Hing Deng

IB World Issues SL
3/25/10
4th period

10 key points from Ch 11:

1.) “All agreed that the United States had to stand up to the aggressors from the north, using
whatever means were necessary. There was also universal agreement on the need to
prove to the Chinese that wars of national liberation did not work and to show the Third
World that America stood by her commitments.” 194
2.) “The idea was that by bringing the peasants together it would be easier to protect the VC
from recruiting, raising taxes, or hiding in the villages among them. In practice, however,
the strategic hamlets amounted to concentration camps. Diem’s troops forced villagers to
leave land their families had lived on for generations and thereby turned thousands of
Vietnamese against the government.” 195
3.) “In July 1964 Mascow, Hanoi, and Paris joined together to issue a call for an
international conference in Geneva to deal with an outbreak of fighting in Laos and with
the war in Vietnam.” 198
4.) “Johnson seized the opportunity that came on August 2 or 3, 1964, when he received
reports that American destroyers had been attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats in
the Gulf of Tonkin. At the time few doubted that the attacks had actually taken place,
although The New York Times and others suggested that the U.S. Navy had provoked the
attacks by escorting South Vietnamese commando raids into North Vietnam.” 199
5.) “Bundy argued that within three months of the start of the bombing Hanoi would give up
and seek peace. Bombing, he asserted, was the way to avoid the unpleasant decision to
send combat troops. In Washington, planning went forward for a program of regular
bombing of the north.” 203
6.) “Hanoi, meanwhile, working from its position of increasing strength, again attempted to
open discussions by explicitly stating that approval in principle of American withdrawal,
rather than withdrawal itself, was all that was needed to get the negotiations started.” 205
7.) “Johnson was able to persuade the Latin Americans to join him in the Dominican
Republic and by May 28 an OAS peacekeeping force had reinforced and taken control
from the U.S. troops. The search for a middle ground in the government went on.
Eventually, in September, a government was formed and in June 1966 moderate rightist
Joaquin Balaguer defeated Bosch in a presidential election.” 208
8.) “In the 1960s, the Arab states, one by one, took control of their oil, owned by the British
before World War II. During and after the war, American oil companies had forced the
British to share the riches with them. But the postwar Arab governments, along with Iran,
began demanding more for their precious, limited and only important natural resource.”
209
9.) “Israel, meanwhile, had won a stunning victory. When she accepted a cease-fire on June
10 (giving the conflict it’s name, the Six Day War), Israel had conquered all of Egypt’s
Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip, driven twelve miles into Syria, seizing the Golan
Heights, and taken all of the Jerusalem plus the West Bank of the Jordan River.” 212
10.) ”Thus the two main results of the Six Day War, which most Israelis and Americans
interpreted as a great victory for Israel, where Israeli occupation of Arab national territory
and the creation of a fully developed Palestinian nationalism” 214
10 key points from Ch 12:
1.) “So it came down to the program Nixon called Vietnamization. Six months after
taking office, he announced that his secret plan to end the war was in fact a plan to
keep it going, but with lower American casualties. He proposed to withdraw American
combat troops, unit by unit, while continuing to give air and naval support to ARVN
and rearming ARVN with the best military hardware America had to offer.” 227
2.) “American agriculture remained the most productive in the world and in 1972 and
again in 1979 the United States was able to make a major dent in its balance of
payments situation by selling massive quantities of wheat to the Russians. The exports
were subsidized by the U.S. government. The wheat deal was perhaps the most direct
payoff Nixon got from détente.” 236
3.) In order for Nixon “to let the North Vietnamese know he could not be pushed around,
Nixon launched his secret war against the North Vietnamese supply routes in
Cambodia. The “secret,” obviously, was well known to the Cambodians and
Vietnamese, but Nixon managed to keep it from the American public (and Congress)
through four years of intensive bombing.” 237
4.) “On June 8, 1969, after meeting with President Thieu of South Vietnam on Midway
Island, Nixon announced the first United States troop withdrawals from Vietnam. By
August 1, he said, twenty-five thousand American soldiers would be returned to the
United States. Further reductions would follow, as ARVN’s fighting quality
improved.” 237
5.) “Backed by the sudden, massive inflow of money and arms, Thieu ordered a general
mobilization. By inducting all men between eighteen and thirty-eight into the service,
Thieu expanded the GVN armed forces from 700,000 to 1,100,000, which meant that
over half the able-bodied male population of South Vietnam was in uniform.” 240
6.) “On April 30, 1970, Nixon made a surprise announcement that a large force of U.S.
troops, supported by major air strikes and backed by a major ARVN force, had
invaded Cambodia. Nixon said the purpose was to gain time for the American
withdrawal.” 242