America and the Vietnam War

The American Vietnam War
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Abstract
The Vietnam war would go down in history as one of America's most protracted involvement without any meaningful success. The US went to war in Vietnam driven mainly by the fear of Communism spread worldwide and across Southeast Asia based on the Domino Theory logic. Its involvement in the war from 1945-1975 would be considered in the country as the worst foreign intervention ever. The essay dissects the intricacies and chronological events of the US Vietnam involvement until the end of the war in 1975.
The American Vietnam War
A period after World War II was marred with constant competition and the need for world dominance by the war's superpowers. WWII created the East communist superpower led by the Soviet Union and China, and Western superpowers led by the US and its WWII allies like France and Britain. America's ultimate involvement in the Vietnam war was necessitated by the bigger picture of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States. The fear of communists spread to other parts of the world, particularly in the Southeast Asia region, made the US get involved in the Vietnam war by supporting the South Vietnamese capitalist state (Republic of Vietnam) against the North Vietnamese communist government (Democratic Republic of Vietnam).
The United States` involvement in Vietnam originates from the end of WWII. It was when the Vietnamese were trying to end the French's continued colonial existence in Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh, Viet Minh's (Vietnamese Independence League) leader, and Vietnam Communist Party's founder managed to blend nationalist (the anti-French movement) with Marxist-Leninist revolutionary belief. It is an ideology that would progress, encompassed with protracted guerilla war tactics against the French to liberate Vietnam. Eventually, in 1954, the Viet Minh seized Dien Bien Phu, authoritatively expelling the French and ending their reign.
After World War II, tensions immediately began and escalated between USSR and the US. Tensions were high because Russian forces occupied and dominated almost Eastern Europe, setting up Communist governments in the region. The set-up governments acted as a barrier between Russia and the capitalist West countries. It was aggression lamented by the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, in 1946. In his famous "Iron Curtain" speech, the premier attacked the Soviet Union questioning the impulsive wall of secrecy enforced between Western and Eastern Europe. However, in 1947, George F. Kennan, the US State Department analyst, under the Containment policy, contended that the Soviet was not likely to make any aggressions. He proposed that the US could curb Communism's spread by limiting Russia's expansion at significant regions, primarily in Europe, in the long term. The policy would become exceptionally prominent in America's government and became the foundation of the government's policy for most of the Cold War period.
The events of the Cold War continued to necessitate military actions by the United States in Vietnam. Three significant events between 1948 and 1949 escalated America's paranoia about Communism. First, the Soviets, while in control of East Germany, tried to expe...