Johnson Presidency Research Articles

Unraveling the Tet Offensive: Impact on American Journalism, Politics, and Nixon's Era

This essay delves into the Tet Offensive's far-reaching impact on American journalism, political landscapes during the Vietnam War, and its implications for subsequent eras, primarily examining its direct influence on Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency and Nixons era. Through a comprehensive analysis, this study scrutinizes how the Tet Offensive reshaped journalistic methodologies, altered public perception of distant conflicts, and indirectly influenced political dynamics during the Nixon era. Revealing the Tet Offensive's role in reshaping journalistic practices and blurring realities through selective media portrayal, the analysis underscores its significant contribution to political shifts in the Vietnam War era. While its direct impact on the Nixon era was limited, the aftermath resonated, highlighting enduring media influence on societal narratives. Ultimately, this exploration emphasizes the Tet Offensive's enduring legacy despite its indirect influence on subsequent political epochs, highlighting the sustained power of media in shaping historical narratives.

Johnson and Vietnam: Decision Making during Operation Rolling Thunder

The name of Lyndon Baines Johnson, 36th President of the United States, has practically been tied together with the Vietnam War, which raged on during the entirety of his presidency. The Johnson Presidency could have been remembered after the numerous and admirable domestic policy steps he took, yet it is Vietnam, which overshadows his historical legacy. Both the Gulf of Tonkin Incident and the longest campaign of the Vietnam War, Operation Rolling Thunder took place during his terms in office. This latter was harshly criticised by his peers, especially from military leadership circles, thus it is worth re-examining this period of the war using now publicly available sources. This article aims to examine how President Johnson and his inner circle of advisors made their decisions during the period in question.

The Foreign Policy of Lyndon B. Johnson: The United States and the World, 1963–1969. by Jonathan Colman, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012, paper. 231 pp.

<i>The Foreign Policy of Lyndon B. Johnson: The United States and the World, 1963–1969</i>. by Jonathan Colman, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012, paper. 231 pp.

Our Country: Northern Evangelicals and the Union during the Civil War Era by Grant R. Brodrecht

Reviewed by: Our Country: Northern Evangelicals and the Union during the Civil War Era by Grant R. Brodrecht Lucas Volkman Our Country: Northern Evangelicals and the Union during the Civil War Era. Grant R. Brodrecht. New York: Fordham University Press, 2018. ISBN 978-0-82327-991-3. 278 pp., paper, $40.00. In recent years numerous works have appeared examining religion during the Civil War era. Grant R. Brodrecht gives us another fine addition in this field that helps better understand the role of evangelical religion in the North. He focuses on the concept of the Union, which for evangelical Protestants "connoted a country formed by the providential hand of God, in addition to the idea that it should remain whole and filled throughout with evangelical Protestantism" (15). This definition suits Brodrecht well in making his argument that evangelicals sought to use the Civil War and Reconstruction to preserve and strengthen their vision of the Union. While not disregarding the role of freedom in the Civil War and Reconstruction narrative, by emphasizing the Union, Brodrecht seeks to continue in the footsteps of those, like Gary Gallagher and Rogan Kersh, who argue for the Union's centrality in the minds of Civil War Americans. Brodrecht amplifies this unionism as he follows the lead of Mark Noll in viewing the nation as having a primarily evangelical ethos. Brodrecht examines evangelical views of the Union and concerns for its future during the war and Reconstruction. He organizes his work chronologically, beginning in the Civil War and taking things through Reconstruction in the 1870s. While it would have been interesting to see how this evangelical view of the Union played out during the sectional crisis, especially as Brodrecht argues in his introduction that this conception was in place prior to the war, this focus still serves his inquiry well. Critical to this work is the evangelical understanding of the Lincoln, Johnson, and Grant presidencies. Brodrecht argues that its relationship to the president played a role vital to forming this evangelical conception of the Union. While Brodrecht has successfully shown the importance of the presidency in the evangelical perception of the Union within his work, it does seem that the occupant of the White House is overemphasized at points, as the Union is more than the chief magistrate to these men and women. For most of the evangelicals in Our Country, the Union supersedes considerations of racial justice. Brodrecht consistently supports his argument in using examples of those [End Page 416] whose theology centered around the Union. For instance, toward the end of chapter 5, Brodrecht explains that evangelicals saw Ulysses S. Grant's election to the White House in 1868 as a saving event for the Union, especially after the disappointing Johnson presidency. But he includes the notion that many evangelicals decried the radicals who sought to implement an agenda that featured racial justice. He does, however, differentiate this viewpoint throughout his pages with some evangelicals who were radicals—primarily New York Congregationalist minister George Cheever. As Brodrecht's focus is national, his source base is made up of archival and published materials from throughout the North. Many parts of his book focus primarily on printed sermons, autobiographies, and evangelical periodicals, which is logical, given the book's emphasis on religious thought. At the same time, most of the sources cited within the text come from ministers and important laymen in these denominations. To that point, in his introduction Brodrecht explains that he began his project by looking at representative evangelical ministers such as George Peck, Henry Boardman, and George Cheever. While these men and the other evangelical leaders cited played a major role in the evangelical thought in this era, it would have been interesting to see what a few more of their followers thought of the Union. Additionally, throughout his book Brodrecht employs archival sources from the presidents and other governmental leaders as an additional lens. But, while it is always clear what evangelicals thought of their leaders, it is not always apparent what these leaders, especially the presidents, thought of their evangelical followers or how they were influenced by them. This issue is a problem, especially as Brodrecht asserts, in his...

