The Vietnam War, sometimes known as the Vietnam Conflict, was a conflict in which the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV or North Vietnam) and its allies fought against the Republic of Vietnam (RVN or South Vietnam) and its allies. By its end in 1975, the Vietnam War had claimed between two and four million lives.
It is also known as the Second Indochina War and colloquially as Vietnam or 'Nam. Vietnamese Communists have often referred to it as the American War or Kháng chiến chá»ng Mỹ, the Resistance War Against America1.
North Vietnam's allies included the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. South Vietnam's main allies included the United States, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea; South Vietnam's allies deployed large numbers of troops. American combat troops were involved from 1959, but not in large numbers until 1965. They left the country in 1973. A large number of civilian casualties resulted from the war, which ended on April 30, 1975, with the capitulation of South Vietnam.
Many Westerners consider the Vietnam War a "proxy war", one of several that occurred during the Cold War between the United States and its Western allies on the one hand, and the Soviet Union and/or the People's Republic of China on the other. The Korean War is another such war. Proxy wars occurred because the major players — especially the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. — were unwilling to fight each other directly because of the unacceptable costs of global nuclear war.
Vietnam was ruled by China except for brief periods from 110 BC to the year 938. After gaining independence from China, Vietnam went through a long history of resisting outside aggression. In the 1800s, it became a French colony. Those who wanted independence were nationalists. Throughout this period, many groups attempted many movements and revolutions. Most of them failed. The Viet Minh resistance group succeeded, temporarily, during the August Revolution that occurred during the liberation of Vietnam at the end of World War II. HỠChà Minh was the leader of this group. An avowed socialist, he studied in Paris and went to Moscow soon after the Russian Revolution. During World War II, Japan invaded and occupied Vietnam. HỠcame back to the country and formed a resistance group in the north. He was aided by American OSS agents, precursors of today's CIA.
Late in the war, the Japanese arrested the French authorities and gave Vietnam a form of nominal independence. At the end of the war during the process of surrender, the Japanese handed over many public buildings in Vietnam to various nationalist groups. One such group, run by Há» Chà Minh, proclaimed a Vietnamese government. Bao Dai, the emperor, was forced to abdicate. The government only lasted a few days, however, as at the Potsdam Conference it had been decided that Vietnam would be occupied by Chinese and British troops who would supervise the Japanese surrender and repatriation. When the Chinese arrived, the government of Há» Chà Minh effectively ceased to exist. As French officials were freed from Japanese imprisonment, they began to reassert control over the country, particularly in the south. In the north, a deal was struck with the Chinese in which France traded concessions in China in return for Chinese support for its control of northern Vietnam. The French landed troops in the north. After failed negotiations with Há» Chà Minh over the possibility of his forming an independent government within the French Union, the French entered Hanoi and Há»'s Viá»t Minh fled into the hills and began an insurgency. In later years, after China became a communist nation able to supply weapons to Há» Chà Minh's forces, the Viet Minh gained the weapons and supplies necessary to transform themselves from an insurgency into a regular army. The Viet Minh eventually handed the French a major military defeat at Ãiá»n Biên Phủ. The French then negotiated their own departure from Indochina. North Vietnam was now controlled by Há» Chà Minh, who immediately formed a communist government.
The country was now effectively divided between north and south by a de-militarized zone. The South Vietnamese government, supported by the United States, refused to hold elections aimed at the unification of Vietnam as agreed to at the Geneva Conference. As opposition to Diem's rule grew, North Vietnam organized an insurgency in South Vietnam. The National Liberation Front (NLF) was run by, funded and supplied by North Vietnam. The competing countries in the Cold War -- the United States on South Vietnam's side, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China on North Vietnam's side -- became increasingly involved.
Há» received shipments of Russian and Chinese supplies at Haiphong Harbor. This material was then transported down the Truong Son Trail (known to the Americans as the Ho Chi Minh Trail) into the hands of the NLF and Viá»t Cá»ng in South Vietnam. Complicating matters, the Truong Son Trail ran for most of its length through neighboring Laos and Cambodia, ending about thirty miles from Saigon. It was impossible to block the shipments of supplies from the north without bombing or invading those neighboring countries. But this bombing did not take place until late in the war. Laos and Cambodia, in the meantime, had their own Communist insurgencies, with the Pathet Lao insurgent group in Laos organized by North Vietnam. Later on, the North Vietnamese would invade and occupy parts of Laos. Cambodia's leader made a secret agreement with North Vietnam that allowed North Vietnam to use Cambodian ports for the supply of weapons and other equipment to forces fighting with South Vietnam.
The South Vietnamese government and its Western allies portrayed the conflict as an action against the use of armed violence as a means of political change, a principled opposition to communism —to deter the expansion of Soviet-based control throughout Southeast Asia, and to set the tone for any likely future superpower conflicts. The North Vietnamese government and its subordinate organization (NLF) viewed the war as a struggle to unite the country under a socialist government and to repel a foreign aggressor —a virtual continuation of the earlier war for independence against the French.
From Colonialism to U.S. intervention
France had gained control of Indochina in a series of colonial wars beginning in the 1840s and lasting into the 1880s. At the Treaty of Versailles negotiations following the armistice that ended World War I in 1919, HỠChà Minh requested participation in order to obtain the independence of the Indochinese colonies. His request was rejected, and Indochina's status as a colony of France remained unchanged. During World War II, Vichy France cooperated with the occupying Imperial Japanese forces. Vietnam was under effective Imperial Japanese control, as well as de facto Japanese administrative control -- although the Vichy French continued to serve as the official administrators until 1944. In that year, the Japanese overthrew the French administration and humiliated its colonial officials in front of the Vietnamese population. The Japanese then began to encourage nationalist activity among the Vietnamese. Late in the war, Japan granted Vietnam nominal independence.
After the Japanese surrender, the Vietnamese nationalists, communists, and other groups hoped to finally take control of the country. The Japanese army in Indochina had assisted the Viet Minh -- Há»'s resistance army -- and other Vietnamese independence groups by imprisoning French officials and soldiers and handing over public buildings to the Vietnamese. On September 2, 1945, Há» Chà Minh spoke at a ceremony in which he announced the formation of a new Vietnamese government under his leadership. In his speech he cited the U.S. Declaration of Independence and a band played "The Star Spangled Banner." Há», who had been an agent of the Third Communist International since the early 1920s, hoped that the Americans would ally themselves with a Vietnamese nationalist movement, communist or otherwise. He based this hope on speeches by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt against the continuation of European colonialism after World War II. Roosevelt, however, had moderated his position after the British -- who wanted to keep their own colonies -- objected. In the end, U.S. policy was to make no objection to France taking back its colonies in Indochina, but to offer no material or military support to France if it encountered difficulties in so doing. In other words, U.S. policy was that France had to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people in keeping with Roosevelt's vision of the self-determination of Third World peoples. This policy would later change at the beginning of the Korean War, when the U.S. would equate Há»'s communism with that of the North Korean communists the U.S. was fighting in the Korean War.
The question of who would control Vietnam was complicated by the disposition of the various allied occupation forces at the end of World War II. Control of Indochina at the end of the war was divided between British and Chinese areas of occupation. The Chinese army arrived in the north a few days after HỠChà Minh's ceremony in September 1945, and took over areas north of the 16th parallel. The British arrived in the south in October and supervised the surrender and departure of the Japanese army from Indochina south of the 16th parallel.
In the South, the French prevailed upon the British to turn control of the region back over to them. French officials, when released from Japanese prisons at the end of September 1945, also took matters into their own hands in some areas. In the north, France negotiated with both the nationalist government of China and the Viet Minh. By agreeing to give up Shanghai and its other concessions in China, the French persuaded the Chinese to allow them to return to northern Vietnam and negotiate with the Viet Minh. The Viá»t Minh, Há»'s resistance army, agreed to allow French forces to land outside Hanoi, while France agreed to recognize an independent Vietnam within the French Union. However, negotiations to work out the details of this arrangement collapsed. The Chinese left, France seized Hanoi, and the Viet Minh fled to the countryside to organize an insurgency, setting the stage for the First Indochina War in which France attempted to reestablish Vietnam as part of a French overseas domain. In the meantime, Há» took advantage of the period of negotiation to liquidate competing nationalist groups in the north.
