Massive amounts of snow, something I have to deal with 5 months of the year where I live! 
So no one liked Diem, what a surprise there! :glare:
So no one liked Diem, what a surprise there! :glare:
-
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Wallops Field does appear to live something of a cursed life. But then if facilities are sited where congressional politics rather than necessity or common sense require them, these things will happen.
John Forseti: Ah. I have never seen it, which is probably why I didn't recognize the initials.
volksmarschall: I live in South Florida, so I don't have to.
Perhaps with the Diem regime gone, the Buddhists won't be "inspired" to set themselves on fire come 1963.
Kurt_Steiner: Plus they will have Hurricane Sandy to contend with in fifty years. :sad:
El Pip: I didn't know Wallops Field existed until I wrote this update. Then the other day a rocket blew up there right on the launch pad! Talk about timing! :blink:
Last Tuesday was the 2014 Midterm Election. It was a great night for Republicans, regaining control of the Senate and expanding their power everywhere. As for Democrats, they spent millions and millions of dollars and won...well, let's just say donors can't get their money back.
Anyway, the Midterm Election inspired me to do a mini-update about the Congress that Jackson has to deal with through the prism of what this alternate history looks like on Wikipedia.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
87th United States Congress
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Eighty-Seventh United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, composed of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, D.C. from January 3rd, 1961 to January 3rd, 1963, during the first two years of the administration of U.S. President Henry M. Jackson. The apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives was based on the Seventeenth Census of the United States in 1950, along with two seats temporarily added in 1959 (one member each from recently admitted states of Alaska and Hawaii). The House of Representatives had a Republican majority, and the Senate had a Democratic majority.
Party Summary
Senate
House of Representatives
Leadership
Senate
House of Representatives
volksmarschall: I live in South Florida, so I don't have to.
Perhaps with the Diem regime gone, the Buddhists won't be "inspired" to set themselves on fire come 1963.
Kurt_Steiner: Plus they will have Hurricane Sandy to contend with in fifty years. :sad:
El Pip: I didn't know Wallops Field existed until I wrote this update. Then the other day a rocket blew up there right on the launch pad! Talk about timing! :blink:
Last Tuesday was the 2014 Midterm Election. It was a great night for Republicans, regaining control of the Senate and expanding their power everywhere. As for Democrats, they spent millions and millions of dollars and won...well, let's just say donors can't get their money back.
Anyway, the Midterm Election inspired me to do a mini-update about the Congress that Jackson has to deal with through the prism of what this alternate history looks like on Wikipedia.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
87th United States Congress
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Eighty-Seventh United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, composed of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, D.C. from January 3rd, 1961 to January 3rd, 1963, during the first two years of the administration of U.S. President Henry M. Jackson. The apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives was based on the Seventeenth Census of the United States in 1950, along with two seats temporarily added in 1959 (one member each from recently admitted states of Alaska and Hawaii). The House of Representatives had a Republican majority, and the Senate had a Democratic majority.
Party Summary
Senate
- Democratic (D): 63 (majority)
- Republican (R): 37
House of Representatives
- Republican (R): 234 (majority)
- Democratic (D): 203
Leadership
Senate
- President: Lyndon Johnson (D-Texas)
- President Pro Tempore: Carl Hayden (D-Arizona)
- Majority Leader: Hubert Humphrey (D-Minnesota)
- Minority Leader: Everett Dirksen (R-Illinois)
- Majority Whip: Russell Long (D-Louisiana)
- Minority Whip: Frederick Houser (R-California)
House of Representatives
- Speaker: Charles Halleck (R-Indiana)
- Majority Leader: Gerald Ford (R-Michigan)
- Minority Leader: John McCormack (D-Massachusetts)
- Majority Whip: Leslie Arends (R-Illinois)
- Minority Whip: Carl Albert (D-Oklahoma)
Go Everett Dirksen. "The Second Lincoln" (well, that was the flowering epithet that LBJ gave him for helping him pass the Civil Rights Act)
Will we finally get the long awaited update on Indonesia? How will Jackson handle this? Just like Kennedy, forcing the Dutch to cede it or actually allow an independent Dutch New Guinea to succeed?
volksmarschall: I like Dirksen too. He would be the obvious choice for Senate Majority Leader should the Republicans flip control of the Senate. Imagine that. Too bad he is going to die at the end of the decade.
NickRooz: An Indonesia update is coming soon. It might not be what you're expecting, though.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Mission in Vietnam
“Henry Jackson saw life, like I do, in terms of missions – missions defined and missions completed. Whether it was standing up to China to protect the freedom of the Pacific Rim or telling members of his own party that we have got to leave the tired old baggage of bigotry behind, Henry Jackson was able to define – and lead – a mission. He understood that no matter what, you always try to complete it.”
-President George H.W. Bush
In June 1987, President Bush posthumously presented President Jackson with the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the nation’s highest civilian award. Former First Lady Helen Jackson graciously accepted “this great honor the nation has bestowed on my husband” in a ceremony in the East Room of the White House. Four years after Jackson’s death from a ruptured aorta, Bush decided that the time was right to honor Jackson's legacy of “helping to build the community of democracies and working tirelessly to keep it vigorous and secure.”
George Bush and others recognized in the late 1980s that Jackson had played a major role in the conduct of the Cold War. While he wasn’t the one who developed the policy of containment (Thomas E. Dewey was the one who did that), Jackson was the one who was much more aggressive than his predecessors in containing the threats posed by the Soviet Union and the Republic of China. With a clear sense of what he wanted to do in foreign policy, Scoop took office in 1961 determined to win the Cold War for the United States. Very much a hawk, Jackson asserted America’s power and influence around the world during his tenure in office. He first built up his country’s military strength, knowing full well that weakness tempts aggressors. He then used that power to try to stop the Soviets and the Chinese from expanding their own power further. Scoop deployed additional US forces to Europe in a show of force designed to make the Communists think twice about engaging the West in a military showdown for control over the continent. Meanwhile in Asia, Jackson’s various missions ranged from stopping the Chinese from taking over the Korean Peninsula to forging an alliance with Thailand. In March 1962 one mission was growing increasingly critical: the defense of South Vietnam.
(Editorial cartoonist Herbert Block was among those calling for an aggressive Vietnam policy in the early 1960s)
Whereas his predecessor John Sparkman had tried to greatly limit American involvement in Vietnam to providing supplies and a few hundred military advisors, Jackson felt that much more had to be done. He was after all a firm believer in the Domino Theory; developed by President Adlai Stevenson in 1953, the Domino Theory stated that if one country fell to the enemy, others would fall right behind it. In Southeast Asia, the dominoes seemed to be falling away from America. Laos and North Vietnam had both been absorbed into the Chinese sphere of influence through the use of military intervention (the former) and diplomacy (the latter). The fear was that if South Vietnam fell as well, the pro-US regime which was forcibly imposed upon Cambodia would collapse and Thailand would find herself fighting for her very survival. Thus the mission was to save South Vietnam from a hostile takeover by North Vietnam, which in turn would save the rest of Southeast Asia. In the autumn of 1961, Jackson approved a plan in which 8,000 combat troops would be deployed to the country by the end of 1962. These American soldiers would fight alongside the South Vietnamese Army in going after the Vietcong guerillas. By the end of 1963, the number of Americans fighting in South Vietnam would be doubled to 16,000. To command these troops, one of the US Army’s best generals had been dispatched to Saigon: Maxwell Taylor. Taylor had earned a reputation as a problem solver, someone who could go into a situation and resolve it. Having led the US mission in Yugoslavia during the 1950s which helped save the pro-US royalist regime from being overthrown by the Communists, Taylor was seen as a natural for the job.
