Chapter 10 - Lyndon Johnson and the Shifting Global Order

Summary

President Lyndon B. Johnson’s historical legacy in foreign policy is most often associated with the disastrous American military intervention and escalation in Southeast Asia. While the passage of time has not diminished criticism of LBJ’s decision-making in Vietnam, scholars have come to recognize that his administration faced other, often complex international challenges. Some of these issues, like the emergence of a new set of European leaders pursing state interests that often clashed with Johnson’s grand strategic priorities, were of the traditional sort. Other global forces were novel and could not be understood only through a Cold War lens. These new challenges included tense dynamics within the Western alliance, the dilemmas of détente, the aftermath decolonization and the rise of new states, global public health, international monetary relations, and nuclear nonproliferation. This chapter explores how President Johnson navigated some of these complicated, cross-cutting international forces.