Why did the USA become involved in Vietnam in the 1950s and the 1960s? Describe the military tactics used by both the USA and the Vietcong forces in Vietnam

The third reason is events in Vietnam. The French pulled out of Vietnam in 1954 after being humiliated by the guerrilla tactics of the Vietminh. This meant that the South Vietnamese were left on their own. As Diem refused to allow the Free elections that would re-unite Vietnam in 1956 as he believed that the Communists would force voters to vote for them. This was supported by the USA. To keep South Vietnam pro-Western, the Americans poured millions of dollars of economic aid and modern technological weaponery as well as military advisors. The North Vietnamese re-started the guerrilla campaign in South Vietnam in 1959 with the Vietcong. The South Vietnamese army, the ARVN, were not adequately trained to deal with guerrilla warfare so they crumbled. Vietnam was America's microcosm of the real world, half Communist, half Capitalist. If the Capitalist side was defeated, it would show the American way of life to be weaker than that of the Communists. This is why America secretly sent in more military advisors so when Johnson took over after Kennedy, the number had risen from 685 to 16,000. When Johnson came to power, he wished to end the Vietnam 'problem' as quickly as possible as it was draining their resources. This is why he created the Gulf of Tongking incident where, allegedly, the American warships and spy ships were damaged. This gave Johnson the perfect excuse to come in and finish of the war.

In conclusion, I believe that the conflicting ideologies between the Vietminh and Soviets and Americans was the main reason for the Americans becoming more involved with the war. This is because it caused the other two problems where Americans were competing as superpowers against each other and is also the reason why the Americans backed South Vietnam as it was anti-Communist. I believe that the problems outside Vietnam was a bigger reason than the events inside Vietnam for the Americans saw the Russians as a greater threat and the only reason that they were fighting in Vietnam was because the Americans wanted to show the Soviets that their way of life would always lose to the Capitalists.

Q2. Describe the military tactics used by both the USA and the Vietcong forces in Vietnam in the 1960s and early 1970s.

The Vietnam War was a war of conflicting forms of military tactics. The difference in tactics for both sides was governed by:- what each side wished to accomplish during the war, economic strength, military technology and knowledge of the geography of Vietnam, especially the topography of the land. The USA was a world superpower with a huge military budget. It also had the best scientists in the world to develop increasingly deadly arms. This allowed them to use helicopters and other expensive forms of war equipment. On the other side of the spectrum, you have a North Vietnam. Admittedly, they were funded by the Communists in Russia and in China but that was not really saying much economically. They also were given weapons from the aforementioned but there was not enough of them and there were few people skilled to use them fighting for the North Vietnamese. However, they had a knowledge of the land and its topography which they used to great affect in attacking the Americans through guerrilla warfare tactics. This allowed them to lay booby traps for the American soldiers to fall for. The difference in aims between the two sides also affected their tactics as the Americans wished to get the Vietcong out of South Vietnam and nothing more than that whereas the Vietcong and NVA wished to fully take over Vietnam. This worked in the Vietcong's and NVA' s favour eventually as this caused low moral in the American's fighting as they were sent to get the North Vietnamese out of South Vietnam and they were just going through South Vietnam, burning all of the South Vietnamese villages and killing the South Vietnamese men and women. I am now going to compare and contrast and explain the differences between each sides military tactics in the 1960s and early 1970s. I am going to start first with the Vietcong's and the NVA' s tactics as they contributed to the American's tactics which were caused partially by reacting to Vietcong and NVA tactics.

The Vietcong tried to always fight using guerrilla tactics. This is when small groups of men fight a war where they are rarely seen but kill the opposition by picking off a few men at a time. They used this form of tactics because if they fought the Americans in a conventional open air war, they would most definitely lose due to the fact they have less economic strength to buy weapons or produce them and they did not have the scientific expertise to create new weapons. Also, they knew that they had a superior knowledge of the land than the Americans so they could lay booby traps, eg holes covered with leaves, and catch the unsuspecting American army out. They also used this tactic as they do not mind waiting a long time before winning the war whereas the Americans did so they could just sit back while the Americans became more agitated and intensified the search for them, thus enlarging the chances of them falling for the Vietcong traps. They also had an intricate network of tunnels and caves. This was important because it meant that they could set traps for the Americans very quickly and then escape unnoticed. To supply this campaign of guerrilla warfare, they had the Ho Chi Minh trail. This was a route from North Vietnam to South Vietnam which they could use to transport food and soldiers. It was totally hidden by forests and it partially went through neighbouring countries: Laos and Cambodia. This was imperative for their war as otherwise their effort would crumble as without soldiers you cannot fight, and without food, you will die. This is why it was important for it to go through remote forests as this meant that it was nearly untraceable for the Americans. When the reinforcements reached South Vietnam, they hid in incognito as they had no uniform but just blended in with the South Vietnamese peasants who were persuaded to support them by either gestures of kindness eg food or by force. This allowed them to have miniature military bases in South Vietnam. As the war continued, the North Vietnamese were given a selection of weapons so that they could stop the American's from using planes to bomb them (eg Anti-aircraft guns, Surface to air missiles and Soviet Mig-17 and Mig-21PF fighters which were armed with air to air missiles.) This was done in reaction to the saturation bombing of North Vietnam as a countermeasure so they would shoot down the American bomber planes. In 1968, Ho Chi Minh ordered the Tet Offensive. This was the first time that the NVA had made an attack outside of the forest. The reason for doing this is because the Americans had grown complacent and thought that they were winning the war. They also would have never expected a North Vietnamese attack in the towns so that it caught them by surprise. They fought with conventional methods such as tanks which also surprised the Americans as they thought that the North Vietnamese could not afford tanks and other armaments. Even though this actual battle was a total catastrophe for the North Vietnamese, it was a major turning point in the war as this showed to the American citizens that the war was being more closely fought than what their leaders had told them. Finally, the NVA lead a huge assault on South Vietnam in 1972 with an attack far greater than the Tet Offensive. The North Vietnamese did not have to really worry about American involvement as the policy of Vietnamization meant that there were only 140,000 US troops in Vietnam so they could beat the South easily. During this, they were officially in peace talks that were stalling which meant that they were being bombed by the Americans who were trying to 'persuade' them to stop. This eventually led to a ceasefire which the NVA finally broke in 1975 in a massive assault from troops from Cambodia and all other bases which the South Vietnamese, as they were poor militarily lost with Saigon falling in late April.