On March 11th, Secretary of Defense Paul Nitze arrived in Saigon for a three-day visit. As the man who would oversee the implementation of the Administration’s Vietnam policy at the Pentagon, Nitze wanted to go to Saigon to see for himself the state of affairs there. He wanted to meet personally with General Taylor and hear his plan for how he was going to use the 16,000 troops being allocated to him. The situation in South Vietnam turned out to be much worse than Nitze had originally imagined. For starters, the military rule put in place following Diem’s assassination left much to be desired. When Adolf Hitler was assassinated in July 1944, the plotters had already set up a post-Hitler government. They had gone into the assassination knowing who was going to have which job once the Nazi regime had been overthrown. By contrast, Nitze reported back to Jackson that “these generals are still trying to figure out who is going to run the schools and who is going to keep the lights on.”
If Diem’s assassination truly had been a military conspiracy, clearly no thought had been put into what to do after Diem was forcibly removed from power. The meeting with Taylor didn’t help matters any; if anything, the meeting only emphasized the hard road ahead. The commanding US general in South Vietnam told the Secretary of Defense straight up that they were facing a very difficult situation and that “the strategy as it exists currently is one that will lead to defeat.”
This was a jarring revelation. For months, Nitze and others had thought that 16,000 combat troops would be enough. Now here was General Taylor, having been on the ground for a month, stating matter-of-factly that 16,000 were far from adequate. “I must stress to you, Mr. Secretary,” Taylor said, “That we cannot rely on the South Vietnamese Army to help us defeat the guerrillas.”
The major problem with America’s South Vietnamese ally was that the quality of her military was shockingly poor. A combination of poor leadership, rampant corruption, and low morale had weakened the South Vietnamese Army to the point that Taylor was ready to write them off as useless. It was the complete opposite of his dealings with the Royal Yugoslav Army in the 1950s in which he found the soldiers well-armed, well paid, and going into battle with the sense that they were fighting for home and family. “The average South Vietnamese soldier doesn’t consider the insurgency to be a serious threat to their livelihoods,” Nitze was told, “They are fighting because someone ordered them to. There’s no feeling in them of fighting for the national good.”
Not having any confidence in his ally, Taylor strongly recommended that the United States take up the bulk of waging counterinsurgency warfare against the Vietcong. He wanted to wage an aggressive campaign in which the strength of the guerrillas were grinded down by constant fighting. He wanted the Vietcong to lose more guns and ammo than they could be supplied by North Vietnam and China. Of course, Taylor’s strategy raised the obvious question:
“General, how large a force will you need to arrest and hopefully reverse the deteriorating situation here?”
Having done his homework, Taylor had worked out a concise estimate of how many more combat troops he would need in order to achieve a favorable outcome. Still, his answer was more than either Nitze or anyone else back in D.C. had been expecting.
(Secretary of Defense Paul Nitze, pipe in hand, during his March 1962 trip to South Vietnam)
“40,000 men?!”
That was Jackson’s exclamation upon receiving Taylor’s estimate from Nitze in the Oval Office. What Taylor wanted was five times what the Pentagon had originally slated for deployment in 1962! The proposal set off a vigorous debate within the Administration. On the one side, there was skepticism about going into a military commitment that could become open-ended. On the other side, it was felt that the United States had no other alternative than to send her forces to South Vietnam. Overcoming his initial surprise, Nitze came around to endorsing Taylor’s plan. He warned that if the US lost South Vietnam, it would mean losing “not merely a crucial piece of real estate, but the faith that we have the will and the capacity to deal with the Chinese offensive in [Southeast Asia].”
The newly-appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs David L. McDonald weighed in, agreeing that the fall of South Vietnam would represent a sharp blow to the United States on the global stage. The problem he had with Taylor’s troop request was that it struck him as being too small a number given the assignment:
“A US force of the magnitude of 40,000 men – whether deployed all at once or in piecemeal – will not convince the other side that we mean business.”
McDonald urged the President to face “the ultimate possible extent of our military commitment”: a force of 205,000 men to counter both the Vietcong and potential intervention by the North Vietnamese and Chinese. That was over five times what Taylor was asking for! Secretary of State Dean Rusk led the opposition, not believing that sending in a massive or even a limited number of US combat troops made sense. Rusk sent Jackson a memo in which he agreed that the collapse of South Vietnam would represent a disaster for the United States both abroad and at home. Rusk further warned that “the loss of South Vietnam would stimulate bitter domestic controversies in the United States and would be seized upon by extreme elements to divide the country and harass the Administration.”
That being said, the State Department was estimating that the chances of South Vietnam collapsing without direct US military support would be quite low. Instead of a massive influx of combat troops, Rusk recommended that the United States sit tight for the immediate future and provide limited help by supporting the reorganization and expansion of the South Vietnamese military in order to “ensure the fulfillment of cooperative military and political goals.”
After hearing all the sides state their cases, Scoop had to make a decision about how many additional troops to deploy if any. He was deeply concerned about losing South Vietnam, having already lost Laos. Although he respected Rusk a great deal, Jackson felt that the State Department was being rather naïve in making the case against an overt American military response. He confided to his speechwriter Arthur Schlesinger that he didn’t see how “American troops cannot be involved on the Asian mainland. It’s necessary for us to have a presence there.”
At a private White House meeting on April 5th, Rusk was informed by the President that his advice would be rejected on the grounds that his Department was underestimating the consequences of not introducing US forces. “If we do not send our troops to Vietnam,” Jackson warned Rusk, “And the country collapses, we will be blamed by everyone for not having done enough. Even if you are estimating that chance as being unlikely, Dean, that is not a chance we can afford to take.”
By April 7th, it had become apparent that Jackson was heading towards a substantial military commitment. Whether it would be Taylor’s 40,000 or McDonald’s 205,000 or somewhere in-between was up in the air. Still having a bad feeling about this, Rusk made one more effort to head off military deployment. He recruited Democratic Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana, the leading expert on Asia in the Senate, to make the outside case for helping the South Vietnamese do their own fighting instead of doing it for them. On April 10th, Mansfield was led into the Oval Office to present his case to the President. The Montana Senator argued that sending US combat forces to South Vietnam carried with it grave risks. Although he offered no convincing alternatives for saving the country from a Communist takeover, Mansfield forcefully expressed his conviction that putting in American combat units would be a serious error:
“I see four possible adverse results: a fanfare and then a retreat, an indecisive and costly conflict, a major war with China while Russia stands aside, or a total world conflict.”
At the very least, “involvement on the mainland of Asia would weaken our military capability in Germany and leave the Russians uncommitted.”
Mansfield was afraid that increasing troop levels in South Vietnam would come at the expense of weakening troop levels in Europe, where the Soviets posed a major threat.
