n.

A protracted military conflict (1954–1975) between the Communist forces of North Vietnam supported by China and the Soviet Union and the non-Communist forces of South Vietnam supported by the United States.

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Vietnam war refers to the US political and military continuation of the French Campaign in Indochina that followed the signing of the 1954 Geneva agreements, which divided Vietnam along the 17th Parallel, and which ended when the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) occupied Saigon on 30 April 1975. A continuation of the Vietminh's effort to free Vietnam from foreign domination, this isolated conflict was slowly transformed into the bloodiest battleground of the Cold War.

Following the Genesva accords, relative calm descended on Vietnam. In Hanoi, the Vietminh, who had come under the control of the Vietnamese Lao Dong (Communist) Party by the time of the French defeat, consolidated their power under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh, collectivized agriculture in the north (which sparked a bloodily suppressed peasant uprising in 1956), and debated how to gain control of South Vietnam. In Saigon Bao Dai, the French-backed emperor, was deposed in a referendum by the US-supported Ngo Dinh Diem in late 1955. Diem, a Catholic in a predominantly Buddhist country, was a committed anti-communist. Bolstered by increasing economic and covert aid from the USA, Diem launched an anti-communist sweep of South Vietnam. By the late 1950s, the hard-pressed Vietminh cadres who had remained in the South, derisively dubbed Vietcong by Diem, appealed to Hanoi for reinforcement and greater support.

Although Hanoi had ordered the formation of Vietcong military units in the Mekong Delta as early as 1957, North Vietnamese leaders debated if the time was ripe to intervene more directly in the South. At a May 1959 meeting of the Lao Dong Party, they decided to support ‘armed revolution’ against Saigon: 4, 500 ‘regroupees’ (a southern communist cadre who had come to North Vietnam following the Geneva accords) began to stream down the ‘Ho Chi Minh Trail’ between North and South Vietnam to help form Vietcong units. In December 1960, Hanoi announced the creation of the National Liberation Front (NLF), a collection of southern groups opposing the Diem regime, to bolster the North Vietnamese contention that the revolt against Saigon was an indigenous movement.

This reversed the military situation and by the early 1960s Saigon was under enormous pressure. Diem's campaign against the communists increasingly was directed against all political dissent, bringing local and US calls for him to reform his government. In November 1960, Diem narrowly avoided being overthrown in a military coup. Vietcong terrorist incidents against the regime surged. In 1959 the Vietcong killed about 1, 200 government representatives, in 1961 this had risen to 4, 000. Vietcong units also began inflicting a string of defeats on the Army, Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). Diem, who generally turned to family members for their political reliability, now relied increasingly on his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu to eliminate political opposition.

The Ngos overstepped the bounds of US patience in 1963 when they forcefully suppressed a series of Buddhist protests against their regime. Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu's characterization of a Buddhist monk's self-immolation as a ‘barbecue show’ only increased the Kennedy administration's disenchantment with Diem. The Ngos had undertaken a delicate balancing act between receiving enormous quantities of US economic and military aid to the civil power (15, 000 US military advisers were in South Vietnam at the end of 1963) while resisting what they perceived as US meddling in South Vietnamese affairs. By 1963 many officials in the Kennedy administration had come to perceive Diem and his brother Nhu as obstructionists. The US diplomatic mission in Saigon gave tacit approval to, if it did not actually orchestrate, a November 1963 coup d'état that resulted in the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu.

The coup caught Hanoi by surprise, but the removal of Diem, recognized as a nationalist throughout Vietnam, invited further North Vietnamese intervention. After his murder, Saigon was rocked by a series of military coups, which produced political instability and battlefield lethargy. Hanoi quickly capitalized on this opportunity: by the end of 1964, Vietcong units had been organized into division-size formations and entire PAVN regiments had infiltrated into South Vietnam. As Vietcong/PAVN activity spread, more US personnel became casualties in the conflict. On 3 February 1964, the Vietcong attacked the US advisers' compound in Kontum City. On 7 February, a bomb blew up in a Saigon theatre, killing three Americans. In May, the USS Card was sunk by Vietcong commandos in a Saigon harbour. In November, the Vietcong attacked the US airbase at Bien Hoa and on 24 December they claimed credit for a bombing at the Brinks Hotel in Saigon where US officers were billeted.

A controversial incident in the Gulf of Tonkin would have a profound impact on the war. Early in the morning of 2 August 1964, the US destroyer Maddox, while patrolling along North Vietnamese territorial waters, was attacked by three North Vietnamese torpedo boats. The Maddox returned fire and was quickly supported by aircraft from the USS Ticonderoga. During the night of 4 August, the Maddox, now joined by the destroyer C. Turner Joy, initially reported a renewed attack, although officers at the scene quickly determined that the North Vietnamese vessels were nowhere to be found and that inexperienced crewmen had simply responded to sonar and radar anomalies. The Johnson administration, uninterested in validating initial reports and indifferent to the probability that Hanoi might have been responding to South Vietnamese amphibious attacks (30-1 July OPLAN 34A raids) against the North Vietnamese coast, ordered retaliatory air strikes against the torpedo-boat base at Vinh. The Johnson administration also gained congressional approval for increased US military action in South-East Asia. Although critics have long believed that the Johnson administration manipulated public and congressional sentiment by not divulging complete details of the incident, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution provided the administration with carte blanche to take military action to defend US personnel and interests in South-East Asia.

By 1965, the nature of the war was changing. No longer just a Vietcong effort to overthrow the Saigon regime through a ‘People's war’, the conflict became a deadlock between the USA and North Vietnam, which was backed by its Soviet and Chinese allies. Hanoi hoped that the USA would not resist a PAVN invasion of South Vietnam; while Washington hoped that Ho Chi Minh and his followers would be deterred by a demonstration of US military might. The 7 February 1965 Vietcong attack on the US airbase at Pleiku prompted US retaliatory air raids against North Vietnam (FLAMING DART) ; on 13 February Pres Johnson ordered a ‘program of measured and limited air action’, against North Vietnam, which came to be known as ROLLING THUNDER.

To protect the US airbase at Da Nang from Vietcong retaliation for US air strikes against North Vietnam, the Johnson administration dispatched two battalions of US Marines to guard the base. More US troops soon followed, initially to protect other US installations, but US military commanders viewed this initial ‘enclave’ strategy as ineffective. On 27 June 1965, Gen Westmoreland, Commander of the US Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), ordered the first US offensive ground operation of the war. The ‘Big-Unit war’ had begun.

As US troops streamed into the country, Westmoreland faced his first major challenge: preventing the collapse of South Vietnam and a successful PAVN occupation of the northern sections of the country. In November 1965, the battle was joined in the Ia Drang valley in the Western Highlands, a hard-won victory for the US 1st Cavalry Division. As US troop strength grew, Westmoreland went on the offensive. Launching a series of large-scale ‘Search and Destroy’ operations, US and Allied forces targeted Vietcong operating bases. Vietcong and PAVN units often managed to evade Allied forces by fading into Cambodian and Laotian sanctuaries, but continuous attacks took their toll, especially on Vietcong forward-supply bases.

