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1. The non-communist government of South Vietnam looked in danger of being overthrown by the communist-backed Vietcong guerrillas.
2. The USA was operating a policy of containment and they feared the domino effect - that if one country fell to communism there could be a knock-on effect in neighbouring countries. Vietnam was a wobbly domino!
3. Under Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, the USA had given millions of dollars to prop up the French in Vietnam, and had sent military advisers to support Ngo Din Diem’s corrupt, anti-communist government. The failure of these two policies had shown that providing money and military advisors to train the army of South Vietnam was not enough to stop communism. Force was needed and this meant American soldiers in a combat role.
4. They finally had an excuse. In August 1964 the destroyer USS Maddox, an American naval vessel, was attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin, just off the coast of North Vietnam by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. This gave President Johnson an excuse to order attacks on North Vietnam.

The USA's tactics under President Johnson

• Bombing - President Johnson ordered the bombing of strategic military targets in North Vietnam, including air raids on the capital city, Hanoi, and bases and supply routes for the Vietcong. This was code-named Operation Rolling Thunder. The USA would ultimately drop 3 million tonnes of bombs in Vietnam - more than all the bombs dropped in Europe during World War Two. However, bombing was highly inaccurate due to the jungle landscape and the lack of industrial targets in North Vietnam.
• Escalation - President Johnson slowly increased the number of American troops on the ground in Vietnam. In 1965, two battalions of US Marines were deployed to protect military bases at Da Nang. This represented a shift away from ‘military advisors’ to combat troops. In July 1965, Johnson sent another 100,000 troops, and a further 100,000 in 1966.
• Air and artillery - American troops were sent on patrols, to be supported by air and artillery if attacked by the Vietcong. This demoralised soldiers, who realised they were being used as bait to draw out the enemy.
• Search and Destroy - From 1965, the American military began a policy of sending soldiers into the jungle and villages of Vietnam to ‘take the war to the enemy’. This often meant soldiers were easy targets for Vietcong guerrilla attacks as the Vietcong were far more adept in the jungle than the American soldiers. This tactic also led to a high number of civilian casualties, destruction of villages and atrocities like the My Lai Massacre all of which damaged the USA’s reputation.
• Technology - The USA relied on high altitude bombers to drop heavy bombs in North Vietnam. They used jets to dump napalm, a chemical that burnt skin to the bone, on suspected Vietcong strongholds. They used Agent Orange, a powerful defoliant, to destroy jungle cover. Helicopters were used to deploy (search for) and destroy guerrilla combatants. Television propaganda was used in the USA to report the ‘body count’ of estimated Vietcong casualties.