John F Kennedy
By Fernando Arellano
5 Facts of His Involvement
- Kennedy tripled the amount of American economic and military aid to the South Vietnamese
- Increased the number of military advisors in Indochina
- Refused to withdraw from the Vietnam War
- Appointed his brother Robert Kennedy as a general
- Kennedy requested that Diem liberalize his regime and institue land reform and other measures to win the support of his people
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a long, costly armed conflict that pitted the communist regime of North Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The war began in 1954, after the rise to power of Ho Chi Minh and his communist Viet Ming party in North Vietnam, and continued against the backdrop of an intense Cold War between two global superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union. More than 3 million people were killed in the Vietnam War; more than half were Vietnamese civilians. By 1969, at the peak of U.S. involvement in the war, more than 500,000 U.S. military personnel were involved in the Vietnam conflict.
During World War II, Japan invaded and occupied Vietnam, a nation on the eastern edge of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia that had been under French administration since the late 19th century. Inspired by Chinese and Soviet communism, Ho Chi Minh formed the Viet Minh, or the League for the Independence of Vietnam, to fight both Japan and the French colonial administration. Japan withdrew its forces in 1945, leaving the French-educated Emperor Bao Dai in control of an independent Vietnam.
Connections with other events or people
- Ho Chi Minh - ceded his position as party secretary-general to Le Duan
- Kent State - At Kent State University in building, promoting the governor of Ohio to dispatch 900 National Guardsmen to the campus
- Containment is a military strategy to stop the expansion of an enemy
- In Southeast Asia, the United States government used the domino theory to justify its support of a non-communist regime in South Vietnam against the communist government of North Vietnam, and ultimately its increasing involvement in the long-running Vietnam War