this theory, credence is lent to the notion that he was being pressured by his advisors to be strong on Vietnam. Following the Taylor report that was sent to Kennedy (which advised him to send an 8,000-man task force to Vietnam) the Joint Chiefs and the Defence Secretary said they’d only support the idea if the President gave his word that the U.S. would commit over 200,000 troops if the plan failed, deeming it the “necessary military action”. 30 At the start of the 1960s, the United States were on red-alert from the Soviet threat and the ever-present Cold War. The victor of the 1960 Presidential election could not be seen as soft on communism, when every citizen depended on that person to defend them from nuclear war. Subsequently, it became overwhelmingly important that Kennedy, the youngest President ever with minimal political achievements to his name, worked to convey that he was strong leader. He needed to show he would beat the Soviets - this necessitated a strong front in Vietnam and at home. The consequences of failure here were drastic, something Kennedy had seen firsthand through McCarthyism and the major defeats for democrats in subsequent elections. The political ramifications were heightened even more in 1961 when Khrushchev promised to give the Soviet support to any country in a war of “liberation”, this meant that Kennedy had to match any showing of Soviet strength in Vietnam. 31 Otherwise, as Geoffrey Warner warned, Kennedy would receive a large amount of criticism from the Republicans “accusing the ebooks/detail.action?docID=279605> [accessed 6 November 2017], pp. 511- 512. 30 William J., Rust, and U.S. News Books, Kennedy in Vietnam (New York: Scribner, 1985), p. 50. 31 Guenter, Lewy, America in Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 19.
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