Download U.S. History Mr. Detjen CWD Class Notes, Prof. Mike Ruddy, SLU

U.S. History
Mr. Detjen
CWD Class Notes, Prof. Mike Ruddy, SLU 1998, “U.S. Foreign Policy, 1945-1990”
Vietnam (1954-1975)
1. Introduction and Overview
2. Truman and Vietnam
--Ho Chi Minh
Vietminh
--shift from FDR’s (anti-) colonial policy
France and ERP/NATO
--impact of the Korean War
3. Eisenhower
--Geneva Conference and Accords (1954)
--Ngo Dinh Diem
4. Kennedy
--Special Forces/advisors and troop commitments
--protests in South Vietnam
Self-immolations of Buddhist monks
--Diem assassination
Introduction
Vietnam, and U.S. involvement therein, must be viewed not from the perspective of the escalation and
failures of the 1960s and 1970s, but from a post-WWII Cold War context. As with the Cold War generally,
there are different ideas on the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of the beginnings of the war in Vietnam. In fact, the
background and chronology have long roots dating to the end of the Second World War and evolving with
direct ties to the 1960s. And despite our post-1970s/Watergate viewpoint with its vantage point of 20/20
hindsight, for the first two decades of U.S. interest/involvement (1945-1965), Vietnam fit the traditional Cold
War context of the U.S. as a great power which could influence any situation anywhere/everywhere in the world
vs. the Soviet Union with its monolithic, expansionist Communism.
In 1963 almost no Americans even knew where Vietnam was on a map, despite a decade + of
commitment. That is, until the mid-1960s, Vietnam as of secondary importance, hardly on the American
public’s radar; U.S. policy toward Vietnam was not based on what was happening in Vietnam, but how it fit in
with the global context of U.S. Cold War perspectives and interests.
Finally, in opposition to D. Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest, which describes a sense of
stumbling and bumbling wherein the U.S. was deluded/blinded into a series of mistakes, it is George Herring’s,
America’s Longest War: America and Vietnam, 1953-1975, thesis/theme that the U.S. was involved not
blindly, but deliberately, consciously. According to Herring, U.S. presidents/leaders dating to Truman in the
immediate aftermath of World War II and through IKE, JFK, LBJ, and RMN, faced with choices and
information on both sides, in each case made a specific, rational choice which in turn narrowed/limited the
options of his successor. Thus, though not involved blindly, each president had increasingly limited options;
there was lots of deliberate rationality. The “blindness” was arguably with respect to the long-term impacts.
From Truman onward, with rational, if increasingly limited options/reasons for decisions, each administration
limited the freedom of choice for he who followed.
In sum, three (3) general statements about Vietnam may be said to hold true from World War II through
the mid-1960s and Johnson’s escalation policy. First, the U.S. looked at Vietnam within a Cold War
geopolitical framework wherein the U.S. was an unbeaten great power at odds in a bipolar world with the
monolithic, expansionist Communism of the Soviet Union.
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Second (and related to One) is the idea that Vietnam itself was a secondary consideration with respect to
U.S. policy. Anti-communism was the bedrock with less and less/no consideration of why communism might
be a threat to the U.S. and/or so domestically popular. That is, Vietnam was just another case of Moscow’s
expansion (China, “lost” to communism in 1949, was generally not considered. State Department experts,
known as “China hands,” and dating to Truman and the immediate aftermath of WWII, focused on indigenous
issues between Mao and Chiang Kai-Shek, but by the 1950s were caught up in McCarthyism and either
resigned or were drummed out of State, resulting in a vacuum of understanding about Asia, generally). And
policy makers were left with a fear of dominoes and the perception of success vis a vis the limited war in Korea.
The third generality is that the series of decisions to be in Vietnam at all, and then to escalate U.S.
involvement were the results of conscious, rational, deliberate choices. In opposition to Halberstam’s “best and
brightest” stumbling and bumbling blindly into chaos, George Herring’s thesis/focus was that when each
administration was presented with choices and alternatives, a rational choice was made to follow a particular
path, an assumed advantageous course of action, though the ultimate effect/impact was to limit the choices
available to each successive administration.
Truman and Vietnam
Throughout World War II, Franklin Roosevelt had—at least rhetorically—supported the principle of
national self-determination as expressed in the Atlantic Charter. And he had perceived the end of European
colonial rule over the Third World, notably Britain in India and Burma, France in Indo-China, and everybody in
Africa. But FDR was dead before the end of the war and the case can be made that he had at least acquiesced to
the notion of spheres of influence, especially on the Russian periphery. He was succeeded by Harry Truman,
who faced Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam.
Ho Chi Minh was an ardent anti-colonialist. Educated in France, and editor of the Communist
newspaper La Paria, Ho was in opposition to a century of oppression by French colonial rule. During the war
he was supported by the OSS against the Japanese, and there’s evidence that at the end of the war he tried to
make contact with Truman, in fact wrote several letters, but he got no response.
