Question

What role did American politics play in the fighting of the Vietnam War? How would these politics decide the outcome of the conflict?

Answer 1

On 12 March 1947, President Harry Truman addressed Congress, hoping to promote U.S. aid to anti-Communist governments in the Middle East and Asia. "At the present moment in world history," President Harry S. Truman proclaimed, "nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life." On the one hand, he explained, the choice is life "based upon the will of the majority," and "distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression." Truman painted the other option—communism—as life in which the will of a few is forcibly inflicted upon the majority. "It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedom."37

With the end of World War II, the United States and its one-time ally, the Soviet Union, clashed over the reorganization of the postwar world. Each perceived the other as a significant threat to its national security, its institutions, and its influence over the globe. To the United States, the USSR was intent on spreading communism by any means necessary. And with each move made by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to spread his sphere of influence in order to secure his nation's borders, the U.S. found its fears confirmed.

President Truman, then, thought it vital that the U.S. find ways to strengthen its alliances abroad. The United States must embrace a new, global role, Truman urged, whereby it would befriend nations hostile to the USSR and orchestrate the battle against the growing Communist threat. Congress agreed that the Communist menace must be contained and that American foreign policy should be based on the preservation of those regimes prepared to fight it. Thus, it approved the "Truman Doctrine," authorizing millions of dollars in military aid, grants to train foreign armies, and the allocation of U.S. military advisors to countries such as Greece, Turkey, and later Vietnam.