|
The Second Indochina War, 1954-1975, grew
out of the long conflict between France and Vietnam. In July 1954, after one
hundred years of colonial rule, France was forced to leave Vietnam. Communist
forces under the direction of General Vo Nguyen Giap defeated the allied
French troops at Dien Bien Phu, a remote mountain outpost in the northwest
corner of Vietnam. This decisive battle convinced the French that they could
no longer maintain their Indochinese colonies and Paris quickly sued for
peace. As the two sides came together to discuss the terms of the peace in
Geneva, Switzerland, international events were already shaping the future of
Indochina.
The Geneva Peace Accords
 The
Geneva Peace
Accords, signed by France and Viet Nam in the summer of 1954, reflected
the strains of the international Cold War. Drawn up in the shadow of the
Korean War, the Geneva agreement was an awkward peace for all sides. Because
of outside pressures brought to bear by the Soviet Union and the People's
Republic of China, Vietnam's delegates to the Geneva conference agreed to the
temporary partition of their nation at the seventeenth parallel. The
Communist superpowers feared that a provocative peace would anger France and
its powerful ally, the United States. Moscow and Peking did not want to risk
another confrontation with the West so soon after Korea. Furthermore, the
Communists believed they were better organized to take southern Vietnam by
political action alone, a prediction that did not come to pass.
 According to the terms of the Geneva Accords,
Vietnam would hold national elections in 1956 to reunify the country. The
division at the seventeenth parallel would vanish with the elections. The
United States and many anti-Communists did not support the Accords. Secretary of State
John Foster Dulles thought that the political protocols of the Accords
gave too much power to the Vietnamese Communists. He was not going to allow
the Communists to take southern Vietnam without a fight. Instead, Dulles and
President Dwight D. Eisenhower supported the creation of a
counter-revolutionary alternative south of the seventeenth parallel. The
United States supported this effort at nation-building through a series of
multi-lateral agreements that created the Southeast Asia
Treaty Organization (SEATO).
South Viet Nam Under Ngo Dinh Diem
The
SEATO Treaty provided for the mutual defense of all signatories, including
the newly-created and U.S.-supported, Government of the Republic of Vietnam
(GVN), or South Vietnam. In 1956, Ngo Dinh Diem,
a staunchly anti-Communist figure from the South, won a controversial
election that made him president of South Vietnam. From his first days in
power, Diem faced stiff opposition from his opponents. He urged the United
States to support his counter-revolutionary alternative, claiming that the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), or North Vietnam, wanted to take South
Vietnam by force. In late 1957, with American aid, Diem began to
counterattack. He used the help of the American Central Intelligence Agency
to identify those who sought to bring his government down and arrested
thousands. In 1959, Diem passed a series of acts known as Law 10/59 that
made it legal to hold someone in jail if they were a suspected Communist
without bringing formal charges.
From
the moment he took power, Diem faced enormous difficulties. Students,
intellectuals, Buddhists and others joined the Communists in opposition to
Diem's rule. The more these forces attacked Diem's troops and secret police,
the more he tried to control their protests. The president maintained that
South Vietnam was a peace-loving democracy and that the Communists were out
to destroy his new country.
The
Kennedy
administration seemed split on how peaceful or democratic the Diem regime
really was. Some Kennedy advisers believed Diem had not instituted enough
social and economic reforms to remain a viable leader in South Vietnam.
Others argued that Diem was the "best of a bad lot." As the White
House met to decide the future of its Vietnam policy, a change in strategy
took place at the highest levels of the Communist Party.
From
1956-1960, the Communist Party of Vietnam desired to reunify the country
through political means alone. Accepting the Soviet Union's model of
political struggle, the Communist Party tried unsuccessfully to cause Diem's
collapse by exerting tremendous internal political pressure. After Diem's
success against Communist cells in the South, however, southern
Communists convinced the Party to adopt more violent tactics to guarantee
Diem's downfall. At the Fifteenth Party Plenum in January 1959, the Communist
Party finally approved the use of revolutionary violence to overthrow Ngo
Dinh Diem's government. In May 1959, and again in September 1960, the Party
confirmed its use of revolutionary violence and the combination of the
political and armed struggle movements. The result was the creation of a
broad-based united front to help mobilize southerners in opposition to the
Saigon government.
