United States History

XXV

Foreign Policy, Vietnam War, and Watergate

In the 1960s the United States remained committed to Cold War goals and sought to stem the spread of Communism around the globe. Continuing the policy of containment, the United States sent more and more troops to Vietnam. There, bogged down in jungle fighting and bombing campaigns, the United States became enmeshed in a long and costly war. When the United States finally left the Vietnamese to determine their own fate in the early 1970s, a near-impeachment crisis increased Americans’ mood of skepticism and distrust of government.

A

Kennedy Administration and the Cold War

In the early 1960s, President Kennedy vigorously pursued the Cold War policy of containment. He expanded U.S. aid to other nations, boosted the size of the armed forces, stockpiled missiles, and strove to end Soviet influence in Cuba, just 90 miles off the tip of Florida. In 1959 a revolution in Cuba brought Fidel Castro, a leftist, to power. When Castro took control, he implemented policies designed to eliminate differences between social classes in Cuba. These policies included confiscating large land holdings and seizing businesses that belonged to wealthy Cubans and U.S. firms. Concerned about Communist influence, U.S. officials were wary of Castro. In 1961 a force of Cuban exiles, trained and supplied by the United States, invaded Cuba in an attempt to topple Castro. They failed, and the Bay of Pigs invasion was a fiasco.

Tensions increased between the United States and Cuba. To deter further U.S. interference in Cuba, Castro sought economic and military assistance from the USSR. In 1962 the United States discovered that Khrushchev had set up nuclear missile bases in Cuba from which rocket-powered missiles could be launched. Kennedy faced a crisis: To destroy the bases might lead to world war; to ignore them risked an attack on the United States. In October 1962 Kennedy demanded that the USSR remove the missiles, and after a few days of suspense, the Soviets agreed to do so.

The Cuban missile crisis was a close call. Teetering on the brink of nuclear war, both superpowers leaped back in alarm. Afterward, Kennedy and Khrushchev established a telephone hot line, and in 1963 they signed the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that banned nuclear tests in the air and in the water. But the Cold War rivalry continued. The United States and the USSR now vied for control in Asia.

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Cold War warriors in the United States believed that Communist aggression posed a threat in Asia. They especially feared a Communist takeover of Vietnam. If Vietnam fell, they believed, Communism would engulf all of Southeast Asia. Even in the 1940s, President Truman provided economic and military aid to prevent the growth of Communist power in what was then French Indochina. When France withdrew from the area in 1954, the Geneva Accords divided Vietnam into two segments: North Vietnam, ruled by the Communist Viet Minh; and South Vietnam, controlled by non-Communist allies of the French.

The United States supported non-Communist South Vietnam and in subsequent decades increased its commitment to the region. Under Eisenhower, from 1955 to 1961, America sent economic aid to South Vietnam. In 1960 Communists and nationalists in South Vietnam formed the National Liberation Front (NLF), often referred to as the Viet Cong (a label attached by its foes). The NLF was organized to challenge South Vietnam’s president, Ngo Dinh Diem, who ruled from 1955 to 1963, and to foster unification.

Kennedy continued Eisenhower’s efforts in Vietnam by tripling American aid to South Vietnam and by expanding the number of military advisers from about 700 to more than 16,000. In 1963 the United States approved a coup led by South Vietnamese military officers to overthrow Diem, who was killed. A few weeks later, Kennedy was assassinated and Lyndon B. Johnson became president. Johnson inherited the problem of U.S. commitment to South Vietnam, where Communist insurgents were gaining strength.

B

Johnson and Vietnam

Johnson was in a dilemma. If he increased American military aid to Vietnam, he would have to divert funds from his Great Society programs, and he might prod China into war. If he withdrew American aid, however, he risked the politically damaging charge that he was “soft” on Communism. Most important, Johnson did not want to be the first American president to lose a war. He enlarged the war in Vietnam.

After an allegedly unprovoked attack on U.S. warships in the Gulf of Tonkin off North Vietnam in August 1964, Johnson authorized limited bombing raids on North Vietnam. At the administration’s request, Congress then offered an almost unanimous resolution, known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, that enabled the president to use military force in Vietnam. In 1965, after a landslide victory in the 1964 election—when voters endorsed his platform of domestic reform and peace abroad—Johnson again escalated American involvement. By 1968 more than 500,000 troops were in Vietnam, and the United States had begun heavy bombing of North Vietnam.

