Vietnam's Second Front: Domestic Politics, the Republican Party, and the War

by Andrew L. Johns

Overview

The Vietnam War was fought on two fronts: in the jungles and rice paddies of Southeast Asia and on the political battlefields of the United States. Ultimately, the administrations of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon failed to achieve victory on either front, but why? The answer lies in an overlooked factor in American history: the role of domestic political considerations in the creation and implementation of U.S. foreign policy and the influence of foreign relations on the American political process.

In Vietnam's Second Front: Domestic Politics, the Republican Party, and the War, Andrew L. Johns examines the relationship between foreign policy and domestic politics during America's longest war, assessing the influence of the Republican Party—including the congressional leadership, state and local politicians, grassroots organizations, and the Nixon administration—on the escalation, evolution, and resolution of the conflict. This groundbreaking work also sheds new light on the institutional tensions that existed between Congress and the president as they struggled to formulate and implement U.S. foreign policy.

Beginning his analysis in 1961 and continuing through the Paris Peace Accords of 1973, Johns argues that the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations failed to achieve military and political victory in Vietnam because of their preoccupation with domestic politics. Johns details the machinations and political dexterity required of all three presidents and of members of Congress to maneuver between the countervailing forces of escalation and negotiation while they grappled with electoral and partisan concerns. He offers a provocative account of the ramifications of domestic political pressure on American foreign policy. He demonstrates the power, consequences, and centrality of this pressure, the constraints—both real and perceived—it placed on U.S. presidents and politicians during the Vietnam conflict, and the degree to which it irrevocably altered the course of the war.

In clear, incisive prose based on virtually unprecedented research in more than eighty congressional and presidential archives, Vietnam's Second Front covers the broad range of the Republican Party's impact on the Vietnam War, offers a compelling reassessment of responsibility for the conflict, and challenges assumptions about the roles of Congress and the president in U.S. foreign relations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813125725
Publisher:	University Press of Kentucky
Publication date:	03/12/2010
Pages:	444
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Andrew L. Johns, associate professor of history at Brigham Young University, is coeditor of The Eisenhower Administration, the Third World, and the Globalization of the Cold War.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction: Ares, Virginia, and the Myth of the Water's Edge 1

1 Trapped between Scylla and Charybdis: JFK, the GOP, and Domestic Politics 11

2 The Cassandra Conundrum: GOP Opposition to LBJ's Vietnam Policy, 1963-1965 43

3 Opening Pandora's Box: Escalation and Domestic Politics, 1965-1966 79

4 Confronting the Hydra: LBJ on the Defensive, 1966-1967 119

5 Sisyphus and Tantalus: The Political Impact of the War, 1967-1968 159

6 The Zalmoxis Effect: Vietnam and the 1968 Presidential Election 195

7 The Icarus Agenda: Vietnamization and Its Political Implications 237

8 Whither Ariadne?: Domestic Politics and Nixon's Search for Peace 279

Conclusion: Sowing Dragon's Teeth 325

Appendix: Republicans, 1961-1973 341

Notes 345

Bibliography 395

Index 427

Editorial Reviews

"Countless numbers of books have dissected just about every imaginable aspect of how American domestic politics influenced the way Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford waged war in Vietnam. Could there possibly be anything new to add to that voluminous analytical list? With Andrew L. Johns' Vietnam's Second Front, the answer, surprisingly, is yes. Johns came up with a unique way to look at the politics of that most political of wars."

History Net

"Johns' book is well-written and carefully researched. It dereves a place on the Vietnam bookshelf alongside studies such as David Kaiser's American Tragedy and Fredrik Logevall's Choosing War." — APSA Legislative Studies Section Newsletter

APSA Legislative Studies Section Newsletter

"Splendidly researched and insightful in its analysis, this important and timely book makes clear the influence of domestic politics on foreign policy and the impact of foreign policy on domestic politics. A major contribution to the historical literature on the Vietnam War."—George C. Herring, author of From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776

From the Publisher