JOHNSON, MCNAMARA AND THE VIETNAM WAR
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 in Vietnam within limits but gradually lost faith in its efficacy.
Background to Johnson's Decision to Escalate the War
The armed effort by the communist Vietminh led by Ho Chi Minh during the Indochina War (1946-1954) was in part a continuation of a centuries-old struggle of the Vietnamese against foreign domination, principally against the Chinese who controlled Vietnam (Annam) for most of the period between 111 BC and 939 AD. After the French seized...