The United States never declared war on North Vietnam or made a total commitment to winning the war. Vietnam remained a limited war, one in which the United States purposely refrained from employing all its military strength. The American commander, General William Westmoreland, sought to inflict heavy losses on the North Vietnamese and to destroy their morale. But the North Vietnamese were tenacious. In January 1968 they launched a massive attack known as the Tet Offensive, which severely damaged U.S. forces and reached the American embassy compound in the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon. South Vietnam and the United States finally turned back the Tet Offensive, but with heavy losses. Americans could not see an end to the war, and its costs, both economic and human, rose alarmingly.

C

The Anti-Vietnam War Movement

By the start of 1968, Johnson encountered mounting opposition to the war. An antiwar movement had arisen in 1964 and 1965 as Johnson began to escalate American involvement in Vietnam. In 1965 students and teachers at the University of Michigan held one of the first campus teach-ins to spread information about the war. Teach-ins soon were held at many colleges and universities. Antiwar protests evoked massive support among draft-age youth, half of them college students. Chanting activists disrupted draft boards, burned draft cards, occupied campus buildings, and marched on the Pentagon (see Anti-Vietnam War Movement).

The Johnson administration faced political critics as well. Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright began to hold hearings that questioned why the United States was fighting in Vietnam. Fulbright stopped supporting Johnson when he learned that the president had exaggerated enemy aggression at the Gulf of Tonkin. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara called the bombing campaign a failure and left his post in 1968. European allies also criticized the American role in Vietnam.

At home, the war generated intense debate. “Hawks” assailed the policy of limited war and favored an all-out effort to defeat Communism in Vietnam. Some contended that politicians prevented the military from winning the war, or that military leaders had no strategy for victory. Others held that the antiwar movement stifled support for the war, ruined morale, and undercut the military effort. “Doves,” in contrast, believed that the United States should never have become involved in Vietnam. The conflict, they argued, was essentially a civil war, and contrary to containment doctrine, its outcome was irrelevant to American security. To some critics, the war was unwinnable, and stalemate was the best foreseeable outcome. In any case, doves argued, the United States should negotiate with North Vietnam to end the war quickly.

By 1968 antiwar sentiment affected electoral politics. Challenging Johnson for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota campaigned against the war. McCarthy roused fervent support among the young, and Vietnam swiftly became the major issue of the 1968 presidential race. Reconsidering his earlier policies, Johnson limited bombing in Southeast Asia and initiated peace talks with Hanoi and the NLF. After he was challenged by McCarthy in the New Hampshire primary, Johnson decided not to seek reelection and withdrew from the race. The president became a political casualty of the Vietnam War.

In 1968 an aura of crisis grew with the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., in April and of Senator Robert F. Kennedy in June. In Chicago during the summer of 1968, violence erupted when police attacked antiwar protesters at the Democratic National Convention. In the election that fall, Richard Nixon defeated Johnson’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey, and third party candidate George Wallace.

D

Nixon and Vietnam

Under Nixon, American troop strength in Vietnam contracted but the war effort expanded. Nixon began a program of Vietnamization, which meant decreasing the number of U.S. troops, offering only advice and assistance, and turning the war effort over to the South Vietnamese. U.S. ground troops gradually returned from Vietnam, but the United States increased its bombing of North Vietnam. Nixon also extended the war into Cambodia and Laos, where he secretly authorized bombing to block enemy supply routes on Vietnam’s border. Finally, Nixon sought a diplomatic escape from war. He visited China and the USSR and sent Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser, to secret talks in Paris with the North Vietnamese. Antiwar protests, meanwhile, continued. In May 1970 Ohio National Guard troops killed four Kent State University students during an antiwar protest, spurring widespread outrage.

In 1973, as Nixon began a second term, the United States and North Vietnam signed a peace treaty in Paris, which provided for a cease-fire. The terms of the cease-fire included: American withdrawal of all remaining forces from Vietnam, Vietnamese return of American prisoners captured during war, and the end of all foreign military operations in Laos and Cambodia. American troops left Vietnam, but the war between North Vietnam and South Vietnam continued. South Vietnam finally fell in April 1975, as North Vietnamese forces entered Saigon. More than 58,000 Americans were killed in Vietnam, and over 300,000 were wounded. Even after the war’s end, Americans continued to debate its purpose and the meaning of its failure.