Why did the USA become involved in Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s?

Political reasons for the first stage of involvement were, the cold war had made USA and Russia where the biggest rivalling superpowers in the world. Russia, being communist wanted other countries to become communist whereas the USA wanted more democracy run countries. The Domino theory had already worked from Russia to China and the USA were worried more of Asia would become communist. The USA had already lost 142, 000 men trying to remove communism from Korea in 1950-53. Another political reason that made more the USA involve more was that the leader of South Vietnam (the non-communist side) was corrupt and unpopular. Due to the unpopular leader, Ngo Diem, Viennese people choose the communist side for the Leader, Ho Minh. Basically the US didn’t want communism to spread and felt they needed to politically involve themselves as the current leader was so unpopular.

Economic reasons for the second stage of involvement of the USA were protection and development of US markets and pressure from arms manufacturers. The US wanted ideally a democratic world, so they didn’t want Asia to become a communist content as this would be one 5th of the world communist. South Vietnam needed to arm itself for fighting the North so as they had not enough money the US helped with arms manufacturers. The US economical involvement meant that they didn’t want to back out as they had money and it would waste resources already spent. So the US had become involved so that they couldn’t back out as they had money into this war.

Military reasons for the third stage of involvement from the US to Vietnam was so that the US could get Vietnam anticommunist but was passed off as allowing all measures necessary to protect US forces against any further aggression after a conflict in the Gulf of Tongking.  

In conclusion the US got more heavily involved as time went on and by the time they had got economically involved they could not back out. The US became involved mainly due to not wanting a domino effect to happen in Asia or around the world.