Communism Vs Vietnam War

1363 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: America's involvement in the Vietnam War

“Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy.”Mao Zedong, (Mao Zedong Quotes).Communism is nothing but a practice of the government, a necessary evil that countries enact in order to accomplish feets. This is not the opinion of a conservationist but the opinion of a communist dictator of china who killed more people than Hitler and Stalin, at an astounding total of 78 million civilian deaths. This harsh practice causes fear to those who live under communism and those who are in fear of being annihilated by it. This fear increases the more powerful communism grows , causing the culture to be afraid, that they would lose their freedom and perhaps even their life, sending the culture into a panic influencing …show more content…

However the south did not wish to become communist so it started the Korean war. US troops were sent in aid to fight communist backed north, this eventually resulted in the communist North and the free South Korea to be split at the 38th parallel, and technically they are still at war with Each other. Similar to the Korean war the Vietnam war would be fought to stop the Vietcong, backed by communist China. Except the US after years of fighting pulled out of Vietnam, because of all the controversy of this war(Red Scare). The Cuban Missile Crisis, would occur after the Korean war and shortly before the first US soldiers would touch down in Vietnam. Fidel Castro seized power of Cuba in 1959 becoming a communist country in league with the soviet union. Skip forward to October, 14,1962 an american U2 Spy plane is flying high above Cuba when photographs of Cuba reveal Soviet medium range ballistic missiles are being placed on the island aimed toward the US with capability of crippling our country. This caused a scrambling in the US of soldiers, naval vessels and the arming of nuclear missiles. Kenedy processed the situation and called for a blockade of Cuba forcing a retaliation of Soviet Ships, but one never came. Eventually after several days of tension John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, the soviet leader, resulted in removal of the missiles and standoff that would not end till the Cold …show more content…

People even today do not trust the government, because their fathers and their fathers were scared at a government constantly searching for a ghost, destroying families and friends lives along the way. If this isn't a good enough incentive to lose trust, how about the corrupt affairs that occurred during this, such as Watergate scandal which could have been so devastated to Nixon’s career that he retired from office, becoming the only president to ever resign from office.The year following would cause a mistrust of the government by the American people and for the years to follow. ( Red Scare).
The fear caused by the cold war is most similar to the current war on terrorism. Similar to Cold War, terrorism is something that is very difficult to fight and when it strikes it can be very devastating. While communism is the more developed of the two, terrorism has similar effects, however both influence the culture creating fear. Today 75 percent of americans consider terrorism as one of if not the most problematic issues in the world today, proving that just as communism was on the minds of former america's terrorism is affecting them in the same way,(Jones Jerry ,Carroll,

Show More
Related

  • Cold War Dbq Essay

    750 Words  | 2 Pages

    One of the biggest fears of the American people is that the concept of communism contrasts drastically from the concept of capitalism, which the United States was essentially founded upon. The United States, as the public believed, was not a land of perfect communal equality, but rather a land of equal opportunity. However, what made communism so dangerous can be succinctly described by Eisenhower who compared the spread of communism as the domino effect. As his secretary of state, Dulles, put it, the propagation of communism “would constitute a threat to the sovereignty and independence” of America (Doc B). In addition, the Cold War also planted the seeds of rational fear of a global nuclear war. As Russia caught up to the United States in terms of technological advancements, they successfully developed the atomic bomb as well as the hydrogen bomb, which caused Americans to believe that the USSR would use these weapons of mass destruction to forcefully extend their ideologies to the USA. In fact, Americans were so frantic about a potential nuclear disaster that it...

    Read More

  • The U.S. Contained Communism In Vietnam

    1513 Words  | 4 Pages

    The U. S. Contained Communism In Vietnam In 1949, Mao Zedong led the Peoples Revolution, which established a Communist State in China. Communism has now been introduced to Asia. In this period, after World War II, Communism was a popular ideology being introduced throughout the world. Vietnam is one of the many countries under the threat of Communism.

