Reprinted from the OAH Magazine of History
7 (Fall 1992). ISSN 0882-228X

Gulf of Tonkin
Erich Martel

Introduction
The U.S. decision to prevent a communist government from taking power in Vietnam dates back to President Truman’s decision in 1950 to support the French war against the communist-led Viet Minh. From that point on, U.S. involvement continued to grow and became part of the Far Eastern component of the “containment policy.” The U.S. commitment increased gradually during the 1950s and early 1960s, with broad bipartisan support. In 1955 the U.S. government installed of Ngo Dinh Diem as premier of South Vietnam. This decision followed the 1954 Geneva Accords that called for the temporary division of Vietnam into a communist, Viet Minh-controlled north and a noncommunist south. The U.S. committed its resources and military to maintaining the south as a separate, noncommunist state. Indeed, each of the four U.S. presidents involved with Vietnam policy after Truman, beginning with Eisenhower, could justifiably argue that he was merely keeping promises made by his predecessors.

In the late 1950s, guerrilla war broke out between communist-led insurgents, dubbed the “Viet Cong” (pejoratively, “communist”), and the Diem government. The U.S. responded with an increasing flow of economic aid and military advisers and equipment. Following the assassination of Diem in November 1963, Presidents Kennedy and then Johnson reiterated U.S. support to the succession of generals that took over the Saigon government. By the end of 1963, fifteen thousand U.S. military advisers were in South Vietnam.

The U.S. military escalation in Vietnam was a calculated response to the battlefield successes of the Viet Cong and the continued inability of the South Vietnamese government to suppress them. The gradual nature of escalation reflected both a hope and a fear on the part of top U.S. strategists and policy makers. The hope was that a few more contingents of advisers would enable the Saigon government to turn the corner and end the Viet Cong threat. The fear was that rapid escalation&emdash;and certainly a declaration of war against North Vietnam&emdash;might provoke China, its northern neighbor, to enter the war as it had in Korea. Such an expansion of the war might lead to closer Sino-Soviet relations and perhaps even nuclear confrontation. Memories of the recent Cuban missile crisis, which put the U.S. on the brink of nuclear war, loomed large in the minds of U.S. policy makers.

The process of transforming a distant conflict from a war with American career soldiers acting as advisers to one involving large numbers of combat units largely made up of draftees and short-term enlistees required more than a restatement of previous promises. Rather, it required explicit congressional support in the form of a formal resolution that would allow the president military options virtually equivalent to a declaration of war but without the ominous portent of such a declaration. The Tonkin Gulf Resolution fitted that requirement and prepared the public for the military challenge ahead.

The Tonkin Gulf Incident
On 2 August 1964, the U.S. destroyer Maddox, outfitted for electronic eavesdropping, was cruising off the coast of North Vietnam. It was authorized to gain intelligence on North Vietnamese radar facilities and to maintain communications with South Vietnamese commandos conducting raids along the North Vietnamese coast. As the Maddox approached Hon Me Island in the Red River Delta, three to five miles inside the twelve-mile limit claimed by North Vietnam, three North Vietnamese torpedo boats raced to intercept it. In the ensuing engagement, acknowledged by both sides, one bullet struck the Maddox; Navy jets from the nearby carrier Ticonderoga sank one of the attacking boats and damaged the other two.

President Johnson ordered the Maddox and a second destroyer, the C. Turner Joy, to continue patroling off the coast of North Vietnam. They were ordered to stage daylight runs to within eight miles of the coast and four miles of the off-coast island to test the twelve-mile limit, which the U.S. did not recognize. South Vietnamese patrol boats were simultaneously conducting nearby coastal raids. Assumedly, the North Vietnamese regarded both as part of a single coordinated operation.

In the early evening of 4 August 1964, in a wild and sonar-distorting storm, officers of both destroyers believed they were under attack from North Vietnamese torpedo boats. Questionable sonar readings suggested that many torpedoes might have been launched, but since no sightings of torpedoes or torpedo boats were confirmed, and since neither ship sustained any damage, evidence of an actual attack could not be established. Ray Cline, deputy director of the CIA, recalled years later that after examining reports of this second incident, “I concluded that they were either unsound or that they dealt with the first incident.” Even President Johnson is said to have remarked to an aide after the second reported attack, “Hell, those dumb stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish.” A 1968 investigation by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by J. William Fulbright, concluded that the second incident almost certainly had not occurred (1).

Nonetheless, President Johnson felt that evidence of an attack was substantial and that the U.S. would have to retaliate. White House aide Kenneth O’Donnell later wrote that the President, under harsh criticism from Republican presidential opponent Barry Goldwater for being soft on communism, felt the need to act decisively. He ordered air attacks against four North Vietnamese torpedo boat bases and a major oil storage facility. Announcing his action on television, Johnson stated, “Repeated acts of violence against the armed forces of the United States must be met not only with alert defense, but with positive reply. That reply is being given as I speak to you tonight” (2).

