It can be argued that by this stage, US objectives in Vietnam had not been completed and any further involvement would have only been causing more damage to the current situation. However, it is important to understand the factors leading to failure in this period in the war. Throughout US involvement in Vietnam, the military faced the clear problem of destroying Vietcong insurgency in the South. This was no easy task as the enemy they were up against was resilient, and highly intelligent in many aspects that were not initially recognised. The first major engagement in Ia Drang may have proved ultimately to be an American victory, but it presented the fact that fighting the VC would not be won through area wars, but purely a through test of which side could drain enemy troop numbers fastest in an attritional war.
The US felt they had no other choice but to act on their policy of containment and fear of the Domino Theory. The Vietnam War also brought about worries of the Domino Theory, as communism was already present in the North, and so they wished to prevent it from spreading to neighboring countries e.g. Laos and Cambodia and evidently also the South. This is the main reason as to why the Americans began to become involved in the Vietnam War. Therefore, the Vietnam War can be said to be part of the Cold War due to the Americans acting upon their policy of containment and fear of the Domino Theory.
Another event that impacted the public’s view of government dishonesty during this time was President Nixon’s involvement with the infamous Watergate scandal which eventually led to his resignation on August 9, 1974. Furthermore, when President Nixon began his presidency, people believed he would work to bring an end to America’s involvement in the Vietnam. Yet, this was not the case as Nixon increased bombing raids and authorized the invasion of Cambodia. When the war started, the American people were led to believe that the war was a necessity to ensure the protection of the nation as a whole.
So for example if the allies in the west did not promise to rebuild Germany and try to stop every country from becoming communist when they threatened to even if it through fair vote (rare as it was). It can be argued that the cold war was an avoidable one. Firstly the Russians were very aggressive in creating a buffer zone and in fact created communist states practically all over Eastern Europe and made much more than a buffer zone and Stalin was at the heart of all these communist political movements and was trying to spread his influence to even Italy and France. This worried the west very much because they thought their very freedom was being threatened but more importantly the more states that became communist the less ttade there was. The west needed trade partners in the east and they couldn’t trade with communist states.
But United States leaders had other concerns. No sooner had World War II ended, then a "Cold War," between the forces of democracy and communism began (Schomp The Vietnam War 5). Long years of fighting had devastated the democratic nations of Western Europe, which left the communist Soviet Union as the dominant power in Europe and Asia (Schomp The Vietnam War 5). The Soviet Union had already over run most of Eastern Europe; now they seemed determined to spread communism all around the globe (Schomp The Vietnam War 5). To help counter that threat Truman started secretly sending money as well as supplies to help back the French forces against Ho Chi Minh's forces (Schomp The Vietnam War 5).
The US intervened because of this as there was a great fear of communism around at the time. McCarthyism had just become a major issue, with many government officials being accused of being communist and as Truman had lost China, Eisenhower knew that if he ‘lost’ Vietnam, then his popularity would suffer greatly as the US public would think he was soft on communism. As a result, he would not be re-elected. The domino theory was significant because if Indochina fell to communism then there was a risk of the US losing Japan, after the effort the US put into restoring Japan after WW2 and all the trade that came from Japan, the US couldn’t afford for Japan to be threatened. Another significant reason why the US intervened in South East Asia was the power vacuum after Dien Bien Phu.
During the 1970s the main issue of contention was the Vietnam war. Neoconservatives believed that America should oppose Communism wherever it took root. They believed that Communism had to be countered because it was immoral as well as a threat to the national security of the United States. They were more than happy to side with Ronald Reagan's administration when he referred to Communism as, an "evil empire" (Muravchik, 2007). During this era, the political stance of conservatives on the other side of the spectrum was evident in the actions taken by then Presidents Richard
Each event focused on ideology contrasts from the rest. There were differences in the number of casualties, the costs for war, as well as the reasons for going to war. The United States involved itself in Vietnam because of the belief in the domino theory; that if a single nation fell to communism, the other nations surrounding it, would soon follow. Eventually America found it near impossible to fight against the
However, you shouldn't make the assumption that devotion to ideology was all that was behind Cold War animosity; countries tend to be more complaint trading partners with countries that share their political systems and both Stalin and the Cold War Era presidents in the US knew this. The tension eventually built, but no one wanted to go to actual war again after the colossal massacre of WWII, hence the term Cold War. 2. Describe and explain the ideological differences between the United Stated and the Soviet Union. In 1917, Russia became a communist country with an agenda of converting the world to communism.
I could blame the defeat which would have been the result of my action on him and come out as Peacemaker…But I had a greater obligation than to think only of the years of my administration and of the next election. I had to think of the effect of my decision on the next generation and on the future of peace and freedom in America and in the world.” However, this idealistic standpoint was mere propaganda. In private, President Nixon would favour a more militant and aggressive approach. This contradictory position not only exposed Nixon’s vulnerability to public opinion, but also his disillusion and misunderstanding of the complexities of such a war. It is imperative to understand the factors which influenced President Nixon’s strategies and decision making during the Vietnam War.