8.8: The Vietnam War
8.8: Explain the causes and effects of the Vietnam War
In the last set of notes, we talked about decolonization and now, we’re going to be talking about the Vietnam War!
The United States Gets Involved
When JFK became president after Eisenhower, he continued supporting South Vietnam. But during this time, there was a war between North and South Vietnam and so as a result, many of JFK’s advisors pushed for him to send troops to South Vietnam. He refused and instead, he increased the amount of economic aid to the South.
In 1962, Diem lost the support of his own people and a Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc, immolated himself (burned himself alive) in public in protest of Diem in 1963. Later that year, Diem was overthrown by his own generals and killed, making further American involvement in Vietnam necessary.
After France lost their colony of Indochina to Japan in World War II, they tried retaking it after the war. However, they failed. Instead, Vietnam was divided along the 17th parallel, with the northern half led by communist Ho Chi Minh and the southern half led by a democratic government under Ngo Dinh Diem. From 1955 to 1961, the U.S. government sent over a billion dollars in economic and military aid to South Vietnam to protect them against communism.
Lyndon B. Johnson
After JFK was assassinated in November of 1963, LBJ became president and continued the policies of the previous two presidents of helping South Vietnam. In August of 1964, the North Vietnamese attacked the USS Maddox, an American destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin. Later, in response, LBJ ordered retaliatory air strikes on North Vietnamese naval bases. He also asked Congress to pass a resolution to allow him to take “all necessary measures” needed to protect American interests in Vietnam. This became known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. As a result, American involvement in Vietnam escalated to full-scale involvement in 1965. In Operation Rolling Thunder, LBJ ordered an aerial bombardment of North Vietnamese targets to damage their economy. However, this failed to do anything major. Over the next few years, bombings of the North continued, causing many civilians to die and destroying the countryside, forcing many Vietnamese to partake in guerilla warfare.
Within the next few years, the number of troops being sent to Vietnam greatly increased, leading to almost 500,000 in Vietnam by the end of 1967 with roughly 16,000 already dead. But then, on Tet in January of 1968, the Vietcong launched an all-out surprise attack on South Vietnam and started attacking every American base in South Vietnam. Despite the U.S. military successfully defending against the attack, the massive damage caused by the Tet Offensive was televised for Americans back home to see. This led many Americans to believe LBJ had failed in the war. Before this, LBJ had been telling the American people that the war had been going well. This turned public opinion into believing he was a liar. As a result, his advisors abandoned further escalation of the war and in March 1968, LBJ announced that he would negotiate for peace and would not run for a second term.
Nixon and the End of the Vietnam War
After LBJ, Richard Nixon won the Election of 1968 and became the 37th President of the United States. Immediately, he began looking for a way to take the United States out of the war. He began a process called “Vietnamization”, in which troops would be gradually withdrawn from Vietnam while the South Vietnamese would be given money and weapons to continue fighting on their own. By 1972, the amount of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam went down from over 500,000 to just 30,000. In addition, Nixon established the Nixon Doctrine, which declared that while future Asian countries would receive U.S. support against communism, the U.S. would not intervene with their military.
When North Vietnam didn’t agree to end the war, Nixon ordered several weeks of bombing against North Vietnam. This led to an armistice agreement. Soon after, the Paris Peace Accords was signed in 1973, removing the United States from the war. Just two years later, Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, fell in April 1975, turning Vietnam into a communist country. As for the United States, the war had caused the country to spend almost $120 billion, deeply damaging the American economy for years.
