Dissertation has to be on something from the 1900 onwards

Has to be on something from the 1900 onwards - Dissertation Example National Interest, 49, 3 – 9. 21 Abstract The Vietnam War is the singularly most important occurrence in the Cold War era, which was direct military fallout owing to the rising antagonism between the two superpowers, USA and USSR. This was keeping in line with the US anti-communist foreign policies observed during the Cuban Missile Crisis and Berlin Wall episode, and was a part of the various measures undertaken by US at that time to contain communism. However, unlike the Berlin wall and Cuban crises, Vietnam War reflects the ignominious defeat of US, and the price it had to pay in terms of psychological and actual monetary costs, still haunt the American socio-political milieu. The war was the longest in recent history, and stretched from 1955 to 1975, though, US came to be involved in this direct combat not until the early 1960s, and the consequences of this battle registered significantly in the minds of the American general public only during the last few years of the war. This article will analyze the Vietnam War and the far-reaching consequences that this war had in terms of subsequent US domestic and foreign policies. ... This war took place after the  First Indochina War,  and was fought between the communist USSR and its allies that had a stronghold in  North Vietnam; and South Vietnam supported by the anti-communist forces, led by U.S. (Spector,  1993). Vietnam at this time lay divided along the lines of a Communist-ruled North, and the US allied South; after Ho Chi Minh put an end to the French colonial rule in 1954, under the 1954 Green Peace Accords. Drawn just after the Korean War, this Geneva agreement was a temporary settlement accorded to bring peace, mainly on the part of the communist forces. Owing to international pressure put on USSR and the People's Republic of China, its allies in Vietnam agreed to temporarily divide the nation on the seventeenth parallel. Moscow and Peking at that time was not particularly willing to face another confrontation with the anti-communist forces, so soon after the Korean debacle. After the division, the south elected Ngo Dinh Diem, a pro US politic al leader, as their President; leading to direct confrontation between the communist supporters and the anti-communist state authority. With the communist forces trying to unite the country, and the north President’s forces bent on detracting the communist supporters, the tension between the two factions was omnipresent, and it inevitably broke out into, first, an indirect and undercover combat; and later after US intervention, into a full-scale war. The Vietnam People’s Army that engaged in direct combat and relied primarily on territorial warfare, represented North Vietnam; while a communist controlled South Vietnamese faction known as Viet Cong that operated right from the enemy’s territory, helped it to a great extent. The South Vietnamese forces and the anti communist allies