1 Ball, George, The Past Has Another Pattern: Memoirs (New York 1987) 300.Google Scholar

2 I have discussed this issue at length in two books, Approaching Vietnam: From World War II Through Dienbienphu (New York 1988)Google Scholar and Pay Any Price: Lyndon Johnson and the Wars for Vietnam (Chicago 1995)Google Scholar.

3 Public statement by Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles, 2 August 1941, quoted in, The Senator Gravel Edition: The Pentagon Papers I (Boston 1971) 8, 9Google Scholar.

4 Sherwood, Robert E., Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York 1950) 578.Google Scholar I have transposed sentences here.

5 Quoted in Gardner, Lloyd C., Economic Aspects of New Deal Diplomacy (Madison 1964) 176Google Scholar.

6 See on this point, Levy, Jack S., ‘Loss Aversion, Framing, and Bargaining: The Implications of Prospect Theory for International Conflict’, International Political Science Review 17 (1996) 179–195. ‘Both experimental evidence from the laboratory and empirical evidence from natural settings clearly demonstrate the asymmetry in people's evaluations of losses and gains. The basic finding is that losses hurt more than gains gratify …. As Jimmy Connors exclaimed, “I hate to lose more than I like to win”.’CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Quoted in Fabian Hilfrich, ‘Visions of the Asian Periphery: Vietnam (1964–1968) and the Philippines (1898–1900)’, Paper for the German Historical Institute's Conference, ‘America's War and the World’ (19–22 1September 1998) 1.

8 Diary Entry 27 November 1942, in Ward, Geoffrey C. ed., Closest Companion: The Unknown Story of the Intimate Friendship between Franklin Roosevelt and Margaret Suckley (Boston 1995) 187.Google ScholarKimball, Warren F., Forged in War: Roosevelt, Churchill and the Second World War (New York 1997),Google Scholar concludes: ‘Roosevelt was convinced that the pressure of nationalism in the European empires was the most serious threat to post-war peace’, Ibid., 301.

9 Ward, , Closest Companion, 187.Google Scholar

10 See editorial note, ‘Roosevelt's Conversations with Various Callers’ - 25 11 1943, in: Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conferences at Cairo and Tehran (FRUS) (Washington DC 1961) 345,Google Scholar and ‘Memorandum of Conversation’ - 3Ja-nuary 1944, Ibid., 864.

11 Diary Entry 27 October 1942, in: Berle, Beatrice Bishop and Jacobs, Travis Beal eds, Navigating the Rapids, 1918–1971: From the Papers of Adolf A. Berle (New York 1973) 421–422Google Scholar.

12 Roosevelt, Elliott, As He Saw It (New York 1946) 116.Google Scholar From the time it was published, Elliott Roosevelt's account of his father's deep dislike of European imperialism, an despecially FDR's supposed suspicion of British machinations to hold onto every part of every empire lest their own be direatened, has been denounced as inaccurate in detail and exaggerated in conclusions. Subsequent documentary evidence from various archives and memoirs has, however, strengthened confidence in Elliott's reportage of his father's attitudes.

13 Kimball, , Forged in War, 300.Google Scholar See also, Kersten, Albert E., ‘Wilhelmina and Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Wartime Relationship’ in: Minnen, Cornelius A. van and Sears, John F. eds, FDR and His Contemporaries: Foreign Perceptions of an American President (New York 1992) 85–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 See Gardner, Lloyd C., Economic Aspects of New Deal Diplomacy (Madison 1964) 275–280Google Scholar, for a brief discussion of the debates at the Atlantic Charter Conference in 1941, and the debates over Article VII of the Lend-Lease Agreement which committed London to wartime negotiations over post-war trade and the removal of empire preferences. For a recent account that deals with the British predicament, see Charmley, John, Churchill's Grand Alliance (New York 1995) 89–101Google Scholar.

15 Roosevelt, , As He Saw It, 115.Google Scholar

16 Anthony D. Biddle to Roosevelt 27 March 1942, and Roosevelt to Queen Wilhelmina 6 April 1942, both in Papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Hyde Park - New York, PSF, The Netherlands 1942. The Dutch Prime Minister, Dr Gerbrandy, who conveyed this delicate request, was at the same time expressing his hope to British officials that the centre of gravity in the Pacific War not shift to Washington from London, out of concern for the future of the East Indies. See Thome, Christopher, Allies of a Kind: The United States, Britain, and the War Against Japan, 1941–1945 (New York 1978) 219Google Scholar.

17 Thome, , Allies of a Kind, 218.Google Scholar

18 See Kimball, Warren F., ‘A Victorian Tory: Churchill, the Americans, and Self-Determination’ in: Louis, William Roger ed., More Adventures with Britannia (New York 1998)Google Scholar.

19 Dallek, Robert, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (New York 1979) 377–378.Google Scholar

20 Hull, Cordell, Memoirs II (London 1948) 1595.Google Scholar

21 Thome, , Allies of a Kind, 217.Google Scholar

22 Notes of Roosevelt-Molotov Meeting, l June 1942, in: Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 573. This remarkable book, published so soon after the war, would provide the most complete history of American policy for years to come, and still bears re-reading, no longer for documents once unavailable elsewhere, but for a feel of the atmosphere.

