The near miss was a hinge in the history of the Cold War. “Now we have a problem in making our power credible,” Kennedy told James “Scotty” Reston of the New York Times, “and Vietnam is the place.” Kennedy meant that it was the safest place: one could signal resolve to draw the line against Communist aggression in a land so godforsaken that neither the Soviets nor China would ever risk escalation over it—escalation that could only lead, inexorably, to nuclear war. It was one of those secrets that only the President and a few of his closest advisers were allowed to know: amidst all the bluster,
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