To Negotiate or Bomb: Congressional Prescriptions for Withdrawing U.S. Troops from Vietnam

Abstract

On the evening of October 7, 1970, Senators J. William Fulbright from Arkansas and John C. Stennis from Mississippi spoke at the Madison Hotel in Washington, DC, before a session of the American Enterprise Institute's Rational Debate Seminar. Their topic, “The Role of Congress in Foreign Policy,” was most appropriate since these senior southern Democrats had led the two most ambitious congressional efforts to alter President Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam policy during the critical 1966–67 period and thereby secure the withdrawal of U.S. troops from this remote Southeast Asian country. Both their remarks that evening and their earlier efforts at pressuring Johnson provide insight into the long-running executive-congressional struggles for control over national war powers. More specifically, the politics surrounding these congressional prescriptions for U.S. troop withdrawal from Vietnam also highlighted the South's regional perspective on U.S. foreign relations, the political implications for key southern senators, and the politics of memory.