Did The Us Win The Cold War? The Sucesses and Failures of The Cold War

Vietnam was yet another place for a proxy war which had a struggle between the nationalists and the communists. North and South Vietnam were divided at the 17 north parallel. The communists under Ho Chi Minh were located in the north while the nationalists remained to the south under the leadership of the dictator Ngo Diem.  Due to the harsh dictatorship of Diem, the opposition to the south increased while the communists there received more support. Due to much tension and the attack on two US destroyer ships, troops from the US were sent to Vietnam to fight the Vietcong. The soldiers were in an unfamiliar area fighting in guerilla warfare. Ironically, as more US involvement in Vietnam occurred, the support for communism increased. Not only was it unpopular there, it was unpopular at home too because people were protesting about the loss of lives. At last President Nixon introduced Vietnamization, which pulled the troops out of Vietnam. In the end, the communists took over and the US didn’t accomplish it’s goal; furthermore, more than 1.5 million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans lost their lives.

These three examples are several of the many attempts by the United States to try to block out communism. In all three, the containment attempts failed. I personally think that the Cold War was a failure for the United States but others might say that in the end, the Soviet Union fell. But all the same, the United States suffered high losses, in lives and financially. Even still today, there are still several communist countries: China, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, and North Korea. Maybe if the US had taken different paths to achieving containment, it might have worked out better for them; at least the domino theory didn’t go to the full extent because there aren’t so many communist countries.