The Nixon Administration And The Vietnam War

In 1960s, the US was faced with another crisis of communist expansion in the war between North and South Vietnam. The Kennedy Administration decided to further pursue their containment strategy out of fear being seen by the international community as weak towards communism. During the Johnson Administration, an attack against American vessels that happened in the Gulf of Tonkin led to President Johnson being granted the ability to conduct broad military operations without congressional approval. The American public began to largely oppose American intervention in Vietnam because the optimistic statements made by the government ran contradictory to the reports of the violent fighting by American news outlets. During the Nixon administration, the US switched to a policy, later known as Vietnamization, where the main goal was to strengthen the South Vietnamese forces and provide them with better armaments so they can better defend themselves. Vietnamization proved to be ineffective as the South Vietnamese forces were unable to hold their own against the North without US air support as proven during Operation Lam Son 719 and the Easter Offensive. The signing of the Paris Peace Accords officially ended US involvement in the Vietnam War. The US followed containment policies during beginning of the war due to the underlying fear of the spread of communism and since the policies were inherited from previous

Because Johnson believed in the domino theory, that if one county turned Communist, namely Vietnam, then neighboring nations would also turn Communist, his approach to the Vietnam War was to escalate the attacks to the point in which the Communists could no longer fight back. Johnson escalated the war through a variety of attacks, including Operation Rolling Thunder, which was the first of many aerial bombings on North Vietnam. Moreover, it was under Johnson’s administration that tens of thousands of American troops were dispatched to Vietnam which was another factoring intensifying the war. On the contrary, Nixon’s approach to the war in Vietnam was to pull out American troops because he valued American lives over containing Communism in Vietnam. Therefore, because the war had reached a stalemate by the time Nixon was in office and he valued American lives over containing communism, he implemented the process of Vietnamization, the organized transaction of American troops in Vietnam that were replaced by South Vietnamese troops. The reason why Johnson chose to escalate the war while Nixon tried to bring American troops home was because of their differing political views. Since Johnson was a Democrat and held some fairly liberal beliefs, like helping the impoverished at any cost, it was only natural for him to show compassion for the South Vietnamese by fighting Communism in order to create a better quality life for them even if it meant sacrificing American lives. However, because Nixon held more conservative views and believed in preserving order in one’s own nation before reaching out to others, Nixon implemented the process of Vietnamization in order to bring

The US has been known to diverge from its once-isolationist state, engaging in international affairs like World War I and several other events alike. It’s therefore no surprise that the US intervened in the Vietnam War during the 1960’s. At the time, President Lyndon B. Johnson put forth new ideas, plans and tactics to help and protect the South Vietnamese and surrounding countries from communist influence. However, the United States’ initial goals and plans didn’t always go the way they had expected. Indeed, Johnson’s Vietnam policies failed because of his unreasonable military strategies and his inefficient political actions.

In Nixon’s effort to end the war, his first policy was to send a message to Hanoi that he meant business. His policy consisted of escalated strategic bombings near the border of Cambodia in hopes to get the North Vietnamese to fear that the United States was capable of doing anything to achieve victory. Even Johnson was skeptical of expanding the war into Cambodia but Nixon’s first policy in full effect. Unfortunately, America was blinded by the corruptness of Nixon’s “peaceful presidency” since

Yet, Nixon was being too modest by assigning responsibility for the war in Vietnam to the Johnson administration election, Nixon consistently criticized Johnson 's Vietnam policy.

Nixon’s first term of presidency was full of accomplishments. Once in office, Nixon and his staff faced the problem of how to end the Vietnam War. Nixon made a nationally televised address on November 3, 1969, calling on Americans to renew their confidence in the government and back his policy of seeking a negotiated peace in Vietnam. Earlier that year, Nixon and his Defense Secretary Melvin Laird had unveiled the policy of “Vietnamization,” which entailed reducing American troop levels in Vietnam and transferring the burden of

The politics of the ultratight resonated deeply with Richard Nixon. Nixon had cut his political teeth as a young Red-hunting member of the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s. His home district in Orange Country, California, was widely known as a Birch Society stronghold. The Los Angeles-area Birch Society claimed the membership of several political and economic elites, including members of the Chandler family, which owned and published the Los Angeles Times. According to the writer David Halberstam (1979, 118) the Times, which was once described as “the most rabid Labor-bating, Red-hating paper in the United States,” virtually created Richard Nixon.

