Preview

Lyndon B Johnson Vietnam Analysis

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1737 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Lyndon B Johnson Vietnam Analysis
The war on communism is seen mainly as a cold war because of the indirect violence between the Soviet Union and the United States. While these Countries never engaged in direct combat, the wars in the Pacific proved to be wars on communism itself because many of the Asian countries fell to communism in the wake of World War Two. This led to what Americans remember as the lone war lost. The war in Vietnam can be seen as the turning point in the war on communism. The Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson will be forever remembered for the Vietnam war and the public’s disapproval over the war and his decisions regarding the war. However, President Ronald Reagan receives, to this day great praise and honor for his presidency in spite of his colossal …show more content…
Johnson was determined to do things his way and didn’t care to how it was done. When Johnson was elected in 1964 he underrated the threat coming from Vietnam and didn’t see it as a potential problem for the future. But when North Vietnamese Attacks kept growing he decided America needed to step in and prevent South Vietnam from falling to communism. At First the public approved of this due to the scare of communism growing. But reports coming out of Vietnam that showed no progress the peoples opinions changed heavily towards the president. Johnson who was a strong believer in foreign policy and a true diplomat did not want to give up on the fight in Vietnam. He saw that if he gave up with the war in Vietnam he would forever be remembered as the president who let communism take over Asia. Ultimately Johnson lost his fight to win the war and tainted his presidency with the blood of American troops on his hands. The Vietnam war was a lost cause and unwinnable, its hard to win a war when the country does not support the war totally. You need to have the majority of the people at home supporting the war in order to have the morale and confidence to win the war. Without the support at home, your left fighting two wars essentially. Your fighting the war in Vietnam and dealing with the failures happening …show more content…
Hope for peace and tensions to fall seemed possible with election of Ronald Reagan. The People of America finally had a president again who had the country’s best intentions at the top of his agenda. Reagan was a patriot who wanted get America back on its feet. With the Cold War raging on and the potential for another World War and possibility of the elimination of entire nations with nuclear weapons. Reagan was determined to bring peace between the United States and the Soviet Union and ease the minds of a nuclear war. Reagan had to think critically and creatively to achieve this goal of bringing peace to the world. With Both the United States and the Soviet Union Having Heavily Armed Forces ready to go at a moments notice something had to be done to prevent another war from breaking out. Communism was still spreading and trying to grow larger with the invasion of Afghanistan. Reagan had to first show that the United States had the potential to win and destroy the Soviet Union if war were to ever break out. Reagan increased the military’s spending to increase our arms to unmatchable numbers. Reagan then had to be the bigger person and use his social skills to try and create a compromise with the Soviet Union. He Finally got the chance to meet with Soviet head of State Mikhail Gorbachev, He started to build a relationship

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Reagan has also improved the relationship with the Soviet Union in his second term in office. President Reagan’s conservative leading set a base for the upcoming president – President George Herbert Walker Bush.…

    • 511 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    “How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.” Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of The United States and 33rd Governor of California. Reagan represented the conservative Republican Party. Before his political career, Reagan acted in over 50 Hollywood films. As a child, he agreed with the Democratic Party, but as he grew older, he became a Republican. Reagan ran three times to become President of the Republican Party, and the third time, 1980, he won both the nomination and presidential elections. During his presidency, he cut taxes and increased the money spent on defense. While he was a President, the whole country experienced an economic upswing, which is mainly the reason why he was re-elected in 1984. Reagan strongly opposed the spread of communism and he tried to defeat the Soviet Union by speeding up the arms race. During his second term, he started to become closer with the Soviet Premier Mihail Gorbatšov. Even though he was known as optimistic,…

    • 992 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Resulting from the American fear of spreading communism in South East Asia, the Vietnam War was America's longest and most exhausting conflict. President Lyndon B. Johnson inherited this problem of spreading communism in 1964, and was at first somewhat against the prospect of conflict having known it may hurt his reelection chances. However, as conditions worsened in South Vietnam Johnson began to slowly launch the massive war effort beginning with an unrelenting bombing campaign on the Viet Cong.…

    • 806 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Vietnam War involved many decisions and outcomes, many of which have latter been reviewed with more uncertainty then confidence. With this Michael Hunt, the author uses both American and Vietnamese resources, some which before the book were never heard from. He uses these sources to try to explain how the United States of America was sucked into involvement with Southeast Asia. The overall conclusion of the book does not bring to many new views on why the United States involved itself with the issues of Vietnam but more confirms already believed views that they began in the conflict with comprehension of Vietnam’s problem other than the issue of the cold war.…

    • 724 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Communism was slowly building up in the time after the Vietnam War. Soviet Union and the US were splitting up their alliance and most countries were still bouncing back after the recession. Ronald Reagan one the most iconic presidents to sit in the oval office was president at the time. Reagan’s skills got tested from the very start. Few days into his first term there was a huge bombing in Lebanon and just days after that a small Caribbean island started to lose its socialist views and gained communist ones. Reagan believed that dealing with the small island, Grenada, was equal value as dealing with the bombing. Much of the US was tentative on supporting their leader and his military after the US involvement in Vietnam. All faith in the US…

