Although many Americans regarded the Cuban Missile Crisis as a victory for the USA , it did not reduce their fear of Communism.
Very soon they found themselves locked into a costly war in Vietnam which put a massive question mark over the very policy of CONTAINMENT.
THE ORIGINS OF THE CONFLICT
Since the late 19th century , Vietnam had been ruled by FRANCE and it was known as INDOCHINA.
But when France was defeated by Germany in the Second World War , the JAPANESE (GERMANY’S ALLIES) took control of the main resources of Vietnam : coal , rice, rubber, railway roads.
During the war a strong anti-Japanese resistance movement (the VIET MINH) emerged under the leadership of Communist Ho Chi Minh.
Ho was a remarkable individual, he had lived in the USA , Britain and France, in the 1920s he had studied Communism in the USSR , in the 1930s he had founded the Indochinese Communist Party , he inspired the Vietnamese people to fight for an independent Vietnam .
When the Second W W ended , the Viet Minh controlled the North of the Country and were determined to take control of the whole country , the Viet Minh entered the city of Hanoi and declared Vietnamese independence (1945).
The French had other ideas, they came back wanting to rule Vietnam again, so in 1946 war broke out between the French and the Viet Minh , Ho Chi Minh cleverly kept quiet about wanting a Communist Vietnam , so countries such as the USA were quite sympathetic to him.
However , when the Communists took over in China and began to give help to Ho Chi Minh, the Americans saw the Viet Minh as the puppets of Mao Tse-Tung , they feared a Communist plan to dominate South-East Asia, so they poured 500 million a year into the French war effort and helped them set up a non-Communist government in the south of the country.
The war continued from 1946 to 1954, the French generally controlled the towns , the Viet Minh the countryside, and their guerrilla tactics made them impossible to beat.
*the French lost 3000 dead in the battle and 8000 more died in captivity
*the Viet Minh forces had defeated the French in open battle with the help of modern weapons of the USSR and China
*a small Asian state had defeated a rich European state through a combination of effective leadership , tactics and determination
*at the peace conference held in Geneva (1954) the country was effectively divided into NORTH and SOUTH Vietnam
WHY DID THE USA BECOME INCREASINGLY INVOLVED IN VIETNAM?
In Vietnam , 1954 , the USA prevented the elections from taking place because they feared that the Communists would win.
Why did they do this?
Their policy was a strange combination of determination and ignorance.
President Eisenhower and his Secretary of State JF Dulles were convinced that China and the USSR were planning to spread Communism throughout Asia.
This idea became known as THE DOMNO THEORY:
If Vietnam fell to Communism, then Laos , Cambodia, Thailand , Burma , and possibly even India might also fall , just like a row of dominoes.
The Americans were determined to resist the spread of Communism in Vietnam which they saw as the first domino in the row.
However, their methods and policies showed their ignorance of the Vietnamese people and the region.
In 1955, the Americans helped Ngo Dinh Diem to set up the Republic of South Vietnam , they supported him because he was bitterly anti-Communist and was prepared to imprison or exile Communists.
He belonged to the landlord class , he was a Christian and showed little respect for the Buddhist religion of most Vietnamese peasants.
Diem’s regime was also corrupt, he appointed members of his family or other supporters to positions of power and refused to hold elections .
The Americans were concerned and frustrated by his actions , in 1963 , Diem was overthrown by his own army Leaders , but the governments that followed were equally corrupt. Nevertheless, they received massive US support.
The actions of these anti-Communist governments increased support among ordinary peasants for the VIET CONG (COMMUNIST-LED NATIONAL FRONT FOR THE LIBERATION OF SOUTH VIETNAM), it included South Vietnamese opponents of the government , large numbers of Communists taking orders from Ho Chi Minh , and so the peasants who did not support the VIET CONG faced intimidation and violence from them.
The VIET CONG also started a guerrilla against South Vietnamese government. They also attacked American air force and supply bases.
By 1962 , President Kennedy was sending military personnel to fight the VIET CONG , in 1963-64 tension between North and South Vietnam grew , and so did American involvement.
President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 , and his successor Lyndon Johnson , was more prepared to commit the USA into a full scale conflict in Vietnam to prevent the spread of Communism.
In August 1964, North Vietnamese patrol boats opened fire on US ships in the Gulf of Tonkin .
In a furious reaction , the US Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf resolution , the resolution gave Lyndon Johnson the power “to take all the necessary measures to prevent further aggression and achieve peace and security”, it meant that he could take the USA into a full-scale war if he felt was necessary.
On March 1965, 3500 US marines , combat troops came ashore at Da Nang , America was at war in Vietnam.
WHAT KIND OF WAR WAS THE VIETNAM WAR?
If the USA thought that its soldiers would win an easy victory, it was soon proved wrong.
