Perils of Dominance : Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam

Perils of Dominance is the first completely new interpretation of how and why the United States went to war in Vietnam. It provides an authoritative challenge to the prevailing explanation that U.S. officials adhered blindly to a Cold War doctrine that loss of Vietnam would cause a "domino effect" leading to communist domination of the area. Gareth Porter presents compelling evidence that U.S. policy decisions on Vietnam from 1954 to mid-1965 were shaped by an overwhelming imbalance of military power favoring the United States over the Soviet Union and China. He demonstrates how the slide into war in Vietnam is relevant to understanding why the United States went to war in Iraq, and why such wars are likely as long as U.S. military power is overwhelmingly dominant in the world. Challenging conventional wisdom about the origins of the war, Porter argues that the main impetus for military intervention in Vietnam came not from presidents Kennedy and Johnson but from high-ranking national security officials in their administrations who were heavily influenced by U.S. dominance over its Cold War foes. Porter argues that presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson were all strongly opposed to sending combat forces to Vietnam, but that both Kennedy and Johnson were strongly pressured by their national security advisers to undertake military intervention. Porter reveals for the first time that Kennedy attempted to open a diplomatic track for peace negotiations with North Vietnam in 1962 but was frustrated by bureaucratic resistance. Significantly revising the historical account of a major turning point, Porter describes how Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara deliberately misled Johnson in the Gulf of Tonkin crisis, effectively taking the decision to bomb North Vietnam out of the president's hands.

This will be the most important contribution to our understanding of the war in Vietnam since the Pentagon Papers. I am not exaggerating or speaking for effect. Porter challenges —by and large successfully—most of the accepted views, especially on the importance of the domino theory, the belief that U. S. policy was driven by a perception of its weakness on the world scene, and the belligerence of Johnson and, to a lesser extent, Kennedy.—Robert Jervis, author of American Foreign Policy in a New Era

Foreign Affairs

Porter has produced a book on U.S. policy in Vietnam from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s that is full of interesting evidence and analysis in pursuit of a thesis that is wrong in key respects. It is a gallant effort, but, like many revisionist historians, Porter overreaches in attempting to prove that key policymakers understood the situation at the time just as he now understands it. He asserts that the period was characterized not by a delicate balance between superpowers but by U.S. predominance — and that this helps explain risk taking in Vietnam. To be sure, policymakers' views on the shifting balance of power (especially when it came to Sino-Soviet relations) were certainly more nuanced than was let on in public, but none truly believed that the United States could act without constraint, as Porter suggests. Porter also argues that the United States' Vietnam policy was made more aggressive by a national security bureaucracy pushing its own preferences — failing to recognize that their advice was always judged in terms of what the political marketplace would bear.

Preface......Page 8 Acknowledgments......Page 16 Selected Abbreviations......Page 18 1 The Imbalance of Power, 1953–1965......Page 20 2 The Communist Powers Appease the United States......Page 51 3 Eisenhower and Dulles Exploit U.S. Dominance in Vietnam......Page 88 4 North Vietnamese Policy under the American Threat......Page 127 5 Kennedy’s Struggle with the National Security Bureaucracy......Page 160 6 Johnson, McNamara, and the Tonkin Gulf Episode......Page 199 7 Bureaucratic Pressures and Decisions for War......Page 222 8 Dominoes, Bandwagons, and the Road to War......Page 248 9 Conclusion: The Perils of Dominance......Page 278 Notes......Page 296 Selected Bibliography......Page 380 Index......Page 402 "Perils of Dominance is the first completely new interpretation of how and why the United States went to war in Vietnam. It challenges the prevailing theory that U.S. officials adhered blindly to the Cold War doctrine that loss of Vietnam would result in a "domino effect" and lead to communist domination of Southeast Asia. Gareth Porter presents compelling evidence that U.S. policy decisions on Vietnam from 1954 to mid-1965 were shaped by an overwhelming imbalance of military power favoring the United States over the Soviet Union and China."--BOOK JACKET The imbalance of power, 1953-1965 The Soviets and Chinese appease the United States Eisenhower and Dulles exploit U.S. dominance in Vietnam North Vietnamese policy under the American threat Kennedy's struggle with the national security bureaucracy Johnson, McNamara and the Tonkin Gulf crisis Bureaucratic pressures and the decisions for war Dominoes, bandwagons and the road to war. In a new interpretation of how and why the United States went to war in Vietnam, the author challenges conventional wisdom about the origins of the war, arguing that U.S. policy decisions were shaped by an imbalance of military power favoring the U.S. over the Soviet Union and China, a factor that is also relevant to the current U.S. intervention in Iraq. Gareth Porter presents a new interpretation of how and why the US went to war in Vietnam. He provides a challenge to the prevailing explanation that US officials adhered blindly to a Cold War doctrine that loss of Vietnam would cause a 'domino effect' leading to communist dominance of the area Interprets how and why the United States went to war in Vietnam. This book provides a challenge to the explanation that US officials adhered blindly to a Cold War doctrine that loss of Vietnam would cause a 'domino effect' leading to communist domination of the area. For decades, no distinction was made between different periods in the diplomatic history of the Cold War, because no one had noted any marked change in the fundamental relationship between the two major antagonists.