Why did America withdraw from Vietnam in 1973?

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Why did America withdraw from Vietnam in 1973?

There are many reasons why America decided to withdraw from Vietnam in 1973. This essay is to investigate and analyse the possible factors/events that led to the withdrawal, the long-term events shall be explored first then the short term. One of the many long-term factors leading to the withdrawal was the failure of the U.S troops trying to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the Vietnamese. This was a policy created by President J.F. Kennedy who believed that if the Vietnamese were shown the advantages of American ‘way of life’ then they would easily win the ‘hearts and minds’ of them, however the Vietnamese didn’t respond to this policy as they wanted an independent country, the French had just left Vietnam and the Vietnamese people didn’t want another intruding outside country in Vietnams affairs. If this policy was to ever succeed then the Americans would have had a great advantage and would’ve been able to defeat the Vietcong, as it was the support of the peasants that encouraged and helped the guerrilla tactics, as well as this the ARVN would have had a bigger incentive to fight with the support of the South Vietnamese peasants.

The Americans lost a lot of support in the war by standing by the South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinah Diem, who was a devoted catholic which caused a major problem with the public in south Vietnam as most of the population was Buddhist, more importantly though, he broke the Geneva agreement by fixing the elections in South Vietnam, and then shortly afterwards suppressed the peasants and made his close friends and family into power.  

Then there was Diems ‘strategic hamlet’ programme which was a complete failure due to the fact that the peasants involved were moved away from there homes which were usually in the highly communist populated area, further leading to Diem outraging the peasants as not only did he make them move away from their homes, he made them pay for the raw materials and building materials for their new homes, this led to the peasants becoming communists or pro-communists as a revolt against the Americans.

This is very different to the Vietcong’s approach to winning over the people of southern Vietnam, which was to treat the peasants with respect, and helping with their daily procedures, keeping to the promises they made and gaining the peasants trust which lead to the peasants helping the Vietcong when they needed to be hidden from the Americans, which was very successful for them, and a factor of the Vietcong's was that they had very good fighting techniques, which were very effective against the U.S troops and the ARVN; this was another factor which lead to the withdrawal of the America, as they had severe losses in there troop numbers, the Vietcong tactics were very effective and were only changed once, the Tet offensive, which gave the Vietcong a severe blow as they were not prepared for that sort of combat but quickly changed back to guerrilla warfare.

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The Vietcong used guerrilla tactics, this comes from the Spanish meaning ‘little war’ these tactics were used against napoleon in the peninsular war (1807-1814) by Spanish soldiers, the Vietcong used these tactics fully and to the maximum by using the surrounding terrain in Vietnam which was mainly dense rainforest etc. they would fight in small platoons or in groups of two or three men, so if they came under attack and were taken captive by the Americans then the Americans would only have a few men which would not be a severe loss to the Vietcong. The Vietcong also dressed ...

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