Eisenhower and U.S. Policy in Southeast Asia
By the time the last American troops were being withdrawn from Southeast Asia in March 1973, America was suffering from a war on two fronts รป one abroad in Southeast Asia and one with itself. An entire generation of anti-war protestors had emerged in response to the years of bloody fighting that had, for the first time in the nation's history, been broadcast into living rooms across the country through the nightly news. Both civilians and military servicemen alike asked themselves this simple question: how did we get into such a mess? How was America, and France before her, defeated by a peasant army of Vietnamese Communists?
It seems that in the wake of defeat, it is most important that blame be properly assessed. And most oftentimes, it is the presiding Administration at the time of the defeat that takes the lion's share of the blame. Is that always where the blame lies, however? Based on the policies regarding Vietnam that President Nixon inherited from Johnson, who inherited it from Kennedy, was it even possible for America to win? No. The failure of America in Vietnam was rooted in decades of flawed policy. In fact, the roots of America's failure in Vietnam can actually be drawn all the way back to Truman, but more significantly, to Eisenhower. The Eisenhower era is significant because American policy in Vietnam was strongly shaped during this time, even though the actual combat occurred under Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. Indeed, it was because Eisenhower pursued a policy of containment in Vietnam that the war finally erupted.
Vietnam policy under Eisenhower can be summed up with two headings. First, a reluctance to actively go to war in Vietnam using the full power of the American military attack force, in spite of the fact that Eisenhower acknowledged the Communist threat from China in Southeast Asia. This reluctance created domestic political friction within...