Congreso Estudiantil de las Naciones Unidas

Committee: Historical Committee

Topic: Vietnam War

President: Benjamin Bigio

Parliamentarian:

I. INTRODUCTION

In 1884, the French Empire conquered an area of

land between British India and the Chinese Empire;
Indochina. For several decades, the region of Indochina
was rather quietly developed as one of the many
possessions of the French overseas empire, until the
Second World War. Indochina was drawn into the conflict
in 1940 after the fall of European France to Germany, after
which the Empire of Japan decided to occupy Indochina for
themselves. To resist Japanese and French imperialism,
communist leader Ho Chi Minh started the Viet-Mihn, an
armed nationalist group. The Viet-Mihn resisted Japanese
control for several years, up until the end of the war in
1945. With the collapse of authority in the region, the
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Viet-Mihn declared the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, a completely independent communist

state based in North Vietnam. However, France seeked to reclaim its former Empire and
launched an invasion into Vietnam. The war descended into a cold war proxy battle, with France
receiving heavy backing and support from the United States, while North Vietnam received the
explicit backing of both the Soviet Union and Communist China. The war dragged on until 1954,
when, after a crushing victory at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the French sued for peace. In
Geneva, half a world away, Vietnam was carved in two. Ho Chi Minh took the north for his new
communist state, while South Vietnam became a capitalist and pro-western ally, ruled by dictator
Ngo Dinh Diem. What would follow for the next few years was the birth of a communist
insurgency in South Vietnam called the Viet Cong, led by Viet Mihn veterans. They were
provoked by Diem’s refusal of any reunification with the communist North and the United
States, which, concerned over any further expansion of communism, began involving itself in the
conflict. First, only by military aid and training under President Eisenhower and Kennedy
starting in 1960. In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson, taking office after the slaying of
Kennedy, oversaw the same efforts. However, after an attack by two Vietnamese torpedo boats
on U.S. destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy, Johnson, encouraged by General William
Westmoreland and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, oversaw a deployment of over
200,000 troops to South Vietnam to combat the Viet Cong. In line with the strategic thinking of
the military, Johnson also began a heavy bombing campaign in North Vietnam, Operation
Rolling Thunder. While initially thought to be a brief "splendid little war”, the war dragged on
and on, American investment continued to grow, and discontent against the war rose with it.
Now the year is 1968, and the United States has been involved in the Vietnam War for years. The
number of troops in Vietnam, with help from the army draft, has ballooned to 500,000, with
some generals clamoring for more. Domestic opposition to the war is at its peak. Protests,
demonstrations, and draft card burnings led by students, hippies, and others tar the national
headlines. The war emerges as the most prominent issue in the upcoming 1968 election, and the
nation holds with bated breath what its leaders will do.

II. THE PRESIDENT

“If you do everything, you’ll win.”

-Lyndon Johnson

If you asked him, Lyndon Baines Johnson never really

wanted a war in Vietnam. In all honesty, he inherited it from
Kennedy and Eisenhower. Regardless, he is the one who
escalated it. What started as a quick and quiet response to the
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Gulf of Tonkin has escalated far out of control. Anti-war protests and draft dodging, largely
propelled by students, have paralyzed major cities and campuses. As the monetary cost of the
war ramps up, the tax hikes and inflation used to pay for it grow unpopular with it. Now in an
election year, President Johnson is up against the wall, with enemies on all sides. Conservatives,
never liking him in the first place, cry wolf over disorder in the streets. His beloved Democratic
Party, the party of Roosevelt and the New Deal, descends into a chaotic melee between doves
and hawks. Liberals both in and out of the party, once entranced by Johnson’s dreams of a
“Great Society,” are now his staunchest enemies as the nation’s commitment to Vietnam drowns
out calls for a domestic war on poverty. Ever since his hardscrabble youth growing up in the
Texas hill country, Lyndon has always wanted power. Getting into the House in the 1930s on the
back of the New Deal, he knew his fate was never just to be a mere backbencher representative.
In 1948, he lied, cheated, scammed, frauded, and stole his way to represent Texas in the United
States Senate, now presenting himself as a true Southern conservative. Johnson made friends
with the old establishment of the Democratic Party and, with some cajoling, made it to Senate
Majority Leader. In 1960, he was elected Vice President along with Kennedy, which on paper
was the culmination of his career. However, Johnson found himself isolated as Vice President, as
Kennedy trusted other advisors, such as his brother Robert. Everything changed in 1963;
Kennedy was shot, and Johnson finally made it to the top of the mountain. The last few years
were a blur. There were moments of triumph, Civil Rights, Voting Rights, the War on Poverty.
Then moments of defeat, the Watts Riots, the Tet Offensive, and the anti-war protests Now
having achieved what he has sought his entire life, Johnson has to find some sort of resolution to
the Vietnamese conflict before his party and presidency collapse around him.

