Vietnam War
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Template:SprotectedTemplate:OriginalResearchTemplate:Infobox Military ConflictTemplate:Campaignbox Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a military conflict in present day Vietnam occurring from 1959 to April 30, 1975. The conflict was a successful effort by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV or North Vietnam) and the indigenous National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, (also known as the Việt Cộng, or more informally as the "Charlie", "VC" or "Cong") to unify Vietnam as a communist state, defeating the South Vietnamese Republic of Vietnam (RVN). To a degree, the Vietnam War was a "proxy war" between the U.S. and its Western allies on the side of the RVN, with the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China supporting the DRV on the other. As a result of this it is often considered part of the Cold War.
The chief cause of the war was the failure of Vietnamese nationalists, in the form of the Viet Minh, to gain control of southern Vietnam both during and after their struggle for independence from France in the First Indochina War of 1946–54.
The U.S., in particular, deployed large numbers of military personnel to South Vietnam between 1954 and 1973. U.S. military advisors first became involved in Vietnam as early as 1950, when they began to assist French colonial forces. In 1956, these advisors assumed full responsibility for training the Army of the Republic of Vietnam or ARVN. Large numbers of American combat troops began to arrive in 1965 and the last left the country in 1972.[2]
At various stages the conflict involved clashes between small units patrolling the mountains and jungles, guerrilla attacks in the villages and cities, and finally, large-scale conventional battles. U.S. aircraft also conducted substantial aerial bombing campaigns, targeting both logistical networks and the cities and transportation arteries of North Vietnam. Large quantities of chemical defoliants were also sprayed from the air in an effort to reduce the cover available to enemy combatants.
The Vietnam War was finally concluded on 30 April 1975, with the fall of the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces. The war claimed between 2 and 5.7 million Southeast Asian lives,[3] a large number of whom were civilians.
Background
History to 1949
From 110 BC to 938 AD (with the exception of brief periods), much of present-day Vietnam, especially the northern half, was part of China. After gaining independence, Vietnam went through a history of resisting outside aggression. The French gained control of Indochina during a series of colonial wars beginning in the 1840s and lasting through the 1880s. At the post-World War I negotiations that led to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, Hồ Chí Minh requested that a delegation of Vietnamese be admitted in order to work toward obtaining independence for the Indochinese colonies. His request was rejected, and Indochina's status as a colony of France remained unchanged.
During the Second World War, the government of Vichy France cooperated with Imperial Japanese forces sent to occupy Indochina. Vietnam was under de facto Japanese administrative control, although the French continued to serve as official administrators until 1944. Hồ Chi Minh returned to Vietnam and formed a Communist-dominated resistance group called the "League for the Independence of Vietnam" (better known as the Viet Minh) to oppose the Japanese in the north[4]. He was aided by teams deployed by the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (the precursor of the Central Intelligence Agency). These teams worked behind enemy lines in Indochina giving support to indigenous resistance groups. In 1944, 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 and, late in the war, granted Vietnam nominal independence.
After the war and following the Japanese surrender, Vietnamese nationalists, communists, and other groups hoped to finally take control of the country. The Japanese army in Indochina assisted the Viet Minh — Hồ's resistance army — and other Vietnamese independence groups by imprisoning French officials and soldiers and handing over public buildings to the Vietnamese. On 2 September 1945, Hồ Chí Minh declared independence from France and proclaimed the formation of a new Vietnamese government under his leadership. In his exultant speech before a huge audience in Hanoi, he cited the U.S. Declaration of Independence and a band played "The Star Spangled Banner." Hồ, who had been a member 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 D. Roosevelt, who opposed a revival of European colonialism after World War II. Roosevelt, however, had moderated his position after the British — who wanted to keep their own colonies — objected.
