Controlling Jungle Lawns and Jungle Wars: Chemicals and Cold War Containment

The phenoxy herbicides appear as one unexplored link between the ideology of domestic containment centered on suburban homes and the John F. Kennedy administration’s international containment that promoted new tactics of counterinsurgency in the jungles of South Vietnam. Both settings represented environmental spaces of Cold War containment. The 1950s and 60s saw extensive use of the miracle weed killers in deserted city lots, rural fields and pastures, and on suburban lawns. Chemical manufacturing represented a major American industry, and a successful one. Looking at the use of chemical weed killers offers a new lens to examine the emergence and influence of the military-industrial complex.

The use of herbicides, specifically Agent Orange, to destroy crops and eradicate jungle cover became an important part of containing the movement of troops, supplies, and support for the National Liberation Front. In removing food and forests, the herbicides also helped force peasants to relocate to what was known as “strategic hamlets,” isolating them from insurgent guerillas in hopes of containing the war. Even as these chemical herbicides were sprayed, they began toxic migrations as the compounds harmed plants, animals, and human beings – the physical and social environments. This paper examines the United States policy and enactment of environmental containment using government documents, oral histories, protest ephemera, and cultural artifacts. This unexplored realm of Cold War containment offers a lens on the domestic and international use of chemical weapons designed to kill weeds but used to erase rebellions.