US involvement in Vietnam War

1. US Involvement in the
Vietnam War

2. The Three Stages
1. 1945-1964: Assistance to France
and then to South Vietnam
2. 1964-1968: Escalation—US
involvement goes from 15,000
military advisors to 500,000
soldiers under Pres. Johnson
3. Vietnamization: Nixon’s attempt to
achieve “peace with honor”

3. Background
 Not a new area of the world in which the
USA held interests
 After WWII the French wanted to regain
control over Indochinese peninsula
(Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand)
 USA had been supplying Ho Chi Minh
against Japanese—at end of WWII Ho Chi
Minh declares independence for Vietnam,
but France with British aid send in a
military force to re-establish French rule

4. The “Communist Threat”
 When France asked USA for help in
regaining colonial rule, Truman said
“no”
 But then, the situation changed:
1. Soviet threat in Europe
2. Truman Doctrine
3. Mao Zedong in China
4. Korean War

5. American Involvement in Vietnam
Begins
 1950: Truman gave the French $40
million in economic assistance and
military equipment
 1950 to 1954: USA gave $2.6 billion
to French, accounting for half the
total cost of the war (400,000 French
troops are losing the war)
 Spring 1954: knock out blow—The
Battle of Dien Bien Phu

6. Battle of Dien Bien Phu
 10,000 Fr troops were
surrounded, cut off
and captured
 Fr pleaded with Ike to
send in ground forces
but he refused on VP
Nixon’s advice
 France is defeated and
the Geneva
Conference tried to
restore peace

7. Results of Geneva Accord, 1954
 S Vietnam and USA did not sign
 Acquiesced to the division of north and south at the 17th
parallel with UN supervision of the cease fire
 Viet Minh in North under Ho Chi Minh
 French forces in the South
 450,000 refugees fled N to S—mostly Roman Catholic
(50,000 went S to N)
 UN supervised elections were to be held in Vietnam in 1956
to unify Vietnam
 Ho Chi Minh sure to win > USA got involved covertly
 CIA supported govt of S Vietnam > Ngo Dinh Diem
 Diem cancels elections
 SEATO > South East Asia Treaty Organization created for
collective security of region included USA, UK, France,
Australia (no Indochinese states are included)

8. Initial American Involvement
 Diem became President of S. Vietnam (Republic
of Vietnam)
 Ho Chi Minh’s guerilla units (Viet Cong) began
infiltrating the South
 Eisenhower continued to support the Diem
regime and provided equipment, weapons and
1000 US soldiers as advisors to arm, train and
mentor the army of the Republic of Vietnam
(ARVN)
 1957: Viet Cong (VC) began active operations in
S. Vietnam (controlling jungles and attacking
towns, cities and ARVN bases)
 By 1959, VC had killed 2600 officials and
controlled large portions of countryside

9. Kennedy Administration
 1961: 8000 more US
advisors are in SV
 Ineffectual: ARVN
units were badly led,
poorly trained and
unmotivated
 Without assistance
from USA, South
would lose
 Foreign policy
nightmare for
Kennedy

10. Kennedy’s Foreign Policy Problems
 Events undermined
Kennedy’s intentions
 1961
1. Bay of Pigs fiasco
2. Berlin Wall
3. Commitment of more
forces to Vietnam
4. Sent VP Johnson on
a “fact finding
mission”

11. Result
 US covert involvement in the
overthrow and murder of the
corrupt, authoritarian leader
of the South, Diem (ahhh!
Remember the USA had
originally supported him—
yikes!)
 Historical debate about the
extent of Kennedy’s support
for actions in Vietnam
(remember the term:
plausible deniability)
 USA had no choice but to
start escalation of its
involvement in Vietnam
 When Kennedy is
assassinated in November of
1963 in Dallas, the course is
set

12. Escalation 1964-1968
 August 1964: USS
Maddox was involved in a
sea battle with N.
Vietnamese torpedo boats
 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution:
passed by Congress on
Aug 7 1964, authorized
President Johnson to use
conventional military
forces in Southeast Asia
without a formal
declaration of war
 Americans were no longer
“assisting”; they took over