The National Liberation Front
The
united front had long and historic roots in Vietnam. Used earlier in the
century by the Communists to mobilize anti-French forces, the united front
brought together Communists and non-Communists in an umbrella organization
that had limited, but important goals. On December 20, 1960, the Party' s new
united front, the National Liberation Front (NLF), was born. Anyone could
join this front as long as they opposed Ngo Dinh Diem. Many non-Communists
who did join the Front may not have realized that the Party would ultimately
dissolve the NLF and limit non-Communist representation in a unified
government.
 The character of the NLF and its relationship to the
Communists in Hanoi has caused considerable debate among scholars, anti-war
activists, and policy makers. From the birth of the NLF in 1960, government
officials in Washington claimed that Hanoi directed the NLF's violent attacks
against the Saigon government. In a series of government "white papers,"
Washington insiders denounced the NLF, claiming that it was merely a puppet
of Hanoi. The NLF, in contrast, argued that it was autonomous and independent
of the Communists in Hanoi and that it was made up mostly of non-Communists.
Many anti-war activists supported the NLF's claims. Washington continued to
discredit the NLF, however, calling it the "Viet Cong," a derogatory
and slang term meaning Vietnamese Communist.
December 1961 White Paper
In
1961, President Kennedy sent a team to Vietnam to report on conditions in
South Vietnam and to assess future American aid requirements. The report, now
known as the "December 1961 White Paper," argued for an increase in
military, technical, and economic aid, and the introduction of large-scale
American advisers to help stabilize Diem's government and crush the NLF. As
Kennedy weighed the merits of these recommendations, some of his other
advisers urged the president to withdraw from Vietnam altogether, claiming
that it was a "dead-end alley."
In
typical Kennedy fashion, the president chose a middle route. Instead of a
large-scale military buildup as the white paper had called for or an
immediate withdrawal, Kennedy sought a limited partnership with Diem. The
United States would increase the level of its military involvement in South
Vietnam through more machinery and advisers, but would not intervene
whole-scale with troops. This arrangement was problematic from the start, and
soon reports from Vietnam indicated that the NLF was increasing its control
in the countryside. To counteract the NLF's success , Washington and Saigon
launched an ambitious and deadly military effort in the rural areas. Called
the Strategic Hamlet Program, the new counterinsurgency plan rounded up
villagers and placed them in hamlets constructed by South Vietnamese
soldiers. The idea was to isolate the NLF from villagers, its base of
support. This plan was based on the British experience in Malaya, but
conditions in South Vietnam were distinct, and the strategic hamlet concept
produced limited results. According to interviews conducted by U. S. advisers
in the field, the strategic hamlet program had a negative impact on relations
between peasants and the Saigon government. In the past, many rural
Vietnamese viewed Diem as a distant annoyance, but the strategic hamlet
program brought government policies to the countryside. Many villagers
resented being forced off of their ancestral farm land, and some have
suggested that the failure of the strategic hamlet concept actually increased
cadre ranks in the NLF.
Military Coup
By
the summer of 1963, because of NLF successes and its own failures, it was
clear that Diem's government was on the verge of political collapse. Diem's
brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, had raided the Buddhist pagodas of South Vietnam,
claiming that they had harbored the Communists that were creating the political
instability. The result was a massive protest on the streets of Saigon that
led one Buddhist monk to self-immolation.  The picture of the monk engulfed in flames made
world headlines and caused considerable consternation in Washington. By late
September, the Buddhist protest had created such dislocation in the South
that the Kennedy administration supported a general's coup.
In 1963, some of Diem's own generals in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam
(ARVN) approached the American Embassy in Saigon with plans to overthrow
Diem. With Washington's tacit approval, on November 1, 1963, Diem and his
brother were captured and later assassinated. Three weeks later, President
Kennedy was murdered on the streets of Dallas.
