Vietnam in Cold War

The Cold War was essentially a battle of ideologies between the Communist East and the Capitalist West. The Vietnam War (between 1955 and 1975) had an important impact on the development of this war. According to historian Steve Phillips, “To the American Government the [Vietnam] War was less about Vietnamese independence than it was a conflict between communism and the capitalist free world.” In this way The Vietnam War furthered the course of The Cold War, and greatly influenced the public opinion of American citizens, as well as the image of America worldwide.

From the late 1850s until the outbreak of the Second World War, Vietnam was under French colonial control. During World War II Vietnam was occupied by Japan. “The French, however, wished to reassert control over the region” (Phillips), but according to historians Keely Rogers and Jo Thomas, “most Vietnamese had no desire to let Vietnam return to the rule of the French after 1945”, and thus a struggle for power ensued. Due to long term domination by their oppressors, there was a popular rise of nationalism, led by the communist Ho Chi Minh. Minh was one of the main defenders of Vietnam during the Second World War, and leader of the Vietminh communist/nationalist party.  However, fearing a communist takeover of Vietnam and the threat of the “domino effect” (a theory which stated that once one country would fall to communism, all of its neighbours would too) America, under president Harry Truman began to send military aid. According to Rogers and Thomas, “In March 1950, military aid was sent to help France defeat the Vietminh. This aid was continued by Eisenhower”. By 1954 United States was funding 80% of the war.  However, the civil war was, according to Phillips, “a crushing defeat for France”. During the final Vietnamese offensive alone “16,000 [French] troops were either killed during action or captured afterwards. French rule could no longer be sustained” (Phillips). Thus, in 1954 the Geneva Accords were signed, agreeing on various topics.  Vietnam would become independent, there would be a temporary division of Vietnam on the 17 parallel, with Ho Chi Minh controlling the north of the country, and Bao Dai (the former emperor who had collaborated with the French) would rule the south. There were to be free elections to unite the country in 1956. However, America disapproved of this agreement and did not sign the Geneva Accords as they did not agree with the placing of a communist as leader of North Vietnam.

In retaliation, America created SEATO (the South East Asian Treaty Organisation), signed by Australia, Britain, France, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines and Thailand. These countries agreed that in the case of an attack on one of them, (if they anonymously agreed) they would take military action. Meanwhile, America was sending increasing amounts of military advisors. According to Rogers and Thomas, “there were 17,000 ‘advisers’ in Vietnam by the time of Kennedy’s death [in 1963]”.. According to Rogers and Thomas, “None of these measures succeeded in limiting the growing success of the Vietcong attacks on the South. Indeed, measures such as the Strategic Hamlets Program and the spraying of Agent Orange only alienated the local peasant population further.” The emperor of Southern Vietnam, Bao Dai, according to Phillips “preferred to live the life of an international playboy and was removed in 1955. Real power now presided in Ngo Dinh Diem… he was a dictator and his government was riddled with corruption”. Features of his regime included the repression of religion, lack of reform, which created growth of opposition.

After the Gulf of Tonkin Incident of 1964¸ where an American Destroyer was shot at by North Vietnamese patrol boats, America became militarily involved in the war. Due to the SEATO alliance, soon Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines and Thailand were also supplying troops. They employed policies of search and destroy missions to eliminate Vietcong (a communist guerrilla organisation operating in South Vietnam) members, spraying of harmful chemicals such as the infamous Agent Orange on jungle and the Strategic Hamlets program, by which peasants were resettled into fortified villages to avoid potential  communist sympathies. These did little to help the situation. They also introduced a new strategy called Operation Rolling Thunder, which involved “the selection of strategic targets in North Vietnam to be bombed in order to put pressure on the North to stop supplying the Vietcong, end the war and start negotiations” (Phillips).  However, this operation was a massive failure; “The USSR and China were quick to offer replacements for supplies damaged… during Rolling Thunder, supplies to the Vietcong by the North actually increased” (Phillips).  Despite this failure, or perhaps because of it, America was dramatically increasing its number of soldiers. According to Phillips, “Within 9 weeks [of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident] 99,000 US soldiers were in South Vietnam… the number of troops increased rapidly, reaching 385,000 in 1966 and 535,000 in 1968.”

