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1 results

  • 15 - LBJ, the Great Society, and Vietnam

  • from Part II - Homefronts
  • General editor Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Columbia University, New York
  • Edited by Andrew Preston, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Vietnam War
    Published online:
    02 January 2025
    Print publication:
    28 November 2024, pp 321-342

  • Summary

    The politics of Vietnam was born in the early Cold War when Republicans made a concerted effort to undercut the national security advantage that Democrats enjoyed after a decisive victory in World War II. The years after the war are often remembered as a period when politics stopped at the water’s edge. Nothing could be further from the truth. Although there were a number of factors that moved the US military deep into the jungles of Vietnam, including a “domino theory” positing that if one country fell to communism everything around it would follow, partisan politics was a driving force behind this disastrous strategy. The same political logic and prowess that led President Lyndon Johnson to strengthen the legislative coalition behind his Great Society simultaneously pushed him into a hawkish posture in Southeast Asia.