American technology and firepower was superior , but as time wore on it became clear that the USA needed more than technology to win this kind of war.
VIET CONG AND GUERRILLA TACTICS
In 1965, the Viet Cong was outnumbered and outgunned by the South Vietnamese forces and their US allies.
The Communist forces were no match for the in open warfare.
However, Ho Chi Minh believed that superior forces could be defeated by guerrilla tactics , he had been in China and had seen Mao Tse-tung use guerrilla warfare to achieve a Communist victory.
The principles of guerrilla tactics were simple:
*RETREAT WHEN THE ENEMY ATTACKS
*RAID WHEN THE ENEMY CAMPS
*ATTACK WHEN THE ENEMY TIRES
*PURSUE WHEN THE ENEMY RETREATS
Guerrilla warfare was a nightmare for the US army , guerrillas did not wear uniforms , they had no known base camp or headquarters , they were hard to tell apart from the peasants in the villages. They attacked and then disappeared into the jungle , villages or tunnels.
The aim of guerrilla attacks was to wear down the enemy soldiers and wreck their morale, this was very effective, Us soldiers lived in constant fear of being ambushed.
Ho knew how important it was to keep the population on his side, the Viet Cong fighters were expected to be courteous and respectful to the Vietnamese peasants. They often helped the peasants in the fields during busy periods.
But they could also be ruthless, they were quite prepared to kill peasants who opposed them or who co-operated with their enemies. They also conducted a campaign of terror against the police, teachers, and any other employee s of the South Vietnamese government.
Between 1966 , 1971 the Viet cong killed an estimated 27,000 civilians.
The greatest strength of the Viet Cong fighters was that they simply refused to surrender , they depended on supplies from North Vietnam , US and South Vietnamese planes bombed this constantly , but 40,000 Vietnamese worked to keep it open whatever the cost.
The total Viet Cong and North Vietnamese dead in the war has been estimated in 1 million, far higher that the US losses.
However , this was a price that Ho Chi Minh was prepared to pay , whatever the casualties , replacement troops were available.
US TACTICS IN VIETNAM , 1965-1972
BOMBING
1965 the USA launched operation ROLLING THUNDER, which involved extensive bombing raids on military and industrial targets in North Vietnam .
The lists of targets was soon expanded to include towns and cities in North and South Vietnam .
MORE BOMBS WERE DROPPED ON NORTH VIETNAM THAN WERE DROPPED IN THE WHOLE OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR ON GERMANY AND JAPAN .
To some extent the bombing was effective :
*it damaged North Vietnam’s effort and it disrupted supply routes
*from 1970 1972 , intense bombing campaigns against Hanoi (North Vietnam’s Capital) and the port of Haiphong forced the North Vietnamese to negotiating table
However, US air power could not defeat the Communists, it could only slow them down , the Viet Cong continued to operate its supply lines.
CHEMICAL WEAPONS
The US developed a powerful chemical weapon called AGENT ORANGE , it was a sort of toxic “weedkiller”, it was used to destroy the jungle where the Viet Cong hid.
Napalm was another widely-used chemical weapon , it destroyed jungles where guerrillas might hide , it also burnt through skin to the bone , many civilians and soldiers were also killed by the chemical weapons.
SEARCH AND DESTROY
The US Commander General Westmoreland developed a policy of search and destroy , he established secure and heavily defended US bases in the South of the Country .
From there , it launched search-and-destroy raids from helicopters , they would descend on a village and destroy any Viet Cong forces they found .
But there were problems:
*the raids were often base on inadequate information
*inexperienced US troops often walked into traps
*innocent villages were mistaken for Viet Cong strongholds
*civilian casualties were extremely high in these raids
* Search-and Destroy tactics made the US and South Vietnamese forces very unpopular with the peasants , it pushed them towards supporting the Viet Cong
THE TET OFFENSIVE , 1968
In 1968 the Communists launched a major offensive ,during the TET NEW YEAR HOLIDAY , Viet Cong fighters attacked over 100 cities , one Viet cong Commando unit , tried to capture the US embassy in Saigon, US forces had to fight to regain control room by room!
In many ways the TET OFFENSIVE was a disaster for the Communists, they hoped that the people from South Vietnam would join them but they didn´t. It lost 10,000 experienced soldiers and was weakened.
However , it posed a question about the war in the USA.
*there were nearly 500,ooo troops there and the USA was spending $20 billion a year on the war, so why had the Communists been able to launch an offensive that took US forces completely by surprise?
*US and South Vietnamese quickly retook the towns but in the process an ancient city was destroyed (Hue) and many civilians were killed…was this right?
THE PEACE MOVEMENT IN THE USA
For a war of such a scale the USA needed the support of the American public, but it was increasingly difficult to keep it.
