Modern History Revision - Nature of U.S involvement

Foreign policy - centrality of communism in forming US policy (critique)

“reflected a tragic combination of overconfidence, misjudgment, and entrapment in the Cold War worldview.” (George C. Herring)

Foreign policy - Reactionary against communism

“anticommunism was the essential prism” (Mark Atwood Lawrence)

U.S strategic interest - policymaking, maintaining European strategic alliances

U.S policymakers “chose colonialism over communism”. (Fredrik Logevall)

U.S. Strategic Interest - Sense of paternalistic responsibility

“This is our offspring, we cannot abandon it, we cannot ignore its needs.” (President Kennedy)

U.S. - defending credibility in the third world, Bay of Pigs/Berlin Wall

Argues that the fear of “loss of face” shaped U.S actions as much as the fear of communism itself (Gareth Porter)

Nation building in Vietnam for anticommunism - importance of Diem

“Bulwark against communism” (Marilyn Young)

Importance of constructing an anti-communist state to U.S foreign policy - involvement in Vietnam

“The commitment to Vietnam reflected the logic of containment taken to an extreme - a refusal to accept limits on American power in a post colonial world.” (Historian Mark Atwood Lawrence)

Facts and figures - foreign policy/ideology

Truman promised US$400 million in military and financial aid to anti-communist forces in Vietnam
Eisenhower established South East Asian Treaty Organisation

Facts and figures - U.S strategic interests + Global Cold War prestige/credibility

Establishment of Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG)

Facts and figures - Nation building in Vietnam

1954 Geneva Accords - circumventing reunification
Eisenhower administration - investment of $322 million aid package
Increase of MAAG advisors under Eisenhower and Kennedy - 680 to 16,000 from 1960 to 1963.
Strategic Hamlet Program, Agroviles, and the U.S Information Agency