The Vietnam war, 1959-75.
(Click to enlarge)

By mid-1967, the war had reached a turning point and officers at MACV began to proclaim ‘light at the end of the tunnel’. US attrition objectives were being achieved: Vietcong and PAVN units were apparently losing more forces in South Vietnam than could be replaced through recruitment or infiltration. Policy-makers in Hanoi also came to the conclusion that the war was stalemated and that battlefield trends were not in their favour. In response, they called for a ‘Tong Cong Kich, Tong Khai Nghia’ (General Offensive, General Uprising). Known in the USA as the Tet offensive, because it occurred during the celebration of the Chinese lunar New Year, the countrywide attacks were intended to spark an insurrection among South Vietnamese civilians and military forces, destroying the Saigon regime. The North Vietnamese hoped to leave US forces isolated along the South Vietnamese border, forcing the Johnson administration to negotiate an end to the war. Hanoi even planned to re-enact the siege of Dien Bien Phu; by January 1968, 40, 000 PAVN soldiers were laying siege to the firebase at Khe Sanh and its garrison of 7, 000 US Marines.

The Tet attacks failed to prompt a southern uprising and military mutiny. With the exception of the battles of Saigon and Hué, Allied forces quickly repelled attacking Vietcong units. At Khe Sanh, the US Marines, supported by thousands of air sorties, stood firm and inflicted enormous casualties on PAVN. But the Tet offensive was a brilliant political success for Hanoi. Believing that progress was being made in the war, the Johnson administration and the US public were shocked by the scope and intensity of the offensive. On 31 March 1968, Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not seek re-election as his administration reassessed its policies toward South-East Asia.

Following Tet, US policy-makers became increasingly determined to devise an exit strategy that would not simply abandon South Vietnam to PAVN. In terms of diplomacy, US and North Vietnamese negotiators began meeting in Paris in May 1968, but their talks made little progress. On the battlefield, the Nixon administration implemented a policy, called ‘Vietnamization’, to bolster ARVN. The USA began turning the war over to ARVN while gradually withdrawing US combat troops from South Vietnam.

Vietnamization came none too soon. Domestic opposition to the war mounted in the aftermath of the Tet offensive, reaching a peak in May 1970 following a US-ARVN raid into Cambodia. Launched to buy time for Vietnamization by destroying PAVN base areas, the Cambodian raid sparked nationwide student protests and tragedy at Kent State University when four students were shot and killed by the Ohio National Guard. In South Vietnam, morale among US troops plummeted as soldiers became preoccupied by the prospect of becoming the last casualty in a war that was winding down. By 1971, over 7, 000 troops in Vietnam faced charges related to heroin (out of a force that numbered about 225, 000), insubordination, and fragging incidents (attacks against officers and NCOs), and courts martial soared. Vietnamization continued, but ARVN remained incapable of holding its own against PAVN: in spring 1971, ARVN launched Lam Son 719, a raid into Laos to destroy PAVN base areas, but was saved from disaster only by the massive use of US air power. In the spring of 1972, during the so-called ‘Easter-Offensive’, Saigon was again saved from disaster by a massive US air effort. Although PAVN, which by now resembled a conventional military force complete with armoured vehicles and ample large-calibre artillery, suffered devastating casualties, it succeeded in bringing western portions of South Vietnam under complete communist control.

By late 1972, Hanoi and Washington, moved along by secret negotiations conducted by Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, were near agreement on a negotiated end to the fighting in South Vietnam. When South Vietnamese Pres Nguyen Van Thieu objected to several portions of the proposed agreement, particularly that North Vietnamese troops would be allowed to stay in South Vietnam, Hanoi began back-pedalling on previously settled issues. The Nixon administration, seeking to break this diplomatic impasse, informed the Thieu regime that the USA would sign the agreement; the only hope of continued US military support to Saigon was in response to Hanoi's violation of the peace accord. To persuade Hanoi, Nixon initiated LINEBACKER II, also known as the ‘Christmas Bombing’. Although aircraft loses were significant, the USA dropped over 20, 000 tons of bombs on the North between 18 and 29 December 1972, causing enormous damage and completely exhausting North Vietnam's air defences. This surge in military-diplomatic pressure finally produced agreement: ceasefire accords were formally signed in Paris on 27 January 1973. The Paris agreement turned out to be a short-lived truce. Saigon forces collapsed in the face of an eight-week offensive launched by PAVN in March 1975. Americans, who had mostly come to the conclusion that US involvement in the war had been a mistake, were in no mood to intervene to prevent Hanoi's victory.

Military victory against the total war waged by North Vietnam was only attainable with US economic and military mobilization, but the decision was taken instead to sell the war in small increments. To minimize the political fallout, the National Guard was not engaged (except to put down domestic disorders) and the children of the influential were exempted from conscription. Secretary of Defense McNamara devised a process of feeding troops in and rotating them out again as individuals, directly attacking unit cohesion and esprit de corps, while the military high command devalued the honour of combat medals by awarding them to non-combatants, and put careerism ahead of combat effectiveness by allowing senior officers to ‘ticket punch’, that is to rotate in and out of combat commands too quickly to bond with their men or to lead them effectively. The impact of the media was twofold, at once feeding domestic outrage at what was being done and demoralizing the troops in Vietnam by showing them the contempt with which veterans were being treated back in ‘the world’. In particular, the effect of live TV coverage of the race riots in the late 1960s on African-American troops was devastating. And, as always, the promises of the air power enthusiasts proved over-optimistic. Bombing the jungle is possibly the least cost-effective form of warfare ever devised by man.

Twenty-five years after the fall of Saigon, much has changed in the world. Relations between reunited Vietnam and the USA are slowly improving, complicated by the issue of MIAs but helped along by tension with China that briefly erupted into a shooting war in 1978. The USSR got into its own Vietnam in Afghanistan and finally could no longer sustain the costs of the Cold War. In South-East Asia the dominos did not fall, although it was only the armed intervention of PAVN that put an end to the genocide of Pol Pot in Cambodia after it was hopelessly destabilized by the neighbouring war. There are 58, 000 names inscribed on the immensely moving war memorial in Washington, while over 2 million dead Vietnamese are largely forgotten. The US military has not yet come to terms with the loss of the war, preferring to nurture a ‘stab in the back’ explanation, but in due course it undertook a reformation of organization and doctrine that was stunningly effective in the Gulf war. Just as the full social and political significance of the American civil war took nearly a century to be appreciated, it may well be that by the middle of the 21st century the Vietnam war will be seen to have been just as important a turning point in the development of the USA.

