Lyndon B. Johnson and the Vietnam War
A research on how President Johnson made his decisions about
Vietnam in 1964-1965
Name: Dick Salfischberger
Teacher: R. Janssens
Date: 01-02-2013
Course: Master Thesis
Introduction
One of the first things President Lyndon Baines Johnson said in 1965, after deciding to
have marines land at the beaches of Da Nang was, “I guess we’ve got no choice, but it
scares the death out of me. I think everybody’s going to think, ‘we’re landing the
Marines, we’re off to battle.’” 1 Da Nang was a province of Vietnam, which had an
important airbase. This base was to be defended because of the importance it had in the
war the Americans were fighting in aid of the South Vietnamese against the North
Vietnamese. Johnson became President in 1964 and the war in Vietnam became his
major concern for the coming years. The quote was typical for Johnson during the years
1964-1965; he always believed he had no other option.
Vietnam had been a colony of the French before World War II. During the war the
Japanese and the French signed an agreement that limited the number of troops of the
French in Vietnam and made the Japanese the actual rulers. After World War II, when
the Japanese had been defeated, the French tried to reclaim Vietnam; this war became
known as the first Indochina War. The French were defeated in 1954 at the battle of
Dien Bien Phu. At the time they left the country, the Americans, afraid of the spread of
Communism in Vietnam, started to help the South Vietnamese people in their fight
against the North Vietnamese. The Americans didn’t want Vietnam as a colony like the
French did, but wanted to try to prevent Vietnam from becoming Communist. Until 1964
the Americans had helped the South Vietnamese with economic and governmental
support; the South became more an American vassal state. North Vietnam, with its
leader Ho Chi Minh, was a Communist state. Vietnam had been divided at the conference
of Geneva in 1954 and elections would be held in 1956 to reunite the country. These
elections were never held and Vietnam remained divided until 1975. Tensions had
grown since 1954 and President Johnson and his advisors were forced to take matters
into their own hands and they needed to make harsh decisions. First they decided to
help the South with its economy and help the government with controlling the country,
but a few years later the Americans tried to fight the Communists with air strikes and
even combat troops. The decision to use air strikes and to send combat troops was
considered as a turning point in this war. It was a decision that could not be reversed.
Lyndon B. Johnson, ‘Presidential recordings of Lyndon B. Johnson’, http://presidential
recordings.edu (March 6 1965).
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They underestimated the enemy and eventually, under the next President, Nixon, they
had to withdraw from Vietnam. The war was considered to be lost to the Americans and
the South would soon be taken over by the Northern Communists.
The decision made by Johnson to escalate the war was one of the most important
decisions made during the Vietnam War. The decisions he made weighed heavily on the
President’s conscience and he chose not to run for President again in 1968. He was
‘destroyed’ by this war. Although Johnson had approved the air strikes and sending
troops, he hadn’t thought of this strategy by himself. He was surrounded by a team of
brilliant men who were supposed to advice Johnson the best they could. Johnson was
often blamed for the disorder in Vietnam and in one way that was true; Johnson had
made the final call. However on the other hand advisors like Robert McNamara and
McGeorge Bundy were busy planning new strategies to win the war. It is often called
‘McNamara’s War’, because McNamara had a great influence on Johnson. How important
was McNamara to Johnson? It is hard to precisely check who made the main decisions.
I’ll refer to litarature on this war, written by historians and journalists. I use
Master of the Senate 2 and The passage of power. 3 Although these books are about
Johnson’s life before his Presidency, they provide a great insight into his personality.
These books show a good notion of Johnson in his personal life, his habits and his view
on politics. The author of the books, Robert Caro, is considered as the best biographer of
Johnson because of his extensive research. The best and brightest 4 by journalist David
Halberstam gives a complete overview of the decisions made during the Kennedy and
Johnson administration. This book analyzes the decisions made especially by the
advisors around Johnson. In The best and brightest Halberstam writes about how
brilliant men made terrible mistakes regarding the Vietnam War. I’ll refer to this book to
describe several advisors Johnson worked with at the time. I use America’s longest war 5
by George C. Herring as a standard work for the Vietnam War. I’ll refer to this book to
discuss the overview of the Vietnam history.
Robert A. Caro, The years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate (New York 2002).
Robert A. Caro, The years of Lyndon Johnson: The passage of Power (New York 2012).
4 David Halberstam, The best and the brightest (New York 1992).
5 George C. Herring, America’s longest war: the United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975
(New York 2002).
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I’ll use the models of Allison and Zelikow described in their book Essence of
Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. 6 They use three models to describe the
decisions John F. Kennedy, President before Johnson, had made during the Cuban missile
crisis in 1962. These three models can be used separately for the decisions Johnson and
his team had made as well. The models of Allison and Zelikow all assume a certain
individual responsibility when making decisions. I’ll describe a different model as well;
the model of Irving Janis called Groupthink. 7 This model assumes decisions are made
because of the power of group pressure; the assumption that an individual prefers a
harmonious group process instead of an endless discussion on certain topics. The last
model I’ll refer to and research the decisions that were made, is Analogies at war 8 by
Yuen Foong Khong. Professor Khong is specialized in international relations. He explains
the analogies Johnson and his advisers used for their decisions in 1965. Khong explains
crucial moments during war time periods that were being discussed during important
meetings like the National Security Council meetings. His main question is which
analogies were used and which advisers used them?
My thesis will be about Johnson and his decisions. The literature shows a picture
of an unpredictable Johnson. I’d like to find out by using the models of Allison, Zelikow,
Janis and Khong whether Johnson’s decisions were that unpredictable. So I have chosen
model III, the Governmental model, of Allison and Zelikow and analyse if Johnson’s
decisions could be placed in this very model III; the Governmental Actor. This model
shows the leader as important but in need of his underlings in order to pass important
decisions. It will also show if McNamara was that important as noted before.
I’ll have to choose certain events in the Vietnam War during the years 1964-1965.
In this thesis I’ll study five events in Vietnam. I’ll analyze the sources from August 2,
1964 until May 1954. I think August 2nd, 1965, was a change of course in the Vietnam
War. This was the month the Tonkin incident took place and Johnson openly started to
fear for his position. I take May 1965 as the last month since that was the moment
Johnson decided to stop bombing North Vietnamese targets and he had no idea what
Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile
Crisis (Second edition 1999).
7 Irving L. Janis, Groupthink (2nd edition 1982).
8 Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War, Korea Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam
decision of 1965 (New Jersey 1992).
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would be the next step in Vietnam. In May 1965 there was no turning back for the
Johnson administration.
I’ll use multiple primary sources combined in the Foreign Relations of the United
States. 910 In these sources prestigious historians combined several important
documents regarding the foreign relations decisions of the United States. These
documents contain memorandums to several advisors and Johnson, reports of National
Security Council meetings and telegrams from South Vietnam. Some of these documents
are straight copies of the originals and some of the documents are summaries by one of
the advisors of Johnson. I’ll focus mainly on the documents that are written to Johnson
or summaries of meetings that Johnson attended. In some cases I’ll also look into
memorandums sent among important advisors of Johnson.
Why is my thesis so interesting? The way I look at the decision making progress
is different from other research. I used five different models to take a closer look at the
decisions Johnson and his advisors made. Because of these models I take another
viewpoint to show the final decisions. These decisions were so important because of
their impact on American society, during and after the war. Although the conflict had
been going on for over eleven years, in 1964-1965 the Americans were sucked into a
war they were never able to win. I mentioned the air strikes and sending combat forces,
these were the big decisions that Johnson made. There has been a lot of research on
decision-making by Johnson during his presidency; I think my research adds a closer
look focused on the years 1964-1965.
In the first chapter I’ll describe the models of Allison and Zelikow, the Groupthink
model used by Janis and analogies used by Khong. These three models will be described,
how to use them, and differences will be explained. This is necessary to explain and
examine the decisions Johnson made which will be examined in the last chapter. In the
second chapter it is necessary to give an overview of the Vietnam War narrowed down
towards 1965. This brief introduction on Vietnam History will give the reason why the
Vietnamese were so determined to fight back against an imperial power like the United
States. In the last part of this chapter I’ll also describe the troubles Johnson had, trying to
get his domestic politics accomplished; like his Great Society. In the third chapter I’ll
John P. Glennon, Edward C. Keefer and Charles S. Sampson, Foreign Relations of the
United States, 1964-1968 Vol. I (Washington 1992).
10 Glenn W. LaFantasie, Louis J. Smith, Ronald D. Landa and David C. Humphrey, Foreign
Relations of the United States, 1964-1968 Vol. II (Washington 1996).
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introduce Johnson and his advisers. As I stated before, Johnson had a great but strange
personality and because of this personality decisions sometimes were hard to
understand for his advisors. In this chapter I’ll also introduce other key players during
the years 1964-1965. Who were his advisors, why did Johnson pick them for his
meetings and who did he like? According to several historians, advisors such as Robert
McNamara and Dean Rusk played a key role in the decision-making during 1964-1965.
But were people like McNamara so important for Johnson? It will be essential to see
whom Johnson liked and those he couldn’t stand. Did these ‘special’ relationships as he
had with Clark Clifford during his Senate years, influence Johnson? In the last part of this
chapter I’ll introduce Khong’s Analogies at war and I’ll describe which advisor was
influenced by which analogy during the war. In the last chapter I’ll present my results of
my study used by researching the Foreign Relations of the United. In this chapter I’ll
combine the primary sources with the analogies of Khong, the Groupthink of Janis and
the decision-making models of Allison and Zelikow.
Chapter I: Governmental Models
In this thesis I’ll research several decisions made by Johnson in 1964-1965. Johnson did
not make these decisions just by himself, and so it is interesting to research who were
important to Johnson and why did they make the decisions they made. Did Johnson
make them alone as is often said, or did his advisors play an important role? I’ll look into
the person Johnson, his advisors and the decisions they made in the next chapter. In this
chapter I’ll describe some models used to analyze modern governmental decision-
making. With these models it will be easier to understand the decisions made and what
specific historical event, leadership or knowledge were conclusive to make the decision.
I’ll use the models of political scientists Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow that
are used in Essence of Decision. This book explains the decision-making of President
Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The event itself is less interesting for
the decision-making in 1965, although several of these decisions relate to each other.
Johnson was Vice-President under Kennedy and he may have used this analogy for his
own decisions. The models used in the book can be used on a broader scale: the Rational
Actor model, the Organizational Process model and the Governmental Politics model. I’ll
use this section to explain each model used by Allison and Zelikow. I use Allison and
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Zelikow for a variety of reasons. First of all the book is used to describe top
governmental decision-making up until today. Secondly, they were one of the first to
portray a model that didn’t describe the government as a Rational Actor that takes all
options into consideration before making a decision. Instead of the Rational Actor, they
describe a broader model in which they explain there are more options and factors to
take in consideration before understanding decisions leaders make. They see the
government as an institute that is able to make mistakes as well and understand errors
are made, sometimes at the cost of thousands of lives.
Model I: Rational Actor model
The first model, the Rational Actor model, is the simplest model. Allison’s and Zelikow’s
summarized their model like this: “Each assumes that the actor is a national
government. Each assumes that the action is chosen as a calculated solution to a
strategic problem. For each, explanation consists of showing what goal the government
was pursuing when it acted and how the action was a reasonable choice, given the
nation’s objective.” 11 The government chooses between several options and will
eventually select the one with the most preferred consequences. In this case we will talk
about an agent in the broadest sense of everybody who needs to make important
decisions. The authors illustrate the model with the following four points:
1. Goals and objectives: These are the interests and values of the agent(s), they are
translated into payoff, utility or preference. What are the objectives of the agent?
And what is its ultimate goal?
2. Alternatives: The agent needs to choose between several alternatives before he
can make his decision. These alternatives can be as simple as ‘invade or not to
invade Vietnam’?
3. Consequences: Each alternative has several consequences regarding its outcome.
4. Choice: This consists of selecting the alternative of which consequences rank
highest in the agent’s payoff function. 12
Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile
Crisis (Second edition 1999) 15.
12 Allison, Essence of Decision 18.
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This model is simple and most easiest to understand. It looks like every decision can be
made with just this model. However, the model only covers the surface and won’t give
any detail or background.
Model II: Organizational Process model
The second model, the Organizational Process model, focuses more on governmental
bureaucracy. Allison summarized the model like this: “To perform complete tasks, the
behaviour of large numbers of individuals must be coordinated. Coordination requires
standard operating procedures: rules according to which things are done.” 13 And,
“Rather, the subjects in model II explanations are organizations, and their behaviour is
explained in terms of organizational purposes and practises common to the members of
the organization, not those peculiar to one or another individual.” 14 Allison and Zelikow
again have five points that are important when discussing model II:
1. When, like Johnson, the administration faces a crisis like Vietnam, they don’t look
at it as a whole but every department is assigned to perform a specific task
concerning Vietnam. In the end they will bring their findings together and look at
the best alternative.
2. Organizations are trying to create capabilities. They try to specialize people
according to their function in order to avoid them to do thousands of more
complicated operations while looking for the solution. Every individual has his
own specialization.
3. The next point is what Allison calls constrain behaviour: Individuals and
organizations are pre-programmed by all the events they have happened to
witness in their lives and other tasks alike they had to complete in the past. This
can be the death of one’s mother but also a pre-existing war like the Korean War.
Allison explains it with the analogy of a Chinese restaurant: as a consumer you
know you can expect a lot of dishes on the menu, and probably all Chinese, in
order to get a hamburger you need to go somewhere else.
4. The fourth point is called the organizational culture. The behaviour of individuals
in an organization is shaped by the structure of how the organization operates,
13
14
whether this is formal or informal. The result is an entity of the organization.
Ibidem 143.
Ibidem 144.
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5. The last point is called the bundle of technologies. In case of the Chinese
restaurant Allison calls the wok and the stove important for the chefs to operate.
In case of our example in Vietnam this would be the available amount of
bombers. 15
We have now discussed two out of three models. What is the big difference between
these first two models? Business and education professor James March and psychologist
and sociologist Herbert Simon summarized their differences like this: “The first, and
analytic rationality is a logic of consequences. Actions are chosen by evaluating their
probable consequences for the preferences of the actor. The logic of consequences is
linked to conceptions of anticipations, analysis and calculation. It operates principally
through selective heuristic search among alternatives, evaluating them for their
satisfactoriness as they are found.
The second logic of action, a matching of rules to situations, rests on a logic of
appropriateness. Actions are chosen by recognizing a situation as being of a familiar,
frequently encountered, type and matching the recognized situation to a set of rules. (…)
The logic of appropriateness is linked to conceptions of experience, roles, intuition, and
expert knowledge. It deals with calculation mainly as a means of retrieving experience
preserved in the organization’s files or individual memories.” 16 The first model deals
with the simplest Actor in the human mind: the Rational Actor. The choice is being made
based on several alternatives and the most rational will be picked. In the second model
there is more room for individual experiences, intuitions and the role of the organization
as a whole.
Model III: Governmental Politics model
The third and last model is the Governmental Politics model. Model III can be
summarized according to Allison and Zelikow like this: “Model III analysis begins with
the proposition that knowledge of the leader’s initial preferences is, by itself, rarely a
sufficient guide for explanation or prediction. That proposition is grounded in
appreciation of the fact that authoritative power is most often shared.” 17 So even if the
Ibidem 143-150.
James G. March and Herbert A. Simon, Organizations (2nd edition Cambridge 1993) 8.
