Vietnam I
Grand Expectations: The United States 1945-1974
by James T. Patterson
Important Note: Take notes by writing down complete answers to the questions below; don’t
settle for the first, obvious response. Make sure you know the bold-faced names and terms. Mr.
Patterson included a lot of footnotes, many of them source citations; I have removed most of
these. If a note says “note in source” Patterson wrote it; otherwise I did. I also wrote the first
two paragraphs to provide some background information.
Questions
1. Do you have any questions?
2. Why was the United States so eager to help South Vietnam?
3. Why was it so important to Lyndon Johnson that he win in Vietnam?
4. What happened in the Tonkin Gulf in August 1964? Why was it significant to US involvement in Vietnam?
5. What is the “Cold War consensus” of which Patterson writes? Why is it significant to our history during this
period?
6. Why did Johnson make the decision to escalate US involvement in Vietnam?
[During World War II, Japan conquered France’s colonies in Indochina, including Vietnam.
After the war, France reclaimed Vietnam for itself, over the opposition of a nationalist movement
led by Ho Chi Minh. Despite its usual sympathy for anti-colonial forces, the United States sided
with France, which was our ally, in part because we were suspicious of Ho’s communism. After
the nationalists defeated France in 1954 at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, France withdrew, and
Vietnam was divided between the Communist North, led by Ho, and a non-Communist South led
by Ngo Dinh Diem. Elections to united the country under one government were planned for
1956, but they were canceled by the South Vietnamese, mostly because the South Vietnamese
and American governments were sure the Communists would win.
Over the next seven years South Vietnam fought a war against North Vietnamese forces and
against a South Vietnamese communist rebel group, the National Liberation Front (NLF). The
war was not going well, despite enormous shipments of American economic and military aid.
Starting in 1961 President John Kennedy sent increasing numbers of American “advisors” to
South Vietnam to train South Vietnamese troops. Despairing of the ineffective and corrupt
government led by Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States tacitly authorized a coup d’état led by
South Vietnamese military officers; Diem was killed. A few weeks later Kennedy was
assassinated in Dallas, and Lyndon Johnson became president.]
Like many Texans of his generation, Lyndon Johnson was brought up on the story of the
Alamo, where brave men had fought to the death to resist attack. As President he told people
that his great-great-grandfather had died there, although there was no substance to his claim.
Vietnam, he exclaimed to advisers on the National Security Council, "is just like the Alamo.”
This is one of many anecdotes that critics of LBJ relate about his approach to foreign policy.
They portray him as ignorant about the world, imperious, devious in the extreme, and quick on
the trigger. His handling of the war in Vietnam, they emphasize, demonstrated all these traits.
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When he sat down with Ambassador Lodge1 in the immediate aftermath of Kennedy's
assassination, he personalized the war. "I am not going to lose Vietnam, " he said. "I am not
going to be the President who saw Southeast Asia go the way China went." For many Americans
then and later the struggle in Vietnam was simply "Johnson's War."
While Johnson was more sophisticated about foreign policy than these anecdotes suggest,
there was no doubt that United States involvement in Vietnam escalated enormously under his
watch. At the end of 1963 roughly 17,000 American military "advisers" were stationed in
Vietnam. A year later there were 23,000. Huge escalation then ensued. Following an attack on
an American base in February 1965, United States planes began bombing North Vietnam. By
late March American marines were regularly engaged in combat. At the end of 1965 there were
184,000 American military personnel in Vietnam; by the end of 1966, 450,000; by early 1968,
more than 500,000. The number of American casualties (killed, wounded, hospitalized, and
missing) increased from 2,500 in 1965 to a cumulative total of 33,000 by the end of 1966, to
80,000 by the end of 1967, and to 130,000 by the end of 1968, the peak of American
involvement.2 American planes unleashed more bombs, many of them napalm, on Vietnam
between 1965 and the end of 1967 than they had in all theaters of World War II.3 Toxic chemical
defoliants such as Agent Orange, dropped to eradicate enemy cover, hit millions of acres of land
in Vietnam and destroyed one-half of the timberlands in the South. A motto of bombing crews
read "Only You Can Prevent Forests."4
By the beginning of 1968 American and South Vietnamese firepower had killed, according to
reasonably reliable estimates, some 220,000 enemy soldiers. This was some sixteen times the
number of Americans (13,500) slain in Vietnam during the same period.5 Civilian casualties,
although smaller as a percentage of total casualties than in the Korean War (where percentages
had hit record highs), were also numerous.6 It is estimated that approximately 415,000 civilians
1
Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. The son of Woodrow Wilson’s great nemesis, Lodge had lost his Senate seat in 1952 to a
rising politician named John F. Kennedy. In 1960 Lodge was the Republican vice-presidential nominee on Richard
Nixon’s ticket, and again Lodge was defeated by Kennedy. In 1963 Kennedy appointed his erstwhile opponent to be
ambassador to Vietnam. It was a different political time.