In a gradual process — accelerated by the establishment of the communist People's Republic of China — the Viet Minh transformed themselves into a well-equipped, modern conventional army. While they could not defeat the French in populated areas of the north, they did manage to gain control over the border with China and remote areas in places like Laos. After the Viá»t Minh's victory over the French at the battle of Äiá»n Biên Phủ, France decided to negotiate a withdrawal from Indochina. All of Indochina was granted independence, including Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. However, Vietnam was partitioned at the 17th parallel, above which the Viet Minh established a socialist state, (the Democratic Republic of Vietnam or DRV) and below which a non-communist state was established under the Emperor Bảo Äại (the State of Vietnam). Bao Dai's Prime Minister, Ngo Dinh Diem, shortly thereafter removed him from power, and established himself as President of the Republic of Vietnam.
As dictated in the Geneva Accords of 1954, the division was meant to be temporary, pending free elections for a national leadership. The agreement stipulated that the two military zones, which were separated by the temporary demarcation line, "should not in any way be interpreted as constituting a political or territorial boundary," and specifically stated that "general elections shall be held in July 1956."
However, the Diem government refused to enter into negotiations to hold the stipulated election, encouraged by the United States' determination to prevent a communist victory in an all-Vietnam election. Questions were also raised about the legitimacy of any poll held in the communist-run North. Diem's South Vietnamese government had not signed the Geneva Accords, so he felt no obligation to comply with them. On the communist side, even before the Geneva Accords were signed, HỠChà Minh had prepared to attack South Vietnam in case unification failed to take place through elections. His preparations included communication with thousands of covert communist agents in the south and the hiding of numerous weapons caches.
Beginning in the summer of 1955, Diem launched a 'Denounce the Communists' campaign, during which communists and other anti-government elements were arrested, imprisoned or executed. Also at this time, people moved across the partition line in both directions. It is estimated that around 100,000 Vietnamese moved from South Vietnam to North Vietnam, while perhaps 1,000,000 Vietnamese moved from north to south. One of the leading Communists in the South, Lê Duẩn, returned to Hanoi to urge that the Vietnam Workers' Party (VWP) take a firmer stand on national reunification. In January 1959, under pressure from southern cadres who were increasingly being successfully targeted by Diem's secret police, the Central Committee of the VWP issued a secret resolution authorizing the use of armed struggle in the South.
In December 1960, under instruction from Hanoi, southern communists established the National Liberation Front in order to overthrow the government of the South. The NLF was made up of two distinct groups: South Vietnamese intellectuals who opposed the South Vietnamese government and were nationalists, such as Truong Nhu Tang; and communists who had remained in the south after the partition and regroupment of 1954, such as Nguyen Thi Binh, as well as those communists who had come from the north. While there were many non-communist members of the NLF, they were subject to the control of the VWP cadres and increasingly side-lined as the conflict continued; they did, however, enable the NLF to portray itself as a primarily nationalist, rather than communist, movement.
The North Vietnamese occupied large parts of eastern Laos and supplied the NLF with weapons via the HỠChà Minh Trail. The Ho Chi Minh trail ran from North Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia (a violation of the neutrality of those countries by North Vietnam) into South Vietnam. In 1965, Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia made a deal with China and North Vietnam that allowed North Vietnamese forces to establish permanent bases in the country and to use the port of Sihanoukville for delivery of military supplies. The Prince was later deposed and the supply route closed by Cambodian Premier, Lon Nol, in 1970. In the meantime, the HỠChà Minh Trail had been steadily expanded to become the vital lifeline for communist forces in South Vietnam, including the Vietnam People's Army, and as a result it later became a target of U.S. air operations.
The Diá»m government was initially able to cope with the insurgency with the aid of U.S. advisers, and by 1962 seemed to be winning. Senior U.S. military leaders were receiving positive reports from the U.S. commander, Gen. Paul D. Harkins of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam. U.S. President John F. Kennedy had increased the number of American "advisers" in the belief that he could duplicate the success of British counterinsurgency warfare in Malaya. However, in 1963, a communist offensive that began with the Battle of Ap Bac inflicted major losses on South Vietnamese army units. This was the first large-scale battle since Dien Bien Phu, a major departure from the assassinations and guerrilla activities that had preceded it.
Ap Bac was a sign that the insurgency was escalating as a result of the increasing supplies of men and weapons from the North. Diem was already deeply unpopular with many of his own people because of his administration's nepotism, corruption, and its apparent bias in favor of the Catholic minority -- of which Diem was a part -- at the expense of the Buddhist majority. Policy-makers in Washington began to believe that Diem was incapable of defeating the communists, and even feared that he might make a deal with Ho Chi Minh. They began to entertain the idea of changing the leadership of South Vietnam.
In November, 1963, the U.S. embassy in Saigon indicated to coup plotters that they would not oppose the removal of Diem from power. The South Vietnamese President was overthrown by a military coup and was later executed (to the horror of President Kennedy.) Chaos ensued in the security and defense systems of South Vietnam, while Hanoi took advantage of the situation to increase its support for the insurgents in the South. South Vietnam then entered a period of extreme political instability with a succession of different military rulers; the United States' involvement in South Vietnam dramatically increased; and the 'Americanization' of the war began.
United States involvement
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Harry S Truman and Vietnam (1945-1953)
Milestones of U.S. involvement under Harry S Truman
March 9, 1945 — Japan overthrows nominal French authority in Indochina and declares an independent Vietnamese puppet state. The French administration is disarmed.
August 15, 1945 — Japan surrenders to the Allies. In Indochina, the Japanese administration allows Há» Chà Minh to take over control of the country. This is called the August Revolution. Há» Chà Minh borrows a phrase from the U.S. Declaration of Independence for his own declaration. Há» Chà Minh fights with a variety of other political factions for control of the major cities.
August 1945 — A few days after the Vietnamese "revolution", Chinese forces enter from the north and, as previously planned by the allies, establish an administration in the country as far south as the 16th parallel.
September 26, 1945: OSS officer Lt. Col. A. Peter Dewey — working with the Viet Minh to repatriate Americans captured by the Japanese — is shot and killed by the Viet Minh, becoming the first American casualty in Vietnam.
October 1945 — British troops land in southern Vietnam and establish a provisional administration. The British free French soldiers and officials imprisoned by the Japanese. The French begin taking control of cities within the British zone of occupation.
February 1946 — The French sign an agreement with China. France gives up its concessions in Shanghai and other Chinese ports. In exchange, China agrees to assist the French in returning to Vietnam north of the 16th parallel.
March 6, 1946 — After negotiations with the Chinese and the Viet Minh, the French sign an agreement recognizing Vietnam within the French Union. Shortly after, the French land at Haiphong and occupy the rest of northern Vietnam. The Viet Minh use the negotiating process with France and China to buy time to use their armed forces to destroy all competing nationalist groups in the north.
December 1946 — Negotiations between the Viet Minh and the French break down. The Viet Minh are driven out of Hanoi into the countryside.
1947–1949 — The Viet Minh fight a limited insurgency in remote rural areas of northern Vietnam.
1949 — Chinese communists reach the northern border of Indochina. The Viet Minh drive the French from the border region and begin to receive large amounts of weapons from the Soviet Union and China. The weapons transform the Viet Minh from an irregular small-scale insurgency into a conventional army.
May 1st 1950 — After the capture of Hainan Island from Chinese Nationalist forces by Chinese Communists, President Truman approves $10 million in military assistance for anti-communist efforts in Indochina.
Following the outbreak of the Korean War, Truman announces "acceleration in the furnishing of military assistance to the forces of France and the Associated States in Indochina…" and sends 123 non-combat troops to help with supplies to fight against the communist Viet Minh.
