Communism has catalyzed numerous wars in the history of the world with the Vietnam War being an explicit example. At the end of 1955, a cold war era was brewing due to the differences between the North and South Vietnam. North Vietnam was communist and South Vietnam, anti-communist. The People’s Republic of China supported the northerners and the Southern Vietnam got their main support from The United States (Pious 85). The United States involvement was an attempt on their part to prevent the invasion of communism to South Vietnam. This is because they had a wider strategy of a non-communist country. Different presidents in the United States as a result participated in the Vietnam War and sought to protect their country from communist invasion (Mann 18). The paper argues that Kennedy should not have taken part in the Vietnam War because the domino theory proposed by Eisenhower was not credible and he was not competent enough to contain the South.
Eisenhower had proposed and argued that according to the domino theory, if communists invaded one country, then all the other surrounding countries would be affected too. Kennedy during his Speech to the American friends of Vietnam, had said that “Burma, Thailand, India, Japan, the Philippines and obviously Laos and Cambodia are among those whose security would be threatened if the Red Tide of Communism overflowed into Vietnam” (Mann 19). During Diem’s era from 1955, he had declared war against anti communists and had many of them arrested and detained. He played a significant role in sparking and igniting the war against the Northern communists. The south experienced numerous warsfrom the North because of Diem’s actions. In 1960, the National Liberation Front was then formally created as an anti-communist Front (Mann 21).
When Kennedy gained presidency in 1960, Eisenhower warned him about the Vietnam War. Kennedy seemed much more preoccupied by Latin America and Europe than by Asia and the Vietnam War. Perhaps this was a contributing factor to the failure of the war. Kennedy’s government was however committed to the Vietnam War policy from the administrations of Truman and Eisenhower (Murphey 103). Kennedy’s determinism in conquering the Vietnam War was renewed in 1961 when nation was experiencing a crisis of the overwhelming power of the communists. He suddenly saw the need to prevent the communist invasion in the South. During an interview by John Reston, a reporter with the New York Times after the crisis, he said that, “Now we have a problem making our power credible and Vietnam looks like the place."(Pious 88). This was however unlikely since after the crisis, Johnson had compared Kennedy to Diem and affirmed his unbelief in Kennedy’s ability to liberate the South from the Northern invasions.
Kennedy furthermore had policies made that did not favor any success in the Vietnam War. He wanted Diem and the anti-communists allies in the South to defeat the guerillas from the North by themselves. This was an impossible mission since if the southern armies were to win the war they neededthe support from the United States. Kennedy did not see the need for any support and had instead, resisted and denied any move to deploy the combat troops from America to the South. According to him, although deployment would have a significant military impact, it would in the end cause huge effects to the military and political structure (Murphey 104).
The military in South Vietnam was at the time also in a poor state and quality. Poor leadership, corruption and politically oriented promotions ailed the military. It was clear that the South Vietnamese military was incompetent for the war (Murphey 106). As the guerilla attacks and insurgencies from the North increased, Hanoi’s role in assisting the New Liberation Front in the war did little to avert the failure of the southerners in the war. Kennedy had been advised by numerous people to deploy the United States army to the South but to no avail. In 1963 however, some troops were sent to the South from Eisenhower’s’ advisors who finally managed to convince Kennedy. Rural populations in the south had by then been attacked by northern guerillas and the south had been greatly affected by the war (Larsen & Collins 167).
It is therefore conclusive to state that Kennedy’s involvement in the Vietnam had heavily contributed to the failure of the United States to contain invasion. He had not taken a keen interest inthe war. He had assumed that even without the help from the United States, South Vietnam would have overpowered the North under Diem’s rule. The National Liberation Front was however not competent to stand in the war alone, they had numerous problems within them that prevented them from effectively fighting the Northern Army. The credibility of the Domino Theory did not also favor the Vietnam War. The Americans were bound to be unsuccessful since it was not a guarantee that all the neighboring countries would be affected by the war. It is during Kennedy’s reign that the Vietnam War was at its peak, this needed a president with a keen interest in containing the South and preventing the Domino effect from the war.
Works Cited
Larsen, Stanley and Collins, James. “Vietnam Studies: Allied Participation in Vietnam.” Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 1985. p. 167
Mann, Robert. Agrand Delusion: America's Descent into Vietnam. New York: Basic Books, 2002. Print.
Murphey, Dwight D. "Vietnam, the Necessary War: A Reinterpretation of America's most Disastrous Military Conflict." The Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies 28.1 (2003): 103-7. ProQuest. Web. 4 June 2013.
Pious, Richard M. The case of John F. Kennedy and Vietnam: Political Science Quarterly116. 1(2001): 81-105.
