Vietnam Crisis Analysis

The purpose of this paper is to better understand the political dynamics that were in play at the very beginning of the Vietnam crisis that eventually lead to the disastrous war in Vietnam. It will examine the historical record from various viewpoints and hope to discover those instances where a failure in communication lead to a cascade effect of fear and uncertainty that set into motion those events that drew the political leaders of the United States deeper and deeper into the quagmire of Vietnam and south-east Asia. How did the Logic of Fear dominate the thinking and policies at the time? The hypothesis of this paper is to show that those failures in communication and signaling could plausibly have been avoided with more adept diplomacy, and subsequently the war in Vietnam could have been averted.

Starting in September of 1940 the Japanese seized control of Vietnam from the Vichy French and remained in control of Vietnam until just before the end of the war, along with all the other European colonies in the region (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2013). Following their shameful surrender to the Germans, allies of the Japanese, the Vichy French offered to administer Vietnam on behalf of the Japanese, which they did until the end of the war when the Japanese, mistrusting the French, kicked them out. Vietnam was a key staging area for Japanese operations on the Asian continent throughout the war. During this time, Ho Chi Minh and others were working with the Allies to provide information to them about the troop movements of the Japanese. Here was an early opportunity for the U.S. to establish a working relationship with the Vietnamese people for the post WW2 war era that was not taken advantage of. Clearly the United Stat...

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...stration honored the treaty and held elections, and then honored the outcome, it likely would have created an entirely different dynamic in our relationship with Vietnam. The U.S. attempt to contain the communist plague lead them to numerous, disastrous conclusions about how to handle this backward, Stone Age insurgency as we inherited the problem and interpreted every moment through the Logic of Fear.

Ho Chi Minh was for a time the Devil incarnate to America. In retrospect, he was a freedom fighter. He had read and embraced the ideals of the Declaration of Independence (The Socialist Republic of Vietnam Government Portal, 2013). He could have been an ally and a friend. Instead, fear led the U.S. to fight him, and lose, with a staggering cost in blood and treasure. Some lessons were learned, many others were not, and the legacy of Vietnam still haunts us today.