1951 — Truman authorizes $150 million in French support.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower and Vietnam (1953–1961)
Milestones of the escalation under Dwight D. Eisenhower.
1954 — The Viet Minh defeat the French at the battle of Dien Bien Phu. The defeat, along with the end of the Korean war the previous year, causes the French to seek a negotiated settlement to the war.
1954 — The Geneva Conference (1954), called to determine the post-French future of Indochina, proposes a temporary division of Vietnam, to be followed by nationwide elections to unify the country in 1956.
1954 — Two months after the Geneva conference, North Vietnam forms Group 100 with headquarters at Ban Namèo. Its purpose is to direct, organize, train and supply the Pathet Lao to gain control of Laos, which, along with Cambodia, is a part of the former "French Indochina".
1955 — North Vietnam launches an 'anti-landlord' campaign, during which counter-revolutionaries are imprisoned or killed. The numbers killed or imprisoned are disputed, with historian Stanley Karnow estimating about 6,000 while others (see the book "Fire in the Lake") estimate only 800. R.J. Rummel puts the figure as high as 200,000 [1].
November 1, 1955 — Eisenhower deploys the Military Assistance Advisory Group to train the South Vietnam Army. This marks the official beginning of American involvement in the war as recognized by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.[2]
April 1956 — The last French troops leave Vietnam.
1955–1956 — 900,000 Vietnamese flee the Viet Minh administration in North Vietnam and relocate in South Vietnam.
1956 — National unification elections do not occur.
December 1958 — North Vietnam invades Laos and occupies parts of the country
July 8, 1959 — Charles Ovnand and Dale R. Buis become the first Americans killed in action in Vietnam [3].
September 1959 — North Vietnam forms Group 959 which assumes command of the Pathet Lao forces in Laos
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John F. Kennedy and Vietnam (1961–1963)
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Timeline
January 1961 — Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev pledges support for "wars of national liberation" throughout the world. The idea of creating a neutral Laos is suggested to Kennedy.
May 1961 — Kennedy sends 400 American Green Beret "Special Advisors" to South Vietnam to train South Vietnamese soldiers following a visit to the country by Lyndon Johnson.
June 1961 — Kennedy and Khrushchev meet at Vienna. Kennedy protests North Vietnam's attacks on Laos and points out that the U.S. was supporting the neutrality of Laos. Both leaders agree to pursue a policy of creating a neutral Laos.
October 1961 — Following successful Viet Cong attacks, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara recommends sending six divisions (200,000 men) to Vietnam. Kennedy sends 16,000 before the end of his Presidency in 1963.
August 1, 1962 — Kennedy signs the Foreign Assistance Act of 1962 which provides "…military assistance to countries which are on the rim of the Communist world and under direct attack."
January 3, 1963 — Viet Cong victory in the Battle of Ap Bac.
May 1963 — Buddhists riot in South Vietnam after a conflict over the display of religious flags during the celebration of Buddha's birthday. Some Buddhists urge Kennedy to end U.S. support for Ngo Dinh Diem, who is Catholic. Photographs of protesting Buddhist monks burning themselves alive appear in U.S. newspapers.
May 1963 — Republican Barry Goldwater declares that the U.S. should fight to win or get the hell out of Vietnam. Later on, during his presidential campaign against Lyndon Johnson, his Democratic opponents accuse him of wanting to use atomic bombs in the conflict.
November 1, 1963 — Military officers launch a coup d'etat against Diem, with the tacit approval of the Kennedy administration. Diem leaves the presidential residence.
November 2, 1963 — Diem is discovered and assassinated by rebel leaders.
November 22, 1963 — Kennedy is assassinated.
In June 1961, John F. Kennedy met with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna, where they had a bitter disagreement over key U.S.-Soviet issues. This led to the conclusion by cold war strategists that Southeast Asia would be one of the major areas in which Soviet forces would test the USA's commitment to a containment policy that had begun during the Truman Administration and been solidified by the stalemate that resulted from the Korean War.
Although Kennedy's election campaign stressed long-range missile parity with the Soviets, he was also interested in using Special Forces for counterinsurgency warfare in Third World countries threatened by communist insurgencies. Originally intended for use behind front lines after a conventional invasion of Europe, Kennedy believed that the guerrilla tactics employed by special forces such as the Green Berets would be effective in the "brush fire" war in Vietnam. He saw British success in using such forces in Malaya as a strategic template.
The Kennedy administration remained essentially committed to the Cold War foreign policy inherited from the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. In 1961 Kennedy found himself faced with a three-part crisis that seemed similar to that faced by Truman in 1949–1950. 1961 had already seen the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the construction of the Berlin Wall, and a negotiated settlement between the pro-Western government of Laos and the Pathet Lao communist movement. Fearing that another failure on the part of the United States to gain control and stop communist expansion would fatally damage U.S. credibility with its allies and his own reputation, Kennedy was determined to "draw a line in the sand" and prevent a communist victory in Vietnam. 'Now we have a problem in making our power credible', he said, 'and Vietnam looks like the place.'[4]
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Frustrations and assassination of President Diá»m
The Kennedy administration grew increasingly frustrated with Diá»m. In 1963 a crackdown by Diá»m's forces against Buddhist monks protesting government policies prompted self-immolation by monks, leading to embarrassing press coverage. The most famous immolation incident is the self-burning of ThÃch Quảng Ãức to protest the government's actions against the Buddhist monks. Vietnam was a largely Buddhist nation (two-thirds were Buddhist in the Southern half), while Diá»m was a Roman Catholic. Although the protests of the Buddhists came from their dissatisfaction with the place of Buddhism in Vietnam, covert communist agents took advantage of the situation in order to fuel the anger of Buddhists and create social instability. The U.S. tried to pressure Diá»m by asking South Vietnamese generals to act against excesses against Buddhist protesters, to no avail. There was also general anger at Diá»m in U.S. circles because he was a strong-willed leader who made his own decisions instead of accepting American advice[citation needed]. With "at least the knowledge and approval of the White House and the American ambassador in Saigon" (LeFeber, "America, Russia and the Cold War", p. 233), the South Vietnamese military staged a coup d'état that overthrew Diá»m on November 1, 1963. The Americans were shocked at the subsequent murder of Diá»m which they did not expect.
The death of Diá»m made the South more unstable. The new military rulers were politically inexperienced and unable to provide the strong central authority Diá»m had provided. A period of coups and countercoups ensued. The overthrow of Diá»m also created a situation in which South Vietnamese military leaders were not willing to stand up to the U.S. as Diá»m had done. It created rival centers of power within the Vietnamese government that worked at cross-purposes to each other. Seven different governments rose to power in South Vietnam during 1964 alone, three during the weeks of August 16 to September 3. This struggle took place within the context of the larger communist insurgency, which itself was not abating. The communists, meanwhile, stepped up their efforts in order to exploit the vacuum of power.
General Maxwell Taylor was of crucial importance during the first weeks and months of the operations in South Vietnam. Whereas initially President Kennedy had told Taylor that "the independence of South Vietnam rests with the people and government of that country", Taylor was soon to recommend that 8,000 American combat troops be sent to the region at once. After making his report to the Cabinet and the Chiefs of Staff Taylor was to reflect on the decision to send troops to South Vietnam that, "I don't recall anyone who was strongly against it, except one man and that was the President. The President just didn't want to be convinced that this was the right thing to do... It was really the President's personal conviction that U.S. ground troops shouldn't go in." [1]
Kennedy was assassinated three weeks after Diá»m's death, and was automatically succeeded by Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson. President Johnson declared on November 24, 1963 that the United States would continue to support South Vietnam.
Lyndon B. Johnson and Vietnam (1963–1969)
Gulf of Tonkin and the Westmoreland Expansion (1964)
Main article: Gulf of Tonkin Incident
President Johnson appointed William Westmoreland to succeed Paul D. Harkins as commander of the U.S. Army in Vietnam in June, 1964. Troop strength under Westmoreland was to rise from 16,000 in 1964 to more than 500,000 when he left following the Tet Offensive in 1968. On July 27, 1964 5,000 additional U.S. military advisors were ordered to South Vietnam, bringing the total U.S. troop commitment to 21,000.
