Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War An infamous photo of General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan shooting an alleged terrorist in handcuffs during the Tet Offensive also provoked public outcry. Another element of the American opposition to the war was the perception that U.S. intervention in Vietnam, which had been argued as acceptable because of the domino theory and the threat of communism, was not legally justifiable. Some Americans believed that the communist threat was used as a scapegoat to hide imperialistic intentions, and others argued that the American intervention in South Vietnam interfered with the self-determination of the country and felt that the war in Vietnam was
Historiography of the Cold War to move on from questions of blame and inevitability to consider the Cold War in the "longue durée" of the 20th century, alongside questions of culture, technology and ideology. Historians have also begun to consider the Cold War from a variety of international perspectives (non-American and non-Soviet) and most especially have stressed the importance of what was then called the "Third World" in the latter half of the Cold War. As Odd Arne Westad, co-editor of the "Cambridge History of the Cold War" (2010) has written: After 1990s new memoirs and archival materials have opened up the study of espionage