Explain why the United States became increasingly involved in the war in Vietnam.

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Year 11 Coursework

Vietnam

  1. Explain why the United States became increasingly involved in the war in Vietnam.

In the years after the Second World War, it became necessary for the Allies to decide the future of the French colony, Indochina, when the Japanese who had been occupying the country, surrendered. Prior to the Second World War, the French had ruled over the regions of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The French ruling was unpopular, forcing ideas of democracy upon the Vietnamese people and the French overthrew any efforts of resistance. When the Japanese invaded the French colony, to resist the Japanese rule, an organisation was founded, the Vietminh, led by Ho Chi Minh. In order to defeat the Japanese, it was essential for the Vietminh to co-operate with the Allies and at the end of the war, Vietnam was declared independent. Unfortunately, the French returned and responded to Ho Chi Minh’s declaration of the Vietnamese independence by enlisting British help in order to expel the Vietminh from the south of the country, resulting in a division between Ho Chi Minh’s North Vietnam and the French’s South Vietnam.

This division was followed by futile attempts to negotiate between the French and the Vietnamese, which lasted a year. For the Vietminh, it was vital that the country reunited as the majority of the food production was in the south, but the French refused and so the Vietnam war began in 1946, when the French killed over 5,000 civilians.

The American President, Roosevelt, disliked the French method of colonialism but conceded to pressure to conform in order to respect the United State’s Ally Britain. When Truman came into power in 1945, he favoured the French in order to gain a sense of strength in Europe against the Soviet Union. Truman saw the Vietnam War not as a civil war but as communist expansion.

During the first three years of the war, the US began to finance the French and so Ho Chi Minh was ultimately forced to seek support from the Soviet Union and China, confirming US fears. Although the French were being supported by the United States, the Vietminh of the north was being equipped with weapons by China and the Soviet Union, who were both communist. The French greatly underestimated the force of the Vietminh, who used guerrilla warfare tactics against the conventional tactics of the French. In 1954, the weakening French army experienced a breaking defeat after surrendering a siege of 55 days at Dien Bien Phu. This fractured the French morale to continue fighting the Vietminh; they could not comprehend such a small nation had defeated a renowned European power. Due to pressure, humiliation and great losses of troops, the strain was clearly beginning to show and in the same year, the French pulled out of the war.

When China fell to Communism in 1949, the US treated the Chinese with suspicion as they believed that they would try to spread communism and consequently, they feared that the whole of south-east Asia would turn communist, country by country. The dominant idea in the US foreign policy was the ‘Domino Theory’, strongly upheld by President Truman, which outlined their fear of the whole of south-Asia falling to communism. This was the idea that if one country fell to communism, the rest of the world would follow like dominoes. This meant that Indochina was of great importance to the US in order to prevent the occurrence of further communism. The US was worried about their strategic position in Asia should Vietnam ‘fall’ to communism as Vietnam was in an advantageous position on the trade routes between Europe and the Far East.  

In order to establish a resolution for Indochina, a conference was held in Geneva in 1954, and the countries that attended were the USA, the UK, France, China, and the SU, and there were representatives for North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Mutually, they agreed on the retreat of French troops, the initiation of a cease-fire and a new regional agreement. Indochina was split up to form the communist North and non-communist South Vietnam, as well as Laos and Cambodia. The division of the North and South of Vietnam was a demilitarised area at the 17th parallel, with the North being controlled by Ho Chi Minh’s communist government and the South being provided with a US-picked anti-Communist government. From the peace conference, it was promised that the North and South of Vietnam would combine after elections took place, but the US prevented the occurrence of free elections as they knew that communism would dominate them, resulting in a triumph of communism. Instead, the next American President, Eisenhower, proposed aid to South Vietnam, as well as training up the South Vietnamese army, by sending over military advisers. Both arms and money were sent to South Vietnam in hope of containing the communist North but unfortunately, the majority of it ended up in the hands of the corrupt politicians of the handpicked South Vietnamese government.

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It was now that the Vietminh reacted by fighting against both the South Vietnamese and US government as North Vietnam verified that they wanted to conduct a war on the South in order to reunite Vietnam as one country. The US government were supporting Diem, the South Vietnamese Prime Minister, claiming his government to be democratic when it was authoritarian, unpopular, forceful and ignored the obligation for free elections as stated at the Geneva conference. The reason that it was so unpopular was because the South Vietnamese government destroyed any form of opposition and imprisoned many antagonists, and there ...

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