17 Allison, Essence of Decision 258.
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leader (in this case Johnson) holds absolute power he needs to negotiate with his
underlings in order to find the best alternative. This model has five phases as well:
1. Separated institutions sharing power: Each participant sits in a seat that confers
separate responsibilities. All individuals will do their best to fulfil their
responsibility as well as possible. Political tradition and governmental practice
will accentuate the difference between those who are interested and will divide
influence between them. In this case we see the different secretaries, for
example: State (Rusk) and Defense (McNamara).
2. The power to persuade: One of the jobs of the leader is to get his underlings
onboard. He needs their power as well in order to rule. Johnson needed to get his
departments head and Congressmen to climb aboard in order to get what he
wanted to achieve in Vietnam.
3. Bargaining according to the processes: The presidential persuasion is not played
at random. The play is structured around certain processes. Johnson would have
had to attend certain meetings and conferences in order to persuade his
underlings.
4. Power equals impact on outcome: The influence of the leader is a balance between
political, managerial, psychological, and personal feasibilities. The operation
must be manageable, acceptable and supported in- and outside Washington. The
timing of the president is everything in this phase.
5. Intranational (within one nation) and International relations: This is the
relationship between two or more nations. “It is,” according to Allison, “the
exceptional case, particularly in relations among close allies, when a national
government allows another country to participate directly and meaningfully in
its intranational decision-making.” 18 The authors give the example of the Iraq
invasion in 1990. President Bush and Prime Minister Thatcher of England met
about the crisis. They met before any decision had been made in their own
government. After agreeing on what to do they discussed it with their
governments. They both chose to share their national power and influence the
intranational deliberations in their countries.
The third model is complex and wide, and the five points mentioned above can be
divided into five new models. The whole model has one thing in common: that several
18
Ibidem 261.
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people in and around the government always share authoritative power of any
government.
Groupthink
Although I focus mainly on Allison and Zelikow there are more models used to analyse
political decision-making. I’ll describe two other models. This model is described in the
book Group Think and was written by Irving Janis. The model is often called Groupthink
and the main argument of the model is that groups of people have a desire for harmony
in a decision making group. People in a group rather agree with each other than
critically evaluate alternative ideas. In his book Group Think Janis examined the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor, the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Vietnam years of 1964-1967. All
these events were more or less a disaster for the United States and according to Janis the
decisions made during these events were ‘Group Think’ choices. Janis thinks that several
higher qualified Washington decision makers were rather scared or unqualified to go
against the flow. This ‘Groupthink’ prevented contra dictionary views to be evaluated
and analyzed as well. Especially the events in Vietnam Janis mentions are interesting for
this thesis. I describe Janis’ model here as an opposite model for the model(s) of Allison
and Zelikow, but I also describe his theory here since we will see in the next chapter I
may share a different view than Janis does. 19
Analogies at war
The other model I would like to describe is the model of Khong. He describes three
important events in history that some of the advisors held onto while making their
decisions. This is an expansion of Allison’s and Zelikow’s model II, point III; constrain
behaviour. It explains that people are pre-programmed by all the events they have
happened to witness in their lives and other tasks alike they had to complete in the past.
It is important to know what different advisors used as their references while making
decisions considering the war.
The first analogy Khong is using is the Munich Analogy. The Munich analogy tells
us that; “aggression unchecked leads to general war later.” 20 The Munich agreement was
an agreement made by Nazi Germany, France, United Kingdom and Italy. This agreement
Irving L. Janis, Groupthink (2nd edition 1982).
20 Khong, Analogies at war 64.
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said that Nazi Germany could annex Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. Adolf Hitler
wanted this part of Czechoslovakia because many Germans lived in Sudetenland.
Although France and the United Kingdom were actually against the annexation, they
gave Hitler this part of Czechoslovakia with the hope his dreams were fulfilled and that
he would no longer try to annex more areas around Germany. History showed that
Hitler’s dreams were far from fulfilled and it was one of the starting reasons for the
Second World War. Some policy makers said that because his aggression in 1938 was
not held in check eventually lead to this new World War. The Munich analogy was often
linked to the Domino theory. Just like in the 1930’s, advisors were afraid that if the
aggression was not contained fast, it would spread like an oil leak on an open sea. After
Czechoslovakia, domino’s kept falling after each other: Poland, Denmark, Netherlands,
Belgium and France. Now the Americans were afraid that after South Vietnam more
South East Asian countries would succumb to Communism. 21
The second analogy is the Korean analogy. This was the analogy based on the
Korean War from 1950 until 1953. The main point of this analogy was the intervention
of the Chinese in this war. The Chinese became Communist in 1949; some Americans
blamed President Truman for letting China become Communist. North Korea acted
aggressively towards the South about the upcoming elections that would be held in
Korea after World War II. The Americans jumped in to help South Korea and China
supported North Korea. The goal of the Americans was to show the North it would not
be able to conquer the South. The Americans attacked the North and the Chinese started
to help the North. In 1953 a line was drawn at the demilitarized zone to divide the North
and the South. The lesson for Vietnam, according to Khong, used by some advisors, was
that “if Vietnam was analogous to Korea in that Northern aggression was to blame, if the
stakes were as vital, and if U.S. intervention was likely to work, then it could be argued
that the United States was obligated to help South Vietnam. (…) The policy implication of
these public lessons of Korea is not hard to deduce: if necessary, the United States would
intervene to keep South Vietnam independent.” 22 This quote states the Americans were
willing to do everything to keep the South non-communist. But on the other hand the
Americans didn’t want to escalate the war. They wanted to try to keep the Chinese out of
Vietnam. If the Chinese would see that the Americans helped the South, the Chinese
21
22
Ibidem, 175-185.
Ibidem, 102.
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might help the North; the Americans wanted to avoid intervention of the Chinese. This is
what became known as the Korean analogy. 23
The last analogy Khong discusses the battle at Dien Bien Phu. This battle, fought
in 1954 by the French, was the end of the First Indochina War. The French lost the battle
and it influenced the negotiations concerning the future of Indochina in Geneva. The
question was how a Western power, with better modern weapons and a better-trained
army, could lose from a guerrilla-trained army. The morale in South Vietnam, which
should be increased because of French (later American) help, would only increase the
morale in the North, since, according to Khong, nationalism is on the side of the
rebellion. The French and the Americans would not bring nationalism with their help
and so the morale in the South would not increase, and instead of that, Khong thinks that
the interventions only strengthened the North in their fight for independence. Dien Bien
Phu was typical for this theory. In the first place, the French would retreat from
Vietnam; the French were defeated. This defeat would only strengthen the North, they
saw that they were able to defeat a modern Western power. Secondly, the North was
convinced that a new Western power could be defeated as well; in this case the
Americans. The French and the Americans overestimated the “effectiveness of our
sophisticated weapons under jungle conditions,” 24 a North Vietnamese army general
said. The lesson to be drawn from the defeat of he French at Dien Bien Phu was that it
was almost unable to win the war against this kind of warfare in unfamiliar territory 25
The three models of Allison and Zelikow I described above give three views to
examine several political events. Where the Rational Actor is the ‘lowest’ level of the
political model, the ‘governmental’ model can be seen as the hardest to understand and
most difficult model to apply to certain events. When the model is first observed it
seems that the individual mind is central to these models; they are central to these
models. Although these models can be used together on one event if needed, I’ll use
them separately on several events. The three models can be seen as levels and
sometimes the decision made won’t get past the Rational Actor simply because one
individual is given three or four options and the one that sounds most reasonable is
chosen. I may also use just one specific detail from one model, for example, the constrain
Ibidem, 97-102.
Ibidem, 152.
25 Ibidem, 148-151.
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behaviour point seen in the ‘organizational’ process model. This point explains how
someone’s past may influence decision making on several occasions. This point of
‘organizational’ process model can be linked to Khong’s analogies at work. The last
model I use, Groupthink, can be regarded as an opposite model. The models of Allison
and Zelikow focus on the individual advisor, while Groupthink focuses more on the
harmonious co-operation of several individuals to make their decisions.
Chapter II: Vietnam’s history
A brief summary of the history of Vietnam is needed to understand the complicated
situation Johnson got in the beginning of 1964. To understand the resistance of the
North Vietnamese it is also necessary to depict their history. Describing their history
will illustrate the background against which Johnson had to make his decisions. I’ll
describe several eras of Vietnamese history. The occupation of Vietnam was the
recurring story of this country. Vietnam has a long history of domination by foreign
powers.
The early Vietnamese history: 950-1859
Vietnam was a region inhabited since the Paleolithic times: prehistoric period of human
history. Archeologists had linked the beginnings of Vietnamese civilization between
2000 and 1400 before Christ. Until 200 before Christ, the Vietnamese lived in relative
peace. In 257 before Christ the last Hùng king of the Hùng dynasty was defeated and
Vietnam was incorporated into the Chinese empire. Vietnam remained a part of the
Chinese empire for almost a thousand years. In 938 a Vietnamese lord named Ngô
Quyèn won a decisive battle and the Vietnamese regained their independence. The
period 950-1859 was called the Vietnamese independence. This was the period in which
the Buddhist religion became the main religion of Vietnam. In the eleventh century, at
the expense of Cham territory, some rulers conquered territory and finally destroyed
the Cham civilization. The notorious Mongols invaded Vietnam in the thirteenth century,
but without a notable win of territory. In 1407 the Chinese conquered Vietnam again for
fourteen years, they destroyed all libraries and archives. In 1428 Le Loi called himself
the emperor of Vietnam when he defeated the Chinese. This dynasty would survive from
1428-1788, until the French colonization period. During the seventeenth and eighteenth
14
century Vietnam was divided in North Vietnam, ruled by Trinh lords under the titular
kingdom of Later Le dynasty, and South Vietnam, ruled by Nguyen Lords who also ruled
in the name of the Late Le dynasty. Both families built up their wealth but paid little
attention to peasants and villagers. By 1739 there was no land left because of these
wealthy families who had acquired all the land. Some peasants were set to work on
these lands, others died of starvation. 26 As seen in this part, Vietnam had long been
divided into different parts before the Geneva Accords in 1954. The separation of 1954
was copied from the seventeenth century along with the political and cultural line that
divided Vietnam.
The Tay Son rebellion
The Tay Son rebellion started in 1772. Three brothers of the wealthy Ho family revolted
against the Nguyen dynasty of the South. After they fought the Nguyen family in a war,
they fought the Trinh family of the North. Both wars were won by the Ho family. In 1792
Quang Trung, of the Ho family, died and left Vietnam to his 10-year old son. The Nguyen
family saw that this dynasty was weakened and asked the French for assistance to
rebuild Vietnam. The old bureaucratic system, which existed before the rebellion, was
introduced again. The same old problems with the food supply for peasants and villagers
returned. The French were eager to help in Vietnam in hope to get some natural raw
materials. With help of the French Nguyen Nha proclaimed himself emperor. Meanwhile
the French conquered some Southern cities in Vietnam. 27 The last independent emperor
of the Nguyen dynasty of Vietnam, Tu Duc, not only faced the escalation of the problems
his predecessors had faced but also had to deal with another problem: the French. While
Tu Doc was fighting peasants, the French had a new plan for Laos, Cambodia and
Vietnam; later to be called Indochina. Some Vietnamese, who became Catholic, were
willing to help the French. Some explorers started to investigate the area and looking for
a trade network between Europe and Indochina. Tu Duc was forced to sign treaties in
favor of the French. These treaties almost took away all his power. When Tu Duc died in
1883, the French took over power.
Frances Fitzgerald, Fire in the lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam
(New York: 1st edition Little, Brown and Company 1972, 1st paperback Back Pay 2002)
32-53.
27 Ibidem.
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The French and Japanese occupation
This was the beginning of a seven-decade period of French domination in Indochina
(Laos was added a few years later). There were several opposition movements that tried
to end French rule. None of these movements were so effective as the Viet Minh, which
was founded in 1941. The Viet Minh, founded by the communist party, was funded by
the Chinese Nationalist Party and paradoxically by the Americans. In 1940 the French
were drawn into the Second World War; this made it especially difficult to defend
France against the Germans and Vietnam against the Japanese. On the other side of the
world, the Japanese, an ally of the Germans, had conquered large parts of Asia since the
beginning of the 1930’s. During this period Vichy France, the part of France that
collaborated with the Germans and the Japanese, maintained power in Indochina but the
ultimate power resided in the hands of the Japanese. The Americans funded the Viet
Minh in their fight against the Japanese. In March 1945, the Germans were defeated in
France and the Free French, French who hadn’t collaborated with the Germans, struck
up communications with the colonial authorities. The Japanese didn’t trust the French
and interned them all. The Japanese ousted Vichy-French and continued to rule Vietnam
as their puppet state: Empire of Vietnam under Bào Dai. During this period the Japanese
exploited Northern Vietnam. When the Japanese surrendered in August 1945, Bào Dai
stepped down as emperor of Vietnam as well. 28
The French occupation
In August 1945, the Japanese were defeated and a new power vacuum arose. It was
agreed that Vietnam belonged to France, and so the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union
and China helped the French rearm themselves. To help the French, both the United
Kingdom and China occupied a part of Vietnam, to hand it over to the French. Meanwhile
Ho Chi Minh, leader of the Viet Minh, declared independence of the Democratic Republic
of Vietnam using phrases of the United States Declaration of Independence. In March
1946 British troops left Vietnam and soon after they had left the Viet Minh began a
guerilla war against the French. This war became known as the First Indochina war
(1946-1954). Both Laos and Cambodia got their follower party of the Viet Minh. 29
28
29
Jonathan Neale, The American War: Vietnam 1960-1975 (London 2001) 3-20.
Neale, The American War 23-26.
16
The first years, until 1949, the Viet Minh lacked weapons and were barely able to
fight the French. By 1949 the Chinese communists had won the Civil War and were now
able to rearm the Viet Minh. From 1950 on the People’s Republic of China gave weapons
to the Viet Minh. China and the United States opposed each other after World War II in
political and ideological theory in what came to be called the Cold War. The
policymakers in Washington considered the war in Vietnam a communist takeover, just
as the war in Korea. They were convinced that the United States needed to send advisors
to help the French. In September 1950 the Americans sent their first Military Assistance
and Advisory Group to Vietnam and at the end of 1954 the United States paid more than
80% of the French war effort. In 1954 the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu. At the
Geneva Conference Vietnam was temporarily partitioned in two parts: North and South
Vietnam, along the seventeenth parallel. There would be new elections in 1956 to
reunify the country. In 1954 Ngo Dinh Diem was appointed Prime Minister of South
Vietnam and in 1955 he announced that the elections of 1956 would not be held. The
Americans knew that the elections would be a devastating loss for the democracy they
adhered; they made sure that the elections of 1956 did not take place. Diem wasn’t
popular in Vietnam. He was a weak political leader and faced a couple of coups against
his regime. Even with the help of the Americans he barely survived. The sect crisis
during the mid 1950s was another problem for Diem. These sects, which were just like
the French Catholics, got control of several areas in Vietnam. The French gave the sects
these areas so the French were able to fight the Viet Minh. Now that Diem was in power
he wanted to control all of South Vietnam and he started to fight the sects in the streets
of Saigon. Diem and his advisors ignored the advice by the United States Embassy to
handle the sects with caution. After a while even the Senate started to ask the President
about the consequences for Diem if he didn’t listen to America. The sect crisis was an
example of the bad relationship Diem had with America.
