Robert Brent Toplin
A fascinating guessing game relates to speculation about how President John F. Kennedy would have dealt with Vietnam if he had lived and won a second term. When Kennedy died on November 22, 1963, there were about 16,000 U.S. soldiers in Vietnam serving as military advisers. If Kennedy had lived would he, like President Lyndon Johnson, have pursued war?
Kennedy made conflicting public statements about his intentions. He affirmed interest in protecting South Vietnam from communist aggression, but he also hoped the South Vietnamese would save themselves. At times, Kennedy sounded both hawkish and dovish on Vietnam. Yet a preponderance of evidence now favors a judgment that Kennedy would not have pursued military action in Vietnam as aggressively as Lyndon B. Johnson.
In one of the most oft-quoted interviews, President Kennedy delivered a nebulous message about his intentions. He told newscaster Walter Cronkite, “In the final analysis it is the people and the government itself who have to win or lose this struggle. All we can do is help, and we are making it very clear, but I don’t agree with those who say we should withdraw. That would be a great mistake.” President Kennedy’s words could be used to defend either position in debates about how he might have dealt with Vietnam.
There can be no completely satisfactory conclusion to the dispute. Even if clear evidence surfaced about Kennedy’s plans for Vietnam, disagreements would remain because conditions on the ground changed in Vietnam after 1963. Viet Cong insurgents and soldiers from North Vietnam eventually won control over vast areas of South Vietnam. The Saigon government appeared likely to collapse. There would be huge political costs if a Democratic president appeared to “lose” Vietnam. Democrats remembered that Joseph McCarthy and other Republicans pounded their party and President Harry S. Truman for “losing” China to the Reds.
Perhaps circumstances would have pushed Kennedy toward war, but evidence has come to light since 1963 that suggests Kennedy might have taken a different course. We are now better aware of Kennedy’s thinking about Asian affairs before he became president. Historians have noted, too, that President Kennedy acted like a reluctant warrior when international crises tested his leadership. Furthermore, in the years after Kennedy’s death, several advisers and close friends described Kennedy’s opposition to a large-scale commitment of U.S. armed forces in Vietnam. The historical record shows, too, that President Lyndon B. Johnson’s approach to Vietnam was quite different from Kennedy’s.
After Congressman Kennedy traveled in 1951 to the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and the Far East, he spoke often about an emerging spirit of nationalism in developing countries. Kennedy said, “It is tragic that not only have we made no new friends, but we have lost old ones.” Speaking in Boston, he argued it would be a mistake for the United States to assist France’s effort to maintain its colonial empire in Indochina. “We now have allied ourselves with the French in this struggle,” Kennedy warned. To the people of Southeast Asia, we seemed to be resisting “the rising tide of nationalism.”
Kennedy told Ernest Lindley of Newsweek that success was not possible in Indochina until the people there were promised the right of self-determination and the right to govern themselves. “Otherwise,” said Kennedy, “this guerilla war is just going to spread and grow and we’re going to finally get driven out of South-east Asia.”
President Kennedy had several opportunities to call for military action in crises abroad, but he hesitated. When Cuban exiles tried to invade Cuba and overthrow Fidel Castro, Kennedy refused to back the Bay of Pigs invasion with American air power. Kennedy also rejected proposals for U.S. military intervention in Laos. He sought, instead, a ceasefire and neutral status for Laos. In October 1962 key advisers from the U.S. armed forces recommended a hawkish response to the Soviet’s placement of missiles in Cuba. Kennedy favored communication and negotiation with the Soviets. His strategy helped to create a peaceful resolution. Regarding Vietnam, too, Kennedy rejected calls for robust escalation. Shortly before he died, Kennedy considered a plan to begin a withdrawal by removing a thousand troops.
Several individuals that knew Kennedy well reported that he firmly opposed placing many boots on the ground in Vietnam. General Maxwell Taylor recalled that only “one man” voiced strong objection to military escalation during planning sessions. “It was really the President’s personal conviction that U.S. ground troops shouldn’t go in,” Taylor recalled. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the president’s special assistant and Ted Sorensen, his speech writer and adviser, indicated in a jointly published article that the Kennedy “began to understand that withdrawal was a viable option.” John F. Kennedy’s two close friends and political advisers, Kenneth O’Donnell and David Powers, said the President hoped a major victory in the 1964 elections would give him an opportunity to change course in Vietnam. Senator Mike Mansfield, who proposed a total military withdraw from Vietnam, reported the President agreed with his idea. Kennedy told Mansfield in the Oval Office, “I can do it after I’m reelected. So we had better make damned sure I am reelected.”
Lyndon B. Johnson took charge after Kennedy’s assassination and pursued a dramatically different approach. Johnson sought advice from many officials and politicians, but he frequently acted on the recommendations of hawkish counselors. In August 1964, Congress gave Johnson what he wanted – the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution — which provided a legal basis for war-making in Vietnam. In February 1965 Johnson endorsed Operation Rolling Thunder that began an extensive bombing campaign. The next month 3,500 U.S. troops landed at Da Nang air base. A month later 20,000 more troops arrived. By November 1965 there were 175,000 U.S. armed service personnel in the country, and 535,000 were in the country by 1968.
Judgments about Kennedy’s intentions for Vietnam are always speculative. Americans never got to see how the 35th president would deal with the challenges that occurred after November 22, 1963. But Americans did see Lyndon Johnson’s response. With extraordinary speed, President Johnson gave a green light to a huge escalation of U.S. military intervention. Johnson was the true father of the Vietnam War.