13. Operation Rolling Thunder
 An air campaign to
bomb NV into
submission
 Thousands of
missions; thousands
of tonnes of bombs
 Ground war heated up
as well
 Helicopters lifted
ground forces to
remote jungle regions
 VC countered with
ambushes

14. Public Opinion Turns
 Mounting casualties lead
Americans to question the
cost of this war
 Media brought disturbing
images home to USA
 “I can’t get out, I can’t finish
with what I’ve got, so what
the hell do I do?” Johnson
 Tried to win the war before
the 1968 election
 By June 1965, 3600 bombing
missions a month
 By the end of 1966, 450,000
American ground troops
 Whitehouse tells American
public they are winning

15. The Tet Offensive
 January 1968
 General Westmoreland had told
the US public that NV were being
“systematically ground down”
 USA needed a major victory and
anti-war movement was gaining
momentum
 Tet = Vietnamese New Year
 During lull in fighting, 85,000 Viet
Cong infiltrated the major cities in
SV—attacked Jan 31
 Seized control of key govt
buildings and US embassy in
Saigon
 Saigon briefly fell to North
 Took 2 weeks to expel invaders
and casualties were high
 Westmoreland asked for 200,000
more troops
 A turning point…

16. The Tide of War Turns
 “The war was fought on many fronts.
At that time, the most important one
was American public opinion.”
General Vo Nguyen Giap (NV)
 Americans wondered how a guerilla
army “on the verge of collapse” could
mount a siege of such magnitude

17. Johnson’s Decision
 March 31, 1968
 President Johnson
went on national
television and
announced:
"I shall not seek, and I
will not accept, the
nomination of my
party for another term
as your president," he
said on that night in
1968.

18. De-escalation and Vietnamization
 Johnson suspended
bombing campaign,
opening the door to
negotiations
 Nixon won the
November 1968
election (Rep)
 Promised to bring
“peace with honor”
and an end to the war
 “Vietnamization”: to
turn the war over to
the SV Army and
withdraw US forces

19. Results
 Peace talks dragged on
 Nixon authorized heaviest bombing raids of the
war as leverage
 1970, he authorized secret operations in
Cambodia and Laos to disrupt the NV supply
routes on the Ho Chi Minh Trail
 Troop withdrawals between 1969-1972
 Last US bombing raid was in Aug 1972
 Paris Peace Accords signed Jan 1973
 Brief ceasefire but fighting began again in 1975;
Saigon captured on April 30
 Vietnam reunited under the Hanoi Government
 Many refugees fled to escape Communist rule

20. Domestic Impact
 Created heightened tensions in an American society that was
already under strain
 The media’s role in the criticism of government policies increased
drastically
 Encouraged Americans to reconsider their global image
 Emergence of a counter culture that demanded social and political
reform
 Clear racial and class divisions among those who had to serve and
those who escaped the draft
 Reputation of the US army in tatters (Mai Lai Massacre-March
1968)
 “It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience
of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate….But it is increasingly clear to
this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to
negotiate, not as victors, but as honorable people who lived up to
their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.”
…..Walter Cronkite

21. Overall Impact
 1964-73: 2 million American served while 500,000 resisted
 Divisive; optimism and pride shattered
 Fall of the entire peninsula to Communism: Vietnam, then
Cambodia, then Laos
 Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot killed approx. 1.5 million
Cambodians
 Brought USA and USSR to negotiate SALT
 Nixon opened relations with China
 Trudeau condemned war and accepted draft dodgers
 3 million civilians died
 2 million military deaths: 1.1 million NV; 220,000 ARVN;
58,000 US; 2,000 SEATO forces

22. Pulitzer Prize Winning
Photos of the Vietnam War

23. Thích Quảng Đức’s self
immolation on 11 July 1963
in protest of Diem’s
administration

25. Combat photography of
Horst Faas

28. Kyoichi Sawada’s combat
photography of the Vietnam
War

31. General Nguyen Ngoc Loan
executing a Viet Cong
prisoner in Saigon'
photographed by Eddie
Adams during the Tet
Offensive

33. Photo of a young girl
running following a napalm
attack by the South
Vietnamese, taken in Trang
Bang by AP photographer
Nick Ut

35. ‘Burst of Joy’ photo taken of
a POW returning home
after 5 years in captivity.
Photo taken by Slava Veder