ABSTRACT
The Vietnam War occupies a special place in the national psyche, a cypher for the United States’ most humiliating defeat and for the memory of divisions at home that still reverberate in the nation’s political cleavages and culture wars, to an extent that more recent controversial interventions do not. Irrespective of how much racist views contributed to a change of heart in the Roosevelt administration, shortly before his death, the president tacitly consented to a French return by making any trusteeship decision in the Global South dependent on the colonial power’s preferences. The Korean War that broke out in 1950 directed US attention on Asia even more, with ominous implications of a major communist push in one of the most populous regions on the globe. The resolution gave Johnson what he wanted, political cover for any course of action in Vietnam, and the ability to neutralize Vietnam as a campaign issue.