The massive escalation of the war from 1964 to 1968 was justified on the basis of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident on August 2-4, 1964, in which the Johnson Administration claimed that U.S. ships were attacked by the North Vietnamese. The accuracy of that claim is still hotly debated.
On the basis of the alleged attack the U.S. Senate approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on 7 August 1964, giving broad support to President Johnson to escalate U.S. involvement "as the President shall determine" without actually declaring war. The resolution passed unanimously in the House of Representatives and was opposed in the Senate only by Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska. In a televised speech, Morse declared that history would show that he and Gruening were serving "the best interests of the American people". In a separate televised address, President Johnson argued that "the challenge that we face in Southeast Asia today is the same challenge that we have faced with courage and that we have met with strength in Greece and Turkey, in Berlin and Korea, in Lebanon and in Cuba." National Security Council members, including Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk, and Maxwell Taylor, agreed on November 28, 1964, to recommend that Johnson adopt a plan for a two-stage escalation of bombing in North Vietnam.
With the United States' decision to escalate its involvement in the conflict, ANZUS Pact allies Australia and New Zealand agreed to contribute troops and material to the war effort. In late 1964, the Australian government reintroduced military conscription, which caused considerable controversy. All young men were required at age 20 to register with the authorities. Every 3–6 months there would be a lottery of sorts, and every man who had a birthday on the chosen date had to go for physical and psychological testing. Those who passed those tests were conscripted to the Army for two years. All conscripts that were sent to Vietnam were volunters. Like their Regular Army counterparts their tour was for 12 months only.
Operation Rolling Thunder (1965–1968)
Rolling Thunder was the code name for a sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam conducted by United States armed forces during the Vietnam War. Its purpose was to destroy the will of the North Vietnamese to fight, to destroy industrial bases and air defenses (Surface-to-air missile or SAMs), and to stop the flow of men and supplies down the HỠChà Minh Trail.
Starting in March 1965 Operation Rolling Thunder gradually escalated in intensity to force the communists to negotiate. However, the two principal areas from which supplies came — Haiphong and the Chinese border — were off limits to aerial attack, as were fighter bases. Restrictions on the bombing of civilian areas enabled the North Vietnamese to use them for military purposes, such as siting anti-aircraft guns on school grounds. Rolling Thunder's gradual escalation has been blamed for its failure, by giving the North Vietnamese time to adapt.
On March 31, 1968, in the aftermath of the Tet Offensive, Operation Rolling Thunder was restricted to encourage the North to negotiate. All bombing of the North was halted on October 31 just prior to the U.S. presidential election of 1968.
It is interesting to note that the U.S. both increased and reduced the intensity of bombing in order to "force" the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table, a contradictory tactic that demonstrates the ad hoc nature and uncertainties implicit in conducting a guerrilla war.
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U.S. troop build-up
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184,000 troops at end of 1965
In February 1965, the United States base at Pleiku was attacked twice, resulting in the deaths of over a dozen U.S. military personnel. The guerilla attacks were used to justify reprisal air strikes [Operation Flaming Dart] against North Vietnam — the first time the U.S. launched an air strike in the north because its forces had been attacked in the south. U.S. National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy said "the incident at Pleiku was like a streetcar --- you had to jump on board when it came along." That same month the U.S. began air strikes in the south. A U.S. Army HAWK missile battery was sent to Da Nang, the second largest city in southern Vietnam with the second biggest airport. The Soviet Union during late 1965 began shipping anti-aircraft missiles to North Vietnam.
On March 8, 1965, 3,500 United States Marines became the first US combat troops to land in South Vietnam, adding to the 25,000 US military advisers already in place. On the 5 May 1965 the 173d Airborne Brigade(Sep)became the first U.S. Army ground combat unit committed to the war in South Vietnam. Joining the 1st & 2nd 503rd Battalions of the 173d(sep) were: 1st Battalion Royal Australian Regiment, The Prince of Wales Light Horse APC Unit(a Citizens Military Force unit at that time), 105 Field Battery Royal Australian Artillery and 161 Field Battery Royal New Zealand Artillery, Company "A" 82nd Aviation Battalion. And various Australian Supporting Units. The air war escalated as well: On July 24, 1965, four F-4C Phantoms escorting a bombing raid at Kang Chi became the targets of North Vietnamese antiaircraft missiles in the first such attack on U.S. airplanes in the war. One airplane was shot down and the other three sustained damage. Four days later, President Johnson ordered an increase in the number of US troops in Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000. The next day, July 29, the first 4,000 101st Airborne Division paratroopers arrived in Vietnam, landing at Cam Ranh Bay.
On August 18, 1965, Operation Starlite began as the first major U.S. ground battle of the war in which 5,500 US Marines destroyed a Viet Cong stronghold on the Van Tuong peninsula in Quảng Ngãi Province. The Marines had been tipped off by a Viet Cong deserter, who revealed a planned attack against the U.S. base at Chu Lai. The Viet Cong learned from their defeat and subsequently tried to avoid fighting a U.S.-style ground war by conducting small unit guerrilla operations.
The North Vietnamese sent regular army troops to southern Vietnam beginning in late 1964 to conduct guerrilla and conventional military operations against the South Vietnamese Army. Some North Vietnamese officials favored an immediate invasion, and a plan was developed to use PAVN (Vietnam People's Army) units to split southern Vietnam in half through the Central Highlands. In the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley, the PAVN suffered heavy casualties from U.S. air power, prompting a return to guerrilla tactics.
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U.S. troop increase and the Battle of Khe Sanh
On November 27, 1965 The Pentagon declared that if major sweep operations needed to neutralize Viet Cong forces were to succeed, the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam would have to be increased from 120,000 to 400,000. By the end of 1965, there were already 184,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam. In February, 1966 there was a meeting between the head of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam General William Westmoreland and President Johnson in Honolulu. Westmoreland argued that the U.S. presence had succeeded in preventing a defeat of the South Vietnamese government, but that more troops were needed to take the offensive and prevent any future threat to South Vietnam. He claimed that an immediate troop increase would lead to a "crossover point" in Viá»t Cá»ng and PAVN casualties being reached in early 1967, after which point a decisive victory would be possible. Johnson authorized an increase in troop numbers to 429,000 by August 1966.
The large increase of troops enabled Westmoreland to carry out search and destroy operations in accordance with the U.S. attrition strategy that saw in high body counts the key to demoralizing and defeating the enemy. In January 1966, during Operation Masher/White Wing in Binh Dinh Province, the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division killed 1,342 Viet Cong by repeatedly sweeping the area. This operation continued under Thayer/Irving until October, and a further 1,000 Viet Cong were killed and numerous others wounded and captured. U.S. forces conducted forays into Viet Cong-controlled "War Zone C", an area northwest of the densely populated Saigon area near the Cambodian border in Operations Birmingham, El Paso, and Attleboro. In 1st Corp Tactical Zone (CTZ) located in the Northern provinces of South Vietnam, North Vietnamese conventional forces entered Quang Tri province. Fearing an assault on Quang Tri city, U.S. Marines initiated Operation Hastings, which caused the North Vietnamese to retreat over the demilitarized zone (DMZ). Afterwards, a follow-up operation called Prairie began. "Pacification", or the securing of the South Vietnamese countryside and people, was mostly conducted by the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN). However, morale in the ARVN was poor due both to corruption and the incompetence of ARVN generals. Little was accomplished other than high desertion rates.
On October 12, 1967 U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk declared that proposals in Congress for peace initiatives were futile because of North Vietnam's repeated refusals to negotiate. The position of North Vietnam was, simply, that the U.S. should leave South Vietnam and overthrow the South Vietnamese government on its way out. Johnson held a secret meeting with a group of some of the nation's most esteemed policy wonks ("the Wise Men") on November 2 and asked them to suggest ways to unite increasingly concerned and discontented U.S. citizens behind the war effort. Johnson announced on November 17 that, while much remained to be done, "We are inflicting greater losses than we're taking....We are making progress." Following up on this, General William Westmoreland, on November 21, told news reporters: "I am absolutely certain that, whereas in 1965 the enemy was winning, today he is certainly losing." Nevertheless, it was recognized that, although the communists were taking a major beating, they had committed themselves to sustaining much larger losses of both soldiers and civilians than the Americans themselves would ever tolerate.
