The Vietnam War, Imperial Presidents, and Limited Democracy

President Johnson was far more concerned about hawks than doves when it came to Vietnam War policy. At one point Johnson apparently told undersecretary of state George Ball, “don’t pay any attention to what those little shits on the campuses do. The great beast is the reactionary elements.” ⁽¹⁰⁾ Hawks wanted an expanded war, including a land invasion of North Vietnam and possibly even the use of nuclear weapons. Johnson clung to his limited war, much to the frustration of some of the military commanders on the ground, including General William Westmoreland. ⁽¹¹⁾ But he had no respect nor agreement with doves opposing the war altogether. ⁽¹²⁾

Johnson’s popularity ratings were plunging, but his reasons for not seeking reelection were multifaceted, complicated, and often interrelated. Physical and mental exhaustion plagued Johnson at the end of his first term. His adherence to a limited war in Vietnam satisfied practically no one except Cold Warriors who appreciated that an expanded conflict risked the possibility of global expansion and even World War III. Antiwar candidate Robert Kennedy’s entry into the Democratic primary race of 1968 was another crucial final factor in Johnson’s decision to resign, and antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy’s strong second place showing in the New Hampshire primary was also ominous for Johnson’s future prospects. Primary challengers followed other factors that had harmed Johnson’s popularity, such as the numerous and widespread urban riots of 1967 and an economy succumbing to inflation (partly because of Johnson’s hidden Vietnam War expenditures) going from 1% in 1964 up to 4.7% in 1968. ⁽¹³⁾ As for the Vietnam War itself, it was the Tet Offensive – not antiwar protests on the home front – that became the most influential factor in deciding Johnson’s retirement from politics. ⁽¹⁴⁾ Undoubtedly Johnson was aware that his Vietnam War policy was faltering with the American electorate and that the Antiwar Movement (including dissent in the news media) was probably a contributing factor. But claiming the Antiwar Movement ended the Johnson presidency stretches credibility.

According to biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin, Johnson actually sympathized with the protesters but dismissed their claims and concerns as naïve, inexperienced, and uninformed, a product of youthful ignorance. Johnson actually blamed the professors for campus unrest, thinking they were old enough to know better, and that they were mired in their “egghead” world of theory rather than contending with profoundly consequential realpolitik decisions. During his decreasing popularity, Johnson actually began deceiving himself into believing that the American public liked him, approved of his policies (including his execution of the Vietnam War), and blamed widely disseminated contrary information on faulty pollsters and the media. ⁽¹⁵⁾ Goodwin wrote that Johnson began descending into “rationalization, wishful thinking, denial, repression” ⁽¹⁶⁾ instead of accepting the bleak realities of the Vietnam conflict and the public response. ⁽¹⁷⁾ Dismissing young demonstrators as mere “exhibitionists” indicated how Johnson was not getting their message. ⁽¹⁸⁾

The idea that Johnson more or less discounted the antiwar demonstrations becomes all the more clear when we consider that, increasingly, he began to ignore his own policy advisors who had any doubts about the premise of Vietnam as a crucial stance against the threat of worldwide communist revolution. When Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara himself began doubting the wisdom of the war, his days in the cabinet were numbered. He left in 1968 to head the World Bank. McNamara was but the highest profile cabinet member who began doubting Johnson’s Vietnam policy, yet Johnson had begun to ignore them all. Instead, fatefully, Johnson began listening only to those cabinet members who agreed with his approach, especially National Security Advisor Walt Rostow. ⁽¹⁹⁾

Johnson himself never conceded to having been influenced by the Antiwar Movement. In fact, in 1971 he stood firm in asserting that he had well-served American foreign policy interests and the greater regional stability of Southeast Asia. ⁽²⁰⁾ In fact, a pronounced stubborn streak characterized Johnson’s entire approach to the Vietnam War. Even after the Tet Offensive he refused to back down and actually escalated the air war in the following months. ⁽²¹⁾ After leaving the presidency, Johnson looked back and blamed the media for a “chorus of defeatism” following the Tet Offensive. ⁽²²⁾ He felt those in the Antiwar Movement needed to examine their consciences for having been wrong about the war and America’s foreign policy in Vietnam. ⁽²³⁾ He blamed the Antiwar Movement for causing a “self-inflicted wound of critical proportions” to the United States. ⁽²⁴⁾ An increasingly stalemated war had to be central in Johnson’s decision not to run for reelection, but one could argue that miscalculating the place of the North Vietnamese within Cold War international politics – and especially underestimating North Vietnamese resolve – was more important in this regard than the American Antiwar Movement. Certainly Johnson’s stated reaction to the Antiwar Movement’s influence was only negative or even retaliatory.

