By Andrew Glass. Johnson Administration (1963 - 1969), United States National Security Policy CARYN E. NEUMANN President Lyndon B. Johnson continued the longstanding commitment of the United States to Southeast Asian security by providing increasing amounts of support to anti-communist South Vietnam.A former congressman from Texas and vice-president since 1960, Johnson took office in 1963 upon the . The troops arrived on 8 March, though Johnson endorsed the deployment prior to the first strikes themselves. Original: Jun 30, 2016. Best Known For: Lyndon B. Johnson was elected vice president of the United States in 1960 and became the 36th president in 1963, following the assassination of John F. Kennedy. 518. Lyndon B. Johnson: Impact and Legacy. Following weeks of intensive discussion, Johnson endorsed the third optionOption C in the administrations parlanceallowing the task force to flesh out its implementation. In thinking about Vietnam, the model LBJ had in mind was South Korea. Like sending troops in there to Santo Domingo. if he can see daylight down the road somewhere. Lyndon B. Johnson's tenure as the 36th president of the United States began on November 22, 1963 following the assassination of President Kennedy and ended on January 20, 1969. Since 1954 every American President has offered support to the people of South Vietnam Our objective is the independence of South Vietnam We want nothing for ourselves. Lyndon Johnson could have been remembered as one of the most outstanding of American presidents. An Asia so threatened by Communist domination would certainly imperil the security of the United States itself. At a post-retirement dinner in New York with McNamara, Bundy, and other former aides in attendance, LBJ accepted full responsibility. Both Diem and Nhu were killed in the coup that brought a military junta to power in early November 1963, ending Americas reliance on its miracle man in Vietnam.4, Kennedys own assassination three weeks later laid the problems of Vietnam squarely on Johnsons desk. The spate of endless coups and governmental shake-ups vexed Johnson, who wondered how the South Vietnamese would ever mount the necessary resolve to stanch the Communists in the countryside when they were so absorbed with their internal bickering in Saigon. "Why We Are in Vietnam". It was focussed on the 1930s appeasement of Hitler and the Containment Doctrine of Truman, and these greatly contributed to his decision to escalate the war. Johnson's strategic objective in South Vietnam, as articulated at Johns Hopkins, was the same one set forth previously by Kennedy in National Security Action Memorandum 52. By December, with attacks increasing in the countryside, a look back at those earlier metrics revealed that State Department analyses were indeed on the mark.8, Yet Johnson did not need that retrospective appraisal to launch a more vigorous campaign against the Communists, for his first impulse as the new president was to shift the war into higher gear. David Coleman, former Associate Professor and former Chair, Presidential Recordings Program, Miller Center, University of Virginia, Marc Selverstone, Associate Professor and Chair, Presidential Recordings Program, Miller Center, University of Virginia, I guess weve got no choice, but it scares the death out of me. Throughout his time in office, Johnson stressed that his policy on Vietnam was a continuation of his predecessors actions going back to 1954. He considered the depth and extent of poverty in the country (nearly 20 percent of Americans at the time were poor) to be a national disgrace that merited a national response. They were unanimous and vehement in their advice to stay the course in Vietnam (although McNamara would very publicly do a mea culpa years later.). American casualties gradually mounted, reaching nearly 500 a week by the end of 1967. This is a different kind of war. In between lie incidents of increasingly greater magnitude, including the decision to deploy the Marines and the shift from defensive to offensive operations. The cost requirements of concurrent military campaigns in both the Dominican Republic and Vietnam were now such that the administration approached Congress for a supplemental appropriation. As each new American escalation met with fresh enemy response and as no end to the combat appeared in sight, the presidents public support declined steeply. 794-803. Johnson believed that if he permitted South Vietnam to fall through a conventional North Vietnamese invasion, the whole containment edifice so carefully constructed since World War II to stop the spread of communism (and the influence of the Soviet Union) would crumble. In conversation with Dick Russell, he said, I dont think the people of the country know much about Vietnam and I think they care a hell of lot less.. newly digitized critical and documentary editions in the humanities and social In particular, Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency overall was a good thing for the American People. The final speech was given by President Richard Nixon in 1973, informing the nation that peace had been found in Vietnam. . Johnson, a southerner himself, worked to persuade congressmen and senators from the former Confederacy to acquiesce in, if not actively support, passage of these measures. Theres not a bit.25 Coming on the eve of Johnsons dispatch of the Marines to Vietnam, it was not a promising way to begin a war. Lyndon B. Johnson was the 36th president of the United States and was sworn into office following the November 