Vietnam War

The Vietnam War or Second Indochina War (also known colloquially as Vietnam or Nam as well as the American War to the Vietnamese) 1 was a conflict between the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRVN, or North Vietnam), allied with the Communist World, namely the Soviet Union and China against the Republic of Vietnam (RVN, or South Vietnam), and its allies — notably the United States military in support of the South, with US combat troops involved from 1965 until the official withdrawal in 1973.

After France's attempted recolonization of Indochina was defeated in 1954 by the Viet Minh at the battle of Điện Biên Phủ, an agreement to temporarily partition the country in two with a de-militarized zone (DMZ) was reached at the Geneva Conference (1954). The Vietnam War ostensibly began as a civil war between feuding governments. Being Western-oriented and perceived as less popular than Hồ Chí Minh's northern government, the South Vietnam government fought largely to maintain its governing status within the partitioned entity, rather than to "unify the country" as was the goal of the North. Fighting began in 1957 and with U.S. and Soviet-Chinese involvement would steadily escalate and spill over into the neighboring Indochinese countries of Cambodia and Laos.

The Geneva partition was not a natural division of Vietnam and was not intended to create two separate countries. But the South government, with the support of the United States, blocked the Geneva scheduled elections for reunification. In the context of the Cold War, and with the recent Korean War as a precedent, the U.S. had feared that a reunified Vietnam would elect a Communist government under the popular Hồ Chí Minh, either freely or fraudulently.

South Vietnam and its Western allies portrayed the conflict as based in 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 Southern dissident allies (NLF) viewed the war as a struggle to reunite the country and to repel a foreign aggressor —a virtual continuation of the earlier war for independence against the French.

After fifteen years of protracted fighting and massive civilian and military casualties, major direct U.S. involvement ended with the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1973. Fighting between Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) forces against the dominant combined People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and NLF forces would soon bring an end to the RVN and the war on April 30, 1975. With the Northern victory, the country was reunified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) with a communist-controlled government based in Hanoi.

Overview

A precise timeline of the Vietnam War is difficult to determine. Some consider the Vietnam War to have been a continuous conflict beginning with the French attempt to reestablish colonial control in 1946 and continuing until the fall of Saigon in 1975. Others divide the conflict into two separate wars, the First Indochina War between the French and the Viet Minh and the Second Indochina War between North Vietnam on the one side and South Vietnam and its allies, most importantly the United States, on the other. Many experts consider the Vietnam War to have just been one front in the larger Cold War.

The First Indochina War may be said to have begun in 1946 with the writing of the Vietnamese constitution and to have ended in 1954 with the Geneva Peace Accord. The U.S. involvement in the conflict is less distinct. The United States had supported Vietnamese guerrillas against the Japanese during World War II, and provided aid to the French in the early 1950s. A US military presence was established in South Vietnam following the 1954 Peace Accord. As US advisors were drawn into battles between North and South Vietnamese forces the US involvement escalated. Many US citizens view the Vietnam War as beginning with the Gulf of Tonkin Incident in 1964. The Vietnam War Memorial reports American casualties as early as 1957.

The ground war was fought in South Vietnam and the border areas of Cambodia and Laos (see Secret War). The air war was fought there and in the strategic bombing (see Operation Rolling Thunder) of North Vietnam. Commando raids or secret operations were conducted by US or South Vietnamese forces in the north but there was never any full-scale ground fighting north of the 17th parallel (For more details of the events during the war, see: Timeline of the Vietnam War.) A coalition of forces fought for South Vietnam, including its army the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (or ARVN), the United States, South Korea, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines. Participation by the South Korean military was financed by the United States, but Australia and New Zealand fully funded their participations. The United Kingdom and Canada did not participate in the war militarily, although a few of their citizens volunteered to join the US forces and Canada led peace talks between the two countries for years. The Spanish government sent a small group of military medical personnel from 1966 to 1971. The North Vietnamese government directed the fighting against that of South Vietnam, using forces including their People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN, better known in the U.S. as the NVA) and the guerrilla forces of the National Liberation Front, better known as the Viet Cong. The USSR provided military and financial aid, along with diplomatic support to the North Vietnamese as did the People's Republic of China. Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and North Korea provided minor assistance through provision of supplies and armor. North Vietnamese pilots and other specialized members of the PAVN often received training in the USSR or in North Korea, as did many of their Southern counterparts in Arizona or Hawaii.

