Kindle Notes & Highlights
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May 30 - June 23, 2025
It is hard to imagine Kennedy doing what Johnson did and canceling imminent visits by important world leaders merely because they opposed the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam, or telling a top aide that he would rather “get sick and leave town” than hear the peace proposals of United Nations Secretary General U Thant and British Prime Minister Harold Wilson.
In the end, it is this dismal South Vietnamese politico-military situation in late 1964-early 1965, more than any personal attributes of Kennedy, that stands as the single most important reason to suppose he would have opted against a large-scale American war in Vietnam.
Many who had always enthusiastically supported the U.S. commitment to South Vietnam, and who would do so again a few months later after the commitment of American troops, in these months freely stated that America had no obligation to persevere under such circumstances and that there might be no option but to withdraw.
At the top of the causal hierarchy for the Americanization of the Vietnam War in 1964-1965 must go Lyndon Johnson’s conception of the conflict and what it meant for his domestic political and personal historical credibility, followed by the workings of the advisory system, and, in particular, the centrality within that system of Mssrs. McNamara, Bundy, and Rusk.
Undersecretary George Ball, put loyalty to Johnson before principle; his hatred for the war was outweighed by his desire to stay on the team.
The critics, especially those in the United States, can also be faulted for their general reluctance to spell out how a “political solution” would be reached, and with what terms.
many of those who foresaw a great calamity ahead should escalation occur failed to work hard to keep it from happening.
Too many were reluctant to say what they privately believed: that the long-term result of American withdrawal (negotiated or otherwise) would likely be a reunified Vietnam under Hanoi rule; that reunification would take many months and perhaps years to occur, during which time the administration could work to shore up other parts of East Asia; and that it would be a Titoist Vietnam with which the United States could live.
The posture of the British government and the Senate Democratic leadership, in particular, was crucial in allowing American policy to go forward, in allowing the Johnson administration to escalate by stealth.
John Q. Citizen was also ignorant because he preferred it that way.
To pose disengagement as the lone option may seem unduly confining. But getting out really was the only alternative to the course the Johnson administration followed.
If getting out was the only alternative to a larger war, the three months following the November 1964 election was the prime time to have opted for such a course.
John F. Kennedy had possessed an excellent opportunity for disengagement, given the Diem government’s repression of the Buddhists and its blithe rejection of American advice, and given the constellation of forces in the international system. He chose not to take that opportunity, and it is difficult to imagine him or his successor doing anything drastic from then until after the American election.
His first plan, the same one Richard Russell had suggested at various points since late 1963, may have been the best, if only because of its simplicity—it involved no intricate bilateral or multipower negotiations. It merely called for getting the current Saigon government—or, if necessary, a successor one—to ask the United States to leave.
A variant of this first plan, also involving no negotiations and potentially less embarrassing (in that it did not mean being asked by an ally to depart), would have had the administration declare on its own that it had regretfully determined that it could no longer help people who would not help themselves and therefore had no option but to withdraw.
it is a profoundly troubling argument in hindsight (the comforting retrospective argument is the one that says it was all inevitable), less because the Johnson team failed to heed his advice than because they failed to even consider it.
It would have required moral courage, but no more of it than Americans should expect of their leaders.
If the morality of a policy is determined in large part by the commensurateness of means to ends, that of the Johnson administration in Vietnam must be judged immoral.
there is this, finally, to say about America’s avoidable debacle in Vietnam: something very much like it could happen again. Not in the same place, assuredly, and not in the same way, but potentially with equally destructive results.
This is the central lesson of the war. The continued primacy of the executive branch in foreign affairs—and within that branch of a few individuals, to the exclusion of the bureaucracy—together with the eternal temptation of politicians to emphasize short-term personal advantage over long-term national interests, ensures that the potential will exist.
They were not evil individuals, but individuals who are not evil can enact policies that have evil consequences.
Otherwise, American soldiers will again be asked to kill and be killed, and their compatriots will again determine, afterward, that there was no good reason why.
According to Ball, Kennedy, upon hearing Ball’s prediction that Vietnam might one day demand three hundred thousand U.S. troops who might never return home, laughed and said, “Well, George, you’re supposed to be one of the smartest guys in town, but you’re crazier than hell. That will never happen.”
A South Vietnamese diplomat, Tran Van Dinh, would later claim that Diem in his last days decided to try to make a deal with Hanoi. According to Dinh, Diem recalled him from his post at the Vietnamese embassy in Washington in late October and ordered him to proceed to New Delhi to meet with a North Vietnamese official on 15 November. The coup intervened and prevented the meeting.
McGeorge Bundy interview with the author, 15 March 1994, New York City.
McGeorge Bundy interview with the author, 15 March 1994, New York City.
