Totalitarianism In The Vietnam War

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Recommended: Historiography of the origins of the cold war

Let’s be honest, war sucks (unless you’re ISIS), but war happens all the time. Heck we’re in one right now. But why does war happen? It’s either because of political ideas clashing, economic problems, or the country just wants to show off its power like the Kardashians showing off their money. These information will not affect you guys much but these wars are the reason why the countries become what they are today. So if you’re wondering why they’re acting a certain way, war is the reason. I’m going to tell you guys about some background information, what happened in the Chinese, Korean, and Vietnam civil wars.
The Cold War was a war between the political ideas: democracy (USA) vs totalitarian (USSR) and capitalism (USA) vs communism (USSR). …show more content…

Totalitarian is total government control where nobody can speak against the government. Capitalism is you trade with any legal countries and communism is where you only trade with certain countries, so everyone gets the same things. The US doesn't like the idea because if there are too many communist countries then the US can’t trade and make money. It’s kinda greedy, but necessary. The one thing that the U.S. is afraid of was the domino theory which is if one country falls to communism then so will the other country around it. So they created Containment, the policy of containing communism within the countries. But why do people want communism? Because communism seems appealing to the poor ,it’s the idea where everybody and everything is equal. The three major civil wars involves these political ideas.
The First Civil War was the Chinese Civil War …show more content…

Vietnam was also split in half at the 17th parallel with North as communist led by Ho Chi Minh, South as democracy by Bao Dai, who was overthrown by Ngo Dinh Diem. The cause of fighting was power. Ho and Diem both wanted to control all of Vietnam. So to be fair they held an election, but Diem was afraid of losing to Ho. So Diem didn’t participate and attacked Ho’s supporters in S. Vietnam. They’re called the Viet Cong or the National Liberation Front (NLF). The Viet Cong are south vietnamese, who are suppose to be anti-communist, but actually support Ho Chi Minh, who is communist. They secretly helped the north by giving them supplies through the Ho Chi Minh Trail. They’re the expert of “betraying your own country”. U.S. went in to train the ARVN (Army of South Vietnam)to fight against Ho’s army, but what they didn’t know is that 75% of the army were Viet Cong. So they’re actually training the enemy. Meanwhile Diem was executed by US military coup. They felt that Diem was a bit pathetic. Nguyen Cao Ky became new leader of S. Vietnam, but he was unstable and corrupt. Americans did feel like they should stay out of this war, but Congress felt that if we do, communism will spread. So how did they make people want to go to war? The Tonkin Gulf Resolution: When a Vietnam attacked an American ship, which for some weird reason was on the Vietnam’s

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