Effects of the Vietnam War to America

According to the Herring (1979) study, the Vietnam War is the elongated military war that emerged as an anticolonial conflict against the French. The anticolonial strife resulted in the Cold War confrontations. The Cold War confrontations involved threatening engagement between the international communism and the free-market economies. The Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) acted from the North under the support of the Soviet Union, and China among other communist nations. To the South, the United States along other anti-communist allies supported the Republic of Vietnam (ROV).

The Vietnam War caused severe damage to the American economy. The United States Government invested over $168 billion in the Vietnam War. This costed the economy of the nation negatively. The war spurred some policy changes. For instance, the War influenced the Congress to terminate the Military Draft and immediately exchanged it with an “all-volunteer army” and reduced the age of voting to 18 years. Also, after the war, the American Congress enacted the War Powers Resolution (War Power Act) in 1973 restricting the President from sending an American army to war for a duration beyond 90 days without the consent of the Congress (Duiker, 2018).

According to Werner & Huynh (2015), the War at Vietnam caused negative effects to the American economy. The war facilitation strained the American’s production capabilities that caused industrial production imbalances. Instead of factories producing consumer goods, they started producing military items. This further influenced controversy in the federal economic policy. The war influenced the weakening of the US dollar. The funds the facilitated the military were ferried overseas without the corresponding transaction back to America. This caused currency imbalance in payment sectors. Military expenditure along with the domestic spending caused budget deficit in America, ultimately, fueling inflation.

Conclusively, the American entry into the Vietnam War as the Superpower left Vietnam with the humiliation of defeat, high casualties, Americans became sharply divided, and the foreign policy became uncertain (Duiker, 2018). The war was the most protracted and significantly debilitating conflict. It is the only war that the United States of America ever lost. The War significantly impacted all American life perspectives, e.g. economy, domestic political culture, and foreign policy. The effects are felt to date.

References

Duiker, W. J. (2018). The communist road to power in Vietnam. Routledge. Retrieved from https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780429492914

Herring, G. C. (1979). America’s Longest War (pp. 203-203). New York: Wiley. Retrieved from http://web.stanford.edu/group/tomzgroup/pmwiki/uploads/0611-1986-Herring-a-AJG.pdf

Werner, J., & Huynh, L. D. (2015). The Vietnam War: Vietnamese and American Perspectives: Vietnamese and American Perspectives. Routledge. Retrieved from https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781317454014