Bibliography

• Herr, Michael, Dispatches (New York, 1991).
• Herring, George, America's Longest War (New York, 1996).
• Lewy, Gunter, America in Vietnam (Oxford, 1978).
• Lind, Michael, Vietnam: The Necessary War (New York, 1999).
• MacLean, Michael, The Ten Thousand Day War (New York, 1981).
• Palmer, Dave R., The Summons of the Trumpet (Novato, Calif., 1978)

— James J. Wirtz

(1960 – 1975)

Causes
Military and Diplomatic Course
Domestic Course
Postwar Impact
Changing Interpretations

The Vietnam conflict triggered constitutional controversies that split the nation and confronted the Supreme Court with some of the most difficult issues that it faced between 1965 and 1975. The Court ducked the toughest of these questions: the constitutionality of the war itself. While declining to order an end to the fighting, however, it provided a surprising degree of protection to antiwar protestors. The Court also expanded significantly the number of men who could gain exemption from military service as conscientious objectors.

Although benefited by many of its decisions, opponents of the war were deeply disappointed in the Supreme Court because of its persistent refusal to rule that American military involvement was unlawful. Article I, section 8 of the Constitution provides that “Congress shall have Power … [t]o declare war”; but no congressional declaration preceded President Lyndon Johnson's commitment of half a million men to combat in Southeast Asia. Johnson and his successor, Richard Nixon, insisted that the August 1964 Tonkin Gulf Resolution, in which Congress urged the commander in chief to “take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression” and the many appropriations acts in which the legislature provided funds for the armed forces, gave them whatever congressional authorization they needed to conduct combat operations in Vietnam. Critics of their policies countered that because Congress had not declared war, they were behaving unconstitutionally. Some also accused the United States of waging a war of aggression in Vietnam and argued that anyone who participated in this conflict would be subject to punishment under principles established at the Nuremberg war crime trials.8

The Supreme Court evaded these issues. Beginning with the cases of Mora v. McNamara (1967) and Mitchell v. United States (1967), the Court persistently employed its discretionary authority to determine which cases it would hear to exclude from consideration all constitutional challenges to the war and all cases raising the Nuremberg defense. In Massachusetts v. Laird (1970), it even spurned what amounted to a request from the Massachusetts legislature to decide the constitutionality of the war. Outraged by his colleagues' refusal to confront this issue, Justice William O. Douglas (joined sometimes by Justices Potter Stewart and John M. Harlan) took the unusual step of filing lengthy written dissents from his colleagues' denials of writs of certiorari, but his protests did no good. The Supreme Court would not even allow a federal district judge to halt the bombing of Vietnam's neutral neighbor, Cambodia, which Nixon initiated without any authorization from Congress. Unwilling to precipitate a conflict with the Executive, the Court protected its institutional interests by leaving the question of the legality of the war to be resolved in the political arena.

But the Court did assist those struggling in that realm to bring American involvement in South‐east Asia to an end. In 1971 Daniel Ellsberg, a “think tank” employee who had formerly worked at the Pentagon, turned against the war. He set out to discredit it by handing over to several newspapers photocopies of a documentary history, prepared by the Defense Department itself, that revealed a number of embarrassing facts concerning the origins of the Vietnam conflict. The Justice Department immediately sought injunctions, forbidding the press to publish what came to be known as the “Pentagon Papers.” The Supreme Court prevented the government from suppressing this official history by ruling in New York Times Co. v. United States (1971) that the government had failed to meet the heavy burden necessary to justify prior restraint. In a related case, Gravel v. United States (1972), the Court held that the Speech and Debate Clause protected a senator who read the purloined papers at a congressional committee hearing and an aide who had helped him prepare for this exposé.

While willing to safeguard those who made the Pentagon Papers public, the Supreme Court proved reluctant to shield dissidents from the military. In Laird v. Tatum (1972), it affirmed a district judge's dismissal of a suit brought by antiwar activists, who alleged that army surveillance of civilian protesters was chilling the exercise of First Amendment rights, announcing that the case raised issues that were not justiciable (see Justiciability). The justices also joined the military legal system and lower civilian courts in withholding meaningful constitutional protection from members of the armed forces who wished to protest the war. In Parker v. Levy (1974), it ruled that the army had violated neither the First Amendment nor the Fifth when it convicted a dissident captain of conduct prejudicial to the discipline and good order of the service and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman for urging enlisted men not to serve in Vietnam. The Court, however, was not totally insensitive to the interests of citizen‐soldiers. In O'Callahan v. Parker (1969), it held that members of the armed forces, many of whom were conscripts or draft‐induced volunteers, could not be tried by courts martial for ordinary crimes that were not service connected (see Military Justice; Military Trials and Martial Law).

And while unwilling to undermine military discipline by sanctioning protest in the ranks, the Supreme Court did provide constitutional shelter to civilian critics of American involvement in Vietnam. Initially, the Court appeared to be no more protective of dissent than it had been during World War I. In United States v. O'Brien (1968), the Warren Court held that a federal statute that criminalized one of the most popular means of expressing opposition to the war—draft card burning—did not violate the First Amendment. O'Brien proved to be quite unrepresentative. Even before that highly controversial decision came down, the Warren Court had held in Bond v. Floyd (1966) that the First Amendment precluded the Georgia legislature from denying an African‐American man the seat to which he had been elected because of his affiliation with an organization that had issued a statement condemning the war and endorsing draft resistance. After O'Brien, Warren and his colleagues held in *Tinker v. Des Moines School District (1969) that it was unconstitutional for a pubic school to expel students who wore black armbands to class to protest American involvement in Vietnam.

When Warren *Burger became chief justice the Court continued to protect dissent. Although holding in Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner (1972) that the management of a shopping mall might exclude demonstrators who wanted to hand out antiwar leaflets from its property without violating the First Amendment, in another case it ruled that the Constitution protected from punishment a man who wore a real military uniform in a protest skit. In Flower v. United States (1972), the Burger Court took the position that the armed services could not exclude antiwar activists from bases or parts of bases that were otherwise open to the public. Such rulings reflected the mood of an American public growing increasingly disaffected with the Vietnam conflict. The Supreme Court joined the rest of the federal judiciary in using the First Amendment to protect agitation aimed at bringing an end to the fighting.

The Court also made it easier for young men who did not wish to participate in the war to gain exemption from military service as conscientious objectors. Section 6(j) of the Universal Military Training and Service Act exempted from combatant duty in the armed forces anyone who, by reason of religious training and belief, conscientiously opposed participation in war. The statute defined religious training and belief as “an individual's belief in relation to a Supreme Being. …” The defendants in United States v. Seeger (1965) and Welsh v. United States (1970) were both denied classification as conscientious objectors because they were agnostics. Although neither man appeared to meet the requirements of section 6(j), the Supreme Court held that both Welsh and Seeger were entitled to be classified as conscientious objectors. Apparently convinced that if the statute were read literally, it would have to be invalidated as a violation of the First Amendment's prohibition against the establishment of religion, the Court interpreted religious beliefs as including moral and philosophical tenets held with the strength of traditional religious convictions. While Seeger and Welsh blatantly distorted the intent of Congress, they did preserve the exemption for those to whom the legislature had wanted to give it. These rulings also increased the number of men who could avoid serving in an increasingly unpopular war. The Court refused, however, to allow those opposed only to fighting in Vietnam to claim conscientious objector status. In Gillette v. United States (1971), it held that denying the exemption to those, such as Catholics, whose religious views precluded only participation in unjust military conflicts, did not violate the First Amendment's Establishment Clause. The Court feared selective conscientious objection could not be administered fairly and might “corrode the spirit of public service and the values of willing performance of citizen's duties that are the very heart of free government” (p. 460).