At
the time of the Kennedy and Diem assassinations, there were 16,000 American
military advisers in Vietnam. The Kennedy administration had managed to run
the war from Washington without the large-scale introduction of combat
troops. The continuing political problems in Saigon, however, convinced the
new president, Lyndon
Baines Johnson, that more aggressive action was needed. Perhaps Johnson
was more prone to military intervention or maybe events in Vietnam had forced
the president's hand to more direct action. In any event, after suspected
Communist attacks on two U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, the Johnson
administration argued for expansive war powers for the president.
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
On
August 2, 1964, in response to American and South Vietnamese espionage along
its  coast, North Vietnam launched a local and controlled
attack against an American ship on call in the Gulf
of Tonkin. A second attack was supposed to have taken place on August 4,
although Vo Nguyen Giap the DRV's leading military figure at the time and
Johnson's Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara have recently concluded
that no second attack ever took place. In any event, the Johnson
administration used the August 4 attack to secure a Congressional resolution
that gave the president broad war powers. The resolution, now known as the Gulf of Tonkin
Resolution, passed both the House and Senate with only two dissenting
votes (Senators Morse of Oregon and Gruening of Alaska). The Resolution was
followed by limited reprisal air attacks against North Vietnam.
Throughout
the fall and into the winter of 1964, the Johnson administration debated the
correct strategy in Vietnam. The Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted to expand the
air war over the DRV quickly to help stabilize the new Saigon government. The
civilians in the Pentagon wanted to apply gradual pressure with limited and
selective bombings. Only Undersecretary of State George Ball dissented,
claiming that Johnson's Vietnam policy was too provocative for its limited
expected results. In early 1965, the NLF attacked NLF attacked two
U.S. army installations in South Vietnam, and as a result, Johnson
ordered the sustained bombing missions over North Vietnam that the Joint
Chiefs of Staff had long advocated.
The
bombing missions, known as OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER, and the introduction of
American combat troops in March 1965, caused the Communist Party to reassess
its own war strategy. From 1960 through late 1964, the Party believed it
could win a military victory in the South "in a relative short period of
time." This overly optimistic prediction was based on a limited war scenario
in South Vietnam, and not on the introduction of U.S. combat troops. With the
new American military commitment, however, the Party moved to a protracted war
strategy. The idea was to get the United States bogged down in a war that
it could not win militarily and create unfavorable conditions for political
victory. The Communist Party believed that it would prevail in a protracted
war because the United States had no clearly defined strategy, and therefore,
the country would eventually tire of the war and demand a negotiated
settlement. By late 1965, Hanoi's more realistic predictions were based on a
military stalemate and a protracted war strategy.
The War In America
One
of the greatest ironies in a war rich in ironies was that Washington had also
moved toward a limited war in Vietnam. The Johnson administration wanted to
fight this war in "cold blood." This meant that America would go to war
in Vietnam with the precision of a surgeon with little noticeable impact on
domestic culture. A limited war called for confined mobilization of resources,
material and human, and caused little disruption in everyday life in America.
With the advent of the Cold War and an increase in nuclear weapons, a limited
war made sense to many strategic thinkers in and out of Washington.  Of course, these goals were never met. The Vietnam
War did have a major impact on everyday life in America and the Johnson
administration was forced to consider the domestic consequences of its
decisions everyday. Eventually, there simply were not enough volunteers to
continue to fight a protracted war and the government instituted a draft. As
the deaths mounted and Americans continued to leave for Southeast Asia, the
Johnson administration was met with the full weight of American anti-war
sentiments. Protests erupted on college campuses and in major cities
at first, but by 1968 every corner of the country seemed to have felt the
war's impact. Perhaps one of the most famous incidents in the anti-war
movement was the police riot in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National
Convention. Hundreds of thousands of people came to Chicago in August 1968 to
protest American intervention in Vietnam and the leaders of the Democratic
Party who continued to prosecute the war.
