other, very quickly – President Eisenhower’s theory on the Domino theory (1954) “You have a row of dominoes set up. You knock over the first one. What will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly.”
The USA had a policy known as the Truman Doctrine, which meant that they would send money, arms and advice to any country threatened by a communist take over. Therefore, they provided Ngo Dinh Diem, who was helped to set up the anti-communist Republic of South Vietnam, with $1.6 billion in the 1950's. The other policy that the USA had was containment, which was to prevent communism spreading any further than it already had done in Eastern Europe. The USA stopped the proposed elections taking place in Vietnam for fear that the communists would win, so Vietnam was divided into North and South Vietnam in 1954. This communist victory over the French led the Americans to believe that communists were taking over
the world and must be stopped.
US President Johnson in April 1965, one month after the start of
Operation Rolling Thunder. He is justifying the reasons for going into
war against Vietnam, which are to keep the peace and freedom of the
people in South Vietnam. He is speaking after the Gulf of Tonkin incident where two American ships were attacked so he is speaking in the 'heat of the moment' and perhaps at a time where he feels that he can convince most of the public that they are going into war to keep the peace and security. But in my opinion going to war is exactly the opposite of keeping the peace.
After the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the US Congress passed the Tonkin
Gulf Resolution. This gave Johnson the power to 'take all necessary
measures to prevent further aggression and achieve peace and
security.' The Congress meant that they would support a war if its
purpose were to bring peace and security, so this is maybe why Johnson
is saying these are the reasons why America should go into war. It
does not give his true opinion of why or whether America should go
into war. It gives the official reasons and the ones he wants the
public to hear. This suggests that these aren’t President Johnson’s real feelings about going to war.
President Johnson stated as another reason for engaging in civil war with Vietnam. He explains, 'we fight because we have a promise to keep,'
which implies that previous American presidents wanted to help South
Vietnam to gain freedom and independence, and he is following this
policy. He also states, 'we are there to strengthen world order,'
which is suggesting that the USA is like the world's police force and
is trying to show that they have lots of power and will use it if they have to. Johnson has introduced an element of fear by saying that if they hadn't gone into
war against Vietnam, 'the result would be instability and unrest, and
even wider war.' The American public would still be recovering from
and remembering the devastating effects of the Second World War and
they desperately didn't want another war, so it would add to public
support for the war. Johnson refers back to the Second World War when
he says, ' we must stay in South East Asia- as we did in Europe,' to
reinforce that America needs to go into war to preserve the peace
because when they were involved with Europe it worked out peacefully
in the end so it should do this time.
President Johnson was bitterly anti-Communist, which is one of the main reasons America went into war against Vietnam. Johnson feared a spread of
Communism around the world. Johnson is also very positive about the war and does not mention any problems that the soldiers might have fighting, for example the Viet Cong's guerrilla tactics that the American soldiers were not used to at all and had trouble fighting against. Johnson also doesn't talk about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which happened a short while before his
Speech. This suggests to me that President Johnson was planning on making the speech even if the Gulf of Tonkin incident didn’t occur, the attack was an added excuse to enter into warfare.
Some points that Johnson makes are accurate and correct whereas some
are not, for example when he says, 'since 1954 every American
President has offered support to the people of South Vietnam,' he is
being accurate in some ways. When John F. Kennedy became President in
1960, he increased the number of military advisors from 100 to 1600 by
1963, and also helped to equip the South Vietnamese army. President
Eisenhower supported the South Vietnamese government before him.
However, Johnson has been slightly inaccurate because although the
American Presidents have supported the governments, they haven't
necessarily supported the people. A lot of the South Vietnamese people
actually supported Communism because a lot of them were peasants and
it meant that everyone would be equal and landlords would not be
better off anymore. However, the leader Ngo Dinh Diem imprisoned many
of the people who supported Communism, so they didn't always express
their opinions. Johnson has been accurate about staying in South East
Asia in earlier times, because the Americans did fight here and didn't
just ignore it or leave it.
Johnson said that if the Communists are ignored, they will take over, spread and become a threat to US lands. He is referring indirectly to the US policy of containment where Communism has to be prevented from spreading and the Domino theory, which demonstrates how Communism could spread extremely quickly, I think Johnson was pressured into continuing the war by other politicians and the fact that the President before him and already half started it.
Once America started sending more troops into directly fight the Viet Cong and the rest of the opposing troops in Vietnam, America had already become too involved to pull back, so being typically American they continued blindly on, even though they were against incredibly tough opponents whose tactics they didn’t really know anything about you could say this was either incredibly stupid, or brave.
In 1967 a national peace movement was set up in the US against the Vietnam war. The war continued internally the Vietcong launched the Tet Offensive (1968) it failed. Richard Nixon replaced Johnson as President.
In 1969 Vietnamisation was introduced Nixon decided to withdraw troops from Vietnam and let the South Vietnamese handle it on their own but he still continued supplying arms and money.
Although there are many reasons why the US became increasingly involved in the war in Vietnam but the ones that stand out the most are that –
America was afraid of Communism and they didn’t want it spreading so they wanted to cut it off in Vietnam to stop the Domino theory.
Once they started providing arms and money to the operation in Vietnam troops followed rather quickly, they didn’t want to look like they were afraid of getting involved, and they didn’t want to be seen as weak, or selfish for not helping out a nearby country, that deserved independence. In the end the whole thing seemed pretty pointless, but before the war got underway the most important reason why America got involved with supporting South Vietnam with arms and money and even military advisors was mainly because they were afraid of religion in this case Communism they are scared of anything remotely new to them and see it as their responsibility to get rid of it. I’m not saying what the Americans did was wrong because if they hadn’t helped maybe all of Europe would be a dictatorship like China, i think they could have negotiated a bit more rather than just barrel in and start a civil war. The Americans were very careful at getting involved at first but once they started they couldn’t seem to stop, they increased from offering aid – money, arms military advisors – to full scale war and dropping bombs. You can see things got out of hand very quickly and if the same thing happened now then I’m sure the US would be a lot more considerate and careful before jumping in and sending military troops, especially after they lost the war in Vietnam.