Yet the war itself ate away at all those things. By using the First Amendment to prevent suppression of antiwar protest, the Court legitimated the expressions of disillusionment, anger, and alienation that eventually pressured the political branches into withdrawing from Southeast Asia.

See also Conscientious Objection; Speech and the Press; War; War Powers.

Bibliography

• W. Taylor Reveley, War Powers of the President and Congress: Who Holds the Arrows and Olive Branch (1981).
• Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Imperial Presidency (1973).
• Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong, The Brethren (1979)

— Michal R. Belknap

(1965-75) the most domestically divisive and least militarily decisive overseas campaign ever fought by the U.S. Given the slow and hesitant commitment to the war, its ambiguous results may not be that surprising. From 1950 to 1965, U.S. presidents gradually increased military and economic aid, first to French Indochina and then to South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in an effort to halt the spread of Communism. President Harry S. Truman first authorized aid in 1950 to help France maintain control of its colony. In 1954, the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu by the Communist-led Vietnamese Nationalist Army, leading to the Geneva Agreement on Indochina, which set up terms and a timetable for Vietnamese independence. The U.S. did not sign the treaty and though it agreed to abide by its spirit, it quickly began to undermine it by sending military advisers and the CIA to help create South Vietnam, eventually installing a pro-U.S. leader, Ngo Dinh Diem, who had little Vietnamese backing. And though President Dwight D. Eisenhower's military experience made him reluctant to step up the involvement, President John F. Kennedy did increase it in 1961 by sending arms, military advisers, and Green Beret forces in order to equip and train the South Vietnamese for counterinsurgency tactics against Communist guerrillas. To justify these commitments, American foreign policymakers relied upon the domino theory, which posited that if one country succumbed to Communism, the rest would fall too. Vietnam—that is, the Vietminh (later the National Liberation Front) and Ho Chi Minh's government—was seen as the domino in line after China, and thus had to be stopped. Of course, there were economic motives, too, as the U.S. hoped to widen its Pacific trade. But perhaps the most important factor was the commitment itself, as each president feared looking weak both at home and abroad. Democrats, under whose watch, the Republicans famously claimed, Americans hadlost China to Communism, were particularly vulnerable. And for Kennedy, the failure to stop Cuban Communism was an even more recent debacle. On an international level, all administrations from Truman's through Nixon's were concerned about the negative impression a de-escalation might make on other nations, considering that the U.S. had pledged its support to South Vietnam. It is quite certain that few policymakers, at least until the latter half of the 1960s, foresaw the extent of American involvement, let alone the possibility of failure.Not just the gradual escalation, but the lack of a formal declaration of war makes it hard to determine its precise beginning. Conventionally, it is dated to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, issued by Congress at the behest of President Lyndon B. Johnson in August 1964, which authorized the U.S. military to retaliate against the North Vietnamese for what was most probably a nonexistent attack against U.S. ships. The resolution functioned as a legislative basis for all subsequent deployment, which was quickly heightened when Johnson authorized a bombing campaign of North Vietnam in early 1965. During the next three years, the number of ground deployments, air force sorties, and bombing tonnage rose dramatically, and the targets spread throughout North Vietnam and into Laos, as well. What Johnson had intended to be a limited war, particularly because he feared Soviet and Chinese involvement, was no longer so limited. In response, Hanoi began sending more units of the North Vietnamese Army into the South, launching a major offensive in the Central Highlands in October 1965. The U.S. won the ensuing Battle of the Ia Drang Valley, a campaign from which it concluded that airborne “search and destroy” tactics could win what appeared to be awar of attrition. But while U.S. estimations of enemy body counts, which were regularly reported to the media, continued to rise, the intensity of North Vietnamese military engagement was not waning. In early 1967, Gen. William C. Westmoreland mounted Operation Cedar Falls near Saigon and Operation Junction City in the Central Highlands in an attempt to win the war. These operations saw the introduction to Vietnam of carpet-bombing, which had originated in the Pacific theater in World War II, and of Agent Orange, the now-notorious toxic defoliant. Still, the enemy did not disappear, and with third-party negotiations rejected by both Hanoi and Washington, the war reached a stalemate.In January 1968, the Vietcong successfully launched the Tet Offensive, a series of coordinated attacks on urban centers and military posts in South Vietnam that were intended to foment a widespread rebellion against Saigon and the U.S. Although no cities succumbed, both sides suffered heavy casualties, and the result was astrategic victory for the North and its Southern followers. Roughly at the same time, the North Vietnamese three-month siege of Khe Sanh was rebuffed by the outnumbered Marines, but again, U.S. victory was ambiguous. In the face of the exacting casualtytoll, the inconclusive results, and increasingly intense public and political scrutiny, Johnson declared in March that bombing of North Vietnam would be restricted and policies would concentrate on a negotiated settlement. This was the same month in which U.S. soldiers committed numerous atrocities in the My Lai Massacre, an incident that was covered up from the press and the public until late 1969.What Johnson's de-escalation policies meant was an increasing development of Vietnamization, an effort to train Saigon's army to take over the bulk of the fighting. President Richard M. Nixon elaborated upon this goal by mounting a campaign of secret bombings of Cambodia in early 1969, while also starting to withdraw U.S. troops. Soldier morale sapped further as the futilityof what was rapidly becoming limited ground action, such as was evident at Hamburger Hill, sank in. The public at home was no more satisfied with the slow-moving withdrawal, which still left over 150, 000 troops in Vietnam by late 1971. American aircraft continued to strafe Laos and Cambodia in support of Saigon's ground forces, who were not so efficiently completing the process of Vietnamization. Indeed, by the final official bombing campaigns, which included the Linebacker and Linebacker II raids on North Vietnam in late 1972 and early 1973, total U.S. bomb tonnage had far exceeded the total dropped in World War II.On January 27, 1973, the U.S., North and South Vietnam, and the NLF's provisionary government signed the Paris Peace Agreements, confirming terms of a ceasefire agreed to but not enforced three months earlier. By April 1, almost all U.S. forces had left Vietnam. Shortly afterwards, Congress stopped funding the bombing campaign in Cambodia, and in November, it overcame Nixon's veto to pass the War Powers Resolution, which restricted the president's power to deploy forces without Congressional approval. This act culminated pressure to stop what had been labeled the “imperial presidency” since early in the war. Nixon, who had declared the treaty to be “peace with honor” was perhaps lucky to already be out of office when the Vietcong captured Saigon in 1975, forcing a dramatic rooftop evacuation by the U.S. embassy staff. This episode underlines the notion that, on a military level, the motivations to fight the war were exaggerated and the military strategies ill-conceived. Some maintain that in the midst of the Cold War, U.S. global credibility was at stake, and that an increased number and efficiency of the attacks should have been formulated. Still, that would have probably drawn Chinese and Soviet involvement, and perhaps escalated the tragedy beyond its already significant proportions.Worse still was that the war not only severely damaged the American economy, but also appeared to have torn the even larger fabric of American society in two. War-related spending had produced high inflation, high unemployment, an unfavorable balance of trade, and insufficient tax increases. These factors contributed to the oil crisis in 1973, as well as to the speculation-driven real estate boom of the 1970s, and also led to the creation of variable interest rates. And during the war itself, the staggering economy did little to improve Johnson or Nixon's standing, most notably among the lower and lower-middle classes. Johnson's underselling of the war which stripped his more popular Great Society programs of necessary funding, quickly came back to haunt him. Not only did he fail to garner public support for the war, but the strength of the antiwar movement contributed considerably to running him out of office. In 1968, the bloody riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago maimed George McGovern's campaign, even if the protesters were not, in the final analysis, primarily responsible for the violence. Draft dodging, draft resistance and conscientious objectors pervaded the war effort, especially as the system seemed to discriminate in favor of the middle and upper class. While Nixon tried to placate resistance by instituting the lottery in December 1969, it did not cease until he terminated the draft in July 1973. Still, like Johnson, Nixon generally believed that the antiwar movement bolstered North Vietnamese hopes and thus considered the protesters treacherous. And while de-escalation quelled the protests, the 1970 revelation of the secret campaigns in Cambodia re-ignited them, including the tragedies at Kent State and Jackson State Universities. Further down the road, some of Nixon's extralegal and illegal inquiries into antiwar protesters became part of the Watergate scandal.On the whole, then, the war cost America dearly. A depressed economy, decreased global credibility, loss of faith in the government, and an overwhelming loss of pride were only some of the longer-term effects. A renewed commitment to isolationism, as well as a popular image of the deranged Vietnam Veteran, have combined to throw doubt on foreign policy commitments in the past three decades. And while scholarly and military interpretations of the war have continued to change over that same time, from soul-searching to anti-government to anti-liberal and back again, the consensus appears to remain that, in the sometimes mirage-making heat of the Cold War, the U.S. fatally mistook the ardency of Vietnamese nationalism for a fervent commitment to Communism.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