On 5 August 1964, President Johnson sent the prepared resolution to Congress. Several members of the House of Representatives voiced reservations. Only two senators vigorously opposed it, including Wayne Morse, Democrat from Oregon, who was outspoken:

“Mr. President [the president pro tempore of the Senate], I rise to speak in opposition to the joint resolution. I do so with a very sad heart. But I consider the resolution . . . to be naught but a resolution which embodies a predated declaration of war . . .

“I am convinced that a continuation of the U.S. unilateral military action in Southeast Asia, which has now taken on the aspects of open aggressive fighting, endangers the peace of the world . . .

“What about the 21,000 American troops in South Vietnam advising the government?

“What about the American air attack, on North Vietnam naval bases?

“What about the shelling of the islands in Tonkin Bay by South Vietnamese vessels? These were all clear acts of war . . .

“I shall not support any substitute which takes the form of military action to expand the war or that encourages our puppets in Saigon to expand the war . . .

“I shall not support any substitute which takes the form of a predated declaration of war. In my judgment, that is what the pending joint resolution is . . .” (3)

Although he would later strongly criticize the U.S. war, Senator Fulbright portrayed the resolution as a moderate measure “calculated to prevent the spread of war.” He succeeded, for the time, in blunting public doubts about the war (4).

When it came to a Senate vote on 10 August 1964, only Morse and Ernest Gruening, Democrat from Alaska, opposed it. The vote in the House was unanimous. Opinion polls indicated that eighty-five percent of the public supported the president’s decision on Vietnam.

Two Resolutions
The Tonkin Gulf Resolution was, in fact, a revision of a lengthier draft drawn up in May 1964 by presidential aide William Bundy, which said that

“if the President determines the necessity thereof, the United States is prepared, upon the request of the Government of South Viet Nam . . . to use all measures, including the commitment of armed forces to assist that government in the defense of its independence and territorial integrity against aggression or subversion supported, controlled or directed from any Communist country” (6).

Slated to be presented to Congress in the week of 22 June 1964, President Johnson held it back, feeling that the situation in Vietnam was not yet critical.

The propitious moment arrived with the events of 2 and 4 August 1964. The draft of the bill was broadened and now “authorized the President to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.” When Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara testified before the Senate, Morse challenged the contention that the attack was “unprovoked.” McNamara replied that the navy “played absolutely no part in, was not associated with, was not aware of, any South Vietnamese [patrol boat] action, if there were any” (7). At a Foreign Relations Committee hearing in 1968, McNamara admitted that the Maddox captain had known of South Vietnamese operations, but was unaware of “details.”

The Administration’s View of Southeast Asia
U.S. policy incorporated in the resolution was a formal statement of widely held U.S. views on the nature and regional implications of the Vietnamese conflict. Additional insight can be gained by examining National Security Action Memorandum 288, “U.S. Objectives in South Vietnam” dated 17 March 1964:

“We seek an independent noncommunist South Vietnam. We do not require that it serve as a Western base or as a member of a Western Alliance. South Vietnam must be free, however, to accept outside assistance as required to maintain its security. This assistance should be able to take the form not only of economic and social measures but also police and military help to root out and control insurgent elements.

“Unless we can achieve this objective in South Vietnam, almost all of Southeast Asia will probably fall under Communist dominance [all of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia], accommodate to Communism so as to remove effective U.S. and anti-Communist influence [Burma], or fall under the domination of forces not now explicitly Communist but likely then to become so [Indonesia taking over Malaysia]. Thailand might hold for a period without help, but would be under grave pressure. Even the Philippines would become shaky, and the threat to India on the West, Australia and New Zealand to the South, and Taiwan, Korea and Japan to the North and East would be greatly increased” (8).

This is, of course, an elaboration of the famous “domino theory,” central to U.S. fears about Southeast Asia and a key justification of the U.S. “containment policy” in Asia.

U.S. retaliatory air raids against the north and wording of the resolution authorizing the president to “take all necessary measures . . . to prevent further aggression” provided him with the option to attack the north in addition to escalating U.S. military presence in the south. In fact, it was northern aggression against the south rather than popular southern disillusion with the Saigon government that was seen by many, including President Johnson, as the major source of the Viet Cong guerrilla insurgency. The president stated this view of the nature of the war in his widely publicized speech on 7 April 1965 at Johns Hopkins University:

“The first reality is that North Vietnam has attacked the independent nation of South Vietnam. Its object is total conquest.

