South Vietnam and The Vietnam War

Research papers on South Vietnam and the Vietnam War examine many aspects of the international issue. Our writers can write on the United States involvement and how it affected South Vietnam or how South Vietnam handled the pressures from the north. Any topic concerning Vietnam can be explicated in a custom research paper from Paper Masters.

Failures on every level led to the financial/structural collapse of South Vietnam. The enormous influx of personnel over the course of the war and the by-stages escalation of involvement, overloaded the fragile economy, resulting in a depression and greater strife for the beleaguered South Vietnamese, prompting them in great numbers to side with the Viet Cong.

South Vietnam

Perhaps the most glaring failure of all was, unlike had been the case in WWI, WWII, and much of the Korean War, leadership in Vietnam, as far as decision making went, was decentralized. Those involved in determining the course of the war were limited by social and political pressures. Decisions to not bomb in North Vietnam, to limit the range of the forces, to control the type of warfare and it's manner of deployment all acted as shackles on the U.S. military. During WWII, there were no limits put on what would be bombed, indeed there was a clear and easily definable goal - destroy the German army because Hitler presented a direct threat to ourselves and our allies. In Vietnam, however, very little was clear. The military was kept on a very short leash, not allowed to act in it's full power. At the end, "Ford apparently gave no thought to the use of American naval and air power," as a measure to prevent the fall.

The Vietnamese

The Vietnamese, however, did not follow social procedure or respond to critics at home, they simply fought in whatever way they could to eject the Americans from their soil. The U.S. was unsuccessful for South Vietnam in the following ways:

• The US failed to act decisively
• The US failed to adequately support the South Vietnamese
• The failure of the U.S. to respond to the fall of Phuoc Long simply spurred the North Vietnamese to greater lengths of agitation.
• The failure to adequately shore up the effort and to maintain the economy
• The US also failed to ensure a non-corrupt South Vietnamese government
• The US felt the continuous pressures on the home front

All of these items should be listed in your research paper, as they led to utter failure of the U.S. to realize it's goals in Southeast Asia.