Background

France had gained control of Indochina in a series of colonial wars beginning in the 1840s and lasting until the 1880s. At the Treaty of Versailles negotiations in 1919, Hồ Chí Minh requested participation in order to arrange more freedom for the Indochinese colonies. However, his request was rejected, and Indochina's status as a colony of France remained unchanged. During World War II, Vichy France had collaborated 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. After the Japanese surrender Vietnamese nationalists hoped to achieve formal independence from France.

On September 2, 1945, Hồ Chí Minh spoke at a ceremony heralding an independent Vietnam. In his speech he cited the US Declaration of Independence and a band played "The Star Spangled Banner." Ho had hoped that the United States would be an ally of a Vietnamese independence movement based on speeches by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt against the continuation of European imperialism after World War II. However, the death of Roosevelt, the development of the Cold War, and Ho's Communist sympathies led to U.S. support being given to the French. Indochina had been in the British theater of operations during the war. The French prevailed upon the British to turn control of the region back over to them, setting the stage for the First Indochina War in which France attempted to reestablish Vietnam as part of a French overseas colony. In a gradual process—accelerated by the establishment of the People's Republic of China—the Vietnamese nationalist army, the Viet Minh, gradually wrested control of the country from France.

After the Viet Minh's historic victory over the French at the battle of Điện Biên Phủ all of Indochina was granted independence, including Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. However, Vietnam was partitioned at the 17th parallel, above which the former Viet Minh established a Communist state and below which an anti-communist state was established under the Emperor Bảo Đại. As dictated in the Geneva Accords of 1954 the division was meant to be temporary pending free elections for national leadership. The agreement stipulated that these 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 "general elections shall be held in July 1956." But such elections were not held as Diem (see below), who had not signed the Geneva Accords, refused to hold them. The U.S. supported this move to maintain its Southern ally, also later claiming that Ho had no intention of holding free elections. The majority of Vietnamese were angered that the scheduled elections for the unification of the country never took place. The United States, fearing a Communist takeover of the region, supported Ngô Đình Diệm, who had ousted Bảo Đại, as leader of South Vietnam while Hồ Chí Minh became leader of the North.

NLF (National Liberation Front) in the South

When Ngo Dinh Diem government refused to have election with the North in 1956, Hanoi proceeded its alternative plan, which had been prepared before the Geneva Accord was signed. Covert communist agents in the South, who were supposed to move to the North according to the Geneva Accord, received order from Hanoi to take up their arms and started an insurgency in order to overthrow the South Vietnam government. The high ranking communist Le Duan, who stayed in South Vietnam as a covert agent, was in charge of this campaign. When the insurgency was suppressed by the South Vietnam government and had no chance to succeed, Le Duan went back to Hanoi in 1958 to consult with Ho Chi Minh and other communists in the CPV. In December 1959, the Central Commitee of the CPV issued a secret resolution to invade South Vietnam by force. To avoid being accused of violating the Geneva Accord, the CPV established the National Liberation Front and used this organization as a cover to invade South Vietnam.

The NLF was composed of several South Vietnam intellectuals, who dissented with the South Vietnamese government, and communists who had origin from the South. Some of them were Huynh Tan Phat, Nguyen Huu Tho, Nguyen Thi Binh... Those communists did not have an independent status from the CPV but received direct orders from Hanoi for the activities of the NLF. The non-communist members of the NLF did not have any role in decision making but their titles. They were only used as the face of the NLF to make the international community believe that the war against the South Vietnam government originated from the people of South Vietnam not from North Vietnam.

