Why was South Vietnam involved in the Vietnam War?

Answer 1

To stop the spread of communism. If America never went to war with North Vietnam, the worlds borders would look very different today. By the way, the US did not lose the war in Vietnam. South Vietnam lost the war. If those idiots had any patriotism they still would have their own country.

Answer 2

In 1954, the Vietminh forces of Vietnam defeated the French at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, and the nation was temporarily divided into two sections, north and south. The people of the south chose Ngo Dinh Diem as their ruler and Ho Chi Minh ruled the north. Diem refused to go along with the planned elections in 1956 to unite the nation so the Vietminh members in the south created the Viet Cong and the war between north and south for control of the country began. The government of South Vietnam requested military advisors from the United States to help train the South Vietnamese army. Ho Chi Minh was a communist and during the Cold War of the 1950s and 60s, the aim of the US government was containment of communist power and not to let it spread. The Eisenhower administration provided South Vietnam with money and advisors to help stop the threat of a North Vietnamese takeover. The United States also was pledged by treaty (SEATO) to aid the member nations in southeast Asia, if they were attacked by a foreign (communist) power. Following the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, President Lyndon B. Johnson also believed in containment and the domino theory. If one nation falls to communism, the next nation will fall, and the next, etc. It became the aim of the Johnson administration to prevent a communist takeover in Southeast Asia. In August, 1964, President Johnson reported to the nation that American ships had been attacked by North Vietnam gunboats in the Gulf of Tonkin, in international waters. The Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution giving the President the power to use whatever force necessary to protect our interests in the area. At the time, the truth was not reported. > http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2261 In February, 1965, the Viet Cong attacked an American military base near Pleiku. Using the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, President Johnson sent in 3,500 Marines, the first official troops, to South Vietnam. By the end of the year, there were 200,000 US troops in Vietnam.
To curtail the spread of communism.

• because usa is a crap country

Indochina had been under French colonial government for more than 80 years when the Japanese invaded Vietnam in 1940. During WWII, the Japanese ruled through a French puppet government. When the Japanese surrendered in 1945, they turned their weapons over to the Viet Minh regime. While the Allies (Russia, Britain, the US and France) agreed that Vietnam should be returned to French government, the French did not have the troops or resources to assert its control.

In 1949, Chinese communists had secured control of China and turned their sights to the situation to their south. In 1950, the PRC recognized the Viet Minh government in Vietnam. At the same time, the outbreak of war in Korea convinced many policymakers in the United States that the Chinese communists were intent upon seizing control of both the Korean peninsula in the north and the Indochina peninsula to the south.

In the First Indochina War, the French tried to hold onto Indochina until 1954, when they were defeated at Dien Bien Phu. At the Geneva Conference in 1954, Vietnam was partitioned into North and South at the 17th parallel. Political struggle, cancelled elections, rigged elections and civil repression on both sides continued through the remainder of the 1950s.

The United States was particularly concerned that, if Vietnam fell to the communists, then the security of Laos, Cambodia, Burma, Thailand and, ultimately, India and the Philippines would be threatened. This was the "domino theory" held by many, including President Eisenhower and (then Senator) John F Kennedy. This led to the conclusion that the United States had to take the place of the French in Indochina, preferably, by proxy.

When Kennedy became president, he still believed that, given sufficient support, the South Vietnam government would be able to prevail against the insurgents from the north. However, the South Vietnamese government under Ngo Dinh Diem was inept, uncooperative and corrupt. The CIA secretly supported a coup, led by some of the South Vietnamese generals, which assassinated Diem in the summer of 1963. The government declined into more chaos.

After Kennedy's assassination, President Johnson took office. Johnson was convinced that South Vietnam would not be able to defend itself without significant help from American armed forces. Over the next four years, Johnson expanded the war against the communist insurgents dramatically. Ultimately, however, political support for the war waned, as an increasing number of Americans became convinced that Vietnam could not be saved.

Answer 3

The ending of the 1st Indochina War (French Indochina War) was brought about by the Geneva Accords in 1954/55 which NEGOTIATED an ending by "fairly" dividing the country between the communist supported "North" and the free world supported "South" at the 17th Parallel. Had not this agreement been met, the war may have continued or another war may have immediately taken place.

Answer 4

Because they appeared weak. Diem had a loose hold over South Vietnam and used harsh methods. While the terms of the 1954 Geneva Accords was that there would be an election to decide who ruled both sections. This was reneged upon by the South for the twin reasons that the North would have never allowed fair elections in their domain and that even under the distinctly unlikely chance that North Vietnam Communist government did allow such a thing that there was enough popular support for the strong and long standing leader of Ho Chi Mihn in the South to make the issue moot in anycase. So after a few years of this, circa 1957 or 1958 Ho Chi Mihn was pursuaded that Diem was weak enough while undergoing the contineous and unpopular efforts to strengthen his power base to justify invading the south. Reportedly, it was South Vietnamese Communists living in Geneva Accord exile within the North who coaxed the argument to its end. After invading with larger and larger complements of troops and infiltrators, enough mistakes where made on the southern side to continue the encouragement. For example, the effort to copy the Malaysian concetrated village fortress strategy was not able to be work in the South for a variety of reasons, and in fact helped the Viet Cong insofar as the effort was unpopular enough to make it easy to relieve the compounds of their advanced guns supplied by the United States. A significant reason for this unpopularity was that ancestor and land god worship was not able to be preformed properly in the stockade arrangement and leaders appointed by Diem tended to be significantly corrupt. This encouraged the initial trickle to become a flood, helped by supplies and technical assistance of other Communist nations.

Answer 5

North Vietnam wanted to re-unite with South Vietnam. If the North hadn't been a communist nation, nor supplied by the communist superpowers; quite possibly the US would've stayed out of it.

But that couldn't have happened anyway...it was the communist superpowers that backed the Viet Minh force against the French to begin with in 1946...which inherently caused a NORTH & SOUTH Vietnam.

Answer 6

Communist North Vietnam wanted to unite with NON-Communist South Vietnam.

Answer 7

ask what the Vietnam War was about and look for my answer it'll explain