The Historical Presidency: Lyndon Johnson and Disaster Politics

The federal government is now the lead responder when a major natural disaster strikes and the president frequently visits the scene, performing the role of consoler in chief. Both of these developments are relatively recent: before the 1960s, disaster response was dominated by subnational governments and the Red Cross, while the federal role was discharged mostly by mid‐level bureaucrats. This article argues that the Johnson presidency was a decisive turning point in terms of the first development and that Johnson also broke new ground by making a regular habit of visiting disaster scenes. However, it attributes the latter pattern more to LBJ's unique political approach than to external pressure, arguing that the expectation that presidents will provide emotional support to disaster victims has developed more recently.

Lyndon B. Johnson and the Civil Right Act of 1964

The Civil Rights Movement is deeply intertwined with Lyndon B. Johnson. Throughout his career, Johnson supported the quest of African-Americans for political and civil rights. They found in him an ally whose role was fundamental in fullfilling the goals of Martin Luther King, Jr, and the Civil Rights Movement. This paper will examine the role of the Johnson presidency in the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1964.

LBJ’s Neglected Legacy: How Lyndon Johnson Reshaped Domestic Policy and Government ed. by Robert H. Wilson, Norman J. Glickman, and Laurence E. Lynn

LBJ's Neglected Legacy: How Lyndon Johnson Reshaped Domestic Policy and Government. Edited by Robert H. Wilson, Norman J. Glickman, and Laurence E. Lynn Jr. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015. Pp. xii, 481. Paper, $29.95, ISBN 978-1-4773-0253-8; cloth, $85.00, ISBN 978-14773-0054-1.) This volume collects thirteen articles from social scientists, policy academics, and historians examining Great Society civil rights, education, social welfare, and urban policy and the mechanics of the Lyndon B. Johnson administration's budgeting and evaluation practices. The chapters are bookended by introductory and concluding essays from editors Robert H. Wilson, Norman J. Glickman, and Laurence E. Lynn Jr., who aim to redirect attention to the impacts of Johnson administration domestic policy, which, contributor Robert Dallek argues, have been overshadowed by sour memories of the war in Vietnam. While there has been no dearth of attention to Great Society critique in the years since Johnson left office (and the pile of books has only grown during the current cycle of fiftieth anniversaries), here the editors promise a specific, potentially fertile inquiry. Moving beyond evaluation of the programmatic successes and shortcomings of Johnson-era initiatives, they undertake to consider the extent to which governance frameworks created during the Johnson years have shaped subsequent national domestic policy choices. In this worthwhile effort, LBJ's Neglected Legacy: How Lyndon Johnson Reshaped Domestic Policy and Government falls short. Much of each chapter is taken up in reviewing policy approaches before the Johnson administration and in rehearsing the particulars of Great Society policy breakthroughs--all well-trodden ground. Contributors consider factors in Great Society programs' initial success and performance over the longer term, but insufficient attention is paid to the promised inquiry. Did Johnson succeed in making lasting changes in the methods of national policy making and, if so, what have been the consequences for subsequent policy changes? The essays do offer some insights into the factors behind the contemporary successes of some Great Society initiatives. Two chapters from Gary Orfield, on civil rights and education policy, suggest that an important factor in success was the Johnson administration's willingness and ability to offer holistic solutions to complex social problems--to hit the problem of the underprivileged with civil rights and education and antipoverty programming. Jorge Chapa's essay on voting rights highlights the importance of energetic executive commitment to the goal and to aggressive enforcement through the initial willingness of the Justice Department to back the promise of the Voting Rights Act with litigation. A lucid chapter from Elizabeth Rose suggests the importance of grassroots investment in the Head Start program, a savvy political choice made by the Office of Economic Opportunity to ensure the program's longevity. Glickman and Wilson's chapter on Johnson-era urban policy is a reminder of the importance of the administration's willingness to simply spend money on and create new government agencies (including the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1965 and the Department of Transportation in 1966) around a policy goal. The collection also provides useful reflections on factors influencing the extent of the impact of Great Society policies since the end of the Johnson presidency. Succeeding chief executives' inclination to pay attention to a policy area looms large. …

