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This chapter provides a brief biography of Lyndon B. Johnson and introduces his White House. After the murder of John F. Kennedy, President Johnson, seeking to promote stability and preferring to focus on domestic issues, emphasised the theme of continuity in foreign affairs. The foreign policy advisory system he inherited was an informal, teamwork-based ‘collegial’ one, but it soon developed into what has been described as a ‘collegial-formalistic hybrid’ system. This chapter outlines the respective roles of the main foreign policy advisers, namely Dean Rusk, Secretary of State; McGeorge Bundy and Walt Rostow, successive National Security Advisers; and Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense. It also explores the CIA's role in policymaking. Generally, the Johnson White House was a smooth-running operation that closely reflected the needs and proclivities of the President, including the provision of advice from a wide range of sources.

We say we value openness, honesty, integrity, respect, and caring, but act in ways that undercut these values — not just once in a while, on very rare occasions, but regularly and routinely — whenever we face threatening or otherwise difficult situations. We then deny we are doing this and cover up our denial, thus trapping ourselves. This chapter presents two examples to document how this works. The first example discusses how people at the State Department behaved in the course of a new initiative put forth by Dean Rusk, Secretary of State. The second example is Andrew Grove's leadership actions during his tenure as Intel's CEO.

President Lyndon B. Johnson did not move decisively to bring the Vietnam War to an end although he had publicly proclaimed his desire for peace during a primetime television address, and had sacrificed his political ambitions in the process. The president's vacillation, emotional outbursts, and unpredictable behavior were an endless source of frustration for Clark Clifford, who could never be certain that he had the president's support. In sending mixed messages Johnson also exacerbated the rivalry between Clifford and hawks Dean Rusk and Walt Rostow, who continued to argue that America's prestige and security were at stake in Southeast Asia. At times the bureaucratic infighting was vicious, as Clifford's adversaries sought to discredit him in front of the president and disregarded his authority over the military. Although he had allies in the Pentagon and White House, among Johnson's senior foreign policy advisers Clifford was very much alone.

This chapter examines southern political leaders, newspapers, and the public during the decade leading to the US commitment to oppose communism in South Vietnam. Over this ten-year period, a clear majority of the South’s influential political figures in Washington opposed committing US military forces to direct combat in Vietnam. Despite developing powerful arguments in favor of restraint, southerners joined other congressmen and senators from across the nation in an overwhelming vote for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, proposed by President Johnson in August 1964. Particular attention is devoted to President Lyndon B. Johnson and Secretary of State Dean Rusk as southerners; to the role of Senators J. William Fulbright and Richard B. Russell in the passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution; and to the influence of defense spending, honor, partisan politics, and personal ties to Johnson in the southern endorsement of this constitutional basis for the war.

Michael Pillsbury had two ways to convince other players who, because of the effect of the proposal on their jurisdictions, would be entitled both to be consulted and to have an opportunity to appeal to a higher level to express any strong opposition to the Stinger missile proposal. But before taking any type of measure, he will want to assess how far he has to move each of them—how committed each has to be for Pillsbury's policy-choice purpose on this occasion. Take two different measures of “level of support” for a proposal. The first hurdle—crowded agendas—of Pillsbury is shown. The proposal could find its way easily onto the agenda of Representative Michael Feighan and Secretary of State Dean Rusk. Within weeks, in response to the unrelated need for proposals to help with the balance-of-payments problem, all the parties whose strong or weak support the rules required if one were to extend the life of the visas were prepared to address an issue they had previously ignored.

Sarit Thanarat, the prime minister of Thailand and a cousin once removed of Phoumi’s, played a significant role both in the Eisenhower administration's efforts to overthrow Souvanna and in the Kennedy administration's attempt to establish a government led by him. The Thai government, which hosted a broad range of American military and intelligence facilities targeting the insurgencies in Laos and South Vietnam, lacked faith in SEATO because of French and British opposition to intervention by the alliance in the Laotian crises of 1959 and 1960–1961. To reassure Thai officials, Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Foreign Minister Thanat Khoman issued a joint communiqué affirming US recognition of both a “collective” and an “individual” obligation to defend Thailand from aggression. The Rusk-Thanat communiqué also declared that the United States and Thailand agreed on the necessity of “a free, independent and truly neutral Laos.” The agreement helped persuade Prime Minister Sarit to join Harriman in pressuring Phoumi to agree to a neutral Lao government led by Souvanna.

This chapter looks at Franco-American relations during the first four months of the Kennedy presidency. The attention of both men was diverted by major crises during this period, but there was optimism on both sides that the Kennedy-de Gaulle summit in Paris would improve relations after a period of drift under President Eisenhower. This was not to be the case. Early genuine enthusiasm for greater Franco-American dialogue on Kennedy’s part was quickly tempered by de Gaulle’s total disagreement with the American president’s plan to reconstitute the chaotic UN peacekeeping operation in post-independence Congo. Nevertheless, American policy-makers close to Kennedy continued to emphasize during this period that there were plenty of potential areas for Franco-American agreement that outweighed areas of divergence. While the youthful Kennedy sought to break from the past and try new Cold War approaches with the emerging Third World, de Gaulle’s conceptions of international diplomacy harkened back to the long era of European international supremacy when French norms were accepted in other advanced countries. This chapter also rounds out de Gaulle’s strategic vision and his desire to establish a more open dialogue between Britain, France, and the United States, the three biggest military powers within NATO.

Whereas the objective of halting Israel’s progress toward nuclear weapons was central to Egyptian and Soviet motives for instigating the 1967 war, afterward the issue receded from both countries’ strategic planning as well as their public statements. Even Nasser’s presence in Moscow during the signing of the Non-Proliferation Treaty in July 1968 was not used to blame Israel for not acceding. Israel’s failure, while under threat in May-June 1967, to use or demonstrate the nuclear device which it had reportedly just completed appears to have convinced Moscow and Cairo that the “Samson option” would be activated only in case of an invasion of the Israeli heartland. It therefore was not expected to be triggered by a campaign to recapture only Sinai, the Soviets’ approved goal, and was not accounted for in planning and preparations for the cross-canal offensive – a calculation that proved dangerously flawed in October 1973.