Why Was the USA unsuccessful in the Vietnam war?

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CLAIRE JAVELEAU 11KJH

WHY WAS THE USA UNSUCCESSFUL IN VIETNAM WAR?

Between 1939 and 1945, the Vietnamese guerrillas had been fighting the French. The communist Vietnamese, called Viet Minh got their inspiration from communist Russia and their University education. The North Vietnamese had defeated the French in war between 1946-1954. In 1954, the North Vietnamese won a major military victory called Dien Bien Phu. Their colonial rulers started discussions to pull out of Vietnam at Geneva in 1954 because they couldn’t defeat the Vietnamese. America had supported the colonial rulers, the French, with money to help provide training and weapons in the war against the Vietnamese.

The terms of the Geneva settlement were that Vietnam would be split in half, into two states; North and South Vietnam. The North would be communist and the South would be Democratic. In 1956 there would be a general election, where the whole country would vote to decide what the country would become, Communist or Democratic. The USA refused to sign this agreement because they wanted to stop the global spread of communism, and by signing this they knew that Vietnam would turn communist. This is because they knew the whole country would vote this way during the general election. They therefore they refused to sign it. The Truman Doctrine was a pledge by America that they would do what ever it took to stop the spread of communism around the world. The Cold War was a term given to the state of tension between super-powers Russia and America between 1945-1991. It was not an actual war, but hostility towards each other, with the possible threat of war. The Americans were correct to see communist activity in Vietnam as part of the Cold War spread of communism, because this is where the Vietnamese got their inspiration. Middle class communist supporters formed the core of the Viet Cong guerillas, and peasants formed the fighting Viet Cong.

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President Eisenhower and his Secretary of State took an anti-Communist line in South Vietnam because they were enforcing their pledge to fight communism, the Truman Doctrine. The USA was involved in Vietnam before 1954, when they were supplying the French colonial rulers with money for weapons and training whilst fighting the Vietnamese. The ‘Domino Theory’ was the theory that once Vietnam turned communist, so would the surrounding countries such as Laos and Cambodia. The USA supported the overthrow of Bao Dai in South Vietnam in 1955 because he wasn’t anti-Communist enough. The new government of Ngo Dinh Diem became ...

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