Us History

1. JFK increased involvement in the war with Vietnam because he wanted to reassert American military might follow: the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Berlin Crisis, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. JFK also viewed Northern Vietnam as a communist threat and containment depended on American support of South Vietnam against Northern aggression to prevent the communist aggressor from gaining strength. Kennedy believed governments would have to develop mobile forces to deal with small international problems before they developed into global nuclear war. For this reason, he created the Special Forces, otherwise known as the Green Berets. Kennedy sent these troops to Korea to test their effectiveness. LJB entered into conflict with Vietnam for more threatening reasons. Unlike JFK—there was direct confrontation; there was an apparent attack on US ships by the North Vietnamese Navy in the Gulf of Tonkin in July 1964. LBJ pushed for a US military response against the North. On August 7, Congress authorized the President to commit US aircraft and ground troops to the war, which still consisted mainly of the guerrilla war in the South. 2. The upheaval and dissent on American college campuses during the Vietnam War helped shape the United States domestic and foreign policy because it showed the government how much the public disagreed with the war in Vietnam. The government was requesting soldiers from the US to fight in a war in which no one was winning or gaining anything from. The draft of American men into a war that people did not believe turned many Americans against the Vietnam war and against the Nixon administration. When the National Guard fired into a college protest (against the war) this provoked even more US citizens to despise the war. Because of the lack of public support—Nixon had to withdraw the troops and advocate for a different kind of policy to deal with the Soviet Union. This plan was known as: "Détente"--a French word meaning "release from tension.” It was a