U.S. Role in the Vietnam War This resear

This research paper summarizes the Vietnam War. It focuses primarily on the American role in the war and presidential decisionmaking, especially the leadership and views on the war of President Lyndon Johnson and his first Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

American military involvement in the Vietnam War reached its peak during the years 1965-1968, but it rested upon and evolved from policy premises which the Johnson administration inherited from, and shared with, the preceding administrations of Presidents Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy. Truman, Eisenhower and, to a lesser extent, JFK avoided Americanization of the war, but a deteriorating political and military situation in South Vietnam in 1963-1965 led Johnson, McNamara and other American leaders to conclude that the American military effort in South Vietnam had to be sharply escalated. That escalation did not, however, result in a favorable outcome from the American standpoint, but instead led to a military stalemate and serious divisions among American policymakers. Eventually, the administration of Richard Nixon reduced the American military presence in South Vietnam and negotiated an armistice, which ultimately did not hold, resulting in the unification of Vietnam by the communists.

Johnson failed to provide effective leadership in regard to the war. He did, however, eschew even worse alternatives. McNamara was a leading proponent of using American force

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Vietnamese forces by sending U.S. combat forces there on a large scale" (96). Perhaps, but we will never know. On November 24, 1963, Johnson told Lodge, "I am not going to let Vietnam go the way of China" (Newman 435). On November 26, he approved NSAM 273 which endorsed current policy but also included plans for American-supported South Vietnamese covert action against North Vietnam. At the same time, he privately confessed his concerns about the quagmire looming in Vietnam to close associates such as Senator Richard Russell. According to Beschloss, Johnson proceeded cautiously because he wished until the 1964 presidential elections were over "to appear neither soft on Communism nor frighteningly ready to take the nation into a war of unimaginable cost" (256). During the 1964 presidential campaign he presented himself as a peace candidate against Republican challenger Barry Goldwater and won re-election by a large majority. His first priorities in late 1963 and 1964 were to unify the nation in the wake of JFK's assassination and to enact tax, civil rights and other domestic legislation, a precursor of his second term Great Society programs, which he feared a major war in Asia would derail. However, the Gulf of Tonkin incident in
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Approximate Word count = 3310
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)