The Long-Term Significance of the Vietnam War - Essay Example

The North Vietnamese Army, Vietnam people's army adopted a more traditional war at times using bigger units than the Viet Cong (Bedford/St Martin's 2009, 15). The United States and South Vietnamese armies depended on air control and overwhelming weapons to carry out search and destroy actions, involving artillery, ground forces, and airstrikes. This paper will discuss why the Vietnam War was significant and why America lost this battle. “Americans considered the Vietnam War as one of the most critical time of the United States history” (Hub Pages 2010, 1).

It was an injury to the U.S spirit, which, regardless of the devastating Korean War, might still have brought a straightforward feeling of triumph in having met, as well as dominated, the opponent in the Second World War. The intransigency of general after general, president after president, and the hopeless extremes to which the United States army went to win in Vietnam can be illustrated in the harsh Operation Ranch Hand. This was whereby thousands of gallons of herbicides, jointly known as Agent Orange, were applied in defoliating large binds of forest terrain that hid the rival’s armies. . “The Vietnam War took the globe in an exceptional course” (Chambers 2011, 10).

Those ten years, 1962 to 1972, which the United States battled in Vietnam acted like a pressure liberation valve. “The war allowed streams to bleed off making the world’s pressures ease, as well as preventing a much superior war from happening” (Chambers 2011, 10). The United States’ original tactic of fighting the enemy was at the border. The tactic worked most of the times. The War, however, bought the world time. The United States’ existence gave time required for a majority of severe leaders behind the warfare, such as USSR's Nikita Khrushchev, China's Mao, and some of U.

S's old guard to lose their power. Time developed into the factor that tipped the stability of power all across the globe in favor of essential reformers like Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev, who supported democratic power. “Time also helped in moving the Soviet citizens from the old and severe rule of the socialist state” (Chambers 2011, 10). After six months, nearly half million East Germans brought down the Berlin Wall. This was followed by the end of every Eastern European communist government, one after the other.

“The United States lost the Vietnam War due to its foreign policy” (Shrinkermd 2008, 1). Their foreign policy was to stop, instead of getting rid of Communism. America would have been capable of destroying Communism many different times such as during the Korean War. “However, the American leaders did not want to eradicate Communism since it would make the Americans look like an Empire again such as the Philippines of the Spanish American warfare” (Shrinkermd 2008, 1). America lost the battle due to forfeit.