Why did US get involved in the veietnam war?

Answer 1

The Vietnam War was the longest war ever fought by the United States. It lasted more than 15 years, from 1959 to 1975. It was also the first war that the United States lost.

WHY THE WAR WAS FOUGHT The United States entered the war to stop the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia. American leaders feared that Communist forces would gain control of Vietnam. After that, nation after nation might fall to Communism. Communism is a political and economic system that the United States strongly opposed. Vietnam had been split in half in 1954, after fighting a war to gain independence from France. When French forces withdrew, Vietnamese Communists gained control of North Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh was the leader of the North Vietnamese Communists. South Vietnam had a non-Communist government. This government was weak. But the United States supported it in order to keep the Communists from taking control of all of Vietnam.

FROM ADVISERS TO TROOPS At first, the United States supported South Vietnam with only money and military advisers. The number of advisers in Vietnam jumped from 800 to nearly 17,000 during the early 1960s while John F. Kennedy was U.S. president. In 1964, U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson reported that North Vietnam had attacked U.S. Navy ships along Vietnam's coast. Nearly 80,000 U.S. troops were in South Vietnam by the end of 1965. . The United States conducted a brutal air war against North Vietnam. In one year, the air force flew 150,000 bombing missions. By 1967, the United States had dropped more bombs on North Vietnam than it dropped on its enemies during World War II (1939-1945). By 1969, at the height of the war, the United States had about 543,000 troops in Vietnam. Many of them were teenagers. The average age of Americans fighting in Vietnam was 19.

END OF THE WAR Although Nixon increased the bombing of North Vietnam, he began withdrawing U.S. troops. Without U.S. support, South Vietnam's government collapsed. North Vietnam won the war in 1975. Vietnam was reunited as a Communist nation. Millions of people died in the Vietnam War. Many of them were civilians, not soldiers. The war created about 10 million homeless Vietnamese refugees. It left hundreds of thousands of orphans.

They got involved in Vietnam because they wanted to stop the spread of communism (domino theory) and after France left Vietnam the US felt they needed to take matters into their own hands.

After WWII, President Truman (and the other western allies) viewed Communism (in the form of the Soviet Union) as the greatest post-war threat. The turning point for Asia came in Dec. 1949 when Chinese communist forces won the civil war in China. Now the U.S. feared all of Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand) might fall to communism.

When France pulled-out of Vietnam in 1955-56, the U.S. basically felt it had to fill the void in order to prevent Ho Chi Minh from unifying Vietnam under communist rule (the 1956 peace accords with France had divided Vietnam in half). So starting in 1955, the U.S. started sending military advisers to assist the South Vietnamese Army. The conflict continued to escalate as communist rebels in the South gained more control of the countryside, which required more & more U.S. military advisers & equipment to prop-up the South Vietnamese army. Finally, in 1965, we sent combat troops to prop-up South Vietnam.

Answer 2

The U.S. joined the South East Asia Treaty Organization in hopes of preventing the spread of Communism during the Cold War. When North Vietnam attacked the south, the U.S. supported the south according to the terms of the treaty.

Answer 3

It was due to the U.S. and the Soviet Union establishing "frontiers" between spheres of influence.

The U.S. got involved because Vietnam was a "vital interest" for the U.S.--this occurs after the French are reluctant to give up Indochina, which will lead to the Vietminh accusing the French of violating a previous agreement (leads to fighting in 1946).

However, the American public and even higher up officials doubted whether the U.S. had legit reasons for being in the war or not both before the war and during the war. American university students protested against the war, leading up to incidents (Kent State University) where students were killed.

Answer 4

The Viet Cong (which fought against the army of South Vietnam received support from the communist government of China. Many Americans at the time were convinced that any victory of communism anywhere was a danger for the world. Tied in with this was the "Domino Theory" which held that if Vietnam "fell" to communism, then its neighbor Laos would likely follow, then Cambodia, Thainlad and so on--comparable to standing up domino game pieces in a row, knocking the first one over, and each one knocks the next one over.

Answer 5

Part of the attempt by the rulers of the US to control as much of the world and its economy as possible.

Answer 6

Part of the cold war; to fight communist aggression.