From the perspective of the present sovereign state of Vietnam, the Vietnam War began during the Second World War as a ‘national liberation struggle’ against Japanese occupation and only ended in 1975, after a series of victories over different adversaries, with the forcible incorporation of the state of South Vietnam into North Vietnam. The first victory came with the collapse of Japan in 1945. But a new enemy soon appeared in the form of France which sought to reimpose colonial rule on all of Indochina. By the early 1950s, however, the French were starting to wilt in the face of Vietnamese guerrilla resistance and were only with difficulty persuaded by the United States to stay in contention (even though 1945 the Americans had urged the European colonialists to grant independence to Asian territories occupied by Japan). By the early 1950s, however, the Americans had been converted to the view that the anti-colonial forces in Indochina were communist-led and would, if successful, join the Soviet camp in the Cold War. Moreover the Americans came to fear that a domino effect would ensue throughout South-East Asia with incalculable consequences for the Western policy of attempting to ‘contain’ communism.

1954 the French indicated their intention to withdraw from Indochina following the symbolic fall to Vietnamese guerrillas of the fortress of Dien Bien Phu. The Americans were fatally divided about their response. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles wished to intervene militarily to prevent any concession to communism, even if that meant that the United States had to act alone. President Eisenhower, on the other hand, insisted that such intervention must take a multilateral Western form. This left the British with the decisive voice, which Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden used, in association with the Soviet Union, to convene an international conference held in Geneva. Indochina was divided into four independent sovereign states: North and South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Of these, one, North Vietnam, was handed over to the communist-led insurgents who had defeated the French. Eisenhower disapproved of this arrangement but lacked the resolution to use armed force to prevent it.

In the circumstances few believed that non-communist South Vietnam would survive for long. But its regime, encouraged by Washington, reneged on a promise given at Geneva for all-Vietnam so-called free elections to be held. And gradually successive US Presidents were drawn into taking South Vietnam under their wing as an insurgency, sponsored by North Vietnam, gathered momentum. Economic aid was presently supplemented with a degree of military support. 1964 President Johnson, apparently reacting to a naval incident between US and North Vietnamese forces, obtained overwhelming support in Congress for the so-called Tonkin Gulf Resolution. This in effect authorized the US administration to render large-scale military assistance to South Vietnam and to wage an undeclared war against North Vietnam.

By 1968 it was apparent that the Americans had failed to defeat the insurgency in South Vietnam and that most other countries, even those belonging to NATO, had no enthusiasm for American policies. Facing much opposition at home and mounting evidence of low morale and indiscipline among US troops, Johnson decided not to seek re-election.

His successor, Richard Nixon, was elected in November 1968 on a platform of seeking to wind down the US presence in Vietnam but simultaneously to seek an honourable outcome in negotiations with North Vietnam. These aims proved to be incompatible but, as Nixon could not bring himself to admit this, the upshot was many more years of warfare. Only 1973 did the North Vietnamese, under pressure from Moscow, consent to a negotiated settlement that enabled Nixon to order a withdrawal of all US forces and somewhat unconvincingly to claim that South Vietnam's independence had been saved. For the Americans, though not for the Vietnamese, the conflict was over.

Two years later South Vietnam's supposed independence disappeared as North Vietnamese forces marched into Saigon. The United States simply acquiesced in the take-over and hence in effect conceded that its longest war had ended in humiliation.

— David Carlton

For more information on Vietnam War, visit Britannica.com.

Vietnam War, fought from 1957 until spring 1975, began as a struggle between the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) supported by the United States and a Communist-led insurgency assisted by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). Eventually, both the United States and North Vietnam committed their regular military forces to the struggle. North Vietnam received economic and military assistance from the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. The Republic of Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, and the Philippines furnished troops to the U.S.–South Vietnamese side. With 45,943 U.S. battle deaths, Vietnam was the fourth costliest war the country fought in terms of loss of life.

The Vietnam War was a continuation of the Indochina War of 1946–1954, in which the Communist dominated Vietnamese nationalists (Viet Minh) defeated France's attempt to reestablish colonial rule. American involvement began in 1950 when President Harry S. Truman invoked the Mutual Defense Assistance Act of 1949 to provide aid to French forces in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Early U.S. aims were to halt the spread of Communism and to encourage French participation in the international defense of Europe.