2 From August 1964 until the end of American involvement in January 1973, the United States suffered 47,356
battlefield deaths in the Vietnam War, compared to 33,629 in the three years of the Korean War. The number
wounded was 270,000, compared to 103,284 in Korea. Other war-related American deaths in Vietnam totaled
10,795, and in Korea, 20,617. Greatly improved medical procedures held down the number of American deaths in
Vietnam, which were approximately 1/2, per year, of the number of American deaths in Korea. (Note in source.)
3 By 1970 the total tonnage of bombs dropped by United States planes in Vietnam exceeded the tonnage dropped in
all previous wars in human history. (Note in source.)
4 A joke on an old Smoky the Bear public-service announcement tag line that “only you can prevent forest fires.”
5 Later estimates, as reported in the New York Times, Nov. 30, 1992, conclude that 1.5 million Vietnamese died in
the war between 1964 and 1973, of whom 924,000 were North Vietnamese and their allies from the South, 415,000
were civilians, and 185,000 were South Vietnamese soldiers. Christian Appy, Working-Class War: America's
Combat Soldiers and Vietnam (Chapel Hill, 1993), 16-17, gives somewhat higher numbers, estimating total
Vietnamese deaths, 1961-75, at between 1.5 and 2 million and noting that hundreds of thousands of Cambodians and
Laotians were also killed during these years, as were smaller numbers of Australians, New Zealanders, South
Koreans (c. 4,000 deaths), Thais, and Filipinos (SEATO allies) who fought alongside the South Vietnamese and the
Americans. An oft-cited grand total of deaths, 1961-75, is 3 million. (Note in source.)
6 Robert Divine, "Vietnam Reconsidered," Diplomatic History, 12 (Winter 1988).79-93. Civilians were 28 percent
of all deaths in the Vietnam War, compared to 40 percent in World War II and 70 percent in the Korean War. There
was much more bombing of large urban populations in both World War II (as of Dresden, Tokyo, or Hiroshima) and
in the Korean War than in the Vietnamese conflict. (Note in source.)
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were killed during the ten years of American involvement in the war. Roughly one-third of the
people of South Vietnam fled their homes as refugees at one time or another during these years.
The escalation did not deter the enemy. By mid-1964 the North Vietnamese under Ho Chi
Minh and his chief general, Vo Nguyen Giap, had assumed control of most military operations in
the South, thereby transforming the character of the war. They relied in part on guerrilla tactics,
many of them conducted by southern allies in the National Liberation Front, and increasingly as
of late 1965 on conventional pitched battles in which the North Vietnamese army ordinarily had
a substantial edge in manpower. These engagements, as casualty figures indicated, cost them
dearly: they lost approximately a million troops during the war. The United States enjoyed an
enormous edge in firepower, it controlled the air, and its soldiers—contrary to later accusations
of ineptitude—fought well, especially before 1969. American soldiers won the majority of such
battles. But Ho Chi Minh's losses were far from fatal. North Vietnam had a rapidly growing
population, which in 1965 totaled around 19 million people (as opposed to 16 million in the
South), and some 200,000 young men came of fighting age each year during the war. As many
as were needed were thrown into the effort. The North also received substantial military aid
from both the Soviet Union and China (some $2 billion between 1965 and 1968), but they relied
above all on themselves and on the NLF in the South.7 Ho Chi Minh ran a dictatorial system that
he employed ruthlessly to outlast the imperialist invaders, from the world's most powerful
country, and to demand nothing less than an outcome that would ultimately unite Vietnam under
his control. More than any other factor, the unyielding determination of the enemy, both from
the North and from Ho's supporters in the South, wore down the American commitment, which
proved to be far less resolute, and foiled Johnson's efforts.
