The growth of the counterculture movement was also closely linked to the escalation of the Vietnam War. American involvement in Vietnam was a product of the Cold War policy of containment (see "West Versus East" in Chapter 28). After Vietnam won independence from France in 1954 and was divided into a Communist north and an anticommunist south, U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower (r. 1953–1961) provided the south with military aid to combat guerrilla insurgents who were supported by the Communist north. President John F. Kennedy (r. 1961–1963) later increased the number of American “military advisers” to 16,000, and in 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson (r. 1963–1969) greatly expanded America’s role in the Vietnam conflict, providing South Vietnam with massive military aid and eventually some 500,000 American troops. Though the United States bombed North Vietnam with ever-greater intensity, it did not invade the north or set up a naval blockade.

In the end, the American strategy of limited warfare backfired. The undeclared war in Vietnam, fought nightly on American television, eventually divided the nation. Initial public support was strong, but an antiwar movement quickly emerged on college campuses. In October 1965, student protesters joined forces with old-line socialists, New Left intellectuals, and pacifists in antiwar demonstrations in fifty American cities. The protests spread to western Europe. By 1967, a growing number of U.S. and European critics denounced the American presence in Vietnam.

Criticism reached a crescendo after the Vietcong staged the Tet Offensive in January 1968. The Communists’ first comprehensive attack on major South Vietnamese cities failed militarily, but the Tet Offensive signaled that the war was not close to ending, as Washington had claimed. Within months of Tet, President Johnson announced that he would not stand for re-election and called for negotiations with North Vietnam.

President Richard M. Nixon (r. 1969–1974) sought to disengage America gradually from Vietnam once he took office. Nixon pursued a policy of “Vietnamization” designed to give the South Vietnamese responsibility for the war and reduce the U.S. presence. He suspended the draft and cut American forces in Vietnam from 550,000 to 24,000 in four years. In 1973, Nixon finally reached a peace agreement with North Vietnam and the Vietcong. Fighting declined markedly in South Vietnam, where the South Vietnamese army appeared to hold its own against the Vietcong.

In early 1974, however, North Vietnam launched a successful general invasion. The South Vietnamese were forced to accept a unified country under a Communist dictatorship, ending a conflict that had begun with the anticolonial struggle against the French at the end of World War II.