Let’s Learn about the Cold War: Part 21 – Lyndon B. Johnson

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Sean D. Smith
  • Minot Air Force Base Public Affairs
MINOT AIR FORCE BASE, N.D. --  Lyndon B. Johnson, often called LBJ, served as vice president to President John F. Kennedy. After Kennedy's assassination in 1963, Johnson assumed the presidency.

American participation in Vietnam escalated considerably under the Johnson administration. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed, which allowed the president to deploy the military to Southeast Asia without a declaration of war.

In 1963 there were 16,000 American advisors in and around Vietnam and Cambodia. By 1968 there were more than half a million troops, most of whom were active in combat roles. It was on Johnson's watch that the Vietnam War deteriorated, and the American anti-war protest culture developed.

While things weren't going well abroad, Johnson had some success at home with liberal domestic policy. He signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which made racial discrimination in voting illegal, and protected voting rights nationwide.

Johnson's efforts on immigration policy led to the removal of national origin quotas, and as he supported civil rights, he also backed public broadcasting and federal entitlements like Medicare. Johnson launched a "War on Poverty", which was relatively successful, though it coincided with a general upswing in the American economy. He called his broad program of domestic reform "The Great Society."

In addition to the war in Vietnam, Johnson was also in office for the Six Day War, in which Israel convincingly defeated Egypt. The Six Day War was only one moment in the broader Arab-Israeli conflict that had been going on for decades, and continues now - but there were serious naval tensions in 1967 as the United States and United Kingdom supported Israel while the Soviet Union supported Egypt and its allies.  

Johnson's popularity dropped steadily as the Vietnam War went on. Johnson resented the war and its effects on the country and his administration, but he was also resigned to it, saying, "I knew from the start that I was bound to be crucified either way I moved. If I left the woman I really loved, the Great Society, in order to get involved in that war on the other side of the world, then I would lose everything at home. All my programs. But if I left that war and let the Communists take over South Vietnam, then I would be seen as a coward and my nation would be seen as an appeaser and we would both find it impossible to accomplish anything for anybody anywhere on the entire globe."

There are indications that Johnson would have liked to take more decisive action in Vietnam, but he feared doing so would provoke the Chinese and the Soviets into invasions of their own. The diplomatically-inclined Nikita Krushchev was no longer leading the Soviet Union -- now it was Leonid Brezhnev, an aggressive neo-Stalinist, and the West had to tread lightly.

Next time: Brezhnev