No Tonkin Gulf resolution

WI more information came into the public domain about the "Tonkin Gulf incident" and Congrss did not pass the resolution.

Does this prevent the Vietnam war.

What are the cosequences for the 1964 election, I am guessing people still do not vote for Goldwater
 
Still a war, fewer foreigners

WI more information came into the public domain about the "Tonkin Gulf incident" and Congrss did not pass the resolution.

Does this prevent the Vietnam war.

What are the cosequences for the 1964 election, I am guessing people still do not vote for Goldwater

LBJ doesn't get the go ahead for the build up if there is no Resolution, do I have that right?

Still a war whether there is US involvement or not, just fewer news crews and a communist victory ten years earlier.

South Vietnam collapses in 1965. The plan the North used to win the war in 1975 was the same one they had used in 1965. That is 'lay siege to a major base in the Central Highlands, then wipe out the relief force, seize Kontum and Pleiku and drive to the coast cutting the country in half.'

With no 1st Cavalry (Airmobile) to respond it works.

Mass panic, 50,000 US advisors that are mixed in with the South Vietnamese Army take heavy casualties, a lot don't make it out before the end and the attempt to extract them causes what morale there is to collapse because the United States is abandoning them in a way the average soldier can see.

Lyndon Johnson blames congress for not giving him the Resolution. Congress blames Johnson for raising the advisor strength from 12,000 to 50,000 when the situation was not salvageable.

60,000 teenage Americans are not Killed in Action. The better part of a million Vietnamese are also not KIA. Vietnam never becomes a cause of any great note, and the social changes that grew out of the anti-war rebellion - the whole hippy drug culture - are toned down and take decades longer.

Or maybe David Drake was right and America goes on to fight a remarkably similar war in Lebanon instead.
 
How long can Saigon survive?

Or, since the veracity of the whole claim is highly disputed, LBJ simply looks for another incident involving US forces and cries wolf later on.

How long the Republic of Vietnam would have survived without direct American intervention is a source of debate.

I have seen accounts from sources who were there off and on since 1947 - Dennis Warner's "Not with guns alone" - saying the south had only months left in it.

Others of equal competence claim it would have been fine for a while, that intervention made the situation worse.

So would there still have been a Saigon government to save if Johnson had to wait for another excuse?

How bad were things anyway?
 
Or, since the veracity of the whole claim is highly disputed, LBJ simply looks for another incident involving US forces and cries wolf later on.


Pretty much.

If memory from my late teenhood serves, there was a second naval incident at about the same time and a VC shelling of a US "advisor" base at Pleiku or something like that. With US forces already in Vietnam and in combat areas, it would only be a matter of time before an action occurs that prompts a reliatory airstrike and direct US combat - and some sort of resolution allowing it
 
I would think under LBJ, yes. Some excuse would have been found, and there ones occuring every day with US advisors engaging the North Vietnamese/Viet Cong. I'm not sure it would occur in a world with a surviving JFK. IIRC the plan was to scale down the military commitment to South Vietnam and have complete withdrawl by 1965 or thereabouts, but that kind of incident would probably provoke tit-for-tat engagements between the two on a scale where war is practically a de-facto occurence, although with the bonus of being able to actually withdraw 'honourably' ("Oh please, they were only advisors, they weren't supposed to stay for long anyway. We did our bit") according to plan. Yeah, JFK could be accused of being weak on foreign policy here, but there are plenty of other examples he could use across the world to balance that out come election year.

I am unconvinced that things would be much different under JFK actually. I consider it an Oliverstonesque conceit that JFK was the "good guy" and LDJ the "bad guy" when it came to Vietnam. It was JFK that promoted the first major escalation of US "advisor" involvement in Vietnam and Laos and there is little in his rhetoric at the time that would indicate he would look for an "honorable way out" in the 1964-65 time frame. JFK had a fascination with special ops. We might have seen a less draftee-intensive US combat role (say a max of 100,000 men - not 500,000), but perhaps a more aggressive war policy focusing more on airpower and use of special forces in North Vietnam itself to interdict and assasinate.
 
Top