AMSCO 8.8 The Vietnam War

Overview

AMSCO Topic 8.8, The Vietnam War, covers America's longest Cold War conflict, from Eisenhower's first aid dollars to South Vietnam through the fall of Saigon in 1975. The chapter explains why containment pulled the United States into Vietnam, how Johnson escalated and Nixon withdrew, and how the war tore apart American politics at home, especially in 1968. For APUSH Period 8 (1945-1980), this is the central example of Cold War military engagement and the debate over how much war power a president should have.

Quick scope of the war from the chapter: about 2.7 million Americans served, 58,000 died, the U.S. spent $118 billion, and total deaths in Vietnam and related Southeast Asian conflicts were probably between 2 million and 4 million.

Eisenhower, the Domino Theory, and a Divided Vietnam

The U.S. got involved in Vietnam because of decolonization plus containment. France tried to retake its colony of Indochina after World War II, which only boosted support for the nationalist and Communist leader Ho Chi Minh.

• By 1950, the anticolonial war became a Cold War proxy fight. Truman gave military aid to the French while China and the USSR aided Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh guerrillas.
• In 1954, a large French army was trapped and forced to surrender at Dien Bien Phu. The French asked Eisenhower to send U.S. troops. He refused.
• At the Geneva Conference of 1954, France gave up Indochina, which was divided into Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.

Vietnam itself was split at the 17th parallel, supposedly temporarily until a general election could unite it. That election never happened, largely because South Vietnam's government feared the Communists would win. Two hostile states emerged: Ho Chi Minh's Communist dictatorship in the North and Ngo Dinh Diem's government in the South, backed by anti-Communist, Catholic, and urban Vietnamese.

From 1955 to 1961, the U.S. gave South Vietnam over $1 billion in aid. Eisenhower justified it with the domino theory, the idea that if South Vietnam fell to communism, one Southeast Asian nation after another would fall too, all the way to Australia and New Zealand. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles also built SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organization) in 1954, a regional defense pact signed by eight nations including the U.S., Britain, and France.

Escalation Under Kennedy and Johnson

Vietnam barely came up in the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates, but it grew into the defining crisis of the decade.

Kennedy's buildup

Kennedy accepted the domino theory and increased the number of U.S. military "advisers" in South Vietnam. By 1963, more than 16,000 U.S. troops were there in support roles, not combat: training South Vietnam's army, guarding facilities, and helping build "strategic hamlets" (fortified villages).

The problem was the ally. Diem lost peasant support in the countryside, and Buddhist monks set themselves on fire in Saigon to protest his policies. Two weeks before Kennedy's own assassination, South Vietnamese generals overthrew and killed Diem, acting with the knowledge of the Kennedy administration.

The Tonkin Gulf Resolution (1964)

This is the turning point to know. South Vietnam was unraveling (seven different governments in 1964), and Barry Goldwater attacked Johnson for weak support against the Vietcong (Communist guerrillas). Then in August 1964, North Vietnamese gunboats allegedly fired on U.S. warships in the Gulf of Tonkin. Johnson used this small, obscure naval incident to get Congress to pass the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, essentially a blank check letting the president take "all necessary measures" in Vietnam.

Congress never declared war, which critics later used to call it an illegal war. This sets up the Period 8 theme of debating executive power over foreign and military policy, which comes back with the War Powers Act.

Johnson's dilemma: escalate and risk an American war whose cost would doom his Great Society programs, or pull out and look weak.

America's War, 1965-1968

In 1965, after a Vietcong attack on the U.S. base at Pleiku, Johnson made Vietnam an American war.

• Operation Rolling Thunder began, a prolonged B-52 bombing campaign against North Vietnam.
• In April 1965, U.S. combat troops fought the Vietcong for the first time. By the end of 1965, more than 184,000 U.S. troops were in Vietnam.
• Generals pursued a war of attrition with search-and-destroy tactics, which alienated the peasants they were supposed to protect.
• By the end of 1967, more than 485,000 troops were deployed (the peak was 540,000 in March 1969) and 16,000 Americans had already died. General William Westmoreland still promised "light at the end of the tunnel."

Credibility gap and hawks vs. doves

The gap between official optimism and reality created what the media called a credibility gap. Robert McNamara later admitted in his memoirs that Washington's leaders failed to understand both the enemy and the nature of the war.

The country split into camps. Hawks saw the war as Soviet-backed Communist aggression, part of a plan to take all of Southeast Asia. Doves saw a civil war fought by Vietnamese nationalists trying to unite their country against a corrupt Saigon government. The loudest opposition came from college students facing the draft. In November 1967, Senator Eugene McCarthy became the first antiwar candidate to challenge Johnson for the Democratic nomination.

