during the vietnam war the tet offensive what conflict was called the soviet union's vietnam

during the vietnam war the tet offensive what conflict was called the soviet union

forces is presently so weak that we can ill afford any detachment of forces to a peripheral area of the communist bloc where they will be pinned down for an uncertain duration' His own estimation: that the 'strategic reserve of U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, recommended the introduction of U.S. Taylor, the president's special military representative and later chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and then U.S. Maxwell Taylor to President Kennedy, which are reprinted in The Pentagon

The profound misjudgment that propelled the United States into the Vietnam War was captured in two November 1961 cables from Gen. It also played a significant role in the Eisenhower administration's refusal in 1954 to intervene on behalf of beleaguered French forces in Indochina. ground forces on behalf of the Nationalist Chinese government in the latter half of the 1940s as wellĪs its opposition to MacArthur's pleas in 1951 to widen the Korean War. This strategically sound aversion underpinned the Truman administration's refusal to commit U.S. naval and air power's effectiveness would be diluted, and where Asian foes could exploit their great superiority in manpower and bog the United Statesĭown in a protracted conflict. Ground combat involvement in wars on the Asian mainland, where, it was felt, U.S. military leaders, including Omar Bradley, Douglas MacArthur, and Matthew Ridgway, had cautioned against military power to a large-scale land war on the mainland of Asia. Strategic injunction against committing U.S. Among other things, it violated an established foreign policy decision makers in the mid-1960s committed a supreme act of misjudgment by intervening directly in the Vietnam War. This is the first of all strategic questions and the most comprehensive.' the kind of war on which they areĮmbarking neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its true nature. IN HIS MASTERPIECE, On War, Carl von Clausewitz observed that the 'first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish.

During the vietnam war the tet offensive what conflict was called the soviet union's vietnam