US IN VIETNAM

Why did the US lose the war in Vietnam?

Why did the US lose the war in Vietnam?

Introduction

The war in Vietnam is one of the major military conflicts of the second half of 20th century. The origin of the conflict can be traced to 1959 when the Communist guerrillas (the Vietcong) supported South Vietnam by North Vietnam, and wanted to overthrow the South Vietnamese government, giving rise to a war between the two countries. On the one hand, the USSR and China supported and armed the Communist Vietcong and North Vietnam, and on the other hand, the U.S. with South Vietnam. Vietnam was the first - and only - military defeat of the United States. This had enormous political consequences in the U.S. and internationally (Walton, 2002, Pp. 323-65). This paper discusses in detail the causes and the defeat of US in Vietnam.

Discussion

The continuing struggle of the Vietnamese people for centuries to state sovereignty culminated with the 1945 August Revolution in the so-called Ho Chi Minh declared independence from the French administration. Ho had hoped for support from the U.S., but was disappointed only a little later, when it was decided at the Potsdam Conference, the occupation of Vietnam by China and Britain. After the withdrawal of these forces, the French attempted to regain control of the country, what the first Indochina war between France and Ho Chi Minh's troops provoked. In the U.S., which had long withheld, was in course of time the impression that Ho Chi Minh would be supported by the Soviet Union. The U.S. thus gradually turned against him. 1950, in response to the diplomatic recognition of the Republic of Vietnam in the north by China and the USSR saw U.S. President Harry S. Truman appointed by the French government and began to support its military with weapons and money. The conflict ended in 1954 with the military defeat of France and the independence of South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. In northern Vietnam, was the Democratic Socialist Republic. In the south, Ngo Dinh Diem was installed as Prime Minister of the United States (Cummins, 2009, Pp. 362-370).

Diem turned in the wake of a rigorous anti-Communist policy, which included arrests, torture and killings of alleged communists. In 1955 he called the Republic of Vietnam with himself as president. Diem also coined the term Viet Cong for opponents of his system. From 1957, Ho Chi Minh began an underground war against the South, during which hundreds of South Vietnamese civilians were murdered. Two years later, these tactics developed into a pitched battle, and North Vietnam began to increase its underground fighters in the south and on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a complex road and street system, which also led by Laos and Cambodia, with arms and equipment.

The 1960 newly elected U.S. President John F. Kennedy saw Vietnam as the primary area in which the U.S. had the communist influence in other parts of the world put a stop ...