The Soviet Union, Communism, and the Vietnam War Essay example -- Commu

A quarter of a century after struggleds the decline of Saigon, Vietnam continues to exercise a powerful hold of the American psyche. No deployment of American troops abroad is considered without the infusion of the Vietnam question. No formulation of strategic polity can be completed without weighing the possibility of Vietnanization. tied(p) the authorities of a person cannot be discussed without taking into account his opinion on the Vietnam state of ware. This national obsession with Vietnam is perfectly national when viewed from a far. It was the only fight that the United States has ever lost. It defined an era of American history that mustiness rank with the depression as one of this nations intimately traumatic. It concluded with Watergate and direct many to believe that the United States was in decline. Even with the sobering effect of time, passions concerning American indemnity and behavior in atomic number 34 Asia reach a level norm helper associated with sens itive social issues. To empathise why, one must look at Vietnam in the proper context. American involvement occurred in the middle of, and was the most visible engagement, of the defining paradign of the agency humanity War II era, the Cold War. Only through this optical prism can the Vietnam experience be defined.One of the seven global powers launching World War II the United States emerged as an undisputed superpower. Her economic and military night was overwhelming in a world pillaged by five years of total war. The only adversary of comparable with(predicate) power was a notion at the opposite end of the ideologic spectrum, the Soviet kernel. As the vanguard of the communist world, the U.S.S.R.s raison detve was the drive on the overthrow of the global capitalist system and replace it with a tyranny of the proletariat. Thus the explicit mission of American Foreign policy after 1945 was opposition to communist advancement anywhere in the world. This took many forms and was endorse by key assumption.Central among then was the avoidance of a extend military confrontation between the Unites States and the Soviet Union. With the U.S.S.R. achieving nuclear capability in 1947 and both sides expanding their armed forces, a full out war was deemed unacceptable. The pass on of such a war was seen to be catastrophic to the survival of the planet. The lesson of the Korean War only reinforced this assumption. The infusion of Chinese troops chop-chop escalated ... ...rs. In fact, relations between Vietnam and China cooled considerably and even led to a brief border war between the two in the late 1970s. Vietnam also never became a threat to its region. While doubtless communist, Vietnam has never become a stridently aggressive Marxist disk operating system in the mold of North Korea, or even Cuba.The Cold War was to the rubric with which America Foreign Policy was formulated during the post World War II era. Confrontation and what was thought to be an inevitable war with the Soviet Union became the starting point of totally American strategical thinking. In this context, the U.S.s relations with all countries had to be looked upon with the Soviet Union and communism in mind. This particularly held true with regards to Vietnam. Having lost China and deceased through a war on the Korean peninsula, American policy makers felt that any more communist aggression had to be stop at all costs. Mixing in the fact that an important ally was intent about keeping her colony, and distrust of Ho Chih Minh and his regime all combined to draw the Unites States into a conflict that was neither winnable or so unimportant as to allow the United States to disengage itself.