US Involvement in Vietnam: the first turning point
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Owing to the fact that it was Johnson who sent in the ground troops in 1965, the Vietnam War became known as ‘Johnson’s war’. The dubious nature of that attribution is implicitly acknowledged by historians who favour the ‘commitment trap’ thesis. According to this interpretation, Johnson of necessity honoured and then built upon a commitment bequeathed to him by three former presidents, Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy. An exit from that commitment would have damaged US credibility as an anti-Communist superpower.
Was there any point at which any of Johnson's three predecessors could reasonably have ended US involvement in Vietnam?
Harry Truman initiated the US involvement. From 1950 to 1953, he gave financial aid to the French colonialists as they struggled to re-establish control of Indochina in the face of opposition from Vietnamese Communists and nationalists. It could be argued that, up to 1953, the United States' commitment was simply a financial commitment to its French ally. On the other hand, as early as November 1950, a Defence Department official warned,
we are gradually increasing our stake in the outcome of the struggle ... we are dangerously close to the point of being so deeply committed that we may find ourselves completely committed even to direct intervention. These situations, unfortunately, have a way of snowballing.
In the early months of his presidency, Eisenhower continued Truman's policy of helping the French, but after the Geneva Conference of 1954, the great turning point in the US commitment occurred. Prior to 1954, US involvement in Vietnam had consisted of giving materials and monetary aid to the French. During 1954 the Eisenhower administration switched from a policy of aid to France to an experiment in state-building in what became known as South Vietnam.
By 1954 the war in Vietnam had become increasingly unpopular in France. The defeat of French troops by Communist forces at Dienbienphu left France exhausted, exasperated and keen to withdraw. At the international conference convened to discuss French Indochina at Geneva in May 1954, the French exit was formalised. Vietnam was temporarily divided, with Ho Chi Minh in control of the north and the Emperor Bao Dai in control of the south. The Geneva Accords declared that there were to be nationwide elections leading to reunification of Vietnam in 1956. However, US intervention ensured that this ‘temporary division’ was to last for more than 20 years.
The United States refused to sign the Geneva Accords and moved to defy them within weeks. Eisenhower's Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, organised allies such as Britain in the South-east Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO). The SEATO signatories agreed to protect South Vietnam, in defiance of the Geneva Accords, which had forbidden the Vietnamese from entering into foreign alliances or to allow foreign troops in Vietnam.
The Eisenhower administration encouraged Bao Dai to appoint Ngo Dinh Diem as his prime minister, and then proceeded to engage in ‘nation building’. Eisenhower and Dulles created a new state, in defiance (yet again) of the Geneva Accords and of what was known to be the will of the Vietnamese people. Eisenhower recorded in his memoirs that he knew that if there had been genuine democratic elections in Vietnam in 1956, Ho Chi Minh would have won around 80 per cent of the vote. In order to avoid a wholly Communist Vietnam, the US had sponsored an artificial political creation, the state of South Vietnam.
Within weeks of Geneva, Eisenhower arranged to help Diem set up South Vietnam. He sent General ‘Lightning Joe’ Collins and created MAAG (the Military Assistance Advisory Group) to assist in the process. The US also helped and encouraged Diem to squeeze out Bao Dai.
The French exit meant that Eisenhower could have dropped Truman's commitment in Vietnam. Truman had aided the French, and the French had got out. American credibility was not at stake, for it was the French who had lost the struggle. However, the French withdrawal from Vietnam was seen by Dulles as a great opportunity for greater US involvement. ‘We have a clean base there now, without the faint taint of colonialism,’ said Dulles, calling Dienbienphu ‘a blessing in disguise’. When the Eisenhower administration created South Vietnam, Truman's commitment had not been renewed but recreated, with a far greater degree of American responsibility.
American observers and the Eisenhower administration had great doubts about Diem's regime. Vice President Richard Nixon was convinced the South Vietnamese lacked the ability to govern themselves. Even Dulles admitted that the US supported Diem ‘because we knew of no one better’.
‘Magnificently ignorant of Vietnamese history and culture,’ according to his biographer Townsend Hoopes, Dulles proceeded to ignore the popularity of Ho Chi Minh and Vietnamese desires, in favour of the unpopular Diem, a member of the Christian minority in a predominantly Buddhist country. Back in 1941, Dulles had said that ‘the great trouble with the world today is that there are too few Christians’. In the East Asian despots (Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan, Syngman Rhee in South Korea, and Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam), all of whom were Christian, the US had found men with whom it felt it could work. After all, as Dulles said, the US had Jesus Christ on its side, and needed allies who believed likewise.
