that the one-sided criticism of the
media contributed to the decline of public support for the
war and ultimately helped the U.S. lose the war.
• The hawks claimed that the liberal media was responsible
for the growing popular disenchantment with the war and
blamed the western media for losing the war in Southeast
Asia.
Elements of the AntiWar Movement
• Students—some argue that the post World War II
affluence set the stage for the protest generation in the
1960s; some students joined the antiwar movement
because they did not want to fight in a foreign civil
war that they believed did not concern them or
because they were morally opposed to all war.
• The Arts—many artists during the 1960s and 1970s
opposed the war and used their creativity and careers
to visibly oppose the war; regardless of medium,
antiwar artists ranged from pacifists to violent
radicals and caused Americans to think more critically
about the war.
Elements of the AntiWar Movement
• Women—women involved in opposition groups disliked the
romanticism of the violence of both the war and the antiwar
movement that was common amongst male war protestors;
such female antiwar groups often relied on maternalism, the
image of women as peaceful caretakers of the world, to express
and accomplish their goals
• African-Americans—African Americans were often involved in the
Civil Rights Movement and the antiwar movement, including Martin
Luther King, Jr. & the Black Panther Party. In the beginning of the
Muhammad
war, some African Americans did not want
to join the war opposition
movement because of loyalty to PresidentAli
Johnson
for pushing Civil
refused
Rights legislation, but soon the escalating violence of the war and the
to serve in
perceived social injustice of the draft propelled involvement in
antiwar groups. They harshly criticized thethe
draftwar
because poor and
minority men were usually most affected by conscription.
Elements of the AntiWar Movement
• The Clergy—the clergy, often a forgotten group during the
opposition to the Vietnam War, played a large role as well.
There is a relationship and correlation between theology and
political opinions and during the Vietnam. In basic summary,
each specific clergy from each religion had their own view of
the war and how they dealt with it, but as a whole, the clergy
was completely against the war.
• Protests in general grew after the
Kent State killings, radicalizing
more and more students. Although
the media often portrayed the
student antiwar movement as
aggressive and widespread, only
10% of the 2500 colleges in the
United States had violent protests
throughout the Vietnam War
years.
Vietnam has elicited
the most ambiguous
response by the
American people
toward any war
before or since.
The Vietnam War
Memorial in
Washington, D.
C.
Fini