1. Why was Vietnam such an important proxy war?

 Proxy war
- A conflict between two states which act on the behalf of others
states that aren’t directly involved in the hostilities.
- Vietnam is considered a proxy war in the Cold War.
 Timeline
- The Geneva conference in 1954 after the Battle of Dien Bien Phu,
they split Vietnam into north and south separated along the 17 th
parallel.
- The beginning of major US involvement in Vietnam started in
1964 with the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
- After this McNamara and Johnson increased US military and
economic support.
- The Viet Cong (USSR) vs Southern Vietnam government (US).
- In the context of the Cold War, Americans had to prove that
their pronouncements about containing communism, supporting
non-communism governments and aiding democracy building
where credible.
- To be able to beat the Soviet Union the US must have a massive
build up of conventional and nuclear weapons, according to the
NSC-68.
- Kennedy tried using idealism to convince the American public
that the US had a moral responsibility to help governments and
political movements that were trying to resist communist
insurgencies.
- Kennedy’s argument was that if they didn’t act aggressively to
protect free nations in Asia, China would eventually dominate
the region.
- If the US failed to step in it would show the rest of Southeast
Asia and the world that the US wasn’t truly dedicated to
containing communism.
-
 Domino theory
- Coined by JFK in 1961.
 - Holds that if one Southeast Asian country falls into communism,
many other countries would follow.
 Tet offensive
- Coordinated North Korean attacks on South Korea.
- Attempt to foment the rebellion among the South Vietnamese
and to encourage the US to scale back its involvement in the
war.
 Vietnamization
- When Nixon got elected, he announced this program.
- Withdrawing of US troops.
- Increasing aerial artillery bombardment.
- Gave the South Vietnamese training and weapons to control the
war on the ground.
 Decolonization
- Political leaders established newly independent countries out of
Europe’s former colonial empires.
- USSR, US and China saw these new nations as possible allies that
they could absorb into their orbit.
- To make their mark the US gave economic military aid to South
Vietnam, while USSR and China did the same in the north.
- It mattered if the new countries established communist or non-
communist governments.
 Theoretical framework: Quagmire theory
- Comes from Halberstam’s “The Making of a Quagmire”, an
account of the US military policy in Vietnam, a reporter stationed
in Vietnam.
- More deeply developed by Schlesinger in “The Bitter Heritage”, a
US historian, served JFK
- This method represents the one-step-at-a-time process the US
had that eventually entrapped them in the military and
diplomatic swamp of Vietnam.
- “tragedy without villains”
- Nationalism rather than communism drew the US to Vietnam.
 Nixon
- When he came into office most Americans across the political
spectrum did not have support for the Vietnam war.

2
 - US and USSR entered a period of détente.
- Was more `pragmatic and idealistic.
- Believed the US should cast aside ideological differences in order
to make alliances, but always in their best interest.
- Two prong strategy:
1. Turn over combat operations to the South Vietnamese.
2. Bomb North Vietnam.
 America’s decision to go to war in Vietnam didn’t involve a Pearl
Harbor of Franz Ferdinand moment. It was gradual process that
included economic aid, diplomacy, politics, presidential
personalities, military force.
 The region mattered to the US because in communist hands, this
area would pose a most serious threat to the security of the United
States and to the family of free-world nations.
 Vietnam was America’s test case to prove that it could meet the
global challenge of communist wars of liberation.
 Regional alliances in Southeast Asia and superpower tensions
between the US, China and the USSR set the international context
for war.
The Vietnam war brought down a president, stirred social unrest and
ended in defeat. Often written off as s colossal strategic blunder and a
humanitarian disaster.
Kennedy wanted to take the same stance on the Vietnam war that
Truman in the Korean war.
South Vietnam was saved in 1973, only to be, lost in 1975. The US defeat
in Vietnam was a political choice not a military necessity.

Analyze Nixon’s foreign policy in terms of success.

1. 1972: Participated in Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) with
Soviet Secretary General to try to temper the Cold War through
diplomatic détente.

