Explain Why the United States Became Increasingly Involved in the War in Vietnam.

Anti-communist attitudes spread across America as the US became increasingly more involved in Vietnam under the presidential reign of Eisenhower advised by his Secretary of State, Dulles who was a rigid anti communist and was determined to prevent "domino theory" from occurring across the world. He believed like many Americans that when one country fell to communism another nearby would fall shortly after. To stop the spread across South-east Asia, the US helped to form the South-east Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO) which stated that all members (Australia, France, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippians, the UK, Thailand and the US) would protect South-east Asian countries. Like with France, America poured in economic aid and military weapons to South Vietnam in order to defeat Ho Chi Minh and his guerrilla army but when Eisenhower left office in 1961 to make way for Kennedy little progress in Vietnam had been made but the first advisers had been sent.

Under Kennedy US participation in the Vietnam War escalated. To foreign affairs, Kennedy brought a mixture of success and failure. The failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba brought him much criticism as it was disorganised and ill-planned, allowing Castro's forces to easily obliterate the attacking exiles as Kennedy attempted to overthrow the communist Castro; but he redeemed himself with his wise handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when he managed to avoid a nuclear war with the USSR. In Indo-China, Kennedy stepped up American involvement from 500 advisers to 10 000 to contain the growing Communist threat of the North Vietnamese, this may have been because his popularity was wavering as he was seen as soft on communism by the US anti-communist public after failing in Cuba. The advisers were sent not to fight but instead to train the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) in the use of conventional weapons to combat. Despite of US involvement the Vietcong seemed to be winning the war and soon the South Vietnamese began to oppose the corrupt regime led by Diem. Street protests occurred with nine Buddhists killed and when a monk drenched in petrol set himself on fire, this sparked controversy around the world. Kennedy could not afford this bad publicity, especially as elections were approaching in the US, and was relieved when two months later Diem was assassinated, ironically, President Kennedy was assassinated only three weeks later.

In 1963 Lyndon B Johnson was the next US President appointed. He was unsure of what the right way of dealing with Vietnam was but soon he was taking America into a new and dangerous direction. Johnson wanted this war ended because he saw Vietnam as the biggest damn mess he'd ever seen and that it wasn't worth fighting for but it was difficult to get out of. The exaggeration of the North Vietnamese attack on US Navy ships in the Gulf of Tonking gave the USA a pretext to attack North Vietnam. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonking Resolution giving Johnson authority "to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression". When the Vietminh attacked the US base at Pleiku in Vietnam and killed seven and injured more than a hundred "advisers" this gave justification to the American people that troops should be sent to Vietnam. On 11 February 1965 Johnson launched Operation Rolling Thunder in cooperation with the ARVN attacking key military and industrial targets in Vietnam. Even though major cities in North Vietnam couldn't be bombed because of jeopardising Soviet relations, America had undertaken a serious escalation in the war and had gained credibility as an anti-communist power. After Air force troops had begun bombing the marines were sent without the pretence of them being called "advisers". America were ready for war, Johnson had taken this massive step and by 1966 268,000 troops were in Vietnam fighting a war which Johnson had previously said was a war "Asian boys ought to be doing themselves".