Most of the Vietnam People's Army (PAVN) operational capability was possible only because of the unhindered movement of men along the Há» Chà Minh Trail in Laos and Cambodia. In order to threaten this flow of supplies, a firebase was set up on the Vietnamese side of the Laotian border near the town of Khe Sanh. The U.S. planned to use the base to draw large forces of the Vietnam People's Army into battle on terms unfavorable to the north. The position of the base also allowed it to be used as a launching point for U.S. raids against the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The U.S. also used the occasion to launch a state-of-the-art electronic warfare project -- a brainchild of U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. This $2.5 billion project involved "wiring" the Ho Chi Minh Trail with sensors connected to data processing centers in order to monitor the movement of North Vietnamese troops and supplies. It was one of the most highly classified operations of the war (from "Boyd" by Robert Coram, p. 268). To the North Vietnamese leaders, the U.S. firebase at Khe Sanh looked like a wonderful opportunity to repeat their famous victory at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and hand the U.S.A. a decisive and humiliating defeat. Over the next few months, both the PAVN and U.S. Marines added forces to the area, with the Battle of Khe Sanh "officially" beginning on January 21st, 1968. Every PAVN attempt to take the base was repulsed with heavy casualties, and even PAVN rear areas were under constant attack by U.S. aircraft, including massive B-52 strikes. When the battle, which extended over a long period and was hard-fought on both sides, finally wound down in April, the PAVN had lost an estimated 8,000 KIA (killed in action) and many more wounded while failing to threaten resupply to the U.S. base (in contrast to the battle of Äiá»n Biên Phủ in which French soldiers were cut off and defeated.) This failure was due to the U.S.'s massive resupply ability and helicopter support. Some have suggested that the PAVN used the battle to divert U.S. attention away from other North Vietnamese/Viet Cong operations such as the upcoming Tet Offensive (see article below), but modern study suggests that the opposite is true. The Battle of Khe Sanh diverted North Vietnamese forces and equipment intended for Tet and other operations. Although the battle had a successful outcome for the U.S., constant allusions to Dien Bien Phu in news reports and the false but understandable perception that the base was in danger of falling caused it to be seen in a negative light.
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Operation Junction City (1967)
On February 22, 1967 US and South Vietnamese forces conducted an operation Junction City, one of the largest operations of the Vietnam conflict against NLF units. The operation was largely successful.
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Tet Offensive (1968)
Late in 1967, General Westmoreland had said that it was "conceivable" that in "two years or less" U.S. forces could be phased out of the war, turning over more and more of the job to the South Vietnamese. [The New York Times, "The 'Wobble on the War on Capitol Hill," 17 Dec 1967] Thus, it was a considerable shock to public opinion when, on January 30, 1968, NLF and PAVN forces broke the yearly Tet Truce and mounted the Tet Offensive (named after Tết Nguyên Ãán, the lunar new year festival which is the most important Vietnamese holiday) in South Vietnam, attacking nearly every major city in South Vietnam with small groups of well-armed soldiers. The goal of the attacks was to seize all important South Vietnamese government offices in order to paralyze the South Vietnamese Army and instigate an uprising among sympathetic South Vietnamese citizens. No such uprising took place. On the contrary, the Tet Offensive drove some previously apathetic South Vietnamese to fight for the South Vietnamese government.
Attacks everywhere were quickly repulsed except in Saigon, where the fighting lasted for three days, and in Hue, where it went on for a month. During the communist occupation of Hue, 2,800 South Vietnamese were murdered by the Viet Cong in what was the single worst massacre of the war (see Massacre at Hue). Massacre though it was, casualties were immeasurably higher for the Viet Cong than for the South Vietnamese. Most Viet Cong and NLF members, who normally pretended to be uninvolved South Vietnamese civilians while engaging in guerrilla warfare, were exposed when they showed their hand during the Tet offensive and were destroyed. Within a month, General Westmoreland claimed — correctly — that the Tet Offensive had been a military disaster for the Viet Cong, and that their backs were essentially broken. Fighting on the communist side after this point was left almost entirely to North Vietnamese (PAVN) forces.
Most of the American media characterized the Tet Offensive as a defeat for the United States. Walter Cronkite, "the most trusted man in America", declared his belief on the CBS Evening News that it was now clear to him that the United States could not succeed in Vietnam. Part of the reason for this perception was that the part of South Vietnam that television viewers naturally expected would be the most secure — the United States embassy in Saigon — had come under attack, and that attack had been televised in living rooms across America. People did not understand why such an attack was possible. The existence of the Truong Son Trail, its passage through countries that the U.S. could not attack, and the fact that it ended within thirty miles of the South Vietnamese capital, were details that escaped the attention of many.
While the U.S. had won a victory by destroying hundreds of thousands of NLF/Viet Cong guerrillas during the Tet Offensive, it could no longer engage the Vietnam People's Army troops without taking the war to them. Short of expanding the war to all of Indochina, there was no clear U.S. strategy for victory. Leaders considered expanding the ground war into North Vietnam by sending U.S. troops north of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) to be unacceptable due to the high risk of Chinese intervention, and any attempt at expanding the war into Laos or Cambodia would have been politically controversial in addition to resulting in the likely countermove of North Vietnam's moving its forces further westward into those countries.
Although the communists' military objectives had been thwarted, they were winning on the propaganda front. Many U.S. citizens felt that the government was misleading them about a war without a clear end. When General Westmoreland called for still more troops to be sent to Vietnam, Clark Clifford — a member of Johnson's cabinet — came out against the war. Public opinion notwithstanding, most U.S. political leaders regardless of their beliefs could no longer see a clear strategy for success. And the political stakes were high, not just in money spent and lives lost, but in the continuation of an inequitable military draft that was partly responsible for growing rebellion on college campuses and in society at large.
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Creighton W. Abrams assumes command
Soon after Tet, Westmoreland was replaced by his deputy, General Creighton W. Abrams. Abrams pursued a very different approach, favoring more openness with the media, less indiscriminate use of air strikes and heavy artillery, elimination of body count as the key indicator of battlefield success, and more meaningful cooperation with South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) forces. His strategy, although yielding positive results, came too late to influence U.S. public opinion.
Facing a troop shortage, on October 14, 1968, the United States Department of Defense announced that the United States Army and Marines would be sending about 24,000 troops back to Vietnam for involuntary second tours. Two weeks later on October 31, citing progress in the Paris peace talks, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announced what became known as the October Surprise when he ordered a complete cessation of "all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam" effective November 1. Peace talks eventually broke down, however, and one year later, on November 3, 1969, then President Richard M. Nixon addressed the nation on television and radio asking the "silent majority" to join him in solidarity with the Vietnam War effort and to support his own policy of achieving an end to the war and American troop withdrawal by strengthening the South Vietnamese Army so that it could defend South Vietnam on its own.
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Richard Nixon and Vietnam (1969–1974)
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Vietnamization
Nixon was elected President and began his policy of slow disengagement from the war. The goal was to gradually build up the South Vietnamese Army so that it could fight the war on its own. This policy became the cornerstone of the so-called "Nixon Doctrine". As applied to Vietnam, the doctrine was called "Vietnamization".
During this period, the United States conducted a gradual troop withdrawal from Vietnam. Nixon continued to use air power to bomb North Vietnam and Viet Cong forces in the south. The U.S. also attempted to disrupt North Vietnam's supply system by attacking the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the lead-up to withdrawal. The U.S. attacked North Vietnamese bases inside Cambodia, used its influence to achieve a change in government in Cambodia that led to the closing of Cambodian ports to North Vietnamese war supplies, and persuaded South Vietnam to launch a massive but ultimately unsuccessful operation into Laos to shut down the part of the Ho Chi Minh trail that traversed that country. More bombs were dropped on Vietnam under the Nixon presidency than under Johnson's, and U.S. casualties fell significantly. The Nixon administration was determined to remove U.S. troops from the theater while strengthening the ability of the ARVN to defend the south.
