Had he lived, JFK would not have withdrawn the US from Viet-Nam

Great Debates
1

[Mods: This is really an historical debate, although the subject matter is political. For that reason, I put it in GD. If it belongs in P&E, I do apologize]

One of the enduring parts of the Kennedy legend, and a usual feature of most juicy conspiracy theories, is the notion that JFK would have removed troops from Vietnam, if only he hadn’t been killed.

Sometimes, this is used as fodder for the “motivation” for his killing. He was going to “shatter the intelligence agencies” and stop the war machine.

Other times, it’s a more mundane lament about the quagmire that war turned into, and a belief that Kennedy had a plan that would have kept us from further engagement.

It’s rubbish.

For one, JFK was an ardent cold warrior. His entire presidency showed support for the military, and for projecting its strength around the world.

There are no shortage of speeches whereby Kennedy spoke against the need to fight against the Soviet communists. His election campaign in 1960 was predicated, in part, on a supposed “missile gap” that he knew wasn’t accurate. Although the Bay of Pigs was not successful, the CIA entertained all sorts of harebrained schemes under his watch, and both Jack and his brother Bobby were very much in support of clandestine activities.

Moreover, there is a counter factual myth about an order that Kennedy made shortly before he died. The myth is that he directed the full removal of troops from Vietnam by 1965.

In reality, the famous order (NSA Memorandum 263) simply says, in part:

And what does that say?

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/white-house-statement-following-the-return-special-mission-south-viet-nam

It’s aspirational! In another era, it might be reported as “when they stand up, we stand down”. JFK had no fixed plans for withdrawal.

(It should also be noted that - in NSA Memorandum 263 - Kennedy requested that this plan not be publicly announced. The meeting was recorded. I’ve found the audio previously online, but I’m not successful right now. He’s clearly thinking politically when he makes this point- he doesn’t want to be tied to any declaration).

I’m arguing that, had Kennedy lived, he would likely have been re-elected (LBJ won in a landslide), but he would never have seen the changes on the ground that would have convinced him to withdraw.

Remember, Kennedy was one of the leading proponents of the “domino theory” - that if Viet-Nam fell, the entire rest of Asia would turn communist. And I just can’t see an old WWII vet ever be willing to admit that America didn’t win a war.

The Gulf of Tonkin incident still would have happened, our troops would have still become enmeshed in an unwinnable war, and the entire legacy for the thing would be laid at Jack Kennedy’s feet.

2

I don’t think it was politically viable for any US president to withdraw from Vietnam in the 1960s. The strategy of “cutting our losses” was entirely alien to the American electorate and the young people protesting the war were largely disenfranchised until the 26th Amendment was ratified two years after JFK would have been out of office.

3

I have nothing to add, but think the OP’s analysis is excellent.

4

I wasn’t aware there was a commonly held belief that JFK would have withdrawn from Vietnam. But I agree, I don’t think he would have.

5

Maybe it’s limited to the wackadoodle conspiracy fringe, but it featured in the movie JFK.

6

I’ve rarely seen this story arise. It’s an excuse used to rehabilitate the reality of the Kennedy presidency, attempting to say he wasn’t responsible for the results of the war. There also the stories that Eisenhower got us into Vietnam so it’s not Kennedy’s fault.

I agree completely with the OP. There’s no reason to think Kennedy would change course.

7

I agree with the OP. I’d also suggest that after the Cuban Missile Crisis, a Democratic president and candidate would be deeply concerned to show he would continue to “stand up to Communism” and thus be unlikely to consider pulling out of Vietnam. LBJ was much more interested in his domestic agenda than foreign affairs, which was crippled by Vietnam, and even he couldn’t pull out of Vietnam, in part because he believed he could not appear to be dovish or soft on Communism because the Republicans would use that against him in the election.

On an almost related note, I have been reading John Kenneth Galbraith’s Ambassador’s Journal, his published diaries from his term as US ambassador to I did, 1961-1963. During that period, he was as concerned with US involvement in Laos as in Vietnam, and was deeply concerned with the influence of Vietnam hawks such as Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara in this period.

8

We had maybe 1000 volunteer advisors there when he died. Nothing to “withdraw” IRL.

Would we have continued support for South Vietnam? Certainly. Would that have meant regiments of USA “boots on the ground”? Doubtful.

So the argument is specious.

A handful or volunteer advisors would never have gotten the kind of reaction that 50000+ GIs did, many of whom were unwilling draftees.

9

According to Wikipedia, there were 16,000 US troops in Vietnam in 1963

10

Okay, all still volunteer advisors. It was the draft and the draftee causalities that really caused the protests.

