Doctrines
Containment is the preventing a countries influence to neighboring countries and in this war it was the prevention of communist rule to other countries that were neighboring Vietnam. This is easily applied to the Vietnam War as the entire reason why we went to war with Vietnam was to prevent the spread of communism throughout Vietnam and to surrounding countries. Even though we attempted to stop the North Vietnamese from spreading communism, eventually we retreated and communism did spread the surrounding countries as a result.
Ideas as weapons are the use of ideas within the public to begin to question or rebel against the government. This was applied to the Vietnam War as we convinced the South Vietnamese that democracy is better than communism and planted the idea of fighting for freedom into the public. We did get some support from the South Vietnamese, but the overall support was minimal as we would train soldiers, but they would not come to fight. Also we did go and give the South Vietnamese medical aid to gain the trust of the citizens, as well as make it seem that we were on their side.
The domino theory is the theory that if individual countries fall to communism than other countries will follow. The domino theory is the main reason why we wanted to end communism in Vietnam. We were afraid that if we did not stop communism in Vietnam that it would spread to the other surrounding countries and communism would grow until there would be no democracy left.
Brinksmanship is essentially the pushing between two countries to see who will back down first, and if no one did then a massive war would result. This does not apply to the Vietnam War because we did not push Vietnam around, we simply went in and started a war, but we did use massive retaliation. Massive retaliation is not using proportionality while attacking the enemy. This is easily seen in the Vietnam War as we used three times the amount of bombs in Vietnam as we did in Europe in World War II. Also, we used an excessive amount of soldiers and killed an excessive amount of people.
The cold war was consisted of multiple other conflicts including the Vietnam War, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The reason behind the cold war was brinksmanship between the Soviet Union and United States, and the attempt to stop the spread of communism. The Vietnam War was a major turning point in the cold war, because we were trying to stop the spread of communism throughout the world, but after the loss in Vietnam, the cold war began to slow down, because the government lost public support, and the thought of ending communism was crushed.
Ideas as weapons are the use of ideas within the public to begin to question or rebel against the government. This was applied to the Vietnam War as we convinced the South Vietnamese that democracy is better than communism and planted the idea of fighting for freedom into the public. We did get some support from the South Vietnamese, but the overall support was minimal as we would train soldiers, but they would not come to fight. Also we did go and give the South Vietnamese medical aid to gain the trust of the citizens, as well as make it seem that we were on their side.
The domino theory is the theory that if individual countries fall to communism than other countries will follow. The domino theory is the main reason why we wanted to end communism in Vietnam. We were afraid that if we did not stop communism in Vietnam that it would spread to the other surrounding countries and communism would grow until there would be no democracy left.
Brinksmanship is essentially the pushing between two countries to see who will back down first, and if no one did then a massive war would result. This does not apply to the Vietnam War because we did not push Vietnam around, we simply went in and started a war, but we did use massive retaliation. Massive retaliation is not using proportionality while attacking the enemy. This is easily seen in the Vietnam War as we used three times the amount of bombs in Vietnam as we did in Europe in World War II. Also, we used an excessive amount of soldiers and killed an excessive amount of people.
The cold war was consisted of multiple other conflicts including the Vietnam War, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The reason behind the cold war was brinksmanship between the Soviet Union and United States, and the attempt to stop the spread of communism. The Vietnam War was a major turning point in the cold war, because we were trying to stop the spread of communism throughout the world, but after the loss in Vietnam, the cold war began to slow down, because the government lost public support, and the thought of ending communism was crushed.
