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Vietnam: An American Ordeal Sixth Edition George Donelson Moss© 2010. You book. Given emerging role United States mid-20th century world affairs online textbook, evaluation made leadership styles Presidents Dwight Eisenhower John Kennedy made effective inhibited effectiveness? Why United States direct leadership President important.
When assessing the effectiveness of Eisenhower's and Kennedy's leaderships, it is important to place their presidencies in the historical context. Both served in the aftermath of the Second World War, when the Soviet Union and the United States were the world's two superpowers. However, this was not enough to define the political context in the international arena of the 1950s and 1960s. There were also regional powers, including the United Kingdom, France, China and Israel, which had to be considered whenever making regional decisions, such as the case was with the Suez Crisis, in 1956, during Eisenhower's presidency.
So, taking this brief description into account, one needs to set several elements or thresholds by which the effectiveness can be evaluated. These can be given by objectives that the presidents have proposed for the duration of their tenure and analyze whether they were successful or not in reaching these. One primary objective was the containment...
Although some have argued that Eisenhower analyzed the alternative strategy of rollback (Borhi, 1999), this was clearly not the case: he did not support the Hungarian uprising and most of his other policies point to the idea that his primary interest was to contain the Soviet Union rather than destroy its power and allies.
John F. Kennedy was an even stronger supporter of containment, his actions, particularly during the Cuban Missile Crisis, were aimed to preventing the spread of Soviet influence in other countries rather than to move into regions where the Soviet Union was already firmly based, such as Eastern Europe. Both he and Eisenhower also had to balance the policy of containment with the continuous threat that the Soviet Union and the U.S. could, together or separately, destroy the world.
This was particularly true during the Kennedy's presidency, when, one can remember, the world came very close to its end. It was because of Kennedy's leadership (as well as that of the Soviet leader, Khrushchev, for that matter) that this did not happen. Nevertheless, these decades were dominated by a very real fear that the two superpowers could ultimately start a Third and final World War.
So, judging against these benchmarks (containing…
Bibliography
1. Laszlo Borhi (1999). Rollback, Liberation, Containment, or Inaction? U.S. Policy and Eastern Europe in the 1950s. Journal of Cold War Studies, 1#3
Although Diem initially appeared to assist the Westerners in their efforts to install democracy in the country he proved to be corrupt, being more interested in his own well-being and in his financial situation than in conditions in the country. The Vietnamese were determined to support theories relating to personal leadership because they could no longer accept being controlled by the French, the Japanese, or by the Americans. It was
Vietnam Turning Point The Alleged Attack on U.S. Maddox in 1964 Why is your chosen turning point actually a turning point and not just another event? The incident leading up to the claim of an attack against the U.S. Maddox, a Destroyer naval vessel is a turning point in history. This is because it sparked the beginning of a war with Vietnam that would last nearly ten years and divide and change U.S.
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In spite of being little more than a tool in the hands of the U.S., Diem was nonetheless a very capable minion. With the purpose of destabilizing Diem's power, Kennedy "recalled the CIA station chief in Saigon, John Richardson, who was known to be friendly with Ngo Dinh Nhu" and "cut off the funds to support some Special Forces under Nhu's Control" (Moss 109). Predictably, the coup overthrowing and murdering
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Being able to trust certain responsibilities to the skills and virtues of others is an essential part of seeing a tactical plan to its successful execution. Moreover, it is essential that one who identifies his or herself as a tactical planner be capable of recognizing the areas of strength that make personnel so valuable and inherently different from one another. Delegation according to these strengths tends to strengthen the