The Kennedy Years and Vietnam

The 1960s form a period of consolidation for the United States in its dealings with the Asia-Pacific region. Much of the policy formulation of the previous decade remained in place during these years and led ineluctably to an ever-expanding American involvement in South Vietnam in an attempt to prevent the emergence of a Communist regime in Saigon. By the end of the 1960s this incremental process had produced the most disastrous and the most divisive episode in postwar American foreign policy. The original Cold War regional premises of the Truman and Eisenhower administrations were continued by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Each in turn enlarged existing commitments in their determination to defend South Vietnam and to protect its allies throughout the wider Southeast Asian region from the contagion of Communism.