Explain Why the United States Left Vietnam

Explain why the United States left Vietnam

A culmination of problems within Vietnam, domestically and internationally forced the United States to leave the nation. The key reasons for withdrawal were bulging economic costs, an increasingly impatient home front, an underestimation of North Vietnamese ideology, events which turned the war and ineffective strategies. The United States was left in an unpleasant situation. The French President, Charles de Gaulle, had warned the US against its Vietnam involvement, saying the only way out would be the removal of its troops, “…you will sink step by step into a bottomless military and political quagmire…” .

To give a global context to the US occupation of Vietnam: there was cut-throat tension between the democratic nations and communist regimes. The American public and the majority of industrialised nations were persuaded by arguments of the “Domino Theory” and Communism taking over the world, the support for initial involvement was present. After the Gulf of Tonkin incident America began escalation in the Kennedy and Johnson years. However with an absence of results in the late 60’s support for the war disappeared as fast as it had arrived.

America, from the onset of the war did not have any precise strategies to achieve their goals. Vietnamese leader, Diem noticed this stating, “It was as if the United States could never quiet decide what policy to pursue.” The official reason for US entry was to defeat the Communist threat. President Kennedy stated, “The enemy is the Communist system itself-implacable, insatiable, unceasing in its drive for world domination…” There were two significant faults with this objective. Firstly the Americans assumed that, without evidence, the Vietnamese people would be swung by the power of democracy. Secondly, disputes occurred between the major Communist nations during the Vietnam war: the Sino-Soviet split destroyed the idea of a unified world-wide takeover by Communist nations. Vietnamese scholar Luu Doan Huynh attacked the US many years later, “…you were not only wrong, but you had, so to speak, lost your minds. Vietnam a part of the Chinese expansionist game in Asia? For anyone who knows the history of Indochina, this is incomprehensible.” America was trapped, the original premise of invading Vietnam became void as the war progressed.

Military strategies used by the United States were ineffective. Many of them were inappropriate for their objective of “winning the hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese people and only incited resentment of the people. Search and Destroy missions, as well as the Strategic Hamlet Programme were flawed. Robert McNamera condemned Operation Rolling Thunder for which, “…its goddamned bombing campaign that had dropped more on Vietnam than on Europe in the whole of World War II and we hadn’t gotten a goddamned thing for it.” Henry Kissinger, in a secret memo, admitted to President Ford that “In terms of military tactics…our armed forces are not suited to this kind of war.” One Admiral, cited by the Historian George Allen, stated “We should have fought in the north, where everyone was the enemy…where you didn’t have to worry whether or not you were shooting friendly civilians…I remember two of our marines being killed by a youngster…”

On the other hand the North Vietnamese had a “people’s will to resist” . As Nguyen Co Thach described, “You (America) have your nuclear weapons. We have our secrecy.” Most importantly the Vietnamese had a common purpose which Giap proclaimed, “Our objective was national independence.” Kolko briefly describes the conduct of the North Vietnamese, “The night virtually became the NLFs property, since it deprived the enemy of freedom to use most of his firepower. The exploitation of the rainy season was another method. The alteration and improvisation of tunnels and mines became a fine art.” The resistance that Americans met proved to be too strong- technology and attrition were no match for the Vietnamese’ ingenuity and spirit, this eventually led to their withdrawal.

Vietnam was known as the “Photographers war”, journalists enjoyed unprecedented influence on the public. Canadian theorist Marshall McLuhan stated, “Television brought the brutality of the war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America-not on the battlefields of Vietnam.” Opinionated leading figures also had an incredible power, notably Walter Cronkite and Martin Luther King. A key moment in the war was when Cronkite stated that America could not win, public approval for involvement dropped dramatically.

Throughout the war, media coverage troubled the US government. This was particularly true with such events as the My Lai massacre occurring