American aid
Meanwhile Diem and the Americans tried to build a strong South Vietnam. There were a
couple of programs that were meant to increase the stability of South Vietnam: increase
of Military Assistance and Advisory Group, commercial-import program and reeducation
camps. The last were supposed to reeducate communists but also non-communists who
did not agree with Diem’s policy. According to Herrings, instead of rebuilding South
17
Vietnam with the commercial-import program: “The massive infusion of American aid
thus kept South Vietnam alive, but fostered dependency rather than laying the
foundation for a genuine independence.” 30 The Military Assistance and Advisory Groups
said to have trained the South Vietnamese soldiers for the wrong war. The soldiers were
trained for a conventional war and not for fighting against guerillas. With almost no
results from the programs in South Vietnam the bill was extremely high; between 1955
and 1961 the Americans poured more than $1 billion in economic and military
assistance. 31 It even got worse when in December 1960 the National Liberation Front
was formed. This organization was designed to rally all those disaffected with Diem by
promising reforms and independence. In 1960 alone 2500 South Vietnamese
government officials had been killed. President Eisenhower saw the gradual escalation
of the war during his presidency but he wouldn’t be affected by the war that much since
a new law forbade a President to run for President three times. The new President, John
F. Kennedy, was forced to solve the gradual escalation problem Eisenhower had got into.
Some advisors of Kennedy said that the Americans should withdraw while still
possible. 32
Kennedy entered a new era of the Cold War with more problems to solve during
the Cold War than any other President. Kennedy faced the Cuban missile crisis, invasion
of the Bay of Pigs, the Berlin Wall and above all, the Vietnam War. All this happened in
less than three years. To show how little Eisenhower was influenced yet by the Vietnam
War, Herring wrote: “Vietnam was not regarded as a major trouble spot in the
administration’s first hundred days. Eisenhower had not even mentioned it in briefings,
and it was only in January, after reading a gloomy report by Landsdale, that Kennedy
learned of the steady growth of the insurgency and the increasing problems with
Diem.” 33 During the summer of 1961 advisors of Kennedy pressed for escalation in
Vietnam. Kennedy, who was not sure what to do, sent Walt Rostow and Maxwell Taylor
to investigate the conditions of sending any troops to Vietnam. Rostow, an economic and
political theorist, and Taylor, Rostow’s military advisor, recommended significant
expansion of American aid to put the war to a quick end. A big discussion arose between
the advisors of Kennedy in Washington. Kennedy, who was scared to lose face, chose the
Herring, America’s longest war 75.
Ibidem, 68-78.
32 Ibidem, 86-87.
33 Ibidem, 92.
30
31
18
direction Taylor recommended; gradual expansion of military advisors. Historian
Michael Cannon thought that Kennedy, who knew from the beginning that gradual
expansion wouldn’t be the solution for this war, refused to abandon the struggle for
political reasons. In this case Kennedy was afraid of a full-scale escalation and for that
reason he didn’t listen to his advisors. 34
Meanwhile, Diem adopted the ‘strategic hamlet’ program. This program was
meant to gain active participation of the rural population against the National Liberation
Front. The peasants were brought to strategic hamlets, which were defended by South
Vietnamese soldiers. The Americans, who supported this effort, increased its military
advisors from 3205 in December 1961 to over 9000 by the end of 1962. The program
failed to achieve its goal: to defend the rural population. The soldiers had difficulty to
separate the National Liberation Front fighters from their own people. Sometime even
women and children were shot just to be sure that no National Liberation Front guerilla
would pass the hamlet entrance. Herring said: “Throughout 1962, Vietnam remained an
operational rather than a policy problem.” 35
The year 1963 was characterized by the lightly optimism about the war. In this
atmosphere Secretary of Defense, McNamara, even insisted on withdrawing some
United States forces on grounds of that their mission was done in Vietnam. Some
advisors later said that Kennedy would have withdrawn the troops if he had survived
another election in 1964. The year ended unstable in South Vietnam when both Diem
and Kennedy were killed within a month of each other. Diem was killed because of the
growing dissatisfaction with his policies, by a group of South Vietnamese generals. The
Kennedy administration knew of the coup but didn’t do anything to save Diem from
being killed. Lyndon B. Johnson, vice President to Kennedy, would become President for
the remaining years until his election in 1964. 36
From this moment on Johnson would change the ‘little’ commitment the
Americans had to the South Vietnamese into a major war on the Asian mainland. His
Great Society 37 was said to be his main focus during his presidency, but Vietnam would
Michael Cannon, “Raising the stakes: The Taylor-Rostow Mission, Journal of strategic
studies 12 (June 1989) 153-158.
35 Herring, America’s longest war 109.
36 Herring, America’s longest war 109-126.
37 This program was initiated to educate, develop depressed regions and remove
obstacles to the right to vote; to fight against poverty.
34
19
draw more and more of his attention. With Diem gone, the National Liberation Front
stepped up their military operations in South Vietnam, hoping that the United States saw
no other option but withdrawal. The twelve generals, who were now in charge, found
little support among the various groups that opposed Diem. In January 1964 General
Nguyen Khanh overthrew the generals who had good reasons to assume they were not
able to rule the country. During this restless period in South Vietnam, Washington
agreed that the chance to resist the insurgency by the National Liberation Front would
be diminished every day.
Johnson relied heavily on several of the advisors of Kennedy: Dean Rusk, Robert
McNamara and McGeorge Bundy. Johnson, who was afraid of what the world would
think about him and didn’t want to be the first President to withdraw from a war, made
Vietnam his keystone. After the death of Diem more and more people in the United
States started to think that this war was hopeless. Charles de Gaulle proposed a
neutralization scheme; Johnson rejected it without serious consideration. Some key
senators started to turn against the war; Johnson would not change a thing of his current
course. 38
The American intervention
On August 2, 1964 the course of the war changed dramatically for Johnson and his
advisors with the Tonkin Gulf incident. The USS Maddox encountered a group of North
Vietnamese torpedo boats. The torpedo boats attacked the island Hon Me, assuming that
the USS Maddox supported the covert attacks and they closed in on the Maddox. The USS
Maddox opened fire and drove the torpedo boats away. Johnson was enraged and afraid
that the North Vietnamese would think lightly of the Americans, since they didn’t
retaliate the attacks. Two days later on August 4, the sonar system of the USS Maddox
indicated North Vietnamese boats. The USS Maddox immediately sent a signal saying
they were under attack. An investigation later proved that the sonar system had perhaps
not been working properly because of the bad weather. The second attack on the USS
Maddox never took place. Nonetheless this incident was used to approve the retaliation
attacks on North Vietnamese torpedo boats. These attacks also convinced Congress for a
38
Herring, America’s longest war 132-140.
20
Congressional resolution authorizing the President to take all necessary measures to
deter any armed attacks. This resolution was called the Tonkin Resolution. 39
In November 1964 Johnson defeated Barry Goldwater with the biggest majority
ever in the presidential elections. Later historians said he had won so easily because of
his quick response to the August 4 ‘attacks’; for the people he proved to be the leader to
deal with Vietnam. In 1965 two major events changed the Vietnam War forever:
bombing several targets (operation Rolling Thunder) and the decision to send ground
troops to Vietnam.
South Vietnam was weakened. Khanh resigned, but the civilian government was
not able to create a stable South Vietnam and the National Liberation Front increased
pressure on the South. The military chiefs already pressed for months for military
action; Johnson was forced to do something. On 7 February 1965 air strikes started
under the name operation Flaming Dart. These air strikes were a retaliation for the
attack in Pleiku on a United States army barrack. McGeorge Bundy and John
McNaughton advocated a stronger program: Rolling Thunder. This operation would last
until November 1968 and tried to force the enemy to his knees with gradual bombing
attacks. On March 2, operation Rolling Thunder started just below the 19th parallel.
Directly after the start ambassador Taylor complained that the first air attacks did little
damage and the pressure rose to expand the bombing. Rolling Thunder was the pretext
to the second major decision in 1965: ground troops. In late February, General
Westmoreland asked for ground forces to protect the air base at Da Nang. Although
Taylor objected because it would be difficult to withdraw, Johnson didn’t listen and sent
the two marine divisions on March 8. Taylor would be right, as in mid-March
Westmoreland asked for two army divisions. These divisions would be sent eventually,
but not with the purposes Westmoreland had suggested. They were sent to protect
American bases and allowed to attack only fifty miles from their bases. This strategy was
called the so called ‘enclave strategy’.
As Johnson, after a few years, was not able to keep his attacks secret, criticism
rose. Especially students and teachers at universities gathered and protested against the
bombing. At first, Johnson was able to justify the bombing by explaining that the air
strikes were a retaliation of the Pleiku attacks by the National Liberation Front. Multiple
39
Herring, America’s longest war 141-145.
21
allies tried to arrange negotiations meetings; Johnson didn’t want to listen to any
proposal.
In May a new regime assumed power in South Vietnam. Khanh was not able to
bring the country together and the so-called Young Turks took over: Vice Air Marshal Ky
and General Nguyen Van Thieu. Taylor regarded Thieu as a reliable and reasonable man.
According to Westmoreland this would be the time to intensify the war, both through
bombing and by ground troops. In July McNamara visited Vietnam. When he came back
he recommended a gradual deployment of additional 100.000 combat forces. In July,
Johnson would only send 50.000 but told Westmoreland in private that he would send
another 50.000 soldiers before the end of the year. He would also intensify the bombing
from 3600 sorties in April to 4800 in June. Herring concluded that the Americans, in
1964 and 1965, had made some major ‘miscalculations’. Johnson thought that he could
win the war by putting just enough effort to get the result he wanted. But what was just
enough to get out of Vietnam with a victory?
Alternative explanations
We’ve seen the Vietnam War described up until 1965 and it seemed that Johnson had no
other option but intervening in Vietnam. Although Herring agreed that external factors
also played a role in Johnson’s decision-making, his main argument for Johnson’s
decisions was his ‘miscalculation’ and one might even say that Herring argued that this
war could never be won anyway. I would now like to focus on what Khong calls
“alternative explanations of the Vietnam decisions of 1965.” 40 I explained the analogies
of war from Khong in chapter I. In his book he also refers to some alternative
explanations that are not so much related to an event. Several advisors can nonetheless
use these explanations and that’s why I describe them here. It is important to illustrate
the other (foreign threats) arguments that Johnson had to take into consideration. These
arguments will also show the difficult position Johnson was in during his decision
making process; he had many things to take into account before making a decision. With
the history of Vietnam described above, these explanations are more understandable.
First of all, there was the containment politics. The word containment was
connected with President Harry Truman (1945-1953). The goal of containment politics
Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at war: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam
decisions of 1965 (New Jersey 1992) 190.
40
22
during the Cold War years was to prevent the spread of communism throughout the
world. So it was feared that if South Vietnam would go communism other countries
around Vietnam would become communist as well: the Domino theory. For Johnson it
was unacceptable to let a country become communist during his presidency. 41
Secondly, the political-ideological theory described the hawkish and the dovish
argument of the decision-making. This theory emphasizes that if a politician was a hawk,
he will normally go for hawkish solutions. The same can be said about dovish politicians.
In this case Khong took George Ball as an example; Ball chose Dien Bien Phu as his
analogy to describe why intervention was a bad idea. Dien Bien Phu was a major defeat
for the French, why would the Americans be able to defeat the Viet Minh guerilla tactics?
Ball was dovish, so that explained his choice. Johnson was more a hawk and chose the
Munich analogy. This analogy focuses on the theory that if Hitler had been stopped early
on there wouldn’t have been a Second World War. The problem with this theory was
that it was quite inflexible; there wasn’t any room for alternatives. If we believe this
theory, the doves were outnumbered and the hawks would immediately go for a fullscale war; Washington chose not directly for a full-scale war but slow escalation.
Therefore it was important to understand the difference and the value Johnson attached
to his dovish advisors. 42
The third focused on the bureaucratic politics. This theory can best be
understood by the organizational missions from each department within the United
States. Thus the military staff emphasized that a war against Ho Chi Minh and his men
would be the best way to contain communism. The Joint Chiefs of Staff agreed with
General Westmoreland most of the time, who favored intervention. In this case the
theory might be right. On the other hand the State Department would go for the slow
escalation. The State Department which was needed for the foreign politics of America
should also be in favor of intervention according to this theory. The last was all but true;
Dean Rusk was one of Johnson’s main advisors and he was pro intervention. This
example showed there were more parties than just plain dovish and hawkish. 43
The last alternative was about the domestic politics. This theory was more
specifically focused on Johnson. The theory explained everything Johnson decided,
Khong, Analogies at war 192-194.
Ibidem, 196.
43 Ibidem, 198.
41
42
23
bearing in mind his Great Society. According to this theory Johnson was willing to do
everything in Vietnam to save his Great Society. Khong used the example of the loss of
China in 1949; China adopted communism as well. After the ‘loss’ of China a discussion
followed how this could have happened. Johnson was afraid that if Vietnam fell, this
decision would arouse as well and his plan of the Great Society would go down the drain.
Especially during his first years in office, Johnson gave the American people and
Congress the idea that the war would not consume inordinate human and financial
sources. This theory thus explained every decision Johnson had made concerning his
domestic policies as his own baby he had to take care of. Johnson later explained that his
one true love was shot in Vietnam. With his true love he meant his Great Society. 44
In this chapter we have described the history of Vietnam. It is full of wars and
occupation by foreign powers. It is actually the unknown alternative for the Americans
Khong is not talking about. The Americans should have known that the Vietnamese had
a long history of fighting foreign powers and that they would fight until they died. This
should have been one of the main concerns of the Americans when they started to plan a
war in Vietnam. The Americans did not look into the history of Vietnam. A lesson they
paid the price for in the end.
Chapter III: Johnson, his advisors and his policy
To understand President Johnson’s decisions, it is needed to understand his way of
communicating with other people. Firstly, his communication skills. What were his
strengths and weaknesses when it came to dealing with his advisors? Did he tolerate
contradictions from his advisors? How did he handle the press? Secondly, important for
Johnson were his advisors. Who were his advisors, what was their background and what
was their stance towards the Vietnam War? Did Johnson attach any value to their
judgement? I’ll only address attention to the advisors that I think were substantially
important to Johnson. Johnson’s way of dealing with other men is important because it
will influence him on the decisions he makes. Besides his way of dealing with other men
he had a weird personality that I’ll describe as well.
I’ll use journalist David Halberstam’s book The best and the brightest to describe
the advisors around Johnson. In this book Halberstam describes the advisors around
44
Ibidem, 200-202.
24
President Kennedy, the predecessor of Johnson. Johnson also chose most of these
advisors for his government. Halberstam describes the background of these men, from
their birth to the decisions they made in Vietnam. I use this source since Halberstam
describes these advisors of Johnson as intelligent men. Halberstam is wondering why
these brilliant men found it so hard to find the right decision. Most of them studied at
Harvard were best of their class in their year or served in several prestigious societies.
Halberstam tries to explain that even the most educated men weren’t able to find a
solution for this war. He finds it incomprehensible that these people, with their
knowledge, took these decisions. Together with the models I explained in chapter I, it
will be made clear later in this thesis why these decisions were made.
Lyndon Baines Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson was the 36th President of the United States of America. As a
President he was the Commander in Chief of the United States forces. He was the main
decision maker in Washington, if he didn’t like anything his advisors said, he could stop
it or not cooperate with their plans. It has to be pointed out that his biographer Robert
Allen Caro said that Johnson was one of the hardest persons to describe because of his
complicated personality. I will give a summary of the notable life of Johnson.
Lyndon Johnson was born on August 27, 1908 in Stonewall, Texas. In his first
school he was elected President in his eleventh class, a first sign of the leader to come.