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Never during the ten-year-long Second Indochinese war did a government emerge in Saigon worthy of the support of the people of South Vietnam. How Did Lyndon B Johnson Contribute To The Civil Rights Movement. Johnsons election as president in his own right allowed the administration to move forward in crafting a more vigorous policy toward the Communist challenge in South Vietnam. strives to apply the lessons of history to the nations most pressing contemporary The CIA predicted that if Washington and its allies did not act, South Vietnam would fall within the year. Speakers have included eminent academics, published authors, documentary producers, historical novelists, postgraduate researchers and Open History Society members. Johnson was reflecting the conventional wisdom of most historians and political thinkers of the 1950s, 60s and 70s who saw Appeasement in the 1930s as a mistake, but when he tried to apply this lesson to the Cold War, it served him poorly. The war was, however, impossible to win as Ball and Humphrey had predicted. George Herring describes Johnson as a product of the hinterland, parochial, strongly nationalistic, deeply concerned about honor and reputation, suspicious of other peoples and nations and especially of international institutions.. On the pretext that the airfields needed for US aircraft had to be defended, the number of ground troops increased swiftly. These included a more aggressive propaganda offensive as well as sabotage directed against North Vietnam.9, But those enhanced measures were unable to force a change in Hanoi or to stabilize the political scene in Saigon. Davidson and later Mr. In a sense, Johnson was able to avoid the label he so greatly feared would be pinned to his name. The presence of several policy options, however, did not translate into freewheeling discussions with the President over the relative merits of numerous strategies. . His vice-president, Hubert Humphrey advised him against it. Johnson was reluctant to intervene in South East Asia but once strategic and politic exigencies seemd to demand it, he began to develop a not unreasonable vision for the future of South Vietnam, one that helped him stay the course. I just cant be the architect of surrender.24. Both the education bills and Medicare were civil rights measures in their own right, making federal funding to schools and hospitals dependent on desegregation. Though his . From the above two quotations, there seems little doubt that Johnson genuinely believed there was a threat of world domination by Communism, a very mainstream Cold-War view among American politicians from the late 1940s to the 1980s. And there must be no such failure in the 1960s. Document Viewer. The battle would be renewed in one country and then another country bringing with it perhaps even larger and crueller conflict, as we have learned from the lessons of history. The flag of Vietnamese nationalism had been captured by the Communist leader Ho Chi Minh and his followers in the north: it would not be easily wrested from them. In response to these reported incidents, President Lyndon B. Johnson requested permission from the U.S. Congress to increase the U.S. military presence in Indochina. As the transcripts included in this volume of taped conversations indicate, those decisions were often agonizing ones, conditioned by the perception that Vietnam was a war that he could neither abandon nor likely win. Prior to finalizing any decision to commit those forces, however, Johnson sent Secretary of Defense McNamara to Saigon for discussions with Westmoreland and his aides. Distinguished Professor, John A. Cooper Professor of History, University of Arkansas. 450 Words2 Pages. However, Americas traditional anti-colonial foreign policy stance was swiftly superseded by fears of Communist expansionism and the onset of the Cold War. Diems effort to construct strategic hamletsa program run by his brother Ngo Dinh Nhuended up alienating increasing numbers of South Vietnamese, arguably creating more recruits for the Communists instead of isolating them as the program had intended. When Republican supporters of Goldwater declared, In your heart, you know hes right, Democrats responded by saying, In your heart, you know he might. Goldwaters remark to a reporter that, if he could, he would drop a low-yield atomic bomb on Chinese supply lines in Vietnam did nothing to reassure voters. Liberal. Restoration of colonial rule fanned the flames of nationalism still further in Vietnam, and significantly elevated the role of the Communist element within the national resistance to the point where it dominated what had previously been a politically broad-based independence movement. Worries about the credibility of the U.S. commitment to Americas friends around the world also led Johnson to support Saigon, even when some of those friends had questioned the wisdom of that commitment. In explaining why such a large deployment was neededit was clearly far more than was needed for the protection of the Americans remaining in the nations capital after many had already been evacuatedJohnson now offered a markedly different justification that emphasized anti-Communism over humanitarianism, saying that the United States must intervene to stop the bloodshed and to see a freely elected, non-Communist government take power.20 Privately, Johnson argued more bluntly that the intervention was necessary to prevent another Cuba. In the days following his address, a number of influential members of the