American Foreign Policy After The Vietnam War - 2605 Words

The Vietnam War was a conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam, the Viet Congs, against the western allied government of South Vietnam. The Vietnam War was also part of a larger regional conflict and a manifestation of the Cold War between democracy and communism. The conflicts of the 21st century will be one of the defining moments of the youth of the United States today when it is looked back on it several decades later; in much the same way the Vietnam War defined a generation of youth in the 1960s and the 1970s. Some questions that had arisen from the Vietnam War were how did the communist Vietnamese win against the Super Power of the United States? What were the social movements in†¦show more content†¦The communist party did lead a mass mobilization of peasants which escalated into a revolution. Life was better under the communist party but at the same that the Vietnam economy was becoming liberalized, it was the co mmunist party that mainly benefited from it and not the people. Neale argues that the three main factors that led to the defeat of the United States in Vietnam by the communist forces were because of (1) the peasants’ revolt, led by the Communists and guerillas, in which countless numbers of Vietnamese fought and lost their lives to bring a new and better future to their country; (2) the anti-war movement in the United States; and (3) the GI revolt. There have been many uprisings by the Vietnamese peasants throughout its history of being under repressive and exploitive regimes. Vietnam was traditionally an agricultural society that was self-sufficient and relied mostly on harvesting rice, the most important and abundant crop in Vietnam. Neale states that under the regimes of the French and the Japanese, the Vietnamese economy was exploited for its manpower and its rice. Vietnam experienced a forced-industrialization under the French rule to transform the traditional agrarian society into that of a capitalist society. The forced-industrialization drained the rural society of its