HIST 221 Lecture Notes - Lecture 29: University Of Michigan, Counter-Insurgency, Truman Doctrine
19 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
LBJ's Great Society
Johnson's speech wat UMich - flurry of legislation (congress passes
84/87)
Emphasis on poverty and racial injustice
○
Chose university students because he thought they would be the
most sympathetic of the American society
○
Many people see this as a continuation of New Deal policies
○
-
Doubled federal aid to poor (went from $6 billion to $12 billion)
This means that there is the creation of more federal programs
to distribute the money
○
-
Medicare and Medicaid (health coverage)
1964 - 44% seniors had no coverage
○
Funded by DC, run by states (programs within state
governments)
○
It is centralized and gives states discretion about how they are
going to distribute the money
○
-
Expansion on unemployment benefits, rise in minimum wage
-
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
-
Elementary and Secondary Education Act
-
CAPs
Community Action Programs
-
CAPs designed to aid grassroots activists
Community-centered in poor neighbourhoods, used much
volunteer labour
○
Social service, medical and mental health services, employment,
education, legal aid
○
1,000 by end of LBJ presidency
○
-
Attempt by the federal government to take notes from civil rights
movements that were flourishing in American society
-
Designed to give federal money to grassroots activists where they
started programs in cities where there was funding
-
In order to take advantage of rights, you may need to take someone to
court to make it enforced therefore you need a lawyer to fight for you
-
Amount of Americans living below the poverty line dropped from 22%
to 12% and this happened in rural cities and urban areas
-
Programs were in largely minority areas (black and immigrant)
-
Criticisms of the Great Society
From the "Left" arguments:
Governments competing with activist groups (CAPs) for money
○
Too "top-down"
○
Did not restructure tax code or provide new redistribution
policies - relied on economic growth
○
-
From the "Right" arguments:
Unconditional expansion of federal government
○
Wasteful government bureaucracy and dangerous "social
experiment"
○
"hand outs" were degrading moral fabric and personal initiatives
of Americans
○
-
1950s Coups
1950 US-backed regime changes
-
Psychological and traditional warfare - importance of CIA
-
Iran (1953)
Context: nationalism, threat to British oil holdings
○
US, especially CIA, British intelligence, Shah's supporters
○
Military coup
○
40% Iranian oil fields (US companies)
○
-
Guatemala (1954)
Context: nationalism, threat to US economic holdings
○
PBSUCCESS (code name) - CIA funded destabilization program
○
-
Origins of the Vietnam War
1945, Ho Chi Minh declares independence, draws on rhetoric of US
Declaration of Independence
1919 he is in Paris for the conference
○
-
1945-54 Truman authorizes military and economic aid ($2.6 billion) to
France
Truman Doctrine - rollback to contain Communism
○
Ok to go abroad in order to help the American security system
contain Communism
○
-
1954 French defeat, Geneva Accords division at 17th parallel
Ho Chi Minh controls the North and there would be a capitalist
government in South Vietnam
○
-
US ramps up involvement, especially against planned 1956
reunification elections
-
JFK Foreign Policy
JFK promoted stronger anticommunism and modernization of US
military
-
Monolithic communism and domino theory
Only one communism controlled by the Soviet Union and they
have weaker communist states that they are controlling
○
-
Incremental intervention, redirect the revolution into a capitalist and
anti-communist state
CIA
○
Advisors and modernizers
○
-
At first: reliance on counterinsurgency versus troop escalation
At the end of the JFK presidency there are 11,000 military
advisors
○
-
US in South Vietnam
Backing of president Ngo Dinh Diem
Western educated, Catholic
○
Conflicts between Diem and South Vietnamese
Lack of land reform, suppression of dissent
§
○
Conflicts between Diem and US advisors
○
-
1957 South Vietnamese attacks on Diem's government
-
1960 National Liberation Front formed (NLF)
Coalition: communists, veterans (from independence
movements against France), farmers, students
○
-
Lecture 29 -Cold War Nation Building
Wednesday, March 21, 2018
9:32 AM
