architects of the military response, had lost faith
in the prospect of victory and on 1 March 1968
was replaced as secretary of defence by Clark
Clifford. The president could see no alternative.
The issue: should another 206,000 troops be
sent to Vietnam, bringing numbers there to
almost three-quarters of a million? Clifford and
the president’s advisers rejected the increase. The
only hope now was that a continued war of attri-
tion would break North Vietnam’s will before
American public opinion, shaken by the Tet casu-
alties and the diminishing hopes for success,
demanded withdrawal.
Demonstrations against the war grew apace
in 1965. The young of the more privileged and
better-educated social groups of the 1960s felt a
new sense of liberation, a fresh vitality demanding
that they challenge the assumptions of their
elders. Protests and demonstrations erupted. In
April 1965, 25,000 marched to the White House.
In October a National Committee to end the war
in Vietnam was formed. Early in the following year
the highly respected Senator J. William Fulbright
began public hearings to find out whether any
national interest was served by the war. The con-
trast with public attitudes to the defeat of Japan
and Germany in the Second World War or even to
the Korean War could not have been greater.
America was deeply split. Johnson still enjoyed the
support of the majority, but a powerful opposition
was forming. The most affected were the young
men called up to register for the draft with the
possibility of being sent to Vietnam. Before the
war ended for American servicemen in 1974,
110,000 had burnt their draftcards and 40,000
young men had evaded call-up by leaving for
neighbouring Canada and for Europe.
It was clear to Johnson by the spring of 1968
that the Americanisation of the war, the sending
of more than half a million combat troops to
Vietnam, had become insupportable. His political
position at home had been severely eroded by the
war. He was challenged by a ‘peace candidate’,
Senator Eugene McCarthy, and also by Robert
Kennedy, both seeking the Democratic nomina-
tion to run for the presidency in November that
year. On 31 March 1968 Johnson announced his
decision not to seek re-election; he also indicated
that there would be a measure of disengagement
from the war, reflecting the new consensus
among his advisers, including former hawks.
That same March, Johnson announced a
partial bombing halt and invited the North
Vietnamese to begin peace talks. The response
from Hanoi early in April was surprisingly posi-
tive. But hopes of an early peace quickly faded as
the almost interminable negotiations in Paris fol-
lowed a tortuous path from their commencement
in May 1968 to their conclusion almost five years
later in January 1973. Nevertheless March 1968
marks the time when the US took the first step
to disengage from Vietnam. It was left to
Kissinger and Nixon to complete the process, to
try somehow to save South Vietnam and bring
the war to an ‘honourable’ end.
The presidential election of 1968 was overshad-
owed by tragedy. In the run-up on 5 June, while
celebrating his victory in the Californian primary,
the almost certain Democratic contender Robert
Kennedy was assassinated in full view of the televi-
sion cameras. Personalities do matter in history.
With Eugene McCarthy now eliminated, the
choice for Democratic candidate fell on an old lib-
eral, the vice-president Hubert Humphrey, whose
association with Johnson’s Vietnam policies had
discredited him among many liberal supporters. In
Chicago there were large demonstrations against
his candidature, brutally dispersed by police. All
this boded ill for Democratic prospects in
November. The durable Republican candidate
Richard Nixon won by a large majority of states;
though the popular vote was only narrowly in his
favour, 31.7 million to 31.2 million. What if
Robert Kennedy had been the candidate instead?
Nixon might well have lost to a Democratic candi-
date with the glamour of the Kennedy name.
The 1970s proved for many Americans a trou-
bled decade at home and a humiliating decade in
the wider world. Johnson’s dream of a new society
and American leadership of the free world had
been damaged by the experience of the Vietnam
War, which overshadowed the administration’s
achievements. What had led the American people
and their leaders into an enterprise that turned out
to be tragic for both Indo-China and the US?
1
THE LIMITS OF POWER 585