After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, President Lyndon B. Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara slowly increased military pressure on the coast of North Vietnam, aiding the South in offensive strikes and intelligence-gathering.. [200]:357 William Westmoreland, no longer in command but tasked with investigation of the failure, cited a clear dereliction of duty, lax defensive postures and lack of officers in charge as its cause. This joint U.S.South Vietnamese program attempted to resettle the rural population into fortified villages. [292][A 13] However, in the years following the war, a vast number of South Vietnamese were sent to re-education camps where many endured torture, starvation, and disease while being forced to perform hard labor. By ignoring ARVN units, the U.S. commitment became open-ended. [282], After the Tet Offensive, many PAVN units incorporated light tanks such as the Type 62, Type 59 tank., BTR-60, Type 60 artillery, amphibious tanks (such as the PT-76) and integrated into new war doctrines as a mobile combined-arms force. 4, p. 7. This figure includes battle deaths of Vietnamese soldiers in the Laotian and Cambodian Civil Wars, in which the PAVN was a major participant. [228] The fatal shooting of four students at Kent State University in 1970 led to nationwide university protests. There was a sixty-day period for the total withdrawal of U.S. forces. At the same time, Hanoi realized it could not achieve a "total victory" and employed a strategy known as "talking while fighting, fighting while talking", in which military offensives would occur concurrently with negotiations. The U.S. and its allies mounted complex search and destroy operations, designed to find enemy forces, destroy them, and then withdraw, typically using war helicopters. In 1961, the U.S. had 50,000 troops based in South Korea, and Kennedy faced four crisis situations: the failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion that he had approved on 4 April,[118] settlement negotiations between the pro-Western government of Laos and the Pathet Lao communist movement in May ("Kennedy sidestepped Laos, whose rugged terrain was no battleground for American soldiers. Included among their ranks were "about 90 percent" of Laos's "intellectuals, technicians, and officials. Troops As They Deploy, Planned VC/PAVN Attack Against US Defensive Perimeter, VC/PAVN Ambushes or Encircles A Moving US Unit. [160]:407411 Drug usage increased rapidly among U.S. forces during this period, as 30% of U.S. troops regularly used marijuana,[160]:407 while a House subcommittee found 1015% of U.S. troops in Vietnam regularly used high-grade heroin. At the Geneva Conference, the French negotiated a ceasefire agreement with the Viet Minh, and independence was granted to Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.[90][91]. More than 20% of South Vietnam's forests and 3.2% of its cultivated land was sprayed at least once. Living in a male-dominated environment created tensions between the sexes. As broad-based opposition to his harsh tactics mounted, Dim increasingly sought to blame the communists. U.S. and allied forces mount major offensive actions to seize the initiative to destroy guerrilla and organized enemy forces. Westmoreland predicted victory by the end of 1967. The killed in action figure comes from "Special Subject 4: The Work of Locating and Recovering the Remains of Martyrs From Now Until 2020 And Later Years," downloaded from the Vietnamese government website datafile on 1 December 2017. [279], During the early stages of the war, the Viet Cong mainly sustained itself with captured arms; these were often of American manufacture or were crude, makeshift weapons used alongside shotguns made of galvanized pipes. [354] 20,00062,000 Laotians also died,[63] and 58,281 U.S. military personnel were killed,[48] of which 1,584 are still listed as missing as of March 2021.[355]. Some have argued that the policy of North Vietnam was not to topple other non-communist governments in South East Asia. In 1998, after a high level review by the. [40]:716, Chaos, unrest, and panic broke out as hysterical South Vietnamese officials and civilians scrambled to leave Saigon. Nguyen Co Thach recalls: "Nuon Chea has asked for help and we have liberated five provinces of Cambodia in ten days. U.S. public opinion overwhelmingly supported the deployment. Some observers in the United States questioned the administration's policy. [160]:508513 North Vietnam was allowed to continue supplying troops in the South but only to the extent of replacing expended material. [200]:357. Thieu was also accused of murdering Ky loyalists through contrived military accidents. [154] Johnson did not, however, communicate this change in strategy to the media. [40]:408411 Incorporating features from the German FG-42 and MG-42, the U.S. replaced their earlier M1919 Browning in most roles with the M60 machine gun, including on helicopters where it was