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  • 3 - The US Congress and the Vietnam War

  • from Part I - The Late Vietnam War
  • General editor Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Columbia University, New York
  • Edited by Pierre Asselin, San Diego State University
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Vietnam War
    Published online:
    02 January 2025
    Print publication:
    28 November 2024, pp 72-95

  • Summary

    Superficially, the Vietnam War might seem a high point of congressional resistance to the Cold War consensus. After all, two consecutive presidents, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, faced ferocious criticism as they expanded the US military commitment in Southeast Asia. Yet for most of the Johnson and Nixon years, Congress was mostly reacting to executive decisions, and struggled to stop either the escalation of the war under Johnson or its expansion under Nixon. Ironically, perhaps the best chance for Congress to influence Vietnam policy came before a significant commitment of US combat forces, during the Kennedy administration. Yet for a combination of ideological and tactical reasons, members of both the House and the Senate who might have been inclined to challenge the administration’s approach to Vietnam declined to do so in a meaningful way.