The Vietnam War Vietnamese: also known as the Second Indochina War, and in Vietnam as the Resistance War Against America Vietnamese: or simply the American War, was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975.
It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam.
North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist allies; South Vietnam was supported by the United States, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, Thailand and other anti-communist allies.
The war, considered a Cold War-era proxy war by some,lasted 19 years, with direct U.S. involvement ending in 1973, and included the Laotian Civil War and the Cambodian Civil War, which ended with all three countries becoming communist in 1975.The conflict emerged from the First Indochina War against the communist-led Viet Minh. Most of the funding for the French war effort was provided by the U.S. After the French quit Indochina in 1954, the US assumed financial and military support for the South Vietnamese state.
The Việt Cộng, also known as Front national de libération du Sud-Viêt Nam or NLF (the National Liberation Front), a South Vietnamese common front under the direction of North Vietnam, initiated a guerrilla war in the south.
North Vietnam had also invaded Laos in the mid-1950s in support of insurgents, establishing the Ho Chi Minh Trail to supply and reinforce the Việt Cộng.
U.S. involvement escalated under President John F. Kennedy through the MAAG program from just under a thousand military advisors in 1959 to 16,000 in 1963. By 1963, the North Vietnamese had sent 40,000 soldiers to fight in South Vietnam.
North Vietnam was heavily backed by the USSR and the People's Republic of China. China also sent hundreds of PLA servicemen to North Vietnam to serve in air-defense and support roles.By 1964, there were 23,000 US advisors in South Vietnam. In August, the Gulf of Tonkin incident occurred, in which a U.S. destroyer was alleged to have clashed with North Vietnamese fast attack craft. In response, the U.S Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving President Lyndon B. Johnson broad authorization to increase U.S. military presence.
He ordered the deployment of combat units for the first time and increased troop levels to 184,000.Past this point, the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) (also known as the North Vietnamese Army or NVA) engaged in more conventional warfare with U.S and South Vietnamese forces. Every year onward, there was significant build-up of U.S forces, despite little progress. U.S Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, one of the principal architects of the war, began expressing doubts of victory by the end of 1966.
U.S. and South Vietnam forces relied on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct search and destroy operations, involving ground forces, artillery, and airstrikes. The U.S. also conducted a large-scale strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam and Laos.The Tet Offensive of 1968 showed the lack of progress with these doctrines.
With the VC and PAVN mounting large-scale urban offensives throughout 1968, U.S domestic support for the war began fading. The Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) expanded following a period of neglect after Tet and was modeled after U.S doctrine. The VC sustained heavy losses during the Tet Offensive and subsequent U.S.-ARVN operations in the rest of 1968, losing over 50,000 men.
The CIA's Phoenix Program further degraded the VC's membership and capabilities. By the end of the year, the VC insurgents held almost no territory in South Vietnam, and their recruitment dropped by over 80% in 1969, signifying a drastic reduction in guerrilla operations, necessitating increased use of PAVN regular soldiers from the north.In 1969, North Vietnam declared a Provisional Revolutionary Government in South Vietnam in an attempt to give the reduced VC a more international stature, but the southern guerrillas from then on were sidelined as PAVN forces began more conventional Combined arms warfare.
Operations crossed national borders: Laos was invaded by North Vietnam early on, while Cambodia was used by North Vietnam as a supply route starting in 1967; the route through Cambodia began to be bombed by the U.S. in 1969, while the Laos route had been heavily bombed since 1964.
