U. S. ENTRY INTO AND FAILURE IN THE VIETNAM WAR

This research paper analyzes the reasons why the United States entered the Vietnam War as it did and why its military intervention in that war failed.

After initially opposing French colonial policy during World War II, the United States became convinced after 1945, and especially after the communist victory in China in 1949, that U.S. vital interests required that a communist takeover of South Vietnam be resisted. Toward that end it supported with military and economic assistance the French war effort in Indochina and, after the Geneva accords were signed in 1954, the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam.

During the administration of President John Kennedy, American assistance to Diem increased, including military advisors and counterinsurgency efforts, but when Diem showed himself incapable of marshalling public support for the war, the United States covertly supported a coup against him in November 1963. During Lyndon Johnson's presidency, the United States gradually escalated its involvement in the Vietnam War to shore up crumbling military regimes in the South by bombing throughout the country and introducing ground troops in 1965-1966.

After the communist Tet offensive of February 1968, the United States reconsidered its military commitment to South Vietnam, eventually resulting under President Richard Nixon in the phased withdrawal of American forces with continuing but diminishing American logistic and a

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of Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu in November 1963. Thereafter, a succession of five makeshift military and military-backed governments produced even more instability. McNamara speculates that, "had President Kennedy lived, he would have pulled us out of Vietnam." 1964-1968 President Johnson ordered a gradual military escalation of the American war effort in Vietnam during the years 1964-1967 which included an intensified bombing campaign in the South and North and the introduction of large numbers of ground troops which peaked at 536,100 in December 1968. He did so on the recommendation of McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The major commitment of ground troops and the decision to fight offensively took place in mid-1965 months after the Tonkin Gulf incidents in August 1964 and a series of Viet Cong attacks on American bases in the South. Johnson chose a middle course between withdrawal and massive escalation. LBJ believed that the expansion of communism was a threat to American security. According to Edmonds, political considerations played a role. He says "Johnson feared that if he left the war and let the communists take over Vietnam, he would be seen as an appeaser and would be unable to accomplish many of his
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Approximate Word count = 2374
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)