Jackson listened respectfully to Mansfield’s point of view but was unmoved. For starters, he thought the Senator was wrong in his belief that being stronger in Asia meant being weaker in Europe:
“We, along with our NATO allies, have the forces in place in Europe to meet a Soviet crossing of the Oder should they want to leave their side of the Iron Curtain.”
On April 14th, Scoop signaled that the Mansfield meeting had done nothing to make him reconsider by ordering the Pentagon to draw up three contingency plans for sending US forces to South Vietnam: one for Taylor’s 40,000 recommendation, one for McDonald’s 205,000 recommendation, and one for 120,000 (which was roughly the midway point between the two recommendations). He was still undecided about the numbers and wanted to keep his options open. It wasn’t until April 25th that the President finally...and fatefully...made up his mind. He sent word to Taylor in Saigon that he would get his 40,000 combat troops and that he had the green light to fully pursue his war plan. This decision meant that America’s involvement in Vietnam would be escalated – a decision which Jackson became firmly committed to once he made it. Like President Bush said twenty-five years later, Scoop viewed saving South Vietnam as his mission and he was determined to complete it. He saw that the only way to keep South Vietnam out of the Chinese sphere of influence was to use American military power in battle. This meant assuming principal responsibility for South Vietnam’s national security, which is exactly what Taylor had advised. Jackson wasn’t a micro-manager who needed to control everything that was going on. He appointed people whom he trusted to know what they were doing and let them exercise their judgment. Taylor was the perfect example. If the commanding General felt that he only needed 40,000 men to defeat the Vietcong and restore order in South Vietnam, then the President wouldn’t second-guess him. He would trust the military to achieve the status "mission accomplished".
Alea iacta est. The die is cast.
NickRooz: An Indonesia update is coming soon. It might not be what you're expecting, though.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Mission in Vietnam
“Henry Jackson saw life, like I do, in terms of missions – missions defined and missions completed. Whether it was standing up to China to protect the freedom of the Pacific Rim or telling members of his own party that we have got to leave the tired old baggage of bigotry behind, Henry Jackson was able to define – and lead – a mission. He understood that no matter what, you always try to complete it.”
-President George H.W. Bush
In June 1987, President Bush posthumously presented President Jackson with the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the nation’s highest civilian award. Former First Lady Helen Jackson graciously accepted “this great honor the nation has bestowed on my husband” in a ceremony in the East Room of the White House. Four years after Jackson’s death from a ruptured aorta, Bush decided that the time was right to honor Jackson's legacy of “helping to build the community of democracies and working tirelessly to keep it vigorous and secure.”
George Bush and others recognized in the late 1980s that Jackson had played a major role in the conduct of the Cold War. While he wasn’t the one who developed the policy of containment (Thomas E. Dewey was the one who did that), Jackson was the one who was much more aggressive than his predecessors in containing the threats posed by the Soviet Union and the Republic of China. With a clear sense of what he wanted to do in foreign policy, Scoop took office in 1961 determined to win the Cold War for the United States. Very much a hawk, Jackson asserted America’s power and influence around the world during his tenure in office. He first built up his country’s military strength, knowing full well that weakness tempts aggressors. He then used that power to try to stop the Soviets and the Chinese from expanding their own power further. Scoop deployed additional US forces to Europe in a show of force designed to make the Communists think twice about engaging the West in a military showdown for control over the continent. Meanwhile in Asia, Jackson’s various missions ranged from stopping the Chinese from taking over the Korean Peninsula to forging an alliance with Thailand. In March 1962 one mission was growing increasingly critical: the defense of South Vietnam.
(Editorial cartoonist Herbert Block was among those calling for an aggressive Vietnam policy in the early 1960s)
Whereas his predecessor John Sparkman had tried to greatly limit American involvement in Vietnam to providing supplies and a few hundred military advisors, Jackson felt that much more had to be done. He was after all a firm believer in the Domino Theory; developed by President Adlai Stevenson in 1953, the Domino Theory stated that if one country fell to the enemy, others would fall right behind it. In Southeast Asia, the dominoes seemed to be falling away from America. Laos and North Vietnam had both been absorbed into the Chinese sphere of influence through the use of military intervention (the former) and diplomacy (the latter). The fear was that if South Vietnam fell as well, the pro-US regime which was forcibly imposed upon Cambodia would collapse and Thailand would find herself fighting for her very survival. Thus the mission was to save South Vietnam from a hostile takeover by North Vietnam, which in turn would save the rest of Southeast Asia. In the autumn of 1961, Jackson approved a plan in which 8,000 combat troops would be deployed to the country by the end of 1962. These American soldiers would fight alongside the South Vietnamese Army in going after the Vietcong guerillas. By the end of 1963, the number of Americans fighting in South Vietnam would be doubled to 16,000. To command these troops, one of the US Army’s best generals had been dispatched to Saigon: Maxwell Taylor. Taylor had earned a reputation as a problem solver, someone who could go into a situation and resolve it. Having led the US mission in Yugoslavia during the 1950s which helped save the pro-US royalist regime from being overthrown by the Communists, Taylor was seen as a natural for the job.
On March 11th, Secretary of Defense Paul Nitze arrived in Saigon for a three-day visit. As the man who would oversee the implementation of the Administration’s Vietnam policy at the Pentagon, Nitze wanted to go to Saigon to see for himself the state of affairs there. He wanted to meet personally with General Taylor and hear his plan for how he was going to use the 16,000 troops being allocated to him. The situation in South Vietnam turned out to be much worse than Nitze had originally imagined. For starters, the military rule put in place following Diem’s assassination left much to be desired. When Adolf Hitler was assassinated in July 1944, the plotters had already set up a post-Hitler government. They had gone into the assassination knowing who was going to have which job once the Nazi regime had been overthrown. By contrast, Nitze reported back to Jackson that “these generals are still trying to figure out who is going to run the schools and who is going to keep the lights on.”
If Diem’s assassination truly had been a military conspiracy, clearly no thought had been put into what to do after Diem was forcibly removed from power. The meeting with Taylor didn’t help matters any; if anything, the meeting only emphasized the hard road ahead. The commanding US general in South Vietnam told the Secretary of Defense straight up that they were facing a very difficult situation and that “the strategy as it exists currently is one that will lead to defeat.”
This was a jarring revelation. For months, Nitze and others had thought that 16,000 combat troops would be enough. Now here was General Taylor, having been on the ground for a month, stating matter-of-factly that 16,000 were far from adequate. “I must stress to you, Mr. Secretary,” Taylor said, “That we cannot rely on the South Vietnamese Army to help us defeat the guerrillas.”
The major problem with America’s South Vietnamese ally was that the quality of her military was shockingly poor. A combination of poor leadership, rampant corruption, and low morale had weakened the South Vietnamese Army to the point that Taylor was ready to write them off as useless. It was the complete opposite of his dealings with the Royal Yugoslav Army in the 1950s in which he found the soldiers well-armed, well paid, and going into battle with the sense that they were fighting for home and family. “The average South Vietnamese soldier doesn’t consider the insurgency to be a serious threat to their livelihoods,” Nitze was told, “They are fighting because someone ordered them to. There’s no feeling in them of fighting for the national good.”
