Marxism-Leninism in Vietnam
In the region of Vietnam there had been many uprisings. All of these uprisings were for one reason, freedom. The Vietnamese were willing to accept Communism in return for what they had been fighting for over 2000 years: self rule.
In 1950 the United States, owing a debt of gratitude towards France, sent several advisors to aid French control in Vietnam. Over the next decade and a half, the United States would send an entire Army and Navy to aid the French in maintaining control in South Vietnam, which had separated from the Communist North Vietnam by treaty in 1954.
Communism is when all property and business is owned by the government and the people work for the government. In turn, the people all get equal shares of the supplies they need to be able to live such as a home, food, health care, and guaranteed employment. Communism is the opposite of capitalism. Capitalism is when property is owned by people or corporations, not the government. Anyway, the U.S. wanted to make all other countries of the world like the U.S. The soviet Union being a communist country would make it harder for us to do that. We became bitter enemies against the Soviet Union.
Communism and capitalism were two great world powers that struggled to get more nations to adopt their ideologies. This eventually became known as the cold war. The U.S. made a policy in 1947. It stated, "America will support, through military and economic aid, all free peoples resisting communism." So in Vietnam, the northern part of Vietnam supported communism and the southern part supported capitalism. The south contained French colonialists and that is how France was involved in this. Ho Chi Minh was the leader of Northern Vietnam's communis...
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...e French and Ho Chi Minh teamed up to get rid of the Japanese. Then France and Ho became enemies again. The Vietminh took control of North Vietnam in 1945. France demanded that Ho Chi Minh give back North Vietnam but instead Ho attacked the French in South Vietnam. War went on for nearly a year and a half. There was a French Military base in Dien Bien Phu and Ho attacked it in 1954 and he won. The French and the Vietminh tried to reach agreements and none of them worked so they ended their fighting and the French were forced to begin withdrawal. That terminated their long rule over Vietnam. Many communist moved north and thousands of refugees fled south.
Bibliography Kathlyn Gay, Voices from the Past... Vietnam War, New York, Twenty-First Century Books, 1996
When Vietnamese revolutionary Ho Chi Minh and his political organization, the Vietminh, seized control of their independence from France United States Politicians saw it as another communist take over. When really Ho was more a nationalist than a communist. All Minh wanted was for the United States to recognize its independence from France and to send aid to help it reach its nationalistic goals. "Before the Cold War Ho and the Vietmin...
The Americans entered the war in 1964 because they believed in the domino theory, that if one nation fell into communism then other nations would follow. Soon America found it almost impossible to fight against people who were so determined to win, so America pulled its troops out of Vietnam in 1973. Withdrawing the American troops resulted in the South Vietnamese forces being defeated by the communists who then took over the country.
Fussell, Paul. "Vietnam." The Bloody Game: An Anthology of Modern War. Ed. Paul Fussell. London: Scribners, 1991. 651-6.
America and the USSR both had different opinions on communism and how a country should be run. The USSR believed communism was the perfect way to run its country and people. Communism consisted of a one party state which owned the whole of the industry business and the agricultural business too. There would be no individual profit making and everyone was equal and received an equal amount of money. America, however was a capitalist state which meant that there was freedom of speech, free elections and more than one political party.
Since the end of World War II until the mid- eighties , most Americans could agree that communism was the enemy. Communism wanted to destroy our way of life and corrupt the freest country in the world. Communism is an economic system in which a person or group of persons who are in control. The main purpose of communism is to make social and economic status of all individuals of the same . Deletes inequalities in property ownership and wealth distributed equally to everyone . The main problem with this is that a person who is rich can be stripped of most of his fortune to someone else can have more material goods and be his equal .
After returning, Minh had help from the Vietminh; an organization of communist that wanted freedom from other countries. Their main goal was to turn Vietnam into a self-governed communist country. France wanted none of this non-sense. In 1945 they had moved back into southern Vietnam and ruled most of the cities. Ho Chi Minh swore to fight France to gain control of the whole country. U.S. promised to aid France, and sent almost $15 million worth of financial aid to France. The French fought for four years, being financially aided by the U.S. the whole time. The U.S. spent nearly one billion dollars in order to help France regain control of the tiny country. The only reason that much effort was put into a small area was the fear of the y. Domino Theory. The Domino Theory first showed it's head during a 1954 news conference by U.S. President Eisenhower. The domino theory is the fear of the spread of communism from one country to the next, and so on. Even with the assistance of the U.S. France could not gain the control it once had on Vietnam.