used for suppressive fire. Previously, the VC had utilised hit-and-run guerrilla tactics. The Kennedy administration remained essentially committed to the Cold War foreign policy inherited from the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. [124] Their weapons were principally of Chinese[280] or Soviet manufacture. Further information on the final North Vietnamese offensive: Ousting and assassination of Ng nh Dim, Gulf of Tonkin and Johnson's escalation, 19631969, ARVN taking the lead and U.S. ground-force withdrawal, Easter Offensive and Paris Peace Accords, 1972, United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races (FULRO). There were approximately 16,000 military . [287], The Vietnam War was the first conflict where U.S. forces had secure voice communication equipment available at the tactical level. The Paris Peace Accords of January 1973 saw all U.S. forces withdrawn;[75]:457 accords were broken almost immediately, and fighting continued for two more years. South Korea would later ask to join the Many Flags program in return for economic compensation. [85]:328, U.S. military advisors were embedded at every level of the South Vietnamese armed forces. Frequent Wind was the largest helicopter evacuation in history. [113] In May 1958, North Vietnamese forces seized the transportation hub at Tchepone in Southern Laos near the demilitarized zone between North and South Vietnam. [97]:17 As Army Chief of Staff Harold Keith Johnson noted, "if anything came out of Vietnam, it was that air power couldn't do the job. [163] Preparations were underway for the General Offensive, General Uprising, known as Tet Mau Than, or the Tet Offensive, with the intention of Vn Tin Dng for forces to launch "direct attacks on the American and puppet nerve centersSaigon, Hu, Danang, all the cities, towns and main bases"[164] Le Duan sought to placate critics of the ongoing stalemate by planning a decisive victory. Thousands of refugees streamed southward, ahead of the main communist onslaught. U.S. president Richard Nixon began troop withdrawals in 1969. This marks the official beginning of American involvement in the war as recognized by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. [245] Statistics for 19681972 suggest that "about 80 percent of the terrorist victims were ordinary civilians and only about 20 percent were government officials, policemen, members of the self-defence forces or pacification cadres. In 1955, however, the strongly anti-communist politician Ngo Dinh Diem pushed Emperor Bao aside to become president of the Government of the Republic of Vietnam (GVN), often referred to during. By 1960, the land reform process had stalled because many of Diem's biggest supporters were large land owners. [253] The US Department of Defense estimates the VC/PAVN had conducted 36,000 murders and almost 58,000 kidnappings from 1967 to 1972, c. [83], The primary military organizations involved in the war were the United States Armed Forces and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, pitted against the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) (commonly called the North Vietnamese Army, or NVA, in English-language sources) and the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF, more commonly known as the Viet Cong (VC) in English language sources), a South Vietnamese communist guerrilla force. This proposal was conveyed to the U.S. embassy in Saigon in Cable 243. [275] A number of prominent Western journalists were also involved in covering the war, with Dickey Chapelle being among the first as well as the first American female reporter killed in a war. Between 1964 and 1973, the U.S. dropped two million tons of bombs on Laos, nearly equal to the 2.1million tons of bombs the U.S. dropped on Europe and Asia during all of World War II, making Laos the most heavily bombed country in history relative to the size of its population. The United States enters the war. In July 1965, at the beginning of this steady escalation, President Johnson attempted to explain the need for increased military intervention in Vietnam in a press conference announcing that draft inductions would increase from 17,000 to 35,000 per month. Stanley Karnow noted that "the main PX [Post Exchange], located in the Saigon suburb of Cholon, was only slightly smaller than the New York Bloomingdale's"[97]:453, Washington encouraged its SEATO allies to contribute troops. The indigenous forces numbered in the tens of thousands and they conducted direct action missions, led by paramilitary officers, against the Communist Pathet Lao forces and their North Vietnamese supporters. Only five high-ranking congressional officials were informed of Operation Menu. [309][310] It is estimated that the explosives still remaining buried in the ground will not be removed entirely for the next few centuries. [87]:260. As Robert F. Kennedy noted, "Dim wouldn't make even the slightest concessions. Public and congressional reaction to Nixon's statement was unfavorable, prompting the U.S. Senate to pass the CaseChurch Amendment to prohibit any intervention. Phase 2. United States Vietnam Relations, 19451967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense, vol. [40]:486 His escalation of the war in Vietnam divided Americans into warring camps, cost 30,000 American lives by that point and was regarded to have destroyed his presidency. [71]:16 U.S. involvement increased under President John F. Kennedy, from just under a thousand military advisors in 1959 to 23,000 by 1964. [40]:649663 Nixon pressured Thieu to accept the terms of the agreement or else face retaliatory military action from the U.S.