The Tet Offensive (January 1968)

During the Lunar New Year, the Vietcong launched a surprise attack on almost every provincial capital and American base in South Vietnam. Militarily, Tet failed. The U.S. counterattacked, inflicted heavier losses, and recovered the territory. Politically, it was a Vietcong victory. Americans watching the destruction on TV concluded victory was nowhere close, and McCarthy took 42 percent against Johnson in the New Hampshire primary.

When the Joint Chiefs asked for 200,000 more troops, Johnson's senior advisers turned against escalation. On March 31, 1968, Johnson announced on TV that he would limit the bombing, seek negotiations, and not run for reelection. Paris peace talks opened in May 1968 but quickly deadlocked. Escalation had stopped, though, and the next president would reverse it.

Coming Apart at Home: 1968 and the Election

The chapter calls 1968 one of the most troubled years in U.S. history outside the Civil War. After Tet and Johnson's withdrawal came the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and riots in cities nationwide.

• Robert F. Kennedy entered the race and mobilized blue-collar and minority voters better than McCarthy. He won the California primary on June 5, 1968, then was assassinated right after his victory speech.
• At the Democratic Convention in Chicago, Vice President Hubert Humphrey won the nomination while Mayor Richard Daley's police clashed with antiwar demonstrators in what TV portrayed as a "police riot."
• Governor George Wallace of Alabama ran as the American Independent Party candidate, tapping White backlash against desegregation, antiwar protests, and race riots, and hoping to throw the election into the House.
• Richard Nixon, a hawk, ran on "peace with honor" and "law and order" with running mate Spiro Agnew.

Nixon won a very close popular vote but a solid electoral majority, 301 to 191. The bigger takeaway: Nixon plus Wallace took almost 57 percent of the popular vote, a signal that the tide was turning against New Deal liberalism and toward conservatism.

Nixon's Vietnam Policy and the End of the War

Nixon's goal was to reduce U.S. involvement without appearing to concede defeat, what he called "peace with honor." Working with national security adviser Henry Kissinger, he pursued Vietnamization: gradually withdrawing U.S. troops while giving South Vietnam the money, weapons, and training to fight its own war. U.S. troop levels fell from more than 540,000 in 1969 to under 30,000 in 1972. The broader Nixon Doctrine extended the idea, promising Asian allies U.S. support but without extensive U.S. ground forces.

Opposition keeps growing

• In April 1970, Nixon expanded the war by invading Cambodia to destroy Communist bases. Campus protests followed, and National Guard troops killed four students at Kent State and two at Jackson State. The Senate (but not the House) voted to repeal the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
• In 1969, Americans learned about the 1968 My Lai massacre of women and children by U.S. troops.
• In 1971, The New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, a secret government study of policy mistakes and deceptions in Vietnam, leaked by former Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg.

Paris Accords and the War Powers Act

Kissinger held secret talks with North Vietnam's Le Duc Tho and announced "peace is at hand" in fall 1972, prematurely. When talks stalled, Nixon ordered the heaviest bombing of the war against North Vietnam. The Paris Accords of January 1973 followed: U.S. withdrawal, return of more than 500 POWs, a promised cease-fire, and free elections. In practice the armistice left tens of thousands of enemy troops in the South and did not end the war between North and South.

After news broke that Nixon had authorized 3,500 secret bombing raids in neutral Cambodia, Congress passed the War Powers Act in November 1973 over his veto. It requires the president to report to Congress within 48 hours of taking military action and to get congressional approval for any action lasting more than 60 days. This is the chapter's answer to the executive-power debate the Tonkin Gulf Resolution started.

Defeat in Southeast Asia

South Vietnam fell two years after U.S. withdrawal. In 1974, President Ford could not get Congress to fund further U.S. military involvement. In April 1975, Saigon fell and Vietnam was reunified under the Communist government in Hanoi. Just before the collapse, the U.S. evacuated about 150,000 Vietnamese who had supported America and faced persecution. The chapter calls the fall of South Vietnam a low point for American prestige abroad and confidence at home, and notes the war's $118 billion cost helped start a long inflationary cycle.

In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975 and killed between 1 million and 2 million of its own people, perhaps a quarter of the population. The wars created 10 million refugees, many of whom came to the United States.

Did the dominoes fall? Cambodia did, but the rest of Southeast Asia did not. Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia became "little tigers" of the growing Pacific Rim economy, and some argued U.S. involvement bought those nations time to develop and resist communism.

Key Terms to Know

Practice and Next Steps

Reinforce this chapter with the course-aligned Topic 8.8 The Vietnam War study guide, which frames the same material around causes and effects, exactly how the exam asks about it.

Vietnam connects to almost everything else in Period 8. Review AMSCO 8.2 The Cold War for the containment policy that got the U.S. in, AMSCO 8.7 America as a World Power for the broader foreign policy picture, and AMSCO 8.9 The Great Society to see the domestic programs the war's costs undermined.

Then test yourself with APUSH guided practice questions or write a causation essay and get instant feedback with FRQ practice. The Vietnam War is a favorite for cause-and-effect prompts, so practicing that skill here pays off.