WHY THE UNITED STATES FOUGHT IN VIETNAM

Scholarship on the Vietnam war has advanced understanding of why the United States fought in Vietnam. An examination of this work leads us to consider several related topics, such as why North Vietnam won the war, why the United States and its ally South Vietnam lost the war, and whether there were missed opportunities whereby the U.S. military intervention could have been avoided. The disciplines of history and political science have illuminated many important aspects of the war ranging from such diverse subjects as presidential personality and leadership to congressional-executive relations. Political science has also contributed significant theoretical advances on the subject of why nations go to war and on the nature of international conflict, belief systems, and conflict resolution processes. By and large, however, we believe that most of the seminal discoveries on the subject of “why the United States fought in Vietnam” have been made by historians. We review several of these contributions with expectations that political science will build on this rich empirical foundation in hypothesis testing and theory development.