Even with U.S. aid in the form of materiel and a Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG), the French could not defeat the Viet Minh use of both guerrilla warfare and conventional attacks. Ending the Indochina War, the Geneva Accords of 1954 divided Vietnam at the seventeenth parallel with a three-mile Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). The partition in effect created two nations: the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the north with its capital at Hanoi, and the Republic of Vietnam in the south with its capital at Saigon. Vietnam's neighbors, Laos and

Cambodia, became independent nations under nominally neutralist governments.

The administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower provided aid and support to the government of Ngo Dinh Diem. The MAAG, which grew in strength from 342 personnel to nearly 700, helped Diem to build up his armed forces. In 1956, with Eisenhower's concurrence, Diem refused to participate in the national elections called for in the Geneva Accords, asserting that South Vietnam had not acceded to the agreement and that free elections were impossible in the north, and declared himself president of the Republic of Vietnam.

During the first years of his rule, Diem, assisted by the MAAG, American civilian advisers, and by $190 million a year in U.S. financial aid, established effective armed forces and a seemingly stable government. He defeated or co-opted South Vietnamese rivals, resettled some 800,000 Catholic refugees from North Vietnam, initiated land reform, and conducted a campaign to wipe out the Viet Minh organization that remained in the south. Although strong on the surface, however, Diem's regime was inefficient and riddled with corruption. Its land reform brought little benefit to the rural poor. Commanded by generals selected for loyalty to Diem rather than ability, the armed forces were poorly trained and low in morale. The anti–Viet Minh campaign alienated many peasants, and Diem's increasingly autocratic rule turned much of the urban anticommunist elite against him.

Anticipating control of South Vietnam through elections and preoccupied with internal problems, North Vietnam's charismatic leader, Ho Chi Minh, at first did little to exploit the vulnerabilities of the southern regime. Nevertheless, Ho and his colleagues were committed to the liberation of all of Vietnam and had accepted the Geneva Accords only with reluctance, under pressure from the Russians and Chinese, who hoped to avoid another Korea-type confrontation with the United States. In deference to his allies' caution and to American power, Ho moved slowly at the outset against South Vietnam.

Beginning in 1957, the southern Viet Minh, with authorization from Hanoi, launched a campaign of political subversion and terrorism, and gradually escalated a guerrilla war against Diem's government. Diem quickly gave the insurgents the label Viet Cong (VC), which they retained throughout the ensuing struggle. North Vietnam created a political organization in the south, the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF), ostensibly a broad coalition of elements opposed to Diem but controlled from the north by a Communist inner core. To reinforce the revived insurgency, Hanoi began sending southward soldiers and political cadres who had regrouped to North Vietnam after the armistice in 1954. These men, and growing quantities of weapons and equipment, traveled to South Vietnam via a network of routes through eastern Laos called the Ho Chi Minh Trail and by sea in junks and trawlers. At this stage, however, the vast majority of Viet Cong were native southerners, and they secured most of their weapons and supplies by capture from government forces.

Building on the organizational base left from the French war and exploiting popular grievances against Diem, the Viet Cong rapidly extended their political control of the countryside. Besides conducting small guerrilla operations, they gradually began to mount larger assaults with battalion and then regimental size light infantry units. As the fighting intensified, the first American deaths occurred in July 1959, when two soldiers of the MAAG were killed during a Viet Cong attack on Bien Hoa, north of Saigon. By the time President John F. Kennedy took office in 1961, it was clear that America's ally needed additional help.

Kennedy viewed the conflict in South Vietnam as a test case of Communist expansion by means of local "wars of national liberation." For that reason, as well as a continuing commitment to the general policy of "containment," Kennedy enlarged the U.S. effort in South Vietnam. He sent in more advisers to strengthen Diem's armed forces, provided additional funds and equipment, and deployed American helicopter companies and other specialized units. To carry out the enlarged program, Kennedy created a new joint (army, navy, air force) headquarters in Saigon, the Military Assistance Command,

Vietnam (MACV). The number of Americans in South Vietnam increased to more than 16,000 and they began engaging in combat with the Viet Cong.

After a promising start, the Kennedy program faltered. Diem's dictatorial rule undermined South Vietnamese military effectiveness and fed popular discontent, especially among the country's numerous Buddhists. An effort to relocate the rural population in supposedly secure "strategic hamlets" collapsed due to poor planning and ineffective execution. With support from the Kennedy administration, Diem's generals overthrew and assassinated him in a coup d'etat on 1 November 1963.

Diem's death, followed by the assassination of President Kennedy on 22 November 1963, did nothing to improve allied fortunes. As a succession of unstable Saigon governments floundered, the Viet Cong began advancing from guerrilla warfare to larger attacks aimed at destroying the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN). To reinforce the campaign, Hanoi infiltrated quantities of modern Communist-bloc infantry weapons, and in late 1964, began sending units of its regular army into South Vietnam. Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, during 1964 increased American military manpower in South Vietnam to 23,300 and tried to revive the counterinsurgency campaign. However, political chaos in Saigon and growing Viet Cong strength in the countryside frustrated his efforts and those of the MACV commander, General William C. Westmoreland.

Johnson and his advisers turned to direct pressure on North Vietnam. Early in 1964, they initiated a program of small-scale covert raids on the north and began planning for air strikes. In August 1964, American planes raided North Vietnam in retaliation for two torpedo boat attacks (the second of which probably did not occur) on U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. Johnson used this incident to secure authorization from Congress (the Tonkin Gulf Resolution) to use armed force to "repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to repel further aggression." That resolution served as a legal basis for subsequent increases in the U.S. commitment, but in 1970 after questions arose as to whether the administration had misrepresented the incidents, Congress repealed it.

Committed like his predecessors to containment and to countering Communist "wars of national liberation," Johnson also wanted to maintain U.S. credibility as an ally and feared the domestic political repercussions of losing South Vietnam. Accordingly, he and his advisers moved toward further escalation.

During 1964, Johnson authorized limited U.S. bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In February 1965, after the Viet Cong killed thirty-one Americans at Pleiku and Qui Nhon, the President sanctioned retaliatory strikes against North Vietnam. In March, retaliation gave way to a steadily intensified but carefully controlled aerial offensive against the north (Operation Rolling Thunder), aimed at reducing Hanoi's ability to support the Viet Cong and compelling its leaders to negotiate an end to the conflict on U.S. terms.

At the same time, Johnson committed American combat forces to the fight. Seven U.S. Marine battalions and an Army airborne brigade entered South Vietnam between March and May 1965. Their initial mission was to defend air bases used in Operation Rolling Thunder, but in April, Johnson expanded their role to active operations against the Viet Cong. During the same period, Johnson authorized General Westmoreland to employ U.S. jets in combat in the south, and in June, B-52 strategic bombers began raiding Viet Cong bases. As enemy pressure on the ARVN continued and evidence accumulated that North Vietnamese regular divisions were entering the battle, Westmoreland called for a major expansion of the ground troop commitment. On 28 July, Johnson announced deployments that would bring U.S. strength to 180,000 by the end of 1965. Westmoreland threw these troops into action against the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese's large military units. Taking advantage of their helicopter-borne mobility, U.S. forces won early tactical victories, but the cost in American dead and wounded also began to mount and the enemy showed no signs of backing off.

