Beginning in the 1950s, maintaining a non-Communist South Vietnam became crucial to American efforts to contain communism. How did the Eisenhower administration go about this? What was the nation's justification for its actions in South Vietnam in the 1950s? How did it balance its commitments to both containing communism and supporting the right to national self-determination? As the United States became more deeply entrenched in Vietnam under President Kennedy, the nation's political and military leaders remained confident that superior technology and firepower would subdue the enemy. They were wrong. Explain their initial understanding of the political situation in South Vietnam and how their assumptions about U.S. technological and military superiority had to be revised as the conflict there escalated.