The Significance of Vietnam War

The Significance of The Vietnam War

Within one generation, The United States have experienced The Second World War, The Korean War and fifteen years of The Cold War crisis. The Vietnam War was the last drop into the cup of American patience. The costs of The Vietnam War were intolerable, because they contravened traditional American values and hopes.

In the year 1965, American government announced, with public support, that America is going to win the guerilla war and defeat the “global communist conspiracy”. It also promised to build free institutions in South-East Asia. Two years later, in the year 1967, the same affair was considered not only as unsuccessful, but also as a gruesome action of the politicians.

In one moment, the intellectuals glorified the arrival of a young and freethinking new president, but almost immediately, they blamed his successor of cruelty, continuous lies and desire of war, although the new president’s strategy was basically the same as of his mourned-for predecessor. Richard Nixon’s governing season did not bring much serenity either. Heated resistance against war became even stronger. Nixon wanted to negotiate an honorary departure, which he considered to be almost anything - apart from leaving millions of people, to whom America promised help, to North Vietnamese communists. He took reliability and honor seriously, because he knew that American ability to create peaceful international order depended on them. Nixon and his special advisor claimed that they had a secret plan how to reach “honorable peace”. But peace came slowly, and when it finally arrived, no one could talk about honor. The longest war in the history of The United States ended and left a bitter heritage behind. The war, commenced as a noble quest for democratic ideals showed that it is not easy to bring democracy to the region of the third world, which lacked any historical experience with liberal values. The war, which was supposed to be a parade of American military power, harmed her dignity so seriously, that many young Americans started to see the army as a completely rotten and wrong institution. The war, that was supposed to show the world how strong the United States are in their conviction, actually divided America more than any other event in the twentieth century. The wounds were so deep that even the peace did not bring much joy. The Vietnamese Wa...

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...e self-confidence and to take into consideration unforeseen factors. However, political passivity does not offer any consolation to millions of immediate victims and it changes political decision-making to irresponsible hazard based on intuition.

The greatest loss caused by the Vietnam War was probably the togetherness of the American society. American idealism led to an opinion that the Vietnamese society can be relatively easily transformed to democracy. When this optimistic thesis fell down, it unavoidably led to disillusion. The prevailing phenomenon was also the misunderstanding of the military problem.

Looking at the complex problem brings me to the following conclusion:

Before The United States (and this applies to any other nation) decide to enter any war, they should be clearly aware of the nature of the threat they will confront and of the nature of the aims they can reach. They must have a clear military strategy and a clear definition of what they will consider a successful military result. And if America decides to commence any military action, it should not accept any other alternative but victory. America can recover from Vietnam only by learning from its wounds.