IPE252 - Vietnam War: A Comprehensive Analysis of Global Impact

This essay examines the Vietnam War and its lasting global impact, focusing on the war's origins, key events, and multifaceted consequences. It highlights the conflict's role in uniting North and South Vietnam, intensifying the Cold War, and reshaping US foreign policy. The essay discusses the devastating ecological impact of US military actions, the economic burden on the United States, and the war's influence on subsequent military strategies. Furthermore, it analyzes how the Vietnam War contributed to the rise of the US as a global superpower, altered geopolitical dynamics, and exacerbated conflicts in other regions. The essay concludes by emphasizing the human cost of the war and the enduring lessons about ideological clashes and external interference in national affairs. Desklib offers students access to this essay and a wealth of other academic resources.

World History IPE252

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Vietnam War and its impact on the world
All the wars in the history had impact on the world history. It also had impact on
countries that were fighting the battle but also the other countries. This war has changed the
world and it has its impact on the overall world. Both Vietnam and United States faced a
huge loss due to this war. This war started at the time of World War II, when the Japanese
forces invaded Vietnam. In order to stop both the Japanese forces and French colonial
administrator, Ho Chi Minh a political leader inspired by Soviet and Chinese communism
formed the Viet Minh or the league for Vietnam’s independence. After the defeat in World
War II, Japanese forces retrenched itself from the war hence leaving the Bao Dai emperor of
France to have control of Vietnam. Immediately after gaining the control he rose up to take
the control of the northern city of Hanoi. However the major reason for the start of the war
was when U.S. increased its involvement in war in the year 1954, however the ongoing
conflict was going on from few decades back (Kocher, Pepinsky & Kalyvas, 2011).
Vietnam War was one of those wars that lasted for several years. It was long, costly
and divisive conflict that potholed the communist government of northern and southern
Vietnam and their allies like United States. This war got intensified due to the Cold War
among the Soviet Union and United States. It is estimated that more than 3 million people
which also includes 58,000 American that got killed because of this war. Out of this figure
half of them were the civilians of Vietnam. In the end communist forces ended the war by
taking the control of the South Vietnam in the year 1975 and the country was unified as the
Socialist Republic of Vietnam (Le Espiritu, 2014). However, it is also the fact that Vietnam
War is like a bad dream to the United States because it lost many of the army personals in the
war but they did not succeed in their aim to reduce the communist power. Moreover, the first
thing that Vietnam War changed is that it combined North and South Vietnam which created
a country that had more unity in it. The war united the ideologies within the nation.
The first impact of the war was on the America itself as there were large oppositions
that created within America that was against the President Richard Nixon who ordered the
withdrawal of the forces of United States in the year 1973. People of U.S. were divided on
this issue. With the enhancement cold war U.S. intensified its policies against the Soviet
Union allies (Herzog, 2017). Equipment supplies and training from CIA of America to
Diem’s security forces has strengthened them and hence they cracked down on the
sympathizers of Viet Minh which they derisively known as Viet Cong which arrested more

