The Gulf of Tonkin incident is when a US Navy ship was allegedly attacked by North Vietnamese patrol boats. Reports of this attack angered LBJ and he retaliated by approving of Operation Rolling Thunder which meant that North Vietnam would be under heavy air bombardment. This was a major escalatory step in Vietnam as it is the first time America was directly involved with artillery. This further increased American commitment to the South Vietnamese and operation rolling thunder escalated the war in Vietnam to such an extent that a full-scale war in the very near future was now an inevitability. Johnson has to take huge responsibility because Operation Rolling Thunder left America in a position where they could not pull out of Vietnam without trying to secure victory.
Johnson believed that America should fight communist ‘aggressors’ in South-East Asia, whatever the cost and so he was the first President to send in ground troops into Vietnam, therefore resulting in a full-scale war. This is the second major step he took in escalating the war in Vietnam, and the most important. LBJ now put America in a position were they had to face the guerrilla fighters of the North face to face and they were expected to win. Johnson had now escalated the war to such an extent that previous Presidents may have just only thought about as an option. Therefore sending in ground troops puts even more responsibility on Johnson for the escalation in the war as it was the first time Vietnam was being invaded by foreigners since the splitting of Vietnam.
Truman was blamed for the ‘loss of China’ and this affected his reputation greatly, Johnson did not want to ‘lose Vietnam’ as he feared that the same would happen to him, therefore he may have been forced into the war in Vietnam because of public opinion. Operation Rolling Thunder was successful for LBJ, and he received good public backing from it, therefore he may have felt that a full-scale war may also receive a similar response and therefore could help him increase his popularity.
On November 1, 1963 a Coup was held in South Vietnam and Diem was removed from the presidency, shortly afterwards he was assassinated. Although the coup was taken out by the ARVN, it did have some American involvement in it, this occurred during the time that Kennedy was President. Kennedy or Kennedy’s government’s influence in the coup increased commitment in Vietnam as they were now trying to be able to choose the government of South Vietnam.
During Kennedy’s time in office the number of military advisers in Vietnam were increased from 500 to 16,000. This increase meant that the commitment of America was also increasing, and therefore making it even harder for them to pull straight back out.
LBJ also had the same foreign policy advisers as JFK; Robert McNamara and Dean Rusk. This meant that there were new fresh ideas being brought into the White House and therefore possibly the problem of Vietnam was still being tackled by Kennedy’s ideas as Johnson did not have much experience in foreign policy.
