The Vietnam War Era
The Vietnam War Era
Alanna DIckerson
THE VIETNAM WAR ERA
The Vietnam War Era
The Vietnam War was a conflict that involved the Southern Vietnam and United States as main allies against North Vietnam communist regime and its southern allies. This war begun from November 1, 1955 to April 30, 1975 during the fall of Saigon and it formed the second part of the Indochina Wars (Elliott, 2010). The South Vietnam allies comprised of the United States, Australia and South Korea while the North Vietnam allies comprised of the neighboring communist states such as China and Soviet Union. The Viet Cong (National Liberation Front) was a communist front from South Vietnam that was supported by the North to fight a guerrilla war against the forces in the region which were against communism. The North Vietnamese Army fought a conventional war and sometimes committed big units to the battle field (Elliott, 2010).
The North Vietnamese side was fighting with an aim of reunifying the entire Vietnam since they perceived this war as a colonial confrontation that was continued from the First Indochina War that involved the France and U.S (Herring, 2009). The involvement of the American forces directly spanned a period between 1950- when U.S decided to aid French to suppress Vietminh Revolution – and 1975 – at the Saigon Fall. The involvement increased from military and economic assistance to French to assistance for South Vietnam independence which made the United States to engage in the war from various small separate decisions over a period of 15 years (Herring, 2009).
Broadly the United States intervention was a result of interaction of two phenomenon involving the post-World War II period. These included the beginning of Cold War and colonial empires dissolution. The increasing nationalism sentiments and the European powers weakness merged at the World War II ending to fracture a colonial system that had shaped the century’s world politics (Herring, 2009). A unique thing from the American view, more so about the Vietnam conflict was that the communists led the revolutionary movements after the French attempted to regain the Indochinese Empire. For about 20 years the policy makers in the United States perceived this conflict as an integral part of their wider struggle against the communism forces. They also assumed that losing Vietnam would be to risk losing interests that they viewed as important and this present an irony since Vietnam was not of any significance until 1940(Herring, 2009). The policy makers had a “domino theory” which held that Vietnam fall would lead to entire Indochina less, Southeast Asia and the effects would extend far. In the era of Kennedy-Johnson, the domino theory was enhanced by credibility notion, the view that U.S had to show its intension of defending its interests in the world (Herring, 2009).