[212], On 15 January 1973, all U.S. combat activities were suspended. [358]:373, Kuzmarov in The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs challenges the popular and Hollywood narrative that US soldiers were heavy drug users,[359] in particular the notion that the My Lai massacre was caused by drug use. [A 12]. [152] With this recommendation, Westmoreland was advocating an aggressive departure from America's defensive posture and the sidelining of the South Vietnamese. [165] The first few days were considered a success but the momentum had slowed after fierce resistance. Moreover, the rushed nature of Vietnamization, intended to cover the US retreat, resulted in a lack of spare parts, ground-crew, and maintenance personnel, which rendered most of the equipment inoperable. "[85]:367, Vietnam was a major political issue during the United States presidential election in 1968. [306] After several failed attempts to negotiate by both sides, Vietnam invaded Democratic Kampuchea in 1978 and ousted the Khmer Rouge, who were being supported by China, in the CambodianVietnamese War. [181] As Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara noted, "the dangerous illusion of victory by the United States was therefore dead. In a scathing attack, he suggested that Kissinger had tricked him into signing the Paris peace agreement two years earlier, promising military aid that failed to materialize. By 1975, they had fully transformed from the strategy of mobile light-infantry and using the people's war concept used against the United States. At World War II's end, Viet Minh forces seized the northern. [85]:48. Although they were originally intended for use behind front lines after a conventional Soviet invasion of Europe, Kennedy believed that the guerrilla tactics employed by special forces such as the Green Berets would be effective in a "brush fire" war in Vietnam. The costs of the war loom large in American popular consciousness; a 1990 poll showed that the public incorrectly believed that more Americans died in Vietnam than in World War II. [97]:341 There was also persistent instability in the military, however, as several coupsnot all successfuloccurred in a short period of time. As the media's coverage of the war and that of the Pentagon diverged, a so-called credibility gap developed. [85]:19 John F. Kennedy, then a U.S. senator, said in a speech to the American Friends of Vietnam: "Burma, Thailand, India, Japan, the Philippines and obviously Laos and Cambodia are among those whose security would be threatened if the Red Tide of Communism overflowed into Vietnam."[106]. Unplanned US Attacks On A VC/PAVN Defensive Perimeter, U.S. [85]:353354 Westmoreland and McNamara furthermore touted the body count system for gauging victory, a metric that would later prove to be flawed. These included the Ho Chi Minh trail supply route, which ran through Laos and Cambodia. [144] The bombing campaign, which ultimately lasted three years, was intended to force North Vietnam to cease its support for the Viet Cong by threatening to destroy North Vietnamese air defenses and industrial infrastructure. More than 3million Americans served in the Vietnam War, some 1.5million of whom actually saw combat in Vietnam. The French-speaking Australian journalist Kate Webb was captured along with a photographer and others by the Viet Cong in Cambodia and travelled into Laos with them; they were released back into Cambodia after 23 days of captivity. [40]:328. However, limitations of the units, including poor voice quality, reduced range, annoying time delays and logistical support issues, led to only one unit in ten being used. Kennedy believed that yet another failure to gain control and stop communist expansion would irreparably damage U.S. credibility. In 1971, the Pentagon Papers were leaked to The New York Times. "[54] Approximately 830,000 Vietnam veterans suffered some degree of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote in 1954: I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held as of the time of the fighting, possibly eighty percent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader rather than Chief of State Bo i. War crimes were committed by both sides during the conflict and included rape, massacres of civilians, bombings of civilian targets, terrorism, the widespread use of torture, and the murder of prisoners of war. In the United States, President Dwight Eisenhower, who had warned against the possible expansion of communism in April, obviously opposed the unifying election. [40]:685690. In response, China invaded Vietnam in 1979. [94][95][40]:9697 The exodus was coordinated by a U.S.