The Reasons the Americans Lost Vietnam Essay

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As Olson and Roberts state, “If anything, the war made Vietnam more dedicated to communism, not less,” (x). So what went wrong in Vietnam? The answer is pretty much everything: American hubris, a lack of understanding of the history and culture of the people, and an overestimation of what the latest munitions tools could accomplish. The United States fought the war with an unbridled and unchecked sense of righteousness, ignorant of the importance of international and domestic support for the cause. Persistence in a lost cause led not to victory but to profound demoralization among the troops, which caused an even longer-range effect of undermining trust in the American government.

The first failure was a lack of understanding of the culture, history, and worldview of the enemy. Reflecting on the war honestly, Robert McNamara admits that the Americans exhibited a “profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics” of not just Vietnam but of the entire region (Olson and Roberts x). Of course, the United States was not alone in demonstrating cultural superiority; the French before them had done the same during the colonial era and their legacy likewise failed to induce Vietnam to become sympathetic to the West (Olson and Roberts 16). Without an admission that the world does not revolve around Western Europe or North America, it is impossible to genuinely devise workable diplomatic or military strategies. The same lessons can be applied to almost every other futile war the United States has involved itself in: most notably Iraq and Afghanistan (Skidmore).

The second thing that went wrong was that the United States believed that it could pursue its anti-communist pogrom without the support of its own people, let alone the international community.

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McNamara admits as much in his memoir (Olson and Roberts x). Olson and James also mention the fact that the Vietnamese communists won because they did so well to garner the support of the peasants of their nation; the Vietnamese were fighting for something; the Americans were fighting against something, and there was a difference (13).

A third and more clearly military strategic issue that caused the American loss was related to the underestimation of guerilla fighters who understood their own geography. The Americans had not learnt the lessons from history, as when the Finns fought off the Russians because of their superior ability to handle harsh weather conditions. Yet the Americans arrogantly imagined they could defeat a people simply because they had more advanced weapons and more money. They were summarily humiliated. Morelock also notes that American military strategy failed because it was reactive, as opposed to proactive, allowing North Vietnamese fighters to take control of the pace and method of fighting (1). This strategy “placed American forces permanently on the strategic defensive,” and also created the “localized war of attrition” that would have dragged on even longer (Morelock 1).Sandhu, Ruckus, and Geddes also point out that the loss combined elements of cultural arrogance and poor military strategy in that the Americans did not realize that the VietCong were “vastly superior in their tactics and numbers,” (1). Once again, the Americans failed to learn from history, as the same problem had beseiged the French. As Schroth puts it, the Vietnamese “outsmarted the French, pounding them with artillery from higher slopes and shooting down planes delivering food and ammunition,” (1).

Finally, demoralization was….....

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