History 308: Causes and Effects of the Vietnam War
About this Assignment
The Vietnam War was a watershed moment in United States history. You’ve learned that the war spanned the terms of three different presidents, divided the nation politically, and tested the adaptability of the U.S. military. For this assignment, please write a 2,000 to 3,000-word essay on one of the two prompts below.
Prompts
Choose one of the following prompts to examine in your essay:
1. In what ways did President Lyndon Johnson escalate US involvement in the Vietnam War? Why did he choose to continue increasing American involvement in Vietnam? How did this differ from the way President Richard Nixon later approached the Vietnam War? How did the American public feel about Johnson’s and Nixon’s respective strategies?
2. During the Vietnam war, the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong employed guerilla warfare tactics when engaging South Vietnamese and United States forces, and guerilla warfare continues to be a primary tactic used in modern warfare. Compose an essay evaluating the use and evolution of guerilla warfare in the Vietnam War and beyond. In your essay, consider how American soldiers adapted or failed to adapt to this fighting strategy, and then argue how this influenced the outcome of the Vietnam War as well as military tactics in ongoing wars today.
Formatting & Sources
Please write your paper in the APA format. As part of your research, you may refer to the course material for supporting evidence, but you must also use at least two primary and three secondary sources and cite them using APA format as well. Please include a mix of both primary and secondary sources, with at least one source from a scholarly peer-reviewed journal. If you use any Study.com lessons as sources, please also cite them in APA (including the lesson title and instructor’s name).
Primary sources are first-hand accounts such as interviews, advertisements, speeches, company documents, statements, and press releases published by the company in question.
Secondary sources come from peer-reviewed scholarly journals, such as the Journal of Management. You may use like JSTOR, Google Scholar, and Social Science Research Network to find articles from these journals. Secondary sources may also come from reputable websites with .gov, .edu, or .org in the domain. (Wikipedia is not a reputable source, though the sources listed in Wikipedia articles may be acceptable.)
