War& war never changes. As man developed better and more efficient ways to kill each other war has continued to plague mankind and all of its lands for millennia. Some campaigns are blatantly justified, and others are still looking for answers as to why they happened. One of these conflicts that are still highly debated throughout the United States is the Vietnam War. Officially involving the United States on November 1st, 1955, the conflict managed to escalate fairly quickly from simply having American military advisors assisting RVN military personnel to have U.S. Marines and Army troops conducting extensive search and destroy missions throughout the Vietnamese countryside by 1964, effectively contributing a substantial amount to the fighting. This critical expansion in the role of American presence in Vietnam happened very quickly under the Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson, who justified this move, however many still questions what the real purpose of American intervention was in Vietnam.
Many posited that the intervention truly was meant to halt the spread of communism around the world stemming from North Vietnam, China, and the USSR and to maintain the U.S. position within the international system, while others believe that the conflict was based on a lie to maximize U.S. power around the globe and to eventually reach hegemonic prowess, or at the very least, unipolarity, within the international system. There are two possible theoretical explanations that can help explain why this conflict spiraled into an all-out war between the U.S. and the NVA and Vietcong. Defensive realism and its counterpart, Offensive realism, both provide substantial evidence that stipulates incentives for U.S. intervention, or expansion depending on who you ask. Offensive realism ends up being a better guide to understanding this case and provides the strongest evidence that points to the U.S. intervention being a strong reactionary conflict intended to be a bid for U.S. hegemony in Southeast Asia.