He graduated in 1924 at the Johnson City High School. In 1926 he enrolled in the
Southwest Texas State Teachers’ College where he graduated in 1930. In the meantime
he worked as a teacher for Mexican schoolchildren at a school in Cotulla. In the 1930’s
he got his first real political experience when he campaigned for the Texas State Senator
Welly Hopkins, running for Congress. In November 1934 he married Claudia Alta Taylor
(nickname Lady Bird). Johnson had two daughters, Lynda Bird and Luci Baines
Johnson. 45 This was also the year he attended the Georgetown University Law Center for
a couple of months. He was appointed head of the National Youth Administration, which
was part of the New Deal program under President Roosevelt. This program was
designed to create jobs and educate young people during the economic crisis of the
1930’s. Two years later he would quit the job to run for a position in the House of
See how his wife and his daughters all got the initials LBJ; Johnson thought that might
help them in their career in politics. He copied this of President Roosevelt; FDR.
45
25
Representatives. He would win the election and attain that position until 1949. He was
notorious for his long working days and his working attitude during the weekends. In
1942, Johnson was sent on a mission to inspect the conditions in the Pacific during
World War II. Johnson, not really critical of working conditions, reported back that the
Pacific needed a greater share of the war supplies, since the war material they were
using were unacceptable to use for the Americans. If even Johnson thought that the war
material was bad, it was a sign for Washington to replace the old with some new
materials. In 1948 he ran again, after running in 1941 as well, for Senator. This time he
would win the election. He would become Senate Majority Whip in 1951; the assistant
Democratic leader of the Senate. According to his biographer Robert Caro he got the
position due to his good friend and fellow Senator Richard Russell: “No detail analysis of
Johnson’s selection as Assistant Democratic Leader – at the age of forty-two and after
just two years in the Senate – is necessary. He had gotten the job for the same reason he
had gotten the chairmanship of the Preparedness Subcommittee: because of the support
of one man.” 46 According to Caro, Russell was in control of the Senate during the 1950’s.
Johnson listened to him, made sure he was around Russell all the time and eventually
became friends with him. Johnson had a sensor for power and was attracted directly to
it. In 1953 he became the Democratic minority Leader and a year later, when the
Democrats won majority in the Senate, Majority Leader. Caro considered Johnson one of
the greatest Senators ever for his ability to gather all information he wanted inside
Washington. Johnson was great in discovering someone’s strengths and weaknesses,
and with that ability he was able to break someone if necessary. He ‘passed’ the Civil
Rights Act of 1957. Although first strongly opposed to the bill, he would later claim the
much weaker version was his accomplishment to get past the Senate. Due to his success
he would be selected as Vice-President during the presidency of Kennedy from 1960
until 1963. In this period Caro said he was stripped of his powers. The once so strong
Johnson was bound to his office and unable to do anything remarkable. They were afraid
that if they unleashed him, they wouldn’t be able to stop him. When in November 1963
President Kennedy was shot, he was unleashed; he became the 36th President of
America up until 1968. 47
46
47
Robert Allen Caro, The years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate (May 2003) 366.
Robert Allen Caro, The years of Lyndon Johnson: The passage of Power (May 2012).
26
The first remarkable thing about Johnson was his posture. Almost taller than any
other person walking around in Washington, he was famous for his ‘treatment’. He
would come a few inches close to your face and bent his body almost all over your body
until one wasn’t able to move anymore. In this position he would have a conversation for
several hours if needed, to convince somebody of his views. Most Senators familiar with
the ‘treatment’ tried to avoid it or otherwise they would quickly agree with him.
Secondly, during his entire career, Johnson was a workaholic and he expected his staff to
be as well. He couldn’t sleep when something had gone wrong or hadn’t been finished.
Short hours of sleep were as normal as his daily breakfast. This might be the reason he
got a heart attack in 1955. 48
Loyalty was one of the character aspects of Johnson. He was loyal to his superior.
Whether it was House of Representative Sam Rayburn, Senator Richard Russell or
President Kennedy, he would remain loyal until death would separate them. So he
expected loyalty from his staff as well. “If Johnson”, Caro said, “had a thought during the
night that he wanted to communicate to a member of his staff, he simply picked up the
telephone and called him or her at home, no matter what the hour.” 49 He also expected
that his staff would keep his secrets to themselves. He would unleash a storm in the
White House when someone of his staff had leaked something to the media. He would
yell to his staff and sometimes he cursed them.
The most striking part of his personality was his rudeness towards people. He
would say or do anything he thought appropriate; almost everything was appropriate as
long as they were lower in the hierarchy. His goal seemed to comfort people by trying to
be as normal as possible but sometimes he got too close with people and then “he would
also urinate in front of his own secretaries – and since some of them were attractive
young women, this, too, was startling to those who witnessed it.” 50 The geniality in
which he tried to comfort people was ‘lovely’ but confronting as well. People tried to get
out of the awkward position as soon as possible and while trying they gave in to
Johnson’s will. So it was the comfort zone that was important if one wished to speak to
him. “It was”, journalist David Halberstam said, “one more sad aspect of Lyndon Johnson
that there was the quality of the bully, and the reverse quality as well; he was, at his best,
He smoked a lot as well until 1955.
Caro, The years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate 129.
50 Ibidem, 121.
48
49
27
most open, most candid, most easy to reach, most accessible when things were going
well, but when things poorly, as they were bound to on Vietnam, he became impossible
to reach and talk to.” 51
The press was important to Johnson for two reasons. Firstly, the press was the
perfect example of how Johnson treated other people; when needed them for political
ends, he treated them nicely, when not needed he would treat them harshly. Secondly, in
the important year 1965 the media was one of Johnson’s main enemies. He wanted to
keep the policy of Vietnam from the media as well as possible. At the beginning of the
year he would be quite good at keeping the media at a distance, but the more America
got involved in the war, the more he was forced to tell the ‘truth’. He always had a love-
hate relationship with the press. On the hand he knew that he needed the media to help
him to get in favour with the people. He knew which journalists he could trust and so he
would tell them more secret information. On the other hand he would enrage when
something leaked towards the media he didn’t want them to know. Johnson had his own
policy when it came down to the media. He, Halberstam said, “didn’t want any mishaps.
He wanted to minimize the chance of controversy and confrontation – wanted to have
publicity without, so far as possible, the danger of bad publicity.” 52 However Johnson,
wanted to play as fair as possible, he wanted to say in the end that he said everything he
knew but that the media wasn’t paying attention or misinterpreted the information,
“Although he had approved the immediate deployment of 100.000 troops followed by
another 100.000 in 1966, he revealed publicly only that he was sending 50.000 troops,
and he made the move as painless as possible by refusing to call up the reserves and
increase taxes. He announced his decision on July 28 at a noon press conference instead
of at prime time and lumped it in with other items in a way that obscured its
significance.” 53 Johnson, afraid of the consequences of sending more troops to Vietnam,
was clever enough to bring the information at a time when it fitted Johnson best. In this
quote he brings the information at noon, when he thinks fewer people pay attention to
the news.
His viewpoint on the Vietnam War brought on a huge debate. Why did he go to
war? Did he even want to go to war? Did he want to prove something during the
David Halberstam, The best and the brightest (New York 1992) 591.
Ibidem, 323.
53 Herring, America’s Longest War 166.
51
52
28
Vietnam War? His main goal during the Vietnam War period was not the war itself but
the legislation of his Great Society. The two main goals of the Great Society were to
eliminate poverty and racial injustice. With more and more money going to the war he
was afraid that Congress would deny several of his domestic legislatures. Because of all
the money going to the war there would be less money for his Great Society. So that was
one reason to get the war over quickly. Another reason not to think too lightly of the war
for Johnson, was that he would be the first President to lose a war and Johnson not
wanted to be the President to be remembered ‘as the one that lost Vietnam’, like Truman
was remembered as the President who let China become Communist. Halberstam said
that Johnson knew exactly what he was doing; he would only go to his staff meetings to
give the impression that they had anything to contribute. According to Halberstam, “the
men around Johnson served him poorly, but they served him poorly because he wanted
them to.” 54 Halberstam seems to suggest that if everything remained vague about the
war, Johnson would have an alibi when Vietnam would fail; it was done to hide that they
were heading towards a real war. So Johnson was expanding the war gradually while
trying to cover most of the differences within the administration or, “slicing the salami
in pieces so thin that they were never able to pin him down.” 55 Johnson must have been
desperate during the year 1965; late 1964 he didn’t dare to escalate, at the beginning of
1965 he didn’t see any other option but starting Operation Rolling Thunder and a few
months later the first ground troops would go ashore in Vietnam.
Robert McNamara
Robert McNamara was the Secretary of Defense under President Kennedy and later
under President Johnson. He would occupy the position from 1961 until 1968. As
Secretary of Defense McNamara was responsible for the armed forces in Vietnam. It was
his task to calculate and predict how many forces needed to be sent to Vietnam. But he
had another important ‘role’ as Secretary of Defense as well; he needed to keep his
generals in the army content. The generals in the army wanted to show their strength,
some of the officers had never been to a war and Vietnam would be a good time to show
off. The Chiefs of Staff are the highest ranking generals and have an advising role to their
Secretary of Defense; Robert McNamara.
54
55
Halberstam, The best and the brightest 596.
Ibidem, 593.
29
McNamara was born on June 9, 1916 in San Francisco, California. He graduated
from Berkeley University in 1937 with a bachelor in economics and minors in
mathematics and philosophy. He obtained his master at Harvard University. During
these years he was in several prestigious associations like the Order of the Golden Bear
at Berkeley. In 1940 he would return to Harvard to teach accounting in Business School.
In 1943 he entered the United States Army Air Forces, serving most of World War II
with its Office of Statistical Control. When he left in 1946 he joined the group of “Whiz
Kids” 56 to help the Ford Company recover from its money-losing era. They managed to
get the company back on track and in 1960 he became the first Ford President from
outside the Ford family. 57
Halberstam said about McNamara: “The body was tense and driven, the mind was
mathematical, analytical, bringing order and reason out of chaos. Always reason. And
reason supported by facts, by statistics – he could prove his rationality with facts,
intimidate others. He was marvellous [sic] with charts and statistics.” 58 A smart man
who was admired in Washington, Kennedy called him the ‘star of my staff’. He was a
rationalist, combined with his persuasive qualities; he was able to force any point of
view on anyone. “It was what made him so effective: the total believe in what he was
doing, the willingness to knock down anything that stood in his way, the relentless
quality, so that other men, sometimes wiser, more restrained, would be pushed aside.” 59
These qualities and his loyalty was what made attracted Johnson to McNamara. Johnson
and McNamara shared a lot of the same values. He was a man of the military and he
didn’t believe in the stories of his civilian staff. Journalists were, according to McNamara,
adversaries. They never believed or understood anything he said.
So when the options for war were shown, McNamara picked, according to
Halberstam, the moderate one: “There, that was reassuring: it was not final, not
irreversible and it bought time.” 60 These were three very important aspects for Johnson
to choose for the moderate way and for these three reasons Johnson was glad that
McNamara was his Secretary of Defense. The last one was very important to Johnson; he
Ten United State Army Forces veterans who became Ford Motor Company’s
executives after WO II.
57 Halberstam, The best and the brightest 224-234.
58 Ibidem, 217.
59 Ibidem, 219.
60 Ibidem, 503.
56
30
didn’t want to make the decision that would lead to the war spiralling out of control.
McNamara wanted to keep his Chiefs happy as well but at the same time wanted to give
the civilians in office at least the impression that they could still control the war.
Dean Rusk
The United States Secretary of State under Johnson was Dean Rusk. Rusk occupied this
position from 1961 until 1969. As Secretary of State he was involved in the foreign
affairs of the United States. This made Rusk an important player in the discussion about
the war in Vietnam.
Rusk was born February 9, 1909 in a modest family in the rural district of
Cherokee County, Georgia. He was one of twelve children. Halberstam describes Dean’s
youth like: “Though Robert Hugh Rusk [his father] was a poor white, he was not trash;
though they were of modest means, there was a sense of tradition in their house and a
belief in what education could do, a passion.” 61 Especially Rusk’s humble background
was a thing Johnson liked. As said before, Johnson grew up in a humble family himself.
The young Rusk was very religiously. He attended church two times a week and until
high school he was convinced he would become a minister one day. In 1927 he attended
Davidson College and became a member of the social fraternity Kappa Alpha order.
During his times in college he also became a Cadet Lieutenant Colonel commanding the
Reserve Officers Training Corps battalion. His military training fascinated Rusk and he
was always way more interested in foreign than in domestic politics. His most
prestigious accomplishment was his Rhodes scholarship; an international postgraduate
award for studying at the University of Oxford. Most interesting was his semester in
Germany where he had a close look at the rise of Hitler in 1933. Halberstam describes
the misunderstanding of some elite Oxford students in what Rusk believes was one of
the mistakes for the Second World War: “The most lasting memory of those Oxford years
was a belief that the best-educated and most elite young men of England would not
fight; it was, he would tell friends later, the worst possible indication, and England might
have been better served if the signal had reflected something closer to the heart and
determination of the average workingman.” 62 This is interesting to what Khong is
saying: “While admitting that he was very much attuned to the lessons of the 1930s,
61
62
Ibidem, 313.
Ibidem, 317.
31
Rusk took pains to point out that these lessons played only a partial role in the United
States’ decision to intervene in Vietnam.” 63 In this quote Khong explains that Rusk was
very much attracted to the Munich analogy. Rusk believed that if Ho Chi Minh was
appeased as well that it would result in the same way as in 1939: a (world) war.
During the war Rusk first served in Washington, later in the China-Burma-India
Theater in the New Delhi section where he worked with the British colonial regime. He
opposed colonialism. Rusk worked together with General Stilwell. General Stilwill and
Rusk couldn’t stand the British, but Rusk was said to be a better diplomat and was able
to appease some fights between Stilwill and the British commanders in headquarters.
These were good years for Rusk; he was promoted eventually from Captain Rusk to
Colonel Rusk. Praised for his writings about military expertise, he was appointed to a
special political-military group, which would determine the political divisions of the
postwar world, which would eventually lead him to the post of director of the Special
Political Affairs of the United Nations. In 1945 he joined the Department of State and in
1949 he became Deputy Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs. A few weeks later
the Korean War broke out. It would be a painful experience for Rusk. He hadn’t
predicted the Chinese intervention and he was in part responsible for the limits under
which American troops had to fight. 64
In 1952, when Eisenhower became President, the Republicans took over the
White House. John Foster Dulles became the new Secretary of State, but in need of new
director for the Rockefeller Foundation, Dulles advised Rusk to take the position. 65 Rusk
would occupy the office for eight years. While Rusk was not really a fighter, he waited
for the Democrats to come back to the White House in peace. He hoped to get a position
in the new government or even trying to run for President. In 1960 he would become
the Secretary of State under President Kennedy and would remain so until 1969.
Rusk was not one of the ‘Washington guys’, as he would later recall himself. He is
described as a hardworking and disciplined man. He liked to sacrifice himself for the
greater good; he admired some of the Calvinist ideals. Rusk didn’t show his feelings and
humor was rare in Rusk. It was hard to understand if one was a ‘real’ friend of Rusk.
According to George C. Marshall secretary of State, whom Rusk admired, Rusk was a
Khong, Analogies at war 183.
Halberstam, The best and the brightest 303-330.
