EISENHOWER’S FOREIGN POLICY

Keys:

avoiding ground wars

low-level CIA actions--with plausible deniability

maintain friendly rulers within traditional American spheres, such as Latin America,

or geostrategically important areas of the world, such as the Middle East

Hence:

Guatemala, 1954

Overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz

Nationalist leader calling for minor land reform program

Threatened United Fruit properties

Several members of Eisenhower’s cabinet worked for United Fruit

An army was organized under Castillo Armas, and supported by air

Began legacy of right-wing rule and attacks on peasant union organizers

Between 150,000 - 250,000 Guatemalans died in succeeding dirty war

Iran, 1953

The Shah of Iran was an ally of the US ever since Russian advances into region were warned off in 1947

But the Iranian people were angry over oil leases to British and American oil companies

Democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadeq tries to nationalize oil companies

CIA agents arrange for Mossadeq’s arrest with Shah’s complicity

First democratic gov’t in Iran’s history thus overthrown

Paved way for Shah’s overthrow in 1979

Eisenhower’s 2nd policy of nuclear buildup to contain Soviets

Spy technology to ascertain Soviet strength ==> the U2 incident

1960 election--JFK plays cold war hawk to Richard Nixon, warns of missile gap, pledges rollback of soviet menace, wins famous election

In parting speech, Eisenhower warns of “military-industrial complex” in 1960

Cuba, 1959-1960s

Huge american interests in island supported by series of pro-American presidents and generals, the last being Fulgencio Batista

Welath inequalities and nationalism lead to 1959 revolution, led by Fidel Castro

Castro, rebuffed by US, turns to Soviet Union for aid

Leads to Bay of Pigs in 1961, actually carried out by JFK

And Cuban Missile crisis of 1962--part of JFK’s “hardline” policies

Vietnam, the test case…

“You know, you never defeated us on the battlefield”

--Col. Harry Summers to an unidentified North Vietnamese officer

--The Vietnamese officer’s reply:

“That may be so, but it is also irrelevant.”

Ho Chi Minh--

Communist or not?

In 1948, the US rejected an attempt to contact him, since, “a white man would be very conspicuous. An effective intelligence officer would have to have a little brown blood. Then, we wouldn’t be able to trust him.”

General Giap with Ho Chi Minh

He created the Vietminh army from textbooks

He did however invent the cadre/cell system--

Five men in a cell, each devoted to the nationalist cause, and dedicated to being brave in front of their friends.

Eisenhower meets Ngo Dinh Diem --”the Miracle Man”-- for the first time.

Diem claimed he received 98.2 % of the vote in 1955, despite the fact that his American advisors told him to claim only 60 %.

Then, Diem cancelled the upcoming elections in 1956 intended to unite the country, claiming the Communists were planning electoral fraud.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

"Tens of thousands of people are being mobilized to take up a life in collectivity, to construct beautiful but useless agrovilles which tire the people, lose their affection, increase their resentment and most of all give an additional terrain for propaganda to the enemy.”

-Bishop Thuc (Diem’s brother)

North Vietnamese army = Vietminh

South Vietnamese guerrillas (NLF) = Vietcong

Vietminh or Vietcong?

John F Kennedy and Sec’y of Defense Robert McNamara

Reeling from Bay of Pigs and Berlin Wall in 1961, JFK says:

"Now we have a problem making our power credible and Vietnam looks like the place…to draw a line in the sand.”

In May 1961, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson visited Saigon and enthusiastically declared Diem the "Winston Churchill of Asia." Asked why he had made the comment, Johnson replied, "Diem's the only boy we got out there."

The Green Berets--Kennedy’s special advisors to Diem

In a conversation with Nobel Peace Prize winner and Canadian prime minister Lester B. Pearson, Kennedy sought his advice. "Get out," Pearson replied.

“That's a stupid answer," shot back Kennedy. "Everyone knows that. The question is: How do we get out?"

Diem assassinated, Nov 2, 1963, by his generals, with tacit support from the CIA.

From left: General Duong Van Minh, General Le Van Kim, Colonel Nguyen Van Y, General Tran Van Don.

The swearing in of Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1963

“I knew from the start that I was bound to be crucified either way I moved. If I left the woman I really loved--the Great Society--in order to get involved with that bitch of a war on the other side of the world, then I would lose everything at home. All my programs. All my hopes to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless. All my dreams to provide education and medical care to the browns and the blacks and the lame and the poor. But if I left that war and let the communists take over South Vietnam, then I would be seen as a coward and my nation as an appeaser, and we would both find it impossible to accomplish anything for anybody anywhere on the entire globe.”

--LBJ to his biographer, Doris Kearns

What happened?• The USS Maddox sent into Gulf to find out

locations of N Vietnamese radar installations.

• Entered N Vietnamese waters in order to assist S Vietnamese secret mission to destroy enemy radar, and ignored N Vietnamese demands to leave area.

• Engaged with N Vietnamese patrols August 2, won engagement

• LBJ ordered no further action to be taken militarily in order to avoid perception the US was heading into war.

Then?

• American media reported the Aug 4 incidents as a Communist attack, which was heroically fought off by the US

• Johnson ordered massive reprisals against N Vietnamese positions

• Johnson then sent a resolution before Congress on Aug 5 asking for a “blank check” on war-making powers

• Congress agreed the next day to pass it, by a vote of 98-2.

