Perspectives on the Cold War, Decolonization and the Vietnam War - Essay Example

The Vietnam War that was fought between the American backed South Vietnam and the Communist North Vietnam lasted for over two decades. Before the Second World War, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, together known as French Indochina, were a French colony. However, the French too were waging a war against the local people, who wanted to be rid of the colonial yoke. Soon after the world war, the fighting for the colony by the French continued, but by the year 1954, after their defeat at Dien Bien Phu, they were forced to agree to the Geneva accords, whereby Vietnam was divided at the seventeenth parallel, and elections to reunify the country were to be held by 1956. Instead, the Americans entered the war in Vietnam to counter the growing clout of a communist group known as the Viet Cong. Although the Americans had superior firepower, the Vietnamese, with their knowledge of the terrain and their guerilla tactics, finally forced America to withdraw after two decades of a long drawn and costly war. The cost to America in terms of economic and political losses, as well as loss of lives and humiliation at the hands of an enemy that seemed small and insignificant, was immense. Today, after over three decades, there is still no consensus among scholars and historians about whether America should have ever entered the war. Vietnam War The war in Vietnam was a long drawn out and costly conflict between South Vietnam, which was backed by America, and the communist regime of North Vietnam. The war began in 1954 with the rise of the communist party of Ho Chi Minh in North Vietnam and escalated into a war of ideologies against the backdrop of the cold war between the Soviet Union and America. It is estimated that more than three million people died in this war, of which a great majority were innocent civilians. The war that America invested in so heavily has been a cause of dissent and divisions among Americans, and by the time president Richard Nixon ordered withdrawal of troops in 1973, America had sacrificed thousands of her young men to this war. Finally, in 1975, Saigon fell to the communist forces and ended the war that had stretched over two decades. Dr. John Guilmartin, in his book America in Vietnam, remarks “The United States of America became deeply involved in Vietnam and that involvement had serious consequences” (Guilmartin,1991). The origins of the Vietnam War can be traced to the end of the Second World War. Before the war, Indochina or French Indochina, as it was then known, was a French colony consisting of today’s Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. In 1940, the Japanese invaded and occupied the northern part of Indochina and a little later the rest of it. In 1941, Ho Chi Minh, a communist leader, formed a nationalist movement called the Viet Minh to repulse the Japanese invasion. Soon after, the French began to encourage nationalism in Vietnam and gave them nominal independence. However, at the end of the war, when the Japanese surrendered, the French renewed their claim on Indochina. Ho Chi Minh assumed power in the north and proclaimed himself the leader of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. In his address in Hanoi, he proclaimed, "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means all the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free. Those are undeniable truths" (Ho Chi Minh, 1945). In the months after the end of the Second World War, Chinese soldiers began the looting of Vietnamese villages as they came down to North Vietnam from China. In the South, the French soldiers, released from Japanese camps, went on a rampage, killing and looting both innocent civilians and Viet Minh soldiers. In 1946, Chiang Kai Shek of China agreed to withdraw his troops from North Vietnam in exchange for French concessions in Chinese ports. Ho Chi Minh also agreed to allow French forces to occupy Hanoi, if they recognized his Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Between 1946 and 1950, there was a constant warfare between the Viet Minh and the French forces. The French, in an attempt to maintain a hold on the colony of Indochina, agreed that the states of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos would be considered independent self-governing states within the French Union. Despite this, there were constant small wars being fought against the French, whose dominance was resented by the local people. At the end of the year 1946, forces of the Viet Minh launched their first large attack on the French. This is considered the beginning of the first Indochina war, with each side hardening its stand. The Viet Minh military commander, Vo Nguyen Giap, declared, "The resistance will be long and arduous, but our cause is just and we will surely triumph” (The History Place, 1946). In 1949, the French installed Bao Dai as the head of the state of South Vietnam. In 1949, Mao Zedong’s victory over Chiang Kai