Evaluate the reasons why the USA failed to prevent a communist victory in Vietnam?

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Sarah Saffaf 12 RSN

2. Evaluate the reasons why the USA failed to prevent a communist victory in Vietnam?

In this essay, I am going to explain why the USA failed to prevent a communist victory in Vietnam. In my opinion the most important reason was that they could not win the heart or minds of the Vietnamese. However, I also believe that there are other important factors such as the lack of support from allies and the Domestic problems in America.

The first important factor was that they were unable to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people. America was seen as barbaric in their efforts to win the war; they saw Vietnam in a global context with the Cold war and wanted to continue to contain communism. In addition, it meant they were unable to see that Vietnam wanted re-unification after being controlled by France and Japan and resulted in them not considering Vietnam’s needs and the public desire for liberation. This could have been due to their narrow scope in the war which failed to meet the needs of Vietnam

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Furthermore, to add to the increasingly uncomfortable situation, they implemented strategic hamlets in the south to keep the communist North from convincing the peasant population to support communism. As a result, this alienated the peasants from their home land and heritage, the forced evacuation was unnecessary as it made the Peasants dislike America even more. This played a significant part in the failure of the USA because communists began to infiltrate the Hamlets by posing as Villagers and therefore turn the peasants minds to communist ideas.  It showed how badly the Americans treated the peasants and how understanding the ...

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