
Contents
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Premises about Vietnam Premises about Vietnam
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Resisting Aggression Resisting Aggression
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Communism as an International Conspiracy Communism as an International Conspiracy
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Civil War or International Aggression? Civil War or International Aggression?
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Falling Dominos Falling Dominos
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Maintaining Credibility Maintaining Credibility
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“Losing” Vietnam “Losing” Vietnam
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Fear of Provoking China or the Soviet Union Fear of Provoking China or the Soviet Union
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Escalation Escalation
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The Impact of Premises The Impact of Premises
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Two Assuming Problems: The War in Vietnam
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Published:November 2022
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Abstract
Premises are especially likely to influence officials in the identification of problems, the first stage of decision making. Sometimes they lead decisionmakers to assume a problem exists, making them less likely to devote attention to the collection and evaluation of evidence regarding the problem. Even more significantly, officials may fail to evaluate the basic premises of their policies. Bypassing a rigorous assessment of the nature of a problem and attempting to solve one that does not exist or that exists in a different form than decision makers envision may result in a costly waste of resources and a myriad of unintended, negative consequences. Often such policies end in tragedy. The Vietnam War is a classic example of this phenomenon. Lyndon Johnson and other officials shared faulty premises that propelled the United States toward war and determined the strategy leaders chose to wage the conflict. The doctrinal consensus on these premises made it difficult to challenge U.S. policy and foreclosed policy options. No comprehensive and systematic examination of Vietnam’s importance to the United States was ever undertaken within the executive branch. Debates revolved around how to do things better and whether they could be done, not whether they were worth doing.
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