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than 100,000 people, most of them were brutally executed and tortured. By the end of 1957,
Viet Cong and Diem’s repressive regime’s other opponents started fighting back with attacks
on the officials of government and others. In the year 1960 many of the opponents of Diem in
southern Vietnam both communist and non-communist constructed a National Liberation
Front for organising the confrontation to the regime. Although NLF claimed that it is
autonomous and its larger numbers of members are communist which U.S. thought that they
were the Hanoi’s puppets. There was a string domino theory that suggested that if Southeast
Asian country fell to communism, other countries will also follow. Checking the political
instability in Southern Vietnam, U.S. started to enhance its military and economic support
(Marmar, et al. 2015).
The impact of the war can be seen from the time of the war, as the bombing was not
limited to the Vietnam in between 1964 to 1973. This is because at the time of war U.S.
secretly dropped two million tons of bombs on the neighbouring nations such as neutral Laos
at the time of CIA-led “Secret War”. This bombing campaign was done to disrupt the
supplier’s flow across the Ho Chi Minh trails within Vietnam and to stop the Pathet Lao rise
or their forces. This bombing was the one of the heaviest bombing country in the world in
terms of per capita income. At the end of July 1965, Johnson allowed a dispatching of
100,000 troops and adding to this the troops of Australia, South Korea, New Zealand and
Thailand also committed the troops to fight within South Vietnam (Havens, 2014).
It was the impact of the war that larger part of the South-East Asia came out of the
control of communist forces. It has impact on the ecology in the South Eastern part of the
world as the U.S. forces dropped 20 million gallons of herbicides in between 1962-1971
mainly in the North of Saigon as well as along the borders of Cambodia and Laos for
reducing the dense jungle that concealed the Viet Cong as well as it also destroyed the crops
of the enemies so that the challenges related to the their sustenance gets created. This also
reduced the food scarcity in the region as Vietnam was one of the major contributors to the
crops grown in the region (Lawrence, 2010).
This war widened the gap between the U.S. and the Soviet Russia as Russia started to
feel that America was against the communist ideology which they wanted to spread in
different parts of the Asia. As U.S. was one of the major economic superpower in the world
that supported other economies as well but they had to spent more than $350 billion to $900
billion on this war which has led to huge burden on their economy which also included

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veteran benefits and interests (Hess, 2015). This war was a lesson for the whole world that
wars not have impact for few years rather it is having impact in the long term even sometimes
for decades both economically and psychologically (Holm, 2010). However, since U.S. won
this war hence this made a super power in the world. It was also a lesson for the world that
getting into the conflicts was much easier while getting out of the conflicts is much more
complicated. Since the European superpowers had already lost their control on the world’s
politics due to the World war I and II. This gave a message to the world that the birth of the
U.S. as superpower after the bombing on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not a fluke. In this
war U.S. faced very high numbers of casualties and these numbers of casualties changed the
way in which United States approached its military actions. After Vietnam War it was seen
that most of the nations used Airforce as their primary strike force so as to reduce the
numbers of casualties on the ground (Emerson, 2014). The war following Vietnam War in
different parts of the world saw that there is higher numbers of use of Air Force. This has
increased the numbers of casualties of the civilians as air bombing become the major war
weapons. U.S. used the Vietnam War as a proxy theatre for the other countries that threatens
its supremacy especially the USSR.
In this war U.S. wanted to prove itself as a power that was able to control the most
parts of the world. Due to this U.S. started increasing its influence in other countries in
different parts of the world. It was due to this that United States got itself indulged in the
other wars and internal affairs of the other countries. U.S. most of the time tried to intervene
between the affairs of the other nations (Ang, 2013). This also made U.S. as villain for many
countries as they felt that U.S. is trying to increase their influence on the internal matters of
the other nations whether it is in the gulf nations or in the South China Sea. In the new world
order, this war played a highly critical role as U.S. did not limit itself as a power that was
confined to the northern American State rather it increased their supremacy in different parts
of the world. However it is also the fact that Vietnam War had long ranging impact on the
military plans of U.S. where every day they wanted to enhance their military strength
(Koscielski, 2018).
It was seen that due to this war, Vietnam became a lesser big power when compared
with other neighbouring nations like Cambodia and due to this, large numbers of people in
Cambodia got killed known as killing field. Due to this decade long conflict of Vietnam, it
becomes the fourth-largest economy in the world but one of the poorest economies (Daddis,
2011). This war created more fragmented world where there was more fighting, suffering of

