Cold War – Pt 2
• Content Standard – 5.3 – Cite specific textural
and visual evidence to analyze the series of
events and long term foreign and domestic
consequences of the US military involvement
in Vietnam, including the Domino Theory, the
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, the Tet Offensive,
Presidential Election of 1968, University
Student Protest, TV Coverage, War Powers
Act and the 26th Amendment.
The Domino Theory was that if North Vietnam won
the war then Cambodia, Laos, and the rest of Asia will
turn communist. America and South Vietnam did not
want to be communist and let it spread throughout
Asia.
U.S. Military Involvement
Begins
 Kennedy elected 1960
 Increases military “advisors” to
16,000
 1963: JFK supports a
Vietnamese military coup d’etat –
Diem and his brother are
murdered (Nov. 2)
 Kennedy was assassinated just
weeks later (Nov. 22)
Johnson Sends Ground Forces
 Tonkin Gulf Resolution
“The Blank Check” *
 was a joint resolution which the United
States Congress passed on August 7, 1964
in response to a sea battle between the
North Vietnamese Navy's Torpedo
Squadron 135 and the destroyer
USS Maddox

Who Is the Enemy?
 Vietcong:



Farmers by day; guerillas at
night.
Very patient people willing to
accept many casualties.
The US grossly underestimated
their resolve and their
resourcefulness.
The guerilla wins if he does not lose, the
conventional army loses if it does not
win.
-- Mao Zedong
Anti-War
Demonstrations
 May 4, 1970
 4 students
shot dead.
 11 students
wounded
 Jackson State
University
 May 10, 1970
Kent State University
 2 dead; 12
wounded
The Tet Offensive, January 1968
 N. Vietnamese Army + Viet Cong
attack South simultaneously
(67,000 attack 100 cities,
bases, and the US embassy in
Saigon)
 Take every major southern city
 Viet Cong destroyed
 N. Vietnamese army debilitated
 BUT…it’s seen as an American
defeat by the media
Nixon on Vietnam
 Nixon’s 1968 Campaign promised an
end to the war: Peace with Honor
 Appealed to the great
“Silent Majority”
 Vietnamization
 Expansion of the
conflict  The “Secret War”
 Cambodia
 Laos
 Agent Orange
(chemical defoliant)
The Ceasefire, 1973
 Conditions:
1. U.S. to remove all troops
2. North Vietnam could leave troops
already in S.V.
3. North Vietnam would resume war
4. No provision for POWs or MIAs
 Last American troops left South
Vietnam on March 29, 1973
 1975: North Vietnam defeats South
Vietnam
 Saigon renamed Ho Chi Minh City
Impact of the War
• War Powers Act – Congress
takes back some of the
presidents power to engage
in military conflict without
their consent – Response to
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
• 26th Amendment – Makes it
legal for 18 yr olds to vote.
If you can die for your
country you should be able
to vote.
• Media Coverage
– Changes
Americans view
of War – They
can see it
everyday!
Thawing the Cold War
• China – Nixon makes first trip to China and
opens communications for the first time in 25
years.
•Détente – Brezhnev invites Nixon to visit
Moscow and begins thawing out of relations –
carries over into the 80’s.
•SALT I
•Gorbachev – Peristrokia and Glasnost
Fall of the Soviet Union
• Broke – USSR can’t keep up with the spending
rate of the US and maintain control of their
satellite countries.
– Reagan – “Tear Down this Wall” speech (Berlin)
– East Germans escape (West takes them in)
– Poland – Solidarity Campaign
– 1991 – Boris Yelstin leads revolution in Moscow and
Communism falls apart.
• US and NATO – left to pick up pieces of these
countries trying to get back on their feet.
• US no longer has an enemy!