Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam and their allies. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China, while South Vietnam was supported by the United States and other anti-communist nations. The conflict was the second of the Indochina wars and a proxy war of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and US. The Vietnam War was one of the postcolonial wars of national liberation, a theater in the Cold War, and a civil war, with civil warfare a defining feature from the outset. Direct US military involvement escalated from 1965 until its withdrawal in 1973. The fighting spilled into the Laotian and Cambodian Civil Wars, which ended with all three countries becoming communist in 1975.
After the defeat of the French Union in the First Indochina War that began in 1946, Vietnam gained independence in the 1954 Geneva Conference but was divided in two at the 17th parallel: the Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh, took control of North Vietnam, while the US assumed financial and military support for South Vietnam, led by Ngo Dinh Diem. The North Vietnamese supplied and directed the Viet Cong, a common front of dissidents in the south which intensified a guerrilla war from 1957. In 1958, North Vietnam invaded Laos, establishing the Ho Chi Minh trail to supply the VC. By 1963, the north had covertly sent 40,000 soldiers of its People's Army of Vietnam, armed with Soviet and Chinese weapons, to fight in the insurgency in the south. President John F. Kennedy increased US involvement from 900 military advisors in 1960 to 16,000 in 1963 and sent more aid to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, which failed to produce results. In 1963, Diem was killed in a US-backed military coup, which added to the south's instability.
Following the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, the US Congress passed a resolution that gave President Lyndon B. Johnson authority to increase military presence without declaring war. Johnson launched a bombing campaign of the north and sent combat troops, dramatically increasing deployment to 184,000 by 1966, and 536,000 by 1969. US forces relied on air supremacy and overwhelming firepower to conduct search and destroy operations in rural areas. In 1968, North Vietnam launched the Tet Offensive, which was a tactical defeat but convinced many Americans the war could not be won. Johnson's successor, Richard Nixon, began "Vietnamization" from 1969, which saw the conflict fought by an expanded ARVN while US forces withdrew. The 1970 Cambodian coup d'état resulted in a PAVN invasion and US–ARVN counter-invasion, escalating its civil war. US troops had mostly withdrawn from Vietnam by 1972, and the 1973 Paris Peace Accords saw the rest leave. The accords were subsequently violated by North Vietnam, and fighting continued until the 1975 spring offensive and fall of Saigon to the PAVN, marking the war's end. North and South Vietnam were reunified in 1976.
The war exacted an enormous cost: estimates of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed range from 970,000 to 3 million. Some 275,000–310,000 Cambodians, 20,000–62,000 Laotians, and 58,220 US service members died. Its end would precipitate the Vietnamese boat people and the larger Indochina refugee crisis, which saw millions leave Indochina, of which about 250,000 perished at sea. 20% of South Vietnam's jungle was sprayed with toxic herbicides, which led to significant health problems. The Khmer Rouge carried out the Cambodian genocide, and the Cambodian–Vietnamese War began in 1978. In response, China invaded Vietnam, with border conflicts lasting until 1991. Within the US, the war gave rise to Vietnam syndrome, an aversion to American overseas military involvement, which, with the Watergate scandal, contributed to the crisis of confidence that affected the United States throughout the 1970s.
Names
Various names have been applied and shifted over time, though the Vietnam War is the most commonly used term in English. It has also been called the Second Indochina War, as it spread to Laos and Cambodia, the Vietnam Conflict, and colloquially Nam. South Vietnam used terms such as Kháng chiến chống Cộng sản and Cuộc chiến bảo vệ tự do. North Vietnam at the time, and official histories produced by the Government of Vietnam today, refer to it as Kháng chiến chống Mỹ, cứu nước, or simply the Resistance War against America. Vietnamese both within the country and overseas occasionally refer to it as Chiến tranh Việt Nam, the Vietnam War.Background
Vietnam had been under French control as part of French Indochina since the 1880s. Vietnamese independence movements, such as the Vietnamese Nationalist Party, faced suppression despite growing public support for diverse reformist and revolutionary nationalist causes. Nguyen Sinh Cung established the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930; the Marxist–Leninist party aimed to overthrow French rule and establish a communist state.Fractures between nationalists and communists emerged in the late 1920s, as the two groups differed in their visions for postcolonial Vietnam: republicanism for the revolutionary nationalists, and proletarian internationalism for the communists. The communists' radical push for centralized control led to a prolonged civil conflict marked by the suppression of rival nationalists, with the ICP largely responsible for initiating systemic Vietnamese-on-Vietnamese violence.
