How We ‘Lost’ Vietnam, 1940–54

Abstract

In May 1972 the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held yet another set of hearings on the seemingly endless Vietnam War. The committee was still seeking to understand the ‘origin and evolution of American involvement in Vietnam’, the chair, Senator William J. Fulbright, explained.’ The invited witnesses included academics with widely different viewpoints on the American war in Vietnam, who all agreed, however, that the problem began when President Roosevelt — or his immediate successor, President Truman — abandoned a supposed commitment to postwar independence for the French colony. They did not concur on why the reversal took place. The reason why policymakers made that fateful decision, the Roosevelt expert Arthur M. Schlesinger maintained, was the precarious and chancy situation in Europe immediately after the war. ‘The real reason’, he told the committee, ‘why we acquiesced in the British-French imperial determination … to put the French back … was because of our concern with the French situation in Europe. … In other words, our policy in Vietnam was based, in that period, essentially on European reasons rather than on Asian reasons.’2 KeywordsForeign RelationColonial PowerAmerican Foreign PolicyMilitary NecessityInternational TrusteeshipThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.