Cold War Policies During The Vietnam War

The Cold War is a difficult era to understand. The entire conflict between the US and the USSR never can to fruition in direct battle, though many lives were still lost in multiple international crises. One of the most important was the fight over Korea. With much of the Western world terrified of communism, many swore to do anything to stop its advance. This was the main priority for the United States after the end of World War II and the US and USSR quickly turned against each other now that they had no common enemy. The Korean War was an international conflict fought through the guise of a civil war between the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea by the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics for the purpose of control over East Asia and control of Korea’s political ideology.
Korea was at liberty for influence after World War II for many reasons, the highest of these being loss of cultural identity and government …show more content…
Furthermore, the war “served to encourage the U.S. Cold War policies of containment and militarization, setting the stage for the further enlargement of the U.S. defense perimeter in Asia. These Cold War policies would eventually lead the United States to regional actions that included its attempts at preventing the fall of Vietnam to communism” (Department of State). The Korean War could have easily been circumnavigated if it was not divided in the first place. If Korea had been allowed by post-war planners to establish their own election and decide on its own government, then war never would have broken out. The civil war was actually an international struggle over communism, with the USSR and the People’s Republic of China attempting to encourage its spread and the Western nations doing everything in their power to stop