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Richard Nixon's Vietnamization policy
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The Vietnam War spanned the terms of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford. Each president was plagued by the seemingly unwinnable war that was unfolding in Indochina and except for Presidents Nixon and Ford all were committed to somehow winning the war. However, it was President Nixon that made the decision to instead commit the United States to developing South Vietnamese forces to protecting itself from North Vietnam and other invading nations. Thus, the Nixon Doctrine was not focused directly on the containment of communism or on defending developing nations via declarations of war against aggressors but instead was focused on developing the native military forces of those nations requesting aid and supplying such nations with the means to protect themselves from external and internal threats.
The Nixon Doctrine was immediately applied to the latter half of the Vietnam War after the Nixon Administration moved into the White House. The doctrine’s main purpose was to address the methods of how the United States would extricate its military forces from Vietnam while at the same time aiding South Vietnam in defending itself against Chinese-supported North Vietnam. According to the Encyclopedia of the New American Nation regarding the Nixon Doctrine:
Southeast Asia would be the setting for the most visible application of the Nixon Doctrine. In an attempt to extricate the United States from the war in Indochina, Nixon sought to ‘Vietnamize’ the conflict by having indigenous troops supplant American forces. It was a program that took four years to complete, with the last U.S. troops leaving Saigon in 1973. (2011)
During the extrication process from Vietnam, the Nixon Administration implemented the Nixon Doctrine...
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Meiertöns, H. (2010). Doctrines of U.S. Security Policy: An Evaluation Under International Law. Cambridge University Press. Retrieved July 2, 2011 from EBSCOhost
The Nixon Doctrine (2011). In Encyclopedia of the New American Nation. Retrieved July 2, 2011, from http://www.americanforeignrelations.com/A-D/Doctrines-The-nixon-doctrine.html
Ravenal, E. C. (1971). The Nixon Doctrine and Our Asian Commitments. Foreign Affairs, 49(2), 201-217. Retrieved July 2, 2011 from EBSCOhost
Roskin, M., & Berry, N. (2010). IR: The new world of international relations: 2010 edition (8th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Longman/Pearson Education.
Rick Perlstein argues over whether "Nixonland", a country at war with itself, still resides in the heart of America. The book took a in depth look at Nixon’s political career from the beginning up to the outcome of the 1972 election, as well as how America’s political scene went from perceived consensus in the LBJ era to the bitterly divided right versus left, also known as the red state/blue state split. Perlstein’s argument is that we are still living in Nixonland. “Nixonland” is a study of the consensus, it isn’t just about Nixon, he isn’t the protagonist of Nixonland although it does include his rise and fall; instead, the protagonist of Nixonland is the American voter who found themselves voting Democrat in 1964 and then Republican in 1972 for the same reasons. This book covers the American political and cultural terrain from LBJ’s liberal landslide in 1964, through Nixon’s comeback in 1968, and land...
JOHN F. KENNEDY IN VIETNAM There are many critical questions surrounding United States involvement in Vietnam. American entry to Vietnam was a series of many choices made by five successive presidents during these years of 1945-1975. The policies of John F. Kennedy during the years of 1961-1963 were ones of military action, diplomacy, and liberalism. Each of his decision was on its merits at the time the decision was made. The belief that Vietnam was a test of the Americas ability to defeat communists in Vietnam lay at the center of Kennedy¡¦s policy. Kennedy promised in his inaugural address, Let every nation know...that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty. From the 1880s until World War II, France governed Vietnam as part of French Indochina, which also included Cambodia and Laos. The country was under the formal control of an emperor, Bao Dai. From 1946 until 1954, the Vietnamese struggled for their independence from France during the first Indochina War. At the end of this war, the country was temporarily divided into North and South Vietnam. North Vietnam came under the control of the Vietnamese Communists who had opposed France and aimed for a unified Vietnam under Communist rule. Vietnamese who had collaborated with the French controlled the South. For this reason the United States became involved in Vietnam because it believed that if all of the country fell under a Communist government, Communism would spread throughout Southeast Asia and further. This belief was known as the domino theory. The decision to enter Vietnam reflected America¡¦s idea of its global role-U.S. could not recoil from world leadership. The U.S. government supported the South Vietnamese government. The U.S. government wanted to establish the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), which extended protection to South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos in case of Communist subversion. SEATO, which came into force in 1955, became the way which Washington justified its support for South Vietnam; this support eventually became direct involvement of U.S. troops. In 1955, the United States picked Ngo Dinh Diem to replace Bao Dai as head of the anti-Communist regime in South Vietnam. Eisenhower chose to support Ngo Dinh Diem. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born in Brookline, Mass., on May 29, 1917. Kennedy graduated from Harvard University in 1940 and joined the Navy the next year.
On April 30, 1970, when Nixon gave a speech announcing his invasion of Cambodia, anti-war factions rose up across the United States. In the speech he stated that, “If, when the chips are down…the world’s most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and institutions around the world. I would rather be a one term president and do what I believe is right than to be a two term president at the cost of seeing America become a second rate power.” Students did not agree with Nixon and protests cropped up on university campuses in the days that followed his speech. Amongst these protesters were students of Kent State University, “The Cambodian invasion defined a watershed in the attitude of Kent students toward American policy in the Indochina War.” At this point, the first two days of May, the students were protesting Nixon’s actions. While the cou...
Frieden, Jeffry A., David A. Lake, and Kenneth A. Schultz. World Politics. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2013. Print.
This book details the discussion of government policy in the stages of the Vietnam crisis from 1961-July 1965. It examines the main characters of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert McNamara, in addition to the military, which included the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It began in the Kennedy era amidst the Bay of Pigs incident and how that led to mistrust of the military planning by advisors and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It continues with Johnson and his administration making decisions over and over that continued to commit more and more involve...
New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Shiraev, Eric B., and Vladislav M. Zubok. International Relations. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Silver, Larry.
The Vietnam War was a multinational conflict lasting from 1955 until 1973. Due to international events and relations of the time, the Vietnam War was a civil war that was heavily influenced by Cold War ideology. Western politicians who accepted the reality of the Domino Theory implemented many policies to increase their countries’ involvement in Vietnam, in order to stop the progress of Communism through South-East Asia. America’s increase in military involvement in the Vietnam War was founded upon the basis of ideological tensions between Communism and Democracy. However, at its core, the Vietnam War was a struggle against the French, and did not
Nye, Jr., Joseph S. “Hard and Soft Power in American Foreign Policy.” In Paradox of American Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. 4-17. Print.
While he was a fierce anticommunist, President Nixon possessed a very “realist” mindset when it came to foreign relations during his presidency. Unlike his predecessors, Nixon was interested more “…in power than ideology” (Foner 1015), implying that he acknowledged the benefits of having a good relationship with powerful nations despite differences in ideology. He also “…preferred international stability to relentless conflict” (Foner 1015), showing that despite being an anticommunist, he would rather end tensions than keep headache known as the Cold War. This proved especially relevant seeing as how the Vietnam War was in full swing
Mingst, K. (2011). Essentials of international relations. (5th ed., p. 70). New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.
Rourke, John T, and Mark A Boyer. 2010. International Politics on the World Stage. 8th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education
Walt, S M. (1998) International Relations: One World, Many Theories. Foreign Policy, 110 (Spring 1998): 29-46.
[1] Karen A. Mingst, Ivan M. Arreguín –Toft. Essentials of International Relations (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., October 2013)
Hudson, V. M., & Vore, C. S. (1995). Foreign policy analysis yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Mershon International Studies Review, 209-238.
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.