Analysis: Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield on US Policy in Southeast Asia

Date: December 18, 1962

Author: Michael J. Mansfield

Genre: report

Summary Overview

The United States had been assisting President Diem in South Vietnam ever since he came to power in 1955. This included military advisers since the late 1950s, as Diem sought to contain domestic rebels as well as others who were inspired and supported by North Vietnam. In December 1961, the United States' president, John F. Kennedy, authorized a rapid expansion in the number of advisers and in the amount of aid to Diem's regime. In the latter part of 1962, Kennedy asked Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield to travel to Vietnam and give a report on what he experienced. Since Mansfield had supported Kennedy's Vietnam policy in the past, Kennedy expected continued support. However, in his assessment of the situation, Mansfield was very negative. This was the first public criticism of American policy in Vietnam and the rest of Southeast Asia. Mansfield doubted that Diem would be able to implement the types of policies desired by the United States and needed by his country. Thus, in Mansfield's view, it was time to re-evaluate American policy in that region.

Defining Moment

New forces were at work within Vietnam by 1962. In South Vietnam, support for President Diem was decreasing rapidly. Having been elected president in 1955, albeit with many electoral irregularities, Diem initially enjoyed broad support. While that support had slowly diminished over the succeeding years, by 1960, it had plummeted. The Vietcong, formally organized in 1960, had not only become a solid fighting force, but the political wing of the organization began offering rural South Vietnamese alternative policies for those areas. As a result, the South Vietnamese government was constructing new “strategic hamlets” and moving the people from their homes into “modern” compounds. South Vietnam was doing this theoretically to offer better services to the people than had been the case in their old villages, but, in reality, South Vietnam was trying to move people away from the Vietcong and undercut rural support for that movement. All of this was happening while the Vietcong were gaining strength and partial control of many South Vietnamese rural areas.

1962 was also a pivotal year for American involvement in Vietnam. The number of military advisers had nearly tripled to more than 9,000. While not specifically executing combat missions, the US Air Force began dropping Agent Orange, a defoliant, on what were believed to be transportation corridors used by North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces. This was an attempt to make it easier for the South Vietnamese army to intercept supplies meant for communist forces or to attack them on what would be a more advantageous terrain. Millions of dollars a month were being given to the Diem government in South Vietnam to assist it militarily and to help it with needed civilian programs. The Americans also decided to bypass the South Vietnamese government by beginning to work directly with an ethnic minority in a key location, the Montagnards. President Kennedy wanted a person he could trust to review the situation and report on it. He choose his former Senate Democratic colleague and supporter, Majority Leader Mike Mansfield. With the American midterm elections completed, and the Democrats holding strong control of both houses, Mansfield was free to plainly express his view of the situation. All things considered, Mansfield's estimation was that American policy in South Vietnam was not working. In light of this, he raised the question as to whether the current American goal of using South Vietnam as a barrier to communist expansion should be kept or modified. If this was to be the location for the confrontation, one should examine the strengths and weaknesses of the current policies.

Author Biography

Michael Joseph Mansfield (1903–2001) was born in New York, but moved to Montana as a child. A naval veteran of World War I, he later served in the army and then in the marines. Mansfield's last posting was in East Asia, through which he developed a special interest in that region. He married Maureen Hayes in 1932, and she pushed him to continue his education. In just a few years, he went from a person without a high school diploma to one who had earned a master's degree. This enabled him to change occupations, from working in the copper mines to being a college professor. A member of the Democratic Party, he served in the House from 1943–53. Defeating a Republican incumbent in the 1952 election, he moved to the Senate, serving there until 1977. He was elected majority leader in 1961 and served there until his retirement, which made him the longest serving majority leader in history. In 1977, he was appointed ambassador to Japan and served there for the next ten years.

Document Analysis

Mike Mansfield had been a friend and legislative ally to President Kennedy, which is why Kennedy asked him to travel to South Vietnam and assess the situation. Thus, when Kennedy read Mansfield's report on his visit, it may have surprised him that it was not the affirmation that Kennedy had expected. Mansfield had the luxury of being independent of the executive branch, so that although he did have to be a little cautious in criticizing an American ally, he did not have to worry about keeping his job if he criticized the president's policy. His negative view of the Diem regime's activities and the failure of South Vietnam to move forward in the eight years since the Geneva Accord should, therefore, be seen in that light. While he saw glimmers of success, Mansfield mainly saw the repetition of history, which if allowed to continue would see the United States on the losing side. Given this pessimistic vision of South Vietnam, Mansfield spends half of his report evaluating other potential allies in the region. He closes his analysis by stating that, in the future, it might be better “to do less rather than more” in Southeast Asia.

As in the case of any good report, Mansfield gets to the point very quickly. While he sees Diem's leadership in South Vietnam as a failure, he regards the American policy as a greater failure for its granting of aid to Diem. Mansfield correctly understood that, without American aid, Diem would likely not have remained in office following the 1955 election. Although Diem was the one who was taking inadequate actions, it was, according to Mansfield, American foreign policy that was failing. He reports that the American assistance was “ill-conceived and badly administered.” Not mincing any words, Mansfield states that the South Vietnamese government was dependent on the United States for its existence, rather than on the people of South Vietnam upon finding themselves duly satisfied with his policies—as would be the case in a truly democratic system.

During these early years, the work of the US military with the Montagnards had been a success, and Mansfield points to this as a positive thing. As for most of the rest of the effort, however, Mansfield believes that the American and Vietnamese optimism about these programs merely repeats the optimism that French leaders had had in their programs only a year prior to their defeat. Mansfield reminds Kennedy (and the others who read the report) that such optimistic projections were based upon their own assumptions about what type of costs the communist forces were willing to endure and that the communist leaders would not be smart enough to change their tactics when the American and South Vietnamese leaders changed theirs. For Mansfield, then, neither of these is a sound foundation upon which to build an American policy for Vietnam.

Widening his perspective, Mansfield spends several pages going through the other Southeast Asian countries. He recognizes that these nations did not really want to get involved with the Vietnamese conflict, yet all depended, to a certain extent, upon US aid. In his summary, Mansfield questions why the United States was so deeply involved in Southeast Asia. He knows a quick withdrawal would cause great harm for the region, but he believes that it would be better “to concentrate on a vigorous diplomacy” rather than to continue to expend “energy and lives” in the support of American interests in the region.

Bibliography and Additional Reading

Glennon, John P., David M. Baehler, & Charles S. Sampson, eds. “Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1962, Volume II, Vietnam, 1962.” Office of the Historian. US Department of State, 2015. Web.

Mansfield Foundation. “Mike Mansfield: Great American Statesman.” The Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation. The Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation, 2009. Web.

Oberdorfer, Don. Senator Mansfield: The Extraordinary Life of a Great American Statesman and Diplomat. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2003. Print.

Olson, Gregory A. Mansfield and Vietnam: A Study in Rhetorical Adaptation. Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1995.