JFK Conference: James DiEugenio made clear how Foreign Policy changed after November 22, 1963

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31. RFK on JFK & Nam:

On April 30, 1964,RFK was interviewed by John Bartlow Martin as part of the John F. Kennedy Library’s official oral history project:

Robert F. Kennedy: The president had a strong, overwhelming reason for being in Vietnam and that we should win the war in Vietnam.

Martin: What was the overwhelming reason?

Kennedy: Just the loss of all of Southeast Asia if you lost Vietnam. I think everybody was quite clear that the rest of Southeast Asia would fall.

Martin: What if it did?

Kennedy: Just have profound effects as far as our position throughout the world, and our position in a rather vital part of the world. Also, it would affect what happened in India, of course, which in turn has an effect on the Middle East. Just, it would have, everybody felt, a very adverse effect. It would have an effect on Indonesia, hundred million population. All of these countries would be affected by the fall of Vietnam to the Communists, particularly as we had made such a fuss in the United States both under President Eisenhower and President Kennedy about the preservation of the integrity of Vietnam.

Martin: There was never any consideration given to pulling out?

Kennedy: No.

Martin: But the same time, no disposition to go in all . . .

Kennedy: No . . .

Martin: . . . in an all out way as we went into Korea. We were trying to avoid a Korea, is that correct?

Kennedy: Yes, because I, everybody including General MacArthur felt that land conflict between our troops, white troops and Asian, would only lead to, end in disaster. So it was. . . . We went in as advisers, but to try to get the Vietnamese to fight themselves, because we couldn’t win the war for them. They had to win the war for themselves.

Martin: It’s generally true all over the world, whether it’s in a shooting war or a different kind of a war. But the president was convinced that we had to keep, had to stay in there . . .

Kennedy: Yes.

Martin: . . . and couldn’t lose it.

Kennedy: Yes.

Martin: And if Vietnamese were about to lose it, would he propose to go in on land if he had to?

Kennedy: Well, we’d face that when we came to it.

Source: Edwin O. Guthman and Jeffrey Shulman, eds., Robert Kennedy In His Own Words: The Unpublished Recollections of the Kennedy Years (New York: Bantam Press, 1988), 394-395.