5.14 The Vietnam War
For several thousand years, Vietnam had struggled to periodically fight off foreign invasions. Buddhist culture had penetrated eastward from India. More often Indochina faced invasion and rule by Chinese from the north. After 1856, the French entered as a colonial power, bringing with them a strong Catholic tradition.
Ho Chi Minh was one Vietnamese who hoped to throw off French and Chinese influence. At the end of World War I, he was in France when President Wilson came to Versailles calling for self-determination for small nations. He attended the peace conference to petition for Vietnam. When the delegates ignored his plea, he became a communist, using the recent Russian Revolution as his model. Visits to Moscow followed, after which he returned to the Indochina region to organize revolutionary activity.
The Geneva Accords
Once Japan was defeated in 1945, Ho seized the opportunity to unite Vietnam under a nationalist government, but France moved to recover control of its old colony Eight years of guerrilla war against the French led to victory at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Ho’s dream of an independent Vietnam finally seemed at hand. He agreed at the Geneva Peace Conference to withdraw forces north of the 17th parallel in return for a promise to hold free elections in both the North and the South. Having supported what they saw as a French struggle against communism, the Americans wanted to block Ho.
The Domino Theory
For Kennedy, Vietnam was just one of many anti-communist skirmishes that his activist advisors wanted to fight. As attention focused increasingly on Vietnam, Kennedy accepted President Eisenhower’s “domino theory” – if the pro-Western Catholic government fell to the communists, the other nations of Southeast Asia would collapse one after the other like dominoes.
In the South, 16,000 American advisors tried to support the American backed regime of Ngo Dinh Diem. But, he was increasingly unpopular due to his corruption and disregard for the rural poor. In November 1963, Diem was assassinated by his own military. Just three weeks later, President Kennedy was assassinated and the problem of Vietnam was left to Lyndon Johnson. Fear of the political costs of defeat in Vietnam led Johnson steadily toward deeper American involvement. He believed that Vietnam was a key Cold War test.
The Vietcong
Until August 1964, American advisors had focused on training and supporting the South Vietnamese army in its struggle against the Vietcong. The Vietcong were communist supporters in South Vietnam. As they were literally the same people, there was no distinguishing between Northern and Southern Vietnamese beyond their actions and beliefs. North Vietnam, for its part, had been infiltrating men and supplies along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a network of jungle routes threading through neighboring Laos and Cambodia into the highlands of South Vietnam.
American support seemed to have little effect. The Vietcong had taken control of about 40% of South Vietnam by 1964. Johnson strategists decided to relieve the South by increasing pressure on North Vietnam.
The Gulf of Tonkin Incident
American ships patrolling the Gulf of Tonkin began to provide cover for secret South Vietnamese raids against the North. On August 2, 1964, three North Vietnamese patrol boats exchanged fire with the American destroyer Maddox. Neither side hit the other.
Two nights later, a second incident occurred, but as it took place during a heavy thunderstorm, a follow-up investigation could not be sure whether enemy ships had even been near the scene. Whatever his personal doubts, President Johnson publicized the incidents as “open aggression on the high sea” and ordered retaliatory air raids on North Vietnam.1 When Johnson then asked for the authority to take “all necessary measures” to “repel any armed attack” on American forces and to “prevent future aggression,” Congress overwhelmingly passed what became known as the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.2
Senator Ernest Gruening of Alaska, one of only two lawmakers to vote no, objected that the resolution gave the president “a blank check” to declare war, a power the Constitution specifically reserved to Congress.3 He was correct. This was the only authority ever granted for the police action in Vietnam. At the time, Johnson insisted that he had limited aims, but as pressure mounted for an American victory, the president exploited the powers the resolution gave him.
Operation Rolling Thunder – Escalation
In January 1965, Johnson was advised that the US should either increase its attack or simply withdraw. In March, Johnson ordered Operation Rolling Thunder, a systematic bombing campaign aimed at bolstering confidence in South Vietnam and cutting the flow of supplies from the North. Rolling Thunder achieved none of its goals.
Once Americans established bases from which to launch the new air strikes, these too became the target of guerilla attacks. Johnson sent in 3,500 Marines. With the decision to commit combat troops, the urge to shore up and protect those already there became stronger. Another 40,000 soldiers arrived in May and 50,000 more by July.
By the end of 1965 almost 185,000 American troops were in Vietnam and still the call for more continued. In 1968, at the height of the war, 536,000 American troops were being supported with helicopters, jet aircraft, and other advanced military technologies. This was “escalation” with a vengeance.
To support the war, American forces built the shell of a modern society in South Vietnam. By 1967, a million tons of supplies arrived each month, an average of a hundred pounds a day for every American in the country. Also by 1967, the war was costing more than $2 billion a month. The United States dropped more bombs on Vietnam than it had during all of World War II.
Notes
- Lyndon Johnson, “Gulf of Tonkin Response,” August 4, 1964, at The History Place, http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/johnson-tonkin.htm.
- Lyndon Johnson, “President’s Message to Congress,” August 5, 1964, at MtHolyoke.edu, https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/tonkinsp.htm.
- Steve Gerstel, “Gulf of Tonkin Incident 20 Years Ago,” UPI Archives, July 23, 1984, accessed January 28, 2019, https://www.upi.com/Archives/1984/07/23/Gulf-of-Tonkin-incident-20-years-ago/3841459403200/.
