The U.S. Victory in Vietnam: Lost and Found
The Iraq war and its insurgency has been likened to Vietnam’s insurgency, the U.S. also faces an equal defeat. Contrarily, people in support of the Iraq war state that Vietnam and the U.S do not share any similarity with the defeat of the U.S. in the Vietnam War.
The U.S. is very dissimilar with Vietnam War, the U.S. won in 1973. It has been argued in two prisms: the Chinese Revolution has been likened to Indochina; the conflict was a Vietnamese Revolution and this was not a threat to the U.S. With the Korean War, conflict was an aggression of the communists made up primarily of North Koreans. The victory of these communists was a threat to the U.S.
The U.S military victory resulted in its political defeat. The forces managed to infiltrate and invade the North Vietnamese Army, but the will of U.S Democratic Party was eroded. Nixon succeeded J.Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson in 1969 and was faced with dilemma. His military was important to win the war, but the U.S opposition argued that it was not politically feasible. On the other hand, the South Vietnamese Military was not feasible and there was need to expand it and ensure its cooperation with the U.S. in order to be able to repress Communists on its own. The process was known as the Vietnamization Program. Event with this achieved, the U.S. still had to provide its forces. The U.S. took caution not to provoke the intervention of the Soviet Union or China.
North Vietnam attempted to abort the Vietnamization Program in 1972, but the Nixon-Kissinger administration had neutralized the Soviet Union and China and was able to counter the Vietnamese invasion by bombing Haiphong and Hanoi. The strategy would improve its negotiating position with North Vietnam thus strengthening the U.S. position.
Conclusively, both the U.S. and Vietnam won the war as seen from the mutual relationship between the American corporations and the Vietnamese communists. Vietnam is active in its involvements in the U.S-led economy and could be said they lost the war. Furthermore, the Vietnams paid for their freedom having lost many lives during the war.
Reference
Kurth, James. 2000. The american way of victory: A twentieth-century trilogy. The National Interest. Summer, http://search.proquest.com/docview/218397305?accountid=13380 (accessed April 13, 2014).