“Of course, some of the people of South Vietnam are participating in attack on their own government. But trained men and supplies, orders and arms, flow in a constant stream from North to South.

“This support is the heartbeat of the war” (9).

In 1970 the Tonkin Gulf Resolution was repealed by Congress, a reflection of President Nixon’s policy of Vietnamization and gradual deescalation of the U.S. military presence in Vietnam.

Teaching the Document
World War II was the last war the U.S. entered with a formal declaration of war as required by the Constitution. In addition to Vietnam, a major war in Korea as well as such minor engagements as the Persian Gulf War were all conducted without such a declaration. It would be useful for students to compare the Tonkin Gulf Resolution with the president’s war-making powers and the forms of congressional support in other wars. Students could examine the reasons why, since World War II, presidents have circumvented formal declaration and how this reflects the international reality in which U.S. foreign policy has been conducted.

Another useful comparison is with the Spanish-American War, which started after a long build-up of U.S.-Spanish tensions over Cuba. The incident that led to war in this case, the explosion of the battleship Maine, bears some similarity to the incident(s) in the Tonkin Gulf: the incidents themselves were shrouded in mystery, the American people and Congress were willing to accept their government’s assigning of blame for the incidents. In 1898 the incident led Congress to declare war against Spain. The very defensive wording of that resolution is also quite similar to the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.

Endnotes
1. Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: The Viking Press, 1983), 374-375.
2. Ibid., 372.
3. Marvin Gettleman, ed., Viet Nam: History, Documents, Opinions (New York: Fawcett Crest Books, 1965), 382.
4. Karnow, Vietnam, 376.
5. Thomas G. Paterson, ed. Major Problems in American Foreign Policy, II (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath & Co., 1984), 590.
6. Neil Sheehan et al., eds. The Pentagon Papers (New York: Bantam Books, 1971), 287.
7. Karnow, Vietnam, 375.
8. Gettleman, ed., Viet Nam, 283-284.
9. Marcus Raskin and Bernard Fall, eds., The Viet-Nam Reader (New York: Vintage books, 1965), 344.

Erich Martel teaches World History and AP U.S. History at Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington, D.C.

“Whereas naval units of the Communist regime in Vietnam, in violation of the principles of the Charter of the United Nations and of international law, have deliberately and repeatedly attacked United States naval vessels lawfully present in international waters, and have thereby created a serious threat to international peace; and

“Whereas these attacks are part of a deliberate and systematic campaign of aggression that the Communist regime in North Vietnam has been waging against its neighbors and the nations joined with them in the collective defense of their freedom; and

“Whereas the United States is assisting the peoples of southeast Asia to protect their freedom and has no territorial, military or political ambitions in that area, but desires only that these peoples should be left in peace to work out their own destinies in their own way: Now, therefore, be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Congress approves and supports the determination of the President, as Commander in Chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.

“SEC. 2. The United States regards as vital to its national interest and to world peace the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia. Consonant with the Constitution of the United States and the Charter of the United Nations and in accordance with its obligations under the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, the United States is, therefore, prepared, as the President determines, to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force, to assist any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty requesting assistance in defense of its freedom . . .”(5)

Students should use the following questions to open their interviews, but the most interesting experiences often result from the questioner turning each response into a more probing question. When possible, interviews with relatives are recommended, as they are often more meaningful to students.

1. Where were you in 1968?
2. How did the war in Vietnam affect you?
A. If your respondent was in the military, ask for specifics:
• what branch (army, navy, marines, air force)?
• what type unit (infantry, artillery, destroyer)?
• what was his/her job/skill/specialty?
• rank (corporal, lieutenant)?
• when and where he/she served
• memorable incidents (battles, unusual experiences)
• how has Vietnam affected his/her life?
B. If your respondent was active in the antiwar movement, how did he/she express opposition? What led him/her to oppose the war? How did his/her views on the war affect relations with family and friends?
3. What was your reaction to the political turmoil of 1968:
• assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy
• Eugene McCarthy’s primary campaign against L.B.J.
• the president’s decision not to seek reelection
• riots at the Chicago Democratic convention
• Nixon’s victory over Hubert Humphrey?
4. What do you remember about the social (campus, urban) unrest of 1968? How did it affect you?
5. What do you think would have happened if King had lived? Robert Kennedy?
6. How have your views on government and foreign policy changed since 1968?

Organizing your Report
• Identify each person interviewed (name is optional) by his/her relation to you (uncle, friend, neighbor, stranger).
• Summarize responses in report form.
• Write a conclusion of how your interview affected your views of the war in Vietnam and the domestic turmoil.

(Adapted from a questionnaire developed by Phil Straw, who teaches a course on the Vietnam War at the University of Maryland).