Lyndon B. Johnson and the Fortas Nomination

Lyndon B. Johnson and the Fortas Nomination ROBERT DAVID JOHNSON In mid-September 1968, Joseph Kraft reflected on the lessons of Abe Fortas’s doomed bid to become Chief Justice. “The books are full of information about how power is used and accumulated in Wash­ ington,” the veteran reporter noted. “But there is now going on here something that is not much described or well understood—the crumbling of power.” Normally, the Senate would have comfortably confirmed Fortas, but instead the partisan interests of Senate Republicans had aligned with the ideological interests of diehard Southern segregationists. “The lesson of all this,” Kraft concluded, “is that the lack of power tends to corrupt as much as power.”1 The Fortas confirmation fight marked a transition away from what the legal scholar Jonathan Zasloff has termed the “informal institutions of American governance,” or “those habits and customs outside of formal, written law that make democracy work.”2 In the last half-century, customs that smoothed the way for Congress to operate from the New Deal through the Great Society—including the beliefthat opponents should not filibuster a Supreme Court nominee, or that judicial nominees would be evaluated on the basis of competence rather than ideology or partisan­ ship—have fallen by the wayside. As com­ mentator Jonathan Chait has argued, informal Senate traditions are just that—informal— and with congressional polarization, “such social norms will never hold up, [since] ultimately, the parties are going to maximize their partisan self-interest as allowed under the rules.”3 The literature on the Fortas nomination includes single-case narratives, comparative studies, biographies of the Justice, and surveys of the Johnson Presidency. These earlier studies share two source-based short­ comings. First, all but one predate the release of the Johnson Presidential tapes for 1968. This condition is all the more unfortunate as Fortas and Homer Thornberry, who was to replace him as Associate Justice, are among only six Supreme Court nominees, and the only unsuccessful choices, for which Presi­ dential recordings exist. Second, despite the 104 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY Senate’s power to confirm Supreme Court nominees, previous publications on Fortas have utilized few Senate manuscript collec­ tions and in some cases none. As always occurs with congressional sources, the quality varies widely; some key players in the Fortas fight either left behind no papers for the relevant period or have closed collections. But for other important Senators, there is available material that, to date, no scholar on the Fortas confirmation has consulted. The list includes Fortas’s most prominent oppo­ nents, Robert Griffin (R-Michigan) and Strom Thurmond (R-South Carolina), but also lower-profile Judiciary Committee mem­ bers such as Hiram Fong (R-Hawai’i) and Quentin Burdick (D-North Dakota), who played important roles at stages of the confirmation process.4 On June 13, 1968, Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered a conditional resignation, to be effective when the Senate confirmed his successor. Though Warren justified the peculiar wording on grounds of the Court always needing a Chief Justice, it seemed as if he sought to ensure that, either way the confirmation vote turned out, a strong liberal would remain as Chief Justice. Johnson played the part by indicating that he would accept the resignation only when the Senate confirmed a successor.5 After the Court-packing fight of 1937, the Senate confirmed twenty-two consecutive Justices, fifteen by a voice vote.6 It thus was not unreasonable, as most Washington observers thought, to expect little resistance for Warren’s replacement.7 For three reasons, however, Johnson might have anticipated the difficulties any prospective nominee would face. First, in 1967, the nomination of Thurgood Marshall, against which eleven Senators ultimately voted, revealed signs of a different approach by some Senators to Supreme Court selections.8 Second, Warren’s resignation coincided with Congress’s con­ sidering crime and gun control bills—issues Vice President Johnson was sworn in as President aboard Air Force One in 1963 as Homer Thornberry, a Texas Congressman, looked directly at the camera. Two years later Johnson appointed Thornberry to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and in 1968 he nominated him to replace Abe Fortas on the...

