The American experience in Vietnam

The Vietnam War stands as one of the defining events of the 20th century. Four decades after its end, the war continues to reverberate through the international system. While its emotional impact has eased somewhat, it still haunts the American imagination and exerts a profound influence upon the United States domestic politics, foreign policy, intellectual life, media, and culture. Needless to say, the war has also had a lasting effect on the people of Southeast Asia. This class aims to provide students with an understanding of the causes, course, and consequences of American involvement in Vietnam between 1941 and 1975. In doing so, it will explore all of Vietnam’s major conflicts—the First, Second, and Third Indochina Wars—and address a number of questions that are still contested among historians: Why did the United States perceive Vietnam as integral to American national security? What was the relationship between the wars for Vietnam and the processes of decolonization and the Cold War? Why did the initial commitment, sustained at a relatively low level for nearly fifteen years, escalate dramatically in the 1960s? Did American and Vietnamese leaders stumble into war by misunderstanding each other? Was the conflict a national civil war or a major international war? How did the war complement, and in many ways accelerate, the many social changes affecting the United States and other countries in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s? How did other countries view and react to the war? Was the war winnable? What are the war’s legacies, in Vietnam, the United States, and the world at large?