University of Virginia Library

Kennedy Did Not Subscribe

Neither did President
Kennedy subscribe to the
self-determination myth. He
perceived something of the
complexity of the situation; a
strain of ambivalence runs
through most of his comments
on the war. In the end,
however, he accepted and
acted on the
Truman-Eisenhower notion
that the domino theory made
South Vietnam vital to
American interests. He was also
influenced by the circumstance
that "the best and the
brightest" of his advisers, to
use David Halberstam's apt
phrase, remained wedded to a
monolithic conception of
communism for some time
after the Soviet-Sino split was
obvious and for more than a
decade after the
Soviet-Yugoslav split was a
demonstrable fact. Saddest of
all, Kennedy was animated by
fear – fear that the loss of
Indochina, following the Bay
of Pigs fiasco and his personal
humiliation by Khrushchev at
Vienna, would destroy his
capacity to govern by inducing
a McCarthy-like "soft on
communism" reaction. As he
said in acquiescing in the
interventionist
recommendations of the
war hawks, Walt Rostow and
Gen. Maxwell Taylor,
Eisenhower was able to put the
blame on the French, but "I
can't take a 1954 defeat
today."