One of Nixon's main foreign policy goals had been the achievement of a breakthrough in U.S. relations with China and the Soviet Union. An avowed anti-communist early in his political career, Nixon could make diplomatic overtures to the Russian and Chinese communists without being accused of having communist sympathies. The result of those overtures was an era of detente that led to nuclear arms reductions in the U.S. and Soviet Union and the beginnings of a dialogue with China. In this context, Nixon treated the Vietnam War as simply another limited conflict forming part of a bigger tapestry of superpower relations. This gambit defused some anti-war opposition at home and secured movement at the negotiating table in Paris, but succeeded only partially so far as material conditions on the ground were concerned.
China and the U.S.S.R. had been the principal backers of the Vietnam People's Army through large amounts of military and financial support. The two communist powers competed with one another to prove their "fraternal socialist links" with the communist regime in the north. That support would increase in the years leading up to, and after, the U.S. departure in 1973, enabling the North Vietnamese to mount a full-scale conventional war against the south, complete with tanks, upgraded jet fighters, and a modern fuel pipeline snaking through parts of Laos and North Vietnam. The fact that the PAVN was able to mount such attacks in spite of years of massive U.S. bombing indicates that Soviet and Chinese military assistance to North Vietnam had increased greatly, although the north was drained of human resources and had to resort to allowing youths under 18 years of age to fight.
Nixon's heavy bombing of Hanoi, partly facilitated by his diplomatic overtures to China, pressured North Vietnam back to the negotiating table, allowing America a face-saving exit or "decent interval" as Nixon's national security adviser Henry Kissinger called it. The Soviets and Chinese continued to supply the DRV with large amounts of military aid, thereby facilitating the fall of South Vietnam when it came in 1975, after just such a "decent interval".
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My Lai massacre
The morality of U.S. conduct of the war was a major political issue both in the United States and abroad. First, there was the question whether a proxy war like Vietnam without a clear and decisive path to victory was worth fighting and worth the casualties sustained both by the combatants and by civilians. Second, there was the question whether a guerrilla war in which the enemy was often indistinguishable from civilians could be fought at all without unacceptable casualties among innocent civilians. Last, there was the question whether young, inexperienced U.S. soldiers -- many of them involuntary conscripts -- could reasonably be expected to engage in such guerrilla warfare without succumbing to stress and resorting to acts of wanton brutality. Fighting a mostly invisible enemy mixed in the civilian population -- an enemy that did not obey the conventional rules of warfare -- and suffering injuries and deaths from booby traps and attacks by soldiers who pretended to be civilians could not help but lead to the kind of fear and hatred that would compromise morals.
In 1969, U.S. investigative journalist Seymour Hersh exposed the My Lai massacre and its cover-up, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. It came to light that Lt. William Calley, a platoon leader in Vietnam, had been ordered to investigate and, by whatever means necessary, dissolve Viet Cong control in a village that was believed to be harboring the Viet Cong as well as a large stash of weapons and ammunition. Upon arriving at the village, Lt. Calley and his men discovered that it was populated mainly by women and children. The near absence of adult males, who might reasonably have been presumed to be Viet Cong in hiding, coupled with the fact that U.S. intelligence had declared that the village was a Viet Cong hotspot, caused Lt. Calley to weigh his options. After thought and deliberation, his men massacred several hundred Vietnamese civilians, including women, babies, and the elderly. The massacre was stopped only after three U.S. soldiers (Glenn Andreotta, Lawrence Colburn and Hugh Thompson, Jr.) noticed the carnage from their helicopter and intervened to prevent their fellow soldiers from killing any more civilians. Calley was given a life sentence after his court-martial in 1970 but was later pardoned by President Nixon. Cover-ups may have happened in other cases, as detailed in the Pulitzer Prize-winning article series about the Tiger Force by the Toledo Blade in 2003.
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Pentagon Papers
Main article: Pentagon Papers
The credibility of the U.S. government suffered in 1971 when The New York Times, and later The Washington Post and other newspapers, published The Pentagon Papers. This top-secret historical study of Vietnam, contracted by Robert McNamara (Secretary of Defense under presidents Kennedy and Johnson), and leaked to the press by Daniel Ellsberg, presented a pessimistic view of the likelihood of victory in Vietnam and generated criticism of U.S. policy. While there was little in the actual papers of much consequence, the government's legal and extra-legal efforts to prevent their publication -- mainly on national security grounds to prevent future leaks and publication of classified information -- created a false impression of their significance among the general public.
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Cambodian incursion and the Kent State Massacre (1970)
In 1965, Cambodian prince Sihanouk, pursuing a policy of official neutrality with regard to the conflict in neighboring Vietnam, made a secret deal with China and North Vietnam, giving them bases and access to Cambodia's ports. Three years later, a communist insurgency threatened the stability of Cambodia. Communist Khmer Rouge guerrillas -- extremists within the communist movement whose methods were similar to those of Stalin and Mao during the Cultural Revolution in China -- took shelter in the areas of Cambodia controlled by North Vietnam. In 1970, Prince Sihanouk was deposed, and Cambodia was led by Lon Nol, who closed Cambodia's ports to Vietnamese war supplies and demanded that North Vietnam remove its army. Those moves were reported in the western media as moves away from Sihanouk's enlightened policy of neutrality. Nixon ordered a military "incursion" into Cambodia in order to destroy NLF sanctuaries bordering on South Vietnam, close down the transfer of supplies and men along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, take pressure off a fragile Cambodian government threatened by its own communist insurgency, and force the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table. The Cambodian Incursion prompted more protests on U.S. college campuses. Four students were killed and a score injured by National Guard and police forces during demonstrations at Kent and Jackson State universities.
One unintended effect of the incursion was to push communist forces deeper into Cambodia, which destabilized the country and allowed the Khmer Rouge to consolidate its power. Prince Sihanouk ended up in China, where he became the political figurehead for the Khmer Rouge. He lent his personal credibility and popularity to their goal of overthrowing the Cambodian government, which they accomplished in 1975. Under the leadership of Pol Pot, a Maoist extremist, the Khmer Rouge set out to destroy every last remnant of "bourgeois ideology". The capital city Phnom Penh was emptied of its population, because cities were considered counterrevolutionary cesspools of bourgeois decadence. The populace was sent to the countryside to eke out a living on farms. The upper classes and intelligentsia were killed, and up to a third of the Cambodian population perished.
Positive results of the Cambodian incursion, from the point of view of the U.S., were that it interrupted the flow of soldiers and military supplies from North Vietnam, reduced the caches of weapons stored by North Vietnam in Cambodia, seriously compromised the ability of North Vietnam to conduct war in the south, and allowed a respite for the transfer of the defense of South Vietnam from U.S. to South Vietnamese forces ("Vietnamization" of the war). These factors, together with the prior destruction of the NLF and Viet Cong during the Tet Offensive and the later intensive bombings of Hanoi, forced the North Vietnamese to negotiate in Paris on terms more favorable to the United States. U.S. forces left Cambodia by June 30.
In an effort to lessen opposition to the war in the U.S., Nixon announced on October 12, 1970, that the United States would withdraw 40,000 more troops from Vietnam before Christmas. Later that month on October 30, the worst monsoon to hit Vietnam in six years caused large floods, killed 293, left 200,000 homeless, and temporarily halted the war.
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Laos incursion (1971)
Backed by U.S. air and artillery support, South Vietnamese troops invaded the portions of Laos occupied by North Vietnam on February 13, 1971 in Operation Lam Son 719, an ultimately failed attempt to close the Ho Chi Minh Trail. On August 18 of that year, Australia and New Zealand decided to withdraw their troops from Vietnam. The total number of U.S. troops in Vietnam dropped to 196,700 on October 29, 1971, the lowest level since January, 1966. On November 12, 1971, Nixon set a February 1, 1972 deadline to remove another 45,000 U.S. troops from Vietnam.
