46 The Vietnam War

Vietnam was the war that America lost. The US engagement in southeast Asia lasted more than a decade, and in the process divided the nation and left an enduring legacy of bitterness. In all, some 2 million Americans—most of them poor white or African American conscripts—saw combat in the theater, and US planes dropped more than twice the tonnage of bombs dropped in the Second World War.

The conflict in Vietnam was the “hottest” episode in the USA’s Cold War strategy to contain—or even push back—international communism, which it regarded as a threat to its way of life, a way of life based on “rugged individualism,” democracy and unfettered capitalism. But as the death toll of young Americans grew higher and higher, it became clear that the American people felt they were paying too high a price.

The anti-colonial struggle The nationalist ideals that germinated in Europe’s overseas colonies in the first half of the 20th century were often aligned with the anti-imperialist ideals of socialism and communism. One young colonial subject who picked up such ideas while living in France was Ho Chi Minh, who had petitioned President Woodrow Wilson at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference to recognize the rights of the Vietnamese people—then under French colonial rule—to self-determination. He was ignored. Ho Chi Minh went on to found, in 1930, the Communist Party of Vietnam.

The Japanese occupation of Vietnam during the Second World War gave Ho Chi Minh the opportunity to strengthen the position of his guerrilla movement, the Viet Minh, and after the Japanese defeat in 1945 he declared the country independent. The French had different ideas, and returned in force. The war that followed resulted in victory for the Viet Minh in 1954, and the same year the independence of French Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos) was recognized by the Geneva Accords. Vietnam itself was temporarily divided along the seventeenth parallel of latitude, Ho Chi Minh heading a communist regime in the North, while a non-communist government was established in the South. Nationwide elections were to be held in 1956.

When it became clear that the Viet Minh would in all likelihood win the elections, the South—under the despotic US-backed rule of Ngo Dinh Diem—refused to cooperate. By the end of the 1950s a communist guerrilla group, the Viet Cong, was active in South Vietnam, supported by the North via secret supply routes through Laos and Cambodia known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The USA sent military advisers to assist the South Vietnamese army, and in 1963 orchestrated the overthrow of the deeply unpopular Diem. However, the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson came to the conclusion that only the deployment of regular US forces could stem the tide. If South Vietnam fell to the communists, the US strategists believed, then the whole of southeast Asia would follow.

The “Sideshow” in Cambodia

Prince Sihanouk, the ruler of neighboring Cambodia, had kept his country neutral during the early years of the Vietnam War. In 1970 he was overthrown by a pro-US army general, but this, together with US raids into the country, only served to increase support for Cambodia’s communist guerrillas, the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge captured the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, in 1975, and under their leader Pol Pot attempted a complete transformation of society, forcing city dwellers to work in the countryside, and killing anybody considered to be a counterrevolutionary. In all, as many as 2.5 million Cambodians may have died either of famine or at the hands of Pol Pot’s death squads. This reign of terror only came to an end when the Vietnamese army mounted an invasion at the end of 1978 and forced the Khmer Rouge back into the jungle.

The morass A suitable pretext came in August 1964 when the North Vietnamese attacked a US naval vessel in the Gulf of Tonkin. As a result, President Johnson gained the approval of Congress for an escalation of America’s military involvement. “We’re going to bomb them back into the Stone Age,” boasted Curtis E. LeMay, chief of staff of the US Air Force, as American aircraft were ordered to hit targets in North Vietnam. The first US ground forces were deployed in the South in 1965, and by the end of 1969 the number of American troops deployed in Vietnam had risen to over half a million.

“We could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home for Christmas.”

Ronald Reagan, interview in the Fresno Bee, October 10, 1965, referring to Vietnam

While US forces conducted search-and-destroy missions in the countryside—alienating the Vietnamese peasantry in the process—the Viet Cong simply retreated to their hidden underground tunnels. Nevertheless, US generals continually voiced confidence that victory was in sight. Thus when the North Vietnamese army and the Viet Cong launched a major offensive during the Tet new year holiday in early 1968 it was a tremendous shock to the American public. The American media had more or less unrestricted access to the fighting, and with the war being shown on American TV every evening, attitudes began to change. Even the veteran CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite concluded in February 1968 that “we are mired in a stalemate,” and that the only way out was to begin negotiations with the North. “If I’ve lost Walter,” President Johnson commented, “I’ve lost Mr. Average Citizen.” Although the Tet offensive ended in failure for the communists, it also showed that the US generals’ talk of imminent victory was an illusion. As anti-war demonstrators flooded the streets of American cities, Johnson announced that he would not stand for re-election.

“I knew from the start that if I left the woman I really loved—the Great Society—in order to fight that bitch of a war … then I would lose everything at home. All my hopes, my dreams …”

Lyndon B. Johnson, in the New York Times Magazine, November 2, 1980. The “Great Society” was Johnson’s ambitious program of domestic civil rights and anti-poverty reforms.

The victorious candidate in the 1968 presidential election, Richard Nixon, had won largely on a promise to end the Vietnam War. Although peace talks had begun in Paris, progress was painfully slow, and while the fighting—and domestic protests—continued, Nixon announced a strategy of “Vietnamization,” by which the South Vietnamese army would take over operations as US forces were withdrawn. At the same time, Nixon intensified the bombing of the North, and also illegally ordered air raids and ground incursions into Laos and Cambodia to hit communist supply lines.

The Paris peace talks resulted in a ceasefire in 1973, allowing the completion of the US withdrawal. When North Vietnamese forces resumed their offensive in 1975, the South Vietnamese army lost all will to resist. By the end of April the North Vietnamese had taken the southern capital, Saigon, and shortly afterward Vietnam was reunited. Laos and Cambodia also fell to communist insurgents. The war had cost the lives of 58,000 US servicemen—and millions of Vietnamese.

the condensed idea

The USA’s biggest foreign policy failure in the Cold War