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What was the cause of the Vietnam war
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Causes of the Vietnam War Essay
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The Vietnam war has been referred to by many names, one of the longer ones was 'the cornerstone of the free world southeast Asia'. It was called that by John F. Kennedy. He was talking about Vietnam being and essential country in a non-communist world. He believed that if Vietnam became a communist country, all of the surrounding countries would also become communists. This is the main reason America was involved in the Vietnam war. Another reason was that America wanted to spread their “political ideas around the globe”. They wanted to do this so that their anti-communism stance was clear. The public also wanted to keep communism from spreading. To soldiers, the war was like a crusade, a great journey to purge the communists from Vietnam. Sadly, this is not what happened. The Viet Cong (VC) had far better tactics than the US. The VC was told to 'nibble at the enemy' so that he could 'neither eat or sleep'. This worked very well. Another demoralizing tactic the VC used was their landmines; they were designed to blow the limbs off the soldiers without killing them. This tied up hospital beds and meant the soldiers had to carry the wounded back to the base.
As you can see, the US has had better ideas than entering in this war. So why did we enter in it? Mainly because of fear, fear of communism. Communism is a socioeconomic structure and political ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general. It means the people who work hard and/or get paid a lot more, must give their money away to people less fortunate, therefore making the poor people equal to themselves. This only works in theory, as demonstrat...
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...pularity, Hanoi created the National Liberation Front on December 12 1960 as a common ground with the Southern communists. This, put plainly, failed. Over three years, the Diem regime grew even more hated, there were 16,000 U.S. Trooops in south Vietnam, the Southern Vietnam army had exemplified its ineptness in the battle of Ap Bac, in which a small band of Viet Minh fought off a much larger force of better equipped South Vietnamese.
That day they were led by one of South Vietnams most trusted Generals, Huynh Van Cao.
Most of the U.S. Advisers were in favor of a coup, with one of the chief demands being that Ngo Ninh Nhu be removed. It was belived that he was in charge of the secret police, he was also Diems most powerful adviser. The CIA came into contact with generals planning to remove Diem. The generals were told that the U.S. would not oppose such a move.
The North Vietnamese Communist leadership's ability to reassess and adapt during the Vietnam War was reflected in how well they combined guerilla and conventional operations to achieve their strategic goal of unifying Vietnam under communist rule. Throughout the conflict, the Viet Cong (VC) were employed to conduct guerilla operations while North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and VC "main force" units were used to transition to conventional operations. Guerilla operations enabled Hanoi to inflict a steady flow of casualties on US forces which increased anti-war sentiment in America. NVA and VC main force conventional operations reinforced the US Army's conventional approach to the fight which caused the Americans to alienate the people of South Vietnam. By alienating the South Vietnamese people, the Americans enhanced the VC's ability to conduct guerilla operations and control rural population centers which weakened the credibility of the Government of South Vietnam (GVN). The combined effects of guerilla and conventional operations supported the North Vietnamese strategy of a protracted conflict that was sure to weaken the resolve of the United States and eventually defeat the GVN.
Oh right, because we were blinded by our fear of communism” (Green). It was the U.S. fear of the spread of communism that propelled the motion to war forward.... ... middle of paper ... ...
In conclusion, I think that the United States became increasingly involved in the Vietnamese War because of the policies they had made as a promise to fight communism, and because they had sorely underestimated Vietcong’s ability to fight back using Guerrilla warfare. They refused to pull out of the war in fear of losing face before the world, but this pride factor scored them massive losses in the war. In the end, with both side sustaining heavy losses, the US were still seen as mutilators in the war, with advanced showing what their intervention had costed, and Vietnam was still fully taken over by Communism – they had achieved nothing and lost a lot.
The Vietnam War was one of many. One reason some people argue the US should have been in the Vietnam War is because of the belief the US was trying to help establish a democracy there. The Vietnam war helping America win the cold war was another reason people believe the US was justified in the Vietnam war. Others believe that the US should not have been there because they were supporting a corrupt government, another reason is that American warfare was excessive and abusively killed many innocent civilians and ruined the land. While it appeared that the US was trying to spread democracy and win the cold war, but in truth, the US was supporting a mini Hitler, and our strategy had little chance of
This theory stated, "If South Vietnam falls to the Communist, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, India and Pakistan would also fall like dominos. The Pacific Islands and even Australia could be at risk." After the French were defeated in 1954, Vietnam was split in two; the north was Communist, led by Ho Chi Minh, and the south was Capitalist under Ngo Dinh Diem. Diem's regime got billions of dollars from the US but remained very unpopular with most Vietnamese people. The US prevented the elections that were promised under the Geneva conference because it knew that the Communists would win.
The Vietnam War took place in between 1947- 1975. It consisted of North Vietnam trying to make South Vietnam a communism government. The United States later joined this conflict because of the stress North Vietnam was putting to South Vietnam to become a government that America did not want. The main reason why America joined was because of a theory called the Domino Effect. America and Russia were going through what has been dubbed the Cold War. The Domino Effect is the theory that communism will spread form one country to another. United states does not want this because our government is a democracy and communism opposes everything we stand for. America fearing communism was growing, stepped into Vietnam with America’s interest in mind, instead of Vietnam’s. There are several reason why American should have not gotten involved with this war. The most important reason was that America government officials made to much of a big deal about communism. This might sound cynical, but America to a certain degree did over react. Let it be said that it is much easier to say this after the fact. By looking back at McCarthyism, we can see the silliness of this fear. There is a serious side though. Thousands of people dies for a government that has no impact of their daily life. What regime Vietnam was going to change over to had no effect on the every day cycle of the United States. So truly, one can say, this can not one thing to do with America, its government and people.
