France controlled most of resource-rich Southeast Asia. Nationalist independence movements, however, had begun to develop in the part of French Indochina that is now Vietnam. A young Vietnamese nationalist, Ho Chi Minh, turned to the Communists for help in his struggle.
During the 1930s, Ho’s Indochinese Communist party led revolts and strikes against the French. The French responded by jailing Vietnamese protesters. They also sentenced Ho, the party’s leader, to death. Ho fled and returned to Vietnam in 1941, a year after the Japanese seized control of his country.
He founded the Vietminh (Independence) League. The Japanese left Vietnam in 1945. France regained its former colony. War Breaks where Vietnamese Nationalists and Communists joined to fight the French armies.
There the Vietminh had widespread peasant support. The Vietminh used hit-and-run tactics to confine the French to the cities. In 1954, the French suffered a major military defeat at Dien Bien Phu. They surrendered to Ho. With the defeat of the French, the United States saw a rising threat to the rest of Asia. U.S. President Eisenhower described this threat in terms of the domino theory. The fall of one to communism would lead to the fall of its neighbours. This theory became a major justification for U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War era.
After France’s defeat, an international peace conference met in Geneva to discuss the future of Indo-China. Based on these talks, Vietnam was divided at 17° north latitude (1954-75). North of that line, Ho Chi Minh’s Communist forces governed. To the south, the United States and France set up an anti-Communist government under the leadership of Ngo Dinh Diem.
Situation in South Vietnam: Diem ruled the south as a dictator. In contrast, Ho Chi Minh began a popular program of land redistribution in the north. The United States sensed that an election might lead to victory for the Communists. So, it supported Diem’s cancellation of the elections. His government was corrupt. Communist guerrillas, called Vietcong, began to gain strength in the south. Gradually, the Vietcong won control of large areas of the countryside. In 1963, backed by the United States, a group of South Vietnamese generals planned a coup. Meeting almost no resistance, they overthrew and assassinated Diem. A takeover by the Communist Vietcong with the backing of North Vietnam seemed inevitable.
United States decided to escalate, or increase, its involvement. It sent increasing numbers of planes, tanks, and other military equipment to South Vietnam. In August 1964, U.S. Congress authorized the president to send American troops into Vietnam. By late 1965, more than 185,000 American soldiers were fighting on Vietnamese soil, although war had not officially been declared. American planes had also begun to bomb North Vietnam.
Yet the Americans faced major difficulties:
- They were fighting a guerrilla war in unfamiliar jungle terrain.
- The South Vietnamese government they were defending was becoming steadily more unpopular.
On the other hand, Ho Chi Minh also strongly supported the Vietcong with troops and munitions, as did the Soviet Union and China.
Annoyed American forces bombed millions of acres of farmland and forest in an attempt to destroy enemy hideouts. This bombing strengthened peasants’ opposition to the South Vietnamese government. Bowing to intense public pressure, President Richard Nixon began withdrawing U.S. troops from Vietnam in 1969.
Agent Orange is a chemical herbicide and defoliant, one of the "tactical use" Rainbow Herbicides. It was used by the U.S. military as part of its herbicidal warfare program, Operation Ranch Hand, during the Vietnam War from 1961 to 1971. This mixture has caused major health problems for many individuals who were exposed, and their offspring.
Nixon’s plan was called Vietnamization (South Vietnam should be ruled by Vietnamese). So he authorized a massive bombing campaign against North Vietnamese bases and supply routes to wipe out Vietcong hiding places.
President Nixon kept withdrawing U.S. troops. The last forces left in 1973. The North Vietnamese overran South Vietnam two years later because the South Vietnamese could not fend off the North Vietnamese on their own.
On 30 April, 1975, the war between North and South concluded. In 1976, Vietnam was officially unified and renamed the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRVN), with its capital in Hà Nội. The unified regime was dominated by holdovers from the North, and the flag and anthem of North Vietnam became the flag and anthem of unified Vietnam. The Communists renamed Saigon, the former capital of the South, HoChi Minh City to honor their dead leader. But more than 1.5 million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans had also died during the war.
After 1975 officials sent thousands of people to “reeducation camps” for training in Communist thought. They nationalized industries and strictly controlled businesses. Communist oppression also caused 1.5 million people to flee from Vietnam. Most refugees escaped in dangerously overcrowded ships. About 70,000 Vietnamese refugees eventually settled in the United States or in Canada.
Case of Cambodia
Cambodia (also known as Kampuchea) had suffered U.S. bombing during the Vietnamese war. And it remained unstable for years. In 1975, Communist rebels known as the Khmer Rouge set up a brutal Communist government under the leadership of Pol Pot. In a ruthless attempt to transform Cambodia into a rural society, Pol Pot’s followers slaughtered 2 million people. This was almost one quarter of the nation’s population.
A Vietnamese invasion in 1978 overthrew the Khmer Rouge. The Vietnamese finally withdrew in 1989. In 1993, under the supervision of UN peacekeepers, Cambodia adopted a democratic constitution and held a free election. Pol Pot was captured and detained in 1997 for the war crimes he had committed.