By 1959 the Hanoi government was supplying the NLF via the Hồ Chí Minh Trail with Russian and Chinese made weapons. A supply route running from North Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia (a violation of neutrality) into South Vietnam. Some supplying boats via China Sea were caught by South Vietnam authority too. Further supplies were sent by sea to Sihanoukville in Cambodia until that outlet was closed by Lon Nol in 1970. The Hồ Chí Minh Trail was steadily expanded to become the vital lifeline for communist forces in South Vietnam, which included the North Vietnamese Army in the 1960s when it became a major target of U.S. air operations.

The Diệm government was initially able to cope with the insurgency with the aid of U.S. advisors, 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. Outside Saigon, large areas of the country were infiltrated by communists who were left before the Geneva Accord and newcomers from the North but the South Vietnamese army could still control the local goverments. In 1963, a Communist offensive beginning with the Battle of Ap Bac inflicted major loss to South Vietnam army units. This was the first battle with a larger scale than assassinations and guerilla activities as before. Ap Bac was the sign that the war was escalating as the result of the increasing supplies of men and weapons from the North. The escalation of war made some policy makers in Washington think the Diem government could not cope with the invasion of communists and lead to the idea of changing the leadership of South Vietnam. But had Ngo Dinh Diem not been replaced by the coup in 1963, would the South Vietnamese have lost to the communists or not is still unknown. What we know for sure is the coup, which overthrew Diem, caused chaos in the security and defense systems of the South Vietnamese and Hanoi took the advantages of this chaos to increase its infiltrations to South Vietnamese society and supports to its forces in the South.

Dwight D. Eisenhower and Vietnam

Soon after the Korean War, with the intention of preventing South Vietnam from becoming a communist state, United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent the first of hundreds of American armed servicemen (along with CIA agents [1]) to Vietnam as military advisers on Feb. 12, 1955.

At a news conference, Eisenhower stated, "You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is a certainty that it will go over very quickly." Eisenhower and his staff subsequently started a plan for military support of South Vietnam.

On July 8, 1959 Dale Buis and Charles Ovnand became the first Americans killed in action in Vietnam.

John F. Kennedy and Vietnam

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. Kennedy left the meeting convinced that the Russians were committed to conflict. This led to the conclusion that Southeast Asia would be an area where Soviet forces would test the USA's commitment to the containment policy.

Although Kennedy's election campaign had stressed long-range missile parity with the Soviets, Kennedy was particularly interested in Special Forces. Originally intended for use behind front lines after a conventional invasion of Europe, it was quickly decided to try them out in the "brush fire" war in Vietnam.
The Kennedy administration remained essentially committed to the Cold War foreign policy inherited from the Truman administration. Furthermore in 1961 Kennedy found himself faced with a three-part crisis that seemed very 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 the West's position and his reputation, Kennedy was determined to prevent a Communist victory in Vietnam. 'Now we have a problem in making our power credible', he said, 'and Vietnam looks like the place.
e Kennedy administration grew increasingly frustrated with Diệm. In 1963 a violent crackdown by Diệm's forces against Buddhist monks protesting government policies prompted self-immolation by monks, leading to embarrassing press coverage. The most famous event is the self-burning of Thích Quảng Ðức to protest the government's violence against Buddhists. Vietnam was a largely Buddhist nation (two-thirds were Buddhist in the Southern half), while Diệm and much of his administration were Roman Catholic, and Diệm was criticized as being out of touch with his citizens. Although the protests of Buddhists came from their sentiments about the discrimation between Catholic and Buddism, covert communist agents also took advantage of the situation to fuel the anger of Buddists in order to create the instability in South Vietnam. The U.S. attempted to pressure Diệm by asking South Vietnamese generals to act against the excesses, to no avail. 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'etat which overthrew and killed Diem on November 1, 1963.

The death of Diệm made the South much more unstable. The new military rulers were politically inexperienced and unable to provide the strong central authority of Diệm's rule and a period of coups and countercoups followed. For example, seven different governments rose to power in South Vietnam during 1964, three during the weeks of August 16 to September 3 alone. This was the struggle within the civil war, which itself was not abating. The communists, meanwhile, stepped up their efforts to exploit the vacuum.

Kennedy himself was assassinated three weeks after Diệm's death, and the newly sworn-in president, former Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, confirmed on November 24, 1963, that the United States intended to continue supporting South Vietnam.

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