Query: How did Ho Chi Minh fit in? Was he a communist? A nationalist? Both? To what extent
either? According to David Halberstam, Ho: A Biography, he liked power, regardless of the ideology. He was
a nominal communist with its people-oriented ideology. He was a nationalist insofar as that meant an
opposition to colonialism or outside rule of any kind, whether French or (historically, for a thousand years)
Chinese. A quote attributed to him, “It’s better to sniff French dung for a while than to eat Chinese dung
forever,” reflects the 1000-year history of Chinese intervention in Vietnamese affairs.
Ho Chi Minh was a symbol of opposition to outside interference, and was therefore appealing to both
North and South Vietnamese. He was the leader of the Viet Minh, a revolutionary body with very strong
Communist influence, but which was nevertheless an eclectic group of communists, anti-colonialists, Catholics,
and Buddhists.
At the end of WWII, the Japanese were driven out; their control was over and their attempted “Greater
East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” in ruins. So, apparently was the U.S. commitment to national selfdetermination. In the 2 to 3 years after the war, the French re-established a colonial government and influence
with the subsequent re-emergence of indigenous civil unrest against the French by the Viet Minh. At the time,
Truman needed French support in Europe for NATO and the Marshall Plan, so we see the first (a la George
Herring) conscious, deliberate, rational choice on the part of the Truman administration as the U.S. shifted
from FDR’s anti-colonial, pro-national self-determination policy to support of the re-establishment of French
colonial rule.
Query: Why? Rhetorically, in justification, Ho Chi Minh was a communist and therefore his efforts
were de facto (perceived as) Soviet-directed. Even more important was the then pre-eminent focus/concern
with Europe in the immediate postwar years. The U.S. had the choice to end colonial rule or to support the
French against the communist Ho Chi Minh in an era when the primary focus of the U.S. was on Europe, and
when the U.S. needed French support there. Thus, despite the growing problem in Vietnam with its anticolonial civil unrest, Europe was in real and immediate need with Germany in ruins, Stalin looming, and Great
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Britain and France needed/integral for the Marshall Plan and NATO. To forestall any break and to appease the
French as the U.S. moved to set up strong, solid, anti-communism in Europe, the Truman administration
supported the French against Ho Chi Minh in then far-off, distant Vietnam. The U.S. feared French retaliation
against NATO if no U.S. support in Vietnam, and it would take a couple of years for “containment” to move
beyond the periphery of Europe.
Initially, U.S. aid was “under the table;” some of the Marshall Plan monies were diverted to Vietnam.
But from 1950 and the “Police Action” in Korea, with its attendant fear of dominos falling, U.S. aid was more
direct. By 1954 the U.S. was providing almost 80% of the French effort against the Viet Minh. Such was the
first rational choice. That is, in terms of the impact of the Korean War (1950-1953) on the issue of rational
choices with respect to U.S. support of the re-advent of French colonialism, the Korean conflict served to widen
the U.S. focus out of Europe to include Asia and the world. The U.S. not only needed French support in
Europe, but also offered increased economic assistance in Vietnam so that, by 1954, the U.S. was underwriting
78% of the French effort there.
Eisenhower, the Geneva Accords, and Diem
The second rational choice came during the Eisenhower presidency in the aftermath of the 1954
Geneva Conference. President in 1953, Ike faced a challenge within months. The French had been fighting
the Viet Minh since 1946, but after 8 years they had little to show for it (a mirror/precursor of the U.S.
experience?) except lots of costs—financial, political, domestic—and pressure at home to end the commitment.
By late 1953 the French stronghold at Dien Bien Phu was surrounded and besieged. Defeat was imminent.
The French called for U.S. aid, and there was some brief discussion of the use of “tactical” nuclear weapons,
though Ike quickly dismissed the idea.
The French were looking for a way to get out of the war with honor intact. The Geneva Conference was
the answer, with delegates from France, Vietnam, Russia, and China. The U.S. sent observers (John Foster
Dulles pointedly did not shake hands with the Chinese delegation), but played no official role; it took no legal
part in the proceedings. The terms of the Geneva Accords included: (1) elections to be held in 1956 in both the
northern and southern parts of the country to enable the Vietnamese people to determine a single leader over a
united country; (2) respect for Vietnam’s territorial integrity, which meant no foreign occupation, troops, or
bases; and (3) a temporary division of the country at the 17th Parallel (shades of Korea), a military demarcation
line (DMZ) which was specifically not a political or territorial boundary. The division did not create two
countries, but a cease-fire zone as a precursor to the settling of political divisions; the intention was a temporary
division as the Viet Minh retired to Hanoi and Bao Dai, the puppet emperor established by the French and
notorious playboy in Paris, moved to Saigon in the South.