The new Vietnamese government only lasted a few days, however, since it had been decided by the Allies at the Potsdam Conference that Vietnam would be jointly occupied by Nationalist Chinese and British forces who would supervise the Japanese surrender and repatriation.[5] The Chinese army arrived in Vietnam from north only a few days after Hồ's declaration of independence and took over areas north of the 16th parallel. The British arrived in the south in October and supervised both the surrender and departure of the Japanese army from Indochina. With these actions, the government of Hồ Chí Minh effectively ceased to exist. 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, took matters into their own hands in some areas. In the north, The French 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. Hồ agreed to allow French forces to land outside of the capital,Hanoi, while France agreed to recognize an independent Vietnam within the new French Union. In the meantime, Hồ took advantage of this period of negotiations to liquidate competing nationalist groups in the north. After negotiations with Hồ collapsed over the possibility of his forming a government within the French Union in December 1946, the French bombarded Haiphong, killing thousands and then entered Hanoi. Ho and the Việt Minh fled into the mountainous north to begin an insurgency, marking the beginning of the First Indochina War. After the defeat of the Nationalist Chinese by the Communists in the Chinese Civil War, Premier Mao Zedong was able to provide direct military assistance to the Viet Minh. By this method, Viet Minh obtained more modern weapons, supplies, and the expertise necessary to transform them into a more conventional military force.
Exit of the French, 1950–1955
In the meantime, the U.S. was supplying its French allies with military aid. The outbreak of the Korean Conflict in 1950 changed everything for the Americans. Seen from Washington, what had been a colonial war in Indochina became another example of expansive world-wide communism, directed by the Kremlin.[6] In 1950, the U.S. Military Assistance and Advisory Group (MAAG) arrived to screen French requests for aid, advise on strategy, and train Vietnamese soldiers.[7] In 1956, MAAG assumed responsibility for training the Vietnamese army.[8] By 1954, the U.S. had given 300,000 small arms and machine guns, and one billion dollars to support the French military effort and was shouldering 80 percent of its cost.[9]
The Viet Minh eventually handed the French a major military defeat at Ðiện Biên Phủ on 7 May 1954 and the French public and government had had enough. At the Geneva Conference the French government negotiated a peace agreement with the Viet Minh which allowed the French to leave Indochina and granted all three of its colonies, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam their independence. However, Vietnam was temporarily partitioned at the 17th parallel, above which the Viet Minh established a socialist state, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and below which a non-communist state was established under the Emperor Bảo Đại. Bao Dai's Prime Minister, Ngo Dinh Diem, shortly thereafter removed him from power, and established himself as President of the new Republic of Vietnam.
The Diem era, 1955–1963
The Winston Churchill of Asia
As dictated by the Geneva Accords of 1954, the partition of Vietnam was meant to be only temporary, pending free elections for a national leadership. The agreement stipulated that the two military zones, which were separated by a temporary demarcation line (which eventually became the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ), "should not in any way be interpreted as constituting a political or territorial boundary," and specifically stated that elections would be held in July 1956. However, the Diem government refused to enter into negotiations to hold the stipulated elections, encouraged by U.S. unwillingness to allow a certain communist victory in an all-Vietnam election. Questions were also raised about the legitimacy of any election held in the communist-run North. The U.S.-supported government of South Vietnam justified its refusal to comply with the Geneva Accords by virtue of the fact it had not signed them.
Diem was an unlikely prospect to lead the Vietnamese people. A devout Roman Catholic, he was aloof, closed-minded, and trusted only the members of his immediate family. For the U.S., however, he was a godsend. He was fervently anti-communist and was untainted by any connection to the French. He was the only prominent Vietnamese nationalist who could claim both attributes. In April and June of 1955, Diem (against U.S. advice) cleared the decks of any political opposition by launching military operations against the Cao Dai religious sect, the Buddhist Hoa Hao, and the Binh Xuyen organized crime group (which was allied with the secret police and some army elements).
Surprisingly, Diem was successful, gaining from his surprised American sponsors the nickname of "the Winston Churchill of Asia." Later in the year Diem organized an election for president and a legislature, and wrote a constitution. In the election (which he might have won legally) Diem received 98.2 percent of the vote, raising the eyebrows of even his American supporters.
