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The Vietnam War
The Vietnam War, previously known as the Indochina war, happened when the cold war was prevailing and involved the battle between the United States of America and the Soviet Union. These were the two battling superpowers by that time, and many countries were still recovering from the wreckages and havoc that they had experienced during the Second World War. The cold war involved the use of strategies such as the arms race together with the proxy wars. America controlled South Vietnam, and they backed the capitalist ideology. In contrast, the soviet union controlled the northern part of Vietnam and advocated for communism. However, in the long-lasting battle, America lost, and the Soviet Union claimed South Vietnam and established a socialized government. Several proportions and arguments have been put forward, some arguing in support of the war while others opposed it. However, in his article, “Vietnam a necessary war,” Michael Lind made some provisions to why the action was necessary after evaluating it from a post-cold war dimension.
Lind expounded that there were profound cultural distinctions in America that rendered the cold war agreement weak and led to a decline in America’s support in the Vietnam War. The Soviet Union, with its communist ideology, continued supporting the low-intensity war, trying to bring the inhabitants of south Vietnam under their control. Therefore America had to intervene together with its allies. The region had been under a series of attacks from external invaders who had gone there to grief the devastating losses they incurred during the Second World War. The other notion was that if the US administration continued compromising the mistreatment and threats by the Soviet Union, it would undermine its military’s credibility. Therefore it was necessary to engage in the war and reaffirm its reputation as a superpower. Also, the United States got involved in the war because of geopolitics, and it was worth it to wage a limited fight to guard Vietnam against the communists.
However, Mark Lawrence, in his article “Vietnam a mistake of the western Alliance” and together with other scholars, tries to argue out that the involvement of the US in the war was unnecessary brought about by American fear and arrogance of the communists. The war risked reinstating the US policymakers’ weaknesses by overshadowing the social aspects and political threats that Vietnam was entangled in. Although Vietnam gained independence after the war, it was entrenched in conflicts that still affect modern countries. They fell into a new trap of “internal dissension” Vietnam lost their cohesion in the pre-war period.
I want to ascertain and support Mark Lawrence’s idea that the US’s involvement in the Vietnam war was a total disaster. This is because its involvement was primarily driven by the American leadership’s individualistic interests to prove their military power. But look at the lasting consequences that were left in Vietnam, a divided nation plagued by instability. Surprisingly, America was determined to end the oppression and brutality of the Soviet community in Vietnam but took an approach that inflicted more suffering on the people since many people died in the ideological war battle. America was driven by selfish motives capped in the capitalist ideology, which they wanted to use to dominate the world with and their interests were not protecting Vietnam as they hypothesized. Generally, the United States’ involvement in the war left more harmful effects, which outweighed the “intended” achievements hence reaffirm that the Vietnam war was a mistake of the Western Alliance.
Works cited
Lind, Michael. Vietnam: The necessary war. Simon and Schuster, 2013.
Lawrence, Mark Atwood. The Vietnam War: A concise international history. Oxford University Press, 2010.
Neuberger, Joan. “Legacies of the Vietnam War.” Not Even Past: Digital & Film (2017).
Ward, Geoffrey C., and Ken Burns. The Vietnam war: an intimate history. Random House, 2018.