The anti-war movement in the United States and Australia, the role of the media, including television coverage of the war and the publication of the Pentagon Papers, the Moratorium movement, and the impact of events such as the Kent State shootings

What this dot point is asking

NESA expects you to analyse the anti-war movement in the United States and Australia, the role of the media, and how both shaped political constraints on the conduct of the war. Strong answers cover the rise of the movement from 1965, the Moratoriums of 1969 and 1970 in both countries, Kent State, the role of television and photojournalism, the Pentagon Papers case, and the political effect on Johnson, Nixon, Holt, Gorton, and McMahon.

The answer

The American movement

The anti-war movement in the United States emerged from the student left, civil rights activism, and pacifist traditions. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Vietnam Day Committee organised teach-ins from March 1965; the University of Michigan teach-in (24 to 25 March 1965) drew 3,000.

The movement grew with US escalation. The October 1965 international days of protest involved around 100,000. The March on the Pentagon on 21 October 1967 drew around 100,000 (Norman Mailer's The Armies of the Night, 1968).

Tet shifted middle-class opinion. The October 1969 Moratorium drew an estimated 2 million across the United States; the November 1969 Mobilization brought 500,000 to Washington. The movement broadened from students to professionals, mothers (Women Strike for Peace), clergy (Berrigan brothers), and veterans (Vietnam Veterans Against the War, John Kerry's 22 April 1971 Senate testimony).

Kent State and Jackson State

On 30 April 1970 President Nixon announced the Cambodian incursion on television. The next week saw protests on 450 university campuses. At Kent State University in Ohio on 4 May 1970, Ohio National Guard troops, called by Governor James Rhodes, fired 67 rounds in 13 seconds at students protesting on the Commons. Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer, and William Schroeder were killed; nine were wounded. Mary Ann Vecchio's anguished photograph by John Filo won the Pulitzer.

On 14 May 1970, police fired at Jackson State College in Mississippi, killing two African American students (Phillip Lafayette Gibbs, James Earl Green). Around 4 million students at 450 institutions struck. Nixon was forced to commit to withdrawing US ground forces from Cambodia by 29 June 1970.

The Senate repealed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on 13 January 1971. The Cooper-Church Amendment (29 December 1970) restricted future ground combat in Cambodia.

Television and photojournalism

Vietnam was the first "television war". By 1968 over 90 per cent of US homes had a television; the evening news broadcast 15- to 20-minute war segments most nights. Combat footage was filmed on 16mm film, flown back, and aired with two- to three-day delay.

Iconic images: Eddie Adams's photograph of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing Nguyen Van Lem in Saigon on 1 February 1968 (Pulitzer 1969). Ronald Haeberle's My Lai photographs (released 20 November 1969). Nick Ut's photograph of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, the 9-year-old burned by South Vietnamese napalm at Trang Bang on 8 June 1972 (Pulitzer 1973). Hubert Van Es's photograph of the helicopter evacuation from a Saigon rooftop on 29 April 1975.

Walter Cronkite, the CBS Evening News anchor, was the most trusted figure in American news. His Report from Vietnam: Who, What, When, Where, Why? aired on 27 February 1968 concluded the war was a stalemate. Johnson reportedly said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America".

The Pentagon Papers

Daniel Ellsberg, an analyst at the RAND Corporation, copied and leaked a classified 7,000-page Department of Defense history (United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945 to 1967) to The New York Times. The first instalment ran on 13 June 1971. The Nixon administration sought a prior restraint injunction.

In New York Times Co. v United States (30 June 1971, 6-3) the Supreme Court held that the government had not met the heavy burden for prior restraint. The papers revealed that successive administrations had systematically misled the public about the war from 1945 onwards. The credibility damage to the Nixon White House was substantial; the Watergate-era "plumbers" unit was created to investigate Ellsberg.

The Australian movement

Australia's commitment in April 1965 was paralleled by domestic resistance. Conscription under the National Service Act of 24 November 1964 selected 20-year-olds by ballot. The Save Our Sons movement (1965, led by Joyce Golgerth, Joan Coxsedge and others) opposed conscription. Don Maclean and Bill White's draft refusal cases drew attention.

Public opinion shifted around Tet. The Vietnam Moratorium Campaign, launched in 1969 by Jim Cairns (ALP), drew Catholics, unionists, students, and church figures. The first Moratorium on 8 May 1970 brought:

• around 100,000 in Melbourne (the largest political demonstration in Australian history to that date),
• around 25,000 in Sydney,
• around 5,000 in Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth, Hobart.

A second Moratorium on 18 September 1970 and a third on 30 June 1971 were also large. The Gorton government replaced Holt (drowned 17 December 1967); McMahon replaced Gorton in March 1971. The McMahon government began reducing the 1ATF in late 1971.

The Whitlam Labor government, elected 2 December 1972, abolished conscription on 5 December 1972, released conscientious objectors, and withdrew the last Australian advisers by January 1973. Australia had committed around 60,000 personnel; 521 had died; around 3,000 had been wounded.

The movement's impact

The movement did not in itself end the war. The DRV's strategy and the South Vietnamese collapse in 1975 ended it. The movement did:

• foreclose Johnson's choices after Tet (the rejection of Westmoreland's 206,000-troop request);
• force Nixon to publicise Vietnamisation and a phased withdrawal from June 1969;
• constrain the Cambodian incursion of 1970 (Cooper-Church);
• end the draft (1 July 1973);
• discredit the imperial presidency (War Powers Resolution, 7 November 1973);
• shape the Paris Peace Accords as a face-saving exit rather than a victorious settlement.

Historiography

Tom Wells (The War Within, 1994) is the standard study of the US movement.

Melvin Small (Antiwarriors, 2002) treats the influence on Johnson and Nixon.

Greg Pemberton (All the Way, 1987) and Peter Edwards (A Nation at War, 1997) are standard on the Australian commitment and dissent.

Peter King and Ann Curthoys on the Australian Moratorium movement.

Common exam traps

Overstating the movement's direct causal effect. The movement constrained; it did not decide. Tet's effect on opinion was the trigger.

Forgetting Australia. The Melbourne Moratorium of 8 May 1970 is the canonical Australian example.

Misdating Kent State. 4 May 1970, four days after the Cambodian incursion announcement.

In one sentence

The anti-war movement in the United States and Australia, sharpened by television coverage from Tet 1968 onwards, the Eddie Adams and Nick Ut photographs, the Moratoriums of 1969 to 1971 (around 100,000 in Melbourne on 8 May 1970), the Kent State killings of 4 May 1970, and the Pentagon Papers case decided on 30 June 1971, constrained the political latitude of the Johnson and Nixon administrations and the Holt to McMahon Coalition governments and made the negotiated exit of the early 1970s politically necessary.