scholarly journals Foreign Policy During the Vietnam War

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Syeda Menebhi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Support ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
The United States ◽  
The North ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
Lyndon Johnson ◽  
The 1960S

<p>The United States became deeply involved in Vietnam during the 1960s largely due to America’s desire to assure that developing countries modernize as capitalist and democratic. Thus, American involvement began with economic and social support in South Vietnam. Yet slowly, throughout the presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, the goal of modernizing South Vietnamese society and containing communism became increasingly implemented by military means. Further, it seems clear that, regardless of how much effort the United States geared towards Vietnam, American defeat was inevitable. By Richard Nixon’s presidency, the initial modernization goals in Vietnam mattered only in so far as they could preserve American credibility. Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon all failed to realize that while U.S. time was limited in Vietnam, the North Vietnamese had all the time they needed to fight for the independence of their country. The South Vietnamese forces could not defend themselves and the United States had to withdraw eventually.</p>

The Vietnam War

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Gawthorpe
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Mass Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
The South ◽  
Communist State ◽  
The North ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
North Vietnam

From 1965 to 1973, the United States attempted to prevent the absorption of the non-Communist state of South Vietnam by Communist North Vietnam as part of its Cold War strategy of containment. In doing so, the United States had to battle both the North Vietnamese military and guerrillas indigenous to South Vietnam. The Johnson administration entered the war without a well-thought-out strategy for victory, and the United States quickly became bogged down in a bloody stalemate. A major Communist assault in 1968 known as the Tet Offensive convinced US leaders of the need to seek a negotiated solution. This task fell to the Nixon administration, which carried on peace talks while simultaneously seeking ways to escalate the conflict and force North Vietnam to make concessions. Eventually it was Washington that made major concessions, allowing North Vietnam to keep its forces in the South and leaving South Vietnam in an untenable position. US troops left in 1973 and Hanoi successfully invaded the South in 1975. The two Vietnams were formally unified in 1976. The war devastated much of Vietnam and came at a huge cost to the United States in terms of lives, resources, and political division at home. It gave birth to the largest mass movement against a war in US history, motivated by opposition both to conscription and to the damage that protesters perceived the war was doing to the United States. It also raised persistent questions about the wisdom of both military intervention and nation-building as tools of US foreign policy. The war has remained a touchstone for national debate and partisan division even as the United States and Vietnam moved to normalize diplomatic relations with the end of the Cold War.

Crossroads of Conservatism

2018 ◽  
pp. 28-54
Author(s):  
Kyle Burke
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Conservative Movement ◽  
Fidel Castro ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Conflict In Africa ◽  
Hearts And Minds

The rise of the US conservative movement in the 1960s opened new possibilities for the anticommunist international. Marvin Liebman, William F. Buckley, Clarence Manion, and other leaders helped create an international crossroads that linked conservative activists, students, businessmen, politicians, and media figures from the United States to kindred forces abroad. In the Caribbean basin, these influential Americans allied themselves with authoritarian right-wing regimes in Nicaragua and Guatemala, and lent support to Cuban exiles bent on retaking their homeland from Fidel Castro. In Southeast Asia, they joined leaders from Taiwan, South Korea, and South Vietnam in calling for greater Asian involvement in the Vietnam War. They also collaborated on psychological warfare campaigns to sway the hearts and minds of ordinary people in Vietnam and other zones of conflict. In Africa, conservative Americans worked on behalf of Moïse Tshombe’s breakaway regime in the Congo, before shifting their efforts to the newly independent, white-supremacist state of Rhodesia. Moving in ever-wider arcs abroad, U.S. conservatives brought home parables about the kinds of action needed to purge the United States of any vestige of communism.

scholarly journals Peculiarities of the US Policy towards Cuba under Conditions of Break Off Diplomatic Relations in the 1960’s

2019 ◽  
pp. 31-39
Author(s):  
Kateryna Kasatkina
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Diplomatic Relations ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
Lyndon Johnson ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The 1960S

