Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

• 1. Introduction

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  The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed the United States Congress on the 7th of August 1964, in the span of less than nine hours of debate. It gave President Lyndon B. Johnson the authority to use conventional military force anywhere in Southeast Asia, without Congress ever formally declaring war. Only two senators voted against it: Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska. Every other senator went along, and the House passed it 416 to zero. What followed was one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in American history, opening the door to a full-scale war that would drag on for years and cost tens of thousands of American lives. How did it happen so fast? And what did the congressmen who voted for it actually know?

• 2. A War Already in Motion

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  On the 19th of December 1963, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara returned from Saigon and told President Johnson the situation was "very disturbing." The Viet Cong, he reported, controlled larger percentages of the population, greater amounts of territory, and more strategic hamlets than expected. McNamara was blunt about the South Vietnamese military junta, saying there was "no organized government" and that the generals were too preoccupied with politics to focus on the war. General Curtis LeMay, commander of the Air Force, had already called for a strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam, memorably saying the United States was "swatting flies when we should be going after the manure pile." General Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went further, arguing to Johnson that South Vietnam was "pivotal" to America's global confrontation with Communism, and that losing it would damage American credibility across the Third World. Johnson was privately unconvinced by the domino theory but deeply afraid of something closer to home. He remembered how the fall of China in 1949 had given Senator Joseph McCarthy his opening, and he feared a new McCarthy-type figure would derail his domestic reform agenda if South Vietnam was "lost." Johnson told his generals at a Christmas Eve gathering in 1963: "Just let me get elected, and then you can have your war."

• 3. The Legal Problem

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  In February 1964, Walt Whitman Rostow, director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, identified the core constitutional obstacle: only Congress could declare war. Johnson had no appetite for a formal declaration, which would create immense domestic pressure to invade North Vietnam and, as Johnson recalled from 1950, risked drawing China into the conflict. China, by 1964, also had nuclear weapons. Rostow proposed a congressional resolution instead, one that would give Johnson authority to act without a declaration. William Bundy, assistant secretary for Asia, agreed and pointed to a useful precedent from Johnson's own Senate career: the 1955 Formosa Resolution, which had given President Eisenhower power to use military force to defend Taiwan "as he deems necessary." Johnson himself had voted for that resolution and used his influence as Senate Majority Leader to pass it. Bundy flagged two obstacles. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, a devout Catholic who applied just-war criteria before endorsing any military action, had come back from a visit to South Vietnam in late 1962 deeply disillusioned. Senator Wayne Morse was known for arguing that only Congress held the power to declare war, and he disliked resolutions that diluted that authority. Bundy warned that these "doubtful friends" could give America's European allies an opening to push for negotiations. By the beginning of June 1964, the final draft of the resolution was complete. Acting Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach called it the "functional equivalent of a declaration of war." All that remained was a pretext to send it to Congress.

• 4. The Incident at Sea

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  Through the spring and summer of 1964, Soviet workers were building radar stations and surface-to-air missile batteries across North Vietnam. The U.S. Air Force and Navy needed to know the frequencies those radars used in order to develop jamming systems, and so the Navy increased DESOTO patrols off the North Vietnamese coast. The tactic was to have South Vietnamese commandos land from Norwegian-built aluminium patrol boats and attack North Vietnamese radar stations, forcing the operators to switch on their equipment, which the Americans could then monitor. On the 30th of July 1964, South Vietnamese commandos attempted to attack the radar station on the island of Hon Me but were detected and driven off. The USS Maddox, stationed offshore, picked up the radar frequency that night. On the 2nd of August 1964, the Maddox was attacked by three torpedo boats from North Vietnam's 135th Torpedo Squadron. The boats expended six torpedoes, all misses, and were then engaged by four F-8 Crusader aircraft from an American carrier. The Maddox fired over 280 five-inch shells. Johnson was informed and made the first use of the hotline to Moscow to tell Khrushchev that the United States did not want war. He chose not to use the August 2 incident as his casus belli, fearing North Vietnam could argue the Maddox had been operating in support of the Hon Me raid. He ordered the Maddox and a second destroyer, the USS Turner Joy, to continue patrolling within eight miles of the North Vietnamese coast, in waters Americans considered international. Two days later, on a stormy night of the 4th of August 1964, both ships reported a second attack. The Turner Joy fired approximately 220 shells at radar targets. Aircraft launched from the carrier Ticonderoga found no visual contact with any craft other than the two destroyers. Captain Herrick, commanding the Maddox, soon reported that the "torpedo boats" were almost certainly radar blips caused by freak weather effects, that no sailor aboard his ship had seen a torpedo boat, and that the "entire action leaves many doubts." In 2005, a declassified National Security Agency historical study concluded that no attack had occurred on August 4. As Johnson privately said in 1965: "For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there."

