AMERICAN POLICY TOWARD THE VIETNAM WAR AND PUBLIC OPINION
This research paper examines American foreign and diplomatic policy toward the Vietnam War and the effects of American public opinion on that policy.
From the late 1940s American policy toward Vietnam was dictated by Cold War considerations --i.e. the imperative need as perceived by American foreign policymakers to contain communist expansion in French Indochina, and, after 1954, to prevent a communist takeover in South Vietnam. Up until the escalation of American military involvement in the Vietnam War under President Lyndon Johnson and for some time thereafter, American public opinion was supportive of the government's Vietnam policy. As, however, American casualties mounted and the indeterminable nature of the conflict became manifest through the mass media, American public support for the American war effort in Vietnam declined, especially after the communist Tet offensive in early 1968. Attitudes of influential elites as well as public opinion generally were influenced by the antiwar movement in the United States, which both reflected and sharpened domestic divisions over the war. More importantly, the American public lost confidence in the conduct of the war by the Johnson administration. It later became impatient with the slow pace of American withdrawal from the war during the presidency of Richard Nixon. Public support for the Nixon administration's attempt to forestall the collapse of South Vietnam gradually eroded and then virtually evaporated.
Events in Southeast Asia in general and Vietnam in particular were of little interest or consequence to American policymakers and the American public prior to World War II. in the 19th century, the United States pursued an isolationist foreign policy vis-a-vis events outside the Western Hemisphere. It devoted itself to developing its vast continental resources and fulfilling its Manifest Destiny, which included ter...