23 Ibid., 573–574.

24 See Gardner, Lloyd C., Approaching Vietnam: From World War II Through Dienbienphu (New York 1988) 35Google Scholar.

25 Murphy, Robert, Diplomat Among Warriors (New York 1964) 192.Google Scholar

26 Thome, , Allies of a Kind, 218.Google Scholar

27 FRUS: Cairo and Tehran, 323–325. Elliott Roosevelt, As He Saw It, has his father suggesting to Chiang, however, that the French might be allowed to serve as the trustee for Indochina responsible to a United Nations organization (page 165.) This interesting piece of evidence certainly predicts where FDR came out in the final months of his life, and suggests that his mind was never at rest on how to manage the transition.

28 FRUS: Cairo and Tehran, 484–485.

29 Ibid.

30 Diary Entry 28June 1944, Ward, , Closest Companion, 314.Google Scholar Sumner Welles, who issued many of the official statements on colonial questions during the war, wrote in 1951 that by the end of 1943 Roosevelt had become convinced that the United States had to work with China in years to come to prevent a cleavage between the Eastern and Western worlds, for our ‘own safety's sake’. Welles, ‘Roosevelt an d the Far East II’, Harper's Magazine 202 (March 1951) 70–80.

31 ,Gardner, , Approaching Vietnam, 45.Google Scholar

32 FRUS: Malta and Yaltai, 770–771.

33 Ibid.

34 Quoted in Gardner, , Approaching Vietnam, 46.Google Scholar Warren Kimball argues that FDR's conditions for French reinvolvement in Indochina ‘were a trap designed to get them to dissolve their entire empire, not just in Southeast Asia’. A sole trusteeship under the United Nations would force the French to accept international accountability. ‘Sole trusteeship and international trusteeship would achieve the same result, independence.’ The Juggler: Franklin Roosevelt as Wartime Statesman (Princeton 1991) 153.

35 Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearings: Causes, Origins and Lessons ofthe Vietnam War, 156–157. See also Patti, Archimedes L.A., Why Vietnam? Prelude to America's Albatross (Berkeley 1980)Google Scholar for another account by a former OSS officer stationed in Vietnam.

36 Gardner, , Approaching Vietnam, 70.Google Scholar

37 McMahon, Robert J., ‘Truman and the Roots of US Involvement in Indochina, 1945–1953’ in: Anderson, David L. ed., Shadows on the White House: Presidents & the Vietnam War, 1945–1975 (Manhattan 1993) 27–28.Google Scholar

38 Quoted in the Senator Gravel Edition, The Pentagon Papers I (Boston 1971) 31Google Scholar.

39 Williams, William Appleman et al. eds, America in Vietnam: A Documentary History (New York 1985) 97–98.Google Scholar

40 Ibid., 91.

41 Ibid., 95–96.

42 McMahon, , ‘Truman and the Roots of US Involvement’, 32. And see, Rotter, Andrew J., The Path to Vietnam: Origins of the American Commitment to Southeast Asia (Ithaca 1987) 141.Google Scholar

43 Substance of Statements Made at Wake Island Conference on 15 October 1950, in FRUS: Korea, 957–958.

44 Draft Memorandum 9July 1954, reprinted in Williams, America in Vietnam, 166–168.

45 Gardner, , Approaching Vietnam, 111–112.Google Scholar

46 Executive Sessions of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (Historical Series) V, 83rd Cong 1st sess., (Washington DC 1977) 142.Google Scholar

47 Gardner, , Approaching Vietnam, p135. Emphasis added.Google Scholar

48 Ibid., 196.

49 Bundy to Donald Graham, editor of the Harvard Crimson 20 April 1965, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library - Austin Texas, The Papers of Lyndon B. Johnson, Files of McGeorge Bundy, Boxes 18–19.

50 Anderson, David, ‘Dwight D. Eisenhower and Wholehearted Support of Ngo Dinh Diem’, in idem ed., Shadow on the White House, 49.Google Scholar

51 Gardner, , Pay Any Price, 47.Google Scholar

52 Unsigned Memorandum [Feb?] 1965, National Security Files, Johnson Papers, International Travel, boxes 28–29. The memo has notes in McGeorge Bundy's handwriting, but the basic themes were common enough in Bundy's day and in that of his successors, Walt Rostow and Henry Kissinger.

53 Quoted in Williams, America in Vietnam.

54 US Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearings: Causes, Origins and Lessons of the Vietnam War, 92nd cong., 2nd sess. (Washington DC 1973) vGoogle Scholar.

55 Testimony of Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr, Ibid. 116.

56 Lee, Steven Hugh, Outposts of Empire: Korea, Vietnam, and the Origins of the Cold War in Asia (Montreal 1995). This outstanding monograph provides a well-argued case for an activist American policy, and a.consistent one.Google Scholar