Japanese occupation of Indochina
In September 1940, Japan invaded French Indochina, following France's capitulation to Nazi Germany. By 1941, Japan had gained full military access across Indochina and established a dual colonial rule that preserved Vichy French administration while facilitating Japanese military operations. Cung, now known as Ho Chi Minh, returned from exile to establish the anti-Japanese Viet Minh movement. From 1944, the US Office of Strategic Services provided the Viet Minh with weapons and training to fight the occupying Japanese. US President Franklin D. Roosevelt supported Vietnamese resistance, and proposed Vietnam's independence be granted under an international trusteeship after the war. The Viet Minh secured their advantage by relocating their operations from southern China into Vietnam and leveraging Allied support.In March 1945, Japan, losing the war, overthrew the French government in Indochina, established the Empire of Vietnam, and maintained Emperor Bảo Đại as a figurehead. The nationalist sentiment that had intensified during World War II paradoxically laid the groundwork for the communist-led Viet Minh, themselves cloaked in nationalism. Following the surrender of Japan, they launched the August Revolution, overthrowing the Japanese-backed state and seizing weapons from the Japanese. On 2 September, Ho Chi Minh declared the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. However, British and French forces arrived in Indochina to oversee the Japanese surrender south of the 16th parallel, while Chinese Nationalist troops did so in the north. On September 23, the British supported a French coup that overthrew the DRV government in Saigon and reinstated French control. O.S.S. forces withdrew as the French sought to reassert control in southern Indochina.
First Indochina War
Beginning in August 1945, the Viet Minh sought to consolidate power by terrorizing and purging rival Vietnamese nationalist groups and Trotskyist activists. In 1946, the Franco-Chinese and Ho–Sainteny Agreements facilitated a coexistence between the DRV and French that strengthened the Viet Minh while undermining the nationalists. That summer, the Viet Minh colluded with French forces to eliminate nationalists, targeted for their ardent anti-colonialism.With most of the nationalist partisans defeated, and negotiations broken down, tensions between the Viet Minh and French authorities erupted into full-scale war in December 1946, a conflict that would later become entangled with the Cold War. Surviving nationalist partisans and politico-religious groups rallied behind the exiled Bảo Đại to reopen negotiations with France in opposition to communist domination. While the State of Vietnam, under Bảo Đại as Chief of State, aligned with the anticommunist Western Bloc, the French exploited it to extend their colonial presence and to bolster their standing within NATO. By adhering to Marxist–Leninist principles, Vietnamese communists monopolized power through a series of radical campaigns.
The anticommunist Truman Doctrine, first announced by president Harry S. Truman in March 1947, pledged United States support to nations resisting "attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures". In Indochina, this policy was first put into practice when in February 1950 the US recognized the French-backed State of Vietnam, based in Saigon, as the legitimate government, after communist China and the Soviet Union recognized the Democratic Republic of Vietnam the month prior. The outbreak of the Korean War in June convinced Washington policymakers that the war in Indochina was another example of communist expansionism, directed by the Soviet Union. Within the United States, the Red Scare and rise of McCarthyism fostered public opposition to communism and convinced Americans that communist ideology needed to be quelled wherever possible.
Military advisors from China began assisting the Viet Minh in July 1950. Chinese weapons, expertise, and laborers transformed the Viet Minh from a guerrilla force into an army. In September 1950, the US created the Military Assistance Advisory Group to screen French aid requests, advise on strategy, and train Vietnamese soldiers. By 1954, the US had spent $1 billion in support of the French effort, shouldering 80% of the war costs.
Battle of Dien Bien Phu
During the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, US carriers sailed to the Gulf of Tonkin and the US conducted reconnaissance flights. France and the US discussed the use of tactical nuclear weapons, though how seriously this was considered, and by whom, is unclear. According to then-Vice President Richard Nixon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up plans to use nuclear weapons to support the French. Nixon, a so-called "hawk", suggested the US might have to "put American boys in". President Dwight D. Eisenhower made American participation contingent on British support, but they were opposed. Eisenhower, wary of involving the US in an Asian land war, decided against intervention. US intelligence estimates remained skeptical of France's chance of success.In May 1954, the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu surrendered. This marked the end of French military involvement in Indochina. At the Geneva Conference, they negotiated a ceasefire with the Viet Minh, and the independence of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam was affirmed, with Vietnam placed under a temporary North–South division.