Beginning in the summer of 1955, he launched a 'Denounce the Communists' campaign, during which communists and other anti-government elements were arrested, imprisoned or executed. During this period refugees and re-groupees moved across the demarcation line in both directions. It was estimated that around 52,000 Vietnamese civilians moved from south to north, while 450,000 were air- or boat-lifted from north to south.[10]
As opposition to Diem's rule in South Vietnam grew, a low-level insurgency began to take shape there in 1957, conducted mainly by Viet Minh cadres who had remained in the south and had hidden caches of weapons in case unification failed to take place through elections. In late 1956 one of the leading communists in the south, Lê Duẩn, returned to Hanoi to urge that the Vietnam Workers' Party take a firmer stand on national reunification, but Hanoi hesitated in launching a full-scale military struggle. Finally, in January 1959, under pressure from southern cadres who were being successfully targeted by Diem's secret police, the north's Central Committee of the Party issued a secret resolution authorizing the use of armed struggle in the South.
On 12 December 1960, under instruction from Hanoi, southern communists established the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam in order to overthrow the government of the south. The NLF was made up of two distinct groups: South Vietnamese intellectuals who opposed the government and were nationalists; and communists who had remained in the south after the partition and regrouping of 1954 as well as those who had since come from the north. While there were many non-communist members of the NLF, they were subject to the control of the party 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.
Coup and assassinations
Some policy-makers in Washington began to believe that Diem was incapable of defeating the communists, and some even feared that he might make a deal with Ho Chi Minh. During the summer of 1963 administration officials began discussing the possibility of a regime change in Saigon. The State Department was generally in favor of encouraging a coup while the Pentagon and CIA were more alert to the destabilizing consequences of such a coup and wanted to continue applying pressure to Diem to make political changes.
Chief among the proposed changes was the removal of his younger brother Ngo Dinh Nhu from all of his positions of power. Nhu was in charge of South Vietnam's secret police and was seen as the man behind the Buddhist repression. As Diem's most powerful advisor, Nhu (along with his wife) had become a hated figure in South Vietnam, and one whose continued influence was unacceptable to all members of the Kennedy administration. Eventually, the administration determined that Diem was unwilling to further modify his policies and the decision was made to remove U.S. support from the regime. This choice was made jointly by the State Department, Pentagon, National Security Council, and the CIA. President Kennedy agreed with the consensus.
In November 1963, the U.S. embassy in Saigon communicated through the CIA to the military officers that made up the conspiracy that the U.S. would not oppose the removal of Diem. The president was overthrown by the military and executed along with his brother on November 2, 1963. After the coup, Kennedy appeared to be genuinely shocked and dismayed by the murders. Top CIA officials were baffled that Kennedy didn't understand that this was a possible outcome.
Chaos ensued in the security and defense systems of South Vietnam and, once again, Hanoi took advantage of the situation to increase its support for the insurgents in the south. South Vietnam now entered a period of extreme political instability, as one military junta replaced another in quick succession. Ironically, Kennedy was himself assassinated on November 22, 1963 just three weeks after Diệm. He was automatically succeeded by Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson, who declared on 24 November that the U.S. would continue its support of the South Vietnamese. During this period, the U.S. military involvement in South Vietnam dramatically increased and the 'Americanization' of the war began.
The Saigon governments, and their new-found Western allies, portrayed their military actions as simply a defense against the use of armed violence to effect political change. At a geopolitical level, the conflict was conducted in order to deter what was then perceived as expansive global communism emanating from Moscow and Beijing, which had been a keystone of Western foreign policy since the late 1940s. The Cold War paradigms of containment and the domino theory were in their heyday and framed many of the arguments on the issue of Vietnam. As far as the North Vietnamese and the NLF were concerned, the conflict was a struggle to reunite the nation and to repel foreign aggressors and neo-colonialists - battle cries that were a virtual repeat of those of the war against the French.