Whether or not we find Johnson’s retrospective views credible, his actions during his time in office certainly reflected the same policy he later defended. In other words, if the demonstrations had been so effective, why did Johnson refuse to end the war during the last eight months of 1968 after he had announced his retirement and had no reelection considerations at stake? Senator Thomas Eagleton offered what was probably the most likely reason: Johnson was simply not going to admit he had been mistaken about Vietnam, for it would be equivalent to admitting that the billions spent and the thousands of American lives lost had all been in vain. Unlike former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (who eventually admitted that the war was a mistake), Johnson remained resolute about his Vietnam War policy. ⁽²⁵⁾ The Antiwar Movement may have contributed to Johnson’s unpopularity, his physical and mental exhaustion – and thus his decision not to seek reelection – but Johnson’s own actions made no concessions and followed no course demanded by the Antiwar Movement.

Arguably, 1968 was the most intense year of anti-Vietnam War protests. That was also the year when American deaths peaked in Vietnam, following the Tet Offensive that both surprised American military commanders and revealed to the American public how Johnson had been lying about or at least vastly exaggerating North Vietnamese weaknesses and lack of resolve. 1968 was also when the nation witnessed the meltdown at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, mainly between status quo Democrats (Hubert Humphrey supporters) and anti-war Democrats severely disheartened after Robert Kennedy’s assassination in June, but still hoping Gene McCarthy could carry the anti-war torch.

Nixon actually capitalized upon this public sentiment during the 1968 GOP convention, giving one of his many speeches about law and order. He described a supportive demographic: “the non-shouters, the non-demonstrators, that are not racist or sick, that are not guilty of the crime that plagues this land.” ⁽²⁶⁾ And remember, the antiwar protests were but an aspect of the greater youth rebellion that included long male hair, abandonment of sexual mores, no end of narcotics, wild rock’n’roll music, et cetera—so, undoubtedly, Nixon was appealing to various conservative people who found all of this objectionable. The irony that male college students were exempt from the draft rankled the parents of working class young men who disproportionately served and died in the war. ⁽²⁷⁾

How and why some candidates win and lose is always very complex, but it would be reasonable to conclude that the 1968 protests in particular played into Nixon’s “law and order” campaign appeal. Granted, the 1968 antiwar protests were preceded by a great deal of inner city rioting over racism, poverty, and police brutality throughout the 1960s. Following the widespread 1967 urban riots, James Earl Ray murdered Martin Luther King, Jr., in April 1968 and an entire new slew of urban riots broke out in over a hundred cities resulting in the deaths of over 35 people. Many Americans found the violent versions of the Antiwar Movement to be but a repulsive subset of all this. Thus, the “law and order” advocacy had a broad application in the campaigns of any number of political candidates that year, including Alabama’s governor George Wallace. 1968 not only witnessed Nixon’s victory in the presidential race but the defeat of the only two senators (Alaska’s Ernest Henry Gruening and Oregon’s Wayne Lyman Morse) who had opposed the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Johnson’s “police action license” for escalating the Vietnam War. None of this indicated much effectiveness for the Antiwar Movement’s efforts.

If the Antiwar Movement could not reverse or even mitigate Lyndon Johnson’s course in Vietnam, Richard Nixon and his powerful National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger were even less receptive to populist antiwar appeals. Nixon was especially dismissive of demonstrators, saying that allowing antiwar demonstrators to make foreign policy was equivalent to anarchy. ⁽²⁸⁾ Nixon vowed that “under no circumstances” would he allow the antiwar protests to affect or influence him. ⁽²⁹⁾ In his much-noted “Silent Majority” speech of November 3, 1969, Nixon offered the polite version of this objection when he stated, “I would be untrue to my oath of office if I allowed the policy of this Nation to be dictated by the minority who hold that [antiwar] point of view and who try to impose it on the Nation by mounting demonstrations in the street.” ⁽³⁰⁾ In his 1978 memoir, Nixon reiterated some of Johnson’s objections to the Antiwar Movement when he claimed it had prolonged the war, hindered efforts to negotiate with the North Vietnamese, and harmed American military morale. ⁽³¹⁾ Violent antiwar protesters especially angered him; he called them the “super hypocrites of our time.” ⁽³²⁾

Despite polite public speech, historian Robert Dallek concluded that behind the scenes Nixon (similar to Johnson) was actually determined to retaliate against antiwar activists. ⁽³³⁾ In sunnier moments Nixon even believed the Antiwar Movement would actually backfire and result in greater overall public support for him and his Vietnam War policies. ⁽³⁴⁾ Follysome as this may have been, Nixon was not even close to allowing the Antiwar Movement to influence his course in Vietnam policy. If anything, he settled more stubbornly into his own prerogatives. ⁽³⁵⁾ This sort of defiance in the face of public unrest perhaps epitomizes the Imperial Presidency. In May 1972, Nixon actually escalated the war more than any time since 1965 during the so-called “Linebacker” offensive (in retaliation for North Vietnam’s Easter Offensive) and then enjoyed a subsequent rise in approval ratings. ⁽³⁶⁾ This probably made Nixon feel vindicated in his defiance of the Antiwar Movement.

