“Now where are these torpedoes coming from?” – Lyndon B. Johnson

“Well, we don’t know.” – McNamara

In 1964, Vietnam was torn apart by a civil war which erupted after the country’s independence from France. The Communist North and the Viet Cong guerilla were engaged in unconventional warfare against South Vietnam, a US ally. Until 1964, Vietnam was of minor concern for the United States – its presence in Vietnam consisted of defending the region with no more than 25,000 troops on the ground. All of this changed between the nights of the 2nd and 4th of August in the Gulf of Tonkin, which would structurally redefine the dynamics of the conflict: a full-scale battlefield with 184,000 US troops deployed on the ground and over one million lives lost. On August 2nd and 4th, US naval ships USS Maddox and Turner Joy were attacked after undergoing secret operation in the Gulf of Tonkin. Evidence of the first attack is not contested, but the existence of a second attack on the 4th of August was at first unconvincingly confirmed, and then later repealed.

This article will attempt to explain the decisions made by the US government following the incident through the work of Graham T. Allison, author of The Essence of Decision (1971). In his book, he formulates three models to explain how states make decisions. The model we will choose to explain the decision of this crisis is the third model, better known as the ‘Bureaucratic-Politics Model’. This model assumes that states do not make decisions at all. Instead, their actions are outputs of “bargaining games” between bureaucracies. Agencies will try to maximize their power and influence through bargaining with other agencies.

Through the Allison’s theoretical lens, we see that the US President Lyndon B. Johnson made an intriguing decision. How could the President possibly choose measures of retaliation against North Vietnam based on incomplete evidence and suppositions? From the lens of Allison’s Bureaucratic politics model, it is possible to provide an explanation for the decisions taken during and after the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. Through Allison’s Third Model, the different environments and strategies of influence of the main actors will be assessed. We will study the main players involved in the decision making process, namely President Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and the National Security Agency (NSA). These actors are analyzed in order to approach the essence of this decision as closely as possible.

Information: the key to pressure

Robert Strange McNamara was appointed Secretary of Defense under the Kennedy administration. The Secretary of Defense is the highest ranking position in the Department of Defense. In terms of control over the military, the Department of Defense is only outweighed by the commander-in-chief. After Kennedy’s assassination, McNamara continued to serve for President Lyndon B. Johnson. McNamara had a long military history and was dedicated to serving the United States; his position, however, determined that he would fight for more power. In fact, after the invented incident on August 4th, McNamara saw an opportunity to gain more funding and importance for his department, thereby increasing his status in the cabinet. He also saw the opportunity to work toward a national goal of showing American strength by attempting to wipe out the North Vietnamese opposition. For these reasons, McNamara pressured President Johnson into escalating the Vietnam War after the events in the Gulf of Tonkin. McNamara urged Johnson to supply more military action in Vietnam, possibly by convincing him that the upcoming elections depended on it. After all, Johnson would not want to look weak in the face of communist regimes. McNamara pressured the president to introduce the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which passed nearly unanimously in Congress. Furthermore, a Department of Defense staffer leaked the story to the Associated Press, possibly to put even more pressure on President Johnson to retaliate strongly.

“Mr. President. The story has broken on the AP”

– Robert McNamara to President Johnson, August 4th, 1964, 17:09

The primary agency which transmitted the reports was the NSA. The marines that worked in the SIGINT correctly anticipated and warned of the August 2 attack. On August 4, however, the Marine Contingent mistakenly gave the August 4 Critic warning based on a translation error. The NSA did not correct the Critic despite the numerous breaches of protocol, nor did it after discrepancies between the warning and factual reality were revealed.

The NSA also filtered the information to Washington in a dubious way. According to NSA historian Robert Hanyok, the “NSA would issue summaries with scattered tidbits of contentious and unreferenced intercepts”. In fact, the evidence for supporting the attack was scarce and “nowhere as strong as would have been wanted”. Indeed, 90% of the information was left out of the chronology.

We can assume that the NSA was conscious of its actions. It cherry-picked and suppressed crucial information for the purpose of fitting the narrative of the fictitious attack.

By proceeding on mixed evidence, the NSA was furthering its goals in Allison’s third model.

The NSA seemed to be under pressure by other parts of the intelligence bodies, most notably financially. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director, John McCone, had established a National Intelligence Programs Evaluation Staff to review the overall cost-effectiveness of the intelligence programs. Reacting to pressure from the other bureaucratic bodies of intelligence, the NSA responded in a way that would have ensured its financial stability in the long run. By filtering information to purposefully frame an incident, it justified its capabilities and promoted further escalation to satisfy its bureaucratic goals.

