The French gained control of Indochina (French Indochina included Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam) during a series of colonial wars, from 1859 to 1885. At the Versailles Conference in 1919, Hồ Chí Minh (a pseudonym meaning the Enlightener) requested that a Vietnamese delegation be present to work toward independence for Vietnam. He hoped that U.S. President Woodrow Wilson would support the effort. But he was sorely disappointed and Indochina's status remained unchanged.
During the Second World War, the puppet government of Vichy France cooperated with Imperial Japanese forces. Vietnam was under de facto Japanese control, although the French continued to serve as the day to day administrators.
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.[22] By 1954, the U.S. had supplied 300,000 small arms and spent one billion dollars in support of the French military effort. The Eisenhower administration was shouldering 80 percent of the cost of the war.[23] The Viet Minh received crucial support from the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. Chinese support in the Border Campaign of 1950 allowed supplies to come from China into Vietnam. Throughout the conflict, U.S. intelligence estimates remained skeptical of French chances of success.[24]
The Battle of Dien Bien Phu marked the end of French involvement in Indochina. The Viet Minh and their mercurial commander Vo Nguyen Giap handed the French a stunning military defeat. On May 7, 1954, the French Union garrison surrendered. At the Geneva Conference the French negotiated a ceasefire agreement with the Viet Minh. Independence was granted to Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. As a U.S. Army study noted, France lost the war primarily because it "neglected to cultivate the loyalty and support of the Vietnamese people."
Aftermath
Main articles: Mayagüez Incident, Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Democratic Kampuchea, Third Indochina War, Reeducation camp, and boat people
Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, fell to the Khmer Rouge on April 17, 1975. The last official American military action in South East Asia occurred on 15 May 1975. Forty-one U.S. military personnel were killed when the Khmer Rouge seized a U.S. merchant ship, the SS Mayaguez. The episode became known as the Mayagüez incident.
The Pathet Lao overthrew the royalist government of Laos in December, 1975. They established the Lao People's Democratic Republic.
Hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese officials, particularly ARVN officers, were imprisoned in reeducation camps after the Communist takeover. Tens of thousands died and many fled the country after being released. Up to two million civilians left the country, and as many as half of these boat people perished at sea.
On July 2, 1976, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam was declared. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter issued a pardon for nearly 10,000 draft dodgers.
After repeated border clashes in 1978, Vietnam invaded Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) and ousted the Khmer Rouge. As many as two million died during the Khmer Rouge genocide.
Vietnam began to repress its ethnic Chinese minority. Thousand fled and the exodus of the boat people began. In 1979, China invaded Vietnam in retaliation for its invasion of Cambodia, known as the Third Indochina War or the Sino-Vietnamese War. Chinese forces were repulsed.
The dire predictions of a generation did not come to fruition. Since Thailand and other South East Asian nations did not fall to systematic Vietnamese aggression, the Domino Theory, so widely trumpeted, was said to have been an illusion. Others, however, argued that they did not fall to Communism, because the war bought time for their economic and political development.[citation needed] Vietnam, without the presence of the United States, showed itself to be of little economic or strategic value to anyone.[109]
At home, a generation of Americans struggled to absorb the lessons of military intervention without clear motives or objectives.[110] As General Maxwell Taylor, one of the principle architects of the war noted "first, we didn't know ourselves. We thought that we were going into another Korean war, but this was a different country. Secondly, we didn't know our South Vietnamese allies … And we knew less about North Vietnam. Who was Ho Chi Minh? Nobody really knew. So, until we know the enemy and know our allies and know ourselves, we'd better keep out of this kind of dirty business. It's very dangerous."[111]
In the decades since end of the conflict, some have sought to portray America's defeat as a political, rather than a military defeat. The official history of the United States Army noted, however, that "tactics have often seemed to exist apart from larger issues, strategies, and objectives. Yet in Vietnam the Army experienced tactical success and strategic failure … The … Vietnam War('s) … legacy may be the lesson that unique historical, political, cultural, and social factors always impinge on the military … Success rests not only on military progress but on correctly analyzing the nature of the particular conflict, understanding the enemy's strategy, and assessing the strengths and weaknesses of allies. A new humility and a new sophistication may form the best parts of a complex heritage left to the Army by the long, bitter war in Vietnam."[112] US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote in a secret memo to President Gerald Ford that "in terms of military tactics, we cannot help draw the conclusion that our armed forces are not suited to this kind of war. Even the Special Forces who had been designed for it could not prevail."[113] Even Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara concluded that "the achievement of a military victory by U.S. forces in Vietnam was indeed a dangerous illusion."[114]
Doubts surfaced as to the effectiveness of large scale, sustained bombing. As Chief of Staff of the United States Army Harold K. Johnson noted, "if anything came out of Vietnam, it was that air power couldn't do the job.[115] Even General William Westmoreland admitted that the bombing had been ineffective. As he remarked, "I still doubt that the North Vietnamese would have relented." [116]
The loss of the war called into question U.S. Army doctrine. Marine Corps General Victor Krulak heavily criticised Westmoreland's attrition strategy, calling it "wasteful of American lives … with small likelihood of a successful outcome." [117] As well, doubts surfaced about the ability of the military to train foreign forces.[118] The defeat also raised disturbing questions about the quality of the advice that was given to successive United States Presidents by the Pentagon.[119]
As the number of troops in Vietnam increased, the financial burden of the war grew. One of the rarely mentioned consequences of the war were the budget cuts to President Johnson's Great Society programs. As defense spending and inflation grew, Johnson was forced to raise taxes. The Republicans, however, refused to vote for the increases, unless a $6 billion cut was made to the administration's social programs. The Vietnam War claimed more than just victims overseas - at home it claimed reforms aimed at lifting millions of people out of poverty.
Almost 3 million Americans served in Vietnam. Between 1965 and 1973 the United States spent $120 billion on the war. This resulted in a large federal budget deficit. The war demonstrated that no power, not even a superpower, has unlimited strength and resources. But perhaps most significantly, the Vietnam War illustrated that political will, as much as material might, is a decisive factor in the outcome of conflicts.