In his memoirs, Kissinger presented himself as a non-angry counterpart to Nixon’s open hatred of the demonstrators, as if he and the war opponents were merely expressing differences of opinion among gentle folk. ⁽³⁷⁾ But Kissinger echoed Nixon when he wrote, “My theme was constant, that the war had to be ended as an act of policy, not in response to demonstrations.” ⁽³⁸⁾ Like Johnson and Nixon, Kissinger also retrospectively blamed the Antiwar Movement for prolonging the war, not ending or shortening its duration. ⁽³⁹⁾ Again, there is no evidence to support the idea that the Antiwar Movement influenced Kissinger any more than it influenced Johnson or Nixon.

Contrary to all the foregoing evidence, media like Stephan Talbot’s 2023 documentary film, The Movement and the ‘Madman’, represent another example of aging former activists who insist they influenced the ending of the Vietnam War. ⁽⁴⁰⁾ The premise of the film is that massive protests on October 15, 1969 ⁽⁴¹⁾ convinced Nixon and Kissinger against executing Operation Duck Hook, a scheme of possibly dropping nuclear bombs on North Vietnam. This is a doubly disingenuous premise. First, we only learned of the highly secret nuclear warfare brinksmanship many years later, when the government declassified documents during the 1990s. ⁽⁴²⁾ The demonstrators of the National Moratorium in October 1969 had no clue about Operation Duck Hook’s existence. Thus, in an example of eisegesis, the commentators in The Movement and the ‘Madman’ are reading later knowledge into the past. ⁽⁴³⁾

Second, what the 1969 demonstrators did not know—but what Talbot and his commentators should have known—was that Nixon and Kissinger had already abandoned Operation Duck Hook before the National Moratorium of 1969 began. ⁽⁴⁴⁾ Accounts vary as to why Nixon and Kissinger abandoned the ploy, and likely there was a combination of factors. Global opposition to Vietnam War escalation supposedly influenced Nixon himself, ⁽⁴⁵⁾ though that seems debatable considering Nixon and Kissinger secretly continued to expand the war into Cambodia. National Security Council staff member Roger Morris remembered the cancelation as based in doubts over military effectiveness, not because of the Antiwar Movement. ⁽⁴⁶⁾ Other National Security Council members (especially Lawrence Lynn) also predicted against Operation Duck Hook’s military effectiveness. ⁽⁴⁷⁾

It is also important to recognize Operation Duck Hook as a subset of Nixon and Kissinger’s “Joint Chiefs of Staff Readiness Test,” a global show of American military force, more specifically nuclear warfare saber rattling. ⁽⁴⁸⁾ Operation Duck Hook and the Joint Chiefs of Staff Readiness Test themselves turned out to be nuclear warfare bluffs, and in a sense, the Soviets and China merely called that bluff. As for the North Vietnamese, they showed no change in their resolve to continue fighting for their homeland.

Talbot’s film is long on the reminiscences of former antiwar activists (such as Tom Wells, Melvin Small, and Daniel Ellsberg) as well as former Vietnam War veterans who turned against the war—but it reflects wishful thinking more than cause-and-effect. For example, Melvin Small erroneously claimed “Nixon folded,” as if public disapproval alone caused him to abandon Operation Duck Hook. Majority public opinion had been at least uneasy about the war since 1967, but that did not preclude Nixon and Kissinger from threatening nuclear warfare in an effort to leverage a Vietnam peace agreement on terms they considered favorable to the United States. This was part of the Nixon-Kissinger’s global anti-communist strategy. ⁽⁴⁹⁾ In other words, Nixon and Kissinger were focusing more on the large and complex picture of foreign affairs within the Cold War context, and far less on antiwar demonstrations.

To Talbot’s credit, he includes an observation from Stephen B. Bull, who was Special Assistant to the President and Appointments Secretary, 1969–73. Bull represents a solitary voice of reason in Talbot’s film, overshadowed numerically by former activists who ignore even the possibility of bluffing, which Bull emphasizes. Bluffing is the standard interpretation now, contradicting the thesis of Talbot’s film. ⁽⁵⁰⁾ And, after all, bluffing and saber rattling was par for the course during the entire Cold War. Some political scientists at the time called it “brinksmanship,” as in going up to the brink of nuclear war.

In an interview about the film, director Talbot said, “We didn’t stop the war anywhere near soon enough, but the protest movement ended the draft and Nixon began to step up the withdrawal of troops.” ⁽⁵¹⁾ But Nixon had promised to end the draft during the 1968 presidential campaign and executed a phased withdrawal of American soldiers which garnered overwhelming public support. ⁽⁵²⁾ Numbers of American soldiers in Vietnam went from 536,100 in 1968 to 475,200 in 1969, Nixon’s first year in office. Thereafter the numbers went down to 334,600 in 1970, then 156,800 the following year. ⁽⁵³⁾ The draft did not actually end until 1973, but the reduction of ground soldiers (and substituting, to some degree, an air war) undoubtedly appeased a large sector of the non-demonstrating antiwar public. Nixon’s “Vietnamization” policy of slowly shifting war burdens from American soldiers to South Vietnamese military forces became a face-saving exit, along with the oft-repeated idea of finding “peace with honor.”

