America and the Vietnam War

The American Vietnam War
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Abstract
The Vietnam war would go down in history as one of America's most protracted involvement without any meaningful success. The US went to war in Vietnam driven mainly by the fear of Communism spread worldwide and across Southeast Asia based on the Domino Theory logic. Its involvement in the war from 1945-1975 would be considered in the country as the worst foreign intervention ever. The essay dissects the intricacies and chronological events of the US Vietnam involvement until the end of the war in 1975.
The American Vietnam War
A period after World War II was marred with constant competition and the need for world dominance by the war's superpowers. WWII created the East communist superpower led by the Soviet Union and China, and Western superpowers led by the US and its WWII allies like France and Britain. America's ultimate involvement in the Vietnam war was necessitated by the bigger picture of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States. The fear of communists spread to other parts of the world, particularly in the Southeast Asia region, made the US get involved in the Vietnam war by supporting the South Vietnamese capitalist state (Republic of Vietnam) against the North Vietnamese communist government (Democratic Republic of Vietnam).
The United States` involvement in Vietnam originates from the end of WWII. It was when the Vietnamese were trying to end the French's continued colonial existence in Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh, Viet Minh's (Vietnamese Independence League) leader, and Vietnam Communist Party's founder managed to blend nationalist (the anti-French movement) with Marxist-Leninist revolutionary belief. It is an ideology that would progress, encompassed with protracted guerilla war tactics against the French to liberate Vietnam. Eventually, in 1954, the Viet Minh seized Dien Bien Phu, authoritatively expelling the French and ending their reign.
After World War II, tensions immediately began and escalated between USSR and the US. Tensions were high because Russian forces occupied and dominated almost Eastern Europe, setting up Communist governments in the region. The set-up governments acted as a barrier between Russia and the capitalist West countries. It was aggression lamented by the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, in 1946. In his famous "Iron Curtain" speech, the premier attacked the Soviet Union questioning the impulsive wall of secrecy enforced between Western and Eastern Europe. However, in 1947, George F. Kennan, the US State Department analyst, under the Containment policy, contended that the Soviet was not likely to make any aggressions. He proposed that the US could curb Communism's spread by limiting Russia's expansion at significant regions, primarily in Europe, in the long term. The policy would become exceptionally prominent in America's government and became the foundation of the government's policy for most of the Cold War period.
The events of the Cold War continued to necessitate military actions by the United States in Vietnam. Three significant events between 1948 and 1949 escalated America's paranoia about Communism. First, the Soviets, while in control of East Germany, tried to expel French, U.S., and British forces out of West Berlin. It attempted this by blockading all the city's external access points. In the winter of 1948/1949, the US responded with the Berlin Airlift dropping important deliveries in West Berlin until Russia conceded. Then, after overcoming the blockade standoff, in August 1949, the Soviets sent another panic to the US by successfully testing its first Atomic Bomb. The third incident was in October 1949, when China's Nationalist government fell to Mao Zedong's Communist forces. The culmination of the three events thrust the US into fear of Communists` probable world take over and feared that they might even plan an attack on the United States.
In response to the Communists` influence, President Harry S Truman's national security advisors drafted a prominent memo dubbed NSC-68. The memo proposed a substantial military spending increase to finance an enormous military boost, anticipating discouraging Russia's aggression. Adhering to the document's policy outline, the US became progressively worried by Communist growth anywhere, and not just Kennan's critical points identified earlier. With the beginning of the 1950 Korean War, the NSC-68 document inspired Harry Truman to start a speed US military buildup.
The fall of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 saw President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Harry Truman's successor, give an essential and famous speech that would outline the United States Cold War policy. Eisenhower cited Kennan's Containment policy but went further to pronounce the Domino Theory. He explained the theory that the Soviet's containment policy needed to go past the critical points to comprise all regions, arguing that if one country embraced Communism, its neighbors would likely be assimilated, likening the situation to a falling row of dominoes. Consequently, America's policymakers began viewing Vietnam as critically vital due to the Domino Theory. The US feared that by Vietnam becoming Communist, the entire Indochina or Southeast Asia would embrace Communism. Aware of Ho Chi Minh's and Viet Minh's popularity in South and North Vietnam, the US leaders dreaded the 1956 scheduled free elections assured at the 1954 Geneva Conference. The leaders feared that the elections would see a unified Communist Vietnam.
Devoted to deterring Communist progression through the Domino theory logic, America's leaders committed to subverting the Vietnamese elections. It did this by backing Ngo Dinh Diem's candidacy, a Catholic nationalist who stressed Confucian values of tradition and loyalty and rejected old Vietnamese social structures overthrowal. Diem's stand contradicted the revolutionary Vietnamese Communist view led by Soviet and China-backed Ho Chi Minh. In 1955, Ngo Dinh Diem clinched South Vietnam with US support, while the communist state led by Ho Chi Minh moved to North Vietnam. After the proclamation of South Vietnam as the Republic of Vietnam (RVN), using their CIA operative in Saigon, Edward Lansdale, the United...