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The USA’s involvement in Vietnam has become one of the most widely known embarrassments in the country’s history. Whether USA should have even been involved in the war is a controversial opinion with many south Vietnamese peasants believing they should not have been hence the decision for many of them switching support from South Vietnam to the Vietcong. However, President Lyndon B. Johnson wanted to escalate the war by sending 100,000 ground troops into Vietnam in the July of 1965 and then a further 100,000 in 1966. As the war progressed, the US public’s opinion on the war turned negative and put pressure on the president to get out of Vietnam. The major reason for escalation in Vietnam is the commitment trap which was laid by the presidents for each other. This can also be linked with Eisenhower’s Domino theory and then the idea of the containment as all of them are about trying to prevent the spread of communism.
One major reason for the USA’s first involvement in Vietnam was The Domino Theory. The Domino Theory was a concept first publicly spoken about on April 7th, 1954 by the president at the time- Dwight D. Eisenhower. As he explained during this speech, a loss to communism in Vietnam was bound to cause a knock-on domino effect leading to all the countries in the East to fall to communism. Eisenhower went on to say in this speech that ‘You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So, you could have the beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences – that are incalculable to the free world’ meaning that if the US lose in Indochina and Vietnam that the world wouldn’t be able to estimate how much freedom we as people would lose. Eisenhower said this to explain to the public what the premise of the Domino Theory was. After this speech, the term ‘Domino Theory’ would continue to be used to describe how communism would spread from one country to another. J.L.S Girling agreed with the premise of the Domino theory stating that if South Vietnam were to fall then it would be ‘a full-blooded expression of the ‘Domino Theory”. Robert S. Mcnamara stated during a testification in front of the House of Representatives in 1965 that ‘The outcome of this struggle (in Vietnam) could have grave consequences not only for the nations of the South-East of Asia but for the future of the weaker and less stable nations everywhere in the world’. Mcnamara was a big advocate for the domino theory during his time as secretary of defense and pushed heavily for deeper military commitment into the war so Mcnamara using the domino theory in order to try and convince the House of Representatives to commit more to Vietnam and stopping the spread of communism. Mcnamara’s effort worked because in early March 1965, President Lyndon B Johnson deployed the first US ground troops in Vietnam. President Eisenhower really used the term domino theory to simplify the idea of the spread of communism and to try and get the vote as people believed he was the best person to stop the great terror which is communism.
Another reason responsible for the increase in the USA’s involvement in Vietnam is the idea of containment. Containment is a foreign policy first established in the 1940’s in which USA believed that containing communism in many eastern European and Asian countries would eventually lead to the downfall of the political view. The idea of containment contrasted with the idea of rollback which is when the strategy of changing a countries main policy which is usually done by replacing the way that the country is run. Rollback, however, hadn’t worked when the US had previously used it as seen in Korea (1950) and Cuba (1961). However, the practical element of containment was not successful with the fall of China and Vietnam to communism. President Truman was the first person to speak publicly about containment first using it in the context of the events happening in Greece at the time. Containment and the Truman Doctrine was a policy which stated that the USA would supply military, political and financial help to whomever needs help in the fight against communism. The USA also carried this policy all the way through to the end of the war.
Containment links with the next reason for US escalation in Vietnam, the desire to appear tough and strong to the Soviet Union and other countries. The reason for this was to intimidate other countries so that they would be less aggressive towards USA and not threaten them due to fear of large repercussions. The Gulf of Tonkin incident 1964 is a good example of where tactics were applied to make USA look scary as it led to the President having complete control over any measures, he wanted to take against North Vietnam without it having to go through congress and the senate. This was dangerous for the other countries as President Johnson was open about what actions he would be willing to take to ensure that the USA is safe and secure from communism. Although President Johnson’s stance on communism was good for the protection of the country, it was bad for the US public. This is because although he protected the country, he did so at the expense of half a million US army ground troops being deployed in Vietnam. Johnson couldn’t not fully commit to the war, so he had to do something to pose some sort of threat towards the USSR and show that they are a country that should not be messed with and being the president to deploy ground troops showed he was not scared of a bit of conflict.
NSC-68 is also reason US involvement in Vietnam escalated. It was released in 1950 and the NSC stands for the National Security Council and the 68 is the paper they released about the threats that the Soviet Union posed. NSC-68 was a 58-page document and one of the most influential documents during the Cold War. The authors said that the ‘hostile design’ of the Soviet Union was one of the biggest threats to America. Also included in the document was the theory that the threat the USSR posed towards USA would soon be a lot larger due to their increase in their arms budget and weapon production, including nuclear weapons. The suggestion made by the authors of NSC-68 was to build up their normal and nuclear weaponry thus starting the arms race. After NSC-68 was released, President Truman tripled the defense budget and sped up the production of arms. However, there were fears of the American public being against the measures that could lead to a full-blown war against the Soviet Union. The reason that this links to escalation in Vietnam is that without NSC-68, the US would not know how much of a threat the USSR were and they would not have committed as much to Vietnam to try and stop the spread of communism. It is because of NSC-68 that the USA became increasingly involved in the fight to stop the spread of communism and why the USA were so invested in the Vietnam war.
