Why Did the Us Lose in Vietnam

Vietnam War

How was the war similar or different to previous U.S. attempts at "containment"?

What were the key mistakes the U.S. made, in your view?

What where the key turning points of U.S. involvement?

Why did the U.S. lose the war?

How was the war similar or different to previous U.S. attempts at "containment"?

The policy or strategy if the U.S. of 'containment' originated during the formative years of te cold war and it aimed to defeat the Soviet Union by means of stopping it expanding its influence and the territories under its communist control. This was the primary reason for the conflict and the strain in relations between the two superpowers. This policy of containment by the U.S. found some success during the Korean War and the Cuban Missile Crisis. However, critics claim that the Vietnam War was a failure and not a true reflection of the policy and strategy of containment as it did not manage to contain the spread of Communism to a certain extent (Hunt).

The U.S. played a tactical role in the Korean War against Russians and the Chinese to see that at least a part of Korea remained outside the communist influence. It was successful to an extent there in that policy of containment. The eventual signing of an agreement between North and South Korea for a demilitarized zone at the 38th parallel practically brought an end to the war and the U.S. policy of containment of Communism was successful.

But the efforts of the U.S. to Communism through its strategy of containment failed in Vietnam. In fact, the operations in Vietnam were miserable and a catastrophic failure for the U.S. army. This war was not different in its idea of containment as the U.S. supported the non-communist forces in Vietnam. But the plunge into the war by the U.S. in a direct manner proved costly. The Republic of Vietnam was supported by the United States military against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam also called the Viet Cong (Ferguson). There were crushing defeats of the U.S. military in Vietnam and sapped the morale of American troops. There were atrocities by U.S. soldiers -- the Massacre at My Lai for example, which robbed the offensive of the virtues of containment in the eyes critics, the world and even a large section of the American people. After the announcement of withdrawing of support to the Saigon regime by the U.S. in January 1973, the South Vietnamese gave up to the Communists by April. This war was different from the other containment strategies of the U.S. as it got involved in a war that many consider as unnecessary. Moreover the war strategies of extensive bombing and killing of Vietnamese people was not what the U.S. critics, the general people and even some sections of the military and the policy had envisioned as containment as people talked about the domino effect and the world viewed the war as an expression of U.S. intent to dominate the world (LaFeber). Therefore, the Vietnam War as a containment strategy was unsuccessful and different from the core idea.

What were the key mistakes the U.S. made, in your view?

In my view, the two greatest or the key mistakes of the Vietnam War was the basic presumption of the American government about the spread of the communism and the strategy that the U.S. military adopted on the battlefield.

The domino theory that the U.S. government had set up to justify the country getting into a direct war in Vietnam has been considered to be flawed by many. While the U.S. government at that time was justified in concluding the domino theory with regards to the spread of communism into Laos and Cambodia and after the Fall of Saigon, what they did not take into consideration was the possibility of the rest Southeast Asian countries not being communized. However the developments in Vietnam where the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were fighting the South were more out of a sense of nationalism than communism, critics say. The U.S. government failed to understand this fact, they say (Ferguson). The U.S. failed to understand that gaining independence was the ultimate goal of Ho Chi Minh and his supporters and not merely spreading of communism throughout the South East Asian region. Thus, the basic assumption of the U.S. government -- the strategy of communism containment and the Domino Effect theory were probably not applicable for Vietnam. Many view the Vietnam War before the Americans jumped into it as an internal fight within the country and not a traditional fight where international boundaries were violated to gain territory as was the case between North and South Korea. Hence, from this argument, it can be said that with basic presumption of the American getting directly involved in the Vietnam War was a mistake.

The military strategy was also to be blamed. The U.S. forces had not taken into account the terrain of Vietnam and had never faced guerrilla war. This is exactly what the Viet Cong gave to the American military which resulted in the worst ever casualty for the U.S. troops in history depleting the morale of the army. Additionally, the unprecedented bombing of North Vietnam did not yield the desired results (Overholt). America wasted billions of dollars but did not achieve results they wanted. This, along with reports of war atrocities by the U.S. army on Vietnamese citizens, created massive uproar in the American society against the war and put the government under pressure.

What were the key turning points of U.S. involvement?

There historians and critics have cited many reasons for the involvement of America in the Vietnam War. But one incident that most agree propelled the American direct involvement in the war was the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. In this incident, U.S. ship Maddox came under attack by three North Vietnamese P-4 patrol torpedo boats in international waters around 30 miles off the coast in international waters on August 2, 1963. Following this incident, even though the Maddox managed to evade the attack, there was much uproar in the U.S. political circle and President Johnson began to increase the number of ships that circulated the waters surrounding North Vietnam. This attack on the U.S. ship sealed the fate of American involvement in the Vietnam War as President Johnson began to finalize the measures in preparing for war.

The U.S. Congress adopted the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution is also known as the Southeast Asia Resolution following the attack that gave President Johnson the power to assist any country in Southeast Asian where the government was considered threatened and "jeopardized by communist aggression." Thus, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident paved the way for a legal justification for a war in Vietnam through the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution by the Congress (LaFeber). There was also pressure on the government to take action from the American society who wanted some form of retaliatory action against the attack.