The purpose of this article is to better understand the political dynamics that were at play in the early days of the Vietnam Crisis that ultimately led to the disastrous war in Vietnam. It will examine the historical record from different points of view and hopes to uncover instances where a failure of communication led to a cascading effect of fear and uncertainty that triggered the events that resulted in U.S. political leaders increasingly deeper into the quagmire. of Vietnam and Southeast Asia. How did the logic of fear dominate the thinking and policies of the time? The hypothesis of this article is to show that these communication and signaling failures could have been avoided through more competent diplomacy, and that subsequently the Vietnam War could have been avoided. From September 1940, the Japanese took control of Vietnam from Vichy. French and remained in command of Vietnam until the end of the war, as well as all other European colonies in the region (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2013). Following their shameful capitulation to the Germans, allies of the Japanese, the Vichy French offered to administer Vietnam on behalf of the Japanese, which they did until the end of the war when the Japanese, distrusting the French, chased them away. Vietnam was a key staging area for Japanese operations on the Asian continent throughout the war. Meanwhile, Ho Chi Minh and others worked with the Allies to provide them with information about Japanese troop movements. This was an early opportunity for the United States to establish a working relationship with the Vietnamese people after World War II, but it was not taken advantage of. Obviously, the United States... middle of paper ......stration honored the treaty and held an election and then honored the result, that would likely have created an entirely different dynamic in our relationship with Vietnam . America's attempt to contain the communist plague has led them to many disastrous conclusions about how to deal with this retrograde Stone Age insurgency, while we have inherited the problem and interpreted every moment through the logic of fear. Ho Chi Minh was for a time the Devil incarnate. in America. Looking back, he was a freedom fighter. He had read and adopted the ideals of the Declaration of Independence (Government Portal of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, 2013). He could have been an ally and a friend. Instead, fear led the United States to fight him and lose, at enormous cost in blood and treasure. Some lessons were learned, many were not, and the legacy of Vietnam still haunts us today..