How should LBJ have approached Vietnam?
- Thread starter peeter
- Start date
In short, intensify the conflict as soon as possible so it could be ended quicker.
- Invade Cambodia from the very beginning and dismantle the Ho Chi Minh Trail's southern terminus early in the war. This makes it much harder for the Vietcong to get reinforced/resupplied and keeps the NVA up north.
- Protect president Diem to prevent military coups and force him to tone it down on Buddhist discrimination.
- Gain the loyalty of the farmers early on in the war. Make the Strategic Hamlet Program voluntary and offer economic incentives to those who participate. Have the US government buy Vietnamese crops have extremely high prices as a way to buy their loyalty. Sell them Western goods at a discount to introduce western culture.
- Operation Linebacker from the moment fighting starts and mine North Vietnamese harbors.
- VIETNAMESIZATION from the very beginning. Also give them an airforce.
- utilize the South Korean troops who fought in otl in a more effective manner. They were the best troops there.
- Control the media. This is the big one.
- Anyone who gets drafted should be sent to military bases in Europe while actual volunteers in the army are sent to fight in Vietnam
He did not want to be there but he did not want to be the first US president to lose a war despite evidence as early as 1964 that South Vietnam was not a viable entity without massive amounts of US assistance so he did what politicians tend to do, he kicked the can down the road long enough that it became the next administration's problem.
That LBJ should not have escalated in early 1965 is not merely retrospective wisdom. The arguments against escalation are expressed cogently in Vice-President Humphrey's February 15, 1965, memorandum:
***
February 15, 1965
MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT
RE: The Politics of Vietnam
I have been in Georgia over the weekend, and for the first time since inauguration, have had time to read and think about the fateful decisions which you have just been required to make, and will continue to be making, on Vietnam. I have been reading the Vietnam cables and intelligence estimates of the last two weeks. Because these may be the most fateful decisions of your administration, I wanted to give you my personal views. You know that I have nothing but sympathy for you and complete understanding for the burden and the anguish which surrounds such decisions. There is obviously no quick or easy solution, and no clear course of right or wrong. Whatever you decide, we will be taking big historical gambles, and we won’t know for sure whether they were right until months or perhaps years afterwards. The moral dilemmas are inescapable.
I want to put my comments in the most useful framework. In asking me to be your vice president, you made it clear that you expected my loyalty, help, and support. I am determined to give it. I don’t intend to second-guess your decisions, or kibitz after the fact. You do not need me to analyze or interpret our information from Vietnam. You have a whole intelligence community for that purpose. You do not need me for foreign policy advice. You have a wise secretary of state and whole staffs and departments to do that. I am not a military expert. Plenty of others are.
But because I have been privileged to share with you many years of political life in the Senate, because we have recently come through a successful national election together, because I think your respect for me and my value to you significantly consists of my ability to relate politics and policies, and because I believe strongly that the sustainability of the Vietnam policies now being decided are likely to profoundly affect the success of your administration, I want to summarize my views on what I call the politics of Vietnam.
1. In the recent campaign, Goldwater and Nixon stressed the Vietnam issue, advocated escalation, and stood for a military ‘‘solution.’’ The country was frightened by the trigger-happy bomber image which came through from the Goldwater campaign. By contrast we stressed steadiness, staying the course, not enlarging the war, taking on the longer and more difficult task of finding political-military solutions in the South where the war will be won or lost. Already, because of recent decisions on retaliatory bombing, both Goldwater and the Kremlin are now alleging that we have bought the Goldwater position of ‘‘going North.’’
2. In the public mind the Republicans have traditionally been associated with extreme accusations against Democratic administrations, whether for ‘‘losing China,’’ or for failing to win the Korean War, or for failing to invade Cuba during the missile crisis. By contrast we have had to live with responsibility. Some things are beyond our power to prevent. Always we have sought the best possible settlements short of World War III, combinations of firmness and restraint, leaving opponents some options for credit and face-saving, as in Cuba. We have never stood for military solutions alone, or for victory through air power. We have always stressed the political, economic and social dimensions.