65 Dulles was chairman of the board of the Rockefeller Foundation.
63
64
32
gentleman. According to Halberstam, Rusk was said to be a loyal Secretary: “For Rusk
believed in protecting the President from difficult decisions in he wanted to be
protected, he believed in containment, he believed in our morality, as opposed to the
immorality of the Communist world, and he believed in the use of force, the primacy of
military, and deep down that the war was a crucial test in Vietnam, and that it was
essentially a military problem.” 66 He was stable in a sense that he wouldn’t change his
viewpoints if these harmed the President. That is why the relationship between Johnson
and Rusk was so stable.
Rusk was afraid of a split between State and Defense and so he went with
McNamara on almost everything he said about Vietnam. Rusk was pro-intervention in
Vietnam especially with the history in Korea in the back of his head. According to
Halberstam, Rusk “had learned his lesson and learned them well. Munich. Mutual
security. Containment. The necessity of a democracy to show dictatorships that it should
not be bluffed. And a belief that American force could do anything that its leaders sets
their minds to.” 67 His ‘mistakes’ made during the Korean War should have been a
warning for Rusk not to underestimate the Chinese; the opposite was the case. Rusk
thought that if the Americans had used more force during that war they might have
defeated the Chinese as well. So Rusk liked to believe that a quick intervention might
help them win the war in Vietnam.
George Ball
The Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs and Agricultural Affairs was George
Ball. He occupied this position during the Kennedy and Johnson administration.
Ball was born on December 21, 1909 in Des Moines, Iowa. Ball was a smart and
well-read person. Ball was one of the most traveled persons in Washington and most
eloquent. He was seen as an Europeanist. He wanted to have good contacts with the
Europeans. Vietnam might destroy that friendship since the Europeans warned America
not to get involved in the war in Vietnam. Especially President de Gaulle warned the
Americans not to get involved; Ball couldn’t agree more. During the Kennedy
administration he was an outsider; as he considered himself wiser than the others of the
Kennedy administration. He was more an, as Halberstam called him, iconoclastic man.
66
67
Halberstam, The best and the brightest 346.
Ibidem, 581.
33
He didn’t like the whole communist hunt during the McCarthy era. Ball wasn’t afraid of
Africa going communist; in fact he hoped they went communist. If several countries in
Africa became communist, countries like the Sovjet-Union would have major problems
to maintain themselves and their African protégés.
Halbertstam described Ball as the man who had his doubts about Vietnam: “Only
one man was left at the top level who had open doubts on Vietnam, and that was George
Ball.” 68 He describes him as ‘prophetic’, he was one of a few men who dared to say that
intervention in Vietnam wouldn’t help bringing the National Liberation Front to its
knees. Ball was especially against bombing and this had something to do with his World
War II past. He was more worried about the economic future of America. His goal as the
Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs and Agricultural Affairs was to protect the
economy in America and not so much the economy in Vietnam. So in that sense it was
quite logical that Ball didn’t want to hear anything about bombing or sending ground
forces to Vietnam.
Ball had another reason not to support the escalation of the war. He had served in
the Strategic Survey team during World War II studying the bombing on Germany. It
turned out that it inspired the German morale and spurred the industrial production in
Germany; the conclusion was that it had had little effect. Hanoi would not be able to
respond by air power, so Ball thought that they would respond by sending more ground
forces to the South. His doubts and the memos he sent to the President, slowed down the
decision making process. Johnson, who was not able and didn’t dare to make a decision
to bomb or commit forces to Vietnam, started to doubt the situation over and over
because of people like Ball. 69
George McBundy
George McBundy is maybe the most consulted advisor of President Johnson in the
period November 1964 until July 1965. Bundy was the National Security Advisor of
President Johnson between 1961 and 1966. The Senate, together with the President,
chooses the Secretaries of State and Defense and as the National Security Advisor is not
a Senate confirmed official, he therefore has an individual role in advising the President.
68
69
Ibidem, 491.
Ibidem, 491-500.
34
The role of the National Security Advisor may vary and during Johnson’s Presidency
Bundy was important to Johnson for his confidence to escalate the war properly.
George McBundy was born on March 30, 1919 Boston, Massachusetts. According
to Halberstam he attended Groton School, “the greatest prep school in the nation, where
the American upper class sends its sons to instil the classic values: discipline, honor, a
belief in the existing values and the rightness of them.” 70 In this school he became first of
his class and was the editor in chief of the student newspaper. After Groton he attended
Yale University. He was a great speaker and became a columnist for the Yale Daily News
paper. It is during this period of his life that Halberstam called him a committed
internationalist and interventionist. After Yale, Bundy went to Harvard. He wasn’t a real
student at Harvard but a Junior Fellow; member of the select Society of Fellows. This
prestigious society was founded for extraordinary scholarly and talented students;
Bundy was one of them. In 1949 Bundy took the position at the Council of Foreign
Relations: a think tank, which is specialized in United States foreign policy. At the
Council he studied the Marshall Plan’s aid to Europe. In 1953 he was appointed at the
Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard at the age of 34. In 1961 he became the National
Security Advisor of President Kennedy. Kennedy called him one of his “Wise Men”. He
had an important role in decisions made during the Bay of Pigs (1961) and the Cuba
Crisis (1962). Like Halberstam said, these years during the Kennedy period were ‘golden
years’ for Bundy. 71
Bundy, a real Republican, was “functional and operational”, he was “not
considering the proper long-range perspective, instead he was too much the problem
solver, the man who did not want to wait, who believed in action. He always had a single
pragmatic answer to a single question, and he was wary of philosophies, almost too
wary.” 72 George seemed to be a doer. He wanted to move things around and do it the fast
way. Bundy didn’t want to wait too long for a solution. Bundy was convinced that a
policy of naval and air action against the North was justified. He believed that there was
no short cut to success, but that the Americans had to do everything they could, so they
Ibidem, 51.
Ibidem, 40-63.
72 Ibidem, 63.
70
71
35
could say that they did everything within their power to free Vietnam from
Communism. 73
William Westmoreland
The first person who was important for Johnson and his administration and who didn’t
reside in Washington was General William Westmoreland. This is important because he
almost had no contact with Johnson directly but still I think he had a major impact on
the decision-making process. He was the Army Chief of Staff from 1964 until 1968. His
first job was to lead the Military Advice Command group, later, when the war escalated,
he would become the main leader of the United States forces. Westmoreland would
become an especially important information resource for McNamara. McNamara would
be influenced by the requests of Westmoreland for additional ground forces several
times.
William Childs Westmoreland was born on March 26, 1914 Spartanburg County,
South Carolina. He went to Spartanburg High and was considered a model boy for his
class. He went to The Citadel and ranked number 33 of the 169 students. Although he
didn’t end up in the top 10, like most other men in Washington did, he was famous for
his leadership. After The Citadel he went to West Point Military Academy. Westmoreland
liked the discipline he encountered at the Citadel and West Point. The ordered world
was the best world according to William. He graduated in 1936, becoming an artillery
officer. During World War II he saw combat in Tunisia, France, Sicily and Germany,
reached the rank of Colonel and was appointed Chief of Staff of the 9th Infantry Division
in 1944. After the war was over he took a three-month during Business program at
Havard.
William was an Army officer and he thought that the war could be solved with the
so-called attrition strategy. This was a strategy in which one side tries to win the war by
trying to let the enemy collapse through continuing losses in material and personnel.
This was exactly the reason Westmoreland continued to ask for more forces during the
years 1964-1967. 74
73
74
Ibidem, 525-526.
Ibidem, 545-562
36
Maxwell Taylor
The second person that didn’t reside in Washington and was of importance was Maxwell
Taylor. Every country has an ambassador in most foreign countries. The ambassador is
important for foreign decision making of the home country. During 1964 up until July
1965 it was Maxwell Taylor who served as an ambassador in Saigon.
Taylor was born on August 26, 1901 in Keytesville, Missouri. He studied at United
States Military Academy at West Point as one of the best students of his class. Although
he was not the best student, it soon became clear that he was a special person in many
ways. He was ambitious, disciplined, could be as cold as ice (most other generals didn’t
like him) and he spoke several languages: French, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, German
and Italian. He was said to be a general whom civilians related to. He brought peace with
him when he walked through a village, local people would say. Because of his diplomatic
and language skills he was dropped behind enemy lines on a secret mission in Rome in
1943. Although the mission was partly cancelled, it got Taylor noticed at the highest
Allied Command. Later he was assigned to lead the 101st airborne division, which
jumped in Normandy on D-Day. After World War II he was superintendent, the
commanding officer at the academy, at West Point. In 1949 he was assigned first
commander in Berlin. Both were highly political positions. In 1953 he was sent to Korea
and he was given the command of the Eight Army. When in 1955 President Eisenhower
asked Taylor to come home to become Chief of Staff of the Army, he couldn’t refuse such
a prestigious job. After the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, he was appointed head of
the investigation group, which researched the failure. President Kennedy, who was very
impressed by Taylor, gave him the highest military function in America: Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff. In 1964 he became Ambassador in Saigon under President Johnson.
He left this post again on July 30, 1965.
When Taylor went to Vietnam as Ambassador in 1964, he was a member of the
‘Never Again Club’. This was a club of United States officers who vowed never to fight a
land war on Asian mainland without the use of nuclear weapons. He was not in favour of
bombing or sending troops. Later in 1964, he had changed his mind. Several reasons
made him change his mind. First reason was the awareness of the failure of the projects
in South Vietnam. The South-Vietnamese government got worse and the army was far
from able to take over the mission themselves. A second reason was the prestige of the
men in Washington themselves. Taylor, with such a prestigious career, couldn’t let South
37
Vietnam slip through his fingers while he was Ambassador. Johnson had another reason
to escalate the war and start with operation Rolling Thunder. At the end of July when he
came home he had changed his mind, but Halberstam said: “when his word carried
weight, he had approved the escalation.” 75 Taylor who, again, was against the war,
became a nobody and no one would listen to his advice. Lodge would become
Ambassador again and the role of Taylor was done.
These are a few men whom Halberstam described as the ‘Best and Brightest’. He
explained that even people who came from all the best positions in the world and had a
great intellectual capacity were not able to solve the problems in Vietnam. He explained
their past and with that he was able to explain their decisions concerning Vietnam.
Khong’s main focus in his book Analogies at war is, that these ‘Best and Brightest’ were
acting with in the back of their mind specific historical foreign policy analogies. To
understand the decisions that were made it is important to understand the historical
background these men were using. I’ll first shortly describe the specific events Khong is
using and after that I’ll explain who uses which analogy.
Analogies at work
In chapter I we have seen the different models and one them were the analogies of
Khong. In this chapter I described several advisors, now it is time to put them together
and see who used which analogy. Some of the decision makers used several analogies to
explain their viewpoints. These analogies are important in this thesis; they serve as the
background for the actual decisions made.
First, the Munich Analogy. It was used by Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara, George
McBundy and President Johnson. Johnson explained his view about Munich in a bulletin
to the Department of State: “Three times in my lifetime, in two world wars and in Korea,
Americans have gone to far lands to fight for freedom. We have learned at a terrible and
brutal cost that retreat does not bring safety and weakness does not bring peace,
because we learned from Hitler at Munich that success only feeds appetite of
aggression.” 76 This analogy was only used in 1965. During the Kennedy administration,
Rusk and Johnson were not considered as relevant to the administration, so their
75
76
Ibidem, 467.
Ibidem, 179.
38
opinions didn’t matter. After the death of Kennedy the use of the Munich analogy slowly
returned and after the decision of bombing Vietnam, the citizens of America needed to
know why they were asked to risk their lives for a country they had no interest in.
Although Rusk agreed with Johnson, he was more careful with the analogy of Munich. He
explained to a journalist that analogies can only play a small part in the decision making
process. The analogies can be inaccurate when applied to new situations. For McNamara
and Bundy it was the aggressor that needed to be oppressed, they were the most
hardcore hawks found in Washington. In this sense we could also place Taylor and
Westmoreland in this tradition, but there was no evidence that one of them used this
analogy to justify their actions. 77
Johnson and Rusk supported the analogy of Korea as well. As seen before,
Johnson tried to keep the escalation in Vietnam from the press as much as possible. One
of the reasons to keep the information out of the press was because of China. If China
heard of the intervening plans of America, they might help out the North Vietnamese.
Johnson was afraid that China would intervene in Vietnam; if China intervened in
Vietnam there would be no stopping the events happening in Vietnam. So besides the
difficulty in warfare the Americans would face if the Chinese soldiers intervened, the
American people would also be more drawn into the war. If the Chinese intervened,
people thought, there must be something at stake in Vietnam. The citizens of America
would start asking questions about the war and eventually Johnson would lose his
popularity among Americans. Rusk, like Johnson, saw that if the Chinese intervened, the
war would become much harder to win. He had another reason as well to fear the
Chinese; as Deputy Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs he was part of a mistake
not forecasting the intervention of the Chinese during the Korean War during the
1950’s. Rusk, still haunted by the prospect of the intervening Chinese, was the last
person in Washington who didn’t want to be careful with the northern neighbors of
Vietnam. 78
The loner George Ball occupied the last analogy. Ball was one of the few people in
Washington who openly agitated against the war. Although the battle at Dien Bien Phu
was a ground battle and had nothing to do with the air strikes discussion that started in
October 1964, Ball tried to use the battle as a metaphor. He explained that once the
77
78
Ibidem, 174-190.
Ibidem, 102-138.
39
United States was on the back of the tiger it would not know when it would be able to
dismount. He meant that if the bombing started the Americans would not know when it
would be sufficient enough to bring the North to its knees and how much bombing was
needed to succeed. A few months later in June 1965, when it was clear that bombing
alone was not enough, Ball started to write memos to everyone in Washington who was
willing to listen to him. In these memos he would use the Dien Bien Phu analogy to
explain the French position in 1954 and he tried to explain that the Americans in 1965
were in the exact same position. Most advisors didn’t listen to Ball; Bundy even sent a
memo of his own to the President pointing out that the Dien Bien Phu analogy was not a
correct comparison with the decision-making in 1965. 79
In this chapter we have seen two things: the main advisors around President
Johnson and their analogies used to make decisions. The advisors of Johnson will be of
importance when studying the cases around the decisions made in 1964-1965. The
analogies they use explain their own history a little bit; what did they experience in their
lives, but also in some cases it is a good prediction of their advice to Johnson. Some of
the advisors used their experience, either for good or bad, to explain decisions they had
made. Often a decision is made and an analogy is searched for to strengthen the reason
for the decision.
Chapter IV: Decision making in Vietnam: 1964-1965
I’ll start analyzing the sources from August 2, 1964 until May 1965. I think August 2,
1965, was a change of course in the Vietnam War. This was the month the Tonkin
incident took place and Johnson openly started to fear for his position. I take May 1965
as the last month since that was the moment Johnson decided to stop bombing North
Vietnamese targets and he had no idea what should be the next step in Vietnam. From
this moment on there would be no turning back to what President Nixon would later call
“Peace with Honor”.
1964: The Tonkin incident
I analyse two major events in 1964: the Tokin Gulf incident and the visit of Ambassador
Taylor to Washington. The first event, I have just explained, as I think this was the start
79
Ibidem, 148-154.
40
of the quagmire dragging Johnson down. It was the first real decision Johnson needed to
make and he was afraid to make the wrong choice. The second event was important
because Taylor was of great importance during this period because of the weakness of
the government in South Vietnam. During the period August 11 and September 5, Taylor
almost sent a telegram to Washington about the new developments daily. Taylor was
close to the fire and had the best view of all decision makers on the problems going on in
Vietnam. His advice to Johnson, when he came to Washington, was of great importance
for Johnson’s future decisions.
The days after the Tonkin incident, the Embassy in Vietnam was on high alert,
and decision-makers in Washington were discussing the next step to take in Vietnam.
