Events
1960
USSR begins airlifting to Communist Pathet Lao forces
in Laos
1961
Kennedy takes office
1962
United States (MACV); sends first “military advisors”
to Vietnam
Cuban Missile Crisis increases Cold War tensions
1963
Battle of Ap Bac sees Viet Cong forces rout ARVN
Buddhist monk immolates himself in protest of
Diem’s policiesDiem overthrown in U.S.-backed coupKennedy assassinated; Johnson becomes president
Key People
-
John F. Kennedy
35th U.S. president; sent
“military advisors” to Vietnam under auspices of MACV; assassinated
in 1963
-
Robert S. McNamara
Kennedy’s secretary of defense; also served under
Johnson
-
McGeorge Bundy
Kennedy’s
national security advisor; advocated early escalation of U.S. involvement
in Vietnam
-
Ngo Dinh Diem
U.S.-backed
leader of South Vietnam; deposed and executed by ARVN coup in 1963
-
Madame Nhu
De
facto first lady of South Vietnam; caused outrage by dismissing a
Buddhist monk’s self-immolation in protest of the Diem regime as
a “barbecuing”
-
Duong Van Minh
ARVN
general who became leader of South Vietnam after ouster of Diem
-
Lyndon B. Johnson
Vice president under Kennedy; became president after
Kennedy’s assassination in 1963
The Kennedy Administration
In November 1960, the young Massachusetts
senator John F. Kennedy was elected U.S. president.
When he took office in January 1961, his
administration portrayed itself as a break from the older traditions
and as the “best and brightest,” with former Rhodes Scholar Dean
Rusk as secretary of state, renowned businessman Robert
S. McNamara as secretary of defense, and academic McGeorge
Bundy as national security advisor. The president also appointed
his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, as attorney general. This group
would remain Kennedy’s key advisors, especially in matters relating
to Vietnam, throughout his entire time in office.
Despite Kennedy’s attempts to appear tough on Communism, Soviet
premier Nikita Khrushchev suspected that the young
president would be more easily intimated than his predecessor, Eisenhower, who
had been one of the major Allied military commanders in World War
II. In the young and inexperienced Kennedy, Khrushchev saw an opportunity
to press for strategic gains.
Laos and Cuba
In 1960,
the Soviet Union began airlifting supplies to the Pathet Lao, a
Communist-led group of guerrilla insurgents fighting against the
French in Vietnam’s neighboring country, Laos. U.S.
policy makers worried that the first domino in Indochina was about
to fall, and for a brief time, small, landlocked Laos became an
important locale in the global Cold War confrontation between the
world’s two superpowers.
Then, in 1962,
Khrushchev upped the stakes even further by placing Soviet nuclear
warheads on the Communist-governed island of Cuba,
just ninety miles from the United States. Kennedy, proving himself
a master of brinkmanship, ordered the U.S. Navy to blockade Cuba
and refused to back down. Ultimately, it was Khrushchev himself
who backed down, removing the missiles in exchange for U.S. concessions.
Although the Cuban Missile Crisis ended peacefully,
it brought tensions to the highest point yet seen in the Cold War.
“Military Advisors” and the MACV
Within this context of increased conflict, the United
States in 1962 established
the Military Assistance Command of Vietnam (MACV), which
provided American personnel to help train the South Vietnamese army,
the ARVN, in its growing conflicts with Communist guerrillas.
Under the auspices of the MACV, the United States sent thousands
of “military advisors” to South Vietnam; within a year,
the American presence rose from around 1,000 men
to over 15,000. Although
the U.S. government maintained that these “military advisors” were
not “military forces” per se, the line quickly became quite blurred.
Moreover, in a major embarrassment for the United States,
many of the 250,000 weapons
that the MACV distributed to the ARVN that year likely ended up
in the hands of the Viet Cong. In fact, many ARVN soldiers
who had been drafted from the ranks of the peasants were also secretly
members of the National Liberation Front at the same time. In short,
the MACV not only drastically escalated the U.S. presence in Vietnam
but also spent a good deal of time and money training the enemy.
