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Changing Nature 

Involvement 

The United States' involvement in 

Vietnam began as an occupation strictly 

run by military advisors, but throughout 

the late 1960s and the early 1970s the 

intervention became an all-out war with 

more than 500,000 U.S. troops and 

non-stop aerial attacks.

In 1961, South Vietnam signed a military and 

economic aid treaty with the United States leading 

to the arrival (1961) of U.S. support troops and the 

formation (1962) of the U.S. Military Assistance 

Command. Mounting dissatisfaction with the 

ineffectiveness and corruption of Diem's 

government culminated (Nov., 1963) in a military 

coup engineered by Duong Van Minh; Diem was 

executed. No one was able to establish control in 

South Vietnam until June, 1965, when Nguyen Cao 

Ky became premier, but U.S. military aid to South 

Vietnam increased, especially after the U.S. Senate 

passed the Tonkin Gulf resolution (Aug. 7, 1964) at 

the request of President Lyndon B. Johnson.

In early 1965, the United States began air raids on 

North Vietnam and on Communist-controlled areas 

in the South; by 1966 there were 190,000 U.S. 

troops in South Vietnam. North Vietnam, 

meanwhile, was receiving armaments and technical 

assistance from the Soviet Union and other 

Communist countries. Despite massive U.S. 

military aid, heavy bombing, the growing U.S. 

troop commitment (which reached nearly 550,000 

in 1969), and some political stability in South 

Vietnam after the election (1967) of Nguyen Van 

Thieu as president, the United States and South 

Vietnam were unable to defeat the Viet Cong and 

North Vietnamese forces.

As the situation continued to deteriorate, Kennedy 

sent two key advisers, economist Walt W. Rostow 

and former army chief of staff Maxwell Taylor, to 

Vietnam in the fall of 1961 to assess conditions. 

The two concluded that the South Vietnamese 

government was losing the war with the Viet Cong 

and had neither the will nor the ability to turn the 

tide on its own. They recommended a greatly 

expanded program of military assistance, including 

such items as helicopters and armoured personnel 

carriers, and an ambitious plan to place American 

advisers and technical experts at all levels and in 

all agencies of the Vietnamese government and 

military.

President Johnson's goal for U.S. involvement in 

Vietnam was not for the U.S. to win the war, but 

for U.S. troops to bolster South Vietnam's defenses 

until South Vietnam could take over. By entering 

the Vietnam War without a goal to win, Johnson 

set the stage for future public and troop 

disappointment when the U.S. found themselves in 

a stalemate with the North Vietnamese and the 

Viet Cong. 

From 1965 to 1969, the U.S. was involved in a 

limited war in Vietnam. Although there were aerial 

bombings of the North, President Johnson wanted 

the fighting to be limited to South Vietnam. By 

limiting the fighting parameters, the U.S. forces 

would not conduct a serious ground assault into the 

North to attack the communists directly nor would 

there be any strong effort to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh 

Trail (the Viet Cong's supply path that ran through 

Laos and Cambodia). 

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