But come to that it did. In early December, after Johnson’s massive election victory, he and his aides agreed on a two-phase escalation of the fighting. The first involved "armed reconnaissance strikes" against infiltration routes in Laos - part of the so-called Ho Chi Minh Trail that carried men and materiel into the South - as well as retaliatory airstrikes against North Vietnam in the event of a major Vietcong attack. The second phase anticipated "graduated military pressure" against the North, in the form of aerial bombing and, almost certainly, the dispatch of US ground troops to the South. Phase one would begin as soon as possible; phase two would come later, after thirty days or more.
In February 1965, following Vietcong attacks on American installations in South Vietnam that killed thirty-two Americans, Johnson ordered Operation Rolling Thunder, a bombing program planned the previous fall that continued, more or less uninterrupted, until October 1968. Then, on March 8, the first US combat battalions came ashore near Danang. The North Vietnamese met the challenge. They hid in shelters and rebuilt roads and bridges with a tenaciousness that frustrated and awed American officials. They also increased infiltration into the South.
That July, Johnson convened a series of high-level discussions about US war policy. Though these deliberations had about them the character of a charade - Johnson wanted history to record that he agonized over a choice he had in fact already made (and many historians have obliged him) - they did confirm that the American commitment would be more or less open-ended. On July 28, the president publicly announced a significant troop increase, disclosing that others would follow. By the end of 1965, more than 180,000 US ground troops were in South Vietnam. In 1966, the figure climbed to 385,000. In 1967 alone, US war planes flew 108,000 sorties and dropped 226,000 tons of bombs on North Vietnam. In 1968, US troop strength reached 536,100. The Soviet Union and China responded by increasing their material assistance to the DRV, though their combined amount never came close to matching American totals.
The 1965 Americanization came despite deep misgivings on the part of influential and informed voices at home and abroad. In the key months of decision (November 1964 through February 1965), Democratic leaders in the Senate, major newspapers such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and prominent columnists like Walter Lippmann warned against deepening involvement (though, in the case of the lawmakers, they did so quietly, behind closed doors). Inside the administration, the opponents included Under Secretary of State George W. Ball and Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey. The latter assured Johnson that the Republican right’s dismal showing in the November elections gave the administration ample maneuverability on Vietnam. Abroad, all of America’s main allies cautioned against escalation and urged a political settlement, on the grounds that no military solution favorable to the United States was possible. Remarkably, even many ofthe proponents ofthe escalation shared this pessimism. They knew that the odds of success were not great, that the Saigon government was weak and getting weaker, lacking even the semblance of popular support.
Why, then, did Johnson and his advisers choose war? Think domino theory again, only in a new form. The worry now was less tangible, more amorphous than in the early 1950s, as US officials began to expound what Jonathan Schell has called the "psychological domino theory."393 To be sure, from the start, the domino theory had contained an important psychological component; now, however, that component became supreme. Credibility was the new watchword, as policymakers declared it essential to stand firm in Vietnam in order to demonstrate America’s determination to defend its vital interests not only in the region but around the world. Should the United States waver in Vietnam, friends both in Southeast Asia and elsewhere would doubt Washington’s commitment to their defense, and might succumb to enemy pressure even without a massive invasion by foreign Communist forces - what political scientists call a "bandwagon" effect. Adversaries, meanwhile, would be emboldened to challenge US interests worldwide.
Vietnam, in this way of thinking, was a "test case" of Washington’s willingness and ability to exert its power on the international stage. Even the incontrovertible evidence of a deep Sino-Soviet split, which affected the strategic balance in the Cold War in the mid-1960s in serious ways, evidently did not lessen the importance ofthe credibility imperative. Beijing appeared to be the more hostile and aggressive of the two Communist powers, the more deeply committed to global revolution, but the Soviets, too, supported Hanoi; any slackening in the American commitment to South Vietnam’s defense could cause an increase in Soviet adventurism. Conversely, if Washington stood firm and worked to ensure the survival of a non-Communist Saigon government, it could send a powerful message to Moscow and Beijing that indirect aggression could not succeed.
Many of the aforementioned opponents of the 1965 escalation rejected this line of argument. They rebuffed the notion that US credibility was on the line in Vietnam and that a setback there would inevitably cause similar losses elsewhere. Some said US credibility would suffer ifJohnson made Vietnam a large-scale war, as audiences around the world questioned Washington’s judgment and its sense of priorities. On occasion, top officials allowed that the critics might be right, but they pressed the credibility argument anyway. One reason was that for many of them, it was not merely America's credibility that was perceived to be at stake; it was also the administration’s domestic political credibility and officials’ own personal credibility. Johnson worried that failure in Vietnam would harm his domestic agenda; even more, he feared the personal humiliation he imagined would inevitably accompany a defeat - and for him, a negotiated withdrawal constituted defeat. Senior advisers, meanwhile, many of whom had for years publicly trumpeted Vietnam’s importance, knew that to start singing a different tune now would expose themselves to potential ridicule and endanger their careers.
What, then, of the stated objective of helping a South Vietnamese ally repulse external aggression? That too figured into the equation, but not as much as it would have had the Saigon government - racked with infighting among senior and mid-level officials and possessing little broad-based support - done more to assist in its own defense. Talented and courageous anti-Communists dedicated to the war effort certainly existed in the South, including in the halls of power, but never in sufficient numbers, even after the ascension to power in 1965 of a more stable regime under Air Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky and General Nguyen Van Thieu. The Ky-Thieu government, a rueful Robert McNamara would remark two years later, in June 1967, "is still largely corrupt, incompetent, and unresponsive to the needs and wishes of the people."394
World History