The French saw the Geneva Accords as a way out—a way to get troops out of Dien Bien Phu
immediately and then a gradual, orderly withdrawal of its colonial presence from the South. But the United
States, with its geo-political perception of a global and expansionist Soviet communist threat, stepped in to
replace the French.
Bao Dai had appointed Ngo Dinh Diem, a Catholic, an anti-colonialist, and a virulent anti-communist
with some links to French colonials, to head the area in South Vietnam. Diem was a Catholic in a primarily
Buddhist nation, but his biggest credential as far as the Americans were concerned was as an anti-communist.
By 1955, the U.S. persuaded Bao Dai to appoint Diem as head of the government. The United States had
replaced the French and supported Diem as the 1956 called-for elections were approaching. Unfortunately for
the anti-communist Americans, the reality of the situation was that Ho Chi Minh, whether nationalist or
communist, was the only person with universal indigenous support, and it was a certainty that he would win the
election. U.S. thinking was that rigged elections were probable with Ho in control in the North, and he also had
a strong following in the South.
The second conscious decision was that since the U.S. was not a signatory to the Geneva Accords, and
since Diem was provisional/interim head of the government at that time, there would be no elections. Ho Chi
Minh won decisively in the North. No elections were held in the South.
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Throughout the Eisenhower years the U.S. provided some impressive economic support to Diem. The
Mekong Delta, for example, South of Saigon, was the richest rice-producing area in Asia and the U.S. sent lots
of money to increase production. Ike also pressured Diem, whose government was not at all democratic, to
reform, but to no avail (a la Syngman Rhee of South Korea). Diem’s was a very corrupt government, and with
his brother as head of the security forces, they rooted out all opposition groups, including Buddhists, and
established some impressive Swiss bank accounts. By the end of the Eisenhower administration in 1960, there
were 8-900 military advisors in South Vietnam.
Kennedy and “Flexible Response”
John Kennedy, also a “cold warrior” who recognized the Soviet threat, initiated the policy of “flexible
response” which involved increased funding for other options, including covert operations and Special Forces/
Green Berets. He was aware of the threats against the Diem government and increased the U.S. military
commitment to Vietnam so that by the end of the Kennedy administration (his death in November, 1963) there
were 16-17,000 “advisors;” that is, not combat troops but Special Forces units with a training and counterinsurgence responsibility, an important distinction in diplomacy. The commitment deepened.
But Kennedy was also increasingly disenchanted with the Diem government and the latter’s resistance to
reform. From 1961 the self-immolation of Buddhist monks in Saigon streets as they protested against Diem and
which were played out on American TV, even as Madame Nhu, the wife of Diem’s brother, was quoted as
saying/referring to the suicides as “a Buddhist barbecue,” a reflection of the callous ruthlessness of the Diem
government. Kennedy was increasingly concerned, and by 1963 the reality of no forthcoming reforms from a
corrupt and nepotistic Diem administration, coupled with an ineffectiveness to resist Ho Chi Minh’s efforts led
to the third rational choice: when Diem was assassinated by South Vietnamese generals under U.S. aegis/
acceptance/ knowledge of the coup.
The assassination/coup took place on the night of November 1, 1963, when the U.S. had said, “we won’t
support you generals actively, but we won’t get in your way.” With the caveat that we don’t yet have access to
CIA or NSC documents for confirmation (all governments seal many official documents for periods of time—
25 to 100 years, depending on their sensitivity—to allow time and passions to elapse before they are available
for historical analysis) Kennedy probably wanted/expected Diem overthrown and exiled, but he was killed by
the Vietnamese military (after he was allowed to take communion) outside a church. Kennedy is reported to
have been visibly shaken upon learning about the murder, and he himself was dead 3 weeks later.
Vietnam was in the midst of turmoil just at the same time that LBJ faced a tumultuous domestic
agenda—the Great Society “war on poverty”—in the United States.
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1. Tonkin Gulf Incident (1964)
--controversy
--resolution
--significance
2. LBJ and conduct of the war
--limited war
--guns and butter
--military and political “responsibility”
3. Growing opposition
--collapse of Cold War consensus
--economic problems
--credibility gap
4. Tet Offensive (January 1968)
Larry Berman, “Lyndon B. Johnson’s Tragic Decision to Escalate,” from ibid, Planning a Tragedy: The
Americanization of the War in Vietnam (1982), excerpted in Paterson, ed., Major Problems in American
Foreign Relations Vol. 2, 4/e, p. 555-564.
