On 22 November 1961, Kennedy sanctioned the use of US forces “in a sharply increased effort to avoid a further deterioration of the situation” in South Vietnam. It included “increased airlift to the GVN in the form of helicopters, light aviation and transport aircraft”.
Throughout 1962, the second year of Kennedy’s term, the “main emphasis” for Washington was “on the military effort” in South Vietnam, as deliberated on by Arthur Schlesinger, JFK’s close consultant.
With regard to south-east Asia, Kennedy’s initial concern was with Laos which by late 1960 had fallen into a state of civil war. He chose not to send US troops or planes into Laos, despite Soviet interference there.
On 11 October 1961 Eisenhower’s successor, John F. Kennedy, ordered the dispatchment of a US Air Force squadron “Farmgate” to South Vietnam, consisting of 12 warplanes equipped specifically for counterinsurgency attacks – and which were soon authorised “to fly coordinated missions with Vietnamese personnel in support of Vietnamese ground forces”.
He believed that he needed to prevail in Vietnam as defeat there would so erode his credibility that support in Congress and the country for his Great Society reforms would evaporate.
From 1961 to 1963, President Kennedy increased the US military presence in Vietnam, establishing the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) and sending thousands of US advisers to assist and train the South Vietnamese armed forces.
Soldiers on both sides faced many difficulties and challenges during the Vietnam War – including climate, terrain, the complex political situation and unclear military objectives.
China had become communist in 1949 and communists were in control of North Vietnam. The USA was afraid that communism would spread to South Vietnam and then the rest of Asia. It decided to send money, supplies and military advisers to help the South Vietnamese Government.
The U.S. felt like Vietnam was a way to regain the reputation as the defender against communist expansion. They feared that if South Vietnam fell to the communists then other nations would follow. Therefore, Kennedy and then Johnson began to involve the U.S. deeper into Vietnam's affairs.
Firstly most of the war was fought as a guerrilla war. This is a type of war which conventional forces such as the US army in Vietnam, find notoriously difficult to fight. Conventional forces are easy to identify, guerrillas are not. In Vietnam the Vietcong were peasants by day and guerrillas by night.
Half of all US soldiers killed were by Vietnamese they were "protecting." Another problem was that America could not go on an offensive against North Vietnam for fear that it would cause involvement from the USSR and China and lead into a Nuclear World War.
The Vietcong had an intricate knowledge of the terrain. They won the hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese people by living in their villages and helping them with their everyday lives. Their tunnel systems, booby-traps and jungle cover meant they were difficult to defeat and hard to find.
The main reasons the US got involved in the war was because of nationalism, imperialism, militarism, and forming allies. Many countries were scared of Germany's nationalism.
The major initiative in the Lyndon Johnson presidency was the Vietnam War. By 1968, the United States had 548,000 troops in Vietnam and had already lost 30,000 Americans there. Johnson's approval ratings had dropped from 70 percent in mid-1965 to below 40 percent by 1967, and with it, his mastery of Congress.
At the heart of the conflict was the desire of North Vietnam, which had defeated the French colonial administration of Vietnam in 1954, to unify the entire country under a single communist regime modeled after those of the Soviet Union and China.