Public opinion in the USA was turning against the war , and many Americans felt deeply uncomfortable with what was going on in Vietnam.
Television showed people being tortured or executed, or women and children watching with horror as their house was set on fire.
The media showed crying children burnt by American napalm bombs.
INSTEAD OF VIETNAM BEING A SYMBOL OF A US CRUSADE AGAINST COMMUNISM, IT HAD BECOME A SYMBOL OF DEFEAT AND CONFUSION.
There were ant-war protests all over the country, and one specific event had a devastating effect on American and international support for the war: THE MY LAI MASSACRE.
THE MY LAI MASSACRE
In March , 1968, a unit of young American soldiers , called Charlie Company , started a search-and-destroy mission in the Quang Ngai region of South Vietnam.
They had been told that in the My Lai area was a Viet Cong headquarter and 200 Viet Cong guerrillas.
The soldiers had been ordered to destroy all houses , they had been told that the villagers would have left for market because it was a Saturday.
Early in the morning of 16 March, Charlie Company arrived in My Lai, within the next 4 hours , between 300 and 400 civilians were brutally killed, they were mostly women , children and old men.
Some were killed while working on the field , others were shot in their homes .
NO VIET CONG WERE FOUND IN THE VILLAGE .
At the time , the army treated the operation as a success , the commanding officer’s report said that 20 civilians had been killed by accident in the attack, but the rest of the dead were recorded as Viet Cong.
THE OFFICERS AND MEN INVOLVED WERE PRAISED.
However, 12 months later, a letter arrived in the offices of 30 leading politicians in Washington , it was written by Ronald Ridenhour , an American soldier who had served in Vietnam , and who personally knew many of the soldiers who had taken part in the massacre.
He had evidence of something rather dark and bloody that had occurred in My Lai, he asked Congress to investigate.
Soon after , LIFE magazine, one of the most influential magazines in the USA, published photographs of the massacre taken by an official army photographer.
This triggered an investigation that ended in the trial for mass murder of LIEUTENANT WILLIAM CALLEY, who had killed 109 people in My Lai, ten other members of the company were also charged , but they placed all responsibility on Calley .
In 1971 he was found guilty and sentenced to 20 years’ hard labour , 4 years later he was released.
Such revelations shocked the American public , it was the clearest evidence that the war had gone wrong.
In November, 1969, almost 700,000 anti-war protesters demonstrated in Washington DC. It was the largest political protest in American History.
ENDING THE WAR IN VIETNAM
After the Tet Offensive , President Johnson concluded that the war could not be won militarily.
He reduced the bombing campaign against North Vietnam and instructed his officials to begin negotiating for peace with the Communists.
A peace conference followed, in Paris , and Johnson also announced that he would not be seeking re-election. It was an admission of failure.
The anti-Vietnam feeling was so strong, that now it was not a question of “could the USA win the war?” , it was more like “how could it get out of Vietnam without looking like a defeat?”.
Richard Nixon was elected President, from then on he worked tirelessly to end US involvement in the war.
This was not easy , because the biggest question on how to contain world communism , the one that had got the USA into Vietnam in the first place, had not gone away.
They did not want to appear to hand in Vietnam to the Communists, they used a range of strategies:
*Peace negotiations with North Vietnam
*withdrawing US troops
*Nixon started to improve relations with China and asked it to pressure N Vietnam to end the war
In 1972, the North Vietnamese launched a major offensive but were unable to conquer South Vietnam.
In 1973, in Paris again, Chief Vietnamese Le Duc Tho, Nixon and the South Vietnamese President Thieu , signed a peace agreement.
Nixon described it as “peace with honour”, others read page 363 source 5.
THE FALL OF SOUTH VIETNAM
Nixon had promised continuing financial aid and military support to Vietnam , but the Congress refused to allow it, they did not want to waste American money.
Without US support , the South Vietnamese government could not sure for long.
One of the major symbol of American failure in Vietnam was the televised news images of desperate Vietnamese men , women and children trying to clamber aboard American helicopters taking off from the US embassy.
AFTER 30 YEARS OF CONSTANT CONFLICT , THE STRUGGLE FOR CONTROL OF VIETNAM HAD FINALLY BEEN SETTLED AND THE COMMUNISTS HAD WON.
HOW DID THE VIETNAM WAR AFFECT THE POLICY OF CONTAINMENT?
*it failed militarily
*it failed politically
*it was a propaganda disaster
The failure greatly affected USA’s policies towards Communist states.
After the war , the Americans tried to improve relations with China, they entered a period of greater understanding with the USSR .
The Americans became very suspicious of involving their troops in another conflict which they could not easily win.
This was an attitude that continued to affect American foreign policy into the 21st century.
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