ABSTRACT
John F. Kennedy, sensing the American Cold War angst during his 1960 presidential campaign, had attacked what he called the “horse and buggy” policies of the Eisenhower administration. Kennedy continued the Eisenhower policies in Vietnam, but he significantly raised the stakes and instigated a small-scale secret limited American war. The most important consequence of the Kennedy administration’s words and deeds from 1961 to 1963 was to increase sharply the American stake in Vietnam and to put the United States on course for a major war in Southeast Asia. To a large majority of Vietnamese and too much of the rest of the world, Americans, having replaced the French in Vietnam, appeared to be trying to thwart Asian self-determination and preserve Western neo-colonial influence in Southeast Asia. For many critics of the US policy in Vietnam, the National Liberation Front was a standing contradiction to Washington’s oft-proclaimed charge that the southern insurgency was in reality an invasion from North Vietnam.