JOHNSON DID NOT ESCALATE the war because he was temperamentally a warmonger. Unlike
Kennedy, he had never demonstrated much interest in foreign policy or in the glamor of Special
Forces, Green Berets, or "flexible response." Cloak-and-dagger intrigue did not appeal to him.
When he heard in November 1963 about secret American efforts to sabotage Cuban installations,
he ordered them stopped, even though the CIA informed him that Castro was promoting a coup
in Venezuela.8 LBJ also sought to pursue the uneasy détente that Kennedy and [Soviet leader
Nikita] Khrushchev had been developing in late 1963. Throughout his administration he took
great care not to make sudden moves that might provoke either the Soviet Union or China, which
remained at loggerheads.
LBJ's policy of escalation in Vietnam, moreover, was neither careless nor precipitous.
Contrary to some historical accounts, the United States did not get bogged down in a "quagmire"
because Johnson waded into a swamp without looking where he was going. Johnson and his top
advisers, to be sure, did not understand the resolve and resourcefulness of Communist
revolutionaries, and they never imagined the morass that ultimately swallowed the American
effort. But he was well aware of the political and military deterioration afflicting the government
of the South in 1964. By mid-year enemy forces controlled 40 percent of the land and 50 percent
7
American soldiers commonly referred to the military side of the NLF derogatorily as the Viet Cong or Vietcong, or
VC, shorthand terms for "Vietnamese Communist." (Note in source.)
8 This order, however, did not prevent the CIA from continuing to explore ways of assassinating Castro. These
explorations continued in 1965. (Note in source.)
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of the people in South Vietnam. The so-called Ho Chi Minh Trail, an elaborate network of roads
(some of them in Cambodia and Laos) facilitating infiltration from the North, could handle
trucks and other heavy equipment. Johnson, deciding whether to escalate, had solid intelligence
on these developments. Moreover, a few of his advisers, including Undersecretary of State
George Ball and Maxwell Taylor (whom Johnson named to replace Lodge as ambassador)
warned him in 1964 and early 1965 that large-scale engagement of American troops was unlikely
to accomplish much. So did informal advisers such as Senate Democratic leader Mike
Mansfield. CIA officials (to whom Johnson paid little attention) said much the same, as they had
since 1961. Unlike Kennedy, who until mid-1963 had given the situation in Vietnam little
attention, Johnson understood that it demanded constant consideration and that escalation of
American involvement carried with it imposing dangers. For this reason—and because he
wanted nothing to disrupt his chances for election in 1964—Johnson increased American aid to
South Vietnam but otherwise said little concerning the conflict during his first fourteen months in
office.
Still, Johnson's personal approach to policy-making did much to promote escalation. As his
comments to Lodge in November 1963 revealed, LBJ perceived Vietnam, like civil rights, as a
litmus test of his ability to carry on the policies, as he saw them, of his martyred predecessor.
Kennedy's support of the coup against Diem, he thought, committed the United States to the
preservation of successive governments in South Vietnam.9 From the start LBJ worked hard to
retain Kennedy's foreign policy and defense team, succeeding in persuading McNamara,10
Rusk,11 and National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy to stay on. All became top advisers on
Vietnam, Rusk for the remainder of his administration. Holding firm in Vietnam would not only
carry on Kennedy's policies; it would also show that Johnson could be counted on to sustain the
international credibility of the United States. This, he thought, was vital. He told Lodge, "Go
back and tell those generals in Saigon that Lyndon Johnson intends to stand by our word.”
Johnson's handling of the war also reflected an inner insecurity that he felt when dealing with
issues of foreign policy. Having given little attention to such matters during his political career,
he relied heavily as President, especially at first, on advisers. These with few exceptions were
tough-minded Kennedy men who remembered what appeasement had done in the 1930s and who
demanded that the United States remain firm. Munich, symbol of appeasement, must not happen
again. Some, like Rusk, believed that Ho Chi Minh was the agent of a world Communist
conspiracy, in this case run by China. McNamara, who especially impressed Johnson, glowed
with confidence about the technological and military capacity of the United States. Johnson
shared many of these beliefs, and he easily absorbed the determination of these and other
advisers in 1964. In later years he never admitted that they—and he—could have been wrong.
He clung resolutely—critics said blindly—to the course that he started steering early in his
presidency.
