Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy since 1938

In Chapters 10, 11, and 12, the authors focus on US foreign policy in the 1960s and the early 1970s. The most important aspect of America’s engagement abroad was the Vietnam War (1955-1975). This war began in the context of decolonization during the Eisenhower administration and was passed onto the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations. It is a war that served as a watershed moment changing the perception of America’s role domestically and the country’s image abroad. The Vietnam War also transformed the perception of the containment policy: it worked in Europe but failed in Asia.

The Kennedy presidency began with the vision that the US was “the last, best hope for mankind” (171), which matched the social mood at this time:

Kennedy took office at the moment in time when America’s optimism was at its zenith. Kennedy believed, and often said, it would be possible for the United States to simultaneously take the offensive in the Cold War, accelerate the arms race, eliminate poverty and racism at home, lower taxes, all without unbalancing the budget and starting inflation (171).

In contrast to Eisenhower’s pragmatism, Kennedy supported the messianic trajectory of American foreign policy more zealously, overestimated American capabilities, and believed that more can be done in the Cold War. Despite Kennedy’s brief time in power cut short by his 1963 assassination, he faced a number of serious foreign-policy decisions.

First, Kennedy carried out the CIA-organized Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 that was designed by the previous administration. The invasion used Cuban exiles and American airplanes and ships with the goal of removing Fidel Castro. In 1959, Cuba had a successful Communist Revolution. In the view of the US government, an ideological rival arose right in their backyard. The invasion failed for many reasons, including the fact that the Cubans had no interest in rebelling against Castro: “The CIA had been wrong in predicting an uprising against Castro, but the prediction was exactly what Kennedy wanted to hear” (174).

Second, the president sought to appear strong: “The Kennedy-McNamara team had launched the greatest arms race in the history of mankind” (175). Using a strategy of flexible response, the Kennedy administration built up American weapons to project the ability of intervening everywhere. The Soviet Union responded by growing its own Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) arsenal. The authors argue that the Soviet Union saw the behavior of the US at this time as aggressive.

The result was the Berlin crisis of 1961 over the status of the divided city. After the 1948 Soviet blockade of the city, the Allies maintained its postwar quadripartite division. By 1958, Khrushchev wanted to have a separate agreement with East Germany about the status of Berlin. Diplomatic solutions failed repeatedly. In August 1961, a wall was built to physically separate East and West Germany symbolizing the geopolitical power shift of the Cold War: “Kennedy was willing to live with the Wall as long as West Berlin stayed in the Western orbit. Khrushchev’s Wall was a brilliant stroke” (179).

The next escalation came in the form of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. The United States placed nuclear-capable missiles in Italy and Turkey threatening the immediate security of the USSR. The Soviet Union responded with, first, providing Cubans with military supplies, and then by constructing bases for medium-range ballistic missiles in Cuba. The Kennedy administration responded by blockading Cuba contrary to the advice of the Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, who wanted an air strike.

The crisis concluded in the final days of October when the Americans promised not to invade Cuba. They also promised to remove the missiles from Turkey, while keeping this information out of the public eye. The USSR, in turn, would not proceed with missiles in Cuba. This was the closest that the world had come to a nuclear exchange during the Cold War: “Kennedy, having been to the brink and having looked into the yawning chasm of world holocaust, learned to be a little softer in his pronouncements, a little less strident in his assertions” (186). On the Soviet side, Khrushchev received criticism from the Chinese for being too cowardly and removing the missiles. He also faced significant opposition within the Soviet government because “his brinkmanship frightened nearly everyone” (187). As a result, Khrushchev was no longer in power a year later. At the same time, the Europeans did not want to be drawn into a nuclear conflict because of the US and the Soviet Union. For example, the French leader Charles de Gaulle sought European independence by asking to remove the NATO headquarters from France.

After this, the authors undertake the complex subject of the early days of the Vietnam War. Ambrose and Brinkley argue that the containment policy that was reasonably successful in Europe failed in Asia. This failure became particularly obvious in the context of this drawn-out conflict.

The Kennedy administration backed the leader Ngo Dinh Diem, “a low-grade despot” (191) in South Vietnam, against North Vietnam, and the Communist guerilla fighters, the Viet Cong, as part of its new strategy to avoid a direct conflict with the USSR.

A large-scale confrontation began in March 1960 between the Viet Cong and South Vietnam. The United States unanimously decided to “stand up to the aggressors from the north” (193), in the words of General Westmoreland. The authors argue that this war was the result of the policy of containment all around the world and, specifically, liberal policies of Truman, Kennedy, and Acheson who acted more hawkish. These leaders believed that superior intelligence and weapons—and South Vietnamese troops—would guarantee a victory.

