Harry Targ
“What-If” History and President Kennedy
Contentious debate will resume about
President Kennedy’s plans for Vietnam as we remember his assassination fifty
years ago on November 22, 1963. Three weeks before the President was killed a military
coup in South Vietnam took place in Saigon; President Diem of South Vietnam was
killed.
Those who saw President Kennedy as a potential
positive force in the world argue that he “matured” from the ill-fated decision
to authorize the CIA to carry out its invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in
April, 1961; to his “measured” but necessary naval blockade to pressure the
Soviet Union to withdraw its missiles from Cuba in October, 1962; to his call
for tension reduction in relations with the Soviet Union in his 1963 American
University speech. Kennedy supporters regard as significant his modest
withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Vietnam in October, 1963. In sum, supporters
of JFK say he was moving towards de-escalating the Cold War with the Soviet
Union and, after reelection, withdrawing from Vietnam.
However, those analysts who move
beyond personalities and discrete events to analyze the trajectory of United
States foreign policy from the onset of the Cold War in 1945 to today and
defend the proposition that U.S. policy has been guided by patterns of economic
expansion, geopolitical and military advance, and the embrace of an ideology of
U.S. exceptionalism, conclude that
President Kennedy and his key advisors remained committed to defeating the
National Liberation Front in South Vietnam and weakening the influence of North
Vietnam in Southeast Asia. The promotion of imperialism and the struggle
against “Communism” remained as central to the Kennedy agenda as it was to his predecessors,
Presidents Truman and Eisenhower.
The United States Involvement in Vietnam Begins
President Harry Truman funded
eighty percent of the French effort to reestablish control of its former colony
in Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos) from 1950 until the collapse of the
French military effort in 1954. During the Eisenhower years the United States
replaced the French as the predominant colonial power in South Vietnam.
After the signatories of the
Geneva Accords divided Vietnam at the 17th parallel “temporarily”
after the peace conference of May 1954, the United States initiated a
“nation-building” campaign in South Vietnam. The Eisenhower Administration
brought Ngo Dinh Diem and his extended family from the United States to Saigon
(now Ho Chi Minh City) allegedly to establish a democracy in the South. Eisenhower
promised to support Diem, authorized the new South Vietnamese leader to reject
the all-Vietnamese elections that were to be held by 1956, committed the United
States to the security of Indochina by organizing the Southeast Asia Treaty
Organization (SEATO), and sent technical advisors and 1,000 military personnel
to help construct an administrative structure, a police force, and an army in
South Vietnam.
Meanwhile the Diem regime
initiated a brutal military campaign to exterminate former supporters of the
anti-French revolutionary force, most of whom opposed Diem’s repression. By
1960, a full-scale civil war was underway as the Vietnamese people sought to
overthrow the Diem dictatorship, which continued to be supported by the United
States.
The Vietnam War
Escalates in the Kennedy Years
Kennedy
acknowledged the escalating civil war in South Vietnam shortly upon taking
office. Vice-President Johnson was sent
to South Vietnam in May, 1961, to assess the progress of the counter guerrilla
war there. He recommended that the
United States continue its support to the Diem regime: “The basic question in
South East Asia is here. We must decide whether to help these countries to the best
of our ability or throw in the towel in the area and pull back our defenses to
San Francisco and a 'Fortress America' concept. More important, we would say to
the world in this case that we don't live up to treaties and don't stand by our
friends.” (Neil Sheehan, ed.,
The Pentagon Papers, Bantam, New
York: 1971, 129).
The new president as a senator had
been a leading advocate for the South
Vietnamese regime in the 1950s. Both he
and his Vice President Lyndon Johnson had strongly supported “containing” Communism
--- as did practically all political leaders, both Republicans and
Democrats. Since the fight in Vietnam
was framed as a fight to stop Communism, most politicians and corporate and
financial elites supported United States military involvement in Vietnam from
the time of its betrayal of the Geneva Accords.
