Vietnam

The war in Vietnam is most widely known for the protests it triggered, the Vietnam proxy
war that was a cause of the cold war. The Vietnam War was a conflict between the communist
North Vietnam and the Viet Cong against South Vietnam and the United States. The war started
in 1954 and was the backdrop to the cold war going on against two global superpowers the
United States and the Soviet Union, spending time and money to fund the expansion of the social
economic system, though the U.S. was the only one to actually send man power. Inspired by the
Chinese and the soviet nations a Ho Chi Minh formed the Viet Minh, to fight the Japanese
occupying the land and the French colonial administration. When they left in 1945 leaving Bao
Dai in control of an independent Vietnam, Ho took complete advantage of the situation and
seized the north, declaring a Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) with Ho as president
(History.com). As a result the French backed Bao and created the state of Vietnam also known as
South Vietnam with Saigon as the capital. Conflict continued against the two different systems
until a huge battle the ended in the treaty negotiation at Geneva split Vietnam along the latitude
known as the 17th parallel (with Ho in control in the North and Bao in the South) and called for
nationwide elections for reunification to be held in 1956 (History.com). However a year before
the two were supposed to merge a strong anti-communist Ngo Dinh Diem pushed Bao aside and
become president. The Unites States containment plan became stricter as the conflict in Vietnam
become even more prominent. In 1955, president Dwight D. Eisenhower pledged his support of
diem and the south Vietnamese. With the help of American military and police, Diems security
forces cracked down on Viet Minh sympathizers in the south, whom he derisively called Viet
Cong (or Vietnamese Communist) (History.com). By 1959 the Viet Cong and other opponents
of Diems escalated there offensive they had begun engaging South Vietnamese Army forces in
firefights (History.com). In 1961 the president Joh F. Kennedy sent a team to report on the
conditions in Vietnam and was persuaded to increase military presence. The domino theory a
theory that if one country is taken over by an expansionist, especially Communist, neighbor,
party, or the like, the nearby nations will be taken over one after another (Dictionary.com).
With this in mind the president sought containment a plan that would stop the effect of the
domino theory. And steadily the amount of American presence increased from 800 to 9,000
troops. Despite the U.S. involvement in Vietnam a coup lead by some of the leading government
official killed Diem and his brother and lead to an unstable government which lead to another
increase of American troop being sent to Vietnam by the new president (Johnson) after Kennedy
was assassinated. Shortly after Congress -- passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave
Johnson broad war-making powers, and U.S. planes began regular bombing raids, codenamed
Operation Rolling Thunder, the following February. (History.com). he made the decision to
deploy combat troop and soon over 175,000 troop were sent to Vietnam. Despite the concerns
of some of his advisers about this escalation, and about the entire war effort as well as a growing
anti-war movement in the U.S., Johnson authorized the immediate dispatch of 100,000 troops at
the end of July 1965 and another 100,000 in 1966 (History.com). the president ignored the
increase of Americans against the war and In October 1967, some 35,000 demonstrators staged

a mass antiwar protest outside the Pentagon. So when the war was lost and the troops came
back there wasnt a celebration because the people who protested against it didnt like that they
went and the supporters didnt like that they lost.

Domino theory. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved December 13, 2014, from
Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/domino theory