Briefly discuss the origins of the Vietnam War. What two broad global contexts explain the onset of that conflict? What were the long-term repercussions of United States involvement in Vietnam?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

ANSWER:
Students should place the Vietnam conflict within the following two broad contexts. First, the independence movement in Vietnam was similar to other anticolonialism and independence movements around the world in the decade after World War II. Second, United States intervention in Vietnam clearly illustrates the bipolarity of the Cold War. Students should trace the beginnings of United States involvement to the Eisenhower administration's decision not to support the French colonial administration in 1954. The French were driven out of Vietnam by a nationalist movement seeking Vietnamese independence. Later, however, President Kennedy supported the corrupt and unpopular South Vietnamese government as a bulwark against the expansion of communism from the north. The Gulf of Tonkin incident provided an excuse to deploy many thousands of additional U.S. troops, and the war escalated throughout the 1960s. The 1973 treaty ending the fighting between the United States and Vietnam was prompted by a powerful antiwar movement in the United States. The antiwar movement, economic problems created by the war, and the unpopularity of the conflict itself ensured that the United States would not engage directly in other Cold War conflicts. Future interventions involved military support rather than the use of U.S. troops.