Analysis: Meeting Between the President and His Advisors

Date: July 21, 1965

Author: Lyndon Baines Johnson; Robert McNamara; George Ball; Dean Rusk; various others

Genre: discussion; transcript

Summary Overview

Of all the discussion around America's role in the escalating conflict in Vietnam, perhaps none was more crucial to the issue of war and peace than the meeting President Lyndon Baines Johnson held with his advisors in the summer of 1965. The culmination of months, if not years, of debate and hand-wringing, this single, fateful meeting was the final confirmation of full-scale military intervention. Caught between two camps—the doves, represented by Undersecretary of State George Ball, and the hawks, represented by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara—Johnson, facing the real prospect of abandoning his ambitious domestic agenda, had to decide to either withdraw from Southeast Asia and risk the loss of American prestige, or commit to war and risk a prolonged and bloody quagmire. The arguments laid out in the meeting document the false assumptions and tragic misconceptions held by American war planners harking back to the Eisenhower administration. These arguments also provide a prescient warning as to what lay ahead.

Defining Moment

The United States first became interested in the small Southeast Asian country of Vietnam, after the defeat and ousting of French colonial forces in the years following World War II. Fearful of the growing power of North Vietnamese communists, American administrations, beginning with Truman and continuing under Eisenhower and Kennedy, had made commitments to keep South Vietnam free. In the case of South Vietnam, “free” was a relative term, as one despotic regime after another ruled over the country with an iron fist. As the population of the south became increasingly sympathetic to the north, tensions turned into open conflict, until they finally boiled over in the early 1960s. By 1965, it was clear that the government of South Vietnam was barely able to stand on its own, and it fell to Lyndon Baines Johnson to make a seismic decision: to either abandon South Vietnam to communist forces, or commit American military forces to a potentially long and costly war.

Representing the two sides of the debate were Undersecretary of State George Ball and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Ball, a life-long diplomat, had been arguing against intervention in Vietnam since the moment John F. Kennedy sent the first 16,000 military “advisors” into the country, famously, and prophetically, warning the president that if the United States were to begin sending troops into Vietnam it would only be a matter of time before the number would top 300,000. Under Johnson, Ball continued to lobby against American involvement, outlining his dire and, in hindsight, accurate warnings of disaster, culminating in a memo he sent to Johnson in February 1965. McNamara—previously one of Ford Motor Company's ten “Whiz Kids” and the corporation's youngest president—was resolutely in favor of American military intervention in Vietnam. A champion of using statistical analysis to make warfare more efficient and considered to be the chief architect of the Vietnam War, McNamara pushed for full-scale commitment, arguing that the conflict in Southeast Asia was crucial to America's long term international security interests. In fact, McNamara was so hawkish that he occasionally withheld crucial information from President Johnson, as he did in the Gulf of Tonkin Incident of August 1964, which led directly to both American military attacks against North Vietnamese forces and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which effectively gave Johnson Congressional approval to launch a war in Vietnam.

The debate between Ball and McNamara came to a head in the summer of 1965, when Johnson— struggling to pass key provisions of his Great Society domestic agenda through Congress and facing an ever more tenuous situation in Vietnam—had to decide between full military commitment and complete withdraw.

Author Biography

George W. Ball was born in Iowa in 1909. Having grown up just north of Chicago, he received a law degree from Northwestern University and eventually became an aide to Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic presidential candidate in 1952 and 1956. After serving in an administrative role during World War II, helping to manage Roosevelt's Lend Lease program, he joined the State Department, where he served as undersecretary for economic and agricultural affairs under both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. In 1968, he briefly served as American ambassador to the United Nations. He died in 1994.

Robert S. McNamara was born in California in 1916. After attending the University of California at Berkeley, he went on to get an MBA from Harvard Business School. During World War II, he worked under Major General Curtis LeMay in the Office of Statistical Control, analyzing the effectiveness of Allied bombing on enemy cities. After the war, McNamara joined the Ford Motor Company, eventually rising to become the youngest CEO in the company's history, and, in 1960, was made secretary of defense, first under Kennedy and then under Johnson. Considered the architect of the Vietnam War, McNamara eventually resigned his post as the war soon proved unwinnable. In 1968, he was appointed to the World Bank, where he served as president until 1981. He died in 2009.

Document Analysis

The transcript outlines the debate between George Ball and Robert McNamara on the subject of American intervention in Vietnam. As Lyndon Johnson agonizes over what to do and questions his advisors, he focuses on the memorandum written by McNamara, which pushes for full military commitment. In this way, the various arguments—military, political, and diplomatic—are laid out. What is clear is that George Ball is in the minority. Frustrated, although still passionate, Ball is asked—and once again restates—his case against escalation. Ball makes clear that he would support whatever course Johnson decides on, but states unequivocally that, although pulling out of Vietnam would be fraught with problems, increasing troop levels and committing to the long course of war would be disastrous.

The hawks, such as McNamara and Wheeler, counter that greater troop numbers might actually mean fewer losses. The strategy is to overwhelm the enemy with greater numbers, allowing the South Vietnamese to take the lead. Ball argues that the war would be long and states simply that the United States cannot win a long war. As casualties mount, support for the war would decrease. Eventually, world opinion would turn against the United States, and the Viet Cong, fighting in their home territory, would prevail. A vital factor, as the war drags on, Ball argues, is the loss of regional allies, but even more damaging would be the change in perception of America as a superpower. How would the United States be perceived around the globe, by foe and friend alike, if it was unable to defeat a guerrilla force?

Unfortunately for Ball, and for the country overall, the other men at the meeting, Rusk, Wheeler, Bundy, and Lodge all disparage Ball's warnings. In their view, the United States is already at war in Vietnam. To leave now would be disastrous for both countries, if not the world. That's neither here nor there because how could a small force hiding in the jungle ever defeat the military might of the United States? Besides, as Henry Cabot Lodge, ambassador to Vietnam, says: it is unlikely American troops would ever have to fight in the jungle at all.

Bibliography and Additional Reading

Herring, George. America's Longest War. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996. Print.

McNamara, Robert & Brian VanDeMark. In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. New York: Random House, 1995. Print.

VanDeMark, Brian. Into the Quagmire: Lyndon Johnson and the Escalation of the Vietnam War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Print.