Ernest Gruening and the Tonkin Gulf Resolution: Continuities in American Dissent

On 7 August 1964, Ernest Gruening (D-Alaska) cast one of the two Senate votes against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, later used by the Johnson administration to authorize the American military buildup in Vietnam. Those studies of the war that mention Gruening's vote gen erally argue that he opposed the resolution for reasons similar to those of its other opponent, Wayne Morse (D-Oregon). In fact, unlike Morse, Gruening adhered to dissenting ideas which had appeared only rarely since the onset of World War II, though by the later 1960s many anti war senators wound up supporting positions similar to those of Gruening in 1964; the senator's Tonkin Gulf dissent thus deserves more attention than it has received.

Choosing to look beyond the Cold War mindset accepted by many of his liberal colleagues,1 Gruening instead relied upon a set of ideals best associated with left-wing foreign policy dissent of the 1920s to make his case against both the war and the overall path of American foreign policy. His initial opinions on South east Asia flowed logically from his overall foreign policy ideology, and his views need to be analyzed in a broader framework. A graduate of Harvard, Gruening trained as a doctor, but decided upon receiving his M.D. that a career in medicine did not appeal, and he turned to journalism instead.

After serving as a reform editor for several Boston journals, he traveled to New York in 1921 to work at The Nation. Once there, Gruening became active attempting to end the American Marine occupation of Haiti; to investigate matters firsthand, Gruening visited Haiti in late 1921, establishing close ties with Hai tian anti-occupation leaders in the Union Patriotique and being named an honorary citizen of Port-au-Prince. He returned to the United States to publicize the ill effects of the occupation, questioning the morality and practicality of a policy that amounted to making the American military legislator, supreme judge, supreme executor; he