The Outcome of a Bargaining Game

On the night of August 4th 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson televised a message addressing the nation to inform the Americans of the morning’s incidents. This public intervention followed a decision that definitely changed the course of the conflict: US authorities ordered air strikes on North Vietnamese naval bases and asked Congress for a stronger involvement.

President Johnson’s position, motivations and environment are decisive elements to grasp his decision to petition Congress for an escalation of the war – thereby giving him authority. The choice of retaliation measures can be explained by multiple factors.

First, Johnson was pressured by his Cabinet, in which there was large consensus for the need to act promptly. The desire for a stronger military intervention in Vietnam was in fact established well before the incidents of August. Mike Forrestal and Mac Bundy, National Security advisors, advocated for an escalation of the conflict since March 1964. Even the idea of a Congressional resolution was mentioned by members of the State Departments months before the first attacks.

Therefore, when the breaking news of August 4th was communicated, the established consensus among the advisors left no other option for Johnson than to act.

The only skeptical advisor was CIA director John McCone, who argued that North Vietnamese attacks were mere defensive reactions. Nonetheless, this statement was buried by the events’ dramatization. A dramatization that led to prompt action although the cabinet was not entirely sure about the existence of the potential second attack, as revealed by a telephone conversation between Secretary of Defense McNamara and Admiral Sharp. However, President Johnson was unaware of these doubts as they were hidden by the Cabinet’s members.

Secondly, the decisions implemented by President Johnson were aimed at legitimizing his position, within his cabinet as well as on the domestic and global scene.

Indeed, after he opposed himself to his cabinet by having underestimated the risks of the first attacks of August 2nd, Johnson could not afford to repeat the same mistake, perhaps to the cost of overreaction.

In a Cold War context, the legitimization of the United States on the international scene was also a central preoccupation. The term “Paper tiger”, meaning someone that appears threatening but is actually ineffectual, was a regularly used cue within the cabinet, which proved the permanent concerns of Johnson and his advisors regarding the nation’s pride.

Moreover, in a position of an unelected President and future candidate, Johnson needed to enliven popular support. A quick and strong response against an imminent threat was a way to do so.

Lastly, the crisis’ dramatization and the retaliation strikes gave reasons for a stronger involvement in the Vietnam War.

Whether planned or not, the incidents provided the President with a great opportunity to justify a congressional resolution, inevitable legal weapon to fight in Vietnam. However, as we have previously seen, the need for a resolution did not originally come from the President’s initiative, but stemmed from his advisors who exercised strong power on him.

Allison’s Bureaucratic politics model then helps us understand the process leading to the Johnson administration’s final decision to order air strikes against North Vietnamese naval bases and oil depots in response to the attack. This article confronted the strategies of influence of McNamara, the NSA and of President Johnson in order to weigh their relative impact during the incident and later on the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. The decision-making process is indeed very well assessed by Allison’s framework in the sense that it gives strong explanatory powers to McNamara and the NSA’s quests for greater funding and political influence.

There is room for further research on this decision. From a theoretical perspective, the phenomenon of Groupthink applied to Foreign Policy Analysis could add more insight into President Johnson’s decision.

S.P., D.G., R.M., L.M.

Bibliography

Allison, Graham T. Essence of Decision; Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. Boston: Little, Brown, 1971.

Ball, Moya Ann. “Revisiting the Gulf of Tonkin Crisis: An Analysis of the Private Communication of President Johnson and His Advisers.” Discourse &Amp; Society, 1 July 1991.

“Battlefield: Timeline.” PBS. Accessed 02 Oct. 2016. http://www.pbs.org/battlefieldvietnam/timeline/

Hanyok, Robert J. “Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds, and the Flying Fish: The Gulf of Tonkin Mystery, 2-4 August 1964.” in Cryptologic Quarterly, 19.4; The National Security Agency (2000). Unclassified document available at: http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/relea00012.pdf Accessed October 15th 2016.

“LBJ Tapes on the Gulf of Tonkin Incident.” LBJ Tapes on the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. National Security Archive. http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/tapes.htm Accessed October 15th 2016.

McNamara, Robert S. In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. Times Books, 1995, p. 127-143

Siff, Erza. “Why the Senate Slept: the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the Beginning of America’s Vietnam War.” Choice Reviews Online, vol. 36, no. 10, Jan. 1999, doi:10.5860/choice.36-5976.