America's All Volunteer Force: A Success?

Abstract: Perhaps the most significant by-product of America's involvement in Vietnam was the decision to move from conscription to an force. The Gates Commission recommended this change, but identified several concerns regarding costs, quality, and the nature of the force that persist forty years later. This article examines the success of the All-Volunteer Force and its appropriateness for a democratic society ********** When America committed major combat forces to Vietnam in 1965, the United States had 2.66 million service members on active duty. (1) It was a mixture of professional volunteers, many of whom had combat experience in WWII or Korea, and conscripted citizens. At the time, President Lyndon Johnson made the political decision not to ask for authority to call up reserve forces; instead he relied on the existing armed forces to implement US national policy, augmented by draft calls, to fill the ranks as the commitment grew. (2) This decision and the violent reaction to the war prompted 1968 Republican nominee Richard Nixon to promise he would end the draft. (3) According to historian Lewis Sorley, Johnson's decision and growing anti-war sentiment in the United States motivated Army Chief of Staff Creighton Abrams to restructure the Army in a way that would force future presidents to mobilize reserves whenever the nation committed to a protracted conflict. (4) The past fifty years have brought a dramatic change in the size, composition, orientation, and professional character of the US military. At 1.31 million, it is just under half the size of the 1965 force and completely composed of volunteers--though some call it a recruited rather than a volunteer force. (5) US forces are strategically mobile and are thus expected and trained to conduct operations anywhere in the world across a wide spectrum, to include humanitarian assistance. Women now comprise nearly 15 percent of this force, and serve in roles not imagined in 1965. (6) The US Defense Department also created a robust and experienced special operations capability. Finally, and most significantly, the American military is trained and educated to a level unsurpassed by any other country's armed forces. This change took place in an era of extreme volatility and complexity, one that included the remainder of the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the first Gulf War, ethnic conflicts after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. There was an explosion in technological development; specifically, unprecedented advances in the speed of computer processors and precision-guided weapons. The international political environment shifted from the relatively stable bi-polar Cold War to what proved to be a less stable uni-polar world that is developing into a multi-polar dynamic with even greater uncertainty. Inevitably, the changes also took place in the context of natural American political and economic cycles. Many factors influenced the US Armed Forces' development over these 50 years. This essay focuses on the end of the draft and the institution of the All-Volunteer Force in 1973. Two significant questions have accompanied the development of this military force. Is the All-Volunteer Force a success? A review of the forty years of experience since its inception suggests that it is. Is an All-Volunteer Force appropriate for a democratic society? This broader question defies easy answers, but it is important for all citizens of the United States to consider. The Decision to End Vietnam-Era Conscription. The story of America's increasing commitment to Vietnam during the Johnson presidency, the effect of more than 58,000 Americans killed in action, and the lack of popular support for the war are well known. Less well known are the events that led to the institution in 1973 of an military that forms the basis for the US armed forces of today. The use of the term all-volunteer implies America's armed forces have normally been manned with conscripted citizens. …

Andrew Johnson's Civil War and Reconstruction. By Paul H.Bergeron. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2011. 300 pp.

