All the Way with JFK? Britain, the US, and the Vietnam War (review)

The British contribution to the U.S. policy debates on Vietnam during the Kennedy administration is often referred to but, until now, has not been thoroughly researched. It is known that Britain was reluctant to contribute forces to the effort to contain communism in southeast Asia but did make an impact through the influence of Robert Thompson, who was influential in persuading the administration to follow the strategic hamlets programme. Later, under Harold Wilson's Labour Government, the Vietnam issue became much more difficult (as it did for everyone else) and there were some attempts to get negotiations going.

In this important study Busch provides a detailed and convincing study of British policy over the Kennedy years, demonstrating just how much of a stake the Macmillan government felt that it had in the defeat of communism in Vietnam. With their hands full in Malaysia, the central focus for British policy-making throughout this period, there was certainly reluctance to get involved in any operations in Laos under SEATO auspices, although Busch shows how they might nonetheless have found themselves doing so. This did not prevent the British providing support in other respects. This included managing the International Control Commission to avoid challenges to the U.S. expansion of its advisors beyond the numbers permitted by the Geneva accords, and also to send Thompson to Vietnam as head of the small British Advisory Mission. With his substantial background in counter-insurgency, Thompson's influence was tangible when the strategic hamlets programme was adopted, but as Busch correctly notes, its implementation then drifted away from what he (and for that matter the Americans) had in mind as Diem turned the programme to his own purposes. Thompson took time to realise what had happened to the programme but after the death of both Diem and Kennedy disillusionment set in.

The book's title is catchy but to some extent misleading. The argument is that the British had their own reasons for defeating the communists and were not blindly following the Americans. Moreover, I am not sure that Busch does full justice to Kennedy's interest in negotiations with North Vietnam or the extent to which the communist violations of the 1962 accords led to him giving up on this option (as well as a vague optimism that the military position was improving). He tends to criticise the Americans and the British from the vantage point of what later became apparent rather than what was then known.

This book is extremely well researched, and vigorously argued. It provides a welcome reminder of what else was going on in Vietnam's neighbourhood during the early 1960s, particularly in relation to the confrontation with Indonesia. This is particularly important in the light of later justifications for Vietnam that argue that the war there held the line long enough for Sukarno to fail and anticommunism to triumph in Indonesia. Most importantly it fills a large gap in the study of British policy-making.