VIETNAM WAR

The Vietnam War (1964–1975) was an eleven-year conflict in Southeast Asia between the American-backed government of South Vietnam and the Communist government of North Vietnam. The North Vietnamese sought to reunify the country following its partition in 1954, while the United States sought to contain Communist expansion by providing South Vietnam with economic and military aid. U.S. involvement reached its peak in 1968-1969, when over five hundred thousand U.S. troops were on the ground. The Pentagon spent $77.8 billion to finance the war. Approximately 58,000 U.S. citizens and over three million Vietnamese were killed during the conflict. Two years after the United States withdrew in 1973, North Vietnamese forces defeated the South Vietnamese and reunified the country.

Vietnam entered the twentieth century as a French colony. During World War II (1939—1945) the French evacuated the colony and the Japanese occupied it. An indigenous nationalist resistance movement to the Japanese invaders sprang up under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh (1892–1969). Ho Chi Minh was a member of both the Vietnamese and the French Communist Parties and the preeminent leader of national self-determination in Vietnam. When the Japanese were defeated in 1945 the French returned to Vietnam and tried to reestablish their colonial authority. For 56 days, the nationalist Vietnamese military force (called the Viet Minh, besieged the French fort at Dien Bien Phu where several thousand French troops were trapped. The French surrender led to peace talks in Geneva, Switzerland in 1954. The treaty required withdrawal of all French troops from Vietnam and a temporary partition of the country at the 17th parallel, with Communists retreating to the north and non-Communists moving to the south. National elections to unify Vietnam were scheduled for 1956.

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953–1961) feared that in a national election Ho Chi Minh would defeat the American-supported president of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem (1955–1963). As a result, elections were held only in South Vietnam. But the elections were rigged and Diem won an over-whelming majority of the vote, declared his country's independence from North Vietnam, and named Saigon as its capital. The decision whether to support Diem was a difficult one for U.S. policymakers. On one hand the United States was concerned that without U.S. support, the South Vietnam government would collapse and fall to the Communists. On the other hand President Eisenhower harbored reservations about getting U.S. troops mired in another Asian conflict so soon after the Korean War (1950–1953).

Diem's actions in office raised further concerns. His anti-Communist sympathies manifested themselves in harsh policies that alienated peasants and villagers. Diem, a Catholic, discriminated against Buddhists even though the Catholics made up only a small minority of the population that had played subordinate roles during the period of French colonialism. Opposition to Diem became widespread and in 1963 he was assassinated by elements in the Army. Diem's death was followed by ten successive South Vietnamese governments in 18 months.

Taking advantage of this upheaval, the nationalist guerilla forces in South Vietnam (called the People's Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF) or, colloquially, the "Viet Cong") emerged under the political leadership of the National Liberation Front. The NLF was an organization of broad nationalist forces, led by the Communist Party of Vietnam. Their goal was the reunification of North and South Vietnam.

The United States responded to these developments by increasing the number of U.S. military, economic, and political advisers in Vietnam from 800 in 1961, when President John F. Kennedy took office, to 16,700 in 1963. During the 1964 presidential race Republican candidate Barry Goldwater charged President Lyndon B. Johnson (1963–1969), who took office following Kennedy's assassination, with not doing enough to win the war. Goldwater stated that Johnson would be responsible if Vietnam and its neighboring countries toppled like dominoes into the lap of the Communists.

Despite Goldwater's defeat, President Johnson was determined to not allow the so-called "domino theory" to become a reality. In August, 1964, U.S. ships off the coast of North Vietnam, in the Gulf of Tonkin, reported sonar indications of a torpedo attack. In response, Johnson ordered an air attack on North-Vietnamese ship bases and oil facilities. The next day the Senate granted the president's request for broad powers over the Southeast Asian conflict by passing the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. The resolution gave the president authority to take all measures necessary to repel any further armed aggression against U.S. forces in the area.

Johnson relied on this "blank check" to commit the first U.S. combat troops to Vietnam on March 8, 1965. By the end of the year the initial commitment of 3,500 troops had increased to 80,000. These combat troops fought alongside the South Vietnamese armed forces, known as the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). The ARVN was a poorly led group that lacked cohesion and motivation. In 1965 alone 113,000 ARVN troops were lost to desertion. Many U.S. soldiers disliked and mistrusted the ARVN and accused them of cowardice.

As the war dragged on in Vietnam, the anti-war movement picked up at home. Promises of victory by politicians and military commanders wore thin on an U.S. public confronted nightly by television images of bloody battles that accompanied mounting casualties. The credibility of U.S. government reports predicting imminent U.S. victory was further eroded by the 1968 Tet Offensive, an all-out assault on every major city in South Vietnam. The NLF forces suffered staggering losses during their offensive and made few strategic gains. The Viet Cong were virtually wiped out. But, though Tet was a military catastrophe for the NLF, it was a political victory. It took both U.S. and ARVN forces by surprise and had a resounding effect on the U.S. public.

The war had reached a stalemate and the Tet Offensive forced U.S. citizens to confront how deeply Communist resistance was entrenched throughout Vietnam. In 1969 opinion polls showed that for the first time in the war, a majority of respondents were opposed to the war. But, even though the war was becoming unpopular, most people were reluctant to pull out of Vietnam immediately. For a time, the American people were still willing to stand by the President in the struggle against Communism. Only between 20 and 40 percent of U.S. citizens polled in 1969 favored immediate withdrawal. But the protests were becoming larger and more frequent. And one-byone, mainstream organizations and politicians began demanding peace in Vietnam. Inflation and higher taxes resulting from the war soured still other segments of society. It was no surprise that upon taking the oath of office in January, 1969, President Richard Nixon (1969–1974) promised to end the war with honor. But before he ended the war, President Nixon and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, widened it.

In March of 1969 President Nixon ordered the secret bombing of Cambodia. His goal was to wipe out North Vietnamese and NLF bases along the South Vietnam border. The "Ho Chi Minh trail" went through this area, carrying provisions and troop convoys of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). When U.S. troops invaded Cambodia the following year, college campuses erupted in protest. Four students at Kent State University in Ohio were killed by national guardsmen who had been called in to prevent rioting. Student protests were staged again in 1971 when the United States provided air support for an ARVN invasion of Laos and in 1972 when the United States began mining the Haiphong harbor. Nixon contended that these operations strengthened his hand at the bargaining table. He pointed to his program of "Vietnamizing" the war, which had reduced the number of U.S. troops in Southeast Asia to under 100,000 by 1972 and gave the South Vietnamese greater control of day-to-day tactical operations. In any event, during Christmas of 1972 the president ordered the final and most intense bombing of the war over Hanoi, the capital of North Vietnam.

On January 27, 1973, U.S. participation in the Vietnam War officially ended when the Treaty of Paris was signed by each of the parties to the conflict. The United States agreed to withdraw all of its forces from Vietnam and stop military operations in Laos and Cambodia. North and South Vietnam agreed to a cease-fire and all prisoners of war were to be released. U.S. military and economic aid to South Vietnam could continue.

Following the collapse of the South Vietnamese regime in 1975, the unified country of Vietnam collectivized the colonial rubber plantations, and some businesses were nationalized. Within ten years, however, elements of capitalism had crept into Vietnamese society. By the 1990s the Vietnam government began instituting policies to bring about a mixed economy involving state, collective, and private ownership. The opening of Vietnamese society improved relations with the United States, which ended a 20-year trade embargo against Vietnam in 1994. Full diplomatic relations between the two countries were established the next year.

VIETNAM WAR

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