The Vietnam War Did war prove to be a successful means of achieving Essay

The Vietnam War Did war prove to be a successful means of achieving political objective Examine this from both the US and North Vietnamese perspectives - Essay Example It is â€Å"an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will†¦ War is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means.2 The Vietnam War was initially a conflict between two new countries that came out of the French colonization of Indochina. But, the US intervention led to a change in the circumstances. In the end, the essential reality of the struggle, wrote Hendrik Hertzberg in his book, Politics (2005), â€Å"was that the Communists, imbued with an almost fanatical sense of dedication to a reunified Vietnam under their control, saw the war against the United States and its South Vietnamese ally as the continuation of two thousand years of resistance to Chinese and later French rule.† (p. 37) Although there are three main players in the Vietnam War: North Vietnam, South Vietnam and the United States, there is the important addition of the Soviet Union as an actor and to a certain degree, China, that the Vietnam War came to be characterized by the conflict of two factions, the Communist and the US-South Vietnam alliance. On the Communist side, there is North Vietnam, Soviet Union and China. Here, the Vietnamese communist is holding the center stage. The Vietnam War was said to be an undeclared war between the Soviet Union and the United States or an extension of the Cold War, with Vietnam as the battleground of the West and the Communists war for global influence. The strategy in this regard is that these major powers were involved in their war against each other using the weaker countries as a battleground. In this approach, their troops are kept at a minimum and that they – the US and Soviet Union - are protected, themselves, from risk of direct attack. The Vietnam, was primarily a conflict between the North and the South for control over