Opening Pandora's Box: The Genesis and Evolution of the 1964 Congressional Resolution on Vietnam

On 7 August 1964, the Tonkin Gulf Resolution swept through Con gress, signalling the beginning of a new era in the American commit ment to Southeast Asia. Within a year, Lyndon B. Johnson used the broad and ill-defined grant of authority to significantly escalate the U.S. military presence in Vietnam with the introduction of combat troops.

Historians consider the Tonkin Gulf Resolution to be a water shed event in the American Vietnam saga, the turning point that al lowed Johnson to conduct an undeclared war without direct congressional sanction. What many scholars have failed to recognize, however, is that the resolution itself was less a turning point than a culmination of months of planning and preparation by an administra tion which anticipated the necessity of escalating the conflict in order to save South Vietnam from communism.