During the two years following his shepherding of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution through the United States Senate in 1964, J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC), came to the conclusion that the war in Vietnam was essentially a civil war and that the United States was simply supporting one side against the other. By the time President Lyndon B. Johnson left the White House in 1969, Fulbright was insisting that the insurgency in South Vietnam was chiefly a response to the repressive policies of the government in Saigon and its American ally, that the war had no bearing on the vital interests of the United States, and that the nation's involvement there was corroding its institutions and corrupting its public life. Though he was a true internationalist, Fulbright, anguished by what he perceived to be America's uncontrollable impulse to dominate, eventually sought refuge in a realism that bordered on neoisolationism. In “The Price of Empire” (1967) and The Arrogance of Power (1966) he advocated an Asian policy similar to that espoused in 1950 by former President Herbert Hoover and Senator Robert A. Taft.

In public hearings, on television, and in Congress, the junior senator from Arkansas worked assiduously to erode national support for the Johnson administration's policies in Vietnam. The motives and circumstances surrounding Fulbright's decision to confront Lyndon Johnson were hotly debated by his contemporaries and are of increasing interest to historians.