The deposing of the monarch Norodom Sihanouk by the Cambodian National Assembly resulted in a PAVN invasion of the country at the request of the Khmer Rouge, escalating the Cambodian Civil War and resulting in a U.S.-ARVN counter-invasion.In 1969, following the election of U.S President Richard Nixon, a policy of "Vietnamization" began, which saw the conflict fought by an expanded ARVN, with U.S. forces sidelined and increasingly demoralized by domestic opposition and reduced recruitment. U.S. ground forces had largely withdrawn by early 1972 and support was limited to air support, artillery support, advisers, and materiel shipments. The ARVN, buttressed by said U.S. support, stopped the largest and first mechanized PAVN offensive to date during the Easter Offensive of 1972.The offensive resulted in heavy casualties on both sides and the failure of the PAVN to subdue South Vietnam, but the ARVN itself failed to recapture all territory, leaving its military situation difficult. The Paris Peace Accords of January 1973 saw all U.S forces withdrawn; the Case–Church Amendment, passed by the U.S Congress on 15 August 1973, officially ended direct U.S military involvement. The Peace Accords were broken almost immediately, and fighting continued for two more years. Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge on 17 April 1975 while the 1975 Spring Offensive saw the capture of Saigon by the PAVN on 30 April; this marked the end of the war, and North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year.The scale of fighting was enormous: by 1970 the ARVN was the world's fourth largest army, with the PAVN being similar in size at around a million regular soldiers. The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities (see Vietnam War casualties): estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed vary from 966,000 to 3.8 million. Some 275,000–310,000 Cambodians, 20,000–62,000 Laotians, and 58,220 U.S. service members also died in the conflict, and a further 1,626 remain missing in action.The Sino-Soviet split re-emerged following the lull during the Vietnam War. Conflict between North Vietnam and its Cambodian allies in the Royal Government of the National Union of Kampuchea, and the newly-formed Democratic Kampuchea began almost immediately in a series of border raids by the Khmer Rouge, eventually escalating into the Cambodian–Vietnamese War. Chinese forces directly invaded Vietnam in the Sino-Vietnamese War, with subsequent border conflicts lasting until 1991. Insurgencies were fought by the unified Vietnam in all three countries. The end of the war and resumption of the Third Indochina War would precipitate the Vietnamese boat people and the larger Indochina refugee crisis, which saw millions of refugees leave Indochina (mainly southern Vietnam), with an estimated 250,000 of whom perished at sea. Within the U.S, the war gave rise to what was referred to as Vietnam Syndrome, a public aversion to American overseas military involvements, which together with the Watergate scandal contributed to the crisis of confidence that affected America throughout the 1970s.
Reason and Compare :
More Americans have died from Covid-19 than were killed during the Vietnam War, a grim milestone coinciding with Hanoi officially reporting zero deaths from the coronavirus.“Fighting the epidemic is like fighting against the enemy,” the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam has declared.As of Wednesday (May 24), at least 98,365 Americans have died from the virus, according to a Johns Hopkins University-run tracker of cases and deaths worldwide.At least 58,220 Americans were killed in the 16-year Vietnam War, starting with two American advisors in 1959 and ending in 1975 when US forces retreated in defeat from communist forces.The former battlefield adversaries’ current Covid-19 tolls would be proportionately equal if America’s 98,365 deaths among its 329 million population were matched by 17,166 fatalities among Vietnam’s 97 million citizens.But Vietnam recorded zero coronavirus deaths as of Tuesday (May 24), the government’s National Steering Committee for Covid-19 Prevention and Control said.The country has confirmed a minuscule 270 coronavirus cases nationwide, despite sharing a border with China, the initial viral epicenter of the pandemic.Vietnam’s actual toll could be higher because of the relatively low number of 188,000 coronavirus tests conducted, but it still likely has one of the lowest Covid-19 mortality rates in the world.“Our team up in Hanoi is working very, very closely with their Ministry of Health counterparts,” said the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s representative in Thailand, John MacArthur.