The Impacts of The Earlier Precedent: Although colonialism officially ended in Indochina when the French withdrew its troops by 1954, the possibility of a war continued to subsist. The Geneva Accords temporarily partitioned Vietnam into two ideologically different states: North Vietnam and South Vietnam. The South, formerly a part of the French Union, now experienced a major but yet unprecedented event. In the South, there emerged a figure called Ngô Đình Diệm. Diem was a faithful anti-communist and an ultra-nationalist. As a result, he did not have a good impression of the revolutionary government in the North led by Ho. Coincidentally, the successor of Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was a supporter of Diem’s ideas. With the help from the United States, Diem slowly and steadily rose to power in the South. In 1955, Diem rigged the 1955 State of Vietnam Referendum to abolish all the monarchical remnants of the system, which later led to the creation of the Republic. The subsequent proclamation of the Republic of Vietnam made the Geneva Accords become defunct as it only comprised of only two major actors: Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the State of Vietnam, which no longer existed after the manipulated referendum.
Brief Summary: The Vietnam War was a series of proxy wars that happened on November 1, 1955 to April 30, 1975. It was a major ideological conflict that was fought between North Vietnam and with its Communist allies against the South with the help of the United States. Thousands of bombs and chemical weapons ravaged over Indochina, and millions perished on either sides.
Preparation for War: The proclamation of a Southern government derailed Ho and his Communist Revolutionary’s plans to reunification. Concurrently, the world was boiling in conflicts between the two superpowers: The United States and The Soviet Union. The region of Indochina also began to draw the two giants’ attention. Both started to send in weapons and aids to win against the other one. To mobilize for a total war, North Vietnam’s Central Committee approved the revival of the Ho Chi Minh trail with the help of Pathet Lao, a communist political movement during the Laotian Civil War, in exchange for war support for the consolidation of the trail. Peace-talks were not so much apparent either, when Eisenhower actively sent aid to South Vietnam in the early years. Around 1959, North Vietnamese troops swiftly penetrated into South Vietnam’s territory from the Southern Laos. In response, South Vietnamese troops hastily rallied their soldiers to repel back the offensive. Tensions abruptly arose, and war seemed to be the only answer.
South Vietnam and Its Domestic Politics: War was later publicly announced across the two countries. At the same time, propagandas were mass-produced by both the North and the South to encourage people into believing that the war was a deliberate attempt to free the South and a demonic invasion by the Communists, respectively. Internal strife intermittently took place in rural areas and Saigon to oppose Diem’s nepotism and inhumane policies against Buddhism. Things badly culminated by1963 when Buddhist Thích Quảng Đức voluntarily self-immolated to protest against Diem’s regime. The end of Diem came to an end on November, 2, 1963 when he was assassinated by a coup led by General Dương Văn Minh. The coup de’tat was likely to be backed up by the United States as there were numerous confidential documents leaked after the war. After the assassination, South Vietnam went in almost a decade of political instability. A time when military faction leaders divided up and fought for the coveted seat. Feeling worried, the United States promptly sketched out the Gulf of Tonkin incident to justify their declaration of war against North Vietnam. On August 7, 1964, the United States Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, authorizing Johnson to use any kind of necessary measures to retaliate against the D.R.V despite the president once said:
”We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.”
The Proclamation of South Vietnam in 1955.
The Vietnam
War
1955-1975
Escalation To A Brutal War: Since the U.S was now officially inside the conflict, all necessary measures either brutal or inhumane was implemented throughout the course of the war. The Laotian Civil War gave the United States a chance to launch several of their mass-bombing operations on North Vietnam’s infrastructures, especially the exasperating trail, where all the essential & covert military operations were taken place by the N.V.A. The culminative number of bombs being dropped in the Vietnam War were twice as much as the amount of the total dropped bombs in WWII. On top of that, the United States carried out various biological warfare agents to undermine the morale of the North Vietnamese Army. In addition to that, the use of biological weapons accidently inflicted and killed up to 400.000 Vietnamese people as well as some other Americans. In 1968, an uprising led by the N.V.A and the N.L.F appalled the American Media. It was an uprising that targeted the U.S Embassy and other important precincts in Saigon. This secret operation consisted of three waves:
Phase I: January 30 – March 20, 1968
Phase II: May 5 – June 15, 1968
Phase III: August 9 – September 23, 1968
The operation was carried out mainly to demolish the morale of the ARVN. It tried incite major political rebellions across the South and revealed the limited capability of the United States. Indeed, the uprising was not victorious for the Communist, but it had given them the upper-hand in diplomacy, especially for the following conferences held in the early 1970s.
De-Escalation and The Collapse of A Republic: By the year of 1969, Americans — with their advanced technology — saw the actual footages of their men in the war. The reported footages were videos of innocent American men being ravaged and killed 9000 miles far away from home. Mass-protests erupted in every corner of the cities. The accumulated madness now exploded after all the lies being told by both the Federal Government and the Presidents. Prior to 1969, the March on Pentagon was an example of this when 50.000 anti-war protestors gathered at the Pentagon. Polices and U.S Marshalls had to disband the mass and sometimes violently dealt against peaceful demonstrators.
The election of Nixon in 1969 was largely because of his earlier promises to bring the American men back home and end the war. However, the withdrawal of a superpower from Vietnam would generate a not-so-much a good image internationally. Therefore, Nixon implemented the policy of Vietnamization in which all of the war responsibilities of the United States were incrementally given back to South Vietnam.
In the meantime, the United States secretly discussed peace-talks with the D.R.V without the consent of Nguyen Van Thieu. The first peace drafts in 1972 were originally denied by North Vietnam due to the unfair advantages written on the Accord. Since then, these became deadlocked until 1973 when the U.S ordered “Operation Linebacker II” to raid both Haiphong and Hanoi in order to polish their statusy image. The Paris Accords was finally later signed on January 27, 1973 between Lê Đức Thọ and Henry Kissinger, ending the United States’ 10 years-long involvement in this pointless war. Just two years later, on April 30, 1975, the government of Republic of Vietnam became history when the T-54 Tank of the National Liberation Front knocked down the Independence Palace’s gate, marking the end of the Vietnam War. A year after, the country was united under the Communist Party of Vietnam and changed its name to Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
The Tank 843 (Soviet T-54) knocked down the Independence Palace’s Gate of South Vietnam.
The USS Maddox Destroyer that was involved in the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964.
📜Sources/Citations:
(1)"1955 State of Vietnam Referendum." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 10 May 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1955_State_of_Vietnam_referendum. Accessed 6 Jul. 2024.
(2)"South Vietnam." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 16 Jun. 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Vietnam. Accessed 6 Jul. 2024.
(3)“Vietnam War.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 23 June 2024, www.britannica.com/event/Vietnam-War.