Vietnam War (1964–75)

Background to the War

The roots of America's painful experience in Vietnam can be traced back to the political and economic policies that the United States adopted in an effort to contain the spread of communism after World War II. In the wake of that war, the United States sought to help the Japanese and European economies recover from the devastation of the war and to create politically friendly, militarily strong, and economically prosperous regimes capable of containing and resisting the internal and external threats posed by communists. Vietnam became an important source of raw materials and foodstuffs for these recovering economies, and the United States obtained French cooperation in European affairs by acquiescing to French demands to reassert control of their former colonies in Southeast Asia.

Despite substantial material and financial support from the United States, French forces proved incapable of defeating the Viet Minh during the First Indochina War (1946–54). The issue of Vietnamese independence was to be discussed at a conference among the major powers scheduled for May 1954. French forces were defeated at Dien Bien Phu just days before the conference opened, and the defeat, a bitter humiliation for France, broke French will to continue the war in Indochina. At the Geneva Conference, Vietnam was divided between the communist north, under Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh, and the noncommunist South, under the control of Ngo Dinh Diem. The vacuum caused by the [Page 881]departure of the French was soon filled by the United States, which gradually committed increasing amounts of aid and advisers to South Vietnam in an effort to keep communism in Southeast Asia confined to North Vietnam. In supplying aid to the Diem regime, American policy was guided by what Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower called the “domino theory,” which argued that if one country fell to communism in Southeast Asia, others would surely follow, and if the process was left unchecked, India and Japan would eventually be forced into the communist camp. Such an eventuality would, according to Eisenhower, be disastrous to the military and economic security of the free world.

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