Pierre Asselin

speaker

562 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Apr 2025 last heard 2d ago

Pierre Asselin’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.

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American History Hit · LBJ & the Vietnam War · 24 Sep 2026 podcast

And then internationally, if you dramatically escalate and suddenly escalate, then when you consider Korea again,

you might kind of make alarm bells ring in Moscow and Beijing.

And you might provoke a Soviet, but more likely Chinese intervention in the conflict.

So again, hindsight being 20-20, maybe gradual escalation wasn't the right policy because it gave North Vietnam a chance to adjust.

But when you look at the context at the time, I don't see Johnson being in a position to pursue an alternative course, just because I think it's, you know, in light of the Cuban Missile Crisis, in light of the Korean precedent, anything too drastic is likely to incite fear in Moscow, in Beijing, and then precipitate an intervention by those countries, which, by the way, again, based on my work in the archives in Vietnam, the Chinese had certainly

considered and were prepared to do.

They told, they would tell the North Vietnamese in 65 that if the Americans do something drastic, you can count on us to help you the way we helped North Korea.

So the message was very, very clear.

So Johnson wasn't sure about that, but in a way, he kind of guessed right about Chinese concerns about a drastic escalation.

So bombing the North, not invading the North, I think was a sensible policy.

So as far as Johnston was concerned, right, the North, the communists in the North were not respecting the status quo.

They were trying to take over the South itself.

Johnson would have been fine with a to Vietnam solution because technically, right, the North is communist, the South is not.

That's containment.

That's fine.

But Johnson thought that he could not lose South Vietnam, particularly in the aftermath of the loss of China.

And again, this is all these, I mean, South Vietnam strategically was not important for the United States.

Economically, it wasn't important for the United States.

But in terms of credibility for Johnson, it was everything to the United States.

You know, it's funny, like people always wonder why Vietnam, right?

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