Eisenhower and U.S. Policy in Southeast Asia By t

By the time the last American troops were being withdrawn from Southeast Asia in March 1973, America was suffering from a war on two fronts û one abroad in Southeast Asia and one with itself.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 an

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ctively render real help in winning the war. The first requirement was a legal right under international law; second, was a favorable climate of Free World opinion; and third, favorable action by the Congress" (1963: 340). Both Eisenhower and Dulles appealed to Winston Churchill and British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, but neither could be swayed to support a U.S. military intervention. The best that Dulles could do was to secure a British promise to support a future security arrangement û a promise that would eventually become the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (Karnow 1984: 198). This debate û both domestic between the Joint Chiefs, Eisenhower and Congress and international between the U.S. and Britain û is a significant indication of Eisenhower's policy in that it shows his unwillingness to commit to a full-scale war because of the massive manpower it would require and because of the lack of international support. By late April 1954, it became clear that there would be no U.S. intervention at Dienbienphu and there seemed to be a collective sigh of relief in Washington. In fact, Dulles took the credit for taking his country to the brink of war and then rescuing her just in time to avoid going into battle. The term
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Approximate Word count = 5419
Approximate Pages = 22 (250 words per page)

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