Not having any confidence in his ally, Taylor strongly recommended that the United States take up the bulk of waging counterinsurgency warfare against the Vietcong. He wanted to wage an aggressive campaign in which the strength of the guerrillas were grinded down by constant fighting. He wanted the Vietcong to lose more guns and ammo than they could be supplied by North Vietnam and China. Of course, Taylor’s strategy raised the obvious question:
“General, how large a force will you need to arrest and hopefully reverse the deteriorating situation here?”
Having done his homework, Taylor had worked out a concise estimate of how many more combat troops he would need in order to achieve a favorable outcome. Still, his answer was more than either Nitze or anyone else back in D.C. had been expecting.
(Secretary of Defense Paul Nitze, pipe in hand, during his March 1962 trip to South Vietnam)
“40,000 men?!”
That was Jackson’s exclamation upon receiving Taylor’s estimate from Nitze in the Oval Office. What Taylor wanted was five times what the Pentagon had originally slated for deployment in 1962! The proposal set off a vigorous debate within the Administration. On the one side, there was skepticism about going into a military commitment that could become open-ended. On the other side, it was felt that the United States had no other alternative than to send her forces to South Vietnam. Overcoming his initial surprise, Nitze came around to endorsing Taylor’s plan. He warned that if the US lost South Vietnam, it would mean losing “not merely a crucial piece of real estate, but the faith that we have the will and the capacity to deal with the Chinese offensive in [Southeast Asia].”
The newly-appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs David L. McDonald weighed in, agreeing that the fall of South Vietnam would represent a sharp blow to the United States on the global stage. The problem he had with Taylor’s troop request was that it struck him as being too small a number given the assignment:
“A US force of the magnitude of 40,000 men – whether deployed all at once or in piecemeal – will not convince the other side that we mean business.”
McDonald urged the President to face “the ultimate possible extent of our military commitment”: a force of 205,000 men to counter both the Vietcong and potential intervention by the North Vietnamese and Chinese. That was over five times what Taylor was asking for! Secretary of State Dean Rusk led the opposition, not believing that sending in a massive or even a limited number of US combat troops made sense. Rusk sent Jackson a memo in which he agreed that the collapse of South Vietnam would represent a disaster for the United States both abroad and at home. Rusk further warned that “the loss of South Vietnam would stimulate bitter domestic controversies in the United States and would be seized upon by extreme elements to divide the country and harass the Administration.”
That being said, the State Department was estimating that the chances of South Vietnam collapsing without direct US military support would be quite low. Instead of a massive influx of combat troops, Rusk recommended that the United States sit tight for the immediate future and provide limited help by supporting the reorganization and expansion of the South Vietnamese military in order to “ensure the fulfillment of cooperative military and political goals.”
After hearing all the sides state their cases, Scoop had to make a decision about how many additional troops to deploy if any. He was deeply concerned about losing South Vietnam, having already lost Laos. Although he respected Rusk a great deal, Jackson felt that the State Department was being rather naïve in making the case against an overt American military response. He confided to his speechwriter Arthur Schlesinger that he didn’t see how “American troops cannot be involved on the Asian mainland. It’s necessary for us to have a presence there.”
At a private White House meeting on April 5th, Rusk was informed by the President that his advice would be rejected on the grounds that his Department was underestimating the consequences of not introducing US forces. “If we do not send our troops to Vietnam,” Jackson warned Rusk, “And the country collapses, we will be blamed by everyone for not having done enough. Even if you are estimating that chance as being unlikely, Dean, that is not a chance we can afford to take.”
By April 7th, it had become apparent that Jackson was heading towards a substantial military commitment. Whether it would be Taylor’s 40,000 or McDonald’s 205,000 or somewhere in-between was up in the air. Still having a bad feeling about this, Rusk made one more effort to head off military deployment. He recruited Democratic Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana, the leading expert on Asia in the Senate, to make the outside case for helping the South Vietnamese do their own fighting instead of doing it for them. On April 10th, Mansfield was led into the Oval Office to present his case to the President. The Montana Senator argued that sending US combat forces to South Vietnam carried with it grave risks. Although he offered no convincing alternatives for saving the country from a Communist takeover, Mansfield forcefully expressed his conviction that putting in American combat units would be a serious error:
“I see four possible adverse results: a fanfare and then a retreat, an indecisive and costly conflict, a major war with China while Russia stands aside, or a total world conflict.”
At the very least, “involvement on the mainland of Asia would weaken our military capability in Germany and leave the Russians uncommitted.”
Mansfield was afraid that increasing troop levels in South Vietnam would come at the expense of weakening troop levels in Europe, where the Soviets posed a major threat.
Jackson listened respectfully to Mansfield’s point of view but was unmoved. For starters, he thought the Senator was wrong in his belief that being stronger in Asia meant being weaker in Europe:
“We, along with our NATO allies, have the forces in place in Europe to meet a Soviet crossing of the Oder should they want to leave their side of the Iron Curtain.”
On April 14th, Scoop signaled that the Mansfield meeting had done nothing to make him reconsider by ordering the Pentagon to draw up three contingency plans for sending US forces to South Vietnam: one for Taylor’s 40,000 recommendation, one for McDonald’s 205,000 recommendation, and one for 120,000 (which was roughly the midway point between the two recommendations). He was still undecided about the numbers and wanted to keep his options open. It wasn’t until April 25th that the President finally...and fatefully...made up his mind. He sent word to Taylor in Saigon that he would get his 40,000 combat troops and that he had the green light to fully pursue his war plan. This decision meant that America’s involvement in Vietnam would be escalated – a decision which Jackson became firmly committed to once he made it. Like President Bush said twenty-five years later, Scoop viewed saving South Vietnam as his mission and he was determined to complete it. He saw that the only way to keep South Vietnam out of the Chinese sphere of influence was to use American military power in battle. This meant assuming principal responsibility for South Vietnam’s national security, which is exactly what Taylor had advised. Jackson wasn’t a micro-manager who needed to control everything that was going on. He appointed people whom he trusted to know what they were doing and let them exercise their judgment. Taylor was the perfect example. If the commanding General felt that he only needed 40,000 men to defeat the Vietcong and restore order in South Vietnam, then the President wouldn’t second-guess him. He would trust the military to achieve the status "mission accomplished".
Alea iacta est. The die is cast.
"assuming principal responsibility for South Vietnam’s national security"
Now there is a wide ranging brief. If (when) General Taylor works out the South Korean leadership are one of the main obstacles to defeating the Viet Cong would he get Scoops backing to do something drastic about it? From the context of the update I would guess yes he would, which would be interesting to say the least.
Now there is a wide ranging brief. If (when) General Taylor works out the South Korean leadership are one of the main obstacles to defeating the Viet Cong would he get Scoops backing to do something drastic about it? From the context of the update I would guess yes he would, which would be interesting to say the least.
“American troops cannot be involved on the Asian mainland. It’s necessary for us to have a presence there.”
How can you be present on the Asian mainland without US troops?
And how to be present in a meaningful way without US troops?
Houston, we have a problem!!!!
How can you be present on the Asian mainland without US troops?
And how to be present in a meaningful way without US troops?
Houston, we have a problem!!!!
