preview

Summary Of The Causation Of Vietnam War

Decent Essays

A Summary of the Causation of the Vietnam War
Traditionally war serves as an instrument for peace with a defined winner and loser. This was not the case in the Vietnam War. As the longest war in U.S history, it spanned nearly 20 years encompassing 5 different presidential terms. The war in Vietnam served as a limited “proxy war” between the United States and Soviet Union fought to combat the spread of communism, to preserve a democratic state in Southeast Asia, and to limit the power of the Soviet Union. Due to the complexity of the Vietnam war itself one cannot categorize the war in terms of “winning” or “losing”, rather one must look at the political, ideological, and historical causations of the war
In the aftermath of WWII most European countries fell under the influence of the communist Soviet Union. At the time the Soviet Union was rapidly spreading it ideals of Marxist equality throughout eastern Europe (History.com). Fearful that the grasp of communism would spread rapidly outside of Europe, the United States shifted its attention to the Korean Peninsula where the soviet backed North Korean government threated war against the South. Realizing that communism was not a primary threat the …show more content…

The “falling domino theory” was a metaphor used by president Eisenhower to describe the uncontrollable spread of communism from one country to another. In essence “The dominoes Eisenhower described were countries, and the contagious element they carried were the political and economic features of communism (Leeson and Deane 1)”. The dominoes Eisenhower described also referred to cold war rhetoric. At the time the United States was in engaged in the cold war with the Soviet Union and attached great significance to the political state of countries associated with communism it. It was believed that if communism was not contained it posed a grave threat to

Get Access