Vietnam Wars, 1945-1975
How six Presidents escalated U.S.
involvement in a nation-building
project in Indochina that ended in a
foreign policy debacle
Is your Cell Phone Turned On?
• Nguyen Tat Thanh a.k.a. Ho
Chi Minh says
Comrades,
turn off your
cell phone
Themes and Topics
• Empire
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Military and Diplomatic Strategies for Global Management, 1953-1963
John F. Kennedy's Vietnam Escalation
Johnson's War
Retreat from Truman Doctrine in 1960s and 1970s
• Role of Government
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The Cold War: CIA Covert Operations in the Third World, 1950-1963
The Cold War: The Vietnam War, 1953-1963
Nixon's "realpolitik" and Detente Foreign Policies
Political Impact of Watergate on American Politics
Congressional Challenges to the "Imperial Presidency"
• Cultural Change
 Anti-war movement
• Social and Cultural Outsiders
 The New Left
Central Analytical Questions
• The Vietnam War can be understood as five turning points
 #1 Why did the FDR and Truman abandon the anti-colonialism position
of the U.S. and support French colonialism in Indochina?
 #2 After the French defeat in 1954, why did Eisenhower reject the
Geneva Peace Accords and instead create South Vietnam government?
 #3 Faced with a growing insurgency against the American supported
government of South Vietnam, why did Kennedy increase indirect
military support?
 #4 Why did Johnson escalate the direct American military presence in
South Vietnam after 1964?
 #5 Why did Nixon’s “Peace with Honor” fail to prevent the US from
losing the Vietnam War to the Vietnamese?
• What was the impact of the Vietnam War on American society?
Ho or France?: US policy, 19451949
“Emperor”
Bao Dai
Described
By one
historian
as a
“Stooges
Stooge”
• First Turning Point involved
whether US would support
colonial power France or
national independence
movement in Vietnam
• Debate with State
Department
 Ho is a Commie
 Ho is a nationalist and commie
 Resolved by Cold War need to
get French support in Europe
• France established control of
Vietnam in 1945
 Install Bao Dai as leader
First Indochina War,
1945-1954
Some Vocabulary
Attachi e sbarchi=attacks
Principali battaglie=
principal battles
Notice: Understanding this slide
requires a reading ability in Italian
Balance of Forces
Vietminh military and political
strategies: integrated
French and Vietnamese military
strategy
Military Strategy: Flexible, attack
only when ready, use guerrilla
tactics with 350,000 troops
80,000 French soldiers
20,000 Foreign Legionnaires
(including 10K Nazis)
100s of 1000s of peasant supporters 48,000 French Colonials
Political strategy: use communist
party to initiate land reform to win
peasant support
300,000 Pro-French Vietnamese
Catholics
Communist China supports:
weapons US had given to
Nationalist China
US military support, 1950-1954:
$1B
Dien Bien Phu, 1953-54
Geneva Accords, 1954
• France and the Vietminh
negotiated a peace treaty
in July 1954
• Agreement provisionally
divided Vietnam into two
military zones, North and
South, at the 17th parallel
• Elections were scheduled
to unite the country in
1956
• The Elections were never
held
Second Turning Point: CIA Covert
Operation
• We can do better!
• Philippine example
• 1954, covert
operations begin in
South Vietnam in
violation of the
Geneva Accords
Major General Edward Lansdale
Nation Building
• Consolidating control
• Eisenhower’s reasons
for intervention
 Economic reasons
 Political reasons
 Strategy reasons
Ike, Dulles, and Diem
Ngo Dinh Diem
• Satisfied US
requirement that
leader be a nationalist
and anti-communist
• Diem as Catholic,
from Vietnamese elite
• Powerful supporters in
US including Senator
John F. Kennedy
Ngo Dinh Diem
What Kind of Ruler?
