What caused the Vietnam War (1964-1973) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words

What caused the Vietnam War (1964-1973) - Essay Example Historians gauge the impact of the Vietnam conflict not only on casualty figure and geographic coverage but also on its length, intensity and global repercussions. For instance, the war in Vietnam played a great importance in the geopolitical sense since it became a flashpoint in the Cold War. Furthermore, the war took place in a turbulent period of human history and became intertwined with other social upheavals which almost brought down the American body politic. The aim of this paper is to analyze the roots and the underlying factors that led to the US intervention in the Vietnam conflict. In the process, it is hoped that this would shed light to the phenomenon which marked significant failures specifically in US international policies and the end-result of the nine-year conflict. Looking back at history, one will find that the US interest in Vietnam did not start with the administrations of John F. Kennedy and Dwight D. Eisenhower. It started with the American policy of containment in the aftermath of the Second World War against the spread of communism and the growing power of the USSR. Andrew Wiest (2002) explored this aspect in his book, The Vietnam War: In each case the scale of the threats precluded the use of massive force, so avoiding the buildup to a nuclear exchange. The US chose to adopt a policy of limited war, hoping to avoid a superpower showdown and in many ways the war in Vietnam became the main example of the US limited war policy.2 After the fall of imperial Japan, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the independence of Democratic Republic of Vietnam and drafted a constitution along with a form of government based on the American model, hoping for a continued American support. He sought the help of the United States in establishing a new Vietnam but he was ignored. The American supported France’s attempt at regaining its colonies in Indochina, hence the war between the French forces