3. This administration has a heavy investment in policies which can be jeopardized by an escalation in Vietnam: the President’s image and the American image, the development of the Sino-Soviet rift, progress on detente and arms control, summit meetings with Kosygin, reordering relations with our European allies, progress at the United Nations, stabilizing defense expenditures, drafting reservists.
4. American wars have to be politically understandable by the American public. There has to be a cogent, convincing case if we are to enjoy sustained public support. In World Wars I and II we had this. In Korea we were moving under United Nations auspices to defend South Korea against dramatic, across-the-border, conventional aggression. Yet even with these advantages, we could not sustain American political support for fighting Chinese in Korea in 1952. Today in Vietnam we lack the very advantages we had in Korea. The public is worried and confused. Our rationale for action has shifted away now even from the notion that we are there as advisers on request of a free government, to the simple and politically barren argument of our ‘‘national interest.’’ We have not succeeded in making this national interest interesting enough at home or abroad to generate support. The arguments in fact are probably too complicated (or too weak) to be politically useful or effective.
5. If we go north, people will find it increasingly hard to understand why we risk World War III by enlarging a war under terms we found unacceptable 12 years ago in Korea. Politically people think of North Vietnam and North Korea as similar. They recall all the ‘‘lessons’’ of 1950–53: the limitations of air power, the Chinese intervention, the ‘‘Never Again Club’’ against GIs fighting a land war against Asians in Asia, the frank recognition of all these factors in the Eisenhower Administration’s compromise of 1953.
If a war with China was ruled out by the Truman and Eisenhower administrations alike in 1952–53, at a time when we alone had nuclear weapons, people will find it hard to contemplate such a war with China now. No one really believes the Soviet Union would allow us to destroy Communist China with nuclear weapons.
6. People can’t understand why we would run grave risks to support a country which is totally unable to put its own house in order. The chronic instability in Saigon directly undermines American political support for our policy.
7. It is hard to justify dramatic 150-plane U.S. air bombardments across a border as a response to camouflaged, often nonsensational, elusive, small-scale terror which has been going on for ten years in what looks largely like a civil war in the South.
8. Politically in Washington, beneath the surface, the opposition is more Democratic than Republican. This may be even more true at the grassroots across the country.
9. It is always hard to cut losses. But the Johnson Administration is in a stronger position to do so now than any administration in this century. 1965 is the year of minimum political risk for the Johnson Administration. Indeed it is the first year when we can face the Vietnam problem without being occupied by political repercussions from the Republican right. As indicated earlier, our political problems are likely to come from new and different sources (Democratic liberals, independents, labor) if we pursue an enlarged military very long.
10. We now risk creating the impression that we are the prisoner of events in Vietnam. This blurs the Administration’s leadership role and has spill-over effects across the board. It also helps erode confidence and credibility in our policies.
11. President Johnson is personally identified with, and greatly admired for, political ingenuity. He will be expected to pull all this great political sense to work now for international political solutions. People will be counting upon him to use on the world scene his unrivaled talents as a politician. They will be watching to see how he makes this transition from the domestic to the world stage.
The best possible outcome a year from now would be a Vietnam settlement which turns out to be better than was in the cards because LBJ’s political talents for the first time came to grips with a fateful world crisis and did so successfully. It goes without saying that the subsequent domestic political benefits of such an outcome, and such a new dimension for the President, would be enormous.
12. If, on the other hand, we find ourselves leading from frustration to escalation and end up short of a war with China but embroiled deeper in fighting in Vietnam over the next few months, political opposition will steadily mount. It will underwrite all the negativism and disillusionment which we already have about foreign involvement generally—with serious and direct effects for all the Democratic internationalist programs to which the Johnson Administration remains committed: AID, United Nations, arms control, and socially humane and constructive policies generally.
For all these reasons, the decisions now being made on Vietnam will affect the future of this Administration fundamentally. I intend to support the Administration whatever the President’s decisions. But these are my views.