Vietnamization received a severe test in the spring of 1972 when the North Vietnamese launched a massive offensive across the DMZ using conventional forces. Beginning March 30, the "Easter Offensive" quickly overran much of Military Region 1 -- formerly known as I Corps -- including Quang Tri, and threatened the city of Hue. Early in April the North Vietnamese opened three additional fronts in the offensive in the Central Highlands and Binh Dinh province of Military Region 2 and against An Loc in Military Region 3, threatening to overrun the entire country.
The United States countered with a buildup of American airpower to support ARVN defensive operations and to conduct Operation Linebacker against North Vietnam, but continued the withdrawal of American troops, now numbering less than 100,000, as scheduled. By June only six infantry battalions remained in South Vietnam, and on August 12, the last ground combat troops left the country. The ARVN eventually stopped the North Vietnamese offensive on all fronts, recapturing Quang Tri in September. Both sides considered this somewhat of a validation of the overall strategy of Vietnamization supported by heavy U.S. airpower.
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1972 election and the Christmas Bombings
In the 1972 U.S. presidential election the war was again a major issue. An antiwar candidate, George McGovern, ran against President Nixon. Nixon ended Linebacker on October 22 and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger declared that "peace is at hand" shortly before Election day, dealing a deathblow to McGovern's campaign, which was already far behind in opinion surveys. However, the peace agreement was not signed until the next year, leading to charges that Kissinger's announcement was a political ploy. The Nixon Administration claimed that North Vietnamese negotiators had made use of Kissinger's pronouncement as an opportunity to embarrass the president and to weaken the U.S. position at the negotiation table. White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler on November 30, 1972 told the press that there would be no more public announcements concerning U.S. troop withdrawals from Vietnam due to the fact that troop levels were then down to 27,000.
With a perceived stalemate in the Paris peace negotiations, President Nixon ordered a resumption of the bombing of North Vietnam using B-52s. Operation Linebacker II began December 18 with large raids against both Hanoi and Haiphong. Although causing many protests both domestically and internationally, and despite significant losses of B-52s over North Vietnam, Nixon continued the bombing until December 29, when the North Vietnamese agreed to resume talks. Up until this time, there had not been heavy U.S. bombing of Hanoi and targeting of North Vietnamese leaders.
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Paris Peace Accords (1973)
On January 15, 1973, citing progress in peace negotiations, President Nixon announced the suspension of offensive action against North Vietnam, to be followed by a unilateral withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Vietnam. The Paris Peace Accords were signed on January 27, 1973, officially ending direct U.S. involvement in the Vietnam conflict. The signing of the Accords won the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for U.S. National Security Adviser and lead negotiator Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese Politburo member and lead negotiator Le Duc Tho. Five days before the peace accords were signed, Lyndon Johnson, whose presidency had been marred by the war, died. The mood during his state funeral was one of intense recrimination because the war's wounds were still raw. However, there was relief not only that U.S. involvement in Vietnam had ended, but also that a chapter in one of the most tragic and divisive eras in the United States had at last come to an end.
The first U.S. prisoners of war were released by North Vietnam on February 11, 1973, and all U.S. soldiers were ordered to leave by March 29. Soldiers returning from the Vietnam War were generally not treated as heroes, and were sometimes even condemned for their participation in the war. The peace agreement, in the meantime, did not last.
As an inducement for Nguyen Van Thieu's South Vietnamese government to sign the Peace Accords, President Nixon had promised that the United States would provide financial and limited military support (in the form of air strikes) so that the south could continue to defend itself. But Nixon was fighting for his political life in the growing Watergate Scandal, facing an increasingly hostile Congress that held the power of the purse, and was able to exert little influence on a hostile public long sick of the Vietnam War. Thus, Nixon broke his promises to South Vietnam. Economic aid to South Vietnam continued (after being cut nearly in half), but most of it was siphoned off by corrupt officials in the South Vietnamese government, and little actually went to the war effort. At the same time, aid to North Vietnam from the U.S.S.R. increased. With the United States no longer heavily involved in Vietnam, both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. no longer saw the war as significant to their relations. The balance of power shifted decisively in North Vietnam's favor, and the north subsequently launched a major military offensive against the south.
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Gerald Ford and Vietnam (1974–1975)
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Total U.S. withdrawal
In December 1974, Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act of 1974, which cut off all military funding to the South Vietnamese government and made unenforceable the peace terms negotiated by Nixon. Nixon, threatened with impeachment because of the Watergate scandal, had resigned his office. His vice president stepped in to finish his term. The new President Ford vetoed the legislation passed by Congress, but his veto was overridden.
By 1975, the South Vietnamese Army stood alone against the well-organized, highly determined, and foreign-funded North Vietnamese. In South Vietnam, there was increasing chaos. The withdrawal of the U.S. had compromised an economy that had thrived largely due to U.S. financial support and the presence of large numbers of U.S. troops. Along with the rest of the non-oil-exporting world, South Vietnam suffered economically from the oil price shocks caused by the Arab oil embargo and a subsequent global economic downturn.
In early March, 1975, the Vietnam People's Army launched an invasion of the Central Highlands supported by tanks and heavy artillery, splitting the South Vietnam in two. South Vietnamese President Thieu was fearful that South Vietnamese troops in the northern provinces of South Vietnam would be isolated due to a Vietnam People's Army encirclement. He decided to redeploy of South Vietnamese troops from the northern provinces of South Vietnam into the Central Highlands. But the withdrawal of South Vietnamese forces from the north soon turned into a bloody retreat as North Vietnam launched its army south over the border. While South Vietnamese forces retreated from the northern provinces, splintered South Vietnamese forces in the Central Highlands fought desperately against the Vietnam People's Army.
Final North Vietnamese offensive
North Vietnam had effectively launched a full-scale conventional military invasion designed to conquer South Vietnam by force.
On March 11, 1975 Ban-Me-Thuot fell to North Vietnam. North Vietnam's 3rd Army Corps (Tay Nguyen) began its attack in the early morning hours. After a violent artillery barrage, the 4,000-man garrison defending the city retreated with their families. On March 15, President Thieu ordered the Central Highlands and the northern provinces to be abandoned, in what he declared to be a "lighten the top and keep the bottom" strategy. South Vietnamese General Phu abandoned the cities of Pleiku and Kontum and retreated to the coast in what became known as the "column of tears". General Phu led his troops to Tum Ky on the coast, but as the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) retreated, civilians also went with them. Due to already-destroyed roads and bridges, Phu's column slowed down as the Vietnam People's Army (PAVN) closed in. As the column staggered down the mountains to the coast, it was shelled by the PAVN. By April 1, the column ceased to exist after 60,000 ARVN troops were killed.
On March 20, Thieu reversed himself and ordered that Hue, Vietnam's 3rd-largest city, be held "at all costs". But as the PAVN attacked, panic ensued, and South Vietnamese resistance collapsed. On March 22, the PAVN launched a siege of Hue. Civilians jammed into the airport, seaports, and the docks. Some even swam into the ocean to reach boats and barges. The ARVN were routed along with the civilians, and some South Vietnamese soldiers shot civilians just to make room for themselves to retreat. On March 25, after a 3-day siege, Hue fell.
As Hue fell, PAVN rockets hit downtown Da Nang and its airport. By March 28, 35,000 troops of PAVN's 2nd Corps (Huong Giang) were poised to attack in the suburbs. On March 29, a World Airways jet flown by U.S. pilot Edward Daley landed in Da Nang to rescue women and children; instead, 300 men jammed onto the flight, mostly ARVN troops. On March 30, Easter Sunday, 100,000 leaderless ARVN troops surrendered as the PAVN marched victoriously through Da Nang. With the fall of Da Nang, the defense of the Central Highlands and northern provinces collapsed. With the northern half of South Vietnam under their control, the PAVN prepared the final phase of its offensive, the HỠChà Minh campaign. The plan: By May 1, capture Saigon before South Vietnamese forces could regroup to defend it.