III. THE ADVISORS

“I think it is a very important war, and I am pleased to be

identified with it and do whatever I can to win it.”
-Robert McNamara

If you asked your average American, they would say

Vietnam is Lyndon Johnson’s War. If you asked a Beltway
insider, they would probably say its Robert McNamara’s War. Starting his career working at
Ford Motors, working to make the company more efficient and profitable, the ambitious
McNamara opted to put his methods of managerial science into play at Kennedy’s Department of
State. Since then, he has been the strongest advocate for an increased American presence in
Vietnam. Articulating Domino Theory, which states that if South Vietnam fell to communism, so
would the rest of southeast Asia. As well as this, he believed in the doctrine of “massive
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retaliation,” and as such, he has been the biggest cheerleader for a heavy handed American
intervention in Vietnam to crush the Vietcong. Not just in military intervention, McNamara has
absolute faith in the South Vietnamese government, going further than some other members of
the administration, visiting the country thrice and publicly proclaiming that the Vietcong would
soon defect and crumble. These predictions, as of early 1968 at least, have not panned out, and as
the main spokesman for government actions on the conflict, McNamara, along with his
president, is one of the faces of the most unpopular war in American history. One must wonder
if, under all of this pressure, he is changing his mind about intervention in Vietnam.
Someone who definitely isn't is General William Westmoreland. If Bobby McNamara is the
face of the war’s justification, then Westmoreland is the face of its persecution. An accomplished
veteran of the Second World War, Westmoreland was placed in command of the U.S. Army in
Vietnam and decided on a strategy of attrition to drain the Vietcong of their manpower and
strength. Massive and destructive bombing campaigns, an equally massive troop buildup, and
even usage of defoliants such as Agent Orange to reduce the thick Vietnamese jungle and make
direct confrontation with the enemy easier. As much as Westmoreland was convinced these
methods would work, they seemingly haven’t. The heavy bombing of the North, while unabided,
has done little to halt supplies coming to the Vietcong. While the increased troop buildup has
both been ineffective, and unpopular domestically. The ongoing Tet Offensive, beginning in
January has brutally targeted South Vietnamese urban centers. The offensive is seen by many as
the death knell for the administration’s persecution of the war. Unlike his boss, Westmoreland
doesn't have an easy way out of being gracefully voted out; he’s an army general, and he’ll fight
until the war is done.

IV. THE OPPOSITION

“About one-fifth of the people are against

everything all the time.”
-Robert F. Kennedy

In August of 1966, a Gallup poll registered that 69% of Americans thought the Vietnam War was
the most important issue facing the nation. Another poll in October 1967 registered for the first
time that more Americans said it was a mistake to send troops to Vietnam (47%) than others
(44%). While the average American is slowly souring to the Vietnam conflict, there are those
who have been against it from the beginning. The shouters, the demonstrators, the
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students—there is one person that holds as much credibility with these groups as one Tom
Hayden. A dedicated organizer and founder of the Students for a Democratic Society, Hayden
has been organizing protests against the war since 1965, even visiting North Vietnam that same
year. The SDS has been intersected with and inspired by the concurrent Civil Rights Movement,
leading a new political current labeled the “New Left”. Rejecting both orthodox Marxism and
mainstream social democracy, the New Left prides itself on using direct action and social
disruption to push change rather than traditional forms of political organization. This doesn’t
mean that the New Left lacks friends in high places, which is where Senator Eugene McCarthy
comes in. McCarthy initially served quietly as a Senator from Minnesota, another one of the
many following in the state’s Democratic tradition. While he voted in favor of the Gulf of Tonkin
resolution, McCarthy’s opinion on the war, like the rest of the nation broadly, began to slowly
sour. McCarthy’s opinion of the war was so strong in fact that he did something unthinkable,
challenge the sitting incumbent. As of October 1967, McCarthy has launched an insurgent
campaign to primary the incumbent Lyndon Johnson. Primarying an incumbent in American
politics is not rare, but its usually nigh-impossible. In the unique case of Johnson, whose
approval ratings languish around 41%, it might be possible. Now, in 1968, the nation waits with
baited breath on the results of the New Hampshire primary and see if McCarthy’s gamble pays
off. One of the many who wait with bated breath is New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
Bobby Kennedy is a man that needs little introduction. He served in the cabinet of his slain
brother and almost religiously supported civil rights efforts, running for Senate in 1964.
Kennedy has a somewhat complicated relationship with Vietnam, however. He supported
involvement when he served as his brother’s Attorney General, but as Senator he became the
chief liberal critic of the war as early as 1966. An icon of liberal democrats, and the heir apparent
to the Kennedy dynasty, everyone expects Robert to run for president. But he has shown
uncharacteristic indecisiveness now, and awaits to see if McCarthy’s gamble makes the whole
venture worth it.
 Congreso Estudiantil de las Naciones Unidas

