Defining a War: INDOCHINA, THE VIETNAM WAR, AND THE MAYAGUEZ INCIDENT

Only two weeks after the fall of Saigon in May 1975, Khmer Rouge forces seized the American merchant ship SS Mayaguez (1944) off the Cambodian coast, setting up a Marine rescue and recovery battle on the island of Koh Tang. This battle on 12–15 May 1975 was the final U.S. military episode amid the wider Second Indochina War. The term Vietnam War has impeded a proper understanding of the wider war in the American consciousness, leading many to disassociate the Mayaguez incident from the Vietnam War, though they belong within the same historical frame. This article seeks to provide a heretofore unseen historical argument connecting the Mayaguez incident to the wider war and to demonstrate that Mayaguez and Koh Tang veterans are Vietnam veterans, relying on primary sources from the Ford administration, the papers of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, and interviews with veterans.

Making Turkey Pay

This chapter details the international response to the outbreak of violence on Cyprus, resulting in the Turkish intervention. It focuses on the effective efforts of Greek Americans to lobby on behalf of Cyprus, using national and local organizations throughout the country and garnering support from Armenian allies. It explains how key activists in Congress, with the crucial support of ethnic lobbyists, successfully organized to press the Ford administration to accept an arms embargo. Finally, it reveals the initial inadequacies of the White House in trying to counter this insurgency.

The Ford Administration, the National Security Agency, and the “Year of Intelligence”: Constructing a New Legal Framework for Intelligence

In the mid-1970s, Congress and the judiciary moved to regulate the National Security Agency (NSA) at a moment when such regulation might have restricted the growth of electronic surveillance. The Ford administration played a crucial role in preventing that from happening. It did so by controlling the flow of intelligence information to Congress and by establishing a flexible new legal framework for intelligence based on broad executive orders, narrow legislation, and legal opinions written by executive branch lawyers. This framework fostered a perception of legality that headed off calls for comprehensive legislation governing intelligence. The Ford administration’s actions protected NSA from meaningful regulation, preserved the growth of electronic surveillance, and sustained executive branch preeminence in national security affairs. The episode proved formative for the Ford administration officials involved—including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Antonin Scalia—and solidified the central role of executive branch lawyers in national security policymaking.

The United States and South Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Program, 1970–1981

Chapter 5 examines the proliferation dispute between the United States and the Republic of Korea (ROK). The Nixon administration’s efforts to extricate the United States from the Vietnam War, draw down US troops in East and Southeast Asia, and seek a rapprochement with China precipitated this dispute. ROK president Park Chung-hee authorized a secret nuclear weapons program in 1972. The Ford administration used a mix of threats to suspend bilateral nuclear cooperation and promises to stabilize US troop levels to get Park to cancel the purchase of a French reprocessing plant in 1975 and 1976. The dispute erupted anew in 1977, when Carter proposed withdrawing all US troops and tactical nuclear weapons. The crisis was finally resolved in 1981, when the Reagan administration pledged to maintain troop levels in exchange for ROK president Chun Doo-hwan’s redirecting nuclear energy research to civilian purposes.