The second attack on the USS Maddox, the one that probably never happened, triggered
a meeting at the Pentagon with McNamara, Deputy Secretary of Defense Vance and
director of the Joint Staff of the JCS, Burchinal. The meeting started at 9:25 AM and after
a while McNamara called Johnson to tell him that they were preparing several options in
retaliation to the attacks to be presented to Johnson. McNamara and the others prepared
four options all starting with “Air strikes (…)”. All the options that were given to the
President were air strikes; there was no other option of choice for Johnson. Options to
wait for another attack, to send combat troops or to send Bundy over for negotiations,
were not mentioned. Around 11:00 AM McNamara summoned Rusk, Bundy and the rest
of the JCS to tell them of their ‘plan’. At 12:40 PM they all arrived at the White House and
they joined the National Security Council and Johnson. They informed them as well and
around 1 o’clock they went for lunch. At 3 o’clock they separated again and convinced
the President to go for retaliation attacks. Rusk sent a telegram to Vietnam that they
should prepare for airstrikes. McNamara and his Joint Chiefs of Staff meanwhile
prepared how the airstrikes should take place, but Johnson had already made the most
important decision; the decision to bomb Vietnam. In less than a day he had made the
bombing decision. 80
Model II, Organizational Process model, is not a match to this event. According to
this model, “Coordination requires standard operating procedures: rules according to
which things are done.” 81 There need to be rules for individuals in order to fulfil their
John P. Glennon, Edward C. Keefer and Charles S. Sampson, Foreign Relations of the
United States, 1964-1968 Vol. I (Washington 1992) 602-611.
81 Allison, Essence of Decision 143.
80
41
job and each apartment is assigned a specific task. There was almost no research after
this incident. The major players were McNamara, Bundy and Rusk. They convinced
Johnson within a day to take actions against this attack. McNamara, Bundy and Rusk did
not research something in their own department but convinced each other of their own
opinion. Model III explains the power of persuasion and takes a longer time period to
reach a well-considered decision. McNamara, Bundy and Rusk used their power to
persuade but not all options were looked into to give a well thought-out decision for
Johnson. Model III in this case is too difficult for this event. The group is, compared to all
the people they needed to convince in Washington, too small to even think of
groupthink.
Allison and Zelikow see this event in the ‘Rational Actor’ model; model I. The
goals and objectives are clear: McNamara at his meeting, proposed an air strike on
Vietnam and Johnson agreed as long as it was not told to the media (yet). There were
hardly any alternatives to choose from for Johnson, it would be an air strike and
McNamara would find out which one would be the best at the time. Although the
consequences were not clear then, it was intended to scare the Vietnamese and keep the
peace. The rational mind of Johnson spoke in this case and reading these sources it
becomes clear that Johnson wanted to get it over quickly but carefully. He carefully
asked Congress that same night for approval of his plans. They agreed and gave him the
so-called Joint Resolution on Southeast Asia (Tonkin Resolution) on August 7. On the
same day Johnson replied to Chairman Khrushchev about the Tonkin incident. Johnson
said, “I repeat that we seek no military base or special position in this area and that our
sole purpose is to enable the nations there to maintain their independence without
outside intervention.” 82 He made clear that he didn’t want to escalate the situation and
that a military base was not an option, but he was not saying a word about the upcoming
air strikes. Model I stands out best in this case. The goal was to show the North
Vietnamese that aggression would be met with aggression and that the Americans
would not be deterred. The objective was an air strike. There were almost no reasonable
alternatives and the consequences were far from clear.
1964: Taylor’s visit in Washington
82
Glennon, Foreign Relations of the United States 648.
42
In September 1964 Ambassador Maxwell Taylor visited Washington. He was to report
about the situation in Vietnam, especially the South. The last few days, still in Vietnam,
Taylor got advice of all leaders in Vietnam trying to ‘influence’ Taylor before he visited
Washington. The situation in South Vietnam was getting worse, exemplary was the way
General Westmorland was trying to describe the training program set up for the South
Vietnamese to defend their country: “I also describe military problem areas. These, as
you know, are many; but all are susceptible to solution assuming that political stability
can be achieved, and that the Armed Forces, particularly the Army, remains intact and
unified in its purpose. Under the present circumstances, however, the continued
solidarity of the Armed Forces is in doubt.” 83 Westmoreland was already in doubt about
the political stability in Vietnam being achieved, between the lines you can read his
doubts about the program, but as a man made of steel, he never admitted that. Taylor at
that moment knew there was some trouble with the government of General Khanh; the
situation as Taylor described was unstable and the future far from secure. On September
8 Johnson got a document called ‘Courses of action for South Vietnam’ 84 drafted by
George McBundy, John McNaughton (assistant Secretary of Defense) and Taylor. This
document contained four major recommendations for South Vietnam for the next few
months. Packed with his knowledge Taylor went to the White House to meet up with the
President and his staff on September 9. Since all attendees had read the document, the
discussion was mainly about the document but the general opinion can be summarized
with Rusk’s saying that “He thought we should take the four recommended actions and
play of the breaks;” 85 they all thought the same.
For Johnson there was not really a chance to think differently, all his advisors,
military or not, were on the same level. Taylor’s opinion was often asked in this
discussion and most noticeable was his pronouncement about the armed forces: “The
President asked what would happen if our proposed efforts did not strengthen the
government and if instead it got weaker and weaker. Ambassador Taylor replied that as
long as the armed forces are solid, the real power is secure. It was vital to be sure of the
Ibidem, 736.
See enclosure for this memorandum, document 342.
85 Glennon, Foreign Relations of the United States 751.
83
84
43
armed forces.” 86 A statement Johnson might have thought of when he sent in 50.000
troops to Vietnam in 1965; ‘troops are needed to keep Vietnam safe.’
During the conversation Johnson expressed his doubts about the team now
working in Vietnam, “we had our best team out there for 60 days and had lost ground.” 87
Taylor thought the President was having the wrong impression and explained that in
half of the provinces the program was going well. In all these examples there seems to
be no room for an alternative opinion, not even from the President himself. The last few
days in Washington, Taylor and Johnson wrote a document that was to be the guideline
for the upcoming months in South Vietnam. It is remarkable how the authors of this
document were mentioned: “The President has now reviewed the situation in South
Vietnam with Ambassador Taylor and with other advisers and has approved the
following actions,” as if to say that Taylor was most important and there were some
other ‘advisors’ who helped as well but they didn’t really matter. Normally in every
official document of the Foreign Relations of the United States everybody’s name is noted
but this document seemed to be written by Johnson and Taylor only.
I wrote down the important measures of the decisions made by Taylor, Johnson
and the other advisors on September 10 1964:
“1. U.S. naval patrols in the Gulf of Tonkin will be resumed promptly after Ambassador
Taylor's return. (…)
2. 34A operations 88 by the GVN (Government of Vietnam) will be resumed after
completion of a first DeSoto patrol. The maritime operations are by far the most
important. North Vietnam has already publicized them, and is likely to publicize them
even more, and at this point we should have the GVN ready to admit that they are taking
place and to justify and legitimize them on the basis of the facts of VC infiltration by sea.
(…)
3. We should promptly discuss with the Government of Laos plans for limited GVN air
and ground operations into the corridor areas of Laos, (…)
4. We should be prepared to respond as appropriate against the DRV (Democratic
Republic Vietnam) in the event of any attack on U.S. units or any special DRV/VC action
against SVN.
Ibidem, 752.
Ibidem, 754.
88 This was a United States program of covert actions against North Vietnam.
86
87
44
5. The results of these decisions will be kept under constant review, and
recommendations for changes or modifications or additions will be promptly
considered.
6. The President reemphasizes the importance of economic and political actions having
immediate impact in South Vietnam, such as pay raises for civilian personnel and spot
projects in the cities and selected rural areas. The President emphasizes again that no
activity of this kind should be delayed in any way by any feeling that our resources for
these purposes are restricted. We can find the money that is needed for all worthwhile
projects in this field. He expects that Ambassador Taylor and the country team will take
most prompt and energetic action in this field.
7. These decisions are governed by a prevailing judgment that the first order of business
at present is to take actions which will help to strengthen the fabric of the Government
of South Vietnam; to the extent that the situation permits, such action should precede
larger decisions. (…).” 89
The first four actions were almost literally taken from the ‘Courses of action for
South Vietnam’ document. A few words were changed, like tit-for-tat was changed to
respond as appropriate; the rudeness removed from the document, the rest stayed the
same. Three more points, points five, six and seven, were added to the final document
but they were abstract and hard to check. The main points drafted and devised by
Bundy, McNaughton and Taylor were passed. This means they were pulling the strings
in Vietnam at that moment. Johnson fully agreed with these advisors and didn’t change a
thing; it was not his decision but the decision of Taylor, McNaughton and Bundy.
Taylor who, after the failure of the build up programs in the South became a
hawk, and Bundy, who, like Halberstam said, didn’t look at the long-range perspective,
were the main architects of this document. Johnson and the rest of his advisors seemed
to agree and hoped for the best. Most of the advisors were already pro action against the
North so the new document was a first step in that direction. The Rational Actor, model
I, is too simple for this event. Model I assumes a simple goal and a rather easy way to
achieve that goal. The Rational Actor explains the calculated solution for a strategic
problem. The men working on this ‘problem’ had a greater challenge than a simple goal
and a strategic problem. In the end he might have agreed with his advisors but not
89
Glennon, Foreign Relations of the United States 758-760.
45
before he had asked everything he wanted to know; he was not the man to give in
because he wanted a harmonious conversation.
Allison and Zelikow call this case the power to persuade in model III. They
explain it the other way around; normally Johnson would need to persuade his advisors.
In this case, his advisors needed to persuade Johnson. In the meeting it seemed all
advisors were already convinced, except for Johnson who, understandably, kept asking
questions. All questions in the end led to that one document. It seemed to be a so-called
tunnel vision. It has to be noted that George Ball, the dove among Johnson advisors and
the only one against a war in Vietnam, was not attending, invited or welcome at these
meetings yet. Ball would start attending these meetings in 1965, but the advisors had
already entered the quagmire of the war and turning back was no longer an option. The
same situation can be applied to model II, point two: specialize people according to their
capabilities. The one who was specialized, in this case, Ambassador Taylor, was needed
to give advice and his opinion on the situation; this was needed so not everybody
needed to do thousands of complicated operations to find a solution. It made sense that
Taylor was asked to write this document. The event can be seen as a combination of
model II and model III.
The real airstrikes didn’t take place before 1965. Johnson was afraid of not being
re-elected if he started bombing right away in 1964. In 1964 Johnson still had the option
to withdraw from Vietnam, but all his advisors pointed towards the other direction. It
was the upcoming year, when Johnson was officially elected as President, that Johnson
would be sucked into the quagmire.
1965: The air strikes
1964 was the year when Johnson was re-elected as President and Vietnam was still
‘quiet’. The real war hadn’t started yet, it was the decisions Johnson and his advisors
made in 1965 that would lead them into the nightmare called the Vietnam War.
In this chapter I’ll look into three different decisions that were being made: the
retaliatory air strikes against Vietnam, the beginning of the United States ground combat
forces in Vietnam and the first bombing pause.
The situation in Vietnam in January 1965 was terrible, the government was still
unstable and the government in Washington didn’t know what to do. In January nothing
really happened. A lot of telegrams came in from Saigon about the current situation in
46
the South and Taylor and McNamara made some recommendations about the next step
for the Americans, but no decision was made about whatsoever.
Bundy sent a memo on January 4 to the President about his concerns in Vietnam:
“My own view is that, whatever we may decide to do on particular matters in the coming
months, it is absolutely essential to maintain a posture of firmness today. I believe that
without firm U.S. language, the danger of further erosion in Saigon is bound to grow.” 90
Bundy was a great proponent during this time period for intervention. He wanted
everything to make the North Vietnamese realize that the Americans were not going to
run away.
Taylor, who by now was sending telegrams to Washington daily, shared a similar
opinion to that of Bundy: “A. That we adhere to the advisory system improving and
expanding it as necessary. Additional district advisors will be required if the GVN
presses on with the war. B. That the U.S. continue to provide only operational support
along current lines augmented and reinforced as the situation requires.” 91 ‘Operational
support’ as Taylor called it was also a marine base near Da Nang defended by both South
Vietnamese and American troops. Once there, the step to take matters into their own
hands was easy, Taylor must have thought. If American troops were in Vietnam, the
decision to let them fight as well, would be easy to make. However throughout the
document you can still read his doubt about sending troops. He didn’t dare to say that he
believed combat troops would be needed; he didn’t want to be the first to say so.
Bundy, a few days later on January 6, was trying to explain to Rusk the positive
and the negative sides of sending troops: “Introduction of limited US ground forces into
the northern area of South Vietnam still has great appeal to many of us, concurrently
with the first air attacks into the DRV. It would have a real stiffening effect in Saigon, and
a strong signal effect to Hanoi. On the disadvantage side, such forces would be possible
attrition targets for the Viet Cong.”
That same day Johnson was informed by his advisors on an eventual next step.
Johnson, in the next quote, seemed all but sure what to do next: “LBJ: 1) Never have
thought reprisals would help stabilize the government. 2) They're not sufficiently
effective to bring you to conference table—because escalation is dangerous & pulling
Glenn W. LaFantasie, Louis J. Smith, Ronald D. Landa and David C. Humphrey, Foreign
Relations of the United States, 1964-1968 Vol. II (Washington 1996) 7-8.
91 LaFantasie, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968 Vol. II 28.
90
47
out is dangerous.” 92 On January 7, Johnson sent a memo to McNamara, in which he
explained that he agreed on not sending troops but would like to know a new
alternative: “Much of the trouble may be here in Washington which sets the policy on
rotation and reporting and other forms of paper work. I expect you and Max are right in
opposing larger U.S. Forces, but let's develop some alternatives.” 93 Later on in the same
document Johnson explained that Washington could be a mess sometimes when it came
to making decisions regarding Vietnam. Johnson was complaining that he would like to
have everyone facing the same direction and that his advisors made it hard for him to
make a decent decision. In the quote written down here he would have liked more
alternatives, but what he exactly wanted was one decent decision all advisors agreed on
so he had a big support for decisions he made. It seems that Johnson felt comfortable
with a broader support.
Bundy described the feeling Johnson had; he and McNamara understood the
feeling of Johnson but neither of them could give the President a decent advise on what
to do next. Bundy said, “What we want to say to you is that both of us are now pretty
well convinced that our current policy can lead only to disastrous defeat. What we are
doing now, essentially, is to wait and hope for a stable government. Our December
directives make it very plain that wider action against the Communists will not take
place unless we can get such a government.” 94 He openly stated to the President that he
understood the feelings of Johnson but at this moment didn’t know what to do yet.
From all these documents two things come to the surface during the ‘silent month’ in
January 1965: the first thing was that Johnson and his advisors didn’t know what to do
and the second thing was the waiting for something to go wrong. A lot had been said in
Vietnam in the month of January about Vietnam but all these documents were lacking a
real advice on what to do next to get a stable government in South Vietnam.
Johnson kept asking for more details and more alternatives to make his decision,
but he had to wait until the Pleiku attacks before he could make a decision. It was
exactly what they were waiting for: something to go wrong. They all agreed that if
Washington was not doing something in Vietnam, horrible things would happen in the
near future.
Ibidem, 37-38.
Ibidem, 42.