.png){kind=avatar}
It never ceases to amaze me - when reading about the Cold War - how staggeringly blind American politicians were to the fact that it was their own support of massively corrupt dictators that fueled the Communist revolutionaries in Asia and Central America in the first place.
Anyway, another wonderful update, Nathan! I can't wait to get into the nitty-gritty of the Longest War.
It perpetuated the militarized sector of the American economy, somewhat nefariously called the "Military Industrial Complex" as if this abstract entity is actually manipulating the scenes of American politics and global history. Ike's quote is taken out of context, but since the end of the Vietnam War and the opening of the Pentagon Papers it was very clear that the government of the US could have cared less about the politics of the states we were involved with, as long as American industries and businesses continued to benefit and that the stated reasons for support of South Vietnam and the communist threat were deliberately deceitful for our real presence over there.
It's the great paradox of deliberative democracies. They preach peace but so often go to war, but not onto one another but onto "ill-liberal" states; mostly (except for recent times) to their own benefit and adding legitimacy to national institutions.
J.J.Jameson: Thanks. I was hoping someone would pick up on that. How Jackson is handling Vietnam is quite different from how JFK and LBJ did. Whether the outcome will be any better is anyone's guess.
El Pip: Taylor really did recommend to JFK this plan to take the offensive with 40,000 troops. Kennedy rejected it because he was trying very hard not to commit substantial forces to Vietnam. JFK was never really comfortable with Vietnam and there's evidence to suggest that he was looking for a way out before his assassination.
Jackson, on the other hand, is way more hawkish that JFK was and is much more willing to give Taylor his backing. Thus the escalation decision LBJ historically made in 1965 happens three years earlier.
Kurt_Steiner: Houston to Kurt: we don't have a problem. You took the sentence out of context, that's all.
H.Appleby: I still don't understand the whole hashtag thing. Then again, never using Twitter might have something to do with that.
Kurt_Steiner: And now we have countries shutting down other countries' movie releases.hmy:
SotV: Reading that reminds me of something a President Reagan aide said when the State Department was trying to override one of Reagan's decisions:
"Wait a minute! No one elected the State Department to anything! Those guys have been screwing up for twenty-five years!"
H.Appleby: Now that I think about it, I've been talking about Vietnam since Dewey's tenure. That is long.hmy:
volksmarschall: As I read this, the Oliver Stone film "JFK" is playing in my head.
On a side note, I’m a little surprised no one – even volksmarschall – brought up the beginning of the update. Since I don’t know how far this AAR will go, every once in a while I like to give hints about the future. In this case, I wanted to reveal that George Bush will be President of the United States in 1987 instead of Ronald Reagan (I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do with Reagan). Bush is one of my favorite Presidents and he’s definitely someone I want to put in the White House. I picked 1987 because it can either be his first term or second term, depending on whether I elect him in 1980 or 1984. I’m determined to make Bush a two-termer TTL, so he’ll either serve 1981-1989 or 1985-1993.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The United Nations Speech
By mid-March 1962, the Jackson Administration had its' hands full. The crisis in South Vietnam seemed to be getting worse with each passing day. Not helping matters any, clean-up was underway from North Carolina to Maine following a devastating and lingering nor’easter which had pummeled the East Coast with heavy flooding and strong winds. Busy as he was, the President chose this particular moment to pick a fight over an issue he felt strongly about. On March 20th, Scoop was scheduled to deliver a speech at the National Press Club in Washington. Founded in March 1908 by thirty-two newspapermen, every President since Theodore Roosevelt had visited the club for journalists. Jackson had been invited by the group to speak on any issue that he chose. In a surprise move, he decided to make the United Nations the subject of his speech. At the time, Congress was debating whether to approve the purchasing of bonds to help finance operations at the UN. It was a routine spending matter that not many people were paying much attention to. That would change however after Jackson mounted the podium at the National Press Club and gave what would be one of the defining speeches of his Presidency.
Once a supporter of the postwar international organization, Jackson had soured on the UN by the time he became President. Originally intended to be a forum in which countries could come to solve their problems peacefully, the UN had become polarized by the Cold War. The United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies were using the organization to trade verbal attacks and accusations. There seemed to be more talking than actual action at UN Headquarters in New York City. The United States Ambassador there, Dorothy Fosdick (the first woman to hold that post), was complaining that she was spending more time defending America from international attacks than she was exerting America’s leadership on the world stage. Believing the UN to be practically useless foreign policy-wise, Jackson had come to the conclusion that the strength and unity of the Atlantic community and NATO were far more important to America’s position in the world. He therefore pursued a foreign policy that put a greater emphasis on maintaining close relationships with individual allies like Canada and the United Kingdom at the expense of the collective global pool known as the United Nations. The problem was that not everyone shared his point of view. There were voices in America that were not only urging stronger cooperation with the UN at the expense of US interests but were actually advocating reforming foreign policy so it would be more aligned with UN interests. In other words, according to Jackson biographer Robert G. Kaufman, they wanted “the United Nations to impinge on the roles of the President and the Secretary of State” in crafting how the United States handled her foreign affairs. This was wholly unacceptable to Jackson, who took advantage of his platform at the National Press Club to attack what he considered to be the wrong course of action to pursue. He would pull no punches.
What the audience heard was the strongest criticism ever leveled at the UN and its’ supporters by a President. Throughout the speech, Jackson warned against putting the UN in charge of formulating America’s foreign policy:
“The United Nations was never intended to be a substitute for our own leaders as the makers and movers of American foreign policy.”
Nor should “our UN delegation in New York become forced to answer to a second foreign affairs office.”
Doing so would cause the United States to weaken its allies “in deference to what is represented in New York as a world opinion.”
Although he emphasized that the United Nations “should continue to be an important avenue of American foreign policy,” Jackson also said that “the involvement of the United Nations has at times hampered the wise definition of our national interest and the development of sound policies for their advancement.”
He advised against holding an exaggerated view of the UN’s role, warning that it could “imperil the ability of the United States in containing the Soviet Union and China, which are the paramount threats to our national interests.”
“The Soviet Union and China,” he went on to say, “Are not and will not be peace-loving nations. The leaders of both nations have threatened to ‘bury’ us. In their more agreeable moments, the Russians and the Chinese promise to bury us nicely; but whatever their mood, the Earth will still be six feet deep above us. We must realize that the Soviet Union and China see the UN not as a forum of cooperation but as one more arena of struggle.”
He concluded:
“The hope for peace with justice does not lie with the United Nations. Indeed the truth is almost exactly the reverse. The best hope for the United Nations lies in the maintenance of peace. Peace depends on the power and unity of the Atlantic community and the skill of our direct diplomacy.”
The astounding speech made headlines around the world. Here was the President of the United States, the leader of the Free World, being openly critical of the United Nations and urging public opinion to be more educated about “the direction of a more realistic appreciation of the United Nation’s limitations, more modest hopes for its accomplishments, and a more mature sense of the burdens of responsible leadership.”
The United Nations Speech as it would become known elicited strong reactions both at home and abroad. Abroad, the Soviets and the Chinese quickly attacked Jackson for making remarks that they considered to be reckless and bellicose. Even the United Kingdom, normally a close ally of the United States, disagreed with it. Prime Minister Rab Butler found the speech too strong and thought Jackson had been rash in his denouncement of the United Nations. The Prime Minister, being much more experienced in dealing with the world, felt that the President had made a terrible mistake in throwing the UN under the bus. “I understand he’s frustrated,” Butler said in private, “But there’s a right way and a wrong way to deal with frustration. He chose the wrong way.”
