Gemma Weatherall
History Coursework
Assignment 2
Why did the USA become
increasingly involved in
The war in Vietnam?
In 1950, the USA was obsessed with stopping communism from spreading in South East Asia. Every one was anti-communist in the USA and they were very worried about the domino theory. The domino theory was a 20th Century foreign policy theory that speculated if one land in a region came under the influence of communists, then more would follow in a domino effect. The domino effect says that some small change will cause another change nearby, which then will cause another change, and so on, to a falling row of dominos.
The final declaration of the Geneva agreement on the 21st July, 1954, on restoring peace in Indo-China, the representives of Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, France, Laos, the United Kingdom, and USA took part. The USA did not want this to take place.
As the 1960’s began the North Vietnamese declared their intention of liberating South Vietnam from the US imperialist. As the Guerrilla attacks started they had a big effect on the North Vietnamese but they tried to blame it on the South even though it was the newly formed Vietcong who were an anti-communist government. The USA increased its involvement after a while when things started to get worse. Even with more support from the US, Ngo Dinh Diem’s government made more mistakes. They tried to separate all of the villagers from the Vietcong by creating ‘Strategic hamlets’ or fortified villages that the Vietcong could not get in to. A lot of the people from the villages did not want to leave the lands hey had farmed for a long time or leave the graves of their family that had died unattended. Buddhist protests over the flying of the flags on the Buddha’s birthday ended with the South Vietnamese civil guard opening fire. The protests that followed were that a Buddhist, monk Quang Duk, committed suicide in the street by setting himself on fire and burnt to death at the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government. The government of Diem did not take much notice of this and then they lost any other support. The US started to get impatient and did nothing to prevent a military coup in November 1963.
