Us Involvement In The Vietnam War

The United States stemmed the growth of Communist ideology through Harry S. Truman’s policy of containment based on previous ideas by George Kennan. It promoted the usage of armed forces and troops to aid countries in risk of communist influence/concepts and guided America’s foreign policy throughout most of the Cold War. The policy sought to confine such ideas solely within the existing boundaries of the Soviet Union. Many communist-threatening events during the Cold War were at a halt due to Truman’s tactic of containment as for example, the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War originally started when a group of Northern Vietnam nationalists attempted to overthrow the French leaders and unify the country under a communist government. In the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the French forces were defeated by Viet Minh nationalists.
The war lasted for more than 19 years and ultimately failed to succeed in destroying all means of communist government. As the war dragged on, the United States public became less and less interested in pursuing warfare in Vietnam and casualties began to climb (more than 360,000 wounded or dead). The Case-Church Amendment passed by Congress in 1973 ended all US military activity in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The Vietnam War was an absolute disaster, didn’t stop communist overtake, and became a benchmark for what not to do in all future U.S. foreign conflicts. The Vietnamese nationalists were promised a nationwide election two years after the peace accords, but this never happened because it looked the communists would