-funded $93million relocation program, which included the use of the Seventh Fleet to ferry refugees. The ethnic minority peoples of South Vietnam, like the Montagnards (Degar) in the Central Highlands, the Hindu and Muslim Cham, and the Buddhist Khmer Krom, were actively recruited in the war. By the time South Vietnam joined the talks, Richard M. Nixon had been elected president. [156], The American buildup transformed the South Vietnamese economy and had a profound effect on society. [340], Vietnamese victims affected by Agent Orange attempted a class action lawsuit against Dow Chemical and other U.S. chemical manufacturers, but the District Court dismissed their case. With respect to the question of reunification, the non-communist Vietnamese delegation objected strenuously to any division of Vietnam, but lost out when the French accepted the proposal of Viet Minh delegate Phm Vn ng,[103]:134 who proposed that Vietnam eventually be united by elections under the supervision of "local commissions". [344], Estimates of the number of casualties vary, with one source suggesting up to 3.8million violent war deaths in Vietnam for the period 1955 to 2002. [40]:35, During the Battle of Dien Bien Phu (1954), U.S. carriers sailed to the Gulf of Tonkin and the U.S. conducted reconnaissance flights. The top-secret history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, commissioned by the Department of Defense, detailed a long series of public deceptions on the part of the U.S. government. However, by November 1963 the program had waned, and it officially ended in 1964. Once again, Hanoi was surprised by the speed of their success. After the French military withdrawal from Indochina in 1954 following their defeat in the First Indochina War the Viet Minh took control of North Vietnam, and the U.S. assumed financial and military support for the South Vietnamese state. This freed North Vietnamese army units for combat in the South. On a per capita basis, the 2million tons dropped on Laos make it the most heavily bombed country in history; The New York Times noted this was "nearly a ton for every person in Laos. Soviet crews fired Soviet-made surface-to-air missiles at U.S. aircraft in 1965. [234][40]:364371 From July 1965 to the end of 1974, fighting in Vietnam was observed by some 6,500 officers and generals, as well as more than 4,500 soldiers and sergeants of the Soviet Armed Forces, amounting to roughly 11,000 military personnel. [195] Among the enlisted, only 2.5% chose infantry combat positions in 19691970. Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge on 17 April 1975, while the 1975 spring offensive saw the Fall of Saigon to the PAVN on 30 April, marking the end of the war; North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year. During the war, more than one million rural people migrated or fled the fighting in the South Vietnamese countryside to the cities, especially Saigon. [165]:4852, In the post-war era, Americans struggled to absorb the lessons of the military intervention. The defeat marked the end of French military involvement in Indochina. [97]:238 Dim staffed his government's key posts mostly with northern and central Catholics. [62] These do not include the estimated 300,000500,000 PAVN/VC missing in action. The DRV ruled as the only civil government in all of Vietnam for 20 days, after the abdication of Emperor Bo i, who had governed under Japanese supervision. Heightened opposition to the war was one of the major factors in Johnson's decision not to run for re-election in 1968. [283] The PAVN started receiving experimental Soviet weapons against ARVN forces, including MANPADS 9K32 Strela-2 and anti-tank missiles, 9M14 Malyutka. Hanoi wished to avoid the coming monsoon and prevent any redeployment of ARVN forces defending the capital. Only 16 months later, the Cuban Missile Crisis (1628 October 1962) played out on television worldwide. [85]:349351 He said, "I am convinced that U.S. troops with their energy, mobility, and firepower can successfully take the fight to the NLF (Viet Cong)". [146], The objective of stopping North Vietnam and the Viet Cong was never reached. [202], In 1970, Nixon announced the withdrawal of an additional 150,000 American troops, reducing the number of Americans to 265,500. Martial law was declared. His plan to build up the ARVN so that it could take over the defense of South Vietnam became known as "Vietnamization". [278], Civil rights leaders protested the disproportionate casualties and the overrepresentation in hazardous duty and combat roles experienced by African American servicemen, prompting reforms that were implemented beginning in 196768.