The Lower Mekong Basin Development Project: Opportunities and Problems of Regionalism in Southeast Asia

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the concept and the outcome of the Mekong proposal contained in President Lydon B. Johnson's peace initiative, April 7, 1965, expressed in a speech at the Johns Hopkins University and to a national radio and television audience. The speech asserted U.S. willingness to negotiate an end to the then-expanding conflict in Vietnam, defended U.S. policy of bombing in North Vietnam, and offered U.S. support for a large program of regional development in Southeast Asia.