The question of sincerity in Lyndon Johnson's attempts to seek a negotiated settlement of the Vietnam war

The matter of sincerity in Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam policy and seeking a negotiated settlement of the war is a very complicated problem. In "The Secret Search for Peace in Vietnam", published in 1968, Stuart Loory and David Kraslow came to the conclusion that President LBJ was insincere. Of course there are arguments which stand behind this statement, such as the fact that there had been many peace talks and opportunities to end the war but every time something went wrong. Whether the diplomat didn't show up, some points in negotiations were missing/forgotten, or just simply both sides couldn't find an agreement.

As the famous saying goes, when there's a will, there's a way. Wasn't perhaps the lack of will the key factor then? Nonsense - one would say. But if we look closely at the story of Vietnam negotiations, indeed we start to seriously doubt if it wasn't the key. Over the years of War, many initiatives were taken, but none of them ended with success. We start to ask ourselves - what was the reason of such ineffectiveness?

One of the most important peace initiatives was "Marigold" - the secret Polish-Italian peace initiative, which took place in 1966. It took effort to open direct talks between the United States and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. One of the reasons why Marigold failed was that both USA and DRV (North Vietnam) wanted to talk from a position of a strength and didn't want to look like it was asking for talks. Also one of the factors were the ongoing bombings of North Vietnam, although, as we know now, it wasn't the main setback. North Vietnamese were willing to talk despite that. With help of John Grounowski, the ambassador of USA in Poland, the meeting with NV's got an exact date and place - December 6, Warsaw. However, it never took place. It was already scheduled, but didn't come to life. There were some major misunderstandings, or should I say communication problems, between Grounowski, Poland's foreign minister Adam Rapacki and NV's. North Vietnamese were waiting all day for the ambassador to show up but he didn't. After that incident, talks broke down. Another peace initiative was dead. In this case, it looks like both sides were really willing to talk so insincerity or lack of willingness couldn't have been the problems. This time in Johnson's opinion the Poles were the ones to blame. The President was disgusted and angry - he thought the Poles have never even set up the meeting. That train of thought led him to believe (or at least say) that Poland didn't even have the authority to arrange direct talks and Hanoi wasn't even ready to negotiate.

If the matter of Lyndon Baines Johnson's sincerity in looking for peace wasn't the question in Marigold case, then what happened later to lead the reporters to claim he was insincere? Basically the main reason must've been the lack of readiness to make the first step by both sides. What I mean is that despite many talks, which have taken place over the years, the fight continued, mainly because each side (USA and DRV) wanted to come out on top. More Vietnamese civilians and American soldiers died, more villages were being bombed or burned, while the great American superpower couldn't (or didn't want to) make the violence cease.

Stuart Loory and David Kraslow wrote that Lyndon Johnson was insincere in his search for peace through a negotiated settlement. While thinking about that problem and studying the latter materials speaking on the subject (after 1968), I came to a slightly different conclusion. Of course I'm not an expert but from what I understood he was sincere. He definitely wanted peace, whether through negotiations or any other form. He wanted peace but couldn't make it happen and that's where his drama lays. First of all, LBJ didn't want to be the first American President to lose a war. He didn't want to (or couldn't) just back down, tell the troops to pack their things and go home. The reason why USA was engaged in Vietnam War in the first place was its informal duty of fighting the Communism. The doctrine of containment obliged United States to stop communism from spreading, and in this case it meant going to Vietnam and helping the South fight against North.

LBJ was an idealist, or in other words, a dreamer. He wanted the world to be a better place. To prove my point, I will make a quotation from President's Peace Without Conquest speech from April 7th 1965:

"We fight because we must fight if we are to live in a world where every country can shape its own destiny, and only in such a world will our own freedom be finally secure.This kind of world will never be built by bombs or bullets. Yet the infirmities of man are such that force must often precede reason and the waste of war, the works of peace. We wish this were not so. But we must deal with the world as it is, if it is ever to be as we wish."

Lyndon Baines Johnson was a tragic character - a man with great ambitions, entangled in a war he didn't want to, but had to face. Taking over the presidency after John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963, he'd never even in his wildest dreams think that Vietnam - a distant country in Asia, and its internal affairs, would ruin all his big plans for building stronger and better America. That he would have to put all his progressive social programs and the idea of "Great Society" aside and focus on fighting communists in Asia. For an individual like LBJ it was truly a nightmare. He had hopes to "feed the hungry and shelter the homeless" and "dreams to provide education and medical care to the browns and the blacks and the lame and the poor" but instead of becoming a peace icon and a well-known social activist, he ended up being hated by many, and loved by few. He witnessed many anti-war protests, being called a killer by youths chanting "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?". His presidency was destroyed by Vietnam War, to the point when Johnson resigned from being a candidate in the next Presidential elections. He couldn't bare the pressure and stress caused by Vietnam War. Years after his Presidency was over, in 1977, a journalist and LBJ's biographer Doris Kearns released a book called "Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream". One of the most interesting things that LBJ told Kearns is featured here, and it's a well known quotation by now:

"I knew from the start that I was bound to be crucified either way I moved. If I left the woman I really loved - the Great Society - in order to get involved in that bitch of a war on the other side of the world, then I would lose everything at home. All my programs (...) But if I left that war and let the Communists take over South Vietnam, then I would be seen as a coward and my nation would be seen as an appeaser and we would both find it impossible to accomplish anything for anybody anywhere on the entire globe"

What shines through this fragment is Johnson's helplessness - no matter what he would have done, it wouldn't have been completely right. He had to stand tall for his nation and continue the war, despite knowing how brutal it was. Numerous attempts to end the war peacefully through negotiations led to nowhere. As the years passed, the question rose - why are American troops still in Vietnam? More soldiers dying - why? The President addressed this issue during his already mentioned "The Peace Without Conquest Speech" in April 1965:

"We are there because we have a promise to keep. Since 1954 every American President has offered support to the people of South Viet-Nam. We have helped to build, and we have helped to defend. Thus, over many years, we have made a national pledge to help South Viet-Nam defend its independence. And I intend to keep that promise."

Furthermore, he added:

"To dishonour that pledge, to abandon this small and brave nation to its enemies, and to the terror that must follow, would be an unforgivable wrong."

All in all, in my opinion Lyndon B. Johnson's attempts to seek a negotiated settlement of the Vietnam War were sincere. The fact that none of them reached its destiny is a whole other problem and it can't be fully blamed on the President himself. The situation could've been described as a "checkmate" - both countries, USA and Democratic Republic Of Vietnam, held on to their positions and didn't want to back down, nor move forward risking losing its powerful status. USA wanted negotiations on its terms, and North Vietnamese wanted negotiations on its terms - with that attitude, there was no way they could match. Concluding, it's a very complicated and (still to this day) controversial subject and to know the whole truth, you'd have to be Lyndon B. Johnson. It's really hard to tell what was going through President's mind in the years of his presidency, but nevertheless - in the light of documents and studies regarding that topic, I'll hold on to my belief that Lyndon Baines Johnson really was sincere. Just the tough situation he was in and the tangled webs of politics prevented him from finalizing the negotiations and replacing a major failure in foreign policy with a much bigger success.