In 1969, a Gallup poll asked, “Do you approve or disapprove of the way President Nixon is handling the situation in Vietnam?” ⁽⁵⁴⁾ 64% of American adults approved, 25% disapproved. Despite some popular images of college campuses as bastions of majority antiwar activism, half of the college students surveyed approved of Nixon’s handling of the war and only 44% disapproved, with significant regional differences (more approval in the South, the least approval in the northeast). ⁽⁵⁵⁾

Ironically, neither Johnson’s limited war strategy nor Nixon’s threats of nuclear escalation had any practical effect in lessening (much less arresting) North Vietnamese resolve to persevere. If we were to claim any single reason for the North Vietnamese victory, it was because fighting for one’s homeland turned out to be far more inspiring than fighting for a semi-abstract anti-communist ideology thousands of miles from home. As Ho Chi Minh famously predicted in 1946, “You will kill ten of us, we will kill one of you, but in the end, you will tire of it first.” ⁽⁵⁶⁾ The skewed kill ratio actually turned out to be far more severe (closer to 34::1, if we conservatively count two million dead Vietnamese to 58,000 American deaths). ⁽⁵⁷⁾ But Ho Chi Minh was quite prophetic in this regard. The North Vietnamese were well aware of the Antiwar Movement in the United States, and undoubtedly they considered this an asset in their focus on the longue durée. But fundamentally they were fighting a civil war with a legacy of foreign interference; first the 19^th French colonials, then the Japanese during World War II, a post-war attempt by the French to reclaim their colony, followed by American Cold War entanglement.

Many Americans object to the idea of an American Empire, ⁽⁵⁸⁾ but is there a better word to describe hundreds of global military outposts ⁽⁵⁹⁾ still protecting American interests in the post-Cold War era? The United States emerged as the only world superpower after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, yet its worldwide military outposts remain. It is in this sense that the world now has an American Empire.

One reason the word likely causes discomfort is because “democracy” and “empire” more or less contradict one another, or at least set a double standard of democracy at home and imperialism abroad. And yet this dualism goes back to the birth of western democracy itself with the polis of Athens and its 5^th Century BCE empire located mainly in the Ionian Sea region. Athens featured an admittedly limited democracy at home for its citizens (yet so too did the United States until the 20^th century) but imposed colonial rule, including the extraction of monetary tribute, from its colonies. ⁽⁶⁰⁾ More troubling for the American Founders was the intermixed decline of democracy and the rise of imperialism during the latter period of the Roman Republic, ⁽⁶¹⁾ an era they studied carefully. ⁽⁶²⁾

In the case of the United States, one could argue that the contradictions of selective democracy were present at birth, and certainly so from the perspectives of indigenous peoples and African slaves, to name but two groups who remained disenfranchised well into the 20^th century. The United States is a nation of conquest, so in a sense its first “empire” was its contiguous continental territories and states ⁽⁶³⁾ gathered under the ideology of Manifest Destiny, ⁽⁶⁴⁾ which spilled over the continental borders to include various 19^th century imperial acquisitions abroad. ⁽⁶⁵⁾ This empire has now finally reached its furthest extent owing to post-World War II superpower status.

During the Cold War, the United States did not pursue imperial conquest and territorial acquisition per se, but the nation contended mightily for an anti-communist world order, and this meant attempting to “contain” communism in the USSR and China. In Asia, containment included many military outposts in places like Okinawa, Taiwan, South Korea, and – temporarily – South Vietnam. For the Vietnamese, the Vietnam War was more of a civil war complicated by post-colonial factions and the various proxy aspirations of the United States, the USSR, and China. The latter had natural proximitous geographical concerns (similar to the ones they had during the Korean War) as would any nation bordering another nation at war with foreign powers.

Historical empathy is necessary if we are to understand the influence of the Cold War during the Vietnam era. All the presidents who oversaw the Vietnam War were firm believers in the two main foreign policy theories that we now call myths: the Monolithic Communist Theory/Myth and the Domino Theory/Myth. The USSR certainly espoused a great deal of rhetoric that helped reinforce the now obviously untenable idea that communist ideology would somehow supersede nationalism, thus fostering a “monolith” of global communism. Dominos falling became the metaphor for the creation of this monolith, and adherents premised their notions upon the fatally inaccurate idea that nations “fell” to communism, one after the other. An obvious alternative interpretation for a nation like China would be more along the lines of communism serving the Chinese as a transition from pre-industrial vulnerability to international colonialism to contemporary autonomy and capitalism. But during the Vietnam era, all American presidents embraced the Monolithic and Domino ideas. Moreover, Democratic Party presidents Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson all had to contend with domestic Republican Party pressures of appearing “soft” on communism. ⁽⁶⁶⁾ This tragically helped foster initial involvement, escalation, and prolongation of the Vietnam War.

