President Franklin D. Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, with Vietnam on his mind. President John F. Kennedy died on Nov. 22, 1963, 57 years ago this month, having told an aide to work up the Vietnam case for decision when he returned from Texas. My thesis is that if either had lived, we might not have had the Vietnam War which tore apart our society, violated the liberty of many young men and disseminated many families with the loss of life. No one knows what might have been, but here is some evidence.

Indochina (Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam) had been colonized by France in the 19th century. During World War II, the area was controlled by Japan. The American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the Viet Minh under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh (the leader of North Vietnam) cooperated together in anti-Japanese activities in the area. FDR did not want France to reassert its sovereignty over Indochina. At the Tehran Conference, FDR and Stalin agreed that Indochina should not go back to France and that a trusteeship was desirable.

FDR was opposed to colonialism anywhere in the world, and particularly wanted to prevent the French returning to Indochina. The United States was indeed preparing to grant independence to the Philippines in 1946. Ho Chi Minh on Sept. 2, 1945, declared independence for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. He contacted the United States for its support. He noted the United States' support for independence for its colony, the Philippines.

If FDR had lived, it is entirely possible an amity relationship could have developed between Ho and the United States. It is possible this could have occurred in the trusteeship system being organized in the new United Nations. Russell H. Fifield in "Americans in Southeast Asia," wrote: If his trusteeship concept had been implemented, possibly two bloody and costly wars might have been avoided. But FDR died, and Vice President Harry S. Truman was not on the inside of decision-making with FDR; he went with the French inserting themselves into Indochina, which led to the French-Indochinese War ending with the Geneva Accords of 1954.

The United States saw the Geneva Accords as a communist victory. The Cold War had come to Southeast Asia. Our response was the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). Thailand was the only member of SEATO on Mainland Asia. SEATO was, if effect, an American protectorate of Thailand. South Vietnam was designated as a protocol state. Ngo Dinh Diem, a Catholic, with American support, became president of South Vietnam (another story), in a Buddhist country! Sink or swim with Ngo Dinh Diem, was the slogan.

November and December 1963 was a watershed moment. Diem was assassinated Nov. 2 (we knew there would be a coup, but JFK was shocked over Diems death), JFK was assassinated Nov. 22, and Thai Prime Minister Sarit Thanarat died of liver failure (some might say of wine, women, and song) on Dec. 8 at age 55. These three deaths left a vacuum. Again, an American vice president, Lyndon Johnson, not in the inner decision-making circle, became president, and wound up committing over 500,000 troops and bombing North Vietnam to create a major American war, necessitating the military draft and costing 47,434 American battle deaths. Would JFK have done this?

A year earlier in the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK went with his legal/political advisers, not his military advisers, who wanted to invade Cuba. According to Robert Kennedy in his book "Thirteen Days," JFK was suspicious of military advice; it seemed they always wanted to go to war. It is likely JFK would have continued his clear and hold/strategic hamlet strategy within a counterguerrilla framework. President Johnson, on the other hand, followed his military advisers and pursued a search and destroy strategy. JFK had said he did not want to institute the military draft. He had said he did not want to turn the conflict into an American war. He wanted to conceptualize the conflict as something other than a war, perhaps as a challenge of nation-building. JFK was close to academics at major universities as constituents; they were predominately anti-war.

Perhaps, Roger Hilsman said it best in "To Move a Nation:" If South Vietnam could not be won, then the United States could accept the resulting situation and would be free to enter negotiations without fatal consequences to our position in the rest of Asia. In other words, Thailand would remain secure. No domino theory here.

James W. Pfister, J.D. University of Toledo, Ph.D. University of Michigan, retired after 46 years in the Political Science Department at Eastern Michigan University. He lives in Devils Lake and can be reached at jpfister@emich.edu.

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James W. Pfister: Untimely deaths of FDR and JFK and the Vietnam War - Monroe Evening News