North Vietnam continued its attack as South Vietnamese forces attempted to hold back the invasion. On April 7, 3 PAVN divisions of the 4th Army Corps (Cuu Long) attacked Xuan-loc, 40 miles east of Saigon , where they met fierce resistance from the ARVN 18th Infantry division. For two bloody weeks, severe fighting raged in the city as the ARVN defenders, in a last-ditch effort, tried desperately to save South Vietnam from conquest. The ARVN 18th Infantry division used many advanced weapons against the PAVN; this was the final phase in which South Vietnamese troops fought very well. But on April 21, the exhausted and besieged army garrison defending Xuan-loc surrendered. A bitter and tearful Nguyá»
n VÄn Thiá»u resigned on April 21, declaring that the United States had "betrayed South Vietnam", and displaying the 1972 document in which the U.S. had promised that it would retaliate against North Vietnam should they attack. Thiá»u left for Taiwan on April 25, leaving control of his doomed government to General DÆ°Æ¡ng VÄn Minh.
By now, PAVN tanks had reached Bien Hoa. They turned towards Saigon, clashing with occasional isolated South Vietnamese units on the way.
Fall of Saigon
By April, the weakened South Vietnamese Army had collapsed on all fronts. The North Vietnamese invasion forced South Vietnamese troops into a bloody retreat that ended in a siege at Xuan-loc, a city 40 miles from Saigon, and the last South Vietnamese defense line before Saigon. The 'Vietnam Babylift' [5] evacuated nearly 3,000 babies and children in harm's way in South Vietnam to the United States and several other countries. On April 21, the defense of Xuan-loc collapsed and PAVN troops and tanks rapidly advanced to Saigon. On April 27, 100,000 PAVN troops encircled Saigon, which was to be defended by 30,000 ARVN troops. In order to increase panic and disorder in the city, the PAVN troops began shelling the airport. With the closure of the airport, large numbers of people who might otherwise have fled the city found that they had no way out. On April 29, the U.S. launched Option IV, arguably the largest helicopter evacuation in history.
Chaos, unrest, and panic ensued as hysterical South Vietnamese officials and civilians scrambled to leave Saigon before it was too late. Helicopters began evacuating both U.S. and South Vietnamese citizens from the U.S. embassy and the airport. Evacuations were delayed until the last minute because U.S. Ambassador Martin thought that Saigon could be held and defended. The evacuations began in an atmosphere of desperation as hysterical crowds of South Vietnamese vied for limited seats on the departing helicopters. Martin had pleaded with the U.S. government, to no avail, to send $700 million in emergency aid to South Vietnam in order to bolster the Saigon regime's ability to fight and mobilize fresh South Vietnamese units. It was now too late for any amount of money to save the situation, with Saigon surrounded and South Vietnamese troops outnumbered.
In the U.S., South Vietnam was now perceived as doomed. President Gerald Ford gave a speech on April 23 declaring the end of the Vietnam War and the end of all U.S. aid to the Saigon regime. The helicopter evacuation continued day and night as PAVN tanks breached the outskirts of Saigon. In the early morning hours of April 30, the last U.S. Marines evacuated the embassy as South Vietnamese civilians poured over the embassy perimeter and swarmed onto its grounds.
Tank skirmishes began as ARVN M-41 tanks attacked the PAVN's heavily armored Soviet T-54 tanks. PAVN troops overcame this resistance, quickly capturing the U.S. embassy, the South Vietnamese government army garrison, the police headquarters, radio station, presidential palace, and other vital facilities. The PAVN encountered greater than expected resistance from small and scattered ARVN formations. By now, the helicopter evacuations that had evacuated 7,000 U.S. and Vietnamese had ended. The presidential palace was captured and the NLF flag waved victoriously over it. Thieu's successor, South Vietnamese President DÆ°Æ¡ng VÄn Minh attempted to surrender Saigon. However, PAVN colonel Búi TÃn informed Minh that he did not have anything to surrender. President Minh ordered South Vietnamese troops to lay down their weapons.
Columns of South Vietnamese troops came out of their defensive positions and surrendered. Saigon fell on April 30, 1975.
The Second Indochina War is considered by some to be the United States' first military defeat with over 58,000 U.S. dead and many more severely injured. As for the people of South Vietnam, over a million ARVN soldiers died in the 30-year conflict. More than one million communist soldiers and approximately 4 million Vietnamese civilians on both sides died.
The last official U.S. battle in Indochina was on May 15, 1975, when 18 soldiers were killed on the last day of a rescue operation known as the Mayagüez incident involving a skirmish with the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Those soldiers are listed last on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
North Vietnam united both North and South Vietnam on July 2, 1976 to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Saigon was renamed HỠChà Minh City in honor of the former president of North Vietnam. Thousands of supporters of the South Vietnamese government were rounded up and sent to "re-education" camps. North Vietnam followed up its victory by first conquering Laos and then Cambodia. Vietnamese troops controlled both countries until the late 1980s. In 1979, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam also entered into a brief war with China.
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Post War policies (1975 – Present)
After the Vietnam war the United States entered a period of relative calm. Any temptation to commit U.S. troops to another proxy war with the Soviet Union or China was resisted. Detente with the latter countries made such wars less likely, although superpower competition persisted, with the major powers seeking to extend their influence and block their rivals through both covert and more direct actions in Nicaragua, Angola and other Third World countries. In the meantime, a new threat was arising with the growth of international terrorism, which first captured the public's attention when Palestinian militants took Israeli athletes hostage at the Munich Olympics in 1972. The seizure by Islamic radicals of the U.S. embassy in Iran and the holding of U.S. hostages for more than a year brought an anemic U.S. response, reflecting U.S. hesitancy to embroil itself in another foreign confrontation.
In contrast to the U.S., Vietnam flexed its muscles and entered into an expansionist period leading to its occupation of Cambodia and Laos. Vietnam also fought a short war with China. However, the Soviet collapse in 1991 effectively ended the Cold War and left Vietnam without its primary economic benefactor. This led the government in Hanoi to seek to improve relations with the United States. Vietnam withdrew its army from Cambodia and Laos, which greatly improved its international image. Vietnam then entered into bilateral negotiations with the United States after Bill Clinton, who had once protested the Vietnam War, became President in 1993. In 1995 Vietnam and the United States established diplomatic and trade relations over the objections of some U.S. war veterans and families still searching for soldiers missing in action (MIAs). The U.S. opened an embassy in Vietnam for the first time since 1975. Direct flights between the U.S. and Vietnam resumed in 2005 when United Airlines began daily flights between San Francisco and HỠChà Minh City via Hong Kong. Vietnam now markets itself as a tourist destination for Americans, including many Vietnamese-American citizens who enjoy making regular visits "home".
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Other countries' involvement
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South Korea
South Korea's military represented the second largest contingent of foreign troops in South Vietnam. South Korea dispatched its first troops beginning in 1964. Large combat battalions began arriving a year later. A total of approximately 300,000 South Korean soldiers were sent to Vietnam. As with the United States, soldiers served one year, and then were replaced with new soldiers, from 1964 until 1973. The maximum number of South Korean troops in Vietnam at any one time was 50,000. More than 5,000 South Koreans were killed and 11,000 were injured in the war.
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China
China's involvement in the Vietnam War began in the summer of 1962, when Mao Zedong agreed to supply Hanoi with 90,000 rifles and guns free of charge. After the launch of Operation Rolling Thunder, China sent engineering battallions and supporting anti-aircraft units to North Vietnam to repair the damage caused by American bombing, build roads, railroads and to perform other engineering works. This freed North Vietnamese army units to go to the South. Between 1965 and 1970 over 320,000 Chinese soldiers served in North Vietnam; the peak year was 1967 when 170,000 were serving there. In April 2006, an event was held in Vietnam to honor the almost 1100 Chinese soliders who were killed in the Vietnam War; a further 4200 were injured.