Edmund Gullion, JFK and the Shaping of a Foreign Policy in Vietnam

[James DiEugenio]

To show why people like Mr. Hagger are so misguided about the difference between JFK and LBJ  on Vietnam, please note this new article up at Kennedys and King.  It proves once again that Kennedy's idea about the use of American force in the Third World were molded before he got to the White House. And that is why he decided Vietnam was a hopeless cause and we were leaving.

 

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/edmund-gullion-jfk-and-the-shaping-of-a-foreign-policy-in-vietnam

[Michael Clark]

Edmund Gullion, JFK, and the Shaping of a Foreign Policy in Vietnam

James Norwood

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In the 1951 photograph above, President Charles de Gaulle is leading a contingent through the streets of Saigon at a time when France was engaged in a losing cause during the First Indochina War. In the back of the pack, a young congressman from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy, is observing the conditions on the ground in a war effort that was at the time receiving substantial American aid. Kennedy’s younger brother Robert accompanied him on the trip. RFK later ran on an anti-war platform at the height of the Vietnam War, shortly before his assassination in 1968. This study explores the impact of the 1951 trip to Vietnam on John F. Kennedy, his association with the diplomat Edmund Gullion, and the evolving vision of JFK for American foreign policy in Vietnam, which was articulated in a major address given in 1954.

 

As a congressman from Massachusetts, Kennedy embarked on a seven-week, 25,000-mile trip in 1951. Accompanied by his brother Robert and his sister Patricia, Kennedy visited Israel, Pakistan, Iran, India, Singapore, Thailand, French Indochina (Vietnam), Korea, and Japan

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In March of 1952, Kennedy spoke to an audience in Everett, Massachusetts, voicing his opposition to sending American troops to assist the French in Indochina. In April, he addressed a Knights of Columbus chapter in nearby Lynn, stating that “we should not commit our ground troops to fight in French Indochina.”

After Dien Pien Phu...

The Geneva agreement stipulated that in the nation’s transition to independence, there would be a temporary partition of the country pending a national election to be held in the summer of 1956.

But the United States never signed the Geneva agreements, and almost immediately, the CIA aggressively began to transform Vietnam with the same zeal that had just effected regime changes in Iran and Guatemala.

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In 1954...

On the floor of the Senate, Kennedy prefaced his chronological survey by demanding the government’s accountability to the American people for adventurism and potential war in Vietnam:

"If the American people are, for the fourth time in this century, to travel the long and tortuous road of war—particularly a war which we now realize would threaten the survival of civilization—then I believe we have a right—a right which we should have hitherto exercised—to inquire in detail into the nature of the struggle in which we may become engaged, and the alternative to such struggle. Without such clarification the general support and success of our policy is endangered."

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"I am frankly of the belief that no amount of American military assistance in Indochina can conquer an enemy which is everywhere and at the same time nowhere, “an enemy of the people” which has the sympathy and covert support of the people"

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JFK’s tour-de-force Senate address of 1954 was not political grandstanding. Rather, it was a carefully formulated examination of the question of American intervention in Vietnam at a pivotal moment for both nations.

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During the 1960 presidential campaign, Kennedy stressed that we would never succeed in Laos against “guerrilla forces or in peripheral wars … We have been driving ourselves into a corner where the choice is all or nothing.”

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As a senator, Kennedy had recognized that “public thinking is still being bullied by slogans which are either false in context or irrelevant to the new phase of competitive coexistence in which we live.”

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The history of the Vietnam War is invariably delineated by historians as a continuum of escalating involvement from the administrations of Eisenhower to Kennedy to Johnson to Nixon in the form of an incremental progression.33 This essay challenges that notion as apparent in the vision of John F. Kennedy, one that vehemently opposed conventional warfare in Vietnam

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 12, 2018 by Michael Clark

[James DiEugenio]

Geez, thanks Michael.

I guess you liked the article.

It is pretty important.  As much as I like Newman's groundbreaking book, JFK and Vietnam, I think he missed this part of the story.

Its hard to explain how Kennedy is the only one arguing against inserting combat troops into Indochina in November of 1961 if you do not know this back story.  Some of the arguments he made at that time are evident in the statements he made back then.  And recall, Nixon actually proposed inserting American combat troops at DIen Bien Phu.

Edited May 12, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[Michael Clark]

6 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Geez, thanks Michael.

I guess you liked the article.

It is pretty important.  As much as I like Newman's groundbreaking book, JFK and Vietnam, I think he missed this part of the story.

Its hard to explain how he is the only one arguing against inserting combat troops into Indochina in November of 1961 if you do not know this back story.  Some of the arguments he made at that time are evident in the statements he made back then.  And recall, Nixon actually proposed inserting American combat troops at DIen Bien Phu.

It is an excellent article. It's kind of painful to read. It highlights JFK's competence to lead us where we could have gone. It points out the reality of a possible French Connection, and reinforces and expands the length width and breadth of the Vietnam experience for the United States.

Edited May 12, 2018 by Michael Clark

[James DiEugenio]

I should add, that flash of insight by Gullion was kind of like a creek which later expanded into a steam and finally into a river.

Because as Norwood notes in the piece, the next stopping point was DIen Bien Phu, where Kennedy opposed Nixon and the Dulles brothers, and then the big bonfire occurred in 1957 with Kennedy's great Algeria speech in the senate.

And then, of course, Kennedy brought Gullion into the White House. 

This is such a key part of the story and I am glad other people are finally catching onto it.  

 

[James DiEugenio]

 

Here is a link to Norwood's interview on the most recent BOR with Len Osanic.

http://www.blackopradio.com/pod/black886b.mp3

Really interesting since he did a lot of reading over JFK's speeches at the time which are now available at the Kennedy Library.  He has some interesting quotes from Kennedy about Diem.

Kennedy's critics from the left like to use those against him.  But 1.) Diem was not his choice, and 2.) Norwood shows that Kennedy's support was not at all unqualified.

 

 

 

[Guest]

Edmund Gullion interview May 8 1990.

Edmund Gullion Correspondence.

Thanks to Malcolm Blunt, scanning  by me.

Edited February 27, 2020 by Bart Kamp

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks for this to you and Malcolm.

Important part of the story that was ignored for far too long. And these would be primary sources.

I reread the Norwood article, and it seems even better today.

[Larry Hancock]

Jim, on a side note, actually there were senior American military officers who also opposed sending in conventional forces.  One of them, a Major General, actually send Westmoreland a letter upon his appointment by Johnson, pointing out that conventional forces were not the solution and it would be insane to think about ground sweeps with large ground formations.  Unfortunately we know from Westmoreland's own writing that before he even got in country he had set his mind on large scale conventional warfare including saturation artillery - since that was what he knew. Even Johnson was shocked by the size of his first major troop request.

Lewis Sorley's book on Westmoreland is a must read in regard to Vietnam, so is Seth Jacobs Cold War Mandarin on Diem.