The Vietnamese liberation struggle against the US-Diem regime escalated
in response to the South Vietnamese regime’s “policy of systematic terror
against the entire southern population” (Nguyen Khac Vien, Vietnam:
A Long History, The Gioi Publishers, Ha Noi: 2007, 271). In late December,
1960 Vietnamese resistance fighters from the South met and established the
National Liberation Front (NLF) to overthrow Diem, create a coalition
government in the South, end all foreign intervention, and work towards
establishing a peaceful reunification of all of Vietnam.
The Kennedy administration in
the spring of 1961 added four hundred Special Forces troops to the contingent
in South Vietnam and one hundred civilian advisors to aid in setting up the
"strategic hamlet" program, designed to move peasant villagers away
from areas influenced by NLF forces. In
the fall of 1961 General Maxwell Taylor, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and
Walt Rostow, economic historian and special advisor to the president, were sent
to South Vietnam to study the situation. They returned recommending the
introduction of U.S.
ground troops, advice that was endorsed by Secretary of State Dean Rusk and
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Rusk and McNamara argued that the “fall”
of South Vietnam would be a
prelude to the “fall” of the rest of Southeast Asia and Indonesia – meaning falling away
from the orbit of US control. A “loss” in Vietnam would also create a
right-wing backlash within the United States, much like the backlash that
followed the "fall of China.”
With these recommendations, the
Kennedy administration began a gradual escalation of direct
U. S. involvement in the South
Vietnamese civil war. US troop strength
went from several hundred to ten thousand by 1963. Meanwhile, the stability of the Diem
government was declining. The strategic
hamlet program, disrupting life in the countryside, was generating recruits for
the NLF. Casualties among the South
Vietnamese army and government officials grew.
Opposition from Buddhists and students to Diem's harsh rule was becoming
more intense.
On May 8, 1963, the army shot
into a nonviolent Buddhist demonstration. Buddhists later committed suicide in
public protest against the Diem regime. In August, 1963, the South Vietnamese
police and military invaded Buddhist pagodas and schools and arrested many
dissidents. After a visit to Vietnam
in September, 1963, McNamara and Taylor claimed that the United States would be able to end
its involvement in the country by 1965. The head of the Military Assistance
Advisory Group, General Harkins, predicted in November, 1963, that victory was
just months away.
While these optimistic
assessments were being made, as they were continued to be made throughout the
war, opposition to Diem within the Vietnamese ruling clique itself was growing. South Vietnamese generals
were ready to oust Diem. US officials in
South Vietnam disagreed in their evaluations of Diem's chances to maintain
control of the country. Some US officials, like former Ambassador Frederick
Nolting, were personal friends of Diem and remained committed to him, while
others, such as the then-acting ambassador, Henry Cabot Lodge, and members of
the CIA, were opposed.
Finally, on November 1, 1963,
with the support of Lodge and the CIA, Diem was overthrown by the South
Vietnamese military, and one of the generals assumed office. This was to be the
first of eleven governments during the remainder of South Vietnamese history. While
turmoil ensued in Saigon, John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on November
22, 1963.
At the time of his death, there
were fifteen thousand US troops in South Vietnam, a dramatic increase from the
Eisenhower commitment but a small amount compared to the 540,000 troops that
would be sent to Vietnam by 1968. Troop
commitments during the Kennedy administration were small, but Kennedy and his
advisors established the military infrastructure, mobilized the academic
expertise, and communicated an official rationale for escalating the US
struggle against the Third World.
Military intervention was coupled with policies designed to encourage
"economic development." While Kennedy was wrestling with what to do about Vietnam shortly before his death, the impression
he wished to leave with the world was that the interests of the United States and the Third World
were in fact identical. The Vietnamese people were experiencing just the
opposite.
(Adapted from Duncan McFarland, Paul Krehbiel, Harry
Targ ed. Vietnam From National Liberation
to 21st Century Socialism, Committees of Correspondence for
Democracy and Socialism, Changemaker
Publications,
lulu.com/spotlight/changemaker,
2013, pp. 43-45).
