To contain the spread of communism throughout Southeast Asia. The USA believed the loss of Vietnam to communist control would lead to similar insurrections in neighboring countries in the region, i.e., the Domino theory.movielocke wrote:Vietnam permeated and touched every cultural institution I encountered growing up in the 90s and yet no one would ever give me a straight answer on how and why and what happened to embroil us in the war, much less what we fought for.
The anti-communist military junta in Thailand quelled any form of uprising by massacring leftist protestors. Also, Chin Peng in Malaysia led an unsuccessful guerrilla insurgency. The documentary The Act of Killing showed the Indonesian military's communist purge.