Thomas L. Hughes, former international coverage advisor and Vietnam Conflict critic throughout the administrations of U.S. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, died Jan. 2, 2023.
A Midwesterner from Mankato, Minn., Hughes was born Dec. 11, 1925. Growing an curiosity in politics, he turned a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, attended Yale Regulation College, and rose rapidly within the political world after arriving in Washington, D.C. in 1955.
Hughes directed the Bureau of Intelligence and Analysis (INR) on behalf of the U.S. State Division within the Sixties, serving as Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Analysis from 1961 to 1969.
Hughes was crucial of the Vietnam Conflict and helped LBJ’s Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, draw up a memorandum in 1965 outlining numerous the reason why the struggle was not price preventing.
Within the memo, Hughes wrote {that a} “full-scale navy assault” towards North Vietnam would “postpone any progress on arms management… weaken our place within the United Nations; it’d require a call-up of reservists if we had been to get entangled in a large-scale land struggle—and a consequent improve in protection expenditures…lastly and most essential it will injury the picture of the President of the USA—and that of the USA itself.”
“American wars must be politically comprehensible by the American public,” Hughes went within the memo. “In World Wars I and II we had this…From a political viewpoint, the American folks discover it laborious to grasp why we danger World Conflict III by enlarging a struggle below phrases we discovered unacceptable 12 years in the past in Korea, significantly for the reason that possibilities of success are slimmer.”
Hughes questioned what American objectives had been in Vietnam and criticized the instability of the South Vietnamese authorities, including, “Politically, folks can’t perceive why we might run grave dangers to help a rustic which is completely unable to place its personal home so as.”
He urged that Johnson withdraw. “The very best end result a yr from now can be a Vietnam settlement which seems to be higher than was within the playing cards as a result of the President’s political abilities for the primary time got here to grips with a fateful world disaster and so efficiently.”
Johnson nevertheless didn’t heed the memorandum and subsequently excluded Vice President Humphrey from issues referring to Vietnam, according to The Washington Post, though he left Hughes in his place.
Hughes subsequently served as deputy ambassador to Britain and retired from authorities work in 1970. He turned president of the Carnegie Endowment for Worldwide Peace from 1971-1991, the place he continued to pursue his pursuits in international coverage.