Shek in China brought the Chinese Communist party into power, and, having gained control over the areas bordering Vietnam, they began supplying weapons to the Viet Minh. At the same time, the US began to aid the French forces. This resulted in the first Indochina war. The local support to the Viet Minh and their guerilla tactics turned the war in favor of the Vietnamese, who took the French outpost of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. An international conference attended by all those involved was held in Geneva to settle the Indochina issue. The Geneva Accords finally put an end to the war between the French and the Vietnamese, marking an end to over a hundred years of colonial rule. The Geneva agreement divided Vietnam at the seventeenth parallel into two parts, with the northern part given to Ho Chi Minh and the southern part to Bao Dai, till elections were held under international supervision two years later to reunify the whole of Vietnam. The Americans believed that the accords had given too much power to the communists in Vietnam. They, therefore, signed a series of agreements that created the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). According to the Geneva accords, Vietnam was split into the communist north and the American backed south. These were separated by a demilitarized zone. A communist guerrilla force known as the Viet Cong began to take shape in South Vietnam. This was supported by the North Vietnamese, and increased its presence in the south due to the people’s frustration with regime of their self appointed president, Ngo Dinh Diem. The accords had envisaged elections to find a permanent solution, but these did not materialize, and, instead, the communists began a series of guerilla attacks on the south. The Americans, who had been supplying military aid and training to the south Vietnamese since 1954 as they were afraid of the spread of communism, slowly increased personnel and equipment. As the Viet Cong grew in strength, so did the presence of Americans in South Vietnam. In 1963, a coup by a group of dissident generals toppled the government, and this was followed by a series of weak governments, none of which were successful in combating the insurgency of the Viet Cong. Increased American involvement in Vietnam came as a result of a torpedo attack by the North Vietnamese on a US destroyer in the gulf of Tonkin in 1964. President Johnson retaliated by ordering air strikes on North Vietnamese naval bases. These served to increase attacks by the Viet Cong on the US personnel and their bases. In the beginning of 1965, eight Americans were killed and 106 wounded in an attack on the American base at Pleiku. In retaliation, Johnson ordered a series of strikes by naval carriers on North Vietnam. These strikes, codenamed Flaming Dart, were the beginning of the escalation of America’s role in the war. Realizing that the South Vietnamese army (ARVN) was unable to cope with the guerrilla tactics of the Viet Cong, America launched a series of bombing attacks on targets in North Vietnam, which is known as Operation Rolling Thunder. There was some hope among the president’s advisors that sustained bombing attacks would nudge the Communists towards the negotiating table. However, despite the continued aerial attacks, the Viet Cong carried on and America was forced to deploy over 100,000 troops to combat them. Troop contributions also poured in from countries such as Philippines, Australia, Korea, New Zealand, and Thailand. Major battles were fought near Danang and Ia Drang, and the Americans aimed at destroying the fighting capacity of the Communists. In a series of skirmishes, the Viet Cong suffered heavy casualties and realized that fighting in the open was impossible against the superior air power of the Americans. The Viet Cong, however, were not deterred. They pulled back to their bases and waited for a more opportune time and place to carry the war forward. Their tactics, their superior knowledge of the terrain, and the inability of the Americans to distinguish between the fighters and civilians, all tilted the battle in favor of the Viet Cong. “What the U.S. has undertaken there is obviously harder, longer, more complicated than the U.S. leadership foresaw” (Hunt, 1967) – that was how the war was viewed by American writers and scholars. Despite using a toxic herbicide to destroy the dense foliage of the jungles and heavy aerial shelling, the Viet Cong fought back with weapons supplied by their Chinese and Soviet allies. In America, the heavy casualties triggered a series of protests against a war that was becoming increasingly unpopular. The turning point of the war came in 1968 when the North Vietnamese army with the help of the Viet Cong launched what is known as the Tet offensive, because it was started on the Vietnamese holiday of Tet. The strike took the Americans by surprise, as the first attacks were launched on the US naval bases near the demilitarized zone. Having successfully diverted the attention of the