ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the primary motive for the intervention was to maintain US prestige in Cold War context by protecting South Vietnam from external communist aggression. It evaluates a case of armed intervention to prevent state failure in the contested postcolonial international order of the Cold War. The chapter shows that US policy elites were acutely sensitive to the humiliation of losing South Vietnam to communism. The early part of the US intervention from February 1965 centred on a limited bombing campaign against North Vietnam to coerce Hanoi into calling a halt to National Liberation Front (NLF) activities. NLF success was in large part due to political discontent with the Diem government', which had been prevalent for some time. In May 1959, the Vietnamese Worker's Party (VWP) in Hanoi authorized the formation of armed units for self-defence in the South but insisted the movement remain political and not attempt to overthrow Diem by force.