94 Ibidem, 95.
92
93
48
On February 6, the North Vietnamese attacked the Pleiku barracks. Not many
Americans were hurt, nevertheless, it was seen as an act of aggression and a reason to
start operation Flaming Dart and later on operation Rolling Thunder. It was only a few
hours after the actual attack had taken place that Johnson and his advisors knew for sure
that they were going to attack some strategic points of the North Vietnamese. This was
the moment they had all been waiting for. Johnson said, “In summary, we have decided
to make the air strikes. Our strikes should be arranged so as to hit in daylight hours (…)
A final decision is needed within the hour.” 95
The final decision was about specific strategic targets in North Vietnam. The
decision was made within the hour and would not be withdrawn. From now on
withdrawal of the bombers was not an option anymore, because withdrawal would be a
sign to the communists that they were winning and the results in negotiations would be
negative for the Americans. Operation Flaming Dart was just the beginning, soon
Operation Rolling Thunder would follow and the bombing would continue under Nixon
until the end of the war. The first step in the quagmire had been taken.
First lets take a look at the analogy of Khong. In this case the Munich analogy, that
taught some of the decision makers in Washington that aggression should be met with
aggression. Hitler tried to take some new pieces of land, which in this case could be
compared to the attacks of the North Vietnamese on the Pleiku barracks; both were acts
of aggression. In the case of the Munich analogy it was said that they had made a wrong
decision by not stopping Hitler from his goal to annex Czechoslovakia. In order to avoid
the same mistake as the French and English had made in 1938, in 1965 they decided to
answer the attacks on the Pleiku barracks with operation Flaming Dart. They had
‘learned’ from history and all were sure how to react when the Vietnamese attacked.
Second question is how to evaluate this decision? All three models of Allison and
Zelikow focus on the individual or departments of individuals. The Rational Actor could
be the second best option, although there was not a certain concrete goal besides letting
the North Vietnamese know the American were not afraid. Model II and model III are not
applicable to this case because of the research factor that is important in these models.
Everybody agrees that bombing Vietnam was the best option and some ‘learned’ from
Munich, but no further research was done. This time the model of Irving Janis
Groupthink is the best for this case. In the Foreign Relations of the United States
95
Ibidem, 156-157.
49
documents there were almost no briefings of people around Washington agitated
against the plan of the eventual bombing plan made by Rusk, Taylor, McNamara and
Bundy. George Ball who might have been against this proposal, can’t be found in the
Foreign Relations of the United States documents as well. In this case I believe the
Munich analogy was very much alive during the months of January and February. With
the important key players believing in the Munich analogy, Groupthink is easy to
understand. All faced the same direction and like Janis explained there was hardly any
room for dissenters when the vast majority had made up their minds. They reinforced
each other thoughts; talking to each other they found out they all thought the same
which made the decision to execute operation Flaming Dart and Rolling Thunder even
stronger. Other minded thinking was not welcome and people probably would not have
dared to question the high ranked men around Johnson. The fact that operation Flaming
Dart was approved so fast after the Pleiku attacks also makes the analogy of Groupthink
stronger.
1965: Sending troops
The next step into the quagmire would be made soon as well. However on February 18 it
was still crystal clear that Johnson was not going to send any troops to Vietnam, he said
that, “he would rather talk than fight, but nonetheless it was terribly important that the
GVN not get the wrong impression that the U.S is seeking negotiations prematurely.” 96
The months of January and February were bad months for the administration of
Johnson, as his Great Society was not working out as planned and terrain was slowly lost
in Vietnam. Above all they didn’t know if the bombing increased the morale of the South
Vietnamese. So the three main architects of 1964, McNamara, Rusk and Bundy, kept
looking for new alternatives. In a long letter to the President, they recommended two
important things. The first was the ‘firing’ of Maxwell Taylor in Vietnam as ambassador.
Bundy said, “McNamara and I, if the decision were ours to make, would bring Taylor
back and put Alex Johnson in charge (…) Max has been gallant, determined, and
honorable to a fault, but he has also been rigid, remote and sometimes abrupt.” 97 The
last sentence was the most concrete thing they could say about Taylor, for bringing him
back to Washington. They didn’t show any real examples why Taylor needed to come
96
97
Ibidem, 327.
Ibidem, 403.
50
back home. Although a few pages later Bundy seemed to give the actual reason why they
wanted to get rid of Taylor: “A closely related question on escalation is whether it would
be useful right now to get a substantial allied ground force in place in the central and
northern part of Vietnam. Max Taylor is doubtful about this, but in the heat of discussion
last night Rusk, McNamara and I all thought it worth serious further exploration.” 98
Taylor was against escalation in Vietnam and remained against until his resignation in
July. To get what they needed, Bundy and McNamara needed to get rid of Taylor so they
could introduce combat troops to Johnson as a real option; they needed to get rid of
someone who disagreed.
This was also one of the first times combat troops were introduced as an option.
Knowing the risks of introducing combat troops to the public, Bundy wisely added: “So
our current plan is that there should be no paper work on this subject at all, but simply
some intensive discussion limited completely to the three of us and one subordinate
each.” 99 They knew Johnson was afraid of public opinion and so it seemed a few months
later, he had had good reasons to fear public opinion.
On March 8, the first 3500 combat forces went ashore at Da Nang to protect an air
base nearby. As it was made possible by his advisors to send in some marines, their task
was to protect the base and nothing else. From now there would be some pressure on
sending more troops who were allowed to leave their base and eventually look for the
enemy: search and destroy actions.
On March 26, during the National Security Council meeting, General
Westmoreland and Ambassador Taylor asked for another 10.000 troops. It seems that
this was foremost a request from Westmoreland since Taylor was already having his
question marks about the war at this time. During this meeting, like most of the time,
Johnson wasn’t concerned with the troop deployment but more with public opinion.
Only a few days later, on April 1 during a National Security Council meeting, Johnson
announced 20.000 more troops to be sent to Vietnam. Bundy added that, “Under no
circumstances should there be any reference to the movement of U.S. forces or other
future courses of action.” 100 This was a policy Johnson was familiar with and he agreed
with Bundy saying that during the 50’s there was no consent of Congress as well when
Ibidem, 404-405.
Ibidem.
100 Ibidem, 516.
98
99
51
troops were sent to Europe. 101 Johnson and his team made up their mind pretty quickly
if they decided to send another 20.000 more troops to Vietnam within less than a week.
On March 26, in the described National Security Council, General Wheeler told Johnson
that the demand for extra troops would be looked into as soon as Ambassador Taylor
was there: “The proposal to introduce U.S. combat troops will be looked at when General
Taylor arrives here next week.” 102 Bundy in his, what now seems a daily briefing, told
Johnson that one of his recommendations was, “An 18,000–20,000-man increase in US
military support forces to fill out existing units and supply needed logistic personnel.” 103
This action in Vietnam was called action number ‘D’ by Bundy, it seemed that action
number ‘B’, the Rowan recommendations, was more important. The Rowan
recommendations included the advice to start psychological warfare. Number ‘B’ didn’t
work out as planned while ‘D’ seemed later to be the more important decision of this
document. The way of presenting things to people is also an important to how people
will react to decisions made. The first thing you read will the most important one most
of the time, by mixing the important ones with the less essential ones, so it will be hard
to tell what is important to complete first.
There were no notes of Johnson meeting Taylor in what so ever kind of setting
except for the National Security Council held on April 1. Nevertheless, during this
meeting Johnson announced that he would send an additional 20.000 troops to Vietnam.
The discussion of sending more troops to Vietnam was no new discussion when General
Westmoreland asked for them, but there are no written documents in the Foreign
Relations of the United States papers that clear the air about the sudden decision by
Johnson to send these troops. I think the letter of Bundy gave the decisive blow for
Johnson.
By now there was no turning back for Johnson and his team of advisors; it was do
or die. Returning the troops home with no real demonstrable result in Vietnam would
probably mean no second term for Johnson in 1968 and Vietnam would become
communist within weeks. The trained South-Vietnamese troops were weaker in morale
than the Vietcong. If Johnson didn’t want to lose, he needed to send more troops every
month or so; he would do so until his resignation in 1968. Only one hope remained for
Ibidem, 515.
Ibidem, 484
103 Ibidem, 509.
101
102
52
Johnson in Vietnam: the hope for a quick peace settlement in favour of Johnson and his
team.
So in sending troops to Vietnam, Johnson entered the quagmire for good with no
option to return peacefully and full support of his home front. Indeed, it was Johnson’s
call to send troops to Vietnam and a few months later, expand the number. It was also
the Secretary of Defense McNamara who liked to demonstrate with statistics that the
Americans were winning in Vietnam. McNamara also fully agreed to send more troops to
Vietnam when Johnson asked for advice. When it came to the policy towards Vietnam,
Bundy and McNamara understood each other; they agreed on most cases. There was
only one difference when reading the Foreign Relations of the United States and that was
the number of times they took the time to write the President a memorandum. Bundy,
on the crucial moments, wrote Johnson a memorandum with his opinion almost daily. If
Bundy was writing to Johnson for someone else, he couldn’t resist the temptation to
write down his own opinion as well. For example, this was the case when he needed to
arrange a meeting between Taylor and Johnson.
A few things were remarkable. The first was a change of thinking; when
Washington needed to arrange the air strikes they all agreed; after the Pleiku attacks the
airstrikes had to be arranged. Sending troops seemed more difficult. Fewer
congressmen, secretaries and close friends around Johnson, advised to send troops to
Vietnam. Fewer people supported Johnson in his decision to send troops to Vietnam. The
way people thought about the War in Vietnam had changed.
The second remarkable thing was the position of McNamara and Bundy, and
more or less Rusk. I’m not so sure what Rusk really thought since he wanted to remain
‘friends’ with McNamara and in the documents he joined most meetings but you can’t
really find his specific ideas. Especially Bundy and McNamara became more important
to Johnson, it seemed he had put his faith in their hands.
I’m not calling three men a group because the big meetings were often attended
by more than ten men. These three men first convinced each other, and they were
important, but they were not even half way done convincing all the other advisors at the
National Security Councils. In that sense Rusk, Bundy and McNamara are not a group.
Model I, the Rational Actor, is applicable here since these meetings gave Johnson hardly
any alternatives, as Allison and Zelikow call it. Johnson kept asking but he never got
more information besides from Rusk, McNamara and Bundy.
53
I think this case can be placed in model II and model III. It can be placed in model
II since every individual had his own task; they tried to specialize people in certain
areas. The organizational culture was pre-programmed that important men like
McNamara and Bundy were always able to inform Johnson first before ‘lower’ standing
men were able to; they started with a lead. For example, Bundy sent memos to Johnson
daily and this influenced Johnson while discussing things about Vietnam in the National
Security Council. The organizational culture was structured thus that these men had an
important role and they knew it. I think they can also be placed within Allison’s earlier
mentioned quote of “Model III analysis”, which “begins with the proposition that
knowledge of the leader’s initial preferences is, by itself, rarely a sufficient guide for
explanation or prediction.” 104 Johnson was in doubt of sending troops, he kept asking for
risks rates and he feared for his Great Society, so he wanted to do everything as long as
his Great Society remained doable. In this case the first point of earlier explained
Separated institutions sharing power was the matter. In this scenario Johnson wasn’t
trying to negotiate between different secretaries to get the result he wanted but he
preferred to let the secretaries negotiate themselves. In this case, as seen earlier, they
managed to get Rusk along and down rated Taylor, so they were the only two major
players left behind who had already agreed with each other. It was a more complicated
game of what Allison called ‘sharing power’ and they played it well. As Secretary of
Defense and National Security Advisor they owned important positions to eventually
persuade other people with their perspectives about the war. It is important to notice
that they were not the only ones to think that sending troops would solve the problem in
Vietnam, as I explained they were important players to persuade Johnson in the end to
sign for their ideas; and so he did.
1965: The bombing pause
In April the decisions took another direction; a new option was added to the list of
getting to the negotiation table: the bombing pause. The Americans, South Vietnam and
North Vietnam tried to get a negotiable settlement for all parties. All three had good
reasons to stop this war immediately. Several countries had already tried to get these
parties to their table to solve the conflict; so far it hadn’t worked. Bundy was also busy
trying to figure out how negotiations would be completed most positively for the United
104
Allison, Essence of Decision 258.
54
States and so he summarized their options (cards): “We have three cards of some value:
our bombing of North Vietnam, our military presence in South Vietnam, and the political
and economic carrots that can be offered to Hanoi.” 105 Military presence was important
for the United States and it would be difficult to withdraw troops from Vietnam. If the
troops were to be withdrawn and negotiations would fail, all troops might have to
return again and that was not an option. The last option, the carrot as Bundy called it,
would only be an option if the negotiations succeeded; negotiations were first needed to
help Hanoi in the future. The middle option, the bombing of North Vietnam, needed to be
aborted before negotiations would start. The bombardments would be easily to abort
from day to day and also easily to be continued if the negotiations failed.
On April 6, the Joint Chief of Staff Wheeler explained to McNamara the effects of
operation Rolling Thunder so far: “The air strikes have not reduced in any major way the
over-all military capabilities of the DRV. Damage inflicted on the Army supply depots
and ammunition depots has, of course, reduced available supplies of certain military
items, but these losses should not be critical to North Vietnamese military
operations.” 106 It is remarkable that Wheeler, head of the military chiefs, saw the
‘negative’ effects of their bombings and indirectly he was wondering if continuation of
operation Rolling Thunder was clever. It was on the same day that Bundy had written
down the ideas of Johnson after their meeting with the National Security Council: “ We
should continue roughly the present slowly ascending tempo of Rolling Thunder
operations, being prepared to add strikes in response to a higher rate of VC operations,
or conceivably to slow the pace in the unlikely event VC slacked off sharply for what
appeared to be more than a temporary operational lull.” 107 McNamara in a letter to
Johnson seemed to agree with that position: “None of them expects the DRV/VC to
capitulate, or come to a position acceptable to us, in less than six months. This is because
they believe that a settlement will come as much or more from VC failure in the South as
from DRV pain in the North, and that it will take more than six months, perhaps a year or
two, to demonstrate VC failure in the South.” 108 McNamara understood the difficult
position America was already in and understood that the VC would not accept an easy
win for the Americans but he remained silent about an eventual bombing pause.
LaFantasie, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968 Vol. II 508.
Ibidem, 535.
107 Ibidem, 538.
108 Ibidem, 574.
105
106
55
On the same day, one of the first times we see Ball in action, he wrote Johnson a
memorandum about Vietnam. The memorandum was one of longest that can be found in
the Foreign Relations of the United States documents. He was, up until this moment, April
21, the first to have told to the President that a bombing pause might lead to a peaceful
and acceptable agreement for both the United States and Vietnam. Ball suggested how
this settlement could be achieved: “The kind of settlement that we may have reason to
hope for at the end of the road could contain the following elements:
1. All hostilities would be terminated. Hanoi would stop infiltrating men and equipment
and the Viet Cong would stop their guerrilla activities.
2. The United States would halt its bombing and both the South Vietnamese and the
United States would stop attacking the Viet Cong.” 109
On April 23, it was Bundy who concluded that after talks with several decision makers in
Washington (read McNamara and Rusk), he believed that “we should slow down our
bombing. We should do this without announcing it simply by suspending raids for two
or three days a week in some sort of pattern. We should also let Hanoi know that we are
doing this in order to improve the atmosphere for talks.” 110 Bundy didn’t say a word
about stopping the bombing; he only wanted to slow down the bombing to show the
good intentions of the United States. Nevertheless, it is clear that he read the
recommendations of Ball and tried to make them his own.