    Read More

  • Unilateral Decision: The Naval Blockade on Cuba

    1134 Words  | 3 Pages

    The naval blockade of Cuba was retaliation from John F Kennedy finding out about the Soviet Union creating secret nuclear missiles on Cuba. The time is October 22, 1962; the State of Union is not at peace. The United States and Soviet Union are in what is known as The Cold War, which lasted from 1945-91. The war leads to international crisis with alliances, naval battles and the Soviet Union, our biggest threat.

    Read More

  • The Miracle on Ice: The US Hockey Team

    1091 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Soviet Union and the United States were very distant during three decades of a nuclear arms race. Even though the two nations never directly had a battle, the Cuban Missile Crisis, amongst other things, was a result of the tension. The missile crisis began in October of 1962, when an American spy plane secretly photographed nuclear missile sites being built by the Soviet Union in Cuba. JFK did not want the Soviet Union and Cuba to know that he had discovered the missiles, so he made his decisions very secretly. Eventually, Kennedy decided to place a ring of ships around Cuba and place missiles in Turkey. Eventually, both leaders superpowers realized the possibility of a nuclear war and agreed to a deal in which the Soviets would remove the missiles from Cuba if the US didn't invade Cuba. Even though the Soviets removed took their missiles out of Cuba and the US eventually taking their missiles out of Turkey, they (the Soviets) continued to build a more advanced military; the missile crisis was over, but the arms race was not.

    Read More

  • Vietnam and The Cold War

    1294 Words  | 3 Pages

    It is impossible to accurately describe the major events that occurred during the cold war without mentioning the war in Vietnam. From its start, this war has been very controversial concerning its purposes and effects on the countries involved. Both sides of this war lost a great number of soldiers and most of these men and women were not even sure why they were fighting. To this day, there is still a lot of uncertainty about the events that took place during this heated time in south Asia. One of the biggest questions raised is why the United States felt it was their responsibility to ever got involved and what were they trying to gain by sending in their troops. A look at the history of the cold war and its relation to the Vietnam War can answer a lot of these uncertainties. Many of the decisions made by the officials involved in this war would not have been made if it were not the cold war and its effects on the countries involved.

    Read More

  • Global Conflict In The 20th Century

    1084 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Soviet Union wanted to sway Afghanistan and helped install a government that pushed out Islamic Revolution supporters to Pakistan. The United States did not agree with this and therefore entered Pakistan, contacting the radical group. These groups were funded to fight a war against Afghanistan for us. One of these groups was the Taliban. After al-Queda, under Osama bin Laden orchestrated the attack on September 11, 2001, the United States entered a war with Afghanistan and Iraq. The war was fought against us with the weapons funded by our country. These actions during the Cold War morphed the theme of fear from Communism to Terrorism. We can also compare how the fear was handled differently. With Communism, it was easy to identify because it came from specific countries. With the War on Terror, terrorists are unknown individuals, coming from all over the globe. This makes explaining events and different groups difficult for the public because there is no known enemy that we can identify and

    Read More

  • The Red Scare

    1068 Words  | 3 Pages

    The First and Second Red Scare of the United States paved the way for a long standing fear of communism and proved to be one of America’s largest periods of mass hysteria. Throughout the years authors and analysts have studied and formed expository albeit argumentative books and articles in an attempt to further understand this period of time; the mindset held during this period however is shown to be completely different compared to now.

    Read More

  • Fear of Communism Caused the Vietnam War

    1616 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Vietnam war has been referred to by many names, one of the longer ones was 'the cornerstone of the free world southeast Asia'. It was called that by John F. Kennedy. He was talking about Vietnam being and essential country in a non-communist world. He believed that if Vietnam became a communist country, all of the surrounding countries would also become communists. This is the main reason America was involved in the Vietnam war. Another reason was that America wanted to spread their “political ideas around the globe”. They wanted to do this so that their anti-communism stance was clear. The public also wanted to keep communism from spreading. To soldiers, the war was like a crusade, a great journey to purge the communists from Vietnam. Sadly, this is not what happened. The Viet Cong (VC) had far better tactics than the US. The VC was told to 'nibble at the enemy' so that he could 'neither eat or sleep'. This worked very well. Another demoralizing tactic the VC used was their landmines; they were designed to blow the limbs off the soldiers without killing them. This tied up hospital beds and meant the soldiers had to carry the wounded back to the base.