Taking a more moderate position, Butler publically re-affirmed his country’s “fullest confidence” in the international organization and expressed his hope that whatever problems that existed there could be resolved peacefully and with a cool head. At home, the reaction to the controversial speech split largely along ideological lines. At home, the reaction to the controversial speech split largely along ideological lines. Scoop received the majority of his praise from conservatives and the majority of his criticisms from liberals. Democratic Senator Richard Russell of Georgia sent Jackson a message telling him that “no finer, saner, or more historic speech on international relations has been made during my time here in Washington. It is refreshing to see someone admit that this country has rights that should be asserted out loud.”
Republican Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, whom Jackson could depend on to support him when it came to national defense and foreign policy issues, put in his two cents:
“The theory that the UN has preserved the peace is preposterous. We must not allow it to dictate our foreign policy.”
Secretary of Labor Ronald Reagan, who represented Conservative Democrats in the Administration, not only loved the speech but even urged Scoop to go one step further and “get us the hell out of that kangaroo court and let it sink. That would send a message to those bums.”
Liberals, who were far more supportive of the UN than their right-wing counterparts, uniformly hated the speech and attacked the President for suggesting that the United States should disregard the United Nations when it comes to policy-making. Republican Senator Jacob Javits of New York, one of the most liberal Republicans in Congress, called the speech “unfortunate”.
The response from Democratic Senator George McGovern of South Dakota was downright harsh. Despite the fact that the two men had campaigned together in 1960, McGovern had emerged as a vocal critic of Jackson’s policies within the Democratic Party. The freshman Senator had voted against Scoop’s request for higher defense appropriations, had voted against the Senate confirmation of Hyman Rickover as Chief of Naval Operations, and would publically challenge the decision to increase America’s military involvement in Vietnam. When McGovern heard the United Nations Speech, he became livid at what he considered to be an unforgivable slap in the face. Speaking out afterwards, McGovern declared that the speech had revealed Jackson’s “shocking lack of knowledge of the world in which we live and of the structure of the United Nations.”
It was strong stuff; after all, openly calling the President of the United States “stupid” wasn’t something to be taken lightly. From then on, McGovern was one of the few people the usually friendly Jackson truly hated and the two men became bitter political and personal enemies. Even Democratic Senate Majority Leader Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, a close friend of Jackson’s, thought the speech was “a great mistake” and “very odd”.
Despite the attacks he was getting, Jackson didn’t back away from what he had said. He weathered the storm of controversy, firmly believing he had been right to criticize the role of the United Nations in American foreign policy. Jackson’s speech reflected his deep convictions about the primacy of alliances and the danger of reorienting US foreign policy in the direction of the United Nations – where countries hostile to America were given equal status and a free platform from which to bash the USA. A young White House aide named Daniel Patrick Moynihan remembered how impressed he was by the President’s performance:
“He was as solid as a rock and you know, he was right. Absolutely right. The UN wasn’t really all that helpful. It was just a place where the Soviets and the Chinese could go to undermine our values and our interests. I thought it was one of the best speeches he ever made, if not the best.”
The day after the speech, House conservatives from both political parties moved to scuttle the bonds debate. With the President having articulated his position on the UN, conservatives felt encouraged not to spend any more time talking about giving taxpayer money to an organization they weren’t crazy about either. “Why should we give our money,” asked a first-term Republican Representative from Kansas named Bob Dole, “To an organization that treats us like we’re the enemy?”
(George McGovern, circa 1961)
The House of Representatives, controlling the power of the purse strings, declined to buy the bonds in the end. Although it wasn’t a blow to the United Nations in the long run, the international organization was put on notice about where they fit into Jackson’s foreign policy. Pro-UN liberals blamed Jackson for the failure of the United States to fulfill what they considered to be her obligation to financially support the United Nations. The United Nations Speech itself became a turning point in Jackson’s Presidency. Although Scoop was no stranger to criticism from the Far Left fringe over his being a Cold Warrior, that criticism began to move into mainstream liberalism after March 20th, 1962. For the rest of his Presidency, Scoop Jackson – a liberal in the New Deal tradition who still worshipped Franklin D. Roosevelt – found himself being increasingly attacked by McGovern and other liberals for refusing to appease the Soviets and the Chinese in the name of easing Cold War tensions. Jackson found their idea of seeking rapprochement dangerous because it meant relying on the good will of aggressive dictatorial regimes. “We have been down this road before,” Scoop would remind people, “With Munich [in 1938]. People thought that if they gave Hitler what he wanted [the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia that was occupied mainly by German-speaking people] and he promised not to make any more demands, then they could continue to enjoy having peace. They thought Hitler’s word would be enough – that they wouldn’t need to stand up to him. Of course, all they managed to accomplish at Munich was to hasten the coming of war. They confirmed for Hitler that they were weak and that he had nothing to fear from them. It is a foolish thing to give an aggressor what they want and expect them to be quiet afterwards.”
Two months after the United Nations Speech, as if to provide more fuel for the fire, “The Guns of August” appeared in bookstores across the country. Written by Barbara Tuchman, the one-volume history book explored the first month of World War One. It took readers into the decision-making process that transformed the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary by a Serbian nationalist in June 1914 into a war that consumed all of Europe and beyond. Tuchman then greatly detailed the first month of fighting, culminating in the September 1914 First Battle of the Marne which halted the German advance towards Paris and set the stage for four years of brutal trench warfare. With the outbreak of World War One approaching its’ fiftieth anniversary, “The Guns of August” became very popular with readers wanting to know more about The Great War. It spent forty-two consecutive weeks on The New York Times Best Seller List and won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1963.
One person who wasn’t a fan of the book was the President. Jackson had been a two-year-old boy when World War One erupted. After being sent a copy by the well-read Democratic National Committee Chairman John F. Kennedy, Scoop read “The Guns of August” and wasn’t impressed by it like JFK was. He disagreed with Tuchman’s central tenet that war broke out in the summer of 1914 not because of German ambitions to acquire greater influence in Europe but because nations had misinterpreted the intentions of others. Because these nations misread each other, they escalated the situation into an all-out war which destroyed those same nations and sowed the seeds for World War Two. According to Jackson, that view of why Europe went to war was WRONG!!! There was no misinterpretation about anything! Germany wanted greater power for herself and she used the assassination as an excuse to launch a war that would achieve that power. So in disagreeing with the book, Jackson was also disagreeing with those using “The Guns of August” as an analogy for understanding the Cold War. Liberals were making the argument that the United States was locked into the Cold War with the Soviet Union and China because each side was misinterpreting the other. If the United States would just sit down and work things out with the Soviet Union and China, then the risk of war by miscalculation would be reduced. Once again, Scoop viewed that reasoning as WRONG!!! The reason the United States was locked into the Cold War with the Soviet Union and China was because the Soviets and the Chinese wanted greater power for themselves. Only by meeting their ambitions with American power could the Cold War be prevented from turning hot. The Soviets and the Chinese would be less likely to provoke the Americans if they felt that it was too risky. Like the UN Speech, the sharp disagreement over “The Guns of August” itself and its implications for America’s present foreign policy became another example of the widening gap between Jackson and liberals over how to deal with the Cold War. By 1964, his differences with McGovern in particular would be irreconcilable.