Andrew Johnson's Civil War and Reconstruction. By Paul H. Bergeron. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2011. 300 pp. Since 1960, the reputation of Andrew Johnson's presidency steadily eroded, a decline that is largely attributable to a revolution in Reconstruction scholarship. Although studies by James Sefton and Albert Castel gave Johnson his due in certain areas (Sefton, Andrew Johnson and the Uses of Constitutional Power [Little Brown, 1980]; Castel, The Presidency of Andrew Johnson [University Press of Kansas, 1979]), the author of the only modern full-length biography, Hans Trefousse (Andrew Johnson: A Biography [W. W. Norton, 1997]), was far more critical of Johnson's Reconstruction policy. According to Paul H. Bergeron, who as editor oversaw the publication of the last eight of the sixteen volumes of The Papers of Andrew Johnson (University of Tennessee Press, 1967-2000), the Tennessean has been vilified enough (p. 6). He argues that one can make too much of Johnson's racism, given prevailing attitudes at the time. Moreover, simply to dismiss Johnson as a racist risks overlooking other considerations that shaped his performance as president, including his commitment to preserving executive power and defending his interpretation of the Constitution. Rather, Bergeron asserts, one must set his racism in the context of his other attitudes and attributes, positive and negative, to gain a better overall assessment of Lincoln's successor in the White House. Bergeron recounts Johnson's career during the 1860s, incorporating his experiences as a senator, military governor, and vice president, as well as his four years as chief executive. As military governor of Tennessee, Johnson's energetic exercise of authority reinforced an already defiant, combative, and, at times, inflexible approach to political life. His actions earned Lincoln's approval: the president offered no objection (and, perhaps, some private encouragement) to Johnson's being named his running mate in 1864. Nearly six weeks after an embarrassing debut as vice president highlighted by a rambling harangue, Johnson assumed the presidency, courtesy of an assassin's bullet. As president, Johnson embraced a reconciliationist approach toward the former Confederates. For all of his bombast about punishing traitors, he reserved his venom for a select few prominent leaders, while embarking upon a pardon policy that proved most liberal. Accepting the destruction of slavery, he had little interest in advancing the fortunes of the freedmen, bringing talk of widespread confiscation and redistribution of plantations to a dead halt. The only time he showed any interest in enfranchising blacks was to silence his critics by extending the right to vote to a handful of freedmen. …

The Photographic Legacy of Lyndon Baines Johnson

In this essay, I take up the question of why, despite Lyndon Baines Johnson's great interest in photography, his determination to harness the medium to sway public perceptions about his presidency could only be realized retrospectively. As part of this investigation, I first consider how Johnson sought to use photography to shape the historical legacy of his presidency and the extent to which his preoccupation with his outward appearance as well as his desire to conduct his governance in private influenced and even impeded that photographic legacy. To further come to terms with the limitations of Johnson's approach to the photography of his presidency, I then turn to two iconic photographs that are frequently evoked when thinking historically about Johnson's presidency. I argue that their historical significance depends less on their representation of Johnson and more on their role in constructing a collective sense of American public identity, especially in relation to the Vietnam War, one of the most contentious aspects of Johnson's presidency.

Atomic Maverick: Romania's negotiations for nuclear technology, 1964–1970

Romania's courting of Western nuclear suppliers started during the Johnson Presidency. Based on multi-archival research, this article argues that Romania's turn to the West stemmed from Moscow's reluctance to share its nuclear advances with Bucharest. It examines the strategy Romania employed to win over the United States, namely acting as a messenger between Hanoi and Washington in the Vietnam War. This article shows that Soviet pressures turned Bucharest, at least temporarily, away from Western suppliers. This research adds to our understanding of Romania's political manoeuvring in the 1960s while also throwing light on the Washington's and Moscow's stances on proliferation.

LBJ's China Policy Initiatives

For years, the conflict in Vietnam dominated the study of U.S. foreign policy during the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ). Since the mid-1990s, with the declassification of U.S. government archives on the Johnson administration, scholarship on Johnson's foreign policies has begun to move “beyond Vietnam.” In his 1995 study of LBJ's international policies, H. W. Brands concurred that LBJ handled Vietnam “disastrously” and would “never be judged a master of the diplomatic arts.” Examining U.S. relations with Western Europe, Turkey, Greece, the Middle East, South Asia, Indonesia, and Cuba, Brands argued that LBJ “did better managing other aspects of the transition to a world no longer dominated by the United States.”1 In the last decade, two book-length studies have been published dealing with Johnson's policies toward Europe and the Soviet Union, respectively.2 U.S. policy toward the People's Republic of China (PRC) during the Johnson administration has thus far received scant scholarly attention. Nancy B. Tucker, one of the first historians to make use of the Johnson archival records, charged the Johnson team with a lack of “energy and imagination” and concluded that Washington's fixation with Vietnam and its misunderstanding of China's role in the conflict precluded movement toward normalization.3 The subject of Michael Lumbers's book is the Johnson administration's China policy initiatives. Lumbers contends that “the Johnson presidency did not represent a period of stagnation, and the senior officials contemplated significant departures fromlong-standing China policy more than was recognized at the time” (p. 3). Although several early pieces briefly touched on this topic, this is the first full-length study on Johnson's China policy.