Another important aspect of presidents Johnson and Nixon in particular was what the aforementioned historian Arthur Shlesinger, Jr., dubbed the Imperial Presidency. ⁽⁶⁷⁾ Unlike pre-World War II presidents, Cold War era executives began exercising unprecedented power as well as employing a great deal of secrecy in their exercise of that power. ⁽⁶⁸⁾ As Imperial Presidents, both Johnson and Nixon deliberately and carefully deceived the American public and Congress regarding their war policies and practices. Johnson clung to a limited war and Nixon repeatedly attempted to intimidate the North Vietnamese and their allies with shows of force and increased air war – both approaches were ultimately ineffective, but so too was the Antiwar Movement in changing these fundamental presidential approaches to the conflict.

Regardless of the Imperial Presidency and its flagrant abuses, we should avoid laying too much of the responsibility for the war on the executive branch. After all, from the founding of the nation, the Constitution has empowered Congress with control over finances, ⁽⁶⁹⁾ the much-repeated “power of the purse.” ⁽⁷⁰⁾ Tellingly, Congress did not use its funding powers to end the war. The case of action speaking louder than words (including antiwar words) may be crucial here. Congress only began making what amounted to token financial gestures when the war was already in its final phase.

Similar to those claiming that antiwar demonstrations and protests ended the Vietnam War, various scholars claim that Congress was an effective antiwar force during the conflict. ⁽⁷¹⁾ Sadly, this is again far more wishful thinking than a convincing argument. ⁽⁷²⁾ In the case of Vietnam, Congress granted Johnson the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in 1964, basically giving the president permission to escalate the war. As later revealed in the Pentagon Papers, ⁽⁷³⁾ Johnson proceeded to oversee the conflict with a great deal of secrecy, hiding facts from both Congress and the public. Toward the end of the war (during 1970–71) various senators and representatives proposed five congressional amendments (four in the senate, one in the house) that would have limited soldier numbers or curtailed funding – but all failed. ⁽⁷⁴⁾ In other words, even antiwar senators and representatives during the Vietnam War tended to be long on rhetoric and short on action, and they were ever in the numerical minority regardless of party affiliation. ⁽⁷⁵⁾

In 2014, Kelly McHugh published a masterful article that analyzed the congressional role during the Vietnam and Iraq wars, as well as schools of thought regarding these topics. In both conflicts McHugh noted that “although members of Congress were vocal in opposing the war, there were few legislative attempts to curtail the president’s ability to conduct the war.” ⁽⁷⁶⁾ There are many reasons for this, from buck-passing to risk aversity among legislators (especially as it pertained to reelection concerns). ⁽⁷⁷⁾ When it came to war in particular, Congress tended to defer to the executive regardless of funding or defunding powers. ⁽⁷⁸⁾ So Congress did not really rein in Nixon and Kissinger. The sponsors of the much-noted Cooper-Church amendment of 1971 intended to end funding of the war’s expansion into Cambodia. Of it McHugh wrote,

Given such half-measures and failures of legislative limits on the executive, some senators pursued a more fundamental change to reemphasize congressional war powers. Many scholars make strong arguments that the Framers originally intended that Congress (and not the president) should have war-making powers and this remained central to the war-making aspect of the Vietnam conflict. ⁽⁸⁰⁾ Contrary legal arguments during the Vietnam era itself (claiming the president had war powers coequal with Congress) ⁽⁸¹⁾ were largely matters of eisegesis, or more specifically, an employment of the presentist fallacy of history. ⁽⁸²⁾ Article II, section 2 of the Constitution designates the president as Commander in Chief, but by this the Framers meant ex post facto presidential war powers, not declaratory congressional war powers – at least in most circumstances, outside of things like a sudden, emergency response to foreign aggression toward the United States. ⁽⁸³⁾

Senators Tom Eagleton and Jacob Javits wrote eloquently ⁽⁸⁴⁾ about Johnson and Nixon’s abuse of the congressional War Powers clause. ⁽⁸⁵⁾ And yet Javits and Eagleton’s efforts backfired in the 1973 War Powers Resolution ⁽⁸⁶⁾ that actually surrendered war powers to the president for the first 60–90 days of a conflict without the requirement of Congress formally declaring war. ⁽⁸⁷⁾ In a profound way, the War Powers Resolution merely became a crowning non-achievement in legislative checks on executive war powers. For this reason, Senator Eagleton ironically began as a sponsor of the bill but ended up voting against it because an entirely different dynamic surrounds initial war funding compared to financing an ongoing conflict. ⁽⁸⁸⁾ Eagleton was making a strong point based on then-recent history, for this is exactly what happened in the Senate during 1965–68, when senators only voted (three different times) for continuing appropriations for soldiers already in Vietnam—not against the war policy itself. ⁽⁸⁹⁾