El Pip: Taylor really did recommend to JFK this plan to take the offensive with 40,000 troops. Kennedy rejected it because he was trying very hard not to commit substantial forces to Vietnam. JFK was never really comfortable with Vietnam and there's evidence to suggest that he was looking for a way out before his assassination.
Jackson, on the other hand, is way more hawkish that JFK was and is much more willing to give Taylor his backing. Thus the escalation decision LBJ historically made in 1965 happens three years earlier.
Kurt_Steiner: Houston to Kurt: we don't have a problem. You took the sentence out of context, that's all.
H.Appleby: I still don't understand the whole hashtag thing. Then again, never using Twitter might have something to do with that.
Kurt_Steiner: And now we have countries shutting down other countries' movie releases.
hmy:SotV: Reading that reminds me of something a President Reagan aide said when the State Department was trying to override one of Reagan's decisions:
"Wait a minute! No one elected the State Department to anything! Those guys have been screwing up for twenty-five years!"
H.Appleby: Now that I think about it, I've been talking about Vietnam since Dewey's tenure. That is long.
hmy:volksmarschall: As I read this, the Oliver Stone film "JFK" is playing in my head.
On a side note, I’m a little surprised no one – even volksmarschall – brought up the beginning of the update. Since I don’t know how far this AAR will go, every once in a while I like to give hints about the future. In this case, I wanted to reveal that George Bush will be President of the United States in 1987 instead of Ronald Reagan (I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do with Reagan). Bush is one of my favorite Presidents and he’s definitely someone I want to put in the White House. I picked 1987 because it can either be his first term or second term, depending on whether I elect him in 1980 or 1984. I’m determined to make Bush a two-termer TTL, so he’ll either serve 1981-1989 or 1985-1993.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The United Nations Speech
By mid-March 1962, the Jackson Administration had its' hands full. The crisis in South Vietnam seemed to be getting worse with each passing day. Not helping matters any, clean-up was underway from North Carolina to Maine following a devastating and lingering nor’easter which had pummeled the East Coast with heavy flooding and strong winds. Busy as he was, the President chose this particular moment to pick a fight over an issue he felt strongly about. On March 20th, Scoop was scheduled to deliver a speech at the National Press Club in Washington. Founded in March 1908 by thirty-two newspapermen, every President since Theodore Roosevelt had visited the club for journalists. Jackson had been invited by the group to speak on any issue that he chose. In a surprise move, he decided to make the United Nations the subject of his speech. At the time, Congress was debating whether to approve the purchasing of bonds to help finance operations at the UN. It was a routine spending matter that not many people were paying much attention to. That would change however after Jackson mounted the podium at the National Press Club and gave what would be one of the defining speeches of his Presidency.
Once a supporter of the postwar international organization, Jackson had soured on the UN by the time he became President. Originally intended to be a forum in which countries could come to solve their problems peacefully, the UN had become polarized by the Cold War. The United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies were using the organization to trade verbal attacks and accusations. There seemed to be more talking than actual action at UN Headquarters in New York City. The United States Ambassador there, Dorothy Fosdick (the first woman to hold that post), was complaining that she was spending more time defending America from international attacks than she was exerting America’s leadership on the world stage. Believing the UN to be practically useless foreign policy-wise, Jackson had come to the conclusion that the strength and unity of the Atlantic community and NATO were far more important to America’s position in the world. He therefore pursued a foreign policy that put a greater emphasis on maintaining close relationships with individual allies like Canada and the United Kingdom at the expense of the collective global pool known as the United Nations. The problem was that not everyone shared his point of view. There were voices in America that were not only urging stronger cooperation with the UN at the expense of US interests but were actually advocating reforming foreign policy so it would be more aligned with UN interests. In other words, according to Jackson biographer Robert G. Kaufman, they wanted “the United Nations to impinge on the roles of the President and the Secretary of State” in crafting how the United States handled her foreign affairs. This was wholly unacceptable to Jackson, who took advantage of his platform at the National Press Club to attack what he considered to be the wrong course of action to pursue. He would pull no punches.
What the audience heard was the strongest criticism ever leveled at the UN and its’ supporters by a President. Throughout the speech, Jackson warned against putting the UN in charge of formulating America’s foreign policy:
“The United Nations was never intended to be a substitute for our own leaders as the makers and movers of American foreign policy.”
Nor should “our UN delegation in New York become forced to answer to a second foreign affairs office.”
Doing so would cause the United States to weaken its allies “in deference to what is represented in New York as a world opinion.”
Although he emphasized that the United Nations “should continue to be an important avenue of American foreign policy,” Jackson also said that “the involvement of the United Nations has at times hampered the wise definition of our national interest and the development of sound policies for their advancement.”
He advised against holding an exaggerated view of the UN’s role, warning that it could “imperil the ability of the United States in containing the Soviet Union and China, which are the paramount threats to our national interests.”
“The Soviet Union and China,” he went on to say, “Are not and will not be peace-loving nations. The leaders of both nations have threatened to ‘bury’ us. In their more agreeable moments, the Russians and the Chinese promise to bury us nicely; but whatever their mood, the Earth will still be six feet deep above us. We must realize that the Soviet Union and China see the UN not as a forum of cooperation but as one more arena of struggle.”
He concluded:
“The hope for peace with justice does not lie with the United Nations. Indeed the truth is almost exactly the reverse. The best hope for the United Nations lies in the maintenance of peace. Peace depends on the power and unity of the Atlantic community and the skill of our direct diplomacy.”
The astounding speech made headlines around the world. Here was the President of the United States, the leader of the Free World, being openly critical of the United Nations and urging public opinion to be more educated about “the direction of a more realistic appreciation of the United Nation’s limitations, more modest hopes for its accomplishments, and a more mature sense of the burdens of responsible leadership.”
The United Nations Speech as it would become known elicited strong reactions both at home and abroad. Abroad, the Soviets and the Chinese quickly attacked Jackson for making remarks that they considered to be reckless and bellicose. Even the United Kingdom, normally a close ally of the United States, disagreed with it. Prime Minister Rab Butler found the speech too strong and thought Jackson had been rash in his denouncement of the United Nations. The Prime Minister, being much more experienced in dealing with the world, felt that the President had made a terrible mistake in throwing the UN under the bus. “I understand he’s frustrated,” Butler said in private, “But there’s a right way and a wrong way to deal with frustration. He chose the wrong way.”
Taking a more moderate position, Butler publically re-affirmed his country’s “fullest confidence” in the international organization and expressed his hope that whatever problems that existed there could be resolved peacefully and with a cool head. At home, the reaction to the controversial speech split largely along ideological lines. At home, the reaction to the controversial speech split largely along ideological lines. Scoop received the majority of his praise from conservatives and the majority of his criticisms from liberals. Democratic Senator Richard Russell of Georgia sent Jackson a message telling him that “no finer, saner, or more historic speech on international relations has been made during my time here in Washington. It is refreshing to see someone admit that this country has rights that should be asserted out loud.”
