Costs of the VN war

Question 1

USA- social factors

Answer 1

-Had cause American society to become divided: divided in terms of social class also, majority of the soldiers were working class + uni students could be exempt from the draft
-58,000 Americans died during the war
-2.7m Americans served during the time of American involvement
-Costed

Question 2

USA- economy

Answer 2

-Costed the US $167b
-As a result the govt didn’t have the funding to expand on domestic programming + Johnson’s ‘Great Society’ suffered from this

Question 3

USA- FP

Answer 3

-The US regarded SV as the cornerstone of democracy in SE Asia
-The loss of SV would create a domino effect causing nearby regions to fall to communism also e.g. Laos + Cambodia
-Without Indochina, SEATO lost its relevance and was disbanded in 1976
-Congress passed the War Powers Act in 1973 which reversed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution- gave Congress the right to declare war

Question 4

Vietnam-social

Answer 4

-Number of deaths range from 100,000 to 330,000 of the SV
-Number of deaths of VC is 1.1m
-Number of civilians dead = 250,000
-Montegnards lost 1/5 of their population- they were an indigenous population between the north + south
-Many southerners were forced into re-education camps
-Collectivisation of farming was introduced in 1978, farmers lost their livelihood
-1.5m Vietnamese left the country

Question 5

VN- politically

Answer 5

-President Ford opposed VNs entry into the UN which isolated them from the international community

Question 6

VN- Economy

Answer 6

-President Ford placed a trade embargo on VN which remained in place till 1994
-This was apart of his strategy to prevent VN from developing economic relations with the West + had a major impact of their economic growth

Question 7

VN- infrastructure

Answer 7

-The US dropped in total 1.3m tons of bombs on Vietnam causing a mass destruction to their agriculture
-Operation Ranch Hand destroyed 6m acres of SV land