The central point to remember is, Congress did not and would not rein in presidential war power during the most contentious and divisive war in American history. ⁽⁹⁰⁾ The subtitle of Eagleton’s 1974 book more or less says it all: War and Presidential Power: a Chronicle of Congressional Surrender. ⁽⁹¹⁾ Eagleton was hardly alone. For example, noted legal scholar John Hart Ely described the 1973 War Powers Resolution as “a tale of congressional spinelessness.” ⁽⁹²⁾

This is especially daunting considering that the attempt to reassert congressional war powers took place after Congress discovered that Kissinger and Nixon had secretly and illegally expanded the Vietnam War into Cambodia. If Congress could not rein in presidential war power during the highly controversial Vietnam-Cambodia conflict, it seems unlikely they ever will. The Vietnam War ended, but there is no legal reason another president could not engage the nation in another such conflict. In fact, presidents since 1973 have routinely ignored the War Powers Resolution altogether. ⁽⁹³⁾ And if Congress refused to rein in the Imperial Presidency during the Vietnam War, the judicial branch behaved similarly.

Far less visible than the mass demonstrations on college campuses and in city streets were the lawsuits that various soldiers, prospective draftees, and even members of Congress filed against the war during 1968–73. Most often, they filed these cases on the grounds that the Vietnam conflict was unconstitutional due to a missing congressional declaration of war. ⁽⁹⁴⁾ In response, many judges pointed out that Congress was fully complicit in the Vietnam War despite having made no formal declaration of war. For example, in 1968 U.S. District Judge Charles Edward Wyzanski, Jr., observed that Congress had not only passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution allowing expansion of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, but repeatedly appropriated money to conscript men into the military. ⁽⁹⁵⁾ In making such assessments, Wyzanski and other judges dismissed these cases. A couple of judges pointed out that a formal declaration of war would have international consequences that Congress was obviously avoiding with good reason, especially in the interest of precluding escalation of the Vietnam conflict into a broader regional or global war. ⁽⁹⁶⁾ But repeatedly, judges during this period dismissed plaintiffs’ cases due to what they described as a “political question” rather than a judicial one. Judge Wyzanski described this most succinctly when he wrote, “this Court concludes that the distinction between a declaration of war and a cooperative action by the legislative and executive with respect to military activities in foreign countries is the very essence of what is meant by a political question.” ⁽⁹⁷⁾

Among many others, political scientist Francis D. Wormuth strongly disagreed with the courts’ refusal to rule on the constitutionality of the Vietnam War by relegating it to a “political question.” ⁽⁹⁸⁾ In other words – in direction contradiction to what judge after judge ruled – the fact that the Vietnam War lacked an explicit congressional war declaration was a perfectly justiciable topic. ⁽⁹⁹⁾ Many years later, legal scholar Louis Fisher agreed with this general assessment. ⁽¹⁰⁰⁾ Furthermore, Fisher identified the oft-mentioned “political question” explanation as a misconception, noting that presidential war-making power was well within judicial purview. ⁽¹⁰¹⁾ Toward the end of the Vietnam conflict, a couple of dissenting judges themselves began to see it this way.

In a rare minority opinion in 1972, Chief District Judge Joseph S. Lord, III (Eastern District of Pennsylvania) wrote in Atlee v. Laird that the case involved what we would now call the central question of executive versus legislative war powers. ⁽¹⁰²⁾ A month later, District Judge William Thomas Sweigert (Northern District of California) went further when he elaborated upon the central importance of congressional war powers for preserving the American democratic and constitutional system. ⁽¹⁰³⁾ The following year, Appellate Judge James Lowell Oakes (Second Circuit Court of Appeals) wrote that the constitutionality of the war was indeed justiciable, partly because Nixon and Kissinger had covertly expanded the war into Cambodia. ⁽¹⁰⁴⁾ Alas, such belated dissenting opinions proved utterly ineffective in shortening or ending the war, or in reining in the Imperial Presidency.

Commentators often write that the United States was more divided during the Vietnam War era than at any previous time in American history since the Civil War. ⁽¹⁰⁵⁾ This idea is generally true, but many scholars studying public opinion polls about the war have reached ambiguous or complex conclusions. ⁽¹⁰⁶⁾ For example, in 1970, Philip Converse and Howard Schuman especially objected to the simplistic idea of pro- and anti-war factions among the public. ⁽¹⁰⁷⁾ In stark contrast to the media’s focus on sensational campus demonstrations, Converse and Schuman also found pro-war sentiments among students at smaller colleges actually exceeding that of the general population. ⁽¹⁰⁸⁾ Some of these pro-war students reflected a more general conservative backlash against radical antiwar protesters. ⁽¹⁰⁹⁾ Those romanticizing the Antiwar Movement, then and now, tend to ignore the backlash effect. ⁽¹¹⁰⁾ The Antiwar Movement’s ultimate effectiveness is probably doomed to eternal ambiguity, and thus scholars will likely debate it without end.