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people and poverty. World history also changed because of the fact that America is not only
the superpower because it has strong military power but it can also exercise it. They have
proved to the world that in any parts of the world they can use their military to show their
dominance. Geo-political situation in many parts of the world changed with the fact that U.S.
started an arm race where every country tried to gain more power than others so as to gain the
control over the larger part of the resources at the world levels. This increased the arms
quality and even smaller countries started to do investment in the warfare so that they can get
protected from the bigger nations like Russia and U.S. who are trying to enhance their power
at the global levels (Ward, 2017).
Vietnam War also proved that there is a need of higher understanding that in the
conflict of the nations it is the civilians who loses the most (Lind, 2013). In Vietnam where
there was large population of the people that actually got killed who did not even have the
role in the war and due to the chemical attack on the region, the lands got infertile which
further enhanced the challenges related to the crops and increasing food scarcity. This also
restricted the chances of the Vietnam to grow as an economically stable nation in the South
East which it would have easily achieved. Vietnam War also showed the world that in the
clash of bigger super power, it’s the smaller countries that suffer the most as they use it as
battle ground (Duiker, 2018). This was also seen in the case of modern day Syria where
bigger powers supported two different fronts and this led to the people losing their lives.
Vietnam War also had impact on the South China Sea. This made other powers to grow in the
region which was supported by the America and its allies.
Vietnam War also showed that which country stood with whom in the cold war. Even
till today these nations are the strategic and military partners of each other. This made the
world more bifurcated in the age of globalisation which even lies till today. Vietnam War
also changed the world history in terms of the fact that it was the new kind of colonial
oppression by bigger power (Scanlon, 2013). Previously the major players were from
European region but after this war America came into the major picture as they started to
control the global resources. This war an example that how just the ideological differences
can kill so many lives as America just got into the war because they felt that communist
powers in different parts of the world will become bigger which could lead them to lose the
cold war.

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In conclusion it can be said that Vietnam War was also an example that how the lack
of unity within the state can be utilised by the external powers for their own benefits and for
propagating their ideologies. It is never easy to calculate the damage as psychological
damages stays for decades and without evaluating this it is not easier for the countries to
know about the actual damage that is done.

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References
Ang, C. G. (2013). The Vietnam War from the Other Side. Routledge.
Daddis, G. A. (2011). No Sure Victory: Measuring US Army Effectiveness and Progress in
the Vietnam War. Oxford University Press.
Duiker, W. J. (2018). The communist road to power in Vietnam. Routledge.
Emerson, G. (2014). Winners & Losers: Battles, Retreats, Gains, Losses, and Ruins from the
Vietnam War (reissue). WW Norton & Company.
Havens, T. R. (2014). Fire Across the Sea: The Vietnam War and Japan 1965-1975 (Vol.
491). Princeton University Press.
Herzog, T. C. (2017). Vietnam war stories: Innocence lost. Routledge.
Hess, G. R. (2015). Vietnam: Explaining America's lost war. John Wiley & Sons.
Holm, T. (2010). Strong hearts, wounded souls: Native American veterans of the Vietnam
War. University of Texas Press.
Kocher, M. A., Pepinsky, T. B., & Kalyvas, S. N. (2011). Aerial bombing and
counterinsurgency in the Vietnam War. American Journal of Political Science, 55(2),
201-218.
Koscielski, F. (2018). Divided Loyalties: American Unions and the Vietnam War. Routledge.
Lawrence, M. A. (2010). The Vietnam War: A concise international history. Oxford
University Press.
Le Espiritu, Y. (2014). Body counts: The Vietnam War and militarized refugees. Univ of
California Press.
Lind, M. (2013). Vietnam: The necessary war. Simon and Schuster.
Marmar, C. R., Schlenger, W., Henn-Haase, C., Qian, M., Purchia, E., Li, M., ... & Karstoft,
K. I. (2015). Course of posttraumatic stress disorder 40 years after the Vietnam War:
Findings from the National Vietnam Veterans Longitudinal Study. JAMA
psychiatry, 72(9), 875-881.

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Scanlon, S. (2013). The pro-war movement: domestic support for the Vietnam War and the
making of modern American conservatism. University of Massachusetts Press.
Ward, G. C. (2017). The Vietnam War: An Intimate History. Knopf.