LBJ Calling*

When the National Archives released the presidential tape recordings of Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) in 1993, rather than in 2023 as stipulated in LBJ's will, it helped to reshape historians' and the public's view of LBJ.1 The president that emerges from these tapes is a complex, fascinating political man, so different from the stiff and somber personae that he projected during television broadcasts. The tapes, mostly telephone calls made by the president, provide a counterweight to LBJ's memoir, The Vantage Point, one of the dullest presidential remembrances ever ghost written.2 The tapes crackle with LBJ's ebullience, persuasiveness (sometimes bordering on bullying), tenacity, prejudices, anger, and maudlin nature, but most of all, they demonstrate his humanity and his mastery of the telephone as an instrument of political power. While there is nothing better than hearing these tapes, it is a time-consuming process. The Miller Center for Public Policy has made it easier by producing a six-volume selection of transcripts of virtually all tapes of the first six months of the Johnson presidency. The transcripts are supported by extensive and definitive annotation in the form of introductory “scene setters” and footnotes. In addition, the volumes have accompanying DVDs with the audios of the tapes selected. These six volumes are the first installment of the commitment by the Miller Center to publish transcripts throughout Johnson's presidency. This is a major undertaking for which the center deserves credit and our thanks.

Rostow's War: Vietnam, 1961-1969

Rostow's War:Vietnam, 1961-1969 John M. Carland (bio) America's Rasputin: Walt Rostow and the Vietnam War. By David Milne. New York: Hill and Wang, 2008. ISBN 978-0-374-10386. Notes. Index. Bibliography. Pp. xi, 268. $26.00. The narrative arc of this morality tale—for that is what David Milne has written—begins in hope and ends in tragedy. More prosaically, it is the author's take on Walt Whitman Rostow's role in the formation and implementation of Vietnam War policy, especially concerning the air war against North Vietnam. In his Introduction the author lays out the details of his argument. His fundamental assumption, from which all else flows, is that despite the good intentions of the United States, the Vietnam War was an avoidable disaster essentially brought about by American actions, and that Walt Rostow, as assistant to the president for national security affairs, played a critical role in causing and shaping that disaster. Also in the Introduction Milne explains his attention-grabbing title. Calling Rostow "Rasputin" (a nickname coined by Averell Harriman, who despised Rostow) is "emotive," he admits, because the characterization "leads one to visualize a conniving sinister character in possession of preternatural powers of persuasion." Milne [End Page 615] believes the description fits Rostow because "when it came to the Vietnam War, Rostow was not averse to deploying questionable tactics to achieve his aims" (p. 8). (Page numbers without an accompanying citation represent pages in Milne's book.) But was that Rostow? Having been so certain at first, Milne retreats briefly, but only briefly, into uncertainty, observing that even Rostow's adversaries believed him to be a "human being" and "a considerate, gregarious individual" and perhaps not quite so bad. (I wonder if Milne knows that in American popular culture, the name Rasputin also conjures up a character difficult, almost impossible, to kill—remember the alleged attempts by assassins to poison, knife, and shoot, not to mention drown, the Russian priest.) I suspect that we could have done without this particular title—though perhaps the publisher liked it. Chapters 1 and 2 tell Rostow's story from his birth in 1916 until Kennedy appointed him deputy national security advisor in January 1961. Without exaggeration it is an amazing story of intellectual achievement and career success. A few highpoints make this clear: B.A., Yale, 1936; Rhodes Scholar, 1936-38; Ph.D. in economics, Yale, 1940; instructor at Columbia, 1940-41; U.S. Army, 1941-45 (detailed to the Office of Strategic Services to develop targets for allied bombing); State Department as Assistant Chief, German-Austrian Economic Division, 1945-46; accepted and rejected a full professorship at Harvard, 1946; instructor at Oxford, 1946-47; member of the Economic Commission for Europe, 1947-49; instructor at Cambridge, 1949-50; and professor of economic history, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1950-61. Despite this record, Milne sees Rostow's success in negative terms: "Having never confronted failure, his capacity for self-criticism was significantly impaired" (p. 340). Chapters 3 through 8 form the heart of the book—they narrate and analyze Rostow's years as a senior policy advisor on Vietnam (1961-1969), especially when he was national security advisor from April 1966 until the end of Lyndon Johnson's presidency. An Epilogue takes Rostow's life from that time until his death in 2003. Although Milne discusses many aspects of Rostow's work on Vietnam in these chapters, the coverage of key issues—e.g., the incremental nature of the American intervention, the ground war, the air war in the south, pacification, negotiations—with one exception tends to receive short shrift. The exception is the air war against the North and Rostow's role in that policy. These chapters become an extended critique of Rostow, the "Rostow Thesis," and its implementation through the Rolling Thunder bombing campaign. Milne uses his own definition of the thesis rather than Rostow's and so creates a straw man easier to demolish than the real thing: "The so-called Rostow Thesis," he writes "held that the United States must deal with externally supported insurgencies through bombing their source…" (p. 134). While Milne's words are true as far...

