Implementing the Containment Doctrine.

America's involvement in Vietnam may be traced to decisions made in the late 1940s and the 1950s as the Cold War and the doctrine of containment of Communism came to be dominant considerations in U.S. foreign policy. Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S Truman had expected to let the Japanese-occupied French colonies in Indochina gain their independence at the end of World War II rather than allowing the French to reassert control. As the Cold War emerged in Europe during the late 1940s, prompting the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the United States became more concerned with not alienating France, a crucial member of the new alliance, than with standing by a vague assertion of the right of self-determination for the various peoples of Indochina. The United States became increasingly...