The right for an individual to exercise his or her own economic rights was created, allowing anyone to handle their own economic issues. You are allowed to earn as much money as possible from your products. The Bourgeoisie owned the factories and earned all of the money from the products that the workers made. Communism is the study of how everyone is at peace and works together. There is no need for competition or armies because no wars are going on.
President Dwight Eisenhower conditionally pledged to support South Vietnam’s new nation in 1955. In the time period between 1955-1961 the United States pumped seven billion dollars in aid so that Vietnam would not “go over quickly” like a “row of dominoes” (McNamara 31). In the next 6 years Vietnam would cost America billions of dollars, thousands of lives, and the disaffection of much of the United States public. Yet in the end, South Vietnam would fall to the North less than 2 years after the United States military involvement ceased.
The French were forced out of Vietnam and Vietnam was divided between communists and anti-communists. The communist regime controlled North Vietnam. Those that supported the French and were against communism controlled South Vietnam. Then trained Communist supporters from the North, the Vietcong, started coming to the South. America decided that they wanted to stop the spread of communism by stopping communism in Vietnam. The United States believed in the Domino Theory. The Domino Theory is the theory that communism will continue to spread around the world unless it is stopped. America sent soldiers over to Vietnam to help the South fight against the North. Then American ships were supposedly attacked of the coast of Vietnam. This is when the United States officially entered the war.
The Vietnam War began as a skirmish between North Vietnam—supported by China and the Soviet Union—and South Vietnam—supported by the United States. North Vietnam was brutally suppressing South Vietnam, trying to impose Communism upon unwilling citizens. The United States—who after World War II made it their duty to protect free peoples against dictatorships—made it a priority to protect South Vietnam from invasion, and supplied them with food and weapons. President Eisenhower hypothesized the Domino Theory, declaring that one Communist state would begin attacking adjacent countries and continue in a domino effect until world domination. Used as justification, the Domino Theory was irrational, because North Vietnam only intended to reunite the country under Communism. Full-scale fighting by the US began in 1964 based on the Anti-Communist hysteria that existed at the time. Disillusioned after two years, the majority of Americans participated in the anti-war movement.
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...
After World War II, the French began a fight for their former colony of Indochina, which included Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The French and other countries failed to see at that time the will and desire of the Vietnamese people to gain independence from foreign rule and to have their country unified. Ho Chi Minh, a Vietnamese nationalist, fought the French and overtook the North Vietnam capital of Hanoi with his followers, the Viet Minh, declaring the area the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. (Anderson, 2002) The French were unwilling to give up their colony and drove the Vietminh from many of the larger cities in the south. The United States entered the Vietnam struggle in 1950 when $15 million in aid was pledged to France in order to fight the Vietminh. (Anderson, 2002) The rationale was to align with France and keep the Soviet Union from expanding in Europe and to keep another country from falling into communist rule.
The United States involved themselves in Vietnam for four main reasons: they wanted to contain communism, prevent the domino effect, support a very weak South Vietnam, and get retaliation for being attacked. After seeing China fall to communism in 1949, Lyndon Johnson did not want to watch the same thing happen in Vietnam. He decided that the United States must fight to contain communism in Vietnam and prevent the domino theory. The domino theory simply stated that if one country fell to communism, neighboring countries would soon follow suit, falling like a set of dominos. Essentially, Americans believed that if South Vietnam fell, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand would follow. Also, South Vietnam could not stand against the Vietcong alone because they were too weak and ill-equipped to fight. The United States believed that with good government, a large scale and ...
The conflict in Vietnam for the United States started when President Dwight D. Eisenhower went along with the domino theory and sent in military advisors in South Vietnam to stop the communist movement from taking place in South Vietnam. The Vietnam conflict was between the communist’s and the United States. North Vietnam was led by Ho Chi Minh, and Ho Chi Minh led the Viet Cong, a guerilla group to help spread communism. The United States were supporters of the South Vietnam because they wanted them to maintain their government rather than falling to the domino theory of communism. After Eisenhower’s term ended, John F. Kennedy became president and took control of the situation in Vietnam.
North Vietnam came under the control of the Vietnamese Communists who had opposed France and aimed for a unified Vietnam under Communist rule. Vietnamese who had collaborated with the French controlled the South. For this reason the United States became involved in Vietnam because it believed that if all of the country fell under a Communist government, Communism would spread throughout Southeast Asia and further. This belief is known as the domino theory. The decision to enter Vietnam reflected Americas idea of its global role - the U.S. could not recoil from world leadership.