How Long Would JFK Stayed in Vietnam?

Fascinating subject.

Yes, it is impossible to guess what people will do, based on past experiences.

It is obviously one of these subjects where the chance is that "Camelot" could have been in ruins if JFK had his full two terms.

The period surely had a few challenges outside of Vietnam.

Ivan
 
I think the biggest difference between Kennedy and Johnston is that JFK wouldn't try to micromanage the war. You know, that whole "they can't bomb an outhouse without my say-so" thing, and how Johnston was picking targets. I'm not convinced Kennedy would escalate as much either, as was already mentioned above about the Gulf of Tonken. Vietnam would still be a disaster, simply because you had a regular army (and Marines) trained to fight conventional wars out their fighting the Viet Cong, who were guerillas. You'd need some serious counter-insurgancy development to have any hope in Vietnam.
 
Agreed. I believe that Kennedy would have slowly escalated in Vietnam before a troop surge in 1967, but not because he would "do anything to win." He was a pragmatist and a Cold Warrior who wouldn't have seen the war as we do today. But he also wouldn't have gone in guns blazing just to win.

There are surges, and then there are surges.

I can see a Kennedy administration refusing to give the entire 200,000+ that the generals had wanted and had got in OTL 1966; which means that the civilians who started to have qualms about there even being any 'light at the end of the tunnel' in late '66 (because after all the generals had been giving everything they could possibly need at that point), they might be forced to allow a post-midterm surge to play out before they can come to that final assessment about the lack of progress that was coming from 'pacifying' the South, alongside the bombing of the North.

In my opinion, McNamara quitting in late 1967 would also surfice, but I share the surprisingly common belief he wasn't going to be SecDef in a second term. So he won't get to be the tipping point.

I've been rereading Neil Sheehan's reportage in the NYT history of the Pentagon Papers (the original articles should be available online at their archive, or on Lexis Nexis, but you gotta pay; sadly the whole collected volume isn't in ebook form) and I've changed my opinion on the absolute necessity of McNamara when it comes to the civilian leadership falling out with the hawks.

McNamara and his assistant, John McNaughton, they weren't alone in 1967 when it came to wanting the administration to consider changing its objectives; there was a whole circle of officials willing to push for de-escalation, for a reduction in the Rolling Thunder campaign, for basically ignoring the generals' demands.

Sheehan points out that Johnson's reaction was to seek a 'third way', and so he got McNamara et al to draw up plans that rejected Generals Westmoreland's and Wheeler's demand for more open-ended troop deployment and a bigger Rolling Thunder; but this compromise solution merely meant the admin settled on new troop requests for 30,000, not the generals' maximalist request of another 200,000. Also, the bombing of North Vietnam was reorganised, instead of being reduced.

Maybe, just maybe, this circle of what the PPs' & Sheehan calls the 'disillusioned doves' (though it included Paul Nitze, a later Reagnite hardliner!) can convince Kennedy of the need to change course, to consider a bombing halt in order to bring Hanoi to the table. To decide that South Vietnam's longterm existence should not be a US primary objective. Essentially, bring the final LBJ policy forward by an entire year, maybe even 18 months. It doesn't need McNamara alone to try and convince POTUS.

Maybe it just needs subcabinet officials and Secretary of State McNamara convincing Secretary of Defense Robert Kennedy on the merits of drawing down.:D

But Sheehan also raises something that caught my eye, something that might have been appealing to a President Kennedy in 1967 grasping for a third way. One that would allow him to pursue de-escalation in the current American areas of operations in the South, along with RT bombing halts in the DRV, yet allow him to continue with keeping the pressure on the North's military power--MACV in that year already had plans for sponsoring South Vietnamese invasions of Cambodia, and even Laos. They presented them to LBJ. I can see Kennedy thinking this is a brilliant, out of the box compromise, particularly if said incursions are lead by US special forces scouting for the ARVN.

