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Example research essay topic: Viet Minh Viet Cong - 1,274 words

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In the wake of the temporary partitioning of Vietnam at the Geneva Conference of 1954, the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration was determined to do what it could to ensure that South Vietnam remained out of the hands of Communists. Eisenhower suggested in a 1954 speech that if the Communists were victorious in Vietnam, the rest of Southeast Asia would "topple like a row of dominoes" to Communist ideology. The Eisenhower administration believed that if Southeast Asia turned Communist it would effect the United States in a great number of ways, including economically and politically. Representative John F. Kennedy, in 1952, said that Asia is an area "where Communists are attempting to seize control where the tide of events has been moving against us.

The Communists have a chance of seizing all of Asia in the next five or six years. " The assumption of Eisenhower and his administration that Communism would spread like a bad virus was a false one. Not only was their ample evidence during the actual fighting of the Vietnam War that this was not the case, but from declassified papers and notes it can be shown that the domino theory was notably inaccurate. Some even thought the domino theory might adverse effects on the United States. Senator Frank Church said, "I think too much intervention on our part may well spread Communism through the ex-colonial world rather than thwart it. " The two major Communist powers, China and the Soviet Union, were too busy with internal affairs to worry about external adventures, such as Vietnam. Also, who was to say that the type of guerrilla warfare and other tactics utilized by the Viet Cong would work in other parts of the world? Vietnam was a case unlike many others and the idea that other acts of nationalism could be as effective as the Vietnamese was a far-stretched idea.

All in all, it can be proven that the United States' assumption of a domino effect was a poor one in predicting the way things would pan out in Southeast Asia. The domino theory was also incorrect because the United States' relationship with China and the Soviet Union would have a much greater impact on the world than the outcome in Vietnam. The United States' main reason for entering the war in Vietnam was to contain Communism. Their main reason for containing Communism was that it would fuel the fire in such monolithic, expansionist countries like China and the Soviet Union. However, this was an inaccurate assumption. This argument will be divided into 2 parts: China and the Soviet Union.

The US military and economic aid programs, the US's choice of allies, the US's priorities and commitment to oppose Communism in Vietnam were all directly related to the central goal of containing the expansion of Communist power. First, China's power in Asia depended more on factors other than the outcome in Vietnam. China was more concerned with her ability to develop a modern industrial power, her capacity to influence the policies of other Asian countries by non-military means and her opportunities to exploit interstate rivalries in Asia. China was having a lot of trouble internally and needed to concentrate on those issues first and foremost. China's economy had been growing at three percent per year, a rate not much higher than India's, which was far from impressive. Also, there is much evidence suggesting that opposition to Mao Zedong wanted to attach greater priority to modernizing China's economy then to frittering away China's resources in external adventures like Vietnam.

China found it impossible to do perform a balancing act. They could not woo underdeveloped countries towards Communism while supporting anti-government oppositions in the same places. China also made it clear that revolutionaries would have to come to power only through their own efforts without help from China. China had realized that in the past their greatest gains came from not supporting revolutionaries, but by supporting one Asian power against another in local disputes. Such cases included Indonesia, Cambodia and Pakistan; however, China could not turn any of these countries into permanent allies. To summarize, China had too much happening at home to try and help a small country gain its independence and turn Communist.

The Soviet Union, like China, was not engulfed in what the outcome in Vietnam would be. In the period of pluralistic Communism, the Soviet Union believed that each party was free to follow a strategy tailored to its own local needs and conditions. The Soviet Union believed that each country needed to fight its own battles and use their own methods to help them gain independence. Situations are different in every country and each country knows what is best for them. The Soviet Union does not know what is best for other countries. Even if it is assumed that Communism pursues the same subtle and destructive course in every country, the obvious differences in its achievements throughout the world indicate that the obstacles it meets vary, region by region and country by country.

Several Asian Communist parties, like the Thai and Burmese, pursued guerrilla tactics without great success. However, in Vietnam, the North Vietnamese used guerrilla tactics and were successful in defeating their enemy. Also, it seems likely that in each of the cases stated above past experience in that country determined their strategy more than how the Vietnamese won their war. Finally, conditions in Vietnam were not duplicated anywhere else in the world.

Only in Vietnam were the Communists able to take charge of a national independence movement at the end of World War Two. The Viet Cong had an upper hand because they controlled much of the area in South Vietnam that the Viet Minh controlled as early as 1944 during the struggle against the Japanese. In addition to the Communist superpowers looking inward and concentrating more heavily on internal affairs, there had never been a monolithic, expansionist world Communist system dominated by Moscow and / or Beijing, although every US president since Harry Truman claimed to be fighting it. If there was, then why were China and the Soviet Union fighting each other instead of working together to spread Communism?

The relationship between the Communist superpowers and their relationship with Vietnam was not as evident as the Pentagon thought. First, each of the major powers, including China and the Soviet Union, had its own agenda. A Chinese-Soviet partnership was not on the Communist agenda and a united sovereign Vietnam was also not on anyone's list. Second, the Chinese were being exhausted by the strain of civil war from 1946 to 1949 and then the Korean War soon after. When these "problems" were eradicated China felt it would be in their best interest to turn their full energy towards internal development, not in concentrating on their affairs with the Soviet Union or Vietnam. Third, in October of 1973, Hanoi's head of government Pham Van Dong traveled to Moscow and Beijing to ask for aid, but his appeal was rejected.

China and the Soviet Union said it was a new world where relations with the United States was important and they were not in a place to offer aid to the North Vietnamese. Finally, it was evident that China and the Soviet Union were not commandeering an expansionist Communist system, because they were not looking to control Vietnam during the Geneva Accords in 1954. Both were more accommodating to the West then to the Viet Minh. The Soviet Union once again had a similar outlook on Vietnam as China did. When US advisors asked how Communist Ho Chi Minh was the answer came back that he was definite...


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Research essay sample on Viet Minh Viet Cong

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