A Cold War president caught between reform and war
In July 1968, he announced that the United States and the Soviet Union had agreed to begin talks on limiting strategic weapons.
Lyndon B. Johnson was a president whose congressional mastery joined an ambitious program of domestic reform to a strategy of Cold War containment. He expanded the Great Society through civil-rights and voting-rights laws, Medicare, education, and anti-poverty programs, while the escalation of the Vietnam War became the defining responsibility that overshadowed those achievements. He also pursued arms control within continued rivalry, using the 1967 Glassboro summit and the July 1968 agreement to begin strategic-arms discussions to open a path that later led to SALT. In his final year he combined peace efforts in Vietnam with arms-control diplomacy, but the agreements were completed by his successor.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1937–1949U.S. Representative from Texas's 10th district
- 1949–1951U.S. Senator from Texas
- 1951–1953Senate Democratic whip
- 1953–1955Senate Democratic leader
- 1955–1961Senate majority leader
- 1961–1963Vice President of the United States
- 1963–196936th President of the United States
Related historical events
- 1955–1975The Second Indochina WarUS presidentUsed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to escalate the bombing and troop deployment, and gave up re-election in 1968.
- 1969–1979Détente and the SALT Negotiationsinitiator of the SALT talksIn July 1968 he agreed to begin strategic arms limitation talks, which Nixon later inherited.
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the path to escalation
In early August 1964, two U.S. destroyers stationed in the Gulf of Tonkin radioed that they had been fired upon by North Vietnamese forces. In response to those reported incidents, Johnson asked Congress for authority to increase the U.S. military presence in Indochina, and on August 7, 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. The resolution authorized Johnson to take any measures he believed necessary to retaliate and to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in Southeast Asia, and it became the legal basis for the Johnson and Nixon administrations' conduct of the Vietnam War.
Uncertainty surrounded the reporting behind the resolution. The Navy had stationed the destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy in the gulf; an attack was reported on August 2 and a second on August 4, but doubts later emerged as to whether the attack against the Turner Joy had taken place. Immediately after the second report, Johnson asked Congress for permission to defend U.S. forces in Southeast Asia. The Senate passed the resolution with only two opposing votes and the House passed it unanimously. Congress supported it on the assumption that the president would return to seek its support before engaging in further escalation.
That assumption did not hold. The resolution quickly served as justification for escalation: acting on the belief that Hanoi would eventually weaken under stepped-up bombing, Johnson and his advisers ordered Operation Rolling Thunder, a bombing campaign against the North that began on February 13, 1965 and continued through the spring of 1967. Johnson also authorized the first of many deployments of regular ground combat troops. Although he wanted to keep discussions of Vietnam out of the 1964 election campaign, he felt forced to respond to what was presented as communist aggression.