The tactics of battle:

American military action sold as support for South Vietnam’s regime

Winning the “hearts and minds” of the people

Removing the Vietcong

Protecting American “assets”

Preventing Vietminh support for the Vietcong

Destroy N Vietnam’s morale--usually through bombing

Main goal: Avoid public perception of a major, long-term commitment while simultaneously scaring N Vietnam’s leadership into giving in to US demands

Hence, the one-year tours of duty coinciding with massive troop deployments and usage of heavy firepower

“We had to destroy the town in order to save it.”

Agent Orange was the nickname given to a herbicide and defoliant used by the U.S. military in its Herbicidal Warfare program during the Vietnam War. Cropdusting in Vietnam during Operation Ranch Hand lasted from 1962 to 1971.

A guerrilla in the Mekong Delta paddles through a mangrove forest defoliated by Agent Orange (1970).

Effects of Agent Orange

Images taken from Agent Orange: "Collateral Damage" in Vietnam by Philip Jones Griffiths

I have tried to offer…my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

….A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. --MLK, 1967

Meanwhile, Gen Westmoreland said…

• “The ranks of the Vietcong are thinning steadily. We have reached an important point when the end begins to come into view.”

• “I hope [the Communists] try something, because we are looking for a fight.”

--Winter, 1967

The Tet Offensive: A Turning Point

· In January of 1968, the Vietcong launched surprise attacks on cities throughout South Vietnam.

· The American embassy was attacked as well in the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon.

· The Tet Offensive proved to the world that no part of South Vietnam was safe, even with the presence of half a million American troops.

· The attacks were known as the Tet Offensive because they occurred during Tet, the Vietnamese News Year’s holiday.

Hue

“What the hell is going on?” exclaimed influential television anchor Walter Cronkite, upon hearing of the offensive.

“I thought we were winning this war.”

Said Johnson: "if we've lost Walter Cronkite, we've lost the country."

--John McNaughton

• A feeling is widely and strongly held that “the Establishment” is out of its mind…that we are trying to impose some US image on distant peoples we cannot understand, and that we are carrying the thing to absurd lengths. Related to this feeling is the increased polarization that is taking place in the US, with seeds of the worst split in our people in more than a century.

"I do not run for the Presidency merely to oppose any man, but to propose new policies.

I run because I am convinced that this country is on a perilous course and because I have such strong feelings about what must be done, and I feel that I'm obliged to do all I can."

Scenes from the 1968 Dem Nat’l Convention in Chicago

1968—the October Surprise

On Richard Nixon--

• “If the president does it, it isn’t illegal.”

• “If you can’t lie, you’ll never go anywhere.”

--Richard Nixon

The “Secret Plan”

• There wasn’t one• But there is this…• “I call it the madman theory…I want the North

Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just slip the word to them that, ‘for God’s sake…we can’t restrain him when he’s angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button’ and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for mercy.”

The Nixon Strategy

• Vietnamization

• Invasion of Cambodia

• Bombing of Laos

• The Huston project (“a Gestapo Mentality”)

• The 1972 Christmas Bombings

On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard killed 4 anti-war protesters at Kent State University.

This Pulitzer Prize winning photo shows Mary Ann Vecchio screaming as she kneels over the body of student Jeffrey Miller at Kent State University. National Guardsmen had fired into a crowd of demonstrators, killing four and wounding nine.

“Ohio”Crosby Stills Nash & Young

Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin'.We're finally on our own.This summer I hear the drummin'.Four dead in Ohio.

(chorus) Gotta get down to it.Soldiers are cutting us down.Should have been done long ago.What if you knew her andFound her dead on the ground?How can you run when you know?

Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na.Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na.Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na.Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na.

(chorus)

Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin'.We're finally on our own.This summer I hear the drummin'.Four dead in Ohio. (9X)

Daniel EllsbergDaniel Ellsberg

The Pentagon Papers

Egil Krogh--

• “Anyone who opposes us, we’ll destroy. As a matter of fact, anyone who doesn’t support us, we’ll destroy.”

The Watergate Hotel

The Paris Peace Treaty, Jan 27, 1973

· In April of 1975, the communists captured the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon, renamed it Ho Chi Minh City, and reunited Vietnam under one communist flag.

By 1962, Pol Pot had become leader of the Cambodian Communist Party and in the jungle, formed an armed resistance movement that became known as the Khmer Rouge (Red Cambodians) and waged a guerrilla war against Sihanouk's government.

In 1970, Prince Sihanouk was ousted due to a U.S.-backed right-wing military coup. An embittered Sihanouk retaliated by joining with Pol Pot, his former enemy, in opposing Cambodia's new military government. That same year, the U.S. invaded Cambodia to expel the North Vietnamese from their border encampments, but instead drove them deeper into Cambodia where they allied themselves with the Khmer Rouge.

From 1969 until 1973, the U.S. intermittently bombed North Vietnamese sanctuaries in eastern Cambodia, killing up to 150,000 Cambodian peasants. As a result, peasants fled the countryside by the hundreds of thousands and settled in Cambodia's capital city, Phnom Penh. All of these events resulted in economic and military destabilization in Cambodia and a surge of popular support for Pol Pot.

By 1975, the U.S. had withdrawn its troops from Vietnam. Cambodia's government, plagued by corruption and incompetence, also lost its American military support. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army, consisting of teenage peasant guerrillas, marched into Phnom Penh and on April 17 effectively seized control of Cambodia.

The “Super Leap Forward”

As immortalized in The Killing Fields