In an article excerpted from his Planning a Tragedy, Berman asserts that there was lots of confusion and
disagreement among LBJ’s advisors and analysts, and posits that Johnson must bear the responsibility for a
decision that resulted in a personal and national tragedy. Berman’s focus is the July 1965 decision to increase
the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000 (and more as required by General William
Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam). Berman asserts that though considerable time and
effort was taken to consider dissenting views, in fact both LBJ and his advisors came to the table with 20 years
of intellectual baggage about Soviet-directed aggressive communism, and as “anti-communism” was elevated to
the status of policy, it was too generally, too indiscriminately, and too simplistically applied; the debate was
over how to save the South Vietnamese government, not why or whether it was worth saving. Berman also
asserts that LBJ’s first priority was his domestic Great Society agenda, and that the escalation bought much
needed time to keep the ball rolling on the domestic legislation.
Gabriel Kolko, “America’s Quest for a Capitalist World Order,” from ibid, Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the
United States, and the Modern Historical Experience (1985), excerpted in Paterson, ed., Major Problems in
American Foreign Relations Vol. 2, 4/e, p. 564-572.
Gabriel Kolko is a New Left/Revisionist historian who posits in this excerpted article that the U.S.
intervention and escalation in Vietnam grew from a post-World War II desperate quest to fashion an integrated
world capitalist order. New Left history/historiography was stimulated both by the opening—in the mid1960s—of U.S. documents, and by the emerging Vietenam controversy and dissent. Revisionist scholars
include William A. Williams, Gar Alperowitz, Walter LaFeber, and Kolko, who in his article turns around U.S.
accusations of Soviet motives with respect to a Communist world order, and points to a U.S. motive of a
Capitalist world order. The valid point about revisionist historians is that historical writing traditionally gave
very little credit to economics and their impact on policy until they came along. On a critical note, New Left
historians place too much emphasis on mono-causal (economic) reasons for policy—whether economics or
ideology—which constitute a consideration, not necessarily the vital consideration.
The Tonkin Gulf Incident and Resolution (1964)
The first benchmark of the Vietnam War comprised the Geneva Accords of 1954. A decade later, the
second benchmark occurred within a few months of Johnson becoming president by default, and it gave the
president virtually carte blanche in Southeast Asia. When Johnson became president, there were 16,000
military advisors in Vietnam, vs. 8-900 at the end of the Eisenhower administration. LBJ had a sense of
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inferiority from Kennedy’s advisors, the desire for his own “missile crisis,” the desire not to be the first
president to lose a war, and the desire to continue JFK’s policies.
The Tonkin Gulf Incident was actually two incidents. In late August, 1964 the destroyer USS Maddox
was in the Tonkin Gulf north of the 17th Parallel on an electronics surveillance mission when North Vietnamese
gunboats attacked her, claiming that she was in North Vietnamese territorial waters (North Vietnam claimed 12
miles offshore as territorial rights). The U.S. protested to the United Nations, claiming the Maddox was outside
the traditional, international 3-mile limit, and sent the USS Turner Joy, another destroyer, and which reported a
second attack. There remain question about that second attack, which probably didn’t happen.
Johnson went on television and claimed that the U.S. ships were in international waters when they were
attacked wantonly and without provocation (he said nothing about the surveillance mission). His arousal of the
populace and of Congress resulted in the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, passed by Congress, and which gave the
President, as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, the authority to take “all necessary measures, including
armed force, to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States, and to prevent further
aggression.”
But the consensus among constitutional historians is that the president/commander-in-chief already has
the inherent power to command U.S. troops/forces, and Johnson only told a half-truth with respect to the Tonkin
Gulf incident. So what were his motives? On the one hand, politics played a role: 1964 was an election year
wherein LBJ was running in his own right against Barry Goldwater, who was rhetorically very tough on
communism (“Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice; moderation is pursuit of justice is no virtue”), and
who portrayed Johnson as weak on communism. The TV address negated the “soft on communism” issue.
It was also a diplomatic signal/warning to the North Vietnamese: after the Geneva Conference of 1954
the adverse forces were supposed to withdraw beyond the temporary demarcation line of the 17th Parallel. As
the forces separated, Ho Chi Minh went North to Hanoi. But there remained in the south a strong contingent of
South Vietnamese communists who opposed Bao Dai and the Diem government. Ho Chi Minh also left some
agitators as well. As a result, these southern, indigenous communist forces formed a political opposition party
to the Diem government, known as the National Liberation Front (NLF). There also emerged, allegedly, in
South Vietnam, a revolutionary rebel army, which the U.S. started to call the Viet Cong, which had links to the
North, but was also a southern indigenous force. But by 1964 the North really stepped up its support of the
southern communists via the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a long, narrow, unpaved trek/supply line mostly through
neutral Laos and Cambodia, and thus LBJ’s televised address was a signal to North Vietnam, “Hey, we know
what’s up. Watch it.” Until 1964 U.S. support was limited, then the escalation caused real alarm, and LBJ
sought to send a signal to the North Vietnamese.
