The Vietnam War - Essay Example

The Vietnam War The fact that during the Vietnam War Viet se Communists and their associates were the aggressorsin Indochina is unquestionable. Although, the real root cause could be traced back to the close of the World War II. The French protectorate, known as Indochina, composed of Laos and Vietnam, together with the Japanese soldiers had taken Cambodia. In 1941, a Vietnamese pro-self-rule movement, known as Viet Minh, was established by a communist Ho Chi Minh to oppose the occupiers of his homeland. Ho Chi Minh being a communist and an aggressor, he started guerilla violence in opposition to the Japanese with the sustainability of the United States of America. Towards the end of the war, the Japanese began promoting the Vietnamese patriotism and in the end approved the country's ostensible independence. According to Caputo, in the subsequent years the Japanese were defeated and the French returned to occupy their colony (287). Viet Minh singly accepted their access into Vietnam after being assured that the country was to be granted independence as part of an agreement with the French union. However, negotiations broke down between the two warring factions and in December 1946, the French soldiers’ surrounded the city of Haiphong and compulsorily got back the capital city Hanoi. These events started the clash between the Viet Minh and the French, which resulted in the Indochina War. The French soldiers were at last defeated at Dien Bien Phu in the year 1954 (Karnow 501). Downs further illustrates that in the beginning, the United States of America had no interest in Southeast Asia and Vietnam (211). Nevertheless, it became obvious that after the World War II the globe would be subjugated by the United States of America and its allies. The Soviet Union together with its allies was at the opposite side of the fence. This isolated the communist movements as a strategy for their success. These concerns were in the end converted into the principle of domino theory; the only remaining option of containing the communist tendencies is to close them within their borders. Tonsenic asserts that these trends continued dominating the United States foreign policy for a long time (165). In 1950, to stop the spread of communism, the U.S began supplying weapons to the French military in Vietnam and financially assisting the French troops. This was meant to dismantle the Viet Minh; these operations continued into the year 1956, when highly trained advisors provided coaching facilities to the army of the newly established Republic of South Vietnam. In spite of their excellent hard work, the army of the republic of Vietnam was poorly equipped and, therefore, ineffective throughout its existence. Karnow shows how the US continued supporting the Diem regime as it battled against Ho Chi Minh’s Marxist military aggressors in the north (624). In the year 1957, a small guerrilla pressure group began to come forward in the south, led by Viet Minh’s soldiers that had not come back from the north after the accords. In 1959, these groups fruitfully pressured Ho’s administration into issuing an undisclosed resolution requesting for an equipped struggle in the south. Military personnel along with the Ho Chi Minh group began supplying weapons and troops into the south. The subsequent year, National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam began in earnest to carry on the fight (Downs 167-168). The situation continued to deteriorate in South Vietnam, worsened by the corrupt regime of Diem government and the Viet Cong continued encroachment. In 1961, the Kennedy administration agreed to pump more aid, weapons, and additional financial support to the rebels. Washington had begun deliberations to force a government transformation in Saigon. In November 2, 1963, the Criminal Investigation Agency CIA of the US assisted the rebels to remove the Diem government from power. In order to mitigate the post coup d'etat chaos, President Kennedy enlarged the number of US soldiers in South Vietnam to 16,000 (Caputo 148). According to Downs (187), the Vietnamese War was an extended struggle involving the pro-home rule forces attempting to unite the country into communist ideology seen as the aggressors, as well as the United States together with the South Vietnamese resisting the spread of communism (Catino 37). While the US was committed in a war the American public did not approve, possessing a premonition of the US not winning the war, the US government began interrogating its foreign policy concerning future wars. Karnow illustrates the numerous effects of Vietnam War. To start with, it was a victory at a particularly heavy cost (685). Slightly more than 58,000 Americans died, while over 150,000 wounded in the battlefields. Northern Vietnam was triumphant over South Vietnam and the associated forces. Many individuals suffered from post-traumatic nervous tension disorders established in the midst of war veterans. Chemical warfare used by the US during the war had adverse effects to human beings and the environment. Herbicides were used to kill plants that otherwise provided covers to enemy troops; these herbicides were not friendly to the environment. The US had three objectives for their participation in the Vietnam War. First, to stop the communist from captivating the whole Vietnam, helping to set up a friendly government in the south, and sabotaging the spread of communism in the adjacent countries. On the other hand, the communist were trying to set up a communist state in Vietnam and unite their country freeing it from alien interventions. Using this as the basis of this war, northern Vietnam was triumphant over their enemies (Downs 56-59). The legality or illegality of this war cannot be substantiated, because it involved several players and superpowers, such as the US, France, Japan and Vietnam. These are foreign countries with different jurisprudence and policies. To narrow down to one particular conclusion is inevitable. However, this war could have been avoided, the main cause of the war difference in ideology. When leaders sit down together and discuss issues, problems get solutions. Avoiding the war in the formative stages was the best option, but the exact time when the war was to be averted is doubtful. In as much as the war started, avoiding it was the best option, the ultimate goal of human beings is to remain peaceful. Works Cited Caputo, Philip. A Rumor of War. Washington, Holt Paperbacks; First Owl Books Edition, 1996. Print. Catino, Martin. The Aggressors: Ho Chi Minh, North Vietnam, and the Communist Bloc. New York, Dog Ear Publishing, 2010. Print. Downs, Frederick. The Killing Zone: My life in the Vietnam War. New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 2007. Print. Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam: A History. New York, Penguin (Non-Classic), 1997. Print. Tonsenic, Robert. Days of Valor: An Inside Account of the Bloodiest Six Months of the Vietnam War. Glasgow, Casemate, 2007. Print. Read More