Additional deployments increased American troop strength to a peak of 543,400 by 1969. To support them, MACV, using troops and civilian engineering firms, constructed or expanded ports, erected fortified camps, built vast depots, paved thousands of miles of roads, and created a network of airfields.

Desiring to keep the war limited to Vietnam, President Johnson authorized only small-scale raids into the enemy bases in Laos and Cambodia. As a result, in South Vietnam, General Westmoreland perforce fought a war of attrition. He used his American troops to battle the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong regular units while the ARVN and South Vietnam's territorial forces carried on the pacification campaign against the Viet Cong guerrillas and political infrastructure. As the fighting went on, a stable government emerged in Saigon under Nguyen Van Thieu. These efforts, however, brought only stalemate. Aided by Russia and China, the North Vietnamese countered Operation Rolling Thunder with an air defense system of increasing sophistication and effectiveness. In South Vietnam, they fed in troops to match the American buildup and engaged in their own campaign of attrition. While suffering heavier losses than the U.S. in most engagements, they inflicted a steady and rising toll of American dead. Pacification in South Vietnam made little progress. The fighting produced South Vietnamese civilian casualties, the result of enemy terrorism, American bombing and shelling, and in a few instances—notably the My Lai Massacre of March 1968—of atrocities by U.S. troops.

In the U.S., opposition to the war grew to encompass a broad spectrum of the public even as doubts about America's course emerged within the administration. By the end of 1967, President Johnson had decided to level off the bombing in the north and American troop strength in the south and to seek a way out of the war, possibly by turning more of the fighting over to the South Vietnamese.

Late in 1967, North Vietnam's leaders decided to break what they also saw as a stalemate by conducting a "General Offensive/General Uprising," a combination of heavy military attacks with urban revolts. After preliminary battles, the North Vietnamese early in 1968 besieged a Marine base at Khe Sanh in far northwestern South Vietnam. On the night of 31 January, during the Tet (Lunar New Year) holidays, 84,000 enemy troops attacked seventy-four towns and cities including Saigon. Although U.S. intelligence had gleaned something of the plan, the extent of the attacks on the cities came as a surprise.

Viet Cong units initially captured portions of many towns, but they failed to spark a popular uprising. Controlling Hué for almost a month, they executed 3,000 civilians as "enemies of the people." ARVN and U.S. troops quickly cleared most localities, and the besiegers of Khe Sanh withdrew after merciless pounding by American air power and artillery. At the cost of 32,000 dead (by MACV estimate), the Tet Offensive produced no lasting enemy military advantage.

In the United States, however, the Tet Offensive confirmed President Johnson's determination to wind down the war. Confronting bitter antiwar dissent within the Democratic Party and a challenge to his renomination from Senator Eugene McCarthy, Johnson rejected a military request for additional U.S. troops and halted most bombing of the north. He also withdrew from the presidential race to devote the rest of his term to the search for peace in Vietnam. In return for the partial bombing halt, North Vietnam agreed to open negotiations. Starting in Paris in May 1968, the talks were unproductive for a long time.

Taking office in 1969, President Richard M. Nixon continued the Paris talks. He also began withdrawing U.S. troops from South Vietnam while simultaneously building up Saigon's forces so that they could fight on with only American advice and materiel assistance. This program was labeled "Vietnamization."

Because the Viet Cong had been much weakened by its heavy losses in the Tet Offensive and in two subsequent general offensives in May and August 1968, the years 1969–1971 witnessed apparent allied progress in South Vietnam. The ARVN gradually took on the main burden of the ground fighting, which declined in intensity. American troop strength diminished from its 1969 peak of 543,400 to 156,800 at the end of 1971. The allies also made progress in pacification. American and South Vietnamese offensives against the enemy sanctuaries in Cambodia in April and May 1970 and an ARVN raid against the Ho Chi Minh Trail in February 1971 helped to buy time for Vietnamization. On the negative side, as a result of trends in American society, of disillusionment with the war among short-term draftee soldiers, and of organizational turbulence caused by the troop withdrawals, U.S. forces suffered from growing indiscipline, drug abuse, and racial conflict.

In spring 1972, North Vietnam, in order to revive its fortunes in the south, launched the so-called Easter Offensive with twelve divisions, employing tanks and artillery on a scale not previously seen in the war. In response, President Nixon, while he continued to withdraw America's remaining ground troops, increased U.S. air support to the ARVN. The North Vietnamese made initial territorial gains, but the ARVN rallied, assisted materially by U.S. Air Force and Navy planes and American advisers on the ground. Meanwhile, Nixon resumed full-scale bombing of North Vietnam and mined its harbors. Beyond defeating the Easter Offensive, Nixon intended these attacks, which employed B-52s and technologically advanced guided bombs, to batter Hanoi toward a negotiated settlement of the war. By late 1972, the North Vietnamese, had lost an estimated 100,000 dead and large amounts of equipment and had failed to capture any major towns or populated areas. Nevertheless, their military position in the south was better than it had been in 1971, and the offensive had facilitated a limited revival of the Viet Cong.

Both sides were ready for a negotiated settlement. During the autumn of 1972, Nixon's special adviser, Henry A. Kissinger, and North Vietnamese representative Le Duc Tho, who had been negotiating in secret since 1969, reached the outlines of an agreement. Each side made a key concession. The U.S. dropped its demand for complete withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops from South Vietnam. Hanoi abandoned its insistence that the Thieu government be replaced by a presumably Communist-dominated coalition. After additional diplomatic maneuvering between Washington and Hanoi and Washington and Saigon, which balked at the terms, and after a final U.S. air campaign against Hanoi in December, the ceasefire agreement went into effect on 28 January 1973.

Under it, military prisoners were returned, all American troops withdrew, and a four-nation commission supervised the truce. In fact, the fighting in South Vietnam continued, and the elections called for in the agreement never took place. During 1973 and 1974, the North Vietnamese, in violation of the ceasefire, massed additional men and supplies inside South Vietnam. Meanwhile, the Nixon administration, distracted by the Watergate scandal, had to accept a congressional cutoff of all funds for American combat operations in Southeast Asia after 15 August 1973.

Early in 1975, the North Vietnamese, again employing regular divisions with armor and artillery, launched their final offensive against South Vietnam. That nation, exhausted by years of fighting, demoralized by a steady reduction in the flow of American aid, and lacking capable leadership at the top, rapidly collapsed. A misguided effort by President Thieu to regroup his forces in northern South Vietnam set off a rout that continued almost unbroken until the North Vietnamese closed in on Saigon late in April. On 21 April, President Thieu resigned. His successor, General Duong Van Minh, surrendered the country on 30 April. North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops entered Saigon only hours after the U.S. completed an emergency airlift of embassy personnel and thousands of South Vietnamese who feared for their lives under the Communists. Hanoi gained control of South Vietnam, and its allies won in Cambodia, where the government surrendered to insurgent forces on 17 April 1975, and Laos, where the Communists gradually assumed control.