The Politics of Cordiality: Continuity and Change in Irish—American Diplomacy during the Johnson Presidency, 1963–9

The Politics of Cordiality: Continuity and Change in Irish—American Diplomacy during the Johnson Presidency, 1963–9

The Politics of Cordiality: Continuity and Change in Irish—American Diplomacy during the Johnson Presidency, 1963–9

The Politics of Cordiality: Continuity and Change in Irish—American Diplomacy during the Johnson Presidency, 1963–9

The Politics of Cordiality: Continuity and Change in Irish–American Diplomacy during the Johnson Presidency, 1963–9

The Politics of Cordiality: Continuity and Change in Irish–American Diplomacy during the Johnson Presidency, 1963–9

"No Basis for Suspicion Election May Be Rigged": The Johnson Administration, the CIA, and the Caribbean, 1964–1968

The editors—Daniel Lawler, Carolyn Yee, and General Editor Edward C. Keefer—of this new volume in the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series chose to begin their presentation of documents with an essay, “Note on Covert U.S. Actions.” The editors wanted to provide readers with “some organizational context on how covert actions and special intelligence operations in support of U.S. foreign policy were planned and approved within the U.S. Government.” The editors reviewed the evolution of committees within the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations that approved and monitored covert interventions. The “5412 Committee” of the Eisenhower years became, for example, the “303 Committee” during the Johnson presidency. In providing this historical context to covert operations, the editors made a wise decision. Between 1964 and 1968, U.S. policymaking toward nations in the Caribbean basin—Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Guyana (British Guiana), and Haiti—primarily consisted of covert operations and interventions. When Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency in late November 1963, he inherited a violent U.S. policy in the Caribbean. As he would later exclaim in a post-presidential interview, “We were running a damned Murder Incorporated in the Caribbean.”1 The United States had attacked Fidel Castro's Cuba with the Bay of Pigs invasion, Operation Mongoose, and assassination plots. The war against Castro continued after the Cuban missile crisis. President John Kennedy or “Higher Authority” personally approved sabotage and terrorist attacks on Cuba in June and November 1963. On 22 November 1963, CIA agents rendezvoused in Paris with a traitorous Cuban official, Rolando Cubela Secades, code-named AM/LASH, and passed to Cubela a ballpoint pen rigged with a poisonous hypodermic needle. The Kennedy administration had not limited its war to left-wing leaders. It backed various schemes to oust François “Papa Doc” Duvalier (1957–1971), the odious tyrant of Haiti, and had assisted Dominican conspirators who assassinated Rafael Trujillo (1930–1961), the vicious and venal dictator of the Dominican Republic. The Kennedy administration also relentlessly attacked the government of Cheddi Jagan (1957–1964) of British Guiana. CIA agents, working through the AFL-CIO labor organization, fomented riots and strikes that precipitated appalling racial and ethnic violence between Guyanese of African and Indian (South Asian) heritages.2

Non-alignment on the Racial Frontier: Zambia and the USA, 1964–68

Careful examination of relations between Zambia and the USA during Lyndon Johnson's presidency, based on archival research in both nations, provides valuable insights into their often very different perspectives in the midst of the Cold War. The Johnson administration at times sympathized with Zambia but dismissed southern Africa as a low priority in the confrontation with communism, whereas Kenneth Kaunda feared for his nation's survival on the racial frontier and desperately needed help, but insisted on a non-aligned foreign policy nonetheless. American officials questioned Zambian policy decisions such as accepting Chinese aid and opposing non-proliferation as naïve or irrational; however, from his perspective, Kaunda was upholding national security and resisting superpower hegemony.