Vann arrived in Vietnam on March 23, 1962 as part of the new U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam. He became a chief advisor to an ARVN infantry division. His duty was to advise his Vietnamese counter part, but he officially had no power over any ARVN troops. It was this situation that became a major point of conflict between him and those who were running the war.
When president of south Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem decided that the election of 1956 should be canceled, America strongly agreed so that Minh could not gain control of the whole country. Diem was a Catholic, which angered the country consisting mostly of Buddhist. In opposition to Diem, a new regime was conjured up in south Vietnam called the Vietcong. Vietcong were residents of South Vietnam who were in favor of the communist rule in North Vietnam.
The president Diem was not the ideal person to be in charge of South Vietnam. He was, as one American official said, "a puppet who pulled his own strings and ours (American) as well." He put people in prison camps, he was harsh on peasants, he refused to allow an election in the South, and he persecuted Buddhists and eliminated Vietminh supporters in the South. Though the US government supported him because he had prevented communist victory in the South.
The United States then decided that the only way to solve the problems would be to contain Communism, including in Vietnam. The true answer to why the United States got involved in Vietnam lies in part in the Truman Doctrine. This statement is true for two reasons. First, the Truman Doctrine set forth a policy that was applied to the international spread of Communism. Second, the Truman Doctrine was brought up when the conflict in Vietnam was increasing.
The Vietnam War was one of the longest and most expensive wars in American history. It started from 1955 till April 30, 1975. This war lasted for almost 20 years. According to the article "How the U.S Got Involved In Vietnam" by Jeff Drake the U.S attacked Vietman and this wasn't supposed to happen. This war could have been avoidable. The 58,000 Americans didn’t have to die, nor did the 2,000,000 Vietnamese. The U.S government was responsible for their deaths. What the government told the public from the very beginning was that they were going to war because they had to stop the communist menace in Vietnam or other countries would follow suit; that they had to defend the democratic South Vietnamese government against the gathering Red hordes. While other people say it was an attempt by the U.S to suppress a heroic Vietnamese national liberation movement that had driven French colonialism out of its country (Drake, 1993).
The Vietminh did not accept that Vietnam should be divided. Ho Chi Minh had believed that the people of Vietnam wanted a communist government. Minh declared that he had authority over the whole state and he encouraged the Vietminh resistance movement in the south. When the United States stepped in Ho ordered that the Vietminh in the South should be supplied with arms by the North. In 1965, Ho sent in regular North Vietnamese troops to help the Vietminh when the United States sent military troops in. While Ho Chi Minh was a Communist, it should be noted that he was a true Nationalist and wanted nothing more than independence for his homeland. Although Ho Chi Minh died 1969 before his country could be unified. Ho Chi Minh’s legacy as a nationalist was honored by the country when Saigon fell and was renamed Ho Chi Minh
The reasons for the Vietnam War took place long before the war even began. For years, the Vietnamese had been under French colonial rule. But, when Communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh came back to Vietnam, he established a group called the Viet Minh, the goal of which was to remove all French occupation from Vietnam. So, the fighting started, and Ho Chi Minh tried to get the US to support them. But, being true to their policies of containment, the US started supporting France. The United States' thoughts about Communism's potential growth can be summed up in one basic idea: the Domino Theory. This theory stated that if one country in a region fell to Communism, the surrounding countries would soon follow. Because of this, the US committed to keeping the North Vietnamese contained once the French withdrew from Vietnam. But, the thing that really pushed the US into sending troops into Vietnam was the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. On August 2nd and 4th, 1964, the North Vietnamese fired upon two US ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. Following this, Congress approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 7, 1964, which gave the president authority to send military troops into Vietnam without declaring war. So, President Johnson sent troops into Vietnam, which had already erupted into civil war, to aid the South Vietnamese.
In 1960 the South Vietnamese communist organization, The National Liberation Front, more commonly known as the Vietcong, joined forces with the North Vietnamese. The American forces backed the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, which only stemmed the influence of the communist in South and proving to be very ineffective. In 1961, Maxwell Taylor sent a telegram to President Kennedy recommending the dispatch of US forces to South Vietnam so that the US forces can be called upon to engage in combat to protect themselves, their working parties, and the area in which they live (Taylor, 121-123). In 1963 the situation continued to escalate. Kennedy is trying to gain the American public’s support by being interviewed by Walter Cronkite of CBS, saying that as ...
Vietnam was a struggle which, in all honesty, the United States should never have been involved in. North Vietnam was battling for ownership of South Vietnam, so that they would be a unified communist nation. To prevent the domino effect and the further spread of communism, the U.S. held on to the Truman Doctrine and stood behind the South Vietnamese leader, Diem.