    • 1605 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Post Cold War became a more moderated approach to the Soviet-United States relations during and following the Reagan years. Ronald Regan with his aggressive tone towards his Soviet counter-part Mikhail Gorbachev set the stage for a global democratic movement even in states who viewed the Unite States foreign policies as unfair and cruel. Ronald Reagan crushed communism with the help of Russia invasion of Afghanistan and Russia’s strained economy. Russia was unable to recover to its former military, political, and economic might that dominated Europe and the Post Second War era since Stalin was its leader. Another event that signaled the end of the Cold War was the fall of the Berlin Wall and United States involvement in the Middle East.…

    • 2074 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    At the time, America and the Soviet Union were enemies, and America did not trust the Soviets. Reagan labeled the Soviet Union as “The Evil Empire,” but Gorbachev was able to persuade him and America that they mean America no harm and that they want to both be at peace with one another (PBS). For the Soviet Union and the United States to be allies is a major step forward to peace being made in the world. Gorbachev and Reagan worked together to end the war, and during that period of time, a real friendship had kindled between them. The end of the Cold War was beneficial to both the United States and Russia, but the Soviets had an extremely tough time dealing with the aftermath. Gorbachev’s economic reforms began to fail and some Soviets demanded independence by using the word glasnost, which translates to openness from Russian (PBS). Since Gorbachev was able to make peace with one of his many enemies at the time adds to the list of how he was an impactful…

    • 804 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    To defuse the Cold War conflict, during the 1980s, Reagan and Gorbachev participated in a series of summits and meetings, leading to an eventual compromise (“Reagan-Gorbachev Compromise”).…

    • 286 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Reagan Administration’s foreign policy is dubbed as The Reagan Doctrine and supported the policy of rollback which contrasted the norm policy of previous administrations of containment and détente. Reagan, being a staunch anti-communist, directed his policies not solely against the Soviet Union, but also towards the spread and influence of communism. During the Cold War, Reagan was seen as an aggressive and strong leader in his military buildup and increased tensions with the Soviet Union until his second term when reform was initiated in Soviet markets and the government. Reagan was able to improve bilateral relations with the Soviet Union and its new leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. Today, many historians and leaders attribute Reagan’s foreign policy to the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. In addition, conservatives’ foreign policy stances reflect that of Reagan’s, displaying Reagan’s significant influence to America’s foreign policy today. Ronald Reagan’s legacy on foreign policy is shrouded with controversy as there were many positive aspects and well as negative aspects that arose as a result of his…

    • 392 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    President Johnson is ranked 4th because he implemented great domestic policies such as health care programs but he created a credibility gap. One of the foreign Policy was the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War was a conflict between North and South Vietnam in which the North was led by a Communist and nationalist regime that fought against the Japanese in World War II and against French colonial rule in the 1940s. In 1954, the north won control of North Vietnam when the French agreed to a partition in the Geneva Accords. The South was led by a non-Communist regime and after 1956, it was headed by Ngo Dinh Diem who governed with economic assistance and a trained military assistance from America. Because most of the people was Buddhist but he was…

    • 671 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    After the end of the Second World War in 1945 another war emerged, this war was the cold war. The cold war was a power struggle between Communism and Capitalism. Capitalist Americans were terrified of communists and the chance of being hurled into a nuclear war. The American fear of communism, “the red scare”, caused many citizens to become paranoid. This paranoia lead many Americans into…

    • 742 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    With Most of the American fearing the worst, Reagan was worried what that meant for his presidency, that much bad talk can’t be good in the first term of his presidency, so he initiated the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks, with the Soviet Union.…

    • 529 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The American involement in the Vietnam war is a conversial topic because many thing occured during that time that didn't set well in many Americans souls. This war reveal many tragic losses to people livelihood. These losses made certain americans wonder how American involement participation was unjust. The solution to this gruesome war was not agreed on by many americans . Martin Luther King Jr builds his argument on the affect of the felllow americans and the ways american solves the problems in vietnam.…

    • 677 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    President Reagan's prediction of the collapse of Soviet communism had come true. America and its allies had prevailed in the Cold War. President Reagan's policies of preserving peace through strength and promoting the advancement of democracy around the world significantly contributed to this victory. President Reagan’s Farwell Speech summed up his achievements well, he says "The way I see it, there were two great triumphs, two things that I'm proudest of. One is the economic recovery...The other is the recovery of our morale. America is respected again in the world and looked to for leadership...They called it the Reagan Revolution. Well, I'll accept that, but for me it always seemed more like the great rediscovery, a rediscovery of our values and our common sense...The lesson of all this was...as long as we always remember our first principles and believe in ourselves, the future will be ours. And something else we learned. Once you begin a great movement, there's no telling where it will end. We meant to change a nation, and instead, we changed a…

    • 1229 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    During the Vietnam War Era

    • 1109 Words
    • 5 Pages

    During the Vietnam War era, the United States and other democratic and free nations were fearful of communism spreading to more parts of the world. They fought two world wars to protect freedom, and to contain the communist movements. The foreign policy of the United States evolved to that of a pre-emptive type strike on the possibility of communism surfacing and threatening free countries. Harry S. Truman began to theorize that if a communist nation took over a non-communist state, then neighboring countries would also fall. This became known as the “domino effect,” and was the foreign policy that Dwight D. Eisenhower applied to countries in South East Asia in the 1950s.…

    • 1109 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays