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Vietnam 3 of 4
Crisis
in Southeast Asia: Kennedy
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The
breakup of the French colonial empire of Indochina in 1954 intensified the
already chaotic conditions in Southeast Asia. As elsewhere, the United States
and the USSR competed to establish governments favorable to themselves. Both
Laos and South Vietnam were threatened by Communist rebellions. In July 1962
Kennedy's roving ambassador, W. Averell Harriman, negotiated an international agreement that arranged for a
neutral coalition government in Laos headed by Prince Souvanna Phouma. This reversed earlier U.S. policy, which had supported an
anti-Communist military dictator. The coalition government, which consisted of
both Communist and non-Communist elements, was shaky, but it survived for some
time.
Kennedy
was less successful in South Vietnam where U.S. military advisers had been
training the South Vietnamese army since 1954. The South Vietnamese government
of President Ngo Dinh Diem was threatened by a Communist-dominated guerrilla movement, called
the National Liberation Front, which was supported by many of the people living
in the countryside.
The
Diem government, which was dominated by Roman Catholics, proved unable to defeat
the Communists or to cope with growing unrest among South Vietnamese Buddhists
and other religious groups. Antigovernment agitation was especially strong among
the Buddhists, some of whom burned themselves to death to protest the Diem
regime. The government charged that the Buddhist groups had become infiltrated
by Communists, and arrested many Buddhists. Although this contention was
supported by outside observers, including a fact-finding team from the United
States, religious friction between the Buddhists and the Catholic-led government
was at least as powerful a force as political conflict.
In
1961 Kennedy demonstrated America's commitment to South Vietnam by increasing
the number of military advisers from 700 to 15,000 and ordering them into
combat. He also warned that “in the final analysis it is their (South
Vietnam's) war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help
them, we can give them equipment, we can send out our men as advisers, but they
have to win it, the people of Vietnam.”
Kennedy
soon realized that Diem was more interested in maintaining his own hold on power
than in defeating the Communists and introducing democracy in South Vietnam. In
1963, when Kennedy was informed of a planned coup to overthrow Diem, he chose to
leave the matter in the hands of the U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry
Cabot Lodge, Jr., whom he knew to be in favor of the planned coup. The coup was
successful, and Diem was killed in the back of a military personnel carrier.
However, the new government was unable to keep the guerrilla war from spreading,
in spite of increased U.S. aid.
Crisis in
Southeast Asia: Johnson
It
was in Southeast Asia that Johnson ran into his greatest difficulties. The
Vietnam War, a military struggle fought in Vietnam from 1959 to 1975, had begun when
Communist-led nationalists rose in opposition to the government of South
Vietnam. They sought the reunification of Vietnam, which had been temporarily
divided in 1954 by the Geneva Accords. These nationalists formed the National
Liberation Front (NLF), which was supported by the Communist government of North
Vietnam. The struggle widened into a war between South Vietnam and North Vietnam
and ultimately into a conflict involving other nations in Southeast Asia. Unlike
conventional wars, the war in Vietnam had no defined front lines. Much of it
consisted of hit-and-run attacks, with the NLF guerrilla fighters striking at
government outposts and retreating into the jungle.
Johnson
had inherited a pledge from the Eisenhower administration that the United States
would not permit South Vietnam to fall to the Communists. He had also inherited
a commitment of several thousand U.S. "advisers" in South Vietnam from
the Kennedy administration.
 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
In
1964 Johnson reported that the North Vietnamese had attacked U.S. vessels in the
Gulf of Tonkin and asked Congress for a resolution to increase U.S. military
involvement. The measure was passed by both houses. In February 1965 U.S. planes
began regular bombing raids over North Vietnam. Johnson stopped the bombing in
May to support peace talks, but when North Vietnam rejected all negotiations,
the bombings were resumed. U.S. troop strength continued to increase in South
Vietnam. On March 6, 1965, a brigade of American marines landed at Ðà Nang,
and by year's end U.S. combat strength was nearly 200,000.
While
continuing the military buildup in Vietnam, Johnson made another attempt to end
the war. In December 1965 he again halted the bombing of North Vietnam in an
effort to achieve a peaceful settlement. Again negotiations failed, and the
raids were resumed. In June 1966 U.S. planes began bombing targets near Hanoi,
the capitol of North Vietnam, and the neighboring port of Haiphong, both of
which had previously been spared.
In
October 1966 representatives from the United States, Australia, New Zealand,
Thailand, South Korea, and the Philippines—which all had troops in South
Vietnam—met in Manila and promised to withdraw within six months if North
Vietnam abandoned the war. The offer was rejected by North Vietnam. In June
1967, when Johnson met with Soviet Premier Kosygin in Glassboro, New Jersey, he
unsuccessfully sought Kosygin's help in bringing North Vietnam to the peace
table.
The
war continued, and casualty figures rose. In November 1967 the Defense
Department announced that total U.S. casualties in Vietnam since the beginning
of 1961 had reached 15,058 killed and 109,527 wounded. With the mounting toll
sentiment grew within the United States for an end to the war, the cost of
which, apart from the loss of life, was estimated by the president at $25
billion per year. A peace movement developed and gathered momentum, and marches
were organized against the war in major U.S. cities.
The Tet Offensive
In
December 1967 Johnson visited foreign capitals in search of support for his war
policies, announcing "The enemy cannot win, now, in Vietnam." A month
later, however, the NLF launched the Tet Offensive (from the name of the Vietnamese lunar new year in mid-February),
a coordinated series of attacks on more than 100 South Vietnamese targets that
almost cut South Vietnam in half. Despite its psychological effect, the campaign
failed, and the Communist forces were driven back from most of the positions
they had gained, having lost 85,000 of their best troops.
In
spite of this U.S. victory, however, by the early spring of 1968 much of the
American public had concluded that the war was unwinnable. Repeated predictions
of victory from U.S. generals and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara had proved wrong, and as the U.S. commitment grew, so did
opposition to the war and to Johnson personally. By 1967 Johnson began avoiding
public appearances because of demonstrations and threats to his life.
The Decision to Retire
As
criticism of the Vietnam War reached its height, one of the most vocal of the
Vietnam critics, Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, announced that he could
not support the president for reelection and entered the race for the Democratic
nomination. After McCarthy made a strong showing in the March 1968 New Hampshire
primary, Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York also entered the race.
Virtually
every political observer believed that Johnson would run for a second full term,
and most believed that, despite the opposition to the war and his poor showing
in the polls, he would have little difficulty in gaining the Democratic
nomination. Therefore, it came as a shock to the nation when the president
announced on March 31 that he was going to devote his full efforts to trying to
end the war and that, consequently, he would neither seek nor accept his party's
nomination for another term. In the same speech, he announced a partial halt to
the bombing of North Vietnam as a gesture aimed at getting peace talks started
with the North Vietnamese. North Vietnam responded to the gesture, and, after
preliminary negotiations, peace talks began several weeks later in Paris.
It
was widely assumed that Johnson's preference for his successor was Vice
President Humphrey, although Johnson made no formal statement of support. The
assassination of Senator Kennedy in June threw the contest for the nomination
into a complete turmoil. Despite the closeness of the views of Senators McCarthy
and Kennedy, McCarthy was not able to obtain the late senator's base of support.
The Democratic National Convention was held in August in Chicago, which was the
scene of widespread demonstrations by critics of the war, mostly young people,
and of bloody clashes between them and the Chicago police. After narrowly
approving a platform plank that defended Johnson's Vietnam policies, the
convention went on to nominate Humphrey on the first ballot.
Although
Johnson endorsed Humphrey, he did not actively participate in the 1968 election.
Humphrey lost the election to Republican Richard M. Nixon by a narrow margin.
After Nixon's inauguration, Johnson returned to his Texas ranch to write his
presidential memoirs, published in 1971 as The Vantage Point: Perspectives of
the Presidency, 1963-1969. The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library in Austin, on
the University of Texas campus, was dedicated in May 1971. Johnson died in 1973
and was buried at the LBJ Ranch, in Johnson City, Texas
Crisis in
Southeast Asia: Nixon
The
most important issue Nixon faced when he became president was the Vietnam War. The war had begun in 1959 when Communist-led guerrillas in South
Vietnam, backed by the Communist government of North Vietnam, launched an
attempt to overthrow the government of South Vietnam. The struggle widened into
a war between South Vietnam and North Vietnam and ultimately into a limited
international conflict in which the burden of the war fell mainly on civilians.
The United States first sent military advisers to South Vietnam in the 1950s.
After a report in 1964 that the North Vietnamese had attacked U.S. vessels in
the Gulf of Tonkin, Congress had authorized President Lyndon Johnson
to increase U.S. military involvement. The Johnson administration
authorized the bombing of North Vietnam, and the first U.S. combat troops
arrived in South Vietnam in 1965. By 1968 there were more than 500,000 U.S.
troops there. Antiwar sentiment developed at home, and demonstrations against
the war became a daily occurrence, particularly on university campuses.
Nixon
had campaigned against the war, saying that he would bring U.S.
soldiers back home. The protests, however, did not decrease with Nixon's
election, even though he began withdrawing U.S. combat troops from South
Vietnam, in accordance with a policy announced in 1969 while he was in Guam on
an Asian tour. Called the Guam, or Nixon, doctrine, the policy stated that the
United States would continue to help Asian nations combat Communism but would no
longer commit U.S. troops to land wars in Asia. Nixon announced that 25,000 U.S.
troops would be withdrawn  from Vietnam by August 1969. Another cut of 65,000
troops was ordered by the end of the year. Nixon's program, known as
Vietnamization of the war, emphasized the responsibilities of the South
Vietnamese in the war.
However,
Nixon expanded the Vietnam War. In April 1970 he authorized the invasion of
Cambodia to pursue North Vietnamese troops there. The authorization was met with
protest demonstrations around the country.
In
1971 the United States assisted a South Vietnamese invasion of Laos. The air war
was also intensified as U.S. bombing missions were increased over Laos,
Cambodia, and North Vietnam. Through the later months of 1971, American
withdrawal from Vietnam continued, but with little apparent effect. Casualty
figures in 1971 reflected the intensification of South Vietnam's own fighting
efforts against the Communists. While U.S. deaths in Vietnam declined
dramatically to 1380, compared to 4221 in 1970, the South Vietnamese forces, on
the other hand, suffered about 21,500 dead, some in Cambodia and Laos but the
majority in South Vietnam. The South Vietnamese claimed the enemy death toll to
be 97,000.
Quang Tri Offensive
The
tide of the war took a turn for the worse on March 30, 1972.
North Vietnam launched a massive offensive south into Quang Tri
province. In April, the United States retaliated with the first deep-penetration
bombing raids over the north since 1967. On May 8 Nixon ordered the mining of
major ports of North Vietnam, notably Haiphong, to destroy enemy supply routes.
Air strikes were directed against North Vietnamese railroad lines, causing
serious economic problems. Quang Tri City, after being held by the Communists
for four and one-half months, was recaptured by South Vietnamese forces on
September 15.
As
the war continued into the second half of 1972, secret peace meetings were held
between Henry Kessenger, assistant to the president for national security affairs, and
the North Vietnamese delegate Le Duc Tho, beginning on October 8. A breakthrough was achieved when, for the
first time, the Communist side expressed acceptance of a peace plan separating
the military from the political settlement of the war, relinquishing its demand
for a coalition government in South Vietnam, and agreeing to a formula for
simultaneous discussion of the situation in Laos and Cambodia. However, the
talks abruptly collapsed on December 16, and the following day Nixon ordered
further massive bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong. Subsequent night raids were
perhaps the most severe aerial assaults in history, and the sudden reescalation
of the conflict was criticized by many people in the United States and
elsewhere. The air attacks also resulted in the loss of 15 B-52s and in the loss
or capture of 93 U.S. Air Force personnel.
With
the beginning of the second Nixon administration, the secret peace meetings
between Vietnam and the United States resumed in Paris. Sensing progress in the
first days, Nixon ordered a halt to all bombing, mining, and artillery fire in
North Vietnam. After six days of discussions, Kissinger and Tho met once again
on January 23, 1973, and, on that evening, President Nixon announced over
nationwide television that agreement on all terms for a formal cease-fire had
finally been reached. The cease-fire officially went into effect on January 28.
Nixon's popularity seemed then to be at a peak, but soon his prestige began to
crumble because of domestic problems and scandals.
Crisis in
Southeast Asia: Ford
Ford
also inherited the Vietnam War, in which Communist guerrillas attempted to
overthrow the government of South Vietnam; the guerrillas were supported by the
Communist government of North Vietnam. Eventually the struggle involved other
Southeast Asian nations and the United States. By the time Ford became
president, all U.S. fighting forces had been withdrawn from Vietnam. However,
conservatives who were strongly opposed to Communism urged Ford to give more
money to South Vietnam to help that country defend itself against a final North
Vietnamese invasion that everyone assumed would soon occur. Ford agreed and
offered several appropriations bills that would have given South Vietnam greater
U.S. support.
After
the 1974 congressional elections, however, few members of Congress favored more
aid to South Vietnam. Congress rejected the bills in 1975, despite conservative
criticism that to abandon South Vietnam would reduce U.S. influence because
other nations would be unable to rely on U.S. support.
In
an attempt to appeal to those who wanted to leave the problems of the war behind
them, Ford offered amnesty to men who had evaded the military draft, or
conscription, but the program was met with skepticism from Democrats and
hostility from conservative Republicans. Only about 20,000 of the estimated
100,000 draft evaders applied for amnesty.
In
the spring of 1975 the North Vietnamese began what was to be the last offensive
in the war. Only a small contingent of American security personnel and U.S.
embassy personnel remained in Saigon, the South Vietnamese capital, and in April
1975 Ford ordered their evacuation. On April 23, 1975, at Tulane University,
Ford announced that the war in Vietnam was “finished as far as America is
concerned.” One week later, North Vietnam captured Saigon and the South
Vietnamese government surrendered, ending the war.
2002 Report
Full country name: Socialist Republic of Vietnam
Area: 329,566 sq km (128,527 sq mi)
Population: 79 million
Capital city: Hanoi (pop 3.5 million)
People: 84% ethnic Vietnamese, 2% ethnic Chinese, also Khmers, Chams (a
remnant of the once-great Indianised Champa Kingdom) and members of over 50
ethnolinguistic groups (also known as Montagnards, 'highlanders' in French)
Language: Vietnamese, Russian, French, Chinese, English and a variety of
Khmer and Laotian dialects
Religion: Buddhism is the principal religion but there are also sizeable
Taoist, Confucian, Hoa Hao, Caodaists, Muslim and Christian minorities
Government: Communist People's Republic
President: Tran Duc Luong
Prime Minister: Phan Van Khai
GDP: US$24 billion
GDP per head: US$300
Annual growth: 8%
Inflation: 8%
Major products/industries: Rice, rubber, food processing, sugar,
textiles, chemicals
Major trading partners: China, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan
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