Editing Containment (section)

==Vietnam==
Senator [[Barry Goldwater]], the Republican candidate for president in 1964, challenged containment and asked, "Why not victory?"<ref>[[Richard J. Jensen]], Jon Thares Davidann, Yoneyuki Sugita, ''Trans-Pacific Relations: America, Europe, and Asia in the Twentieth Century'', p. 178. (2003)</ref> President [[Lyndon Johnson]], the Democratic nominee, answered that rollback risked nuclear war. Johnson explained containment doctrine by quoting the Bible: "Hitherto shalt thou come, but not further."<ref name="Jensen1">Jensen, p. 180. The quote is from [[Book of Job|Job]] 38:11.</ref> Goldwater lost to Johnson in the 1964 election by a wide margin. Johnson adhered closely to containment during the [[Vietnam War]]. Rejecting proposals by General [[William Westmoreland]] for U.S. ground forces to advance into Laos and cut communist supply lines, Johnson gathered a group of elder statesmen called [[The Wise Men (book)|The Wise Men]]. The group included Kennan, Acheson and other former Truman advisors.

Rallies in support of the troops were discouraged for fear that a patriotic response would lead to demands for victory and rollback.<ref name="Jensen1"/> Military responsibility was divided among three generals so that no powerful theater commander could emerge to challenge Johnson as MacArthur had challenged Truman.<ref>Jensen, p. 182.</ref>

Nixon, who replaced Johnson in 1969, referred to his foreign policy as détente, a relaxation of tension. Although it continued to aim at restraining the Soviet Union, it was based on political realism, thinking in terms of national interest, as opposed to crusades against communism or for democracy. Emphasis was placed on talks with the Soviet Union concerning nuclear weapons called the [[Strategic Arms Limitation Talks]]. Nixon reduced U.S. military presence in Vietnam to the minimum required to contain communist advances, in a policy called [[Vietnamization]]. As the war continued, it grew less popular. A Democratic Congress forced Nixon, a Republican, to abandon the policy in 1973 by enacting the [[Case–Church Amendment]], which ended U.S. military involvement in Vietnam and led to successful communist invasions of South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.