Most Americans think of the Vietnam War as a phenomenon of the 1960s, when U.S. combat troops arrived in South Vietnam in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent a Communist takeover of the country. In actuality, for the Vietnamese people the conflict started long before that, when the Communist-dominated Viet Minh Front, led by the veteran revolutionary Ho Chi Minh, seized power in Hanoi from the defeated Japanese at the end of
World War II. After negotiations with returning French colonial authorities failed, full-scale war broke out in December 1946 (see
Indochina War).
For the next eight years, the Viet Minh fought a guerrilla war against the French. Victory was elusive, so the latter turned for help to the United States. Concerned at the Communist victory in the recent civil war in China and the possibility of an expansion of the "red tide" into Southeast Asia, Washington began to provide assistance to the French in 1950. In succeeding years U.S. support increased, but after the major defeat at
Dien Bien Phu in May 1954, the French decided to sign a compromise peace agreement at Geneva. The northern half of Vietnam was given to the Communists, the remainder to nationalist forces allied with the French.
The Geneva Agreement had called for national elections to unite the country, but South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem refused and began to suppress Viet Minh supporters in the south. In 1959, the Hanoi regime in the north decided to return to a strategy of revolutionary war and dispatched cadres southward to help strengthen the movement, now popularly called the Viet Cong (Vietnamese Communists).
By 1961 the insurgent movement had reached sizable proportions, and the United States decided to increase its support for the beleaguered regime in Saigon. The Kennedy administration assigned military advisers to train South Vietnamese soldiers in how to conduct
counterinsurgency operations and "win the hearts and minds" of the local populace. Kennedy rejected a recommendation to send U.S. combat troops.
Under growing pressure from the Viet Cong, Diem continued to weaken, and in November 1963 he was overthrown by a military coup. Washington had hoped that new leaders would revitalize the war effort, but the Saigon regime remained political unstable, while Viet Cong strength increased in the countryside. In August 1964, responding to an attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats on U.S. naval vessels in the Tonkin Gulf, President Lyndon Johnson ordered air strikes on North Vietnamese territory and obtained congressional authorization to take necessary actions to protect U.S. interests in Southeast Asia.
Washington's effort to intimidate Hanoi failed. Communist leaders, now convinced that the Saigon regime was near collapse, stepped up infiltration and ordered a major effort to seek final victory in the south. But when Viet Cong forces attacked a U.S. camp at Pleiku in early February 1965, Johnson responded with a sustained campaign of air strikes (labeled Operation Rolling Thunder) and the introduction of U.S. combat troops to assist Saigon in the prosecution of the war. General
William Westmoreland, commander of the U.S. military in South Vietnam, drew up a strategy designed first to stabilize key areas in the Central Highlands and along the northern border and then to launch sweep operations to wipe out enemy base areas throughout the country. In the meantime, South Vietnamese forces would carry out pacification operations to root out Communist elements in the countryside.
As U.S. force levels increased, Communist leaders retaliated by sending substantial numbers of North Vietnamese regular forces into the south. Their strategy was to maintain constant pressure by launching selected attacks at vulnerable points throughout the country. This approach was costly, however, both in terms of casualties and morale. In late 1967, planners in Hanoi decided to launch a major offensive in the hope of bringing about the collapse of the Saigon regime and a withdrawal of U.S. military forces from South Vietnam. Known as the
Tet offensive, it was launched in early February 1968 and involved attacks throughout the countryside, along with assaults on major cities such as Hue and Saigon, where sapper teams (terrorist units) briefly seized government installations and the ground floor of the U.S. embassy.
From a military perspective, the campaign was a costly setback for the Viet Cong, who bore the brunt of the fighting and suffered heavy casualties. But Tet demonstrated the continuing vulnerability of the Saigon regime and undermined public support for the war effort in the United States. In late March, President Johnson called a halt to U.S. air strikes above the twentieth parallel as an inducement to bring about negotiations.
After considerable sparring, peace talks began in November, but neither side was ready to capitulate. Hanoi continued to hope that U.S. public opinion would force Washington to withdraw. To win the support of the "silent majority," President Richard M. Nixon directed the gradual removal of U.S. troops while simultaneously attempting to strengthen the Saigon regime. In 1970 he ordered a brief assault on Viet Cong sanctuaries inside the Cambodian border. Unfortunately, one consequence of the campaign was to extend the war into previously neutral Cambodia.
By the autumn of 1972, both sides appeared to recognize that total victory was unlikely. After a series of mutual concessions, a peace agreement was finally signed in Paris in January 1973. It provided for a cease-fire, the withdrawal of remaining U.S. troops, and provisions for a political settlement between the contending elements in South Vietnam.
For most Americans, the Paris agreement marked the end of the war. But the political settlement never took effect, and by the fall of 1974 heavy fighting had resumed. When Hanoi realized that the United States was too war-weary and preoccupied with the Watergate scandal to respond, North Vietnamese troops invaded the Central Highlands and finally seized Saigon on April 30, 1975. The country was soon unified under Communist rule.
The Vietnam War has usually been considered a defeat for the United States. In fact, the issue is not quite so clear-cut. Whereas both Cambodia and Laos were placed under Communist rule, the remaining states in the region were galvanized by the fall of South Vietnam to take action to protect their own security. In present-day Vietnam, Communist leaders are introducing market reforms, and the country ironically serves as the primary bulwark against possible future Chinese expansion into Southeast Asia.
William J. Duiker
William J. Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam (1981); George C. Herring, America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975, 3rd ed. (1993); Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History, rev. ed. (1991).
