In his public statements about Vietnam, Johnson appeared resolute and confident, but privately he expressed great doubts to his advisers. In early summer 1964 Johnson called his friend and mentor Georgia senator Richard Russell to ask his advice. A selection from that conversation appears here, revealing Russell’s opinions and also Johnson’s conflicted thoughts about further involvement. One sticking point Johnson discusses is the 1954 South East Asia Treaty Organization, which required the United States and other signatories to aid any government under threat by communism.

SENATOR RUSSELL: Pretty Good. How are you Mr. President?

PRESIDENT JOHNSON: Oh, I’ve got lots of trouble. I want to see what you . . .

RUSSELL: Well, we all have those.

JOHNSON: What do you think about this Vietnam thing? I’d like to hear you talk a little bit.

RUSSELL: Well, frankly, Mr. President, if you were to tell me that I was authorized to settle as I saw fit, I would respectfully decline to undertake it. It’s the damn worse mess that I ever saw, and I don’t like to brag and I never have been right many times in my life, but I knew that we were gone [sic] to get into this sort of mess when we went in there. And I don’t see how we’re ever going to get out of it without fighting a major war with the Chinese and all of them down there in those rice paddies and jungles. I just don’t see it. I just don’t know what to do.

JOHNSON: Well, that’s the way I have been feeling for six months.

RUSSELL: Our position is deteriorating and it looks like the more we try to do for them, the less they are willing to do for themselves. It’s just a sad situation. There is no sense of responsibility there on the part of any of their leaders apparently. It is all just through generations or even centuries that they have just thought about the individual and glorified the individual. That’s the only utilization of power, just to glorify the individual and not to save the state or help other people. And they just can’t shed themselves of that complex. It’s a hell of a situation. It is a mess, and it’s going to get worse, and I don’t know how or what to do. I don’t think the American people are quite ready for us to send our troops in there to do the fighting. If it came down to an option of just sending the Americans in there to do the fighting, which will, of course, eventually end in a ground war or a conventional war with China, and we do them a favor every time we kill a coolie, whereas when one of our people got killed it would be a loss to us, and if it got down to that—of just pulling out—I’d get out. But then I don’t know. There is undoubtedly some middle ground somewhere. If I was going to get out, I’d get the same crowd that got rid of old Diem to get rid of these people and to get some fellow in there that said we wish to hell we would get out. That would give us a good excuse for getting out. I see no terminal date, boy oh boy, any part of that in there.

JOHNSON: How important is it to us?

RUSSELL: It isn’t important a damn bit for all this new missile stuff.

JOHNSON: I guess it is important.

RUSSELL: From a psychological standpoint.

JOHNSON: I mean, yes, and from the standpoint that we are a party to a treaty. And if we don’t pay any attention to this treaty I don’t guess that they think paying attention to any of them.

RUSSELL: Yeah, but we are the only ones paying attention to it.

JOHNSON: Yeah, I think that is right.

RUSSELL: You see the other people are just as bound to that treaty as we are.

JOHNSON: Yes, that’s right.

RUSSELL: I think there are some twelve or fourteen other countries. . . .

JOHNSON: Well, I spend all my days with Rusk and McNamara and Bundy and Harriman and Vance, and all those folks that are dealing with it and I would say that it pretty well adds up to them now that we have got [to] show some power and some force and that they do not—they are kind of like MacArthur in Korea—they don’t believe that the Chinese Communists will come into this thing. But they don’t know, and nobody can really be sure, but their feeling is that they won’t, and in any event, we haven’t got much choice. That we are treaty bound, that we are there, this will be a domino that will kick off a whole list of others, and that we have just got to prepare for the worst. Now I have avoided that for a few days. I don’t think the American people are for it. I don’t agree with [Oregon senator Wayne] Morse and all that he says, but . . .

RUSSELL: Neither do I, but he is voicing the sentiment of a hell of a lot of people.

JOHNSON: I’m afraid that’s right. I’m afraid that’s right. I don’t think the people of this country know much about Vietnam, and I don’t think that they care a hell of a lot less.

Source: U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, Foreign Relations of the United States 1964–1968, Volume XXVII, Mainland Southeast Asia; Regional Affairs (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2000), Document Number 52.