South Vietnam’s position in the Vietnam war was also a reason the USA got involved as without the US’s involvement they would have lost which would make the USA appear weak as they promised help to all countries who needed it as stated in the Truman Doctrine. The main reasons for this were who the US ‘put’ in charge of the South Vietnam; Ngo Dinh Diem. The people of South Vietnam did not like Diem, so they were bound to be wanting a new leader, like Ho Chi Minh who was widely regarded as a people’s hero. Eisenhower said in later years that ‘it was generally agreed that if an election had been held, Ho Chi Minh would have been elected premier… at the time of fighting, possibly 80% of the population would have voted for the communist leader Ho Chi Minh.’ It was well known that Ho Chi Minh was a more popular candidate to lead Vietnam if it were to be reunited. South Vietnamese people did not like Diem because of many reasons, the big one being his favoritism towards Catholicism and his hatred for Buddhists (which was most of the south Vietnamese population). There were many anti-Buddhist actions caused by Diem and the suppression of Buddhists led to a ‘Buddhist Crisis’ in which Buddhists all over Vietnam protested Diem’s regime and challenged him. The most famous thing that happened in this crisis was the demonstration by a Buddhist monk called Thich Quang Duc lit himself on fire and committed suicide in protest of Diem. He became known as ‘the monk on fire’ and the images shocked people around the world leading to even less support of Diem. Diem carried out these anti-Buddhist regimes for most of his time as prime minister of South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh was the complete opposite however, as he completely supported the idea of Buddhism. The name Ho Chi Minh also was a Buddhist name so you can imagine people being happy having a man who was supportive of Buddhist religion. Over time, as the South Vietnamese public had begun to despise Ngo Dinh Diem, the US were planning to overthrow him. On September 2nd, President Kennedy said during an interview with Walter Cronkite that: ‘With changes in policy and perhaps in personnel, I think we [the government] can win. If it doesn’t make those changes, I would think the chances of winning would not be very good.’. The purpose of Kennedy sating this is perhaps to try and gain back some confidence from the south Vietnamese. If the South Vietnamese had a new leader which they could get behind, then it could be the push that they need to win the war. Just over 2 months after Kennedy had said that, there was a coup by some of his generals which resulted in his assassination. However, this didn’t help the situation as the leadership of South Vietnam was slowly passed over to the US, whom the South Vietnamese weren’t too fond of either.
The performance of ARVN was also a reason the US involvement in Vietnam was escalated. ARVN is the army of the republic of Vietnam, but it was the South Vietnamese army. A group from the defense department said that ‘the ARVN are plagued by confusion, apathy and poor morale.’. The context of this statement is to show how lost the South Vietnamese army are. Diem appointed his ranking officials in ARVN ‘on the basis of their family connections and political reliability’. This just proves the previous statement because the people leading the Army of the Republic of Vietnam had little to no military experience. The main purpose of this army was to oppose communism and fight the Vietcong guerillas. President John Kennedy sent a massive number of resources and financial aid to ARVN to help them combat the Vietcong. ARVN was not extraordinarily successful in their fight against the Vietcong and relied massively on US troops to help them. ARVN also came under attack very quickly from the South Vietnamese public after Ngo Dinh Diem ordered them to start raiding Buddhist temples and put down anti-government religious groups. The ARVN eventually led a military coup against Diem, assassinating him in 1964. After Diems assassination ARVN assumed power over South Vietnam, but their role in the war slowly started to decrease as the US got increasingly involved in the war.
As mentioned in an earlier paragraph, The Gulf of Tonkin incident 1964 was a large reason for why the US took a big step into putting actual troops into Vietnam and why they started spending a large majority of their budget on Vietnam. The Gulf of Tonkin incident was a brief but large confrontation between North Vietnam and the US in which 3 North Vietnamese torpedo boats fired on a US ship, but all the missiles missed the ship. USA also claimed there was another attack on the same ship just two days after but whether there actually was or whether it was just a claim to help support the Gulf of Tonkin resolution is unknown. George McT Kahin argued ‘that the attack on the Maddox was not unprovoked’ and believed that they had been involved in a patrol which included electronic spying. President Johnson responded to these attacks by proposing the Gulf of Tonkin resolution which gave Johnson the power to do whatever he feels necessary without having to take his decision through congress and the Senate. Although the Resolution was passed in the August of 1964, Johnson chose not to take any actual action against Vietnam until after the Presidential Election in the November. This was to make sure that he could use his ideas for punishment in his campaign and it led to him being re-elected as President. He went on to deploy ground troop and invest much of the budget on bombing Vietnam and sending over troops and resources.
The commitment trap is a large reason for why there was escalation in the Vietnam war and why the Vietnam war went on so long. The commitment trap is the idea that each president which comes into power sets up a ‘trap’ for the next president by committing more to the Vietnam war.
The main reason for the level of escalation in the Vietnam war was the commitment trap.
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