Introduction - Analysis of U.S. grand strategy during the Vietnam War cannot be fully understood without placing it in the context of the Cold War and the foreign policy of “containment.” In this context, details indicate that realist, liberalist, and constructivist theories all contributed to U.S. grand strategy at the time. However, more detailed analysis reveals that, while defensive realism was guiding foreign policy during this period of the cold war, offensive realism was the predominant theory guiding U.S. grand strategy in Vietnam.
Body - After the end of World War II, the expansion of Soviet influence into Eastern Europe and South East Asia resulted in its recognition as a growing world power. In a cable sent from Moscow in 1946, addressing concerns on offensive Soviet ideology promotion, U.S. diplomat George Kennan argued that the Soviets were waging a continuous war against the idea of capitalism by assertively promoting their own model of communism. Kennan believed that the U.S. needed to counter the Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe with an alliance in Western Europe. This perceived threat and the idea of great power parity between the U.S. and the Soviet Union led to the adoption of realist approaches to U.S. grand strategy. Kennan’s suggestions were incorporated into the 1947 Truman Doctrine, which later led to the defensive realist strategy of containment being adopted as a Cold War grand strategy. In 1948, the Marshall Plan added an economic aspect to the containment strategy. The Marshall Plan was an economic aid program designed to help rebuild European economies damaged by WWII, while helping prevent the spread of Soviet influence in Western Europe.
The attributes of realist grand strateg...
... middle of paper ...
...ian sphere of influence appears to be expanding, and China has also been increasing efforts to establish itself as a world power. As realism predicts, when either of these states rise to challenge U.S. hegemony, the influence of more realist approaches to U.S. grand strategy will be expected.
Conclusion - It is understood that realist, liberalist, and constructivist theories all contributed to Cold War U.S. grand strategy. Because there was great power parity throughout the cold war, Realist approaches remained dominant. However, while the Cold War détente period during the Vietnam War was primarily one of defensive realism, where minimal force was used multilaterally to affect the balance of power with the Soviet Union, the war itself adhered to an offensive realist strategy, where maximal force was used unilaterally to affect the capabilities of North Vietnam.
The alliance formed between the US and USSR during the second world war was not strong enough to overcome the decades of uneasiness which existed between the two ideologically polar opposite countries. With their German enemy defeated, the two emerging nuclear superpowers no longer had any common ground on which to base a political, economical, or any other type of relationship. Tensions ran high as the USSR sought to expand Soviet influence throughout Europe while the US and other Western European nations made their opposition to such actions well known. The Eastern countries already under Soviet rule yearned for their independence, while the Western countries were willing to go to great lengths to limit Soviet expansion. "Containment of 'world revolution' became the watchword of American foreign policy throughout the 1950s a...
Chris Appy’s s American Reckoning is a book-length essay on the Vietnam War and how it changed the way Americans think of ourselves and our foreign policy. This is required reading for anyone interested in foreign policy and America’s place in the world, showing how events influence attitudes, which turn to influence events.
Lawrence’s purpose in writing this book was concise and to the point. In recent history, due to the fall of the Soviet bloc, new information has been made available for use in Vietnam. As stated in the introduction, “This book aims to take account of this new scholarship in a brief, accessible narrative of the Vietnam War… It places the war within the long flow of Vietnamese history and then captures the goals and experiences of various governments that became deeply embroiled in the country during the second half of the twentieth century” (Lawrence, 3.) This study is not only about the American government and how they were involved in the Vietnam conflict, but highlights other such countries as France, China, and the Soviet Union. Lawrence goes on to say that one of his major goals in writing this book is to examine the American role in Vietnam within an international context (Lawrence, 4.) Again, this goes to show that the major purpose of Lawrence’s study included not only ...
To start off the Cold war, Russia had lost twenty-seven million soldiers in World War II. Stalin was not going to allow the Germany to attack Russia again . To make sure of this , Stalin made East Europe his buffer zone.The United states could not allow the this to contunie to happen. The first example was the Truman Doctrine, that declared the the Untited States would support “free people”. The Doctrine was followed by the Marshall Plan which gave 12 billion dollars in aid European democracies so that communist ideas would not be so attractive. These were some of the long term , patient policies the United States did to
During the Cold War, the United States engaged in many aggressive policies both at home and abroad, in which to fight communism and the spread of communist ideas. Faced with a new challenge and new global responsibilities, the U.S. needed to retain what it had fought so strongly for in World War II. It needed to contain the communist ideas pouring from the Soviet Union while preventing communist influence at home, without triggering World War III. With the policies of containment, McCarthyism, and brinkmanship, the United States hoped to effectively stop the spread of communism and their newest threat, the Soviet Union. After the war, the United States and the Soviet Union had very different ideas on how to rebuild.
During 1940-1970, the USSR and the USA were the world’s leading superpowers. After WW2, it was the US money that helped rebuild nearly all of Western Europe, putting nearly half a dozen countries into debt. They opened trade and helped Europe’s ravaged economy to get back onto its feet. They did so by creating the ‘Marshall Plan’ on June the 5th, 1947. The plans aim was to reconstruct Western Europe and at the same time to stop Communism spreading to them – the Americans were avid believers in the Domino Theory, and believed that communism would take over all of Europe if they did not intervene. They also created other policies such as the Truman doctrine on March the 12th, 1947 (which is a set of principles that state that the US as the worlds ‘leading country’ will help out other democratic governments worldwide) and NATO, 4th of April 1949.