IOTL Johnson appears to have dismissed outright the idea of invading these bordering nations, regardless of the fact he had SFs in both, covertly attacking the Ho Chi Minh Trail (he also had US air elements bombing the Trail in Laos).

But of course Nixon later sponsored the ARVN invasion of Cambodia in order to give cover to his own army's flanks, so it's not like this is an impossible military operation, for a slightly desperate CinC. We know it's viable, even if it's not palatable to more rigorous opponents of the war.

Things that make you go hmmm...
 
Kennedy is noted by some of those that knew him to have some worry that the Republicans and Conservatives would call him an appeaser if he disengaged from South Vietnam.

Norton, I hope you know my new standard analogy about this: in the surprising event of JFK pulling out of Vietnam, he's facing the same sort of FP backlash Carter had over Iran, plus Afghanistan, plus the Panama Canal Zone, and if (when) any Americans are captured by communist forces in such a bug-out, the Tehran Hostage Crisis.

But of course I believe this is a scenario that's totally inoperative...

Not likely IMO to have gotten the power or seen the need for ground troops in Vietnam if the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution is not created first.

The US air base is at Pleiku is getting attacked by VC in February, 1965, regardless of what happens at Tonkin.

US servicemen are going to die at the hands of men armed with weapons supplied by Hanoi.

As I mentioned on another thread, the administration is going to have a much more logical case for a resolution authorising military action against North Vietnam with Pleiku than they had with the incident at sea! (And of course they'll get a resolution through congress; OTL's Gulf of Tonkin resolution was opposed by the grand total of two senators, and no representatives.)
 
I think the biggest difference between Kennedy and Johnston is that JFK wouldn't try to micromanage the war. You know, that whole "they can't bomb an outhouse without my say-so" thing, and how Johnston was picking targets.

You know why he was doing those infamous target selections himself?

Because by 1967 the civilian doves* in his administration were desperately trying to get him to slowdown Rolling Thunder, to restrict its devastation to a smaller portion of North Vietnam; so, whenever the generals wanted him to breach the geographical limits the doves had got him to impose, such as going back closer to Hanoi, he made sure he had final say over whatever new target was excised from the recently cordoned off areas (and could therefore be bombed).

Anyway, I think it's safe to assume America didn't lose in Vietnam because of these incidents of POTUS intervention. 'Cos the war was already lost by then.

EDIT: And the thing with micro-management of the war; if you believe, as I do, that RFK is going to be SecDef in the second term, then I think the guy who's experience in military oversight in the first term involved him taking the CIA's undeclared war against Cuba and chairing it himself, he's going to be sorely tempted to do what LBJ did with the Rolling Thunder reorganisation. Earlier, and on steroids.


*Really foreign policy realists, imagine a bunch of Colin Powells. But they get called doves for dramatic effect.
 
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The US air base is at Pleiku is getting attacked by VC in February, 1965, regardless of what happens at Tonkin.

US servicemen are going to die at the hands of men armed with weapons supplied by Hanoi.

As I mentioned on another thread, the administration is going to have a much more logical case for a resolution authorising military action against North Vietnam with Pleiku than they had with the incident at sea! (And of course they'll get a resolution through congress; OTL's Gulf of Tonkin resolution was opposed by the grand total of two senators, and no representatives.)

In that case war might have been inevitable as its conceivable to see Kennedy then in turn ordering bombings of North Vietnam and eventually putting in marines to protect other air bases from future attacks. Given the Vietcong would retaliate from the bombing campaigns escalation would continue to be inevitable. Would Kennedy go all the way with half a million troops though like Johnson? Probably not, he might have sympathized with the antiwar movement and tried peace talks to secure peace sooner as Johnson was able to achieve. How would something like this though potentially harm the peace process?

But if this is the reason why JFK enters the war is an actual attack on American forces and not flawed intelligence which can easily be construed as a lie as it still is today for Johnson to conspire to start the war, how does this affect popular opinion in the long run and especially the anti-war movement? My take is that even if Kennedy does escalate the war to ground troops he doesn't stay in as long as Johnson does and should be successful in trying the diplomatic route better. Perhaps have a chance to end the war by the end of his second term. He might even have been remembered as less harsh by history than Johnson was.
 
