Cuba, Fidel Castro and the Bay of Pigs
In the late 1950s, America faced Communist expansion in its southern sphere of influence—the Caribbean and Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine established that the United States considered the Caribbean area as an area of special security interest. The Monroe Doctrine warned foreign powers not to try to expand their interest into that area. If such […]
The Cuban Missile Crisis
The failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion caused Khrushchev to question Kennedy’s capabilities. Khrushchev, with Castro’s consent and assistance, decided to test Kennedy by placing Russian nuclear missiles that could threaten major American cities in Cuba. (Jennings and Brewster, pp. 373-375.) In October 1962, American spy planes took pictures of Cuba that revealed missile […]
Berlin
The status of Berlin continued to be a bone of contention between the U.S. and the USSR. President Kennedy took a hardline on the issue. He was determined that the U.S. would do everything it could to maintain the freedom of the people of West Berlin and the free access to the city from West […]
French Indochina after World War II
The Vietnam War was one of the most controversial events in American history. Long after American involvement ended in 1973, the debate continued: Was it a “noble cause” as asserted by President Ronald Reagan, was it a genocidal exercise in imperialism as argued by the most vehement critics, or was it just a “quagmire of […]
Early American Vietnamese Policy
In 1955, President Eisenhower and his policy makers, following the Domino Theory, sent U.S. troops to Vietnam to act as advisors to the South Vietnamese ARVN. The U.S. also sent massive amounts of foreign aid in an effort to establish a stable political regime under Diem. The hope was that the U.S. could play a […]
The Kennedy Administration’s Approach to Vietnam
Like Eisenhower, Kennedy was a firm believer in the monolithic communism concept and its corollary, the Domino Theory. Kennedy’s acceptance of monolithic communism led him to believe that Ho Chi Minh and North Vietnam were the puppets of the Moscow communists. Thus, Kennedy escalated U.S. involvement in Vietnam by increasing the number of advisors and […]
President Johnson Takes Over and Expands the War
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, did not think that South Vietnam was worth fighting for. He campaigned for the presidency in 1964 by promising that he would not escalate the war. Ironically, Johnson allowed himself to be convinced that his personal interests (his Great Society domestic program) and the country’s security interests (the Domino Theory) […]
The Draft
The institution of the draft for the Vietnam War affected the general public directly. To meet the quotas, draft boards did away with student deferments, and college boys began to be drafted. With the growing involvement of American boys in the fighting in Vietnam, and the resulting increase in the number of American casualties, unrest, […]
The Nature of the Soldier’s Experience in Vietnam
The Vietnam conflict was not the conventional type of war for which the U.S. forces were trained and equipped. Using guerilla war tactics (i.e. hit-and-run ambush, nighttime bombings and incursions, soldiers melting in with the civilian population) that were particularly suited for the jungles, the Viet Cong, with the assistance of regular North Vietnamese forces, […]
The My Lai Massacre
Not only were the American forces frustrated by the Viet Cong’s guerrilla tactics, they were frustrated by their own country’s policies and tactics. “Washington had sent [them] there to fight a limited war, of dubious aims, against a people dedicated to absolute war, in a fight for their own survival.” (Jennings, Id.) “When GIs couldn’t […]