Americans Divided
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The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, or the Vietnam Conflict, occurred in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia from 1959 to April 30, 1975. The war was fought between the communist North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of South Vietnam, supported by the United States and other member nations of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). |
 
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The Vietcong, the lightly armed South Vietnamese communist insurgency, largely fought a guerrilla war against anti-communist forces in the region. The North Vietnamese Army engaged in a more conventional war, at times committing large-sized units into battle. U.S. and South Vietnamese forces relied on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct search-and-destroy operations, involving ground forces, artillery and air strikes. |
 
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The United States entered the war to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam as part of a wider strategy called containment. Military advisors arrived beginning in 1950. U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s and combat units were deployed beginning in 1965. Involvement peaked in 1968 at the time of the Tet Offensive. Under a policy called Vietnamization, U.S. forces withdrew as South Vietnamese troops were trained and armed. |
 
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Despite a peace treaty signed by all parties in January 1973, fighting continued. In response to the anti-war movement, the U.S. Congress passed the Case-Church Amendment in June 1973 prohibiting further U.S. military intervention. In April 1975, North Vietnam captured Saigon. North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year. |
 
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The war had a major impact on U.S. politics, culture and foreign relations. Americans were deeply divided over the U.S. government’s justification for, and means of fighting, the war. Opposition to the war contributed to the counterculture youth movement of the 1960s.The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities, including 3 to 4 million Vietnamese from both sides, 1.5 to 2 million Laotians and Cambodians, and 58,159 U.S. soldiers. |
 
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Various names have been applied to the conflict. Vietnam War is the most commonly used name in English. It has also been called the Second Indochina War, and the Vietnam Conflict. In Vietnamese, the war is known as Chi?n tranh Vi?t Nam (The Vietnam War), or as Kháng chi?n ch?ng M? (Resistance War Against America), loosely translated as the American War.As there have been so many conflicts in Indochina, this conflict is known by the names of their chief opponent to distinguish it from the others. |
 
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The main military organizations involved in the war were, on the side of the South, the U.S. military and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), and, on the side of the North, the Vietnam People's Army (VPA), also known as the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) also called the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), and the Vietcong, or National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF), a communist army based in the South. |
 
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The Geneva Accords, concluded between France and the Vietminh in 1954, partitioned Vietnam on a temporary basis pending national elections to be held by July 20, 1956.Much as in Korea, the agreement stipulated that the two military zones were to be separated by a temporary demarcation line (known as the Demilitarized Zone or DMZ) In June 1955, Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem of the State of Vietnam (then occupying South Vietnam) announced that elections would not be held. South Vietnam had rejected the agreement from the beginning, he said. "How can we expect 'free elections' to be held in the Communist North?" |
 
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Diem asked. President Dwight D. Eisenhower expressed U.S. fears when he wrote that, in 1954, “80 per cent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh” over Emperor Bao Dai. However, this wide popularity was expressed before Ho's land reform program and the suppression of a peasant revolt in Ho's home province,and Diem's imprisonment of 20,000 communists in reeducation camps, and the Buddhist crisis in the south. |
 
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The Domino Theory, which argued that if one country fell to communist forces, then all of the surrounding countries would follow, was first proposed as policy by the Eisenhower administration. It was, and is still, commonly hypothesized that it applied to Viet Nam. John F. Kennedy, then a U.S. senator, said in a speech to the American Friends of Vietnam: "Burma, Thailand, India, Japan, the Philippines and obviously Laos and Cambodia are among those whose security would be threatened if the Red Tide of Communism overflowed into Vietnam.". |