Lessons Learned of the Vietnam War - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages... The Vietnam War serves as one of the most dominant and influential international conflicts appeared after the Second Great War (Mahajan, 2003) on the horizons of the world, encompassing the Far East in its fold, and leaving an indelible impact of its horrible consequences in the entire region as well as on the rest of the world at large. Started during the climax of Cold War (Arora 2002) between the then two strategic Super Powers i.e. the USSR and USA, the war lasted for twenty long years from 1955 to 1975, and ended in the heavy losses of men and material of the invaded Vietnam as well as the complete humiliation and degradation of the invader USA eventually. Although, the American administration and forces applied every possible strategy and even military brutality on the country, particularly the Mai Lai catastrophic massacre (Fallows 2009) , yet the defensive state, along with its forces and masses belonging to this small Far East state of Vietnam, did not surrender one single inch of their territorial boundaries; at last their exemplary fortitude, unflinching will-power and unabated determination forced the US military might to surrender and hence paved the way for the cessation and exit of the American troops from their country at last. The Lessons America Learnt:The analysts, since the aftermath of the Vietnam War onward, remained engaged in making investigations of the causes behind the failure of the US mission in a country, which apparently looked a very easy target, though turned out to be a hard nut to crack; even its population, economic position and military force was far lesser in comparison with the American might. Consequently, discovering the chronicles of events that turned the US invasion over Vietnam as nightmare for her had turned to be a moot point to be discussed at every forum for the future years to come. One of the most fatal mistakes committed by the invading country was sending a huge army of almost 3 million US men and women thousands of miles away from their fatherland in order to fight a foreign soil just for stopping the advancement of communism from entering the northern part of Vietnam (Anghie 2007).5 Actually the US foreign strategy remained revolving around creating certain impediments on the way to the advancements of Communist Russia; in order to keep an overwhelming majority of the world sovereign-states under the US influence and economic subjugation as well.6 Consequently, protection of her economic system capitalism served to be the most vital issue for the Americans, for the security of which the US leadership dragged the military personnel into a certain inferno, which cost the lives of over 2.5 million people on both the warring sides eventually (Kalyvas & Kocher 2003). Hence, the Americans fought a fruitless war hundreds of miles away from their home in order to tame a small Asian state by wasting a huge amount of dollars for a useless pursuit. It is therefore the USA has assured the least chances of the occurrence of deaths ...Download file to see next pagesRead More