10.2: Lyndon B. Johnson: “Peace without Conquest” Speech about Vietnam (7 April 1965)

Lyndon Johnson inherited the Vietnam War from his predecessor, John F. Kennedy, who in turn inherited the war from Dwight D. Eisenhower. There was a political consensus, regardless of party, that any country around the world that fell to communism, no matter how small and insignificant, represented a defeat for the United States because of the effect that it would have on America’s international reputation. Johnson’s problem was that as South Vietnam, which had become a client state of the United States, became increasingly unstable, it required more economic and military aid, as well as American troops, to keep that country from falling to communist insurgents supported by the Soviet client state in North Vietnam. By 1965, when he gave this address at Johns Hopkins University, Johnson had to make the case to the American people in the starkest possible terms in order to flag up wavering support for the war at home.