American press and U.S. Congress questioned the basis for concluding that there was real risk of the Dominican Republic coming under Communist control. While the Great Society policies dovetailed well with New Deal policies, Johnson misinterpreted Roosevelts foreign policy, reading back into the 1930s an interventionist course of action that Roosevelt only adopted in 1941. His limited goal was to keep North Vietnam from destroying South . April 7, 1965 Its legacy was 58,220 American soldiers dead, a huge drain on the nations finances, social polarisation and the tarnishing of the reputation of the United States. . Bundys presence in Vietnam at the time of the Communist raids on Camp Holloway and Pleiku in early Februarywhich resulted in the death of nine Americansprovided additional justification for the more engaged policy the administration had been preparing. Randall B Woods does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. He references the song "We Shall Overcome", . In Santo Domingo, rebels sympathetic to the exiled liberal intellectual President Juan Bosch had launched an open, armed uprising against the military-backed junta. They recommended that LBJ give Westmoreland what he needed, advice that General Eisenhower had also communicated to the White House back in June. The onset of that American war in Vietnam, which was at its most violent between 1965 and 1973, is the subject of these annotated transcripts, made from the recordings President Lyndon B. Johnson taped in secret during his time in the White House. In documenting those private uncertainties, the Dominican Crisis tapes share characteristics with the tapes of what became a much larger and more serious crisis where U.S. intervention was simultaneously and rapidly escalating: Vietnam. Raids by the local Communistsdubbed the Vietcong, or VC, by Diemhad picked up in frequency and intensity in the weeks following Diems ouster. American public opinion was willing to go along with whatever course of action the administration chose, Johnsons standing being so high at this point. But on 3 NovemberElection Dayhe created an interagency task force, chaired by William P. Bundy, brother of McGeorge Bundy and chief of the State Departments Bureau of Far Eastern Affairs, to review Vietnam policy. Correct answers: 2 question: Which statement most accurately explains why the war powers act (1973) was passed? In fact, Johnson sought the counsel of ad hoc groups and advisers during the escalation of the war. Political considerations that stretched back to the loss of China episode of the late 1940s and early 1950s led Johnson, as a Democratic, to fear a replay of that right-wing backlash should the Communists prevail in South Vietnam. Those 3,500 soldiers were the first combat troops the United States had dispatched to South Vietnam to support the Saigon government in its effort to defeat an increasingly lethal Communist insurgency. The Cold War was essentially fuelled by a conflict of ideology, and Johnsons ideology was strongly rooted in the past. Lyndon B. Johnson, Why We Are in Vietnam, 1965 By the summer of 1964 the Johnson Administration had already made secret plans to escalate the American military presence in . This coincided with the assassination of Diem (with American collusion) and subsequent chaos in the South Vietnamese government, administration and army. The shuffling and reshuffling of military personnel also contributed to Diems troubles, further undermining the counterinsurgency; indeed, by reserving some of the Souths best troops for his own personal protection instead of sending them out to defeat the Communists, Diem contributed to the very incidenthis forcible removal from powerhe was trying to forestall.3 A poor showing against the Vietcong at the battle of Ap Bac in January 1963 sparked the most probing questions to date about those personnel shifts and about the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). But that endgame, when it did come during the administration of President Richard M. Nixon, was deeply contingent on the course that Johnson set, particularly as it flowed out of key decisions he took as president both before and after his election to office. Hoping to apply more pressure on the Communists, the administration began to implement a series of tactics it had adopted in principle within the first week of Johnsons presidency. He emphasised four factors which justified not just a presence but an escalation of American military force. He frequently reached out to members of the business and journalistic communities, hoping to shape opinions as much as to receive them. National Historical Publications and Records Commission, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/. In coming weeks and months, questions and doubts about the necessity of the military intervention grew. Even after winning the 1964 presidential election, Johnson still felt he had to tread carefully with public opinion. Instead his time in office is mostly associated with deepening American involvement in the war in Vietnam which ultimately proved futile. The tapes included in this edition show vividly a president all too aware of shortcomings of the deeply flawed information that he was receiving, and by the time of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, several senior officialsand apparently the President himselfhad concluded that the attack of 4 August had not occurred. Some citizens of South Viet-Nam at times, with understandable grievances, have joined in the attack on their own government.