The Tonkin Gulf Resolution reinforced both U.S. abilities and will. It passed 417-0 in the House, and
with only two dissenting votes in the Senate, one of whom had voted against U.S. entry into World War II in
1941. As attacks against Special Forces began, so came the excuse to invoke the Resolution. And by 1968,
there were 500,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam.
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1. Johnson and Vietnam
--limited war
--the Great Society: guns and butter
--political/military “responsibility”
Harry Summers, On Strategy
2. Domestic unrest
--end of Cold War consensus
--credibility gap
--economic impact of the war
3. Tet Offensive (1968)
--North Vietnamese defeated
--LBJ response
“I shall not seek, nor will I accept…”
The case can be made that the Vietnam War “started/began” in late-1964/early-1965 as the United States
moved away from the façade of “advisors” and sent in combat troops. Historians have suggested that the
February 1965 attack by the North Vietnamese on Special Forces bases was the catalytic/imminent incident
(though not at all akin to nuclear missiles in Cuba) which Johnson was waiting for/searching for to invoke the
Tonkin Gulf Resolution and which legitimized the escalation. In the initial stages there was a sense of
confidence (read ‘arrogance’) and the ‘inevitability’ of ultimate U.S. victory.
LBJ and the Conduct/Escalation of the War, 1965-1967
To continue with George Herring’s argument that each successive administration made rational choices
which in turn limited the options available to the following administration, where does LBJ fit in? What is the
rationality in the way that Johnson and his (and formerly, JFK’s) Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara got
from “Point A” in 1965—when the U.S. was still the omnipotent world power able to accomplish whatever it
set out to do—to “Point B” in 1968—when Johnson, with a successful and popular domestic/Great Society
program, voluntarily withdrew from the election after only 1 term in office, and soldiers and civilians in
Vietnam were dying by the tens of thousands?
In 1965, Johnson and his advisors had the (arguably racist) sense that there was no way some little
“pissant country” could stand up to the mighty and righteous United States. Thus the 4 years preceding the
pivotal 1968 saw an incremental expansion/escalation of the war. In 1965 Johnson chose not to bring to bear
the full weight of U.S. military forces, not to marshal domestic U.S. support, economic price controls…to end
the war quickly and decisively (though that said, doubts remain whether total war would have achieved a
different result). Instead, in a (4th) conscious, rational political decision on the part of the administration,
Johnson responded with an incremental escalation over time. In 1965 U.S. combat troops numbered 125,000;
by 1968 there were over a half million, and General Westmoreland was promising an end to the war if he could
have just a few more—200,000 or so.
Johnson’s decision was influenced by two assumptions: first was the way U.S. leaders perceived
American power and their (now questionable) ability to win the war, with the ongoing sense of “just one more
escalation will result in victory and we’re out.” But this perception was related to what was happening
domestically at the same time.
Johnson’s Great Society was a grand plan for improving the U.S. politically, morally, and
economically. The impetus behind it was Michael Harrington’s The Other America (1961), which Kennedy
had read and by which he was greatly influenced. In an effort to make the U.S. a more equitable society at
home, the Great Society reflected an increased government responsibility for the overall welfare of the
American people and included welfare programs, civil rights, national health care (in the form of Medicare and
Medicaid) and literacy and job training programs. LBJ made a conscious decision not to sacrifice the Great
Society just to win the war; that is, “guns and butter” were both possible, but not necessarily total war and all
that implies. Johnson’s attempted to both fight the war, not to win it, but so as not to lose it.
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Also, since 1956 there was a Cold War consensus among both liberals and conservatives to oppose
communism. But by 1967-68, that consensus began to break down. Liberals in Congress were allies in the
Great Society programs but were often the critics of the war. Conservatives generally opposed the Great
Society spending but were more supportive of U.S. power in the world, and this left Johnson in a dilemma. He
couldn’t sacrifice the Great Society to win the war, and thereby lose liberal support, and he also couldn’t end
U.S. involvement in Vietnam and thereby lose conservative support. Johnson sought to maintain a domestic
consensus for his Great Society programs and therefore fought a limited was while he gradually increased troop
levels. But with each increase, the North Vietnamese were able to adapt and respond. (See notably, Fitzgerald,
Fire in the Lake, from the perspective of the Vietnamese who felt, after centuries of foreign domination, that a
few more years of opposition against the Americans was “do-able.”
There is also the issue of political and military responsibility for the conduct and direction of the war.
Political decisions weren’t the only responsibility for the loss in Vietnam, despite military scholars who have
suggested that the military’s hands were tied by the political decision to prosecute a limited war. Harry
Summers, On Strategy, a former battalion commander in Vietnam, attacked the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who
knew fairly early on about the decision not to prosecute the war to victory and said nothing. Summers asserted
that the military strategists were wrong when they said the U.S. was fighting a guerrilla war (eg. The strategic
hamlets in the jungle) when the U.S. actually should have prosecuted a conventional war along the lines of the
Korean conflict, and cut off the North-South supply lines and let the South Vietnamese root out the insurgents.