Americans, they simultaneously attacked major cities and provincial capitals. The Viet Cong were also successful in penetrating the US embassy in Saigon. Despite being caught off-guard, the Americans were successful in repelling the attacks and inflicted heavy casualties on the Viet Cong. However, public opinion in the US began to turn against the war, as footage of casualties increased concerns about the situation on the ground in Vietnam; and finally President Johnson called for a halt to the bombings and also initiated peace talks. Despite these measures, heavy fighting continued on the ground with each side trying to gain the upper hand. Richard Nixon, who became the US President in 1969, tried to make an honorable exit from a war that had become unendurable to most Americans. As Dr.Guilmartin puts it, “They saw little on their television sets to convince them that the sacrifice was worth the cost and active opposition to the war was growing” (Guilmartin, 1991). President Nixon announced that the US would begin training and equipping the South Vietnamese military to reduce the numbers of the US troops in Vietnam. Over the next three years, a large number of US troops withdrew from Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh died in 1969, but his successor carried on the war. Peace talks were held in Paris from 1969, but these broke down when a major offensive was launched in 1972. However, this was repulsed by the superior air power of the Americans. Finally, a peace deal was brokered in 1973, whereby the US forces would leave and the South Vietnamese would be free to determine the future of their country. The beginning of the year 1973 saw most American troops withdraw from South Vietnam, but the fighting continued unabated there. In 1975, the North Vietnamese began a concerted effort to take over the whole of South Vietnam. In seven weeks, Communist forces swept through the south and Saigon fell in April 1975. Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City, and thousands of refugees, who had opposed the communists, began to flee as they feared reprisals. This resulted in the waves of boat people leaving their country in search of safer havens. The Vietnam War became very unpopular by the end of President Johnson’s term in office. The draft policy was particularly resented by the poorer class of working men, who did not have the necessary clout to evade the draft. There was disillusionment among those drafted for combat duty, and racial frictions were on the rise. The culmination of problems besetting the American troops was the massacre at My Lai. A platoon under the command of Lt. William Calley Jr. rounded up four hundred villagers in the hamlet of My Lai and massacred them in cold blood. When the news trickled into the US, a year later, it sent shock waves through the American public. The sense of shock and dismay was further fuelled due to attacks on supply routes and communist bases in Cambodia, in 1970 and 1972. As the number of body bags increased, so did the anger of the people against the government. The American government was also battling a spate of public protests against the economic consequences (for example, inflation) of the long drawn war; and the Kent state incident where stone throwing protesters were fired upon, which resulted in four deaths, was only one among the rising numbers of protests. In one such protest, war veterans threw away their medals on the steps of the Capitol building. The consequences of any war are always death and destruction, but the Vietnam War brought in its aftermath new problems of severe drug use among the US servicemen, as well as psychological problems of readjustment into society. In Vietnam, the harmful effects of toxic herbicides that were used caused disabilities and various types of cancers in generations of Vietnamese people. The political cost to the US was also seen in the people’s diminished faith in their leaders, and a distrust of the army after the revelation of incidents like the My Lai massacre. Although the war in Vietnam ended over three decades ago, there is still no consensus on whether the American intervention was necessary in the war or whether American policy makers erred in their decision to involve America in a costly war that brought nothing but pain and humiliation. History may decide either way, but for the millions who suffered, there can be no excuse to ease the pain of loss and suffering. References Guilmartin, John. (1991). America in Vietnam. Retrieved from http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/books/aiv/index.cfm?page=1&dir=0028 Ho Chi Minh. (1945) Declaration of Independence, Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Retrieved from http://coombs.anu.edu.au/~vern/van_kien/declar.html Hunt, George P. (1967). The case for bombing pause number. Life Magazine, 63(16):4. The History Place (1999). The Vietnam War: Seeds of Conflict 1945 – 1960. Retrieved from http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/index-1945.html Read More