In his book The Unfinished Journey (5th ed), William H. Chafe generally takes the position that the reasons for the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War were purely for the reasons of containing the threat of Soviet expansion in Europe, Southeast Asia and the rest of the world. From his perspective, the Korean War bequeathed a "…mixed legacy of precedents that would shape the agenda of subsequent American policy toward the Cold War and Asia. Central to that legacy was the conviction that containment, however painfully implemented, had worked…" (Chafe, 2003, 245). It also hardened the resolve of the United States to fight Communism "…everywhere around the glob and to bolster the U.S. conviction that containment was the only language the Russians would understand…." (Chafe, 2003, 249).
The Korean War had established another precedent in that it established Asia as a battleground of the Cold War (Chafe, 2003, 245). Along with the commitment by the United States to contain Communism in other areas of the world, Asia now entered the same category thus globalizing the Cold War with literally no bounds.
The legacy to which Chafe refers also established other political precedents within the United States (Chafe, 2003, 246). Among these was allowing the Executive Branch of government to bypass Congress and waging war based upon the authority of the President. Another was the authority given to (or usurped by) the White House to define the issues and control the flow of information to the American people with respect to what was actually happening—in short telling the American people what they had to hear as opposed to what they needed to hear.
The involvement of the United States really started during the second term of Dwight Eisenhower and initiated again as a "showcase of Communist containment" (Chafe, 2003, 256) as well as in support of the basic tenets of the Truman Doctrine. According to Chafe (2003...