The Seeds :: essays research papers fc

The seeds of the Vietnam War were sown two decades prior to the conflict. Following the Second World War the United States adopted two foreign policies, which seemed to coexist peacefully for a time. The policies: anti-colonialism (policy against colonization of small nations) and anti-communism. Little did the United States know that the coexistence of these two policies would soon become a great paradox. Indochina had been a colony of France since the middle of the nineteenth century, within its parameter Indochina contained three nations: Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. At the conclusion of WWII these nations were seeking independence from the colonial rule of its motherland, France. On the heels of the war the U.S was primarily occupied with assisting Europe recover economically and escape communist domination (Pentagon Papers A-2). Confronted with these problems of what then seemed to be a larger scale the U.S considered the fate of Vietnamese "nationalism" relatively in significant. In fact Indochina appeared to be a region in the post-war world in which the U.S need not involve itself (P. Papers A-2). Tides quickly shifted, however, when the problem was brought to President Roosevelt's attention by Premier Ramadier of France. Following his policy of anti-colonialism, Roosevelt advocated the independence of all Indochinese nations. France, unwilling to give up colonial rule continued to occupy Indochina. Meanwhile, a man by the name of Nguyen Ai Quoc, who later came to be known as Ho Chi Minh, formed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) as well as an army of Vietnamese freedom fighters called the Viet Minh. Finally on December 19, 1946 the Vietnamese troops attacked French troops stationed on the outskirts of Hanoi. This began the start of the eight year Franco-Viet Minh War. Shortly prior to this conflict President Roosevelt had died, fanning the flame of anti-colonialism and leaving the official policy of the U.S toward the Franco-Vietnam war as neutral. Due to the neutrality of the United States during the first four years of the Franco-Viet Minh War, the Vietnam War became, inevitably, the destiny of the United States. This paper will explain three major points and how they laid the foundation for the Vietnam War. These points include: 1) reasons for U.S. neutrality, 2) how this neutrality allowed Communism to blossom in Vietnam, and 3) how this blossoming Communsim made the Vietnam War inevitable. One of the main reasons for this lack of action on the part of the U.