Escalation and Americanization, 1963-1968
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On August 2 1964, just days after the U.S. increased the number of military advisers in South Vietnam to 21,000, the destroyer USS Maddox reported being attacked by three North Vietnamese torpedo boats off the coast of North Vietnam while on an intelligence mission in support of covert South Vietnamese attacks on North Vietnam. Two days later a second U.S. naval vessel believed it had come under attack in similar circumstances. This caused retaliatory strikes by the U.S. against North Vietnam, and prompted Congress to approve the Southeast Asia Resolution (also known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution), which among other things gave the president power to conduct military operations without a declaration of war. It was later discerned, however, that this second attack never took place.[11]
Following this, the National Security Council recommended that Johnson adopt a plan for a three-stage escalation of the bombing of North Vietnam. On March 2 1965, following an attack on a U.S. Marine barracks at Pleiku (see Operation Flaming Dart), Operation Rolling Thunder commenced. The bombing campaign, which would ultimately last three years, was intended to force North Vietnam to cease its support for the NLF in South Vietnam by threatening to destroy North Vietnam's industrial, transportation, and air defense infrastructures and bolster the morale of the South Vietnamese.[12] Bombing was not restricted to North Vietnam, and other aerial campaigns, such as Operation Commando Hunt, targeted different parts of the NLF and PAVN infrastructure, including their supply chains (most famously the Ho Chi Minh Trail) that ran through Laos, Cambodia and of course South Vietnam.
After several attacks it was decided the U.S. Air Force bases in South Vietnam needed more protection, so on 8 March 1965, 3,500 United States Marines were assigned to South Vietnam. Due to attacks from the NLF, Operation Starlite began as the first major ground operation by U.S. troops and proved largely successful; learning from their defeat, the NLF began to engage in small-unit guerrilla warfare instead of the standard American-style ground war. This allowed them to control the pace of the war, engaging U.S. and South Vietnamese forces only when they believed they had an advantage.
Under the command of General Westmoreland, the U.S. dramatically increase its troop commitment in Vietnam from 16,000 military advisers in early 1964 to more than 553,000 servicemen by 1969. Because of this decision, allies Australia, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Thailand, and the Philippines agreed to send in troops as well, which were supported by U.S. aid money and logistics. This allowed for more complex operations on the behalf of the U.S., such as operations Masher, Attleboro, Cedar Falls, and Junction City.
Meanwhile, the South Vietnamese government began to settle down with the election of Nguyen Van Thieu as President and Nguyen Cao Ky as Vice President in 1967, ending the series of military juntas that had begun with Diem's assassination in 1963. This allowed the ARVN to collaborate more effectively with their western allies, and to become a more effective force in the war.
In January 1968, the PAVN an NLF broke the truce that had traditionally accompanied the Lunar New Year (Tet) holiday and launched the Tet Offensive in the hopes of sparking an uprising among the South Vietnamese. Although the U.S. and South Vietnamese were initially surprised by the scale and scope of the offensive, they responded quickly and devastated the ranks of the NLF. Despite its tactical failure, however, the Tet Offensive effectively ended the political career of President Johnson, who refused to run for reelection and spent the rest of his term working for peace in Vietnam. It is commonly seen as a turning point in America's involvement in the Vietnam War.
On 10 May 1968, in spite of low expectations, peace talks began in Paris between the U.S. and the DRV. Negotiations stagnated for five months, until Johnson gave preliminary orders to halt the bombing of North Vietnam. This gave an electoral boost to the Democratic candidate, Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, who was running against Republican former Vice-President Richard Nixon. Through an intermediary, Nixon advised Saigon to refuse to participate in the talks until after elections, claiming that Nixon would give them a better deal once elected. Thieu obliged, leaving almost no progress made in the negotiations by the time Johnson left office.
Vietnamization and American withdrawal, 1969–1973
:For more detail see: Vietnamization and American Withdrawal
During the 1968 presidential election, Nixon had promised to bring "peace with honor". The means