The Best and the Brightest: Kennedy-Johnson Administrations (Modern Library)

by David Halberstam

The failure to come to terms with China and with the McCarthy period was costly, because without looking realistically at China, the Administration could not look realistically at the rest of Southeast Asia. It was failures and frustrations over China which had involved the United States in Vietnam and changed American policy there in 1949; now, because it was not coming to terms with China, the Kennedy Administration would soon expand the Eisenhower Administration policy and commitment in Vietnam. Above all, John Kennedy did not want to revise America’s Asia policy (even in October 1963, with Vietnam falling apart, he told television interviewers that he did not want to cut off aid to Vietnam because that might start events comparable to those preceding the fall of China, and that was the last thing he wanted). Thus, because he did not look back on America’s China policy, it was easier for him, in 1961, to move forward in Vietnam.