This book, which is subtitled 'McGeorge Bundy, the NSC and Vietnam', is cited in 'The Sleepwalkers' as an example of intergovernmental power struggles and intrigues. The book is referred to as "a brilliant study of the US entry in to the Vietnam War...showing that while LBJ and JFK were reluctant to wage war.....the NSC narrowed options....until war was inevitable."
I believe the story told in this book is more nuanced than its citation above. Mac Bundy believed in the US role as maintainer of worldwide institutional structures such as the UN and NATO that would preserve peace and stability. He accepted America's role as the indispensable state that had responsibilities around the world. He was a believer in containment. He was staunchly opposed to the NLF and believed that the US was required to establish and preserve a noncommunist South Vietnam. He came to Washington in 1961 and worked for a President who wanted to be his own Sec. of State. JFK picked Dean Rusk, whom the author says would have been a much better Undersecretary, because Kennedy did not want interference with his ideas, and he knew he could manage Rusk. JFK believed in our commitment to South Vietnam, even though State, Walter Lippman, Sen. Mike Mansfield and the editorial board of the New York Times were some of the many voices recommending a policy of neutrality in southeast Asia. Standing up to the North, while building up the South was a broadly accepted policy in the Kennedy administration.
War as the only option seems to be what the "Harvards" presented to LBJ. By the time the fateful decisions on the road to war were made in 1964 and 1965 the Administration was already operating in a narrow feedback loop consistent with the characterization above. However, it wasn't just the NSC, as Defense was gung ho from the very beginning. I'm looking forward to Caro's final book on Johnson, for what I hope is the definitive analysis
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