The article is an attempt to analyze the peculiarities of the US Policy towards Cuba under conditions of break off diplomatic relations in the 1960s. The article focuses on factors which influenced on the formation of the US policy towards Cuba and determined the nature of its qualitative changes in the given period. The author analyzed definite political and economic steps made by President John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson against Fidel Castro’s regime. There is also described the work of the Special Group Augmented that prepared for the new phase of the «Cuban project» – Operation «Mongoose». As a result of the research the author comes to the conclusion, that peculiarities of the US Policy towards Cuba under conditions of break off diplomatic relations in the 1960’s had changed. President Kennedy’s policies were characterized by different methods and approaches. It included both covert operations and sabotage against F. Castro’s regime, as well as political and economic pressure on Cuba. However, such US policy had the opposite effect. Cuba had established relations with the Soviet Union. The confrontation between the United States, the Soviet Union and Cuba led to The Cuban missile crisis. After the crisis was resolved the USA was forced to suspend operation «Mongoose». In addition, John F. Kennedy had attempted to establish a secret back channel of communication with F. Castro. After his death, preliminary for negotiations between Washington and Havana were discontinued. The new President Lyndon Johnson did not allow the normalization of relations with Cuba on Castro’s terms and while he was in power. He made an effort to destabilize the Castro’s regime by making an engaging immigration policy for Cubans who lived in the United States or desired come to the country and got a permanent residence. At the end of Johnson’s presidency, the United States took part in the Vietnam war, but the problem of U.S.-Cuban relations remained unresolved.

scholarly journals THE GENESIS OF THE US FOREIGN POLICY: THE ORIGIN OF THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE TOPIC, 1610–1820S

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (73) (2) ◽  
pp. 81-93
Author(s):  
D. V. Dorofeev
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
North American ◽  
Alternative Hypothesis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
The North ◽  
The Us

The research is devoted to the study of the origin of the historiography of the topic of the genesis of the US foreign policy. The key thesis of the work challenges the established position in the scientific literature about the fundamental role of the work of T. Lyman, Jr. «The diplomacy of the United States: being an account of the foreign relations of the country, from the first treaty with France, in 1778, to the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, with Great Britain», published in 1826. The article puts forward an alternative hypothesis: the emergence of the historiography of the genesis of the foreign policy of the United States occurred before the beginning of the second quarter of the XIX century – during the colonial period and the first fifty years of the North American state. A study of the works of thirty-five authors who worked during the 1610s and 1820s showed that amater historians expressed a common opinion about North America’s belonging to the Eurocentric system of international relations; they were sure that both the colonists and the founding fathers perceived international processes on the basis of raison d’être. The conceptualization of the intellectual heritage of non-professional historians allowed us to distinguish three interpretations of the origin of the United States foreign policy: «Autochthonous» – focused on purely North American reasons; «Atlantic» – postulated the borrowing of European practice of international relations by means of the system of relations that developed in the Atlantic in the XVII–XVIII centuries; «Imperial» – stated the adaptation of the British experience. The obtained data refute the provisions of scientific thought of the XX–XXI centuries and create new guidelines for further study of the topic.

The French Factor in U.S. Foreign Policy during the Nixon-Pompidou Period

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Trachtenberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nixon Administration ◽  
Nuclear Area ◽  
Henry Kissinger ◽  
Sharp Turn ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter discusses relations between France and the United States under the Nixon administration. When Nixon took office as president in early 1969, he and his national security advisor Henry Kissinger wanted to put America's relationship with France on an entirely new footing. Relations between the two countries in the 1960s, and especially from early 1963 on, had been far from ideal. Nixon and Kissinger tried to develop a close relationship with the Pompidou government and in the early Nixon–Pompidou period the two governments were on very good terms. Both governments were also interested in developing a certain relationship in the nuclear area. However, by 1973 relations between the two countries took a sharp turn for the worse. The chapter considers what went wrong and why the attempt to develop a close relationship failed.

Epilogue

2021 ◽  
pp. 150-168
Author(s):  
Uta A. Balbier
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Business Culture ◽  
American Business ◽  
Political Protest ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Political Landscapes ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter explores the transformed religious, economic, and political landscapes in Europe and the United States at the time of Graham’s return to Berlin and London in 1966. It explains why Graham was now facing sharper criticism: the theological climate had shifted even further away from Graham’s rather fundamentalist theology, which now appeared outdated. The 1960s counterculture articulated an increasing consumer critique that zoomed in on Graham’s unconditional support for American business culture and the American way of life. And the Vietnam War, from which Graham never really distanced himself, loomed large over his revival meetings, where he now faced open political protest. But even more so, the increasing secularization of crusade cities such as London and Berlin made it significantly harder to rally support for Graham’s revival work at the same time when Graham’s highly professionalized revivalism was increasingly perceived as secular and formulaic.