On the other hand, hard-core realists predict that since China’s economy is on the rise, and United States economy is declining, it may create conflict. During World War I, a war occurred between England, a declining dominant hegemony, and Germany, a dissatisfied challenger on the rise (Wong, The Rise of Great Powers, Nov.18). However, war will not spark between China and...
This book details the discussion of government policy in the stages of the Vietnam crisis from 1961-July 1965. It examines the main characters of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert McNamara, in addition to the military, which included the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It began in the Kennedy era amidst the Bay of Pigs incident and how that led to mistrust of the military planning by advisors and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It continues with Johnson and his administration making decisions over and over that continued to commit more and more involve...
So many things influenced our involvement in the Vietnam War, and Lawrence examines the decisions we made in a greater context than just our own. He argues that international pressures controlled the attitudes and ideas of the United States, for the most part.
In February 1946, George F. Kennan, an American diplomat in Moscow, proposed a policy of containment. Containment is the blocking of another nation’s attempts to spread its influence. During the late 1940s and early 1950s the United States used this policy against the Soviets. The United States wanted to take measures to prevent any extension of communist rule to other countries. The conflicting U.S. and Soviet aims in Eastern Europe led to the Cold War. The Berlin airlift, formation of NATO, and the Truman Doctrine all relate to this policy of containment.
containment. By breaking down containment in this manner, historians and researchers alike can look at containment like never before. Instead of containment all being viewed as the same, Gaddis differentiates among many of the different presidents to prove the different types of containment and how each president believed their type of containment would be successful in handling the spread of communism. By beginning with Kennan, the original believer in containment and ending with Kissinger, who used a hybrid of many of the different approaches, the reader can fully understand the progress, both positive and negative. The book is an essential read for those who want to perform research on cold war policy in the United States, as well as political decisions on many of the Presidents throughout the cold war, as the book is full of sources, both primary and secondary.
In his book Cold War: The American Crusade against World Communism, James Warren discusses the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, its causes, its consequences, and its future. Warren also analyzes why the United States was so afraid of communism and how this fear controlled both U.S. domestic and foreign policy. In George Washington’s Farewell Address, he warned future leaders to avoid foreign entanglements. However, the United States strayed away from this policy in 1941 after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. From then on, the United States realized that with its great power came great responsibility. The U.S. felt the responsibility to develop a strategy to combat the spread of world communism, which was viewed as the “Red menace.” The U.S. believed that communism would spread from the Soviet Union, across all of Europe; the U.S. understood that the spread of communism would not be very difficult because the destruction caused by World War II left many nations vulnerable to communism. Also, the Soviet Union had a highly-trained army, a ruthless leader, and a nation committed to Marxist-Leninism, which was a belief that human progress is the destruction of Western democracy and capitalism. The Cold War was a military, diplomatic, economic, and scientific struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States. The rivalry between these two nations also affected places such as Korea, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Malaya, and Vietnam. The Cold War controlled many of the crises that occurred the last half of the 20th century. The major conflict of course was the threat of nuclear weapons. Thomas Larson wrote that “the vulnerability to weapons that could destroy entire countries...heightened fears and antagonisms and made th...
The Cold War began in 1946, shortly after WWII, and ended more than four decades later in 1991. It began with the shifting struggle for power and prestige between the Western hemisphere and the Soviet Union. The U.S. and President Harry Truman fear of communist attack and the Soviet Union need for a secure western border led to America’s effort in providing economic stability and security to nations of the Western hemisphere. In addition, President Truman began his “Get Tough” policy that encouraged the development of nuclear weapons for America to be securely defensive and well armed. The document, “Secretary of Commerce Henry A. Wallace Questions the “Get Tough” Policy” written by Secretary Wallace described America’s actions, “the effort to secure air base spread over half the globe from which the other half of the globe can be bombed,” which he felt America during the Cold War went “far beyond the requirements of defense.”Although, President Truman was determined to resist aggression, moreover, stop the spread of communism and Soviet power, the document was written to make the public and particularly President Truman realize that he himself used aggressive diplomacy that failed to notice the Soviet Union purpose and policy, which if he did understood, might have made better approaches in achieving his goals.
America’s Policy of Containment was introduced by George Kennan in 1947. This policy had a few good points but many more bad points.Kennan's depiction of communism as a "malignant parasite" that had to be contained by all possible measures became the basis of the Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, and National Security Act in 1947. In his Inaugural Address of January 20, 1949, Truman made four points about his "program for peace and freedom": to support the UN, the European Recovery Program, the collective defence of the North Atlantic, and a “bold new program” for technical aid to poor nations. Because of his programs, "the future of mankind will be assured in a world of justice, harmony and peace." Containment was not just a policy. It was a way of life.
The alliance that had formed between two super powers, U.S and USSR during World War II was not strong enough to overcome the past decades of suspicion and unease between the two nations. Unwilling to compromise because of paranoia about their postwar national security created high tension atmosphere in U.S- Soviet Union’s relationship. This unstable partnership finally cracked due to the defeat of Nazi German: An unnatural alliance that was bound to fall apart after the defeat of the common enemy can be considered the origin of the Cold War.The Cold War had an enormous impact on the United States politically, socially, and economically including Red hunts, unconditionally fear of Communism and McCarthyism in the period 1940s-1950s, also shaped U.S.’s political agendas. This war ended as the reform programs introduced by Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, which unexpectedly led to the collapse of Soviet Union. The...