LBJ: Cold Warrior

Paper Summary:

This essay examines the idea that President Lyndon B. Johnson was actually a strong supporter of containment and a hardline anti-communist foreign policy. The author discusses how the failure of his foreign policy is what has made detente his legacy.

From the Paper:

"The issue of whether Johnson weakened containment comes down to the question of what is most important for containment to work. Is it more important to be able to successfully confront your enemy directly or to put up resistance wherever your enemy may attempt to penetrate around the globe? It seems to me that the former is a prerequisite for the latter. Johnson was only able to succeed at resisting communist insurgency in Latin America and elsewhere because the Soviets had not yet caught up to the United States in terms of strategic weapons. In addition, in the areas were Johnson was successful, the Soviets had little direct effect. The one area where the Soviets did become actively involved, Vietnam, was a dismal failure for Johnson and the US."

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