The Watergate scandal started when five men broke into the Watergate offices in Washington D.C. They were breaking in to repair an unsuccessful attempt to spy on the Democratic National Committee. Nixon and his five men were trying to gain leverage for his reelection. Nixon’s team denied having involvement and knowledge

Many people think that all Nixon did in his presidency was the watergate scandal, but in reality he helped stop Americans fighting in the Vietnam War. When Richard Nixon started in Office he was faced with the difficult task of trying to pull all US troops out of Vietnam. He decided to use a tactic he created called Vietnamization. The simple plan was to strengthen South Vietnam so they could fight the war by themselves. The plan involved many small steps which helped finally end our involvement in January 1973.

The main causes to the failure of the Vietnam War was the lack of resourcefulness, and unfamiliar jungle terrain. Nixon and Kissinger’s first approach dealt with strengthening the South Vietnamese government, and even the military. “ARVN forces grew to more than a million, and the South Vietnamese air force became the fourth largest in the world” (Roark, 847). What this had meant was that Nixon and Kissinger did what they could to strengthen the military in South Vietnam. During that time, the U.S also advocated elections in the village, the building of schools, hospitals, and much more. The second approach of Nixon and Kissinger included the reduction of U.S Presence in Vietnam. “American forces decreased from 543,000 in 1968 to 140,000 by the end of 1971, although casualties remained high” (Roark, 847). This had meant that even though Nixon reduced the number of Americans in Vietnam, the deaths during the war had remained very high. Taking the Americans out of Vietnam had meant that the Vietnamese people had their own responsibility of destiny. If one foreign country fell to communism, the rest would

President Richard Nixon advocated Vietnamization withdrawing American troops and giving South Vietnam greater responsibility for fighting the war. But In 1970, Richard Nixon attempted to slow the flow of North Vietnamese soldiers and supplies for South Vietnam by sending Americans, forces to destroy the Communist supply bases in Cambodia. The Vietnam War cost the United States about 58,000 lives and 350,000 casualties. Which also resulted between one and two million Vietnamese death.

After the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as superpowers and subsequently a period of tension and hostility arose, known as the Cold War. During this time, a new possibility of complete nuclear destruction that would claim the lives of many emerged, therefore “the easing or relaxing of tensions” on both sides was needed, this period would be known as detente. Both countries had been guaranteed mutually assured destruction as they had both managed to stay ahead in the development of nuclear arsenals. By the late 1960s the Soviets had surpassed the United States in intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) by 1,300 to 1,054. Although the U.S was still

The Vietnam War was unlike any other war in which the United States has participated. The Vietnam War has many unique attributes, beginning with the unclear reason as to why the U.S. became involved in a war that presented no threat to U.S. citizens or national security. Three unique attributes of the Vietnam War that are very interesting are the U.S. combat strategy, the Vietnamese guerrilla warfare, and the MIA issue.

The investigation assesses the level of success President Richard Nixon’s Vietnamization policy attained during the Vietnam War to end U.S. involvement in the war. In the strive to evaluate the level of success this policy demonstrated, the investigation evaluates the ability of the policy to equip, expand, and train Southern Vietnamese forces and allocate them to a substantial combat position, all while simultaneously reducing the quantity of U.S. combat troops in a steady manner. The Vietnamization policy is investigated and analyzed by both its causes and effects. The motivation that led to Nixon’s creation of this

The Watergate Scandal was a major political scandal during the Presidency of Nixon. Nixon, paranoid and afraid of losing his reelection, employed men to do an assortment of illegal activities intended to place the republicans ahead of the democrats in the election. The activities were not detected until a