Fly Until You Die

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chia Youyee Vang
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Many

The Vietnam War is the subject of hundreds of scholarly studies, policy reports, memoirs, and literary titles. As America’s longest and most controversial war, it coincided with domestic turmoil in the United States and in Southeast Asia, led to the displacement of large numbers of people, and strained the social fabric of Cambodian, Lao, and Vietnamese societies. The complex nature of the war means that despite the many books that have been written about it, much remains to unfold, in particular the experiences of ethnic minorities in Laos who became entangled in Cold War politics during the 1960s and 1970s. This book fills the gap by exploring the dramatic forces of history that drew several dozen young Hmong men to become fighter pilots in the United States’ Secret War in Laos, which was in direct support of the larger war in Vietnam. They transformed from ethnic minorities who mostly lived on the margins of Lao society to daring airmen working alongside American pilots. After four decades in exile, surviving pilots, families of those killed in action, and American veterans who worked with them collectively narrated their version of the historical events that resulted in the forced migration of nearly 150,000 Hmong to the United States. By privileging Hmong knowledge, this book begs us to reconsider the war from overlooked perspectives and to engage in the ongoing construction of meanings of war and postwar memories in shaping ethnic and national identities.

The Watergate Crisis

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dafydd Townley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Confidence ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Richard Nixon ◽  
The Us ◽  
National Headquarters ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S

The Watergate affair has become synonymous with political corruption and conspiracy. The crisis has, through fact, fiction, and debate, become considerably more than the arrest of five men breaking into the Democratic Party’s national headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington DC in the early hours of Saturday, June 17, 1972. Instead, the term “Watergate” has since come to represent the burglary, its failed cover-up, the press investigation, the Senate enquiry, and the eventual resignation of the thirty-seventh president of the United States, Richard Nixon. Arguably, Watergate has come to encompass all the illegalities of the Nixon administration. The crisis broke when the Vietnam War had already sunk public confidence in the executive to a low ebb, and in the context of a society already fractured by the turbulence of the 1960s. As such, Watergate is seen as the nadir of American democracy in the 20th century. Perversely, despite contemporaries’ genuine fears for the future of the US democratic system, the scandal highlighted the efficiency of the US governmental machine. The investigations that constituted the Watergate enquiry, which were conducted by the legislative and judicial branches and the fourth estate, exposed corruption in the executive of the United States that stretched to the holder of the highest office. The post-war decades had allowed an imperial presidency to develop, which had threatened the country’s political equilibrium. Watergate disclosed that the presidency had overreached its constitutional powers and responsibilities and had conspired to keep those moves hidden from the electorate. More significantly, however, the forced resignation of Richard Nixon revealed that the checks-and-balances system of government, which was conceived almost 200 years before the Watergate affair, worked as those who devised it had planned. Watergate should illustrate to Americans not just the dangers of consolidating great power in the office of the president, but also the means to counteract such growth.

scholarly journals Visions of Diversity: Cultural Pluralism and the Nation in the Folk Music Revival Movement of the United States and Canada, 1958–65

2006 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 593-614 ◽  
Author(s):  
GILLIAN A. M. MITCHELL
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Pluralism ◽  
Folk Revival ◽  
The North ◽  
Folk Music Revival ◽  
Revival Movement ◽  
Excellent Work ◽  
The 1960S

This article focusses on the concept of cultural pluralism in the North American folk music revival of the 1960s. Building on the excellent work of earlier folk revival scholars, the article looks in greater depth at the “vision of diversity” promoted by the folk revival in North America – at the ways in which this vision was constructed, at the reasons for its maintenance and at its ultimate decline and on the consequences of this for anglophone Canadian and American musicians and enthusiasts alike.

Mirages over the Andes: Peru, France, the United States, and Military Jet Procurement in the 1960s

2002 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franççois Le Roy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Foreign Assistance ◽  
Military Establishment ◽  
White House ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War

On May 5, 1967, U.S. National Security Adviser Walter W. Rostow briefed President Lyndon B. Johnson that Peru had contracted to buy twelve Mirage 5 supersonic fighter jets from France, "despite our repeated warnings of the consequences." The first planes were delivered a year later, prompting the United States to withhold development loans from Peru as directed by the Conte-Long Amendment to the 1968 Foreign Assistance Appropriations Bill. Peru was the first Latin American country (with the exception of Cuba) to equip its air force with supersonic combat aircraft, and its decision spurred a dramatic qualitative and financial escalation in regional arms procurement, thereby defeating Washington's effort to control the latter. The CIA qualified the "Mirage affair" as the "most serious issue" in U.S.-Peruvian relations at the time. The event demonstrated the growing desire of Peru and other Latin American countries to loosen the ties that bound them to Washington and exemplified France's drive to depolarize world politics during the Cold War. Demanded by the Peruvian military establishment, the Mirage deal also announced the golpe of October 1968 that ended the presidency of Fernando Belaúúnde Terry and ushered in the reformist military dictatorship of Juan Velasco Alvarado. In addition, it complicated relations between the White House, Congress, and the press in the antagonistic context of the Vietnam War. Finally, it further illustrated the diplomatic and economic stakes of military aircraft sales, as well as the appeal of the airplane as a symbol of national sovereignty and modernity.

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