JFK and Vietnam

[Middle-aged Europe]

I have no idea.

And I'm pretty sure Kennedy himself didn't really know either at the time of his death. I think at the end of the day, Kennedy was as much of a foreign policy hawk as he was a Detente diplomat. He often wanted to keep himself all options open and the decision which of those two parts he wanted to play was basically made on a case-to-case basis.

That said, at the time of his death he was in a process of "thinking it over"... but no decision had already been made either way.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Another fact I just remembered from reading a book about Kennedy's foreign policy once:

I think Kennedy's closest circle of adivsors was actually pretty much divided on Vietnam. One side didn't really see much point in continuing with the current strategy and favored exploring a number of alternatives to a military engagement, the other side wanted to continue or even expand the U.S. military involvement.

At the time of Kennedy's death neither side had gained the upper hand and the internal discussion hadn't really come to a conclusion. When Johnson become president, he fired almost all of those "Vietnam doves", while he kept the "hawks" in his administration.

The bottom line is... a continued Kennedy administration had made a withdrawal a bit more likely, but there is no guarantee that it actually would have happened.