3
 - Triangulation plan was working. Nixon was bettering US-China
relations leading to the USSR wanting to better their own
relations with the US.
2. Signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM). Helped to calm US-
USSR tensions by lessening the threat of nuclear weapons between
them.
- Did not end the arms race but paved the way for future pacts
which sought to reduce and eliminate arms.
3. First President who visited Beijing, China to sign the Shanghai
Communiqué, announcing a desire for normalized relations.
- Relations between the US and China had been deteriorating
since the 1950s it had erupted into open conflict with border
clashes during Nixon’s first year in office.
- He started sending out diplomatic feelers to China such as calling
them the “People’s Republic of China” rather than the
“Communist Nation”.
4. Signed Paris Peace Accords in 1973 ending US involvement in the
Vietnam War.
- Nixon only negotiated a flawed agreement that merely
interrupted, rather than ended, the Cold War.
- Even though Nixon was attempting to end the war on favorable
terms (using Kissinger to communicate with the North
Vietnamese) he still ordered the bombing of the Communist
supply line on the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Cambodia. With this he
launched a world-wide nuclear alert, ‘69.
- The North would not yield, and Nixon didn’t go through with his
threats.
- He was not revealing anything of this to the American public. His
public strategy was a combination of negotiation and
Vietnamization.
- Nixon wanted to get all troops out of Vietnam by ‘71, but
Kissinger convinced him that it was a bad idea since the
presidential elections where coming up in November 1972. If he
withdrew now, he would have to answer for it at elections.
- In March 72, the Northern troops invaded the South. He
responded by implementing the blackmail plans he made in ‘69.

4
 - North Vietnamese eager to reach settlement before American
presidential elections and the removal of US troops.

Dou you think the US won the Cold War?

 The two nations fought in proxy wars.
 The soil of European nations serves as nuclear missile sites for both
the US and USSR.
 In USSR satellite states, populations were repressed and subjugated
by communist rule.
 The Cold War ended with the collapse of the USSR in 1991,
becoming the Russian Federation.
 Collapse preceded revolutions in Poland and Czechoslovakia, as well
as the fall of the Berlin Wall.
 When the USSR fell the Soviet States dissolved.
 The American victory was guaranteed through finances.
 US bled Soviet’s dry through proxy wars and nuclear arms race.
 The Cuban Missile Crisis
- 1962
- JFK called the Soviets hand and they had to remove their missiles
from Cuba with reluctancy. It was a blow to the USSR’s national
pride, that weakened them since a totalitarian state needs
national pride to unify the population.
- For the rest of the 60s the US continued to bolster its nuclear
arsenal.
 During the 70s, with the Ford and Carter administrations, they
favored hard criticism of Soviet policies over stockpiling nuclear
arms.
 When Reagan took the presidency in 1981, he went back to the
same spending amount as in the 60s.
 Many historians credit the fatal blows to the USSR to Reagan.
 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)
- Perhaps the one that signaled the end of the USSR.
- Uncompleted project that would have cost hundreds of billions
of dollars.
- Weaponization of outer space.

5
 - Shield compromised of a network of nuclear missiles and lasers
in space that would intercept a Soviet first strike.
- Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).
 Afghanistan
- Most of the USSR’s monetary problems came from pouring
money into Afghanistan.
- 1979: USSR invaded and occupied the country.
- The Truman Doctrine stipulated that American policy was to
contain the spread of communism throughout the world.
- The US was secretly supporting the strugglers in Afghanistan.
- The overwhelming support that the US gave to the freedom
fighters in Afghanistan led the USSR’s invasion to be protracted
and expensive.
- The Afghanis defeated the USSR and the Soviet’s withdrew in
1989.
 Alternative theories
- Some historians believe that the USSR lived its natural lifespan
and that the US was merely a witness to its death.
- Some schools of thought insist that communism is simply
unsupportable on a large scale.
- How can one be the winner of the war when the other kills
itself? The US was simply left as the last man standing and thus
won.
- Some believe that the US prolonged the Cold War through
decades of hardline rhetoric against the USSR.
- In Bush administration many of the American public wanted to
punish the Soviets but he was reserved.
- Without further US intervention, Bush avoided driving the
crumbling USSR to any desperate acts.
 Gorbachev
- Many believe that Reagan was at the hand of the fall of the
Soviet Union. However, without Gorbachev the dissolution of
the USSR may have taken much longer.
- Served as Reagan’s counterpart.
- Introduced sweeping reforms that fundamentally altered the
social, political and economic fabric of the USSR.

6
 - Perestroika
1. His (restructuring) plan opened up the state-owned economy
to some private ownership, creating the transition to a free-
market economy like the US.
2. However, the economic backlash against this radical and rapid
transition was unable to sustain the USSR.
3. Poverty and food shortages plagued the country.
4. It was introduced to rapidly, it was a shock to the system
- Glasnost
1. His (openness) essentially reversed the USSR’s policies of
brutal totalitarianism, suppression of government criticism
and free speech.
2. Workers would strike, journalists could publish editorials in
opposition to the Kremlin.
3. The political combination of glasnost and perestroika helped
contribute to a grassroots revolution in the USSR that led to
the replacement of a single-party communist system with a
multi-party democratic system.
 Who won the Cold War?
- Democracy one in the USSR and its satellite states.
- Free-market won too, as did transnational corporations (they
had billion more customers after the fall of the USSR).
- The entire world one by having coming out of the Cold war
without suffering complete nuclear annihilation.