V. THE VIETNAMESE

“As you know, the country of Vietnam is one;

the Americans have launched an undeclared
war.”
-Ho Chi Mihn

With all the turmoil happening in the United States, one can easily forget what this war was all
about in the first place. After the Geneva Accords in 1954, the original plan was to hold unified
Vietnamese elections in 1956 where one leader would be elected for the whole country. However
the president of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, withdrew from the plan after fearing that Ho
Chi Mihn would win the election. In 1957, a communist insurgency began in the South
Vietnamese hinterlands that was covertly backed by the North. Diem, who had already been
receiving tacit American support due to the anti-communist stance of his rule began receiving
active material aid from the United States, beginning the most controversial American foreign
policy adventure in recent history. Diem was never a popular leader, despised for his harsh
crackdown on communists and failed land reform. His unpopularity came to a head when Diem
began persecuting Buddhists, another deeply impopular decision done as a result of his Roman
Catholic bias. The United States, seeing Diem as more as a liability at this point, supported the
Army to overthrow him, which they did in 1963. Diem was unceremoniously stripped of his
power and assassinated, with the leadership of South Vietnam trading hands between various
generals during this period. All the while, the country became highly dependent on American
military intervention to fight the burgeoning Vietcong insurgency. South Vietnamese troops were
themselves very unenthusiastic and plagued by low morale, having more sympathy for the
peasent revolt than the corrupt government in Saigon they were supposedly fighting for.
Currently the South Vietnamese are led by Nguyen Van Thieu, a general who finally made it to
a leadership position after a power struggle. The position of the South Vietnamese government is
currently threadbare, while the somewhat promising results of the Tet Offensive, which while
catastrophic for the U.S domestically, have been largely a military defeat for the North
Vietnamese. Regardless, massive corruption, authoritarianism, and overreliance on United States
aid mark a unsteady path for the South Vietnamese.
 Congreso Estudiantil de las Naciones Unidas

FULL DELEGATES LIST

- Lyndon B. Johnson
- William Westmoreland
- Robert McNamara
- Eugene McCarthy
- Robert Kennedy
- Tom Hayden
- Richard Nixon
- Ho Chi Mihn
- Nguyen Van Theiu
- Mao Zedong
- Leonid Brezhnev

DELEGATE QUESTIONS

This committee takes place in February of 1968; please keep that in mind for your research

1. What is your delegate’s stance on the Vietnam conflict? Are they a hawk or a dove?
2. Whether they are a hawk or a dove, what solutions or changes to current policy does your
delegation propose at the moment?
3. What other delegations would your delegation be willing to cooperate with to further
common goals?
4. If American, what partisan affiliation does your delegation hold? Are they Democrat,
Republican, or something else?

If you have any further questions or would just like to reach out, please reach me at my email at
benjaminbigio15@gmail.com

Best of luck!
 Congreso Estudiantil de las Naciones Unidas

REFERENCES

https://www.britannica.com/event/Gulf-of-Tonkin-incident

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Viet-Cong

https://www.britannica.com/place/Indochina

https://www.archives.gov/research/military/vietnam-war/casualty-statistics

https://www.jstor.org/stable/27552566

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-S-McNamara

https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Westmoreland

https://news.gallup.com/poll/18097/iraq-versus-vietnam-comparison-public-opinion.aspx

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tom-Hayden

https://www.britannica.com/topic/New-Left

https://www.americanyawp.com/text/27-the-sixties/

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/lyndon-b-johnson-public-approval

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-F-Kennedy

https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/the-kennedy-family/robert-f-kennedy

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nguyen-Van-Thieu

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ngo-Dinh-Diem