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History
Student Lectures
Martha Klovstad: "Early Dissent: Senator J. William Fulbright
and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearings of 1966"
Martha Klovstad traced the development
of moderate dissent against US involvement in Vietnam war by
tracing the political career of Senator William Fulbright. Fulbright
began to challenge US foreign policy, particularly the US involvement
in Vietnam, in the mid-sixties.
Fulbright had been a strong supporter of
President Johnson, who had a reputation as proponent of peace.
Martha noted that Fulbright had not always been an opponent of
US policy in Vietnam. He had sponsored the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin
Resolution that increased US involvement in Vietnam and enhanced
President Johnson's powers concerning it.
Soon, however, Fulbright began to see a
disparity between the administration's stated and real goals.
Fulbright became particularly sensitive to the ways in which
Cold War fears had resulted in an unthinking foreign policy against
anything that might be communist or sympathetic toward communism.
Fulbright’s concerns led him to challenge
US actions in Vietnam and to urge for a foreign policy that made
distinctions between different kinds of communist regimes. When
Johnson simply ignored him, the senator resorted to more public
forms of pressure. As chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
he held televised hearings in 1966 on the US Vietnam policy.
Martha argued that the US was not yet ready
for such a moderate position. The US involvement in Vietnam escalated.
Unity was valued far more than debate, and Fulbright’s efforts
for a more rational, truthful, and discussion of foreign policy
led to accusations that he was a communist sympathizer. Nevertheless,
Fulbright "opened the avenue for opposition.”
Katherine Kleinworth:
"The Paris Peace Agreement
and the End of the Vietnam War"
The difference between the negotiated end
to the Vietnam war and the real end of that war was the subject
of Kate Kleinworth’s paper. The Paris Peace Accord of 1973
ended US involvement, but it did not bring peace to Vietnam.
When the accord was signed in 1973, President
Nixon promptly declared "peace in Southeast Asia.”
The US promised to stop all military actions and to withdraw
its troops within sixty days. In fact, Kate pointed out, the
process of troop withdrawal had begun at the beginning of Nixon’s
administration as part of the plan for “Vietnamization,”
whereby the South Vietnam government would gradually take over
the military responsibility for conducting the war.
The US also agreed to stop aid to Cambodia
and Laos although, Kate pointed out, no date for ending aid was
stipulated in the accord. For its part, North Vietnam promised
to release US prisoners of war and hand over information on US
MIAs.
The reasons why the negotiated end to the
war did not bring peace were abundant, but in large measure they
fell into four categories: first, the provisional government
of South Vietnam was largely excluded from the final negotiations.
Second, without clear deadlines and measures in place for noncompliance,
much of the accord comprised little more than suggestions. Third,
the failure to determine the borders between north and south
before signing the accord doomed Vietnam to a bitter and bloody
struggle in subsequent months. Fourth, continued US involvement
in Laos and Cambodia continued to destabilize Vietnam.
The result, Kate concluded, was that the
accord may have brought peace for the US, but Vietnam remained
very much at war. |
