Vietnam War: A Short Guide

Humans have been fighting wars ever since the dawn of time. To some degree, the world we inhabit today has been shaped by violence of the past. Sometimes the violence and destruction goes on and on, lasting for decades. One such prolonged conflict of modern times is the Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War.

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Humans have been fighting wars ever since the dawn of time. To some degree, the world we inhabit today has been shaped by violence of the past. Sometimes the violence and destruction goes on and on, lasting for decades. One such prolonged conflict of modern times is the Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War.

The Vietnam War lasted for almost two decades, from 1 November 1955 to 30 April 1975. And like any battle, it had its heroes and tyrants. The war was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, and other communist states, while South Vietnam was backed by the United States, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and other anti-communist states. It also served as a proxy war between the Soviet Union and the United States of America during the Cold War.

Wars are not started in a day. They are a result of multiple conflicts and differing opinions and interests brewing over the course of history. Their roots are primarily economic, political, and/or religious. The Vietnam War took place just after the bloody battle between the Viet Minh (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and French Colonialists, which was termed as the First Indochina War (1946–1954). French control in Vietnam — as well as Cambodia and Laos — lasted from the late 19th to mid 20th century. Ultimately, after six decades of hardships, the Vietnamese sought independence from their colonial oppressors in 1954 after the decisive victory at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.

France wasn’t the only occupier of the Vietnamese land. Japan had invaded parts of Vietnam in 1940 during World War II. As a result, the Vietnamese were enraged and wanted freedom from both their foreign invaders. After the Second World War ended, the nationalist movements in Vietnam had started to gain momentum. When the Japanese withdrew from Vietnam in 1945, the nationalists led by Ho Chi Minh declared independence.

After defeating and forcing out both the Japanese occupiers and the French colonial administrators, the Geneva Accords of 1954 were designed. This contained the future of Vietnam. The country was temporarily divided along the 17th parallel, with Ho Chi Minh’s communist forces controlling North Vietnam and a pro-western government led by Ngo Dinh Diem governing South Vietnam. There was a promise of an election to decide the future of South Vietnam, although that never happened.

What came after was another tragic war of the 20th century. Remember, the world had already seen two full-fledged wars by then, making the 20th century the most murderous one in recorded history. The United States believed that communism in Vietnam would create a domino effect in Southeast Asia, spreading the ideology further to the neighbouring countries. Thus began the war against the spread of communism.

Ngo Dinh Diem refused to conduct the election because he was expected to lose. He was unable to deal with the developing insurgency in the South as the support for the nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh was growing bigger. The United States supported Diem’s decision and started to put in effort to build a strong South Vietnamese military to tackle the communists. The then American president Dwight Eisenhower deployed the Military Assistance Advisory Group to train the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam).

Gaining support of the U.S., Diem then launched a military campaign against the Viet Minh personnel left in South Vietnam, killing and capturing suspected communists. While the war-torn North Vietnam focused on rebuilding itself, giving more attention to political campaigning instead of military action, they were hoping the Diem regime would disintegrate if they escalated internal pressure in the region. That didn’t go as they hoped it would.

After the failure of using political means to topple the southern regime, a secret resolution was signed at the 15th Party Plenum in January 1959, authorising the use of “revolutionary violence” in order to overthrow the government in South Vietnam and remove foreign intervention. Thereafter, the South started sending manpower along with equipment to further intensify the revolution. This would later become the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

During this time in 1960, the communist sympathisers formed National Liberation Fund (NLF), or the Viet Cong, for guerrilla warfare in South Vietnam. By the end of 1962, NLF would have 300,000 active members. While the fight went on between the two regions, the then U.S. president Kennedy signed a military and economic treaty to further increase its support for the Diem regime. In 1961, the U.S. had spent around $65 million in military equipment and $136 million in economic aid. The U.S. was now providing direct advice to the troops on ground in the battlefield. And to coordinate the affairs more fluidly, they formed Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) in Saigon in 1962.

In May 1963, Buddhists on the streets of Hue were protesting against the discriminatory policies of Diem. They were fired upon by the army troops. The incident was followed by a Buddhist monk setting himself on fire in Saigon, which became a major global headline. There was a wave of protests in Hue and Saigon, and around 4,000 students were arrested. All these incidents fueled the anti-Diem sentiment. The Diem administration started to lose support, even from its own army generals. Hence, a plan to overthrow Diem was devised, which was also Washington-approved. The plan was set in action in November 1963 when Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, were captured and killed. Coincidentally, three weeks later on the streets of Dallas, President Kennedy was assassinated.

All this was happening while the war in Vietnam continued. On 2 and 4 August in 1964, two American ships were attacked in international waters by North Vietnam. This became the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. Subsequently, Congress made the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave the U.S. president authority to escalate its involvement in the ongoing war. Using the resolution, the first U.S. troops were deployed on ground by President Lyndon Johnson in March 1965. The same year in November, the first major battle between the U.S. soldiers and North Vietnamese was fought in La Drang Valley.

The involvement of America in the Vietnam War was being criticised domestically. As a consequence, large protests were breaking out and during one of these, 31-year old anti-war activist Norman Morrison set himself on fire in front of the Pentagon in November 1965. The bloodshed was further escalated when the U.S. bombed Haiphong Harbor and North Vietnamese airfields in February 1967. Simultaneously, the rage of the American civilians was escalating as the protests increased in Washington D.C., New York, and San Francisco. By late 1967, the number of American soldiers in South Vietnam were estimated to be 500,000.

Back in the U.S., the situation had worsened for the Johnson administration. A large number of anti-war protestors gathered during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, accelerating the pressure. The same year, a well-designed set of attacks took place in more than 100 South Vietnamese cities, known in the West as the Tet Offensive. Even though the communists had lost the battles on ground, this was a major psychological victory for them. The scope of war was beyond belief for the American public and, as a result, Johnson decided against running for re-election.

Peace talks began in Paris in January 1969. In September 1969, Ho Chi Minh died of a heart attack in Hanoi. The same year, Richard Nixon was elected as the new American president. Under his policy of Vietnamization, the withdrawal of U.S. troops began in July 1969. The number of American troops had been reduced to 69,000 in 1972.

However, to stick to their original motive of stopping communism from spreading, Nixon tried to expand the war into Laos and Cambodia in secret campaigns, violating their international rights. This sparked larger protests in America. Students were shot and killed, sending shockwaves across the country.

The war was almost in its last phase as the negotiations were underway. On 27 January 1973, the Paris peace talks produced a ceasefire agreement. The last U.S. troops left Vietnam on 29 March 1973.

The already weakened South Vietnam officially surrendered to communist North Vietnam on 30 April 1975.

South Vietnam and North Vietnam were merged as a communist country on 2 July 1976. It still remains a communist country, one of the only five in the world.

The United States never issued a declaration of war against North Vietnam, so technically they don’t consider this as a war. In terms of body count or casualties, the U.S. had a much smaller number than North Vietnam. However, they failed in preventing communist expansion. Thus, going by the overall outcome, it was a loss for the U.S. Honouring the soldiers who provided their service, the U.S. established a Vietnam War Memorial in 1982.

The aftermath of the war in Vietnam can still be felt today. The explosives and chemicals polluted the waterways and soil, which made parts of land and water unusable, along with causing other profound social and economical impacts war can have on a society. Both sides underwent massive human casualties, along with the psychological damage soldiers and civilians endured in the following years.

Vietnam has not been engaged in large-scale military conflicts after the reunification in 1976.