[...]... several continents and several wars: officer of the 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions during World War II; superintendent of West Point; military governor of Berlin; commander of ground forces in Japan and Korea; Army chief of staff; chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) Taylor did not, however, lack preparation for his new assignment in South Vietnam Although a professional Army officer, he occupied... East Asia In the late 1930s, Taylor served as a military attach^ in Tokyo and Peking, acquiring knowledge of Asian languages and cultures He returned to the Far East at the end of the Korean War, commanding the Eighth Army in the months before the armistice During this time, Taylor followed the Korean negotiations closely, broadening his understanding of the intimate link between force and diplomacy... reaction only clouded their attention to basic assumptions and ultimate costs as the war rapidly spun out of control in the spring and summer of 1965 In their desperation to make Vietnam policy work amid this rising tide of war pressures, they thus failed ever to question whether it could work—or at what ultimate price Their failure recalls the warning of a prescient political scientist, who years before... Westmoreland commanded an infantry battalion through the North Africa, Sicily, and Normandy campaigns Following the war, Westmoreland became a paratrooper, leading an airborne combat team in Korea In addition to the time-honored virtue of battlefield courage, Westmoreland also demonstrated talent in the contemporary art of administration, To the Crossroads in Vietnam 17 highly valued in the postwar Army... preserve a non-communist southern Vietnam The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) Pact, signed at Manila in September 1954, marked an important step in this direction A protocol to the SEATO treaty pledged Washington to the defense of southern Vietnam, thus deepening America's commitment to the regime.6 6 Into the Quagmire As Eisenhower broadened U.S support of southern Vietnam, its new leader,... none of our business what happened in Europe or the world, and thus France was sacrificed to Fascist ambitions, and England's destiny was fought out in the skies over London." But America had learned its lesson; today, "[wjhenever security of this country is involved, we are willing to draw the quarantine line and we would rather have it on the shores of the Mediterranean than on the shores of the Chesapeake... carried the lessons of China and Korea into his years as Secretary of State and applied them to Vietnam 12 Into the Quagmire Rusk's colleague, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, maintained the respect and confidence Johnson had accorded him as Vice President At Kennedy's first Cabinet meeting in 1961, it was "the fellow from Ford [Motor Company] with Stacomb on his hair" who had impressed LBJ most Johnson. .. upheaval sparked by the civil rights movement It is difficult to overstate the impact of this upheaval on American politics in the mid-1960s During 1964-1965, the United States—particularly the American Southexperienced profound and long overdue change in the economic, political, and social rights of blacks This change, consciously embraced by the liberal administration of Lyndon Johnson, engendered... noncommunist Vietnam. 4 The transition from French to American involvement in Vietnam followed the 1954 Geneva Conference That July, France and the Vietminh signed an armistice ending French colonialism in Southeast Asia and creating the separate states of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam Among their major provisions, the Geneva Agreements established a temporary partition of Vietnam at the seventeenth parallel,... stipulated the eventual reunification of Vietnam through countrywide elections scheduled for July 1956, for which the Vietminh, in return, agreed to regroup its forces above the seventeenth parallel, thus relinquishing control over much territory south of that line; prohibited the introduction of additional troops and military supplies into either northern or southern Vietnam, as well as the establishment of . class="bi x0 y0 w0 h0" alt="" INTO THE QUAGMIRE This page intentionally left blank INTO THE QUAGMIRE Lyndon Johnson and the Escalation of the Vietnam War Brian VanDeMark New York Oxford OXFORD. otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data VanDeMark, Brian Into the quagmire : Lyndon Johnson and the . following account casts added light on Lyndon Johnson and the escalation of the Vietnam War, while moving the reader to reflect further on this fateful chapter in modern American history. Although