• Government by
repression
• Village opposition
• US indirect military
intervention
• National Liberation
Front formed
• Combat begins
Protracted Guerrilla War
• Peasant villages were often
pro-Vietcong and supported
resistance to the US invasion
by elaborate tunnel systems
under villages
• The village-tunnel link
required removal of peasants
from the countryside through
anti-insurgency policies like
the Strategic Hamlet
Program and Free-fire zones
Third Turning Point: Kennedy and
Vietnam
• Kennedy’s Cold War
Credentials
• Kennedy’s refused direct
military intervention but
nevertheless escalated US
involvement
JFK Briefing March 1961
 Established MACV
 Increased military advisers
 Initiated Operation Ranch
hand
 Deployed two helicopter
companies used to initiate the
Strategic Hamlet Program
War on the Peasantry
• Kennedy’s refused direct
military intervention but
nevertheless escalated US
involvement
 Deployed two helicopter
companies used to initiate the
Strategic Hamlet Program
Opposition to Diem Grows
• Diem’s brother, Nhu,
Archbishop of the
Vietnam Catholic Church
Buddhists
commit
selfimmolation
in 1963
 Religious tensions
increasingly played a part in
the conflict between Diem’s
regime and the largely
Buddhist (and noncommunist) population of
South Vietnam
 Kennedy weighed his
options
Kennedy and Diem
Generals who cooperated
with the US in overthrowing
and killing Diem
• Kennedy’s plan to
overthrow Diem in Fall
1963
• Diem’s attempted
counter-move
• Death of Diem
• Assassination of
Kennedy
Post Diem Instability
• After Diem’s
assassination, military
Junta try political
approach
• On January 30, 1964,
the “Pentagon’s Coup”
puts a pliant new
leadership in power
under Gen. Khanh
• Lyndon Johnson’s
Vietnam dilemmas
Duong Van Minh
General Nguyen
Khanh
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
• Gulf of Tonkin Affair,
August 2 and 4, 1964
• August 7, 1964, Senate
and House of
Representatives in a joint
resolution supported and
approved the measures
taken by the President to
repel armed attack
against US forces and to
prevent further
aggression
On August 2, USS Maddox was on an
intelligence-gathering mission thirty
miles off North Vietnam's coast.
Fourth Turning Point: Direct Military
Intervention
• Johnson’s leadership
style: suppress dissent
within his inner circle
• Hawks get their way
• Johnson’s private
doubts
Architects of Escalation: Sec.
State, Dean Rusk, LBJ, and
Sec. Defense, Robert McNamara
Bombing Campaign
Walt Whitman Rostow
“the poet of bombing?”
• Architect of Bombing
• Bombing as
“calibrated escalation”
• Bombs and Leaflets!
• Restraints on Bombing
• Why didn’t bombing
succeed?
Guerrilla War/Conventional War
• As the US escalated,
so did the Vietnamese
 Growth of US ground
troops
 Note US failure to
attract commitment of
allies
 After 1963, the North
Vietnamese regular
army played an
increasingly important
role in the fighting
Rise in Urban Terrorism
• Target Saigon: Called Bombsville
 36 month campaign, May 1963-May 1966
 VC urban guerrillas bomb US billets and US Embassy
 Dramatize security crisis and undermined claims
GSVN enjoyed broad support from the urban
population
• LBJ’s responses
 Bombers drove U.S. to launch Operation Rolling
Thunder in February 1965
 Construct secure military base outside Saigon
New Spin on the War
• Stopping International
Communist Aggression
 Two Vietnams
 Invasion
 Containment
• The Government
“Credibility Gap”
• Other perspectives:
 Civil war
 War for national
independence?