The American tactics on the other hand were totally opposite to this. This is because they had, as I said earlier, more money and weapons. This allowed them to use much more expensive weapons than the North Vietnamese, hence this war being very famous for having American soldiers brought in by helicopter to trace the North Vietnamese. These helicopters were also used as rocket launchers and machine guns as the marshy and forested land of South Vietnam made it difficult to get a clear shot at the enemy. However, due to their lack of knowledge to the local geography, they were at constant risk to the Vietcong's guerrilla warfare tactics so there main aim of getting rid of the North Vietnamese in South Vietnam was made much harder as the North Vietnamese were hiding and fighting in incognito. The first thing the Americans did was to set up strategic hamlets. This was supposed to root out all of the links to the Vietcong in the little country villages so the Vietcong would be easier to identify in the forests, as they would not be mistaken as peasants. In reality, this was a complete failure as it was very unpopular with the South Vietnamese who were losing their homes that turned many to helping the Vietcong and housing them. Another tactic used by the Americans at the beginning of the war was extensive bombing of North Vietnam 'Operation Rolling Thunder'. This was supposed to bully the North Vietnamese to talk about peace, as they would destroy military and industrial sites in the city. However, this did not work as it strengthened the North Vietnamese citizen's resilience and caused them to hate the Americans more and made them more determined to defeat them. This was later improved to saturation bombing where the Americans bombed everything in sight. This was done as the Americans started to become tired of fighting the war as it was causing great economic strain so they tried to force the North Vietnamese into submission. This also was unsuccessful due to reasons given above. In 1966 the American's begun Search and Destroy missions. This is because they found that the strategic hamlet tactic was not working so they decided to send out American units to search and destroy the NVA and Vietcong. This is where Americas superior economic and technological power came into play as they had the ability to fly troops in by helicopter to fight. The greatest example of an American 'success' through this method is the Mai Lai Massacre in March 1968 where, in Lehman's terms, the American's were brought in by helicopter and then shot at anything that moved including children and women. Even though this method caused considerable loss to the North Vietnamese, it also affected the American numbers as they got caught in Vietcong booby traps. However, they were able to obtain considerable information about the Vietcong's activities by the soldiers that they captured and tortured/interrogated. The Americans throughout the war tried to use a policy of Pacification whilst attempting to create a democracy. This was done because they saw how much support the North Vietnamese had in the country villages so this was to counteract it. It was not a great success due to the fact that they had it down as a second priority due to fighting the Vietnamese. As the war progressed, the Americans begun to use chemical warfare. This is due to how difficult it was to trace the Vietcong hiding in the forest so they were not getting very far in their war against them. They did this by using napalm which was the worst of these weapons as it caused terrible burns to anyone that it landed on and spraying weed killers to do defoliation which means stripping leaves off of trees. The latter included the infamous Agent Orange which stripped forests bare of leaves. It also contaminated any people who were exposed to it, including Americans handling it at the base. The American General, Westmoreland, began to talk publicly of a war of attrition. This is where the Americans would try and kill more men than they would lose. However, this policy was a total failure as the Tet offensive proved. Even though the North Vietnamese were badly damaged, so were the Americans and the US citizens could not accept this. The US civilians also were not pleased by the fact that they had been lied to for the last few years as the Americans had obviously not been winning the war but more like drawing it. This caused public opinion in the United States to plummet about Vietnam. This caused radical changes in the policies of America. Under Nixon, they began a policy of Vietnamization in 1969. This was the policy of handing the war back to the South Vietnamese to fight for themselves. However, this did not stop the Americans from having one last effort to influence the war when they attacked Cambodia in order to root out any NVA camps and to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh trail thus causing problems to the Vietcong in the forests. They then entered a period where they were trying to encourage a peace agreement imbetween the South Vietnamese and the North Vietnamese as they wanted this war to finish as quickly as possible as it was greatly affecting them economically. Every time it stalled, they launched a huge bombing campaign. They eventually reached a ceasefire in 1972. In the period 1972-1975, the Americans completed Vietnamization so there were no more American troops in Vietnam which was a great mistake as it allowed the North Vietnamese to mount a huge offensive that destroyed the South Vietnamese resistance and let the Communists have the entire of Vietnam.