Vietnam War provides the opportunity to learn from history. Analysis of the Vietnam War experience, from the American point-of-view anyway, sheds light on current diplomatic negotiations, presidential leadership, and cultural/social contexts of war. Unfortunately, it would seem that the opportunities to learn from Vietnam had been squandered by the time the War on Terror began in earnest after September 11, 2001. The Vietnam conflict, for example, began as a diplomatic farce. As Young (2014) puts it, "Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara created the illusion that attacks on North Vietnam were alternatives to war rather than war itself," (p. 1). Bombs were used as a darkly ironic form of diplomacy. Therefore, one of the most important lessons learned from Vietnam is that the United States must be more honest and straightforward in its use of force. Use of force cannot be disguised as a form of diplomatic negotiations. "There is a grave danger associated with calling the bombing of another country anything but war," (Young, 2014, p. 1). During the Second Gulf War and the war in Iraq, Bush's strategy was similar in that war was never officially declared. This approach is deceptive not only for the foreign power, but also for the American people. The American people are led to believe that the political conflicts will be resolved diplomatically, when in reality a full-blown war has escalated. A war by any other name is still a war. In addition to the lesson of botched and deceptive diplomacy, Vietnam...
Presidential leadership was lacking during the Vietnam War, which is why the diplomatic strategies used by Johnson can be rightfully called deceptive. Johnson told the American public that war in Vietnam was essential to curb the great evil of communism. The fear about communism was deeply ingrained already in the American psyche, and was why Kennedy initially started to look to Southeast Asia prior to his assassination and also led to the Bay of Pigs and other debacles. Fear of communism was simply a propaganda campaign used to dupe the American public into accepting whatever military interventions the government wanted. "Far from an inevitable result of the imperative to contain communism, the war was only made possible through lies and deceptions aimed at the American public," (Young, 2014, p. 1). The process by which Johnson persisted in allocating troops to Vietnam and engaging in war was a sign of poor leadership. Instead of being honest about the intentions of the American government, the president sneakily put American lives in danger over the course of twelve years and pretended that no war was going on. When it was obvious how entrenched American troops had become, the president had lost connection with the American public. This seriously undermined the…
War: Vietnam The concept of 'Realism' has been one of the most important and dominating theories that has come into force, especially after the World War II. The theory has not only been responsible for guiding international relations but has also been the predominant force behind the formulations of foreign policies. (Theories of International Relations) For most of its history, Vietnam has been under the domination of foreign rule, most
To that end, the northern Vietnamese forces and the Viet Cong in the south were looking to actually unify with the southern portion of this country -- which is evinced by the fact that shortly after the end of the war Vietnam was indeed united once again. Although this conception of the significance of the war is primarily political in nature, U.S. military forces could have used a more
Vietnam: An Unpopular War VIETNAM WAR 12 The paper takes a look into the unpopularity of the Vietnam War and the failed strategies, which resulted in the defeat of the U.S. army in Vietnam. A lot of news and opinions exist regarding the Vietnam War, which tells us about its unpopularity (Writer Thoughts). Several reasons exist about this specific topic and this paper addresses those reasons. Different scholars have put forward arguments regarding the
South Vietnam, it believed, could be a base for the desired ability to mount military and economic operations throughout the globe and regardless of the insidious presence of communist influence, a premise which stood in direct contrast to Ho Chi Minh's dream. Indeed, as an official policy, leaders in Washington considered that the fall of South Vietnam to communism would be a pathway to the prevalence of communism in other
Vietnam Lessons learned from the American experience of the Vietnam War. Vietnam has been called America's first and only completely 'lost' war, even though it was never officially declared to be a war at all. The clumsy diplomatic relations which characterized American involvement in Vietnam from the beginning were a harbinger of troubles to come. The roots of the conflict can be traced to the aftermath of World War II, when French-backed
Vietnam War - Web Sources Type in 'the Vietnam war' on the Google search engine and 9, 470,000 web sites will pop up. Aside from being the longest war involving American troops, it has become to be known as the most unpopular war. The first site listed is "The American Experience: Vietnam Online" at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/which provides an extensive detailed history of the war. There are numerous information links on the home page,
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