American Involvement In The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War is a war fought between the United States of America and the Soviet Union by proxy during the Cold War. The war officially opposed North Vietnam, backed by the Soviet Union and China, and South Vietnam, backed by the United States. American involvement in the Vietnam War started in the early 1960s when President Kennedy decided to send increasingly more troops (from less than 1,000 in 1960 to more than 16,000 in 1963) in order to contain communist progression throughout the world since he already failed to overthrow Castro in Cuba, failed to prevent the construction of the Berlin Wall and the split of Korea into two countries following the Korea War. When Lyndon B. Johnson took over the presidency in 1963, the situation in
In January 1968 the Viet Cong1 and the People’s Army of Vietnam2 launched a series of surprise assaults on American and South Vietnamese positions, including the American embassy. Eventually the communists were pushed back but the attacks left a permanent psychological scar on the Americans as they had been caught off guard. Lyndon B. Johnson declared in March 1968 that he would not run for the next election because of how bad the Vietnam War turned out. At the time when Richard Nixon made his Presidential Nomination speech, the public opinion about the Vietnam situation had gone from positive to overly negative, as shown by the countless protests against the war occurring from 1965 onwards. Nixon vividly criticizes the situation in his speech and takes the opportunity to lambaste Kennedy’s and Johnson’s leaderships. When Nixon took office in January 1969, he officially condemned the war in Vietnam and began to massively withdraw American troops the same year. As a result the number of American soldiers present on Vietnam ground decreased by roughly 100,000 a year from 1969 to 1971 until only a bit over 20,000 troops remained in