The costs of the war were high for every participant. Besides combat deaths, the U.S. lost 1,333 men missing and 10,298 dead of non-battle causes. In terms of money ($138.9 billion), only World War II was more expensive. Costs less tangible but equally real were the loss of trust by American citizens in their government and the demoralization of the U.S. armed forces, which would take years to recover their discipline and self-confidence. South Vietnam suffered more than 166,000 military dead and possibly as many as 415,000 civilians. North Vietnamese and Viet Cong deaths amounted to at least 937,000. To show for the effort, the U.S. could claim only that it had delayed South Vietnam's fall long enough for other Southeast Asian countries to stabilize their noncommunist governments.

Bibliography

Andrade, Dale. America's Last Vietnam Battle: Halting Hanoi's 1972 Easter Offensive. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001.

Berman, Larry. Planning a Tragedy: The Americanization of the War in Vietnam. New York: Norton, 1982.

Duiker, William J. The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam. Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1996.

Halberstam, David. The Best and the Brightest. New York: Random House, 1972.

Herring, George C. America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2002.

McMaster, H. R. Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam. New York: Harper Collins, 1997.

McNamara, Robert S. In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. New York: Vintage, 1996.

Oberdorfer, Don. Tet! Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.

Palmer, Bruce. The 25-Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984.

Thompson, Wayne. To Hanoi and Back: The U.S. Air Force and North Vietnam, 1966–1973. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000.

Turley, William S. The Second Indochina War: A Short Political and Military History, 1954–1975. Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1987.

Westmoreland, William C. A Soldier Reports. New York: Da Capo, 1989.

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On 2 September 1945 at Hanoi's Ba Dinh Square, Ho Chi Minh issued the historic Vietnamese proclamation of independence with words borrowed from the American Declaration of Independence: "We hold the truth that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Ho Chi Minh—who four years earlier had founded the League for Revolution and Independence, or Vietminh—had been preparing his entire life for the opportunity to rid Vietnam of colonial rule, both Japanese and French. Crowds marched from one end of Saigon to the other chanting, "Do Dao de quoc, Do Dao thuc dan phap." (Down with the Imperialists, Down with the French Colonialists.) Throughout Vietnam banners proclaimed "Vietnam for the Vietnamese."

Ho Chi Minh requested support for his cause from nations that recognized the principles of self-determination and equality of nations. President Franklin D. Roosevelt seemed to favor an international trusteeship for Vietnam to be followed by independence, but new pressures would soon change the situation for Ho and the Vietnamese. As the Cold War developed, Washington became more sensitive to the colonial interests of its allies than to the decolonization of Indochina. Ho was defined as being pro-Moscow. U.S. Cold War policy was guided by the containment of a perceived Soviet aggression. Containment was composed of economic, political, and military initiatives that sought to maintain stability in the international arena. The bitter recriminations in the United States over "who lost China?" after 1949 led the Truman administration to do what it could to prevent a Vietminh victory in Vietnam or anywhere else in Indochina. Vietnam was valued not for its own merit, but was seen rather as a test of America's global position and credibility. In December 1950, the United States joined France and the French-controlled governments of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos in signing the Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement. The United States agreed to provide military supplies and equipment through a military advisory group. This small contingent of U.S. advisers provided limited logistical services; all supplies and equipment were dispensed through the French Expeditionary Corps. U.S. aid to the French military effort mounted from $130 million in 1950 to $800 million in 1953.

In May 1953 the French government appointed General Henri Navarre commander in Vietnam and charged him with mounting a major new offensive against the Vietminh. One of Navarre's first moves, late in 1953, was to dispatch French troops to Dien Bien Phu, the juncture of a number of roads in northwestern Indochina about 100 miles from the Chinese border. On 7 May 1954 the French forces were defeated there. Shortly thereafter the Geneva Conference was held, bringing together representatives of Vietminh-controlled territory and Bao Dai's French-controlled government—which would later evolve into North and South Vietnam, respectively—the other emerging Indochinese states of Laos and Cambodia, and the major powers of France, Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the People's Republic of China. The Geneva Accords, formally known as the Final Declaration of the Geneva Conference on the Problem of Restoring Peace in Indochina, essentially settled military but not political issues.

The Vietminh controlled most of Vietnam and sought a political settlement at Geneva that would lead to the withdrawal of French forces and the establishment of an independent government led by Ho Chi Minh. But at the Geneva Conference, Anthony Eden of the United Kingdom, Pierre Mendès-France of France, Vyacheslav Molotov of the Soviet Union, and Chou En-lai of China pressured the Vietminh, through its representative, Pham Van Dong, to accept much less than it had won in battle. Under great pressure in particular from the Chinese and Soviets, who feared American military intervention under Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Ho made two major concessions—a provisional demarcation line drawn at the seventeenth parallel and free nationwide elections for unifying the country supervised by an international commission scheduled for 1956. The election was intended to settle the question of political control over Vietnam. Externally, the accords provided for a neutral Vietnam, meaning that no military alliances were to be made by either side.

Three months after Dien Bien Phu, President Dwight D. Eisenhower convened the National Security Council (NSC) to review U.S. policy in Asia. The president was already on record as claiming that

strategically South Vietnam's capture by the Communists would bring their power several hundred miles into a hitherto free region. The remaining countries in Southeast Asia would be menaced by a great flanking movement. The freedom of 12 million people would be lost immediately and that of 150 million others in adjacent lands would be seriously endangered. The loss the Republic of Vietnam, or South Vietnam, would have grave consequences for us and for freedom.

Eisenhower had also articulated the line of reasoning that came to be known as the domino theory, that the fall of one state to communism would lead to the next and the next being knocked over. Not losing Southeast Asia thus became the goal of the United States.

In an October 1954 letter to the president of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, President Eisenhower was exceedingly clear:

I am, accordingly, instructing the American Ambassador to Vietnam to examine with you in your capacity as chief of Government, how an intelligent program of American aid given directly to your Government can serve to assist Vietnam in its present hour of trial, provided that your Government is prepared to give assurances as to the standards of performance it would be able to maintain in the event such aid were supplied. The purpose of this offer is to assist the government of Vietnam in developing and maintaining a strong, viable state, capable of resisting attempted subversion or aggression through military means.

By 1961 Vietnam loomed as a test of President John F. Kennedy's inaugural commitment "to pay any price, to bear any burden, in the defense of freedom." But Diem's government had evolved into a family oligarchy that ruled through force and repression. Opposition grew from a wide range of political, social, and religious groups. Protests raged, including the quite dramatic self-immolations by Buddhist monks. On 1 November 1963, Diem was removed from office and murdered in the back of a U.S.-built personnel carrier. The coup was planned and implemented by South Vietnamese military officers; U.S. ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were involved. Kennedy, given the opportunity to instruct Lodge that the coup be stopped, issued no such order.

Diem's dea