If JFK had also escalated the war and ordered similar campaigns, e.g. Rolling Thunder and other stuff, what's the likelihood that he would have gone the Nixon route as well and ordered similar operations to Linebacker and mining Haiphong harbour? It was already mentioned that plans existed to invade Cambodia as well as Laos. Now there's a thought - two Pol Pots.:eek:
 
In that case war might have been inevitable as its conceivable to see Kennedy then in turn ordering bombings of North Vietnam and eventually putting in marines to protect other air bases from future attacks. Given the Vietcong would retaliate from the bombing campaigns escalation would continue to be inevitable.

Yes, essentially.

(For what it's worth, I should point out something important about Camp Holloway--from what I can tell from the wiki article, it was home to only a single transportation company during the Kennedy years, it only receives a full battallion compliment in late 1964. I don't know whether that matters, as JFK had 16,000 troops in country under his administration, so if Camp Holloway isn't an inviting enough target for the VC by 1965 they'll just chose some other American base. But heck, a smaller unit there might actually get totally overrun by an NLF attack! So a hundred or so dead and/or captured!)

But if this is the reason why JFK enters the war is an actual attack on American forces and not flawed intelligence which can easily be construed as a lie as it still is today for Johnson to conspire to start the war, how does this affect popular opinion in the long run and especially the anti-war movement?

I think you're placing too much emphasis on the shoddy investigative work behind the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, and its importance to history; the fact is, any escalation in the RVN by any POTUS is going to involve more obvious strategic deception, or rather it will eventually become obvious that there is massive deception at work.

Ultimately, the famous 'credibility gap' from our history is about the Johnson administration promising America they were stabilising the South, that things were better than they seemed. Officially, in public, they were winning, they were always meant to be winning. Until suddenly LBJ declares mumble mumble this is not the case, and mah fellow 'Merkins, I will not seek, nor will I accept, the nomination for my party for another term as your president...

Forget Bush's WMD analogy for massive escalation's beginning; think the analogy of Cheney and co.'s boastfulness about "we will be treated like liberators in Iraq!!11!!!" when it comes to a Vietnam escalation continuing so long on the same path.

My take is that even if Kennedy does escalate the war to ground troops he doesn't stay in as long as Johnson does and should be successful in trying the diplomatic route better. Perhaps have a chance to end the war by the end of his second term.

As I mentioned above, this is one possibility, I certainly won't reject it out of hand...

what's the likelihood that he would have gone the Nixon route as well and ordered similar operations to Linebacker and mining Haiphong harbour?

...But this nightmarish scenario is another possibility.

My fear is the Kennedys take the opportunity to use their love of back channel diplomacy to find out whether Mao does or doesn't care if the USAF sorties close to his borders as a matter of course, or whether the Soviets will threaten some kind of retaliation if the main DRV harbour (which their merchant ships docked in) is bombed and mined.

In OTL Johnson's administration was terrified of doing anything along those two lines, for fear of provoking the respective great Red powers.

But then a ruthless foreign policy troubleshooter enters the Oval Office in 1969, and it's on, bad luck Russian and Chinese heavyweights.

Jack Kennedy considered himself an FP troubleshooter, much like Nixon did.

He might even have been remembered as less harsh by history than Johnson was.

On the war, if he's bringing LBJ's autumn '68 peaceseeking attempts forward by a year or so, he really should be given the sort of credit Johnson never got.

But on the subject of everything else to that point, does he begin to repent like Johnson did in his own reclusive, maudling retirement years?

I think he's going to be a vigorous guy for at least a decade after leaving office.

Now, in this day and age, I keep thinking of a more recent attractive, smooth operator who goes around, using his pretty damn effective presentational skills to engage just about every anti-war opponent he comes across, to brilliantly state his case for why history will absolve him for going to war in the first place.

Tony Blair.
 
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