By 1968, the war was looking grim for America. After the Vietcong launched the Tet Offensive against the South, “the consequences of the offensive were to lead the USE to re-evaluate its commitment to Vietnam” (Phillips).  The Tet Offensive was an initiative by the Vietcong carried out in February 1968, which was meant to coincide with Tet, the Vietnamese New Year. The offensive consisted of simultaneous surprise attacks on 35 towns and cities in the South, using 80,000 troops. According to Phillips, “with over half their soldiers killed, the Tet Offensive was a severe military defeat for the communists. Yet, its wider impact was to swing the situation heavily in their favour.” Phillips also states that, “events within the USA were, at the time, pushing the government to consider whether the human and financial costs of the war were worth the gain, especially as victory over the communists was beginning to look unobtainable.” Both sides were desperate for the war to end. In 1968, Richard Nixon became the new president of America. His solution to the Vietnam problem was ‘Vietnamisation’, or “training and supplying arms to the government of South Vietnam so that US troops could be withdrawn” (Phillips). However, this policy, according to Phillips, “showed that Nixon, like his predecessors, had failed to understand the nature of the war… South Vietnam had become, more than ever, an army without a country.” There were 415,000 American troops in Vietnam in 1970, and this number dropped to 239,000 in 1971 and only 47,000 in 1972. The troops that remained had low morale. “Desertions became commonplace, increasing by 400 per cent between 1969 and 1971. More concerned with their own survival, soldiers sometimes killed their officers rather than obey orders to fight... in 1971 15% of US troops in Vietnam were addicted to hard drugs and four times as many soldiers were being treated for drug-related problems as they were for combat wounds” (Phillips).

In 1972 the communist launched what is now called the Easter Offensive. “This offensive contained large numbers of North Vietnamese forces supplied with Soviet weaponry” (Phillips).  It ended in a stalemate; “the realisation that there would be no quick end to the war led both sides to engage in peace talks while continuing to fight” (Philllips). American hopes for an all-out military success had faded, however, according to Phillips, the government believed that “if they could not win the war, they could still inflict enough damage on North Vietnam to bring to the negotiating table in the future.” During the Paris Peace Talks of 1972, this situation was reached. Henry Kissinger, the American National Security Advisor, and Le Duc Tho, the leader of the North Vietnamese delegation had agreed on a ceasefire. This ceasefire was agreed to on the terms that the forces of North and South Vietnam would retain the areas which they currently controlled. This was advantageous to North Vietnam as they controlled large areas of the South. The other condition of the ceasefire was that all foreign troops had to be withdrawn from Indochina (South-East Asia). However, the South Vietnamese government under the new leader President Thieu, who was not included in negotiations, refused to accept this settlement. According to Phillips, “he viewed it as an abandonment of his regime to the forces of communism”.  According to Rogers and Thomas, “After a decade of military involvement, the loss of hundreds of thousands of American lives, billions of dollars and the damaging division of U.S. public opinion, the Americans pulled out of Vietnam in 1973.” Now that most US troops had been withdrawn, “North Vietnam was determined to unite the country and South Vietnam, not deprived of nearly all US military help was too demoralised to offer much resistance” (Phillips) The newly made ceasefire “only delayed the final outcome of the war” (Phillips). In March 1975 the communists launched a Spring Offensive against the South. According to Phillips, “the South Vietnamese army fled in panic”. President Thieu resigned, and fled abroad while the presidential palace was invaded by the North using Soviet tanks. Phillips states that “the speed of South Vietnam’s collapse took the North by surprise but without US support the regime in the South, lacking any popular support of its own, had crumbled”. In this way, the Vietnam War ended.

“In the context of the Cold War, the Vietnam War was a victory for communist and a failure for US policy” (Phillips). The was originally intended to protect South-East Asia against communism, however upon its conclusion Vietnam became unified under communism, and later in 1975, Laos and Cambodia also became communist, bringing US fears of the Domino Effect to life. Vietnam also created major budget troubles for America. Between 1965 and 1975 the United States spent $111 billion on the war. Popular dissatisfaction demonstrated by public protests and epitomized by the heartless massacre of women and children in village of My Lai by American troops in 1968, which caused “widespread revulsion in the USA… the My Lai massacre was only one example of the atrocities committed by both sides during the war” (Phillips). The dissatisfaction of American people and huge budget deficits created by the Vietnam War were major causes of détente (relaxation of tensions) between the USSR and America between 1971 and 1979. According to Phillips, “The Vietnam War had started as a war of independence that turned into a war over the future direction of the country by the intervention of outside forces operating within the context of the Cold War.”