• 5. Railroading the Resolution

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  Early on the morning of the 4th of August 1964, before the facts of the second incident were even settled, Johnson told several congressmen that North Vietnam had just attacked an American patrol in international waters and promised retaliation. Johnson confided to aide Kenny O'Donnell that he was being "tested" and that his main fear was that the Republican candidate, Senator Barry Goldwater, might gain in the polls. McNamara was directed to ensure the naval report removed all ambiguous elements. Admiral Sharp applied pressure on Captain Herrick to "confirm absolutely" that his patrol had been attacked. Forty minutes after Sharp's call, Herrick sent a message saying the original ambush was "bona fide." CIA director John McCone told the National Security Council that his agency believed North Vietnam had acted out of "pride" and anger over sovereignty violations, and that Hanoi did not want war. His assessment was noted and set aside. When McNamara testified before a joint session of Senate committees on the 6th of August 1964, he stated that the Maddox had been "carrying out a routine mission" and denied any connection to South Vietnamese raids on the islands of Hon Me and Hon Nieu. Senator Morse had been tipped off about Operation 34A by a Pentagon source and pressed McNamara directly. McNamara answered: "Our navy played absolutely no part in, was not associated with, was not aware of any South Vietnamese actions, if there were any...I say this flatly. This is a fact." It was not. CIA deputy director Ray Cline later said he concluded that the intelligence McNamara had cited to prove the second attack had actually referred to the first. He was told to keep his doubts to himself. A public opinion poll at the time showed 85 percent of Americans felt Congress should pass the resolution.

• 6. Fulbright's Bargain

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  Johnson chose Senator J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as his main instrument for passing the resolution. Fulbright was widely regarded as the Senate's resident foreign policy expert, and Johnson knew that wavering senators would follow his lead. To secure Fulbright's support, Johnson exploited his old friend's vulnerabilities skillfully. He gave Fulbright the impression of future influence over foreign policy. He hinted he might sack Secretary of State Dean Rusk after the election and consider Fulbright as his replacement. He insisted to Fulbright that the resolution was an election-year maneuver to blunt Goldwater's attacks, not a blueprint for war. Johnson swore the resolution "was not going to be used for anything other than the Tonkin Gulf incident itself." Several other senators were equally reluctant. Gaylord Nelson wanted to add an amendment forbidding Johnson from sending troops without further congressional approval. Fulbright dissuaded him, saying he had Johnson's word that "the last thing we want to do is become involved in a land war in Asia," and that the resolution was designed to "pull the rug out from under Goldwater." On the 6th of August 1964, Fulbright gave a floor speech calling the resolution a mechanism "calculated to prevent the spread of war" and praising Johnson for his "great restraint" in responding to a small power. Congress voted on the 10th of August 1964. The Senate approved it 88 to 2. Johnson afterward told National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy: "You know that resolution your brother's been talking about for the past few months? Well, now's the time to get it through Congress." Rostow was candid in the aftermath: "The second attack probably hadn't happened, but it was the chance to do what we should have been doing all along."

• 7. From Resolution to War

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  Johnson proved reluctant to use his new powers immediately, hoping Ambassador Taylor could pressure the South Vietnamese into fighting more effectively. On the 1st of November 1964, Viet Cong guerrillas attacked the American air base at Bien Hoa, killing five American servicemen and destroying six B-57 bombers. Johnson declined to retaliate, instead creating a working group to consider scenarios. A memo co-written by McGeorge Bundy and McNamara in January 1965 warned that current policy could "lead only to a disastrous defeat" and presented two alternatives: withdrawal or war. After a Viet Cong attack on the air base at Pleiku in February 1965, Johnson announced "I've had enough of this" and ordered Operation Flaming Dart on the 7th of February 1965. British Prime Minister Harold Wilson wrote to Johnson opposing the bombing, but Johnson phoned him and urged Wilson to send British troops to fight instead. On the 2nd of March 1965, Johnson ordered Operation Rolling Thunder, the sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam that his generals had urged for over a year. Six days later, two Marine battalions landed at Danang. In June 1965, General William Westmoreland reported that the South Vietnamese forces could not withstand the pressure without substantial American combat troops and requested 180,000 men immediately. Johnson approved it in July. In a recorded telephone call with McNamara, Johnson acknowledged: "We know ourselves that when we asked for this Tonkin Gulf resolution, we had no intention of committing this many ground troops." On the 28th of July 1965, Johnson gave a television address declaring: "We cannot be defeated by force of arms. We will stand in Vietnam." The resolution that Fulbright had called a tool of intimidation had become authorization for a full ground war.

• 8. Repeal and Reckoning

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  In February 1966, Wayne Morse introduced a motion to repeal the resolution. Mansfield said fatalistically that America was "in too deep now," but Morse, described as a "skilled parliamentarian," used procedural tools to keep the debate running for two weeks. Only five senators voted for the repeal motion. By 1967, with casualties rising and public opposition growing, the resolution was being decried as a "blank check" the administration had cashed repeatedly. An investigation by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmed that the Maddox had been on an electronic intelligence collection mission and that the U.S. Naval Communication Center in the Philippine Islands had already questioned at the time whether any second attack had occurred. Fulbright, who had been the resolution's floor manager in the Senate, turned publicly against the war and spent years trying to understand how he had been misled. The Nixon administration, which took office in January 1969, initially opposed repeal, warning of consequences beyond Vietnam. By 1970 it began to shift its position, asserting that military operations in Southeast Asia rested on the president's constitutional authority as commander in chief, not on the resolution itself. That argument made the resolution seem even more redundant, and Congress repealed it. Morse's prediction made on the Senate floor in August 1964 had proven accurate: those who voted for it lived to regret it, and the senator's warning that the resolution was "a historic mistake" became a verdict that history confirmed.