***
"Instead of gratitude from Johnson, or in any case a discussion of the issues, Humphrey is punished: he is ostracized from all meetings on Vietnam and McGeorge Bundy is told by Johnson to keep the vice president under surveillance, lest his heretical views on Vietnam become public knowledge. Only many months later, after agreeing to become an exuberant supporter of the war in Vietnam, is Humphrey allowed back into LBJ’s inner circle. The change in Humphrey was widely noted: from an independent and cautious critic of the war to a cheerleader for LBJ. The American satirical songwriter Tom Lehrer spoke for many Americans in his ‘‘Whatever Became of Hubert?’’ (1965). 34
"It is clear that Humphrey will fall in line with Johnson’s escalation of the war because he wants desperately to succeed LBJ as president. Yet his decision to stifle himself, to ignore his own prescient advice given in the February 15, 1965, memorandum, will prove to be his undoing as a candidate for president in 1968 following Johnson’s March 31, 1968, announcement that he would not seek reelection..." https://epdf.pub/vietnam-if-kennedy-had-lived-virtual-jfk.html
***
February 15, 1965
MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT
RE: The Politics of Vietnam
I have been in Georgia over the weekend, and for the first time since inauguration, have had time to read and think about the fateful decisions which you have just been required to make, and will continue to be making, on Vietnam. I have been reading the Vietnam cables and intelligence estimates of the last two weeks. Because these may be the most fateful decisions of your administration, I wanted to give you my personal views. You know that I have nothing but sympathy for you and complete understanding for the burden and the anguish which surrounds such decisions. There is obviously no quick or easy solution, and no clear course of right or wrong. Whatever you decide, we will be taking big historical gambles, and we won’t know for sure whether they were right until months or perhaps years afterwards. The moral dilemmas are inescapable.
I want to put my comments in the most useful framework. In asking me to be your vice president, you made it clear that you expected my loyalty, help, and support. I am determined to give it. I don’t intend to second-guess your decisions, or kibitz after the fact. You do not need me to analyze or interpret our information from Vietnam. You have a whole intelligence community for that purpose. You do not need me for foreign policy advice. You have a wise secretary of state and whole staffs and departments to do that. I am not a military expert. Plenty of others are.
But because I have been privileged to share with you many years of political life in the Senate, because we have recently come through a successful national election together, because I think your respect for me and my value to you significantly consists of my ability to relate politics and policies, and because I believe strongly that the sustainability of the Vietnam policies now being decided are likely to profoundly affect the success of your administration, I want to summarize my views on what I call the politics of Vietnam.
1. In the recent campaign, Goldwater and Nixon stressed the Vietnam issue, advocated escalation, and stood for a military ‘‘solution.’’ The country was frightened by the trigger-happy bomber image which came through from the Goldwater campaign. By contrast we stressed steadiness, staying the course, not enlarging the war, taking on the longer and more difficult task of finding political-military solutions in the South where the war will be won or lost. Already, because of recent decisions on retaliatory bombing, both Goldwater and the Kremlin are now alleging that we have bought the Goldwater position of ‘‘going North.’’
2. In the public mind the Republicans have traditionally been associated with extreme accusations against Democratic administrations, whether for ‘‘losing China,’’ or for failing to win the Korean War, or for failing to invade Cuba during the missile crisis. By contrast we have had to live with responsibility. Some things are beyond our power to prevent. Always we have sought the best possible settlements short of World War III, combinations of firmness and restraint, leaving opponents some options for credit and face-saving, as in Cuba. We have never stood for military solutions alone, or for victory through air power. We have always stressed the political, economic and social dimensions.
3. This administration has a heavy investment in policies which can be jeopardized by an escalation in Vietnam: the President’s image and the American image, the development of the Sino-Soviet rift, progress on detente and arms control, summit meetings with Kosygin, reordering relations with our European allies, progress at the United Nations, stabilizing defense expenditures, drafting reservists.