On May 13, 1965 the first bombing pause was a fact. It lasted for only six days and
gave the North-Vietnamese time to rebuild their important structures. It was the first of
six other bombing pauses.
The bombing pause can be attributed to George Ball. Up until April Ball wasn’t so
much involved in Vietnam. However, with the longest memorandum written to Johnson
in months, he seemed to be (back) in the game. Ball, normally a loner in Washington,
was this time backed up by Bundy and McNamara who stated to believe that a bombing
pause might work. It remains a question whether Johnson would have taken the advice
as well if Bundy and McNamara hadn’t taken the advice of Ball. In this case I think it was
Ball who triggered the discussion for the bombing pause.
It is clear that model I won’t go along with this scenario. There is no clear goal
before the bombing pause. This bombing pause seems to have come from nowhere and
109
110
Ibidem, 590.
Ibidem, 604.
56
an idea to change the course they were heading. Ball put some more effort in the idea
and tried to make it a realistic idea; eventually it would work out. However with no real
purpose and alternatives set before the bombing pause, model I is not applicable in this
case. Model II, with its different departments, is also not the right model. The different
departments that researched the scenario and then came up with their advice, was not
the case here. It was only Ball who put effort in the idea to research it, afterwards the
rest simply followed.
It was Ball’s power to persuade to get everybody onboard and so we place this
scenario in model III. By trying to get the President onboard he had an important player
with him. I don’t think Bundy and McNamara were persuaded by Ball’s memorandum
but they knew they needed to do something differently in Vietnam in order to change
the war. With everybody thinking the same and almost no friction between the men in
Washington it can also be placed within the model of Groupthink. Although Groupthink
assumes that some people don’t agree but prefer a harmonious solution. In this case
simply most of the important men had already agreed with each other and so Groupthink
was already there but in an other way Janis explains.
They must have thought the plan for a bombing pause might be a practical one.
Ball wasn’t the person to lobby around in Washington, trying to get support for his plan;
he hoped that key players would take his advice. Later, when Ball got more involved and
he turned against the war, he wouldn’t be so successful with his plans of retreat. This
was one of the first and last times, people in Washington would listen to Ball regarding
Vietnam.
Conclusion
The Vietnam War was a disastrous war on every front, for the Americans. The economic
help didn’t work as planned, the political help to stabilize the government didn’t work
either and the last option, bombing the North and sending troops, eventually didn’t
work as well. The last option, to bomb North Vietnamese strategic points, was the most
catastrophic for many people: both Vietnamese and Americans. Thousands of people
died because of the War in Vietnam. The Vietnamese people were used to fighting
foreign powers for centuries and in that light, the American soldiers were not new to the
Vietnamese. The people of Vietnam had fought several foreign powers over many
57
centuries like the Chinese, the French, the Japanese and the Americans; they knew what
it was like fighting foreign powers. They also fought each other in horrific civil wars, the
last with the help for the Americans. The Vietnamese were used to fighting a much
stronger opponent. Advisors like Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk and McGeorge Bundy
were more concerned with the lessons to be learned from their own history; the Munich
and the Korean War analogy. The conference of Munich taught that aggressors like Adolf
Hitler should be suppressed with aggression and the Korean war learned that if the
Americans sent troops to Vietnam, the Chinese might help the North; the last thing was
to be avoided at all costs. The Americans sent troops to Korea to show the North they
were not able the take over the Southern part of Korea. The advisors in Washington
didn’t care about the history of Vietnam and they especially didn’t care about their way
of fighting foreign powers. They were focused on their own Western war history.
We’ve encountered several men in these Vietnamese war years, all with their
own roles. I focused on the men in Washington with as main player, President Johnson.
With his remarkable posture, his loud voice and his unconventional way to
communicate with people, a nightmare for some men to pass the hall of his office. He
wanted to have everything researched before he made a decision and some decisions
took months, but we have seen that at the right moments, it would be crystal clear for
him to start operations like Rolling Thunder. His love for his Great Society and his hate
of the press were both worlds apart and summarize Johnson in one sentence. He had a
team of brilliant men around him. One of them was Robert McNamara who studied at
Harvard, who became the first Ford President from outside the Ford family and was ‘the
star of the staff’ during Kennedy period. Another man, Dean Rusk, who was more
relaxed and less visible than McNamara, was also counted among these brilliant men.
Rusk studied at Oxford and liked to sacrifice himself for the greater good. Just three
important men who helped Johnson make his decisions.
With model III, the Governmental Actor, I tried to research whether Johnson
made most of the decisions on his own whatever his advisors said, or that he listened to
their advice. In model III, the Governmental Politics model, the most important point for
this thesis was the power to persuade. For example, it could be that Johnson, in need of
his advisors, but with his own opinion, would persuade his advisors in order to get
support for his plans if needed. Model II focuses on the coordination of different
individuals and their departments. This coordination required standard operating
58
procedures in order to succeed. Model I was the simplest one and assumes that each
national government looks for the best option to research their goal. I placed Groupthink
by Janis as an opposite model for the other three models. In Groupthink Janis assumes
that each individual prefers a harmonious solution instead of a discussion that might
place one person outside the group. During this thesis I found out that in some scenarios
more models were reliable. For example, model III includes the power to persuade. If the
person is good at persuading people, everybody might get on board and perform the
task as discussed. However you can also say that this is a typical example of Groupthink
since the people who were persuaded were more in favour of a harmonious solution and
agreed with the man who had a solution for a certain case. In this scenario they all think
the same because they prefer a harmonious atmosphere and so it can be named
Groupthink as well.
The question was whether Johnson’s decisions can be placed in Allison’s and
Zelikow’s model III or not; the Governmental Politics model. I don’t think the decisions
made by Johnson can overall be placed within model III. Of the five scenarios I looked
into, only two are examples of model III. Too often another model is the outcome of a
scenario and, if it is a model III, it was not Johnson who was trying to get in favour with
his advisors but the other way around. It was Ball for example, who persuaded men in
Washington to start a bombing pause. It sometimes looked as if Johnson was indifferent
to what his decision makers were planning as long as it didn’t bother his Great Society.
Only the sending of American combat forces to Vietnam can be found in model III. There
are some more examples but this scenario was most clear. Bundy and McNamara, as
well as specific departments, were busy calculating the risks and options about sending
troops to Vietnam on a daily basis. The discussion received the most criticism of all
scenarios discussed and therefore it needed a decent research and a good persuasive
team: Bundy and McNamara. The decision to send combat troops was made quickly and
seems to be out of the blue. This can be counted within the unpredictable character of
Johnson.
Of all the models I have discussed model III does come closest but not close
enough to fit in Johnson’s decision making pattern. Johnson was certainly not a person
for Groupthink, he was not afraid to say what he thought even if that meant that he
would stand alone in a discussion. Model I doesn’t fit the decision making process as
well since the solutions were not calculated solutions to strategic problems most of the
59
time. Model II, that looks a bit like model III, assumes the power of the individual
departments inside Washington. Although each individual has his own department it is
more chaotic than structured like model II describes. The planned structure model II
describes can’t be found within Washington because decisions can be made out of the
blue and only a few departments operated like Johnson would have liked them to
operate; advising him on everything every day.
I think advisors around Johnson were the great architects of his decisions,
specifically McGeorge Bundy and Robert McNamara. McNamara was always portrayed
as one of the most important advisors of Johnson; I think he was portrayed as the most
important advisor in literature references. I acknowledge the importance of McNamara
on the decision making process during the Vietnam War. Although another man,
McGeorge Bundy, hasn’t received enough credit in my opinion. Bundy, who can’t be left
out, is also often named in references, although he doesn’t get enough attention in my
opinion. In the Foreign Relations of the United States he is the most important man for
Johnson. Especially in the first six months of 1965 he is of great importance to Johnson.
At certain moments he was sending a memo almost daily while McNamara was sending
a memo on an average of once a week. Most of the time, when Bundy wanted something
to happen in Vietnam, Johnson would agree. In all scenarios in this thesis Johnson and
Bundy agreed on what they had decided. McNamara also agreed with them but it was
harder to find his opinion in these documents. If I studied just these document, Bundy,
not McNamara, would be the most important man besides to Johnson. The constrain
behaviour (model II) of Johnson and Bundy was the same. They were both preprogrammed by all the events they happened to have witnessed.
The unreliability of Johnson makes it hard to place his government in one model.
As I said before, Johnson did exactly what he wanted. Although I have to say that he had
great trust in his advisors and listened to them most of the time. His unreliability is to be
found in his timing. Sometimes he could make a decision based on just one report and
sometimes he would have several meetings before taking action. Especially when he got
sucked more into the war, decisions seem to become more random and out of the blue.
Although I didn’t look into the whole story of McGeorge Bundy I think there is
ground for a new research. Bundy seems to have been one of the main architects of the
war in my opinion and doesn’t get enough attention he deserves concerning this war. I
think Bundy deserves more attention in literature than he has perceived so far. A new
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research might show the role of Bundy during the Vietnam years in a broader
perspective.
61
Bibliography
Primary sources
Glennon, John P., Edward C. Keefer and Charles S. Sampson, Foreign Relations of the
United States, 1964-1968 Vol. I, Washington 1992.
LaFantasie, Glenn W., Louis J. Smith, Ronald D. Landa and David C. Humphrey, Foreign
Relations of the United States, 1964-1968 Vol. II, Washington 1996.
Literature
Allison, Graham and Zelikow, Philip, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile
Crisis, 1st edition Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers 1971, 2nd edition (with Philip
Zelikow) 1999.
Cannon, Michael “Raising the stakes: The Taylor-Rostow Mission, Journal of strategic
studies 12, June 1989.
Caro, Robert A., The years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate, New York: 1st edition
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 2002, 1st vintage book edition 2003.
Caro, Robert A., The years of Lyndon Johnson: The passage of Power, New York: 1st edition
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 2012.
Fitzgerald, Frances, Fire in the lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam, New
York: 1st edition Little, Brown and Company 1972, 1st paperback Back Pay 2002.
Halberstam, David, The best and the brightest, New York: 1st edition Random House
Publishing Group 1969, 1st Ballantine books edition 1992.
Herring, George C., America’s longest war: the United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975,
New York: 1st edition McGraw-Hill Companies 1979, 4th edition 2002.
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Janis, Irving L., Groupthink, Boston: 1ste edition Houghton Mifflin 1982, 2nd edition June
1982.
Johnson, Lyndon B. ‘Presidential recordings of Lyndon B. Johnson’, http://presidential
recordings.edu, March 6 1965.
Khong, Yuen Foong Analogies at War, Korea Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam
decision of 1965, New Jersey: 1st edition Princeton University Press 1992.
March, James G. and Simon, Herbert A., Organizations, 1st edition Wiley 1958, 2nd edition
Cambridge 1993.
Neale, Jonathan The American War: Vietnam 1960-1975, London: 1st edition Bookmarks
2001.
63
Document 342 1964
SUBJECT
Courses of action for South Vietnam
The attached memorandum (Tab A) records briefly the consensus which has been
worked out with Max Taylor in recent days.2 This course of action is the best we can
design for the central purpose of thickening the thin fabric of the Khanh government in
the next two months. Everyone regards this as the first priority task, and the American
actions are all framed with this as their primary purpose. Our consensus now runs
against any plan to force substantial escalation before October, at the earliest. My own
guess is that unless there is a very marked change in Saigon, we will still be cautious a
month from now, although Bob McNamara is a little more aggressive than the rest of us.
This paper does not discuss long-range actions, but you should know that in the longer
perspective nearly all of us are agreed that substantially increased pressure against
North Vietnam will be necessary if we are not to face the prospect of a gradual but
increasingly inevitable break-up of our side in South Vietnam.
I also attach at Tab B a Special National Intelligence Estimate which was approved
today.3
McG. B.
Tab A
COURSES OF ACTION FOR SOUTH VIETNAM4
Bundy's paper, “Possible Courses of Action for South Viet-Nam,” initially drafted on
September 3 and revised on September 5, was similar to McNaughton's but had only five
sections: Analysis of the Present Situation, Actions To Be Taken in Any Event, Major
Additional Action We Might Consider Within South Viet-Nam, Major Additional Courses
of Action Outside South Viet-Nam, and Summary and Conclusions. (Johnson Library,
National Security File, Vietnam Country File, Vol. XVII, Memos) Both papers were
pessimistic about the situation in Vietnam and presented a range of possible U.S. actions
to improve it. The text printed here represents the consolidation and revision of the
Bundy and McNaughton drafts in light of the discussions on September 7 and 8.
The Situation
1. Khanh will probably stay in control and may make some headway in the next 2–3
months in strengthening the government (GVN). The best we can expect is that he and
the GVN will be able to maintain order, keep the pacification program ticking over (but
not progressing markedly), and give the appearance of a valid government.
2. Khanh and the GVN leaders are temporarily too exhausted to be thinking much about
64
moves against the North. However, they do need to be reassured that the US continues
to mean business, and as Khanh goes along in his government efforts, he will probably
want more visible US effort, and some GVN role in external actions.
3. The GVN over the next 2–3 months will be too weak for us to take any major
deliberate risks of escalation that would involve a major role for, or threat to, South
Vietnam, However, escalation arising from and directed against US action would tend to
lift GVN morale at least temporarily.
4. The Communist side will probably avoid provocative action against the US, and it is
uncertain how much they will step up VC activity. They do need to be shown that we and
the GVN are not simply sitting back after the Gulf of Tonkin.
Courses of Action
We recommend in any event:
1. US naval patrols in the Gulf of Tonkin should be resumed immediately (about
September 12). They should operate initially beyond the 12-mile limit and be clearly
dissociated from 34A maritime operations. The patrols would comprise 2–3 destroyers
and would have air cover from carriers; the destroyers would have their own ASW
capability.
2. 34A operations by the GVN should be resumed immediately thereafter (next week).
The maritime operations are by far the most important. North Vietnam is likely to
publicize them, and at this point we should have the GVN ready to admit that they are
taking place and to justify and legitimize them on the basis of the facts on VC infiltration
by sea. 34A air drop and leaflet operations should also be resumed but are secondary in
importance. We should not consider air strikes under 34A for the present.
3. Limited GVN air and ground operations into the corridor areas of Laos should be
undertaken in the near future, together with Lao air strikes as soon as we can get
Souvanna's permission. These operations will have only limited effect, however.
4. We should be prepared to respond on a tit-for-tat basis against the DRV in the event of
any attack on US units or any special DRV/VC action against SVN. The response for an
attack on US units should be along the lines of the Gulf of Tonkin attacks, against specific
and related targets. The response to special action against SVN should likewise be aimed
at specific and comparable targets.
The main further question is the extent to which we should add elements to the above
actions that would tend deliberately to provoke a DRV reaction, and consequent
retaliation by us. Examples of actions to be considered would be running US naval
patrols increasingly close to the North Vietnamese coast and/or associating them with
34A operations. We believe such deliberately provocative elements should not be added
65
in the immediate future while the GVN is still struggling to its feet. By early October,
however, we may recommend such actions depending on GVN progress and Communist
reaction in the meantime, especially to US naval patrols.
The aim of the above actions, external to South Vietnam, would be to assist morale in
SVN and show the Communists we still mean business, while at the same time seeking to
keep the risks low and under our control at each stage.
Further actions within South Vietnam are not covered in this memorandum. We believe
that there are a number of immediate impact actions we can take, such as pay raises for
the police and civil administrators and spot projects in the cities and selected rural
areas. These actions would be within current policy and will be refined for decision
during Ambassador Taylor's visit. We are also considering minor changes in the US air
role within South Vietnam, but these would not involve decisions until November.
66