Nation of Nations 3/e Davidson, Gienapp, Heyrman, Lytle, and Stoff
	Online Learning Center

THE CHAPTER IN PERSPECTIVE

No event since the Civil War divided Americans as deeply as did the Vietnam War. The contrast between the patriotism evoked during World War II offers a strong contrast. The contrast becomes perhaps even stronger when it is remembered that World War II began at the end of the nation's most severe depression, while the Vietnam War came at the end of a long period of economic expansion. Yet the broader roots of social discontent put these contrasts into perspective. As we saw in Chapter 29, the crisis atmosphere of the Cold War had encouraged a majority consensus during the 1950s. During the 1960s a younger generation began to challenge that consensus--to campaign for "free speech, to revolt against conformity, to question the conditions that allowed segregation, poverty and racism to persist. It is not so surprising that, as draft calls and casualty lists rose for a war halfway across the globe, the questioning also spread to challenge the black-and-white battlelines of the cold war.

OVERVIEW

The consensus that had united the nation to fight the cold war cracked during the Vietnam conflict, as Americans fought in Vietnamese jungles and the streets of American cities. In a guerrilla war without battle lines and against an often unseen enemy it was easy to wonder who was the friend and who the enemy. At home Americans could ask the same question when both the supporters of the war and its opponents claimed to represent the best interests of the nation.

The Road to Vietnam

The struggle that wracked Vietnam for some thirty years was deeply rooted in history. Ho Chi Minh drew as much or more on the traditions of his people as he did on Marxist ideas. Before Lyndon Johnson committed the United States fully to the war, presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to John Kennedy had made decisions interlocking the fate of the two nations.

An incident in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964 led President Johnson to launch retaliatory air strikes on North Vietnam. More important, Congress adopted the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution giving Johnson in effect a blank check to retaliate. The following year, Operation Rolling Thunder began the bombing of selected targets in the North, but had little effect. With air bases to defend, the United States had to send troops, and when the troops became involved in combat, reinforcements were brought in, until American forces assumed the major fighting role in the South.

Social Consequences of the War

Due to a draft system that made it easier for students and the more affluent to receive exemptions, the soldiers that served in Vietnam tended to be younger, poorer, and less well educated. Still, morale at first remained high in the face of unrelenting combat, booby traps, and the physical rigors of the jungle. Yet American forces made little headway against the enemy. The advanced technologies of war that were used (napalm, cluster bombs, and defoliants) too often destroyed the land, villages and people that American policymakers were intending to help.

By 1967 antiwar protest at home had spread outward from college campuses. Hundreds of thousands of people rallied to halt the bombing and end the war. In 1968 protesters ringed the Pentagon. The grim lack of progress led to defections even within Johnson's cabinet, most notably Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. And as the cost of the war rose, so did inflation.

The Unraveling

The issues of the war came to a head in 1968, after the shock of the Vietcong's Tet offensive. Americans won a costly military victory, but the Vietcong came away with a political triumph. Within Johnson's Cabinet, Defense Secretary Clark Clifford led a movement to deescalate. When antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy almost beat Johnson in the New Hampshire primary, the president announced he would not run for reelection, a victim of America's longest war.

Four days later an assassin gunned down Martin Luther King, sparking riots in the nation's major cities. Two months later Robert Kennedy was shot and killed while campaigning for the presidency. America had lost its most articulate liberal leaders. Frustrated protesters ran into hostile police at the Democrats' Chicago convention and rioting erupted in the streets. The presidential race of 1968 came down to a contest among Johnson's vice president, Hubert Humphrey; conservative Republican Richard Nixon; and the former segregationist Governor of Alabama, George Wallace. Despite Humphrey's last-minute surge, Nixon won a narrow victory.

The Nixon Era

Richard Nixon admitted in private that the Vietnam war needed to be ended, while publicly he escalated the bombing to force North Vietnamese concessions. In 1970, he briefly extended the war into Cambodia. As a result, domestic protest mounted and Congress repealed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. Meanwhile, Nixon steadily withdrew American troops--"Vietnamizing" the war. That reduced both American casualties and the morale of American troops.

Nixon saw Vietnam as part of a larger pattern of America's declining world power. In the Nixon Doctrine, he announced a shift of increased responsibility to allies like the South Vietnamese and Shah of Iran. He also made a dramatic trip to China and initiated a policy of détente with the Soviet Union that included a Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT) agreement limiting some nuclear weapons.

At home, Johnson's insistence on pursuing both the war and his domestic welfare programs without paying for them through tax increases led the economy into stagflation (low growth combined with inflation). Nixon sought to stem the economic slide and shift power from Washington to state and local government through his "New Federalism." Despite a reputation as a conservative, the president accepted a number of reforms, including the Clean Air an Clean Water Acts. He even resorted to Keynesian wage and price freezes to stem inflation. In effect, Nixon reversed traditional Republican economic policies to achieve practical results.

"Silent" Majorities and Vocal Minorities

Nixon's appeal to the silent majority did not recognize the plight of significant minorities. Hispanics had grown increasingly vocal in insisting that they, like African Americans, had been held back by discrimination and poverty. They campaigned for a greater political voice and for economic power. Cesar Chavez organized Mexican-American migrant farmworkers, while more militant groups like La Raza Unida sought to gain power in communities where Chicanos were a majority. Indians, whose population had swelled during the twentieth century to about 800,000 by 1970, became similarly active. Through various forms of protest and legal challenge they sought to reclaim old tribal rights and more responsive government policy. And one of the most long silent groups, gays, gave voice to new demands for respect and equal rights.

Even with Nixon appointee Warren Burger replacing the liberal Earl Warren as chief justice, social activists still looked to the Supreme Court to redress their grievances. The Court upheld school busing as one way to redress segregation. When President Nixon tried to make two controversial appointments to shift the Court's balance to the right, Congress rejected them. Nixon increasingly resorted to legal harassment by federal agencies to crush groups he saw as enemies. When the Democrats in 1972 nominated George McGovern, an antiwar liberal, to run for president, Nixon and his vice president, Spiro Agnew, won a smashing victory.

The End of an Era

In 1973, after untold material and personal loss, the United States ended its almost thirty-year involvement in Vietnam's internal conflicts. An intense bombing campaign in 1972 allowed negotiator Henry Kissinger to claim "peace with honor" rather than defeat--although in fact, the administration had accepted the terms offered by the North Vietnamese before the bombings. Even Richard Nixon, whose career had begun as an arch-cold warrior, came to recognize there were limits to what the United States could do to contain Communism.

Copyright ©1998 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Any use is subject to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
McGraw-Hill Higher Education is one of the many fine businesses of The McGraw-Hill Companies.
For further information about this site contact mhhe_webmaster@mcgraw-hill.com.