Congress and the Politics of Troop Withdrawal, 1966–1973
This chapter examines the politics of U.S. troop withdrawal from Vietnam during the 1960s and 1970s in order to identify the strategies employed by Congress to check an imperial executive and to regain its constitutional prerogatives. When the Vietnam War escalated in 1964 and 1965, most policymakers, including Lyndon Johnson, were very sensitive to the role Congress might play in its evolution. During this period, Congress challenged presidential decisions and helped to create the political pressure that led to a drawdown in American troops fighting the war. The chapter first considers how Senator William Fulbright brought the problems with the Vietnam War to the forefront of public debate before discussing the politics of troop withdrawal since the time of Johnson, with particular emphasis on Richard Nixon's Vietnamization and a range of legislative initiatives such as the War Powers Act (1973) and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (1978).