Philosophers and the better scientists are wary about declaring matters of cause and effect. ⁽¹¹¹⁾ Regarding the anti-Vietnam War Movement, Andrew Priest wrote, “it is almost impossible to disaggregate it [public opinion for or against the war] from other influences acting upon policymakers, such as the progress of the war itself or other domestic and international events.” ⁽¹¹²⁾ Before Andrew Priest, Adam Garfinkle had become one of the most provocative scholars to deny Antiwar Movement effectiveness. Yet, early in his 1997 book, Telltale Hearts, Garfinkle admitted that “speculation” might be the most honest term rather than any claim to cause-and-effect or lack thereof. ⁽¹¹³⁾ It is logical to conclude that some Americans were against the war despite the protesters, and others irrespective of the protesters—but it is impossible to conclude that the protesters caused the end of the war. ⁽¹¹⁴⁾ This indicates a paradox of sorts, captured by Charles DeBenedetti and Charles Chatfield, who observed that many came to agree with the Antiwar Movement’s goals while disagreeing with its methods. ⁽¹¹⁵⁾

William Berkowitz studied fifteen major anti-Vietnam War protests between 1965 and 1971, then examined subsequent Gallup polls in an attempt to discern the effect of the demonstrations. ⁽¹¹⁶⁾ Berkowitz concluded that “the data in general do not reveal any consistent, dramatic, or lasting effects of the demonstrations one way or another.” ⁽¹¹⁷⁾ He also concluded that maybe his study revealed no demonstrable effects from the protests simply because there were no effects. ⁽¹¹⁸⁾ This troubled Berkowitz, who alluded to himself as an antiwar activist who was left feeling powerless in light of his findings. ⁽¹¹⁹⁾ He ended his article with an open question wondering what could possibly influence controversial policy when both gentle and “bitingly critical persuasion,” civil disobedience, and prolonged massive demonstrations, had all failed. ⁽¹²⁰⁾

A few romantics might argue that the Antiwar Movement did indeed end the war. The better question might be, was the multifaceted Antiwar Movement influential? If so, how? We can never really measure it. Allen Matusow concluded that the Antiwar Movement ultimately helped de-escalate the war, ⁽¹²¹⁾ despite periodic expansions and escalations during both the Johnson and Nixon administrations. Aside from that, it might seem like a reasonable supposition even if it remains impossible to prove in any precise sense. But even if Matusow’s assertion is true on its face, we would still have to consider other contributing factors, such as the continuing costs of the war, mounting death toll, and the unwillingness of either Johnson or Nixon to invade North Vietnam. The “limited war” approach was partly to avoid provoking hot war from China (as occurred in the Korean War, after the U.S. and its allies got too close to the Chinese border), but even hawks began seeing this as a no-win strategy that would only perpetuate stalemate.

Perhaps the best assessments of the Antiwar Movement’s influence are couched in cautious terms. ⁽¹²²⁾ It profoundly contributed to national divisions but it also reflected and amplified divisions already present. Media coverage likely contributed to this amplification. Media amplification remains important in and of itself, but it also reflected a meeting place among populist protestors and corporate elites. Sensational news is big business.

Following the Elite Theory of Democracy, the news media constitutes one component of select power brokers that also includes corporate moguls, high level bureaucrats, and elected office holders. Having said that, it remains difficult to make generalizations about the media coverage of the Vietnam War and the Antiwar Movement. Sometimes the protesters may have benefitted from publicity; other times, some of them expressed frustration and anger over how the media covered them. ⁽¹²³⁾ Continuing a long and deep tradition of sensationalism, the American news media almost definitely focused unduly on the radical elements of the Antiwar Movement. ⁽¹²⁴⁾

Early media coverage of the war was generally in sync with the White House, predicting that victory would arrive soon in a limited land war. But especially during 1968, media coverage became far more complex—sometimes angering the hawks or the military itself, sometimes sensationalizing the antiwar demonstrations, sometimes questioning political authority. At this point “truth” was not necessarily the “first casualty of war,” as the old saying went; ⁽¹²⁵⁾ rather, media coverage (and omissions) more resembled a chaotic free-for-all of information overload and all sorts of “truths” and “falsehoods.” Media coverage of the war and Antiwar Movement was undeniably influential, but the details of influence are almost hopelessly muddled.

As often repeated, the Vietnam conflict was the first to be broadcast in people’s living rooms, and it used the notorious “body count” in lieu of tangible progress in the vein of World War II. ⁽¹²⁶⁾ Political scientist Guenter Lewy concluded that television coverage came to be clearly biased against the war, focusing on atrocities committed by America’s South Vietnamese ally, but omitting how North Vietnam prevented press access altogether. ⁽¹²⁷⁾ The media delivered numerous horrific images, such as that of the South Vietnamese police commander Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner on the street with a snub-nosed handgun in 1968. Eddie Adams (Associated Press) took a photograph of this that won the Pulitzer Prize and made it into newspapers around the world. Four years later, Nick Ut took another Pulitzer-winning photograph for the Associated Press of a nine-year-old naked girl—the severe burns on her back hidden from the camera—running from an American napalm attack. Then there was the footage of Buddhist monks sitting in the lotus position, burning themselves to death to protest mistreatment by the South Vietnamese government. After soaking themselves in gasoline, they lit themselves afire, immediately attracting Vietnamese people who ran toward them bowing and kneeling and making salutary prayers before the monks slowly succumbed to death and fell over.

