Vietnam “in every way we properly can” which he also addressed at the General Assembly of the United Nations. 26 After the Second World War, America was placed centre stage; the gatekeeper to global capitalism. They were charged with defending any country under threat from authoritarianism and harsh regimes. Scholars such as Brian VanDeMark go as far as to claim that America became “arrogant and stubborn… [in their] power to shape foreign events”. 27 This attitude translated into a hawkish mentality that dominated much of Congress, the military, and the public - which ultimately pushed Kennedy into a corner he couldn’t escape. In a 1963 interview with Walter Cronkite, he sharply criticised the Diem government and adds that “I do not agree with those who say we should withdraw. That would be a big mistake.” 28 The argument against withdrawing was strongly advertised by his military advisors as the ‘Domino Theory’, where, if South Vietnam falls, so will the rest of Southeast Asia, Kennedy would later subscribe to this theory and reiterate his view that the war must be won. 29 In publicly supporting 26 Denise M., Bostdorff, and Steven R. Goldzwig, ‘Idealism and Pragmatism in American Foreign Policy Rhetoric: The Case of John F. Kennedy and Vietnam’, Presidential Studies Quarterly, 24 (1994), pp. 1-16.< https://search-proquest-com.openathens- proxy.swan.ac.uk/docview/215692085?OpenUrlRefId=info:xri/sid:primo&ac countid=14680> [accessed 5 November 2017] (p. 4). 27 Brian, VanDeMark, Into the Quagmire: Lyndon Johnson and the escalation of the Vietnam War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. xiv. 28 Cronkite Interview of JFK [online]. YouTube, 2009 [cited 5 November 2017]. Available from: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM3uaXp8DAk> 29 Lawrence, Freedman, Kennedy’s Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) <https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/swansea-
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