Domino Theory In Vietnam

The domino theory was very important, and significant for the reason of involvement in the conflict In Vietnam for USA. The US had encountered many tragedies with communism, in the cold war fighting the Soviet Union, turning of China to Communism and the spread of communism to Eastern Europe during the World War, which was huge evidence that Communism could easily be spread. However what mainly sparked the hatred of communism was the red scare in the 1920s which showed the destruction that communism can do, and the extreme effect that might occur if it spread ever further. So in the essay I will talk about how extreme the domino theory was as a result for the US involvement in Vietnam, and other factors relating to US involvement.

I believe
China had fallen to communism in 1949, which was a reason in which the US got involved with Korea, to stop the domino theory from taking place, they thought to contain communism in Korea so that wouldn’t take place, and the US felt very passionately about this, which is supported by a quote from Lyndon B Johnson which he said that, "I am not going to be the president who saw South-East Asia go the way China went." And that is why they went into war with Korea in 1950-1953. 400,000 soldiers had died and many thought that was a lot of soldiers who died for the capitalism approach however many thought that winning against communism would end all wars during that time, and so President Eisenhower also thought that communism would stop at the 17th parallel, but as we know, it wasn’t as easy as that because there were many important factors that stopped it being that easy. For one thing, the leader of the south, Ngo Dinh Diem, was a catholic and many of South Vietnam were Buddhists led to many dangerous uprising, This is shown by the Buddhist crisis in 1963 in Hue when Diem prohibited displaying Buddhist flags in support of the Buddha’s birthday, meanwhile a few days later, Catholics
There were many reasons that the US had got involved but I believe that the war was particularly escalated by the USA due to an increase in involvement. It is also important to understand that during the 1900s, the US had thought of itself as the best country in the world and the only superpower, so they wanted to show that even though Vietnam had defeated its close ally, France, it couldn’t destroy America, so I believe it is important to understand that it was trying to send out a message to all of the countries in the world that the US is the only superpower in the world, and if anyone messes with the ideological theory of capitalism, something will happen to them, but as we know already, that had backfired for the US, and in the end, did the opposite of what it wanted to achieve. It sent out a message that the US wasn’t as great as many people had thought it to