The Domestic Front
From 1964-1968 the war escalated, the Cold War consensus began to break down, and the domestic
protest/unrest emerged and itself escalated even as the prosecution of the war developed. The anti-war
movement would eventually attract a broad spectrum of people, and emerged with a growing credibility gap—
the disparity between what the government said and what the people believed. See notably Guenther Lewy,
America in Vietnam (1978), whose analysis of the nightly news reports reflected a definition of success in
Vietnam was determined by body count, not territory/land, as in Korea or the World Wars.
The impact of the incremental escalation (we’re almost there, almost done, just a little more and we’ll
win—but we never won, and more people died) also contributed to the development of skepticism toward the
government. Between Vietnam and Watergate, it cracked the faith.
Recently historians have begun to suggest that too much emphasis has been placed on the end of the
Cold War consensus and the credibility gap/anti-war protests, and have focused instead on the economic impact
of the war. By 1968 there was real inflation and the beginning of severe economic problems.
The peak was the February 1968 Tet Offensive which would lay the foundation for the beginning of the
end, for Nixon’s final, deliberate choice.
The Tet Offensive (1968)
Tet is the Vietnamese New Year festival celebrated in February. In 1968 the North Vietnamese
mounted a surprise attack (actually a series of multiple, simultaneous attacks) against a number of provincial
capitals in South Vietnam. Although U.S. and ARVN (Army of the Republic of South Vietnam) forces were
initially caught off guard, they quickly regrouped and utterly defeated the North Vietnamese forces. According
to George Herring, the U.S. was for the next 2 years in the strongest position it had ever been; the Viet Cong
were decimated and there existed real potential for a defeat/rout of North Vietnamese forces.
But in the U.S. there was utter disaffection in the wake of the Tet assault. Having been promised only in
January that the war was all but ended (and only needed a few more troops), the American public no longer
believed General Westmoreland’s (probably correct) assessment that he could have finally won the war with
206,000 more troops (despite his desperately self-serving memoirs, he makes a good point).
Johnson refused, saying the U.S. couldn’t afford the additional troops. And then in March 1968, LBJ
went on television and (1) offered to negotiate the end of the war, (2) announced the end of the bombing of
North Vietnam, and (3) announced that he would not seek a second term as president (“I shall not seek, nor will
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I accept, the nomination of my Party.”). His withdrawal from the 1968 election was a reflection of political
realities.
Richard Nixon won a very close election against Hubert Humphrey (LBJ’s VP). During the campaign
Nixon declared he had a “secret plan to get out of Vietnam” (he didn’t—he would devise one with Henry
Kissinger after his election), and he would ultimately offer a broader view of foreign policy.
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1. Nixon strategy to end the war
--negotiate: linkage
--escalate (bombing)
--Vietnamization and U.S. troop withdrawal
2. Effects of the Vietnam War
--skepticism of government
--Nixon Doctrine and U.S. limits
--War Powers Act (1973)
--economic problems (stagflation)
--relations with allies in disarray
3. Nixon/Kissinger Détente: assumptions
--downplay ideology
--realism: stability, not peace
--multipolar world
Our focus here, with respect to how Nixon got the United States out of Vietnam is from the perspective
of the war, the situation in and of itself—and what effect it has on subsequent foreign and domestic policy—but
also, considering what part Nixon’s effort to end the war in the larger geo-political plan/context of the NixonKissinger introduction and implementation/application of Détente. That is, we look at the efforts from 1969 not
just as the story of how the U.S. got out of Southeast Asia, but also/rather as explained in terms of a greater
plan, that of détente, the hallmark of Nixon’s foreign policy.
Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (1978), in Paterson, Major Problems in American Foreign Policy
Vol. 2: Since 1914 4/e (1995)
Written 3-4 years post-inglorious resignation and therefore with some time for personal reflection/
perspective/analysis, Nixon’s memoirs tell us how he perceived what he faced and what he planned to do, and
in fact they’re a pretty accurate reflection of his views and opinions. Nixon was focused not only on Vietnam
but beyond Vietnam; he was not obsessed with Southeast Asia in and of itself but in relation to a broader global
situation.
Nixon was also a realist. Though a lifelong anti-communist (he’d served on McCarthy’s HUAC
committee) he realized that he must deal with the very real bi-polar nuclear power/potential threat of the Soviet
Union, and so the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) talks were a part of his administration,
and “linkage” was part of all negotiations (that is, “If you want grain, or credits for grain, then get Hanoi to be
more forthcoming in the peace talks”). Historians and journalists have suggested that it had to be Nixon to deal
more realistically with the Soviet Union (and with “Red” China, for that matter) instead of a liberal who would
have been ideologically slammed in the press, simply because of his impeccable, unquestionable anticommunist credentials/resume (and perhaps like/akin to LBJ, a southern, Texas racist with respect to 1960s
civil rights legislation/progress).
