In my opinion Operation Rolling Thunder (ORT) was a massive failure. As the US did not meet its official aims and objectives of stopping the spread of communism to Vietnam. It caused a lot of inexperienced soldiers to lose their lives. Also having a major effect on America its self as the country battled to juggle money to afford the cost of the war. But one of the hardest battle’s for the US was to keep their own countries support.
The South Vietnamese Allies had poor morale, they were badly paid, and they exploited US aid for financial gain. The US military had poor leadership from officers, they were frustrated because they had a lack of knowledge of the area and they had an inability to identify their enemy. These are the main reasons that the US failed to defeat the North Vietnamese Communists. The US became gradually involved in the war in Vietnam. Truman supported the French in the battle against Ho Chi Minh and the Vietminh.
The failure of foreign policy in the years 1514-1525 can be attributed to many things. The combination of Henry's isolation from European affairs and the fact that his attempts to raise tax were ultimately unpopular failures, meant that he had no way to impose himself upon Europe. Even when he did manage to scrape together the finances needed for a strong foreign policy his reliance on his allies led to disaster. As soon as Henry took the throne in 1509, it was obvious that he was a king that wanted to fight a war. However, wars generally led to very expensive costs to the country.
The roman empire the economy system got weak. The economy system got weak because of the tribes and pirates outside of the empire disrupting the trade. Trying to expand to their limit, the romans had less of new sources like silver and gold. Extremely desperate for the new sources the government raised all of the taxes. They started to cheat people out of their silver and gold by putting less and less of silver and gold in their metal.
To what extent was the US defeat in the Vietnam conflict a result of the difficulties in winning the “hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese people? To establish the significance of the failure of America’s attempt to win over the “hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese people, one must look at the other reasons behind the US defeat and compare their significance to the significance of their failure. The first and probably the most significant event was the way in which the war was fought. The Viet Cong were a guerrilla army which used guerrilla tactics, they used the jungle to their advantage and their main tactic was being secretive; they would attack the US camps then disappear. Finding the Viet Cong was very difficult, not only due to their impressive tunnel system, but also the fact that most of the local population supported the Viet Cong due to opposition to Diem’s government and the strategic hamlets they were forced into, it made It impossible for the American soldiers to know who was a Viet Cong member and who was an ordinary villager.
These factors all upset the royalists and meant they had negative opinions of Clarendon which they were able to whisper in Charles’s ear when Clarendon wasn’t around and turn Charles’s more against Clarendon so it became easier to dismiss him and use him as a scapegoat later on. In terms of finance, Clarendon was also unsuccessful. He only managed to gain £1.2million a year for Charles which was too limited. He didn’t provide an adequate income and according to Farmer, ‘Finance was at the root of the troubles which toppled Clarendon’ which was because
John majors government came into office after the downfall of Margret Thatcher, which ultimately created divisions within the party. Not only did the party suffer from the internal conflict but also faced the problems of the recession after the ‘Lawson boom’. In order to stabilise the economy he joined the ERM getting a good deal but ultimately resulting in ‘black Wednesday’ causing Major to raise interest rates to 15%. This was political suicide and he soon lost the support of the press we had once relied so much on to get re-elected in 1992. The housing market also plummeted leading to negative equity, which the majority of the working class could not afford resulting in the repossession of their houses combined with the drastic increase in unemployment Britain was in a mess.
One of their major goals was to disrupt and destroy the South Vietnamese government. Orders were actually given to the invaders to cause maximum disruption to the government to create crisis by killing military and administrative personnel. This reason alone would do some serious damage to the government but another tactic was to kill for “…terrorism and warning.” By killing government officials and private citizens it scared the citizens of not just Hue but all over the area into compliance with the National Liberation Front. The communists also wanted to annihilate Christians for political reasons. The communists always tried to suppress religions anyway possible and because of Ngo Dinh Diem being Catholic and in charge of South Vietnam at the start of the resistance to the North.
It was also a propaganda disaster. The Americans had always presented their campaign against Communism as a moral crusade. But the My Lai Massacre and the herbicides used on the forests damaged America's reputation. The whole campaign was shown to be flawed. The Americans were propping up a government which did not have the support of its own
The hawks and doves were complete opposites, the hawk’s argument concluded that America must win the war in Vietnam in order to contain communism in Southeast Asia and preserve the nation’s prestige (Davidson-Gienapp-Heyrman-Lytle-Stroff, 2005). The doves on the other hand wanted the conflict in Vietnam ended immediately and the troops returned home. The political and social outcomes facing the United States because of the conflict in Vietnam ranged from a growing distrust of the decisions being made by the political leaders to the ever increasing cost of the conflict in Vietnam. The growing distrust helped to fuel the student unrest because the younger generation decided to voice their opinions and take a stand for those