Secret Government Analysis
Central Intelligence Agency Estimates of Vietcong
Strength in South Vietnam, 1963-1966
Year
Percentage of Villages
under Vietcong Control
1963
50%
1966
60%
Source: Pentagon Papers
Rise of the New Left
• The Student Left
• 1962 Port Huron
Statement
• “Revisionist” Critique
of US Foreign Policy
 C. Wright Mills and
the “Power Elite”
 William A. Williams
and the “Tragedy of
American Diplomacy”
William Appleman Williams
Senate Democrats Oppose War
• Senate Democrats
investigated the
President of their own
party beginning in
1966
• Critics, centered in the
Senate Foreign
Relations Committee,
included Fulbright,
Morse, Gruen,
Kennedy, Mansfield
Sen. J. William Fulbright
Tet Offensive
• Tet: Chinese and
Vietnamese New Year
• Vietcong take war to
cities of the South
• Tet Offensive for VC
 Military defeat
 Political victory
• US Military response
LBJ Calls its Quits
• Decision to withdraw
from the 1968
Presidential race
• End to escalation
• End to bombing
• Call for peace
negotiations
Election of 1968
House and Senate Results
Complex Spectrum of Options in
the 1968 Election
Diplomatic/
Military Victory
Diplomatic/
Military Defeat
Negotiated
Peace
No
Negotiations
Troop
Withdrawal
Troop
Escalation
Humphrey
Nixon
Wallace
Nixon and Kissinger: Turn 5
• Who was Henry
Kissinger?
• What was the plan
they shaped to bring
“peace with honor”?
Norman
Rockwell-like
Nixon above;
Nixon
and Kissinger
at left
Origins of the Watergate Scandal
• A secret bombing
campaign against the Ho
Chi Minh trail was leaked
to the press in 1969
• To plug the leak, Nixon
and Kissinger ordered
Chief of Staff, H.R.
Haldeman to form a black
bag group that became
known as “the plumbers”
• The plumbers bugged
Kissinger’s staff to
identify the leaker
H.R. Haldeman
Invasion of Cambodia I
• To counter the
effectiveness of North
Vietnamese use of
staging areas in
Cambodia, Nixon
launched an
“interdiction” invasion
of Cambodia in June
1970
Invasion of Cambodia II
• Overthrow of Prince
Sihanouk’s “neutral”
Cambodian government
• Pro-Western Government
• Cambodia invasion
• Civil War in Cambodia
President Nixon points to the
 Lon Nol
 Khmer Rouge
“Parrot’s Beak” region of
Cambodia, said to be the
Communists “Pentagon East”
Nixon Triangulates
• Détente and the
Vietnam War
 Question: How to
reduce the possibility
of a wider war if the
US increased its
bombing of North
Vietnam?
 Answer: Negotiate
with the Communist
giants!
The anti-communist turns
to “Realpolitik”
Project Linebacker
• SVN President Thieu
and secret US
negotiations with
NVN
• Promise of Airpower
• Thieu’s skepticism
• Christmas Bombing,
1972
Paris Peace Treaty, 1973
• Outline of the
agreement
 US withdrawal within
60 days of treaty
(troops and bases)
 US POWs returned
 No North Vietnamese
troop withdrawal
 National Council on
Reconciliation
 National Elections
Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho
End of the South Vietnam Regime
• Nixon’s promise to
SVN President Thieu
• Nixon’s resignation
• Congress cut in funding
• Final assault
• End of the South
Vietnamese regime
Last Helicopter Out
2nd Indochina
War, 1960-75
Note: Knowledge
of some Italian
required to
understand this
slide
Challenging the Imperial
Presidency?
• Whistleblowers and the Free Press reassert
their responsibilities to inform the citizenry
 Pentagon Papers (1971)
• Congress only inadequately reasserts its
constitutional authority
 Nixon Resignation
 War Powers Act (1974)
 Freedom of Information Act (1974)
Critical Thinking Question
• Why was it at every major turning point in
the Vietnam intervention, American leaders
chose to escalate the intervention?
Conclusions
• Vietnam War and the “Death” of Cold War
Orthodoxies
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Bi-polar World?
International Communist Conspiracy?
Munich Analogy?
Domino Doctrine?
US security perimeter?
• Vietnam War “Syndrome” and the
challenge of the new militarism