Nixon realized that he must deal with—and officially recognize—the People’s Republic of China (PRC)
as the official Chinese government over the Formosa/Taiwan Nationalist government. And the acceptance of
the PRC reflects the reality of the position of the Soviet Union and the struggles between the two communist
nations, not to mention Nixon’s realistic efforts to exploit the emerging Sino-Soviet split.
With regards to Vietnam, Nixon’s policy emerged from three (3) fundamental premises: (1) he had to
prepare/educate the public with respect to the impossibility of total victory; (2) he had to act based on his
conscience (?!?!?) and keep U.S. commitments; and (3) he couldn’t abandon South Vietnam to communist; he
had to find a way to end the war “as honorably as possible.” The conflict, of course, was between honor and the
public disaffection with the progress and conduct of the war.
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Nixon, like Johnson, didn’t want to be the first president to lose a war, but he was also realistic enough
to realize that the U.S. had to get out of the war. He couldn’t just leave, not just because of U.S. prestige/
reputation/honor, but because of a deeper global political framework.
Nixon also saw the role of the Soviet Union in fairly realistic terms. He tried to foster a global
relationship between the two superpowers which recognized that the USSR had a realistic influence on the
situation in Vietnam, and reflected his sense that the final decision to end the war would lie not only in Hanoi,
but in Peking or Moscow. In a world where U.S. and Soviet interests were so widespread and overlapping it
was unrealistic to separate or compartmentalize areas of concern. Thus Nixon decided to “link” progress in
Soviet areas of concern (strategic arms limitation, increased trade) with progress in U.S. areas of concern
(Vietnam, the Middle East, Berlin, Eastern Europe, Jewish emigration out of the Soviet Union). Such was
linkage, the idea that what we wanted from them was the price they paid for what they wanted from the U.S.
At the end of Johnson’s administration the Soviets had tightened their hold on Eastern Europe;
specifically had sent tanks into Czechoslovakia during the 1968 “Prague Spring.” The Soviets had also, by the
early 1970s, increased their oppression of internal dissent as they denied Soviet Jews the right to emigrate to
Israel. Despite public calls for the U.S. to be tough on the Soviets on this issue, Nixon was cautious, fearing
that if the U.S. was tough there, the Soviets would not cooperate to bring about the end of the conflict in
Vietnam.
The Nixon Doctrine (1969)
In an almost reversal of the Truman Doctrine, Nixon asserted that individual (specifically Asian)
countries must take more responsibility for their defense (in Vietnam, this would be known as Vietnamization).
From Truman through Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson, the presidential doctrines had all asserted U.S. power
and global/omnipotent influence. For the first time, Nixon seemed to be admitting that there were limits to U.S.
power.
The Nixon Doctrine stated that the U.S. would fulfill all agreements/treaties, and would still “be there”
if there was a threat of nuclear attack, but…on other matters relating to internal security and self-defense, U.S.
allies must assume more of the economic and military responsibility of defending themselves. That is, the U.S.
was not as powerful as it used to be. In 1969, this was a realistic response; the U.S. would meet its agreements,
but South Vietnam must assume more of the burden (a philosophy that caused some real problems, especially
with ultra-right wing anti-communist conservatives [and hence the appeal of Ronald Reagan, later] and on the
other end of the spectrum, with the extreme left, who felt the U.S. had no business in the world at all).
Just as the Truman Doctrine was prompted by a particular concern in Greece and Turkey, which Truman
presented in very grandiloquent terms of “free peoples everywhere,” so Nixon added subsequent statements
which refined his Doctrine. That is, while Vietnam was the instigator, the immediate focus, the Nixon Doctrine
was aimed at all our allies, and so the U.S. called on Germany, for example, to pay more of the costs for U.S.
troops stationed in NATO countries. By 1969, the U.S. has its limits.
Nixon’s Strategy to End the War
In March 1968 LBJ withdrew from the presidential race and vice-president Herbert H. Humphrey got
the nod, but as the personification of the failed Johnson policy, he was in trouble from the beginning.
Nonetheless he lost a very close race (Nixon was personally very unpopular—in 1962 in California he’d
declared, “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore!) as Nixon declared during the campaign that
he had a “secret” plan to get out of Vietnam, a plan which was in fact determined/decided upon after the
election. Nixon had the bedrock realization that the U.S. had to get out of Vietnam.
