Vietnam and the American Theory of Limited War - Essay Example

The Vietnam War Vietnam War Topic The concept of limited war implies that those engaged in the war have limited resources at their disposal to fight a war and also do have limited objectives for engaging in the war. Unlike in conventional wars, it was hard to understand which side was winning the war as it was difficult to understand whether the war was over. However, factors that could constitute winning the war included: declining number of attacks by the Vietcong, making the North Vietnamese give up the fight and also increased popularity of the south Vietnam would have been an indicator of winning the war.

Therefore, successful outcomes of reduced insurgence by the north and their retreat could count in indicating that US was winning the war.Topic 2Hamburger Hill is one the movies that gives an account of the occurrences that took shape in the Vietnam War and relays the story from the soldiers who took part in the war. The movie shows an attempt to take Hill 937 by the US troops and the negative impact that war brings about. Other films that also give a firsthand account of the war are, Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan.

Topic 3Limited war is the opposite of total war. The war was based on ideologies of means and end. Because of constraints in terms of the resources like financial, military and human, the presence or absence of a vision played a great role in influencing the outcome of the war. The war had to be fought by any means in order to attain the desired result. The end was to justify the means.Topic 4The topic describes the Vietnam War as formless and could hardly be sustained. It had crude statistics of measuring a win.

Assuming that Southern Vietnam was not an excessively hard place to operate and under-estimation of the enemy, made the war possible and sustained. The Viet used Guerrilla tactics in their combat. The US soldiers, on the other hand, used the search and destroy tactics as well as bombing the economic and industrial centers of the enemy soldiers and this tactic obliterated the Viet Cong army.Topic 5To describe the Vietnam war as formless and frontless, I think creates a picture of lack of military organization with no clear cut means of measuring attained success and no strategies to secure the secured enemy territory.

The war had no specific objective that could be pointed out and was, thus, formless. It was hard to identify signs of victory. Fighting could take place anywhere at any time with no frontline.Topic 6The Cuban missile crisis was a great threat of nuclear war in the world. The patience exhibited by J.F Kennedy helped put the situation under control. Kennedy became victorious in October 28, 1962 when he, Khrushchev and U Thant-the United Nations Secretary general reached an agreement that USSR would dismantle their weapons in Cuba in exchange for US compliance to dismantle all the US-built intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Italy and Turkey against the soviet.

ReferenceMoss, G. (1990). Vietnam, an American ordeal. Englewood Cliffs, New York: Prentice Hall.