Would Kennedy have escalated or de-escalated America’s involvement in Vietnam if re-elected in 1964? Mitchell J Skinner – AM245 “We don’t want our American boys to do the fighting for the Asian boys”. 21 This quote from Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 can be seen in hindsight as crazy, stupid, and outright unthinkable. That LBJ could say that, only a matter of years before 543,000 American soldiers were entrenched in America’s longest war - Vietnam. However, could all of this been different if John F. Kennedy was not assassinated in 1963 and then re-elected in ’64? A truly hypothetical question, but an important one when looking at the character of JFK, the legacy of Vietnam, and most importantly, the Cold War. Many historians believe that Kennedy would have simply continued in Vietnam and left a legacy similar to LBJ, due to the combined pressures presented by the Cold War and domestic hawkishness. However, there are historians and writers who believe a second Kennedy term would have de-escalated the war in Vietnam, and avoided the deaths of 59,000 Americans and Vietnamese. There are various reasons why historians believe this: his experience in World War 2, his preference for negotiations, and the more immediate European threat. Despite having just 3 years of his Presidency to base this hypothetical question on, it is possible to conduct a thorough and balanced argument with a reasonable conclusion, which this essay aims to achieve. In order to reassure American allies of the U.S’s commitment to defeating communism and preserve its status as the defender of liberty in the world, the tone of an American President was vitally
21 Noam, Chomsky, Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War and US Political Culture (London: Verso, 1993), p. 108.
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