ABSTRACT
In retrospect, the fear that America would be left alone in the world against two great victorious empires in Europe and Asia seems terribly exaggerated. All Americans would agree that American strategic interests required substantial assistance to the belligerents against Germany. Naval action in the North Atlantic, with American destroyers dropping depth-charges on German submarines and receiving torpedoes in turn, constituted America's first limited war. A narrow analysis of military and political conditions necessary to achieve such an outcome would not deal with the broader political, economic, and moral costs of the war, to Vietnam and to the United States. Lyndon Johnson failed to mention the clandestine American-sponsored air-attacks and South Vietnamese naval actions against the North Vietnam coast that had been conducted prior to the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. If Hanoi interpreted the American destroyers presence in the Gulf as part of those actions, then its response was something less than "open aggression".