“The communications I’ve had with my Vietnam team is that at this point in time, [they] don’t have any indication that those numbers are false,” MacArthur said, according to US National Public Radio.Despite America’s position and resources as a superpower, compared with Vietnam’s status as a developing nation, Washington did not move as fast as Hanoi in responding to Covid-19’s potential threat in the beginning, losing valuable time which no doubt contributed to the high US death toll.The US also did not coordinate the information in their health and safety messages to the public, or blanket the country with broadcasts, print media, street posters and other ubiquitous warnings and reminders which Hanoi did on a scale reflecting its mass mobilization efforts during the war.Hanoi’s impressive twin successes – both against America during the war and now in containing the spread of Covid-19 – have been achieved by commanding citizens to act, manipulating media and controlling public and private enterprises.The Communist Party’s tight hold on then-North Vietnam, and on today’s united Vietnam, have enabled Hanoi to respond with comparatively limited resources.On April 23, some offices, shops, restaurants, hotels, tourist sites, sports venues and other places in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and elsewhere, reopened for the first time since scattered lockdowns began on April 1.The government relaxed the nationwide lockdown because no new infections were reported since April 16, a success which continued on Tuesday (April 28).High-risk places such as beauty parlors, festivals, zoos and other businesses where people easily mingle, remain shut. The provinces of Bac Ninh and Ha Giang and some neighborhoods in the capital Hanoi also remained under partial lockdown.“We need to learn to adapt to live with the pandemic,” Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc announced.“We must not let it destroy our economy or our country. We need to put our people’s lives first and continue to take drastic measures to control the disease.”The government’s new “live together safely” strategy allows people to work, but they must maintain social distancing, frequently wash their hands, and submit to health checks when traveling between provinces.International flights remain curbed but some air travel and public transport within Vietnam is beginning again. Schools are scheduled to restart soon.“Passengers are requested to refrain from talking and eating, and wear face masks on public vehicles,” the Vietnam Government Portal’s news reported.The US however responded with a patchwork of lockdowns with varying restrictions, with some states and major cities relatively unaffected by mandatory controls while other states and large cities implemented strict stay-at-home orders.Those uneven responses also began on different days, allowing the coronavirus to spread from locations that eventually did lockdown and infect places which remained open.Vietnam’s strategy and staff also benefitted from lessons learned from dealing with previous China-borne and cross-border diseases such as SARS, bird flu, and swine flu. Vietnam’s timeline reveals its winning strategy. On January 16, the Heath Ministry alerted government officials on how to stem an expected virus outbreak.The ministry told hundreds of Vietnam’s hospitals and clinics on January 21 to start preparing for cases.Hanoi confirmed its first cases on January 23, when doctors treated two Chinese citizens who had traveled around the country after flying in from Wuhan on January 13.A National Steering Committee on Epidemic Prevention was established on January 30 when the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed the virus was a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern.”Early in February, Hanoi began warning the public and created an informational website in the Internet-savvy country.Selective lockdowns cleared Hanoi’s crowded streets and some other cities and villages, while allowing people to shop for food and essentials.Police issued fines for not wearing a mask in public, threatened imprisonment if a maskless person infected anyone, and banned gatherings of 20 or more people.Hanoi began quarantining villages in February whenever they reported Covid-19 cases. Teams went door-to-door in neighborhoods suspected of having infections.WHO’s Western Pacific Regional Director Takeshi Kasai said last week, “They’re really doing their part,” by quarantining about 180,000 people. “I think that’s the reason why they were able to continue to keep the number [of infections] small.”Tens of thousands of people, including visitors and citizens arriving from abroad, were quarantined in guarded dormitory camps dotted throughout Vietnam. Soldiers left breakfast, lunch and dinner outside each room.Vietnam quickly stopped flights and overland travel in the first week of March to and from China, which shares a border with northern Vietnam.By March, officials were also monitoring incoming international passengers, and banned all foreign entries after March 22, except for Vietnamese citizens returning home and other individuals, who all had to undergo a two-week quarantine.When Hanoi’s prestigious Bach Mai Hospital and, in Ho Chi Minh City, the Buddha Bar, were identified as clusters of infection, a widespread lockdown was declared on April 1.Hanoi’s success contrasted with Washington’s fumbling comes on the 45th anniversary of America’s defeat in Vietnam, displaying again the impressive, unexpected strength of the small Southeast Asian nation which still suffers deep war scars but no Covid-19 deaths.
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