An analysis of the United States involvement in South East Asia and why it lost in Vietnam.
This paper examines the basic political reasons that the United States chose not to win the Vietnam War. The paper provides a historical outline of what went wrong for the U.S.A. in the Vietnam war, and how these errors undermined the American’s role in world affairs. The paper claims that America’s choice to employ a policy of containment was unsuccessful.
“American foreign policy from the end of the Second World War until the collapse of the Soviet Union consisted of two related aspects. The first of these was a basically military one, and the second, derived from the first was economic in nature. The economic aspect was to establish a cooperative integrated world order with the United States as its leader. In order to achieve this the Americans used the military aspect that was a policy of containment. The physical prevention of the spread of Communism throughout the world by military action as stated in the Truman Doctrine of 1947, and first seen in Greece immediately after the end of the war.”