Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson and America's Involvement in Indochina
In April of 1954 during the Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the problems related to the end of the Korean War remained unresolved which led to the Geneva Conference offering to negotiate some sort of peace treaty in Indochina. Since 1945, Indochinese nationalists, led by avowed communists, had waged war to drive French troops from Vietnam and in March of 1954, the French National Assembly "authorized its government to negotiate a settlement of war during the Geneva Conference," but when the communist nationalists surrounded a French stronghold at Dien Bien Phu in northern Vietnam early in 1954, it appeared that "only armed intervention by the United States could save France from humiliating defeat" in Indochina and Vietnam" (Poole, Eight Presidents, 67). At this time, Vice-President Richard Nixon publicly urged that American troops be sent to Vietnam, but President Eisenhower rejected this idea. Ten days after the Geneva Conference began, Dien Bien Phu surrendered. Five great power were present at this conference in 1954, being the governments of Laos, Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), the States of Vietnam and the People's Republic of China. Each of these governments demanded that all western fo
On November 1, 1963, insurgent generals supposedly loyal to the Diem government initiated a coup against him and the American representatives in Saigon "did absolutely nothing to help him out, either politically nor militarily" (Poole, The United States and Indochina, 151). Johnson took office and it was not long before the conflict in Indochina became an issue of high priority for the Johnson Administration. As a result, President Kennedy sent increased military supplies to the Diem government and when the Vietcong enlarged their military operations, Kennedy sent "military advisers and airmen to train South Vietnamese troops and to fly them to the scenes of battle" (Poole, Eight Presidents, 85). government should no longer continue to support the Diem government. In August of 1963, after South Vietnamese police stormed a number of Buddhist temples and arrested hundreds of monks, President Kennedy became convinced that the U. When the resolution passed, it provided Johnson with the justification to create a major policy of military escalation in Vietnam. Thus, by the summer of 1963, some three months before his assassination in Dallas, Kennedy had committed more than 13,000 American military personnel to "advise" and fight in South Vietnam (Poole, Eight Presidents, 87). He immediately asked the US Congress to approve a resolution that gave his the power to "use force to reply to attacks upon American troops and ships" (Poole, Eight Presidents, 124). Many scholars point out that 1968 was the year when the United States truly committed itself to the war in Vietnam and to its overall mission to rid Indochina of the influence of Chinese communism. By 1955, it was clear to Eisenhower that war in Indochina was imminent and that the so-called "domino theory" would occur in Vietnam, meaning that "if the communists conquered South Vietnam they would conquer all of Indochina and ultimately dominate all of Southeast Asia" (Poole, The United States and Indochina, 134). However, the Eisenhower Administration was firmly against this policy and was very concerned with the containment of Chinese communism in Indochina. In August of 1964, President Johnson received reports that North Vietnamese torpedo boats had fired upon American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.
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