    Read More

  • Communism and Capitalism During The Cold War

    546 Words  | 2 Pages

    Communism was the ideology followed by the Soviet Union. Originally founded by Karl Marx, it said that everything should be owned by the government and then divided up equally among the people who would then all work for it. For the communist party in Russia, their political system was always in danger. From the start of the Russian Revolution there have been dangers to communism. Before World War II most of the western nations ignored Russia simply because it was a communist state and the western nations actually supported Hitler because they believed that Germany would provided a buffer against Communism. The permanent threat against Russia gave the incentive to expand and spread communist influence as much as possible to keep their way of life intact, it was very much Russia against the world. However not only was the Soviet Union communist, they were totalitarian, meaning all the power was with the rulers. While this was effective for keeping the standard average of living the same for everyone and preventing poverty, it also led to a poor work ethic among the working population...

    Read More

  • McCarthyism

    1048 Words  | 3 Pages

    Looking back on communism and its affect on American society, the present day terrorism can draw many parallels. The parallels are similar, yet they are not quite on the level of paranoia that communism instated within the U.S. and against our own society. To be accused of being a communist, one did not have to have a certain appearance; it was an ideology that that individual accepted, however to be accused of a terrorist is mostly along the lines of an appearance and the Muslim community.

    Read More

  • North Korean Genocide

    584 Words  | 2 Pages

    Later North Korea crossed the 38th parallel and entered South Korea. The United States responded by telling the United Nations to help South Korea. The United Nations did and they pushed North Korea so far back they hit the northern tip of China. China went into the war to protect its borders. At the end of the war, they went back to where they were in the beginning.

    Read More

  • Cold War

    555 Words  | 2 Pages

    This buildup of weapons by the two countries started The Cuban Missile Crisis (The Cuban). Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet leader of the time, was nervous about the buildup of nuclear weapons in Western Europe and Turkey by the United States. He felt a build-up of missiles in Cuba would level the playing field.... ... middle of paper ...

    Read More

  • Security Against Democracy The Legacy Of The Cold War Analysis

    1746 Words  | 4 Pages

    According to Elaine Tyler May in her article Security against Democracy: The Legacy of the Cod War at Home, the cold war made an impact on Americans state of mind. During the nuclear arms race, many Americans became paranoid about their own country as well as foreigners . Instead of trying to get rid of this situation and mediating it , America decides to join this race, which only fuels the fire. At the same, American citizens were living their lives in fear everyday. Citizens were preparing themselves in case of an attack, as a result of the government doing nothing to try to protect America. Elaine Tyler May also states that the media back then was only fueling this phobia to grow. For example, the Los Angeles Times showing hypothetical bomb targets if the Soviets were to attack in Los Angeles. Some Americans, who were considering the possibility of a nuclear war, modified their homes into concrete to resist an atomic blast, created backyard bunkers, or even sheltered in their basements. In addition, whether you were for or against the buildup of nuclear weapons, fear would be present.

    Read More

  • The Cuban Missile Crisis

    1916 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Cuban Missile Crisis was a major event in U.S History that almost led to nuclear destruction. It was over a period of thirteen days in which diplomats from the U.S and the Soviet Union were trying to reach a peaceful resolution so that they wouldn’t have to engage in physical warfare. The crisis was the hallmark of the Cold War era which lasted from the 1950’s to the late 1980’s. The Cold War was a power struggle between the U.S and Soviet Union in which the two nations had a massive arms race to become the strongest military force. The U.S considered Communism to be an opposing political entity, and therefore branded them as enemies. Khrushchev’s antagonistic view of Americans also played a big role in the conflict. The Cold War tensions, coupled with a political shift in Cuba eventually lead to the military struggle known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Cuban Missile Crisis was the point of most tension and near collapse causing the Cold War to almost shift from a passive and underground struggle to a violent and catastrophic one.

    Read More

  • The Crucible

    911 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Cuban Missile Crisis – Between Russia and America. Russia supported Cuba and was going to aid Cuba by supplying nuclear arms. America was totally against it and threatened to start a nuclear war with Russia if it did this.

    Read More

More about Communism Vs Vietnam War

Open Document