The Tet Offensive
By
1968, things had gone from bad to worse for the Johnson administration. In
late January, the DRV and the NLF launched coordinated attacks against the
major southern cities. These attacks, known in the west as the Tet
Offensive, were designed to "break the aggressive will" of the
Johnson administration and force Washington to the bargaining table. The
Communist Party believed that the American people were growing war-weary and
that Hanoi could humiliate Johnson and force a peace upon him. Most of
Hanoi's predications about the Tet Offensive proved elusive. Communist forces
suffered tremendous casualties in the South and the massacre of thousands of
non-Communists in Hue during the Tet Offensive created ill-will among many of
Hanoi's supporters. Furthermore, several leading southern Generals thought
the plans for the Tet Offensive were too risky and this created a strain in
relations between northern and southern Communists. In any event, in late
March 1968, a disgraced Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not seek the
Democratic Party's re-nomination for president and hinted that he would go to
the bargaining table with the Communists to end the war.
The Nixon Years
Johnson
engaged the Vietnamese in secret negotiations in the spring of 1968 in Paris and soon
it was made public that Americans and Vietnamese were meeting to discuss an
end to the long and costly war. Despite the progress in Paris, the Democratic
Party could not rescue the presidency from Republican challenger Richard
Nixon who claimed he had a secret plan to end the war.
Nixon's
secret plan, it turned out, was borrowing from a strategic move from Lyndon
Johnson's last year in office. The new president continued a process called "Vietnamization"
an awful term that implied that Vietnamese were not fighting and dying in the
jungles of Southeast Asia. This strategy brought American troops home while
increasing the air war over North Vietnam and relying more on the ARVN for
ground attacks. The Nixon years also saw the expansion of the war into
neighboring Laos
and Cambodia, as the White House tried desperately to route out Communist
sanctuaries and supply routes.  The intense bombing campaigns and intervention in
Cambodia in late April 1970 sparked intense campus protests all across
America. At Kent State in Ohio, four students were killed by National
Guardsmen who were called out to preserve order on campus after days of
anti-Nixon protest. Shock waves crossed the nation as students at Jackson
State in Mississippi were also shot and killed for political reasons,
prompting one mother to cry, "they are killing our babies in Vietnam and
in our own backyard."
The
expanded air war did not deter the Communist Party, however, and it continued
to make hard demands in Paris. Nixon's Vietnamization plan temporarily
quieted domestic critics, but his continued reliance on an expanded air war
to provide cover for an American retreat angered U.S. citizens. By the early
fall 1972, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and DRV representatives
Xuan Thuy and Le Duc Tho had hammered out a preliminary peace draft.
Washington and Hanoi assumed that its southern allies would naturally accept
any agreement drawn up in Paris, but this was not to pass. The new leaders in
Saigon, especially president Nguyen van Thieu and vice president Nguyen Cao
Ky rejected the Kissinger-Tho peace draft, demanding that no concessions be made.
The NLF too rejected many of the provisions of the draft. The conflict
intensified in December 1972, when the Nixon administration unleashed a
series of deadly bombing raids against targets in North Vietnam's largest
cities, Hanoi and Haiphong. These attacks, now known as the Christmas
bombings, brought immediate condemnation from the international community and
forced the Nixon administration to reconsider its tactics and negotiation
strategy.
The Paris Peace Agreement
In
early January 1973, the Nixon White House convinced the Thieu-Ky regime in
Saigon that they would not abandon South Vietnam if they signed onto the
peace accord. Likewise, Hanoi convinced leaders of the NLF that all southern
political prisoners would be released shortly after the peace accord was
signed. On January 23, therefore, the final draft was initialed, ending open
hostilities between the United States and the DRV. The The Paris Peace
Agreement did not end the conflict in Vietnam, however, as the Thieu-Ky
regime continued to battle Communist forces. From March 1973 until the fall
of Saigon on April 30, 1975, ARVN forces tried desperately to save South
Vietnam from political and military collapse. The end finally came, however,
as DRV tanks rolled south along National Highway One. On the morning of April
30, Communist forces captured the presidential palace in Saigon, ending the
Second Indochina War.
|