4. American wars have to be politically understandable by the American public. There has to be a cogent, convincing case if we are to enjoy sustained public support. In World Wars I and II we had this. In Korea we were moving under United Nations auspices to defend South Korea against dramatic, across-the-border, conventional aggression. Yet even with these advantages, we could not sustain American political support for fighting Chinese in Korea in 1952. Today in Vietnam we lack the very advantages we had in Korea. The public is worried and confused. Our rationale for action has shifted away now even from the notion that we are there as advisers on request of a free government, to the simple and politically barren argument of our ‘‘national interest.’’ We have not succeeded in making this national interest interesting enough at home or abroad to generate support. The arguments in fact are probably too complicated (or too weak) to be politically useful or effective.
5. If we go north, people will find it increasingly hard to understand why we risk World War III by enlarging a war under terms we found unacceptable 12 years ago in Korea. Politically people think of North Vietnam and North Korea as similar. They recall all the ‘‘lessons’’ of 1950–53: the limitations of air power, the Chinese intervention, the ‘‘Never Again Club’’ against GIs fighting a land war against Asians in Asia, the frank recognition of all these factors in the Eisenhower Administration’s compromise of 1953.
If a war with China was ruled out by the Truman and Eisenhower administrations alike in 1952–53, at a time when we alone had nuclear weapons, people will find it hard to contemplate such a war with China now. No one really believes the Soviet Union would allow us to destroy Communist China with nuclear weapons.
6. People can’t understand why we would run grave risks to support a country which is totally unable to put its own house in order. The chronic instability in Saigon directly undermines American political support for our policy.
7. It is hard to justify dramatic 150-plane U.S. air bombardments across a border as a response to camouflaged, often nonsensational, elusive, small-scale terror which has been going on for ten years in what looks largely like a civil war in the South.
8. Politically in Washington, beneath the surface, the opposition is more Democratic than Republican. This may be even more true at the grassroots across the country.
9. It is always hard to cut losses. But the Johnson Administration is in a stronger position to do so now than any administration in this century. 1965 is the year of minimum political risk for the Johnson Administration. Indeed it is the first year when we can face the Vietnam problem without being occupied by political repercussions from the Republican right. As indicated earlier, our political problems are likely to come from new and different sources (Democratic liberals, independents, labor) if we pursue an enlarged military very long.
10. We now risk creating the impression that we are the prisoner of events in Vietnam. This blurs the Administration’s leadership role and has spill-over effects across the board. It also helps erode confidence and credibility in our policies.
11. President Johnson is personally identified with, and greatly admired for, political ingenuity. He will be expected to pull all this great political sense to work now for international political solutions. People will be counting upon him to use on the world scene his unrivaled talents as a politician. They will be watching to see how he makes this transition from the domestic to the world stage.
The best possible outcome a year from now would be a Vietnam settlement which turns out to be better than was in the cards because LBJ’s political talents for the first time came to grips with a fateful world crisis and did so successfully. It goes without saying that the subsequent domestic political benefits of such an outcome, and such a new dimension for the President, would be enormous.
12. If, on the other hand, we find ourselves leading from frustration to escalation and end up short of a war with China but embroiled deeper in fighting in Vietnam over the next few months, political opposition will steadily mount. It will underwrite all the negativism and disillusionment which we already have about foreign involvement generally—with serious and direct effects for all the Democratic internationalist programs to which the Johnson Administration remains committed: AID, United Nations, arms control, and socially humane and constructive policies generally.
For all these reasons, the decisions now being made on Vietnam will affect the future of this Administration fundamentally. I intend to support the Administration whatever the President’s decisions. But these are my views.
***
"Instead of gratitude from Johnson, or in any case a discussion of the issues, Humphrey is punished: he is ostracized from all meetings on Vietnam and McGeorge Bundy is told by Johnson to keep the vice president under surveillance, lest his heretical views on Vietnam become public knowledge. Only many months later, after agreeing to become an exuberant supporter of the war in Vietnam, is Humphrey allowed back into LBJ’s inner circle. The change in Humphrey was widely noted: from an independent and cautious critic of the war to a cheerleader for LBJ. The American satirical songwriter Tom Lehrer spoke for many Americans in his ‘‘Whatever Became of Hubert?’’ (1965). 34
"It is clear that Humphrey will fall in line with Johnson’s escalation of the war because he wants desperately to succeed LBJ as president. Yet his decision to stifle himself, to ignore his own prescient advice given in the February 15, 1965, memorandum, will prove to be his undoing as a candidate for president in 1968 following Johnson’s March 31, 1968, announcement that he would not seek reelection..." https://epdf.pub/vietnam-if-kennedy-had-lived-virtual-jfk.html
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marathag
Banned
Too many Cold Warriors for that.