One of the most-noted media moments arrived when anchorman Walter Cronkite offered his first-ever editorial comment on CBS News. Cronkite had just returned from Vietnam, following the Tet Offensive. On February 27, 1968, he famously said, “To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, if unsatisfactory conclusion,” and that it was “increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.” ⁽¹²⁸⁾

Cronkite’s famous commentary raises the question whether journalists merely represent actuality or rather assist in the creation or enhancement of the experience they seek to report. The claim that LBJ responded to Cronkite’s commentary with, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America,” remains apocryphal. After all, by this time—and consistent with Elite Theory of democracy ⁽¹²⁹⁾—business leaders, legal professionals, and other “conventional” leaders like Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford began opposing the war less on ideological grounds than because they simply saw it as a hopeless quagmire with no chance of military victory for the United States. ⁽¹³⁰⁾ In other words, these were “Establishment” figures who shared little or nothing in common with demonstrators objecting to the war on moral grounds. And yet, because of their very conventionality, these white-collar professionals likely had more clout when it came to congressional and presidential considerations regarding the hopelessness of the war. In 1969, Clark Clifford wrote, “We should reduce American casualties by reducing American combat forces. We should do so in accordance with a definite schedule and with a specified end point. Let us start to bring our men home-and let us start now.” ⁽¹³¹⁾ W. Lance Bennett has pointed out the impact that this kind of opposition from Washington D.C. elites like Clifford had on changing the general media conversation about the war. ⁽¹³²⁾ As for the antiwar protests themselves, it is difficult to imagine the support, emulation, opposition, and backlash they evoked had there not been media coverage. ⁽¹³³⁾

In the final analysis, television coverage of the Vietnam War and antiwar demonstrations probably only contributed to existing divisions, confusions, and ambiguities at home. ⁽¹³⁴⁾ The impact of media coverage was profound, but sometimes that profundity was merely reflective of a reality (in a reporting sense) rather than evoking a reality, as in making news and creating or enhancing reactions where none previously existed. As Daniel Hallin concluded, the media was only part of a larger scenario that doomed the Vietnam war to failure. By the time Cronkite made his monumental editorial assessment of the war, Hallin noted that the Vietnam conflict was already failing due to the “limited war” aspect, ⁽¹³⁵⁾ since Johnson (wisely or not) was unwilling to invade North Vietnam and risk regional or global escalation. Thus, in a reporting sense, to a major degree the media merely came to reflect public and political divisions that already existed. ⁽¹³⁶⁾

The limited effectiveness of the populist aspect of the Antiwar Movement is largely consistent with the Elite Theory of democracy, ⁽¹³⁷⁾ a political science philosophy that views the masses as marginally effective in influencing policy. This would apply to domestic policy, but even more to foreign policy and perhaps especially to policy involving the making, conducting, and the ending of war.

Elite Theory scholars have argued that real power in the United States rests with and is wielded not by the people at large but rather by political, bureaucratic, corporate, and media elites. ⁽¹³⁸⁾ Political and policy outcomes are skewed by financial contributions from political elites that can be, and often are, enormous. Low voter turnout, widespread voter apathy, and an electorate that remains largely ill-informed about policy issues result in elections that are largely symbolic. Even individual political activists tend to be better educated and wealthier than the population at large. ⁽¹³⁹⁾ This kind of analysis recognizes the limitations of a system of representative democracy which encourages politicians to pursue policies of short-term advantage. ⁽¹⁴⁰⁾

A major reason for the failure of the Antiwar Movement was its lack of a cohesive democratic form. As Jan-Werner Müller has observed, “Street protests . . . have genuinely democratic meaning, but they lack proper democratic form, and they cannot yield a kind of democratic trump card against representative institutions.” ⁽¹⁴¹⁾ Demonstrations, marches, sit-ins, and the like work best when interwoven with existing political, legal, and policymaking systems. And yet, these existing systems also largely failed during the Vietnam War.

The Cold War context remains the crucial backdrop. Fear of communism and a prospective nuclear World War III heavily influenced a generation or two of leaders following the Second World War; perhaps they found it easier or even wiser to defer to a strong executive in these circumstances foreboding possible emergencies that could not accommodate the luxury of judicial and legislative deliberation. So, if the legislative-judicial system and mass protests did not end the war, what did? More than anything, probably the persistence of the North Vietnamese in fighting for their homeland—within a context of America’s self-chosen limited war—explains their eventual triumph. In light of this, the United States gradually acknowledged that they were entangled in a hopeless quagmire, short of dangerously escalating the conflict with a land invasion of North Vietnam, employing nuclear weapons, antagonizing China and the Soviet Union and possible sparking a third world war.