Why did the United States get involved in the Vietnam War?

Essay by funnyfckerUniversity, Bachelor'sB-, May 2006

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Why did the United States get involved in the Vietnam War? Explain what factors led American policymakers down the path towards war, and cite specific examples of critical events that reflected these factors.

There was no specific factor that led the united states into getting involved in the Vietnam war, but rather a gradual series of events and decisions which would lead them down such a path. The initial reasons for U.S. involvement in Vietnam seemed logical and compelling to American leaders. From Washington's perspective, by the end of World War II the principal threat to U.S. security and world peace was Stalin's dictatorship and the influence and spread of communism which was emanating from the Soviet Union. Any communist anywhere, in the United States or anywhere else, was, by definition, an enemy of the United States. Drawing an analogy with the unsuccessful appeasement of fascist dictators before World War II, the Truman administration believed that any sign of communist aggression must be met quickly and forcefully by the United States and its allies.

This reactive policy was known as containment.

Ho Chi Minh and the Vietminh front that he had created in 1941, had become the target of containment in Vietnam. Ho was a communist, as were his chief lieutenants and they had long-standing connections to the Soviet Union. They were also passionate Vietnamese nationalists who fought to rid their country, first of the Japanese and then, after World War II ended in 1945, to prevent France from re-gaining its former colonial status over Vietnam and the rest of Indochina. Harry S Truman and other American leaders, having no sympathy for French colonialism, favoured Vietnamese independence. However, in eastern Europe, expanding communist control and the victory of the communists in China's civil war made France's war against Ho Chi...