preview

The Cold War: The Vietnam War

Decent Essays

The Cold War
The Cold War is the name given to the relationship that developed primarily between the United States and the USSR after World War II. The Cold War began in 1946 between the United States and the Soviet Union, who had been allies just a few years before during World War II. Although they were once allies, America and the Soviet Union had very different systems of government. The United States had a democratic form of government and the Soviet Union was ran on a communist form of government. The United States and Soviet Union did not fight against each other physically, and fought with politics and economics instead. Many crises occurred during the Cold War including the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam and Korean wars and the fall of the Berlin wall.
The term “cold” was used because there was actually no large scale or physical fighting …show more content…

Vietnam had been divided into two, with a communist government in the North under Ho Chi Minh and a democratic government in the South under Ngo Dinh Diem. The war began when Ho commenced a guerilla campaign in South Vietnam with the intent to reunite the country under a communist government. The Kennedy Administration elected to increase aid to South Vietnam but did not want to use ground forces. America entered the war in 1964 when a US warship was attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin. Later on, US aircraft commenced bombing targets in Vietnam and the first troops arrived. These troops defeated North Vietnamese forces and the North Vietnamese elected to avoid fighting battles and wanted to engage US troops in small units in South Vietnam. The term Vietnamization was coined during this time and was the US policy of withdrawing its troops and transferring the responsibility and direction of the war effort to the government of South Vietnam. The United States lost this war and Vietnam became a communist

Get Access