Commitments: Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Ngo Dinh Diem

Over the decade from 1953 to 1963, US policy toward Vietnam moved from a measured containment approach to an avowed commitment to the survival of the Republic of Vietnam in the south as a global strategic imperative. The colonial origins of the French war, doubts about Paris’s ability to prevail, and the historically marginal nature of US interests in Southeast Asia initially restrained the American involvement. The Truman administration wanted no American war in Vietnam, but was willing to aid France in Indochina for reasons of keeping good relations with a NATO ally and because of regional security concerns in Asia. In January 1953 Dwight D. Eisenhower became president, and US policy continued to concentrate on aid to France’s war effort. After little more than a year, however, Paris decided to end its almost eight-year quest to subdue the Vietminh by force. Unwilling to concede the region to communist-led political regimes, Washington chose to seek a strategic outpost in South Vietnam and provided US aid directly to Vietnamese opponents of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). The Eisenhower administration identified Ngo Dinh Diem as the best available leader of this effort. By 1961 when John F. Kennedy entered the White House, Diem’s American-backed government in Saigon remained extremely insecure. The new administration increased the US commitment to its ally. The level of US economic and military aid and the number of American military personnel grew significantly. At the time Kennedy and Diem fell victim to assassination in November 1963, the United States remained firmly committed to preventing unification of Vietnam under the DRV.