American involvement grew gradually. After Kennedy’s assassination, President Lyndon Johnson continued Kennedy’s policies. For example, in 1964, the American military-advisor presence in the region increased significantly ignoring the international call for reconciliation.

The August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident was based on false information about North Vietnamese activities. Without any investigation, the incident led to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and greater American hostilities against North Vietnam: “Like Eisenhower in the Middle East, Johnson wanted and got a blank check that would allow him to expand the war as he saw fit without consulting Congress” (199-200).

In general, in the mid-1960s, the main debate in Washington was whether to negotiate or to increase American involvement in Vietnam. In practice, the US opted to increase its bombing campaigns:

The sheer magnitude of the American effort boggled the mind. First the headlines proclaimed that America had dropped more bombs on tiny Vietnam than in the entire Pacific Theater in World War II. By 1967 it was more bombs than in the European Theater. Then more than in the whole of World War II. Finally, by 1970, more bombs had been dropped on Vietnam than on all targets in the whole of human history. Napalm poured into the villages while weed killers defoliated the countryside. Never had any nation relied so completely on industrial production and material superiority to wage a war. Yet it did not work (203).

The failure of the US invasion of the region and the mounting costs ultimately led Americans to question “some of the fundamental premises of American foreign policy during the Cold War, especially the definition of America’s vital interests and the domino theory” (214).

When Richard Nixon took over as president in 1969, he had many options to resolve the Vietnam War such as bringing the troops home. Nixon chose to increase lend-lease to South Vietnam which “proved to be a disastrous choice, one of the worst decisions ever made by a Cold War President” (228).

The results of this decision led to prolonging the war, increasing the death toll, causing significant inflation, and internal division within the US Nixon also significantly increased the American bombing campaigns in South Vietnam and Cambodia. Since the US was doing poorly in Vietnam, Congress stepped in and began to limit Nixon’s power. Domestically, too, Nixon was embroiled in the Watergate scandal involving significant abuses of power in the context of the 1972 presidential election. The war in Vietnam and the Watergate significantly reduced confidence in his leadership.

In 1973, the sides signed the Paris Peace Accords ending the war in Vietnam. However, the peace collapsed when North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam in 1975. The two countries reunited as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam a year later: “America’s most disastrous foreign-policy adventure, the intervention into the Indochinese war, had come to an end “(249). At the same time, Khmer Rouge government arose in Cambodia which the authors call “one of the most repressive regimes in the world’s history” (249).

In addition to Nixon, Henry Kissinger, the president’s national security advisor, plays an important role in this section. The authors describe him as a megalomaniac: “His self-confidence knew no bounds” (229). Kissinger believed everything was connected and sought a détente with the USSR starting with SALT nuclear arms talks, decreasing the tension in the Middle East, and peace in Vietnam. The US and the USSR signed the SALT I agreement in 1972 freezing ICBM deployment and was “the only arms-control agreement signed by any President in the first four decades of the Cold War” (231). Détente also allowed the US to establish diplomatic relations with East Germany in 1974 and by selling large amounts of wheat to the Soviet Union.

The Vietnam War was not the only event in international relations at this time. For example, the American interests in the Dominican Republic and a fear of a Communist takeover led to an invasion in 1965. The authors also highlight the question of oil-producing countries which formed OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) in 1959: Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq. The question of American interests in the Middle East led to the CIA toppling an Iranian leader Mosaddegh in 1953 after he attempted to nationalize the country’s oil fields. The late 1960s also involved the relationship between the US, Soviet Union, and Gamal Abdel Nasser-led Egypt, and changing loyalties in that country.

At the center of that relationship was the question of Israel and its expansionist behavior. Israel won the 1967 Six-Day War occupying the Syrian Golan Heights, Egypt’s the Sinai Peninsula, and capturing the West Bank and Jerusalem. In response, Arab states “did tacitly abandon the call for the extinction of the Zionists and committed themselves to diplomatic efforts to solve the problem” (213).

The worsened relations between China and the Soviet Union—the Sino-Soviet split—allowed Kissinger to pursue triangular diplomacy and develop separate relationships with the two ideological opponents. In 1972, Nixon traveled to Beijing to meet with China’s leadership, Mao Zedong and Chou En-lai, ending decades of non-existent diplomatic relations. By the late 1970s, the US and China established full-fledged diplomatic relations during the Carter administration with trade relations formed in the following decade.