The Eisenhower administration was well aware of Ho Chi Minh's popularity. However, it was not Vietnam itself that mattered, but Vietnam's position as a potential domino in the Cold War. In the 1954 speech in which he had introduced his famous ‘domino theory’, Eisenhower had said that if Vietnam fell to Communism, other nations might follow.
Given that the US came very close to dumping Diem in 1955-6, it is interesting to note the important role played by relatively minor and/or ignorant American figures in Diem's survival and in this great turning point in US involvement in Vietnam. Influential Senator Mike Mansfield, leader of the Democrats in the Senate, had been a professor of Japanese and Chinese history. Congress considered ‘China Mike’ to be their expert on Vietnam, although, as he modestly admitted, ‘I do not know too much about the Indochina situation. I do not think that anyone does.’ Despite his acknowledged ignorance, the Catholic Mansfield had been greatly impressed when he met Diem in the United States in 1950. Mansfield's support was vital when the Eisenhower administration considered dropping Diem in 1955. Eisenhower and Dulles did not want to incur congressional wrath by deserting the senator's protégé.
In A Bright Shining Lie, journalist Neil Sheehan opined: ‘South Vietnam, it can truly be said, was the creation of Edward Lansdale.’ Dulles sent covert CIA operative Lansdale to help create the South Vietnamese state soon after the Geneva Conference. Lansdale gave Diem support and advice, including a memo headed, ‘HOW TO BE A PRIME MINISTER OF VIETNAM’. British novelist Graham Greene based a destructive American do-gooder character in his novel The Quiet American on Lansdale. Lansdale, like Mansfield, lacked any real understanding of Vietnam.
Despite all the doubts, the Eisenhower administration stuck with Diem. By the end of Eisenhower's presidency, there were nearly 1,000 US advisers helping Diem and his armed forces. Under President Kennedy, the number of advisers rocketed to around 16,000, which renders suspect claims that, had he lived, Kennedy would have got out of Vietnam.
Some historians consider that Kennedy had a last, great opportunity to extricate the US from Vietnam in 1963. Johnson felt that when the Kennedy administration colluded in the autumn 1963 coup against Diem, the United States' moral responsibility in and commitment to Vietnam greatly increased. Having helped depose one South Vietnamese leader, the US had an even greater obligation to support his successors. The US colluded in Diem's overthrow because of the unpopularity of his government and its consequent ineffectiveness in opposing Communism in South Vietnam. In the spring of 1963, the American media had covered the Buddhist protests in South Vietnamese cities such as Saigon. Americans had been shocked to see Buddhist monks burning themselves to death in protest against the oppressive regime of the Catholic Diem. The US had urged Diem to halt the religious persecution. It could be argued, therefore, that when Diem ignored American advice that he should reform, the US had a great opportunity to exit Vietnam without losing face or credibility. On the other hand, Diem had ignored American warnings to introduce reform for almost a decade. Any sudden US rejection of Diem and ending of the US commitment in 1963 might have raised questions as to why the US had supported Diem's unsatisfactory regime for so long.
In the context of the Cold War and with 16,000 American ‘advisers’ in Vietnam at his accession in 1963, it was exceptionally difficult for Johnson to repudiate his predecessors' legacy in Vietnam, particularly as he had not been elected president in his own right. The increasing vulnerability of American personnel to Vietcong attack triggered a unanimous decision within the Johnson administration to escalate the involvement in early 1965, when Rolling Thunder commenced and the first American ground troops were sent in. By 1968, they numbered around half a million.
While it could be argued that Kennedy had the opportunity to leave Vietnam in 1963, it is difficult to find a date at which it could be argued that Johnson had a similar opportunity. In defence of Kennedy, the US had invested nearly a decade of monetary aid, men and materials in the Saigon regime by 1963. Most importantly of all, the US had invested its credibility in ‘nation building’ – something that had not been the case under Truman or until Eisenhower rejected the Geneva Accords in 1954. According to historian David Anderson, writing in 2005, ‘the Eisenhower administration trapped itself and its successors into a commitment to the survival of its own counterfeit creation’, the new ‘state’ of South Vietnam.
Thus Eisenhower's rejection of the Geneva Accords and his ‘nation building’ in South Vietnam constituted the greatest turning point in the US involvement in Vietnam, the point of no return. This turning point is a microcosm of the reasons why the US got involved and why the US was unsuccessful in Vietnam. That small country was not seen as a nation in its own right and with its own aspirations. Instead it was seen, after the Korean War, as the place where Communism had to be stopped. Vietnam was a victim of the Cold War. American policy-makers acted with little understanding of the country and forced unpopular and unimpressive rulers upon half of it for nearly two decades.
http://www.historytoday.com/viv-sanders/turning-points-vietnam-war
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