Vietnam
War: divergences on imperialist policy shake US bourgeoisie
American involvement in Vietnam began following French
imperialism’s defeat in Indochina when the US moved in to
pick up the pieces for the West. The strategy, again a
manifestation of containment, was designed to prevent what
Eisenshower’s Secretary of State Dulles had called the
“domino theory” – one country after an another
falling to Russian imperialism like dominoes. The aim was to
transform the temporary separation of Vietnam into a northern and
southern zone created by the Geneva agreements into a permanent
division, as in the Korean peninsula. In this sense the American
policy of subverting the Geneva agreements began under the
Republican Eisenhower regime and continued under Kennedy, who
began dispatching military advisers to Vietnam in the early 1960s.
The Kennedy administration played an integral role in running the
country, even authorising a military coup and the assassination of
President Diem in 1963. The impatience of the White House with the
general who delayed in assassinating Diem, has been well
documented. Following the assassination of Kennedy in 1963,
Johnson continued the American intervention in Vietnam, which
mushroomed into America’s longest military war.