11

The “modern” draft was in effect from 1948. You are, of course, right to note that the draft and the sending of troops increased greatly after the Gulf of Tonkin “incident.” I think the OP’s point was to question whether Kennedy would have acted much differently than LBJ. It is speculative, of course, but there is nothing in Kennedy’s record to suggest he was somehow morally opposed to war. 16,000 “volunteer advisors” is surely a significant commitment. If a government sends 16,000 armed “volunteers” into another country, we may be a little skeptical of their protestations for peace, surely?

12

How many non volunteer draftees went to Vietnam in 1963?

The fact that there was a draft is meaningless. The fact the young men were drafted against their will and died was the crux of the protests.

I was nearly drafted in that war.

13

I believe Norman Morrison’s self-immolation in front of McNamara’s office in 1965 was a protest against the war, not the draft.

14

Indeed, the fact that JFK dramatically raised the number of US military personnel in Vietnam during his tenure speaks to how much he actually escalated things. Military Advisors in Vietnam: 1963 | JFK Library:

President Eisenhower sent some 700 military personnel as well military and economic aid to the government of South Vietnam. This effort was foundering when John F. Kennedy became president.

In May 1961, JFK authorized sending an additional 500 Special Forces troops and military advisors to assist the pro Western government of South Vietnam. By the end of 1962, there were approximately 11,000 military advisors in South Vietnam; that year, 53 military personnel had been killed. The president would soon send additional military advisors to support the South Vietnamese Army. By the end of 1963, the numbers had risen to 16,000.

Calling them ‘volunteers’ and ‘advisors’ are both Pentagon-speak of the era that tries to minimize what was actually going on to the public. They didn’t volunteer to go to South Vietnam to ‘advise’ the ARVN on their own, they were ordered to deploy there via the US chain of command ultimately resting on the shoulders of the POTUS. Calling what they were doing there ‘advising’ makes it sound like they were answering questions from the ARVN in a daily newspaper column. They were ‘advising’ ARVN officers in the field in combat and were often de facto the leaders of the ARVN unit whose commander they were ‘advising’. Hence why so many of them were being killed in action.

15

I appreciate your point about volunteer advisors; it is more helpful than the “scare quotes” I used to imply the same thing.

We may also want to consider the issue of the war in Vietnam a little more broadly than the sending of US ground troops. The US dropped more bombs on Laos and Vietnam than it did on Germany and Japan. At some level, at some scale, the involvement of US ground troops may not be the crucial matter.

16

I don’t think this argument is relevant to the issue of “what would Kennedy have done in Vietnam if he had lived?” It implies that the people protesting the war were all or even mostly between ages of 18 to 21, which is not true. It also implies that the votes of protesters would have made a difference. They wouldn’t. The reason for and purpose of large, noisy, and/or disruptive protests is to increase the influence of the protesters’ point of view beyond the power of their votes into society at large. This happened, but it took two or three years to show any effect, as evidenced by the withdrawal of Johnson from the election in 1968. The enfranchisement of voters of age 18 to 20 might have resulted from the persistence and vehemence of anti-war protests, but the effectiveness of the protests was the cause, not the effect, of that change.

17

Another vote of agreement with the OP.

I’ll add that Lyndon Johnson considered pushing the American effort in Vietnam to be part of the Kennedy legacy he had inherited.

18

Here’s a different question: could JFK have WON the war?

I know that the accepted wisdom today is that the war was unwinnable, and that may be true, but countries always say that a war was unwinnable after they lose. Could Kennedy have made political and strategic decisions that could have led to a better outcome? Would he have?

19

The chaos that war brings requires a full nationwide military occupation on levels near to what a colonial occupying force does. The US (being a modern democracy and not imperial Britain/France) doesn’t have the stomach to put so many Americans soldiers through this (as seen in Iraq and Afghanistan). Hell, even the French gave up on controlling French Indochina after nearly 100 years of power.

It seems that the only way to win the Vietnam war was to wait until the 900lb nationalistic gorilla / regional super power (China) makes inevitable, aggressive expansions into their territory and then step in as a friendly balancing force.

When you have access to Vietnamese political/military leaders and economy use the stabilizing force of US soft power to peacefully influence their population into willfully changing from a one-party state into a stable, modern, and open democracy.

It worked with Taiwan, and it seems that the US doing this to Vietnam right now.

20

We tend to forget that the war in Vietnam was first a civil war. That made it hard to even understand what “winning” would look like. It is by no means the definitive word, but JK Galbraith’s Indian ambassador journal notes there were US advisors who were hawks and others who, 1961~3, thought Vietnam could not be resolved by force.