Nixon’s first Secretary of State was William Rogers, a personal friend but with very little influence on
foreign policy overall. The real mover and shaker behind Nixon’s foreign was Henry A. Kissinger. Germanborn and Harvard-educated, Kissinger was National Security Advisor during Nixon’s first term (1969-1973)
and both NSA and Secretary of State during Nixon’s second term (1973-1977). Nixon was first elected in 1968,
but the agreement of U.S. withdrawal wasn’t signed until his second inauguration in 1973. So what was the
strategy to get the U.S. out of Vietnam during those first four years? In all, 55,000 Americans died during the
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whole of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War (1954-1973/5). Of those, fully half died during 1969-1973,
coinciding with U.S. efforts to withdraw; there was no de-escalation during negotiations.
In sum, Nixon sought a strategic withdrawal combined with tactical escalation. That is, first Nixon
turned to negotiations. Originally called for by LBJ as he withdrew from presidential contention, Nixon sought
to open the lines of communication. Despite the initial disagreement, an inability to agree on the shape of the
negotiating table, Nixon pursued open, public, regular, formal meetings at the Paris locale for the talks, as well
as back-channel, secret, behind-the-scenes diplomacy. Lots of the real negotiations took place out of the
public’s sight, out of the limelight. (See notably, Charles Ashman, Kissinger: The Adventures of Super-Kraut
[1972].)
Secondly, Nixon also pursued a policy of Vietnamization, which increased the burden on/of the South
Vietnamese during the U.S. withdrawal. A cause for much of the turmoil at home was the death of U.S. troops
in the context of 500,000 stationed in Vietnam at the time. Vietnamization was a direct, immediate result of
the Nixon Doctrine, which involved the systematic reduction of U.S. troop levels. By the treaty signing in
1973, there were 125,000 U.S. troops remaining in Vietnam. Historians have argued how serious Nixon was,
though the U.S. did withdraw troops and simultaneously turned over the prosecution of the war to the South
Vietnamese.
Finally (thirdly) Nixon also escalated U.S. involvement in the air war/assault, with increased bombing
of not only North Vietnam, but also of neutral Cambodia and Laos as well. His overall strategy/goal was to get
U.S. troops out of Vietnam, but this was coupled with the occasional tactical escalation, notably the bombing of
Haiphong Harbor (avoided previously because of the presence of Soviet ships) and the bombing of (neutral)
Cambodia (though there remains the question of de facto vs. de jure neutrality, since Cambodia was allowing
the North Vietnamese to set up base camps in its territory, and since the supply-line Ho Chi Minh Trail ran
through the eastern edge of the country). In fact, as late as October 1962, with the treaty almost ready to be
signed, Nixon made a decision to bomb the north—in part to show that the U.S. was still strong, in part to
disrupt the northern supply route and protect the U.S. withdrawal, and finally to show China that the U.S.
wasn’t just capitulating, wasn’t just giving in.
In January 1973 Nixon got his peace treaty, and the last of the U.S. troops pulled out. The U.S. was out
with a compromise agreement. The Thieu government of South Vietnam held on for two more years against the
North Vietnamese, though Saigon fell in April 1975 when North Vietnamese troops entered the city, soon
renamed Ho Chi Minh City.
Effects and Legacy of Vietnam
The increasing credibility gap between presidential politics/the U.S. government and the American
populace was reinforced by the ongoing and simultaneous Watergate scandal, and resulted in the emergence of
some real skepticism with respect to the U.S. government and its highest leadership; there was a real reluctance
in the aftermath of the war to follow the political leadership than there was before the war.
The Nixon Doctrine reflected U.S. acceptance that it was not omnipotent, that there were limits on what
the U.S. could, and would, do around the world.
The resultant War Powers Act was passed in 1973. The overall course in U.S. history, especially with
regards to the conduct of foreign policy, especially in the 20th century, has been the steady increase of
presidential/executive power, when the president would commit troops in accordance with his constitutional
powers as Commander-in-Chief and then turn to Congress for (an expected/assumed) funding and/or
ratification. In 1973 Congress passed a law—as yet untested in the courts—which was an effort to reassert
congressional power within the context of constitutional separation of and balance of powers. The act stipulates
that the president may commit troops but is required to report his actions within 48 hours, and then has 60 to 90
days to remove those troops if not congressional approval/ratification is forthcoming. The act is a check on the
power of the presidency (a reversal of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution) and an effort on the part of Congress to
reassert its role. To date (1998), the War Powers Act has never been invoked nor has there been a constitutional
challenge yet to the Commander-in-Chief powers. Nonetheless, successive presidents have been cautious.
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Economic problems also plagued the U.S. in the aftermath of Vietnam, notably stagflation, during the
1970s with its runaway inflation and no production (Vietnam doesn’t get full ownership of this; OPEC takes
some credit as well).
Finally, U.S. relations with other allies were in disarray as lots of questions emerged from NATO allies
who were concerned from the outset with U.S. involvement in Vietnam while U.S. commitments in Europe
were affected by monies spent and troops deployed outside of Europe.
In sum, at the end as at the beginning, Vietnam wasn’t just a Vietnam issue; but a global foreign policy
issue.
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