That said, LBJ did the wrong thing given the chance, every time. Too much McNamara influence.
How do you both escalate and get Diem to do what you want? If you've shown you're not willing to let him lose to the Communists, he has no need to be cooperative. I agree that reining in the Catholics so as to get the Buddhists on board is absolutely necessary to a stable South Vietnam, but I don't know how you make that happen, and nothing here seems to seriously address that problem.
He need to embark on a better state building program for South Vietnam. For all his faults, Diệm was actually somewhat competent and his overthrow kind of result into a steady decline for South Vietnam. Find a more competent leader because the administration after Diệm OTL was incredibly incompetent. If he don’t, Vietnamization will not be a viable strategy at all.
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It would be a little bit hard for LBJ to do that, given that Diem was overthrown and killed while JFK was still in the White House...
He should have stayed out. With that being said, although we tend to associate Vietnam with LBJ, Truman certainly deserves a large share of the blame for his decision to back French colonial rule.
Just find another competent leader which will be significantly harder. Seriously, the decision to back the coup against Diệm is the Kennedy Administration greatest mistake.
With a written letter of apology for the US' role in the unconstitutional removal and extrajudicial killing of Vietnamese president Ngô Đình Diệm. After which he washes his hands of the matter entirely, and focuses on bolstering Thailand as the regional bulwark against communism.
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Mr. House
Banned
Far more ruthless.
In South Vietnam move the entire civilian population to Saigon and make the city a mega city. Draft the entire population into civil institutions of control like state daycares, schools, labor corps, military etc.
Make everything outside Saigon a free fire zone with kill on site. Keep 100K American troops in country, all volunteers, along with other nations like SK and perpeutually kill any NVA forces in the South (and keep Mega-City Saigon under control). No need for messy guerilla warfare since it's bog standard conventional killing.
Bomb North Vietnam into rubble to start. Bomb the dikes. Mine the harbors. And firebomb Hanoi like WW2 firebombing is back in vague on day one.
At some point North Vietnam will run out of troops to send south.
In South Vietnam move the entire civilian population to Saigon and make the city a mega city. Draft the entire population into civil institutions of control like state daycares, schools, labor corps, military etc.
Make everything outside Saigon a free fire zone with kill on site. Keep 100K American troops in country, all volunteers, along with other nations like SK and perpeutually kill any NVA forces in the South (and keep Mega-City Saigon under control). No need for messy guerilla warfare since it's bog standard conventional killing.
Bomb North Vietnam into rubble to start. Bomb the dikes. Mine the harbors. And firebomb Hanoi like WW2 firebombing is back in vague on day one.
At some point North Vietnam will run out of troops to send south.
South Vietnam was basically a lot cause after Diem was overthrown.
So who's gonna supply the poplation with food and other basic neccessities,? And packing the entire population into Saigon is basically a logistical nightmare. If we follow your strategy, the war will basically drain the US even further. And the US bombing had alredy been quite intense during LBJ's tenure. Protests will be even bigger due to how the US is basically commiting warcrimes in a foreign country.
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By withdrawing advisors and leaving. It is not America‘s fight.
I think the war is winnable, but the methods to pull off a win are basically democide. What’s the point of winning if winning involves killing a million civilians? To say nothing of the cost of the war or the potential for war to destabilize society.
I think the war is winnable, but the methods to pull off a win are basically democide. What’s the point of winning if winning involves killing a million civilians? To say nothing of the cost of the war or the potential for war to destabilize society.
Yes. That'll work really well.
*IF* the US does that (and manages to get commanders willing to do that), I'd say the United States has a decent shot at losing the entire Cold War by the 1970s.