The first stage of intervention was financial. Eisenhower sought to provide assistance to Diem’s regime in order to enable South Vietnam to resist communist rebels and establish a model of Westernisation in Saigon. Between 1953 and 1957 over $1 billion of US economic and military aid was put into South Vietnam but Diem failed to achieve stability in a confused Vietnam. Much of the problem rested with Diem himself, a vain and corrupt leader whose rule was characterised by nepotism, persecution of certain religions, bribery, corruption and a lack of reform. The burning Buddhist monk protesting against the policies of the Catholic and pro-American Diem just shows how much people opposed Diems rule. To the rest of the world it looked as if the US were backing the wrong leader and, when the South Vietnamese military overthrew him in a coup in October 1963, it is believed it was done with the approval of Kennedy.
Diem’s unpopularity increased, and the opposition within South Vietnam grew. Diem labelled all opponents Vietcong (communist). The Vietcong appealed to the mass of the Vietnamese population, they attracted people with promises of land reform and their respectful treatment and persuasion of the peasants, this enabled them to win over the ‘hearts and minds’ of the people. As support for the Vietcong grew the South Vietnam needed greater assistance from the United States in order to deal with this.
Kennedy was a believer of the quagmire theory, and it is for this reason that he needed to do something to counteract the Vietcongs’ popularity. By sending in military troops he saw it as a way of showing the South Vietnamese that the Americans were just as capable of supplying the demands of the people. Sending troops in showed that the Americans could offer protection to a corrupt Vietnamese nation. Diems’ unpopularity caused a change in tide which the state believed could only be eradicated by military intervention.
President Kennedy introduced military, having said this 16,000 Americans could not effectively deal with the scale of the task, especially with the continued supply of equipment coming from Hanoi. Tactics such as Strategic Hamlets also failed. By 1964, a third of South Vietnam was in the hands of the Vietcong.
Under Johnson, superior military technology was seen to be the only means to prevent the communist takeover of South Vietnam. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident in August 1964 gave the US President a ‘blank cheque’ to conduct the war against the Vietcong and the North. By 1968 Johnson had committed over half a million ground troops to the war effort. In many respects Johnson was looking to fulfil the legacy of JFK in preventing the South falling into communist hands, but it was only after he was elected in his own right in 1964 that he developed the confidence to extend the previous policy. Johnson was influenced by advisers, like Robert McNamara and General Westmoreland, were determined to see a strong military commitment to resolve the conflict.
The US was concerned about its perception of losing the Cold War, the fall of China and the failure in Korea. The US were concerned about losing Asia to communism. The ‘domino theory’ argued that if Vietnam would fall then neighbouring countries such as Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaya and Indonesia could also follow. The commitment to South Vietnam was therefore seen as a vital dam to prevent takeover by communist forces. US Presidents were also determined to present an image of being tough on communism, the quagmire theory suggests that successive Presidents had to continue escalating as none of them wanted to accept the fall of Vietnam to communism during their term, but also did not want to fully commit troops which could be unpopular.
Kennedy, being a great believer of the domino and quagmire theory, matched with his desire not to be blamed for the ‘loss of Vietnam’, saw military intervention as the only direction to move in. The fact that previous presidents had been blamed for Chinas’ fall to communism drove Kennedy on to make pivotal decisions.
American intervention was primarily determined by the context of the Cold War, the US could not sanction the loss of Vietnam to communism and the further the US got embroiled in sustaining the unsustainable in South Vietnam, the harder it became to pull out, the quagmire theory. Johnson’s strong military intervention came as a result of years of support to a corrupt regime which failed to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the Vietnamese people, when Ho Chi Minh and North Vietnam could offer unity and independence, the US presence could, realistically, offer only continued conflict.
