Vietnamization and the Fracturing of Conservatives’ Foreign Policy Consensus

The escalation of United States military intervention in Vietnam during 1964 presented conservative political activists with a dilemma. On the one hand, conservatives recognized the war as an attack on international communist expansion deserving of their vociferous support. On the other hand, the Johnson administration’s commitment to a policy of limited war and its failure to prepare the public for the bloody conflict diminished conservatives’ faith in a positive outcome. Southeast Asia, furthermore, was not for conservatives the frontline in the global war against communism. Fears that a long war would distract public attention from challenging Soviet military expansion and undermine the Cold War consensus proved prescient. Yet, conservatives’ variegated responses to the Vietnam War presented political opportunity. Leading conservative Republicans and key activists associated with the American Conservative Union embraced President Richard Nixon’s policy of Vietnamization, placing their faith in the president’s promise that North Vietnamese intransigence would be met with a bold American response. They also concluded that affording South Vietnam greater control over the war would undermine US insistence on pursuing a strategy of limited war. By embracing President Nixon’s call for “peace with honor,” the Republican Right contested the image of conservatives as war mongers and enhanced their political legitimacy. But the failure of Vietnamization to secure conservatives’ goals led to a fracturing of the movement, allowing new voices to take a leading role in challenging détente during the mid to late 1970s.