Tonkin Gulf resolution, in U.S. history, Congressional resolution passed in 1964 that authorized military action in Southeast Asia. On Aug. 4, 1964, North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin were alleged to have attacked without provocation U.S. destroyers that were reporting intelligence information to South Vietnam. President Lyndon B. Johnson and his advisers decided upon immediate air attacks on North Vietnam in retaliation; he also asked Congress for a mandate for future military action. On Aug. 7, Congress passed a resolution drafted by the administration authorizing all necessary measures to repel attacks against U.S. forces and all steps necessary for the defense of U.S. allies in Southeast Asia. Although there was disagreement in Congress over the precise meaning of the Tonkin Gulf resolution, Presidents Johnson and Richard M. Nixon used it to justify later military action in Southeast Asia. The measure was repealed by Congress in 1970. Retired Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap, in a 1995 meeting with former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, categorically denied that the North Vietnamese had attacked the U.S. destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964, and in 2001 it was revealed that President Johnson, in a taped conversation with McNamara several weeks after passage of the resolution, had expressed doubt that the attack ever occurred.

Resolution Island, 387 sq mi (1,002 sq km), off SE Baffin Island, Canada, Nunavut Territory, at the east entrance of Hudson Strait. At its southern extremity is a radar and meteorological station.

Foot Resolution, offered in 1829 by Samuel Augustus Foot in the U.S. Senate. This resolution instructed the committee on public lands to inquire into the limiting of public land sale. The Jacksonian Democrats, who wished to encourage migration to the West, opposed the resolution; the New England manufacturing interests, who demanded a ready labor supply, backed it. When the Foot Resolution was introduced, the advocates of states' rights saw an opportunity to coalesce with the interests of the West. This touched off (1830) the dramatic debates between Robert Hayne and Daniel Webster.