Vietnam and Foreign Policy

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses how the Vietnam War offered the conditions for the US to realize the change in the international political environment and the need for diplomatic cooperation more than military confrontation. The paper looks at Henry Kissinger's new diplomacy that offered the detente period, which advocated for the first time the existence of more than two centers of power. The paper shows how from this point on, subsequent administrations worked, more or less, to reaching a peaceful outcome to the Cold War.

From the Paper:

"The Vietnam War can be rightfully seen as a pivotal moment in the history of the 20th century. The human loss could only be estimated, as there were too many unknown events that influenced the final outcome of the victim count, as "over 57, 000 Americans- and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese- died. Total American expenses have been calculated at over a trillion dollars." (Rothney and Findley, 1986, 300) However important is the human factor, aside from the tragedies of the Vietnamese and American peoples who engaged their troops on the battlefield, there is the aspect of the dramatic political shift that the war and its outcome provoked."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Hyland, Wiliam G. The Cold War is over. New York: Random House, 1990.
• Kissinger, Henry. Diplomacy. London: Simon & Schuster, 1994.
• Tower, John J."Foreign policy for the seventies". The Vietnam legacy: the war, American society and the future of American Foreign Policy Ed. Anthony Lake. New York : New York University Press, 1976.
• Rothney, John Alexander, and Carter Vaughn Findley. Twentieth-century world. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1986.

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• Case Study # 114126 : "Public Opinion and Foreign Policy"
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