9
Ngo Dinh Diem had been the authoritarian leader of South Vietnam until he was murdered in a revolt led by
officials of the South Vietnamese military. US Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. had given tacit encouragement
to the coup plotters. Diem was killed just a few weeks before the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
10 Robert McNamara (1916-2009) was Secretary of Defense from 1961 until his resignation in February 1968.
11 Dean Rusk (1909-1994) was Secretary of State. Before taking up his post in Washington he lived in Scarsdale.
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Domestic political considerations figured especially heavily in Johnson’s thinking about the
war. Like Kennedy, he feared the backlash that might whip him if he seemed "soft" on Vietnam.
Repeating "lessons" from history, he recalled:
I knew that if we let Communist aggression succeed in taking over South Vietnam there
would follow in this country an endless national debate—a mean and destructive debate
—that would shatter my Presidency, kill my administration, and damage our
democracy. I knew that Harry Truman and Dean Acheson had lost their effectiveness
from the day that Communists took over in China. I believed that the loss of China had
played a large role in the rise of Joe McCarthy. And I knew that all these problems,
taken together, were chickenshit compared with what might happen if we lost Vietnam.
The significance of LBJ's personal traits accounted for the growing belief, especially by antiwar activists, that Vietnam was "Johnson's War." His critics are correct in pointing to the role of
these traits and in arguing that Johnson, commander-in-chief until 1969, possessed the ultimate
power to stem the tide of escalation. He was the last, best, and only chance for the United States
to pull itself out of the quagmire.
Critics of Johnson are also accurate in pointing to his deceitfulness about events in Vietnam.
As later revelations showed, this became significant as early as his handling of the so-called
Tonkin Gulf crisis of August 1964. Following brief fighting between the United States
destroyer Maddox and North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the gulf on August 1, Johnson said
nothing to the American people. But the engagement riled him, and he sent a second destroyer,
the C. Turner Joy, into the gulf to help the Maddox resume operations. It is clear that while he
was not trying to provoke another fight, he was not trying to avoid one either. When he received
reports of further confrontations in the gulf on August 4, he announced that the enemy had fired
on the two destroyers. In retaliation he ordered five hours of American air attacks on enemy
torpedo boat bases and nearby oil storage dumps. One American airman was killed in the action.
The President also took advantage of the encounters to call on Congress to authorize him as
commander-in-chief to use "all necessary measures" to "repel any armed attacks against the
forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression" in the area. Congress, responding
with patriotic fervor, approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, as it was called, with only
desultory debate. The votes were 416 to 0 in the House and 88 to 2 (Senators Ernest Gruening of
Alaska and Wayne Morse of Oregon) in the Senate. The resolution, wide open in its grant of
congressional power, indicated the power of the Cold War consensus in the United States.
Johnson, who never asked Congress for a declaration of war, later cited it as authority for
escalation far beyond anything the lawmakers could then have imagined.
What really happened in the Tonkin Gulf, however, was much more mysterious than Johnson
had let on. A brief naval engagement had indeed occurred in the gulf on August 1, leading North
Vietnamese patrol boats to launch torpedoes at the Maddox. Fire from the Maddox and
American carrier planes had badly damaged one of the boats. Events on August 4 were much less
clear. As one of the destroyer commanders reported to McNamara at the time, it could not be
ascertained that the enemy had fired torpedoes. Blips on radar screens—the basis for reports of
attack—may have been caused by foul and freakish weather conditions. No American ships
were hit, no men wounded or killed. McNamara and Johnson nonetheless chose to use the
reports as pretext for a show of toughness that they had been seeking to make for some time.
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Johnson's goal was not to secure a resolution enabling him to wage full-scale war, either then or
later. Rather, it was to put the North Vietnamese on notice that the United States was determined
to fight back. It was also to show the American people that he was every bit as tough as, if not
tougher than, Barry Goldwater, his opponent in the election campaign. To achieve these ends he
resorted to deceit. He was to do so again and again in the ensuing fifty-three months of his
administration.
In hailing the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution Johnson issued a statement that revealed much
about his approach to the war in Vietnam. "Let no one doubt for a moment," he declared, "that
we have the resources and we have the will to follow this course as long as it will take us." Few
statements of the postwar era better expressed the grand expectations that America's liberal
leaders maintained at that high tide of national optimism. Johnson, along with many of the
American people, seemed to believe that the United States could build a Great Society at the
same time it was fighting a war. It could afford both guns and butter. America could do it all.
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