Us Involvement In The Vietnam War Essay

On the 19th of December 1946, The Viet Minh under Ho Chi Minh leadership launched a rebellion against the French authority governing the colonies of French Indochina. The first few years of the war were a low-level rural insurgency against French authority. However, after the Chinese communists reached the Northern border of Vietnam in 1949 the conflict became a conventional war between two armies equipped with modern weapons. These were supplied by the Chinese communist and Russian communist.

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.

The Vietnam War was one of the most famous proxy wars during the cold war, it was a battleground for opposing ideologies. The northern side was predominately controlled by the communist government and the southern side was controlled by the democracy government. The country never wanted to be divided, all they wanted was to recover after world war II, become an independent country and improve the living conditions of the Vietnamese citizens. But under the control of the two superpowers, Vietnam once again became the battlefield for two opposing ideologies.

French who still wanted to keep hold of Vietnam as it was very rich in

The Vietnam War was fought between South and North Vietnam over the reunification of Vietnam. The North fought a more conventional warfare and it was supported by the Soviets and other communist countries while the South fought more of a guerilla war and was supported by the US and other anti-communist countries. Of course the US got involved and supported the South because of the Truman Doctrine in which aided any country who felt threatened by communism and prevented the spread of communism, the US got involved and supported them by going into war and using military tactics such as airstrikes and large stratgetic bombings. One major thing the US had going on was the Domino theory which applied to most US foreign policies, this justified their support for non-communist regimes. North Vietnam saw this war as something small while the US saw it as a way to prevent communism taking over another country and eventually the US got involved in the long run. Although the North Vietnamese won and unified Vietnam under communism, and the US had no success in preventing this, communism failed to spread through the rest of Southeast Asia.

Vietnam is a southeastern Asian country that has been occupied by the French since the early 19th Century. During War War II Japanese forces invaded Vietnam. In order for the native Vietnamese to fight off both the French Colonial Administration and the invading Japanese, political leader Ho Chi Minh inspired by Soviet Communism, established the League of Independence of Vietnam. After Japan’s defeat in World War II in 1945, the Japanese withdrew their forces from Vietnam. The French educated Emperor Bao Dai was now back in control of Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh saw this as an opportunity to finally gain control and almost immediately took control of the northern city of Hanoi. Ho Chin Minh declared himself as president. In hopes to regain control of Hanoi, France backed Emperor Bao and created the state of Vietnam in 1949. Although both sides wanted the same goal of uniting Vietnam, their government views were drastically different. Ho and his followers wanted the nation to be modeled after other communist countries. While Bao and his followers wanted their country to be in close ties with democratic countries in the west. These causes led to a civil war for the sole control of Vietnam.

The Vietnam war started with a governmental conflict that would cause major problems across the country. The North Vietnamese wanted Communism and the South wanted to avoid Communism at all costs, because of Southern Vietnam’s stance of anti-communism they would be joined by America in their attempts to get rid of Communism. America involved

Richard Nixon, the following President after Johnson, recommended Vietnamization, which removed American soldiers and gave the South Vietnam greater responsibility to fight their war. President Nixon sent American forces to annihilate supply bases of the Communist in Cambodia. In between 1968 to 1973, the struggles were made to end conflict under diplomacy. Later on in January of 1973, the agreements of Vietnamization were reached; the U.S. troops were detached from Vietnam, and prisoners from the U.S were liberated. South Vietnam fully surrendered to the North, which lead to Vietnam being reunited.

The Viet Minh forces seized some cities in the North and they created the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. France, however, did not want to let Vietnam go. So they backed up Emperor Bao Dai who started ruling Vietnam after World War

Before World War Two, Vietnam had been part of the French Empire. Which was during the war, the country had been overpopulated by the Japanese race. When the Japanese retreated, the people of Vietnam took the opportunity to establish their own government controlled by Ho Chi Minh. The subsequent treaty signed in July 1954 at a Geneva conference split Vietnam along the latitude (17 degrees north latitude) with Ho in control in the North and Bao in the South. The treaty also called for

The U.S supported the South with money and advisors. Then on August 2nd 1964 North Vietnamese boats fired torpedoes on an American ship patrolling on the gulf of Tonkin. Then president Lyndon Johnson got congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. It said the U.S could use military force in Vietnam. At first the force was limited to bombings, but by the end of 1965 there were one hundred and eighty-four thousand U.S troops in Vietnam and over five hundred thousand my 1968. At first everyone thought it would be and easy fight for the Americans, our army was not prepared for jungle gorilla warfare like the Viet Cong. The Viet Cong would stage steak attacks and suicide bombings. Back in the U.S people did not like the fact that so many men were dying overseas for some small country in Asia. Eventually president Johnson stopped sending more troops, he even refused to run for another term because of the Vietnam war. Richard Nixon became president but didn't end the war until 1973 after his reelection. By the time the war was over about 1.2 million Vietnamese were dead. Also fifty-eight thousand American soldiers died in the

The Vietnam war took place between November 1, 1955 and April 30, 1975. During the time period of the 1950’s, high tensions had risen in America due to the ever-growing spread of communism throughout Asia. In order to free Vietnam from France’s control and to be an independent nation, Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh attempted to reach out to America on numerous of occasions, all of which failed to be successful. Eventually, Minh turned his attention to the Soviet Union for aid, causing alarm to the American government. The US. believed that if Vietnam were to inhabit communist ideals, that it would reflect the Domino Theory and eventually cause other countries within Asia to fall into communist hands. The US's involvement in the Vietnam War changed

The main intention was that Vietnam would after these elections once again become one country. However the Geneva truce crumbled. Diem decided not to hold free elections. This was to his benefit as his opposer, Ho Chi Minh would probably have won the elections. He in return started to train guerrillas to oppose the government forces in the south. These guerrillas, the Viet Cong (meaning: Vietnamese communist), began attacks on the U.S. military installations in 1957. The Americans still believed strongly in the domino theory. They were afraid that if Vietnam was to become communist, the countries and regions around Vietnam would also turn communist. Like when you push over a domino, it would trigger off a whole set of dominoes. The Americans felt it as their duty to prohibit this from happening. In April 1961 the U.S. signed a treaty of amity and economic relations with South Vietnam. In December of that year the first American troops arrived in Vietnam. A year later they had gone from 400 troops to 11.200 American troops in Vietnam. The Diem government was having substantial difficulty with coping with the unrest in South Vietnam. On November 1 1963, the Diem regime was overthrown in a military coup. Diem was executed in this coup and succeeded by an army general called Nguyen Thieu. He created, together with General Nguyen Cao Ky, a military council in 1965. During elections in 1967 Thieu became the president of South Vietnam.

---Between 1955 and 1960, the North Vietnamese with the assistance of the southern communist Vietcong, tried to take over the government in South Vietnam, and in November 1963 President Diem was overthrown and executed. The following year, the North Vietnamese began a massive drive to conquer the whole country aided by China and Russia.

In response to Diem’s claims of Minh being a communist, President Eisenhower backed South Vietnam’s refusal to participate in the election, following which, in 1958, South and North Vietnam went to war in what the US saw as a proxy war between the Communist and non-communist blocks.