Republican Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, whom Jackson could depend on to support him when it came to national defense and foreign policy issues, put in his two cents:
“The theory that the UN has preserved the peace is preposterous. We must not allow it to dictate our foreign policy.”
Secretary of Labor Ronald Reagan, who represented Conservative Democrats in the Administration, not only loved the speech but even urged Scoop to go one step further and “get us the hell out of that kangaroo court and let it sink. That would send a message to those bums.”
Liberals, who were far more supportive of the UN than their right-wing counterparts, uniformly hated the speech and attacked the President for suggesting that the United States should disregard the United Nations when it comes to policy-making. Republican Senator Jacob Javits of New York, one of the most liberal Republicans in Congress, called the speech “unfortunate”.
The response from Democratic Senator George McGovern of South Dakota was downright harsh. Despite the fact that the two men had campaigned together in 1960, McGovern had emerged as a vocal critic of Jackson’s policies within the Democratic Party. The freshman Senator had voted against Scoop’s request for higher defense appropriations, had voted against the Senate confirmation of Hyman Rickover as Chief of Naval Operations, and would publically challenge the decision to increase America’s military involvement in Vietnam. When McGovern heard the United Nations Speech, he became livid at what he considered to be an unforgivable slap in the face. Speaking out afterwards, McGovern declared that the speech had revealed Jackson’s “shocking lack of knowledge of the world in which we live and of the structure of the United Nations.”
It was strong stuff; after all, openly calling the President of the United States “stupid” wasn’t something to be taken lightly. From then on, McGovern was one of the few people the usually friendly Jackson truly hated and the two men became bitter political and personal enemies. Even Democratic Senate Majority Leader Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, a close friend of Jackson’s, thought the speech was “a great mistake” and “very odd”.
Despite the attacks he was getting, Jackson didn’t back away from what he had said. He weathered the storm of controversy, firmly believing he had been right to criticize the role of the United Nations in American foreign policy. Jackson’s speech reflected his deep convictions about the primacy of alliances and the danger of reorienting US foreign policy in the direction of the United Nations – where countries hostile to America were given equal status and a free platform from which to bash the USA. A young White House aide named Daniel Patrick Moynihan remembered how impressed he was by the President’s performance:
“He was as solid as a rock and you know, he was right. Absolutely right. The UN wasn’t really all that helpful. It was just a place where the Soviets and the Chinese could go to undermine our values and our interests. I thought it was one of the best speeches he ever made, if not the best.”
The day after the speech, House conservatives from both political parties moved to scuttle the bonds debate. With the President having articulated his position on the UN, conservatives felt encouraged not to spend any more time talking about giving taxpayer money to an organization they weren’t crazy about either. “Why should we give our money,” asked a first-term Republican Representative from Kansas named Bob Dole, “To an organization that treats us like we’re the enemy?”
(George McGovern, circa 1961)
The House of Representatives, controlling the power of the purse strings, declined to buy the bonds in the end. Although it wasn’t a blow to the United Nations in the long run, the international organization was put on notice about where they fit into Jackson’s foreign policy. Pro-UN liberals blamed Jackson for the failure of the United States to fulfill what they considered to be her obligation to financially support the United Nations. The United Nations Speech itself became a turning point in Jackson’s Presidency. Although Scoop was no stranger to criticism from the Far Left fringe over his being a Cold Warrior, that criticism began to move into mainstream liberalism after March 20th, 1962. For the rest of his Presidency, Scoop Jackson – a liberal in the New Deal tradition who still worshipped Franklin D. Roosevelt – found himself being increasingly attacked by McGovern and other liberals for refusing to appease the Soviets and the Chinese in the name of easing Cold War tensions. Jackson found their idea of seeking rapprochement dangerous because it meant relying on the good will of aggressive dictatorial regimes. “We have been down this road before,” Scoop would remind people, “With Munich [in 1938]. People thought that if they gave Hitler what he wanted [the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia that was occupied mainly by German-speaking people] and he promised not to make any more demands, then they could continue to enjoy having peace. They thought Hitler’s word would be enough – that they wouldn’t need to stand up to him. Of course, all they managed to accomplish at Munich was to hasten the coming of war. They confirmed for Hitler that they were weak and that he had nothing to fear from them. It is a foolish thing to give an aggressor what they want and expect them to be quiet afterwards.”
Two months after the United Nations Speech, as if to provide more fuel for the fire, “The Guns of August” appeared in bookstores across the country. Written by Barbara Tuchman, the one-volume history book explored the first month of World War One. It took readers into the decision-making process that transformed the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary by a Serbian nationalist in June 1914 into a war that consumed all of Europe and beyond. Tuchman then greatly detailed the first month of fighting, culminating in the September 1914 First Battle of the Marne which halted the German advance towards Paris and set the stage for four years of brutal trench warfare. With the outbreak of World War One approaching its’ fiftieth anniversary, “The Guns of August” became very popular with readers wanting to know more about The Great War. It spent forty-two consecutive weeks on The New York Times Best Seller List and won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1963.
One person who wasn’t a fan of the book was the President. Jackson had been a two-year-old boy when World War One erupted. After being sent a copy by the well-read Democratic National Committee Chairman John F. Kennedy, Scoop read “The Guns of August” and wasn’t impressed by it like JFK was. He disagreed with Tuchman’s central tenet that war broke out in the summer of 1914 not because of German ambitions to acquire greater influence in Europe but because nations had misinterpreted the intentions of others. Because these nations misread each other, they escalated the situation into an all-out war which destroyed those same nations and sowed the seeds for World War Two. According to Jackson, that view of why Europe went to war was WRONG!!! There was no misinterpretation about anything! Germany wanted greater power for herself and she used the assassination as an excuse to launch a war that would achieve that power. So in disagreeing with the book, Jackson was also disagreeing with those using “The Guns of August” as an analogy for understanding the Cold War. Liberals were making the argument that the United States was locked into the Cold War with the Soviet Union and China because each side was misinterpreting the other. If the United States would just sit down and work things out with the Soviet Union and China, then the risk of war by miscalculation would be reduced. Once again, Scoop viewed that reasoning as WRONG!!! The reason the United States was locked into the Cold War with the Soviet Union and China was because the Soviets and the Chinese wanted greater power for themselves. Only by meeting their ambitions with American power could the Cold War be prevented from turning hot. The Soviets and the Chinese would be less likely to provoke the Americans if they felt that it was too risky. Like the UN Speech, the sharp disagreement over “The Guns of August” itself and its implications for America’s present foreign policy became another example of the widening gap between Jackson and liberals over how to deal with the Cold War. By 1964, his differences with McGovern in particular would be irreconcilable.
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Even if Tuchman's books is not one of my favourite books about the Great War, I must said that Scoop got it WRONG here. At least about what WW1 refers.
I gues that Scoop is going to find himself in deep trouble soon...
I gues that Scoop is going to find himself in deep trouble soon...
Oh George, George, George McGovern. His historic ascendancy into the Democratic nomination is what killed, perhaps with the brief interlude of Jimmy Carter, the liberal-populism that the Democratic Party was founded on and the birth of the liberal gentry in Jefferson's party. For this, he is an evil, evil man!
