1a, which consisted of three areas, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, was part of the in south-east Asia, and was ahs scene of almost non-stop conflict from the fl 1954 the Vietnamese were fighting for independence from France) Indo- Occupied by the Japanese during the war! + (Resistance to both Japanese and THE SPREAD OF COMMUNISM OUTSIDE EUROPE 149NORTH VIETNAM THAILAND CAMBODIA ss Ho Chi Minh Trail @ American bases Map 8.2. The wars in Vietnam French was organized by the League fe inamese Independence (Vietminh), led by the 4 communist Ho Chi Minh,.)who had spi yy Russia learning how to organize revolutions. The Vietminh, though led by communists, was an alliance of all shades of political opinion that wanted an end to foreign control. (At the end of the war in 1945,Ho Chi_Minh declared the whole of Vietnam. independent=Wh« ecame clear that the had no intention of allowing full independence, hostilities broke out, beginn eight-year struggle which ended with the Fi léfeat at Dien Bien Phu Vietminh were successful partly because they were masters.of. guerti massive sipport from the Vietnamese people, and because the French, sti eee the after-effects of the world war, failed to send enough troops) The decisive factor probably that from 1950 the new Chinese communist governmehtt of Mao Zedong st the rebels with arms and equipment {The USA scare a Ived: seit as part of the Cold War and the fight against communism| the id; but it was not enough. However, ‘ace in order to prevent the sprea French with military and economi were determined to take France’s pl: throughout-south-east Asi ry 150 PARTI war AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONSnt (1954), Laos an is Vmporany divided into two ler thet My pate Mapes Mech my goverient Was recognized in North Vietnam. South Vietnam was to have a sej a government ee time being, but elections were. tobe held in July 1956 for th count ich would then become united. Ho Chi Minh was disay D eps ne = pill Was confident that the communists would win the aational aaa A it a4 outs the electjon: ihe never held, and a repeat performance of the Korea: eel ell way developed in South Vietnam which eventually at caused the wy) become involved? + ,H{gpe South Viemamese. government under President Ngo Dinh Gien) (chosen by a ational referendum in 1955) refused to make preparations for the elections for the whole of Vietn m. (The USA, which backing his regime, did itor press himfor fear OF communist victory if the elections went-ahead (US It n (1953-61) was just as worried as Truman had been about the spre communis! He seemed to become obsessed with the ‘domino theory’)- if there is a line of domi- ‘noes standing on end close to each other and one is pushed over, it will knock over the next one in the line, and so on. Eisenhower thought this could be applied to ‘one country in a region ‘fell’ to communism, it would quickly.“knock neighbours.)However, the US attitude was a violation of the Geneva i war in South Vietnam and why did the USA countri over’ all its ment. Af. {Although Ngo began energetically, his government soon. lost popularity; he came “from a wealthy Catholic family, whereas three-quarters of the population were Buddhist. who thought themselves discriminated against. They demanded land reform of the type carried out in China and North Vietnam. ‘Here Jand had been taken away from wealthy landowners and redistributed among the poorer people; but this did not happen in South Vietnam. Ngo also gained a repu- tation, perhaps not wholly deserved, for corruption, and he_was unpopular. with nationalists, who thought he was .too ican i nce. In 1960 various opposition groups, which included many former communist members of the Vietrninh, formed 7 ‘National Liberation Front (NLF). They demanded a democratic national ; government which would introduce ‘reforms and negotiate peacefully for a united Vietnam. A guerrilla campaign began, d buildings; Buddhist monks had their own attacking government officials an ial brand of protest - committing suicide in public by setting fire to themselves. 's credibility declined. further. when he dismissed. all criticism — however - ition as communist inspired) In fact the communists were ) n .d harsh security measures. He was November 1963, after which the of whom President Nguyen Van al_ of Ngo left the, basic situation Pv) vote Yas: RFRA - pe with the situation, the USA decided South Vietnam. Under Eisenhower they had Supporting the regime since | with economic aid and military advisers, they accepted Ngo’s claim that communists were behind all the trouble. Having defeat communism in North Korea-and Cuba, they. felt a strong stand must » Both Kennedy and his successor Lyndon Johnson were prepared to go was ruled by a succession of generals, lasted the longest (1967-75). The remov changed and the guerrilla war continued. i became clear that Ngo could not co} ‘THE SPREAD OF COMMUNISM OUTSIDE EUROPE 151Illustration 8.1 A Vietcong suspect is executed in Saigon by Police Chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan, 1968 * further than just economic aid and advisers. In public the Americans said their inter vention was to protect the independence of the Vietnamese people, but the red eason was to keep the country securely in the non-communist bloc. 5 |The Americans were strengthened in their resolve by the knowledge that the Vietcong (as the guerrillas were now known) (see Illus. 8.1) were receiving supplies, equipment and troops from North Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh believed that such aid was justified: it was the USA and the South who were refusing to be bound by the Geneva agreements;)given South Vietnam’s refusal to agree to national elec- tions, only force could unite the two halves of the country. 6 The Americans’ involvement in Vietnam was different from their role in Koret where they fought as part of a UN coalition. In the intervening period, many ne members, mostly former colonies of European powers, had joined the U) . These new states were critical of what they considered to be unjustified US interferen what should have been an independent country. They could not be relied od support US action via the UN, and therefore the US had to act on its own, WH UN participation. (c) The phases of the war ue 4 intro These correspond to successive American presidencies, each of which saw th : tion of new policies. i ment down (© “ John F. Kennedy (1961-3) tried to keep American involve! pters am guerrilla campaign. [He sent about 16 000 ‘advisers’ plus helico 152 PARTI. WAR AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS$ in which local peasants were leaving the Vietcong isolated outside. This ‘Ong were peasants, who simply continued to red en masse into fortified villages, a failure because most of the Viete erate inside the village: ndon Johnson (1963-9) was faced with a situation, according to reports from an advisers in 1964, where the Vietcong and the NLF controlled about 40 scent of South Vietnamese villages and the peasant population seemed to support He assumed that the Vietcong were controlled by Ho Chi Minh and he to bomb North Vietnam Les) in the hope that Ho would call off the ign. Many historians have blamed Johnson for committing the USA so in Vietnam, calling it ‘Johnson’s War’. Recent assessments have taken a sympathetic view of Johnson's predicament. According to Kevin Ruane, ‘far m being the hawk of legend, historians now tend to see Johnson as a man racked with uncertainty about which direction to take on Vietnam’. He was afraid t American intervention on a large scale would bring China into the war. His real est was his campaign for social reform ~ his ‘great society’ programme (see tion 23.1(d)). However, he inherited the situation from decisions taken by the previous presidents — he was the unfortunate one who felt he had no alternative 9 honour their commitments. r the next seven years a greater tonnage of bombs was dropped on North smamese cities than fell on Germany during the Second World War. In addition, er half a million American troops arrived in the South) In spite of these massive orts, the Vietcong still managed to unleash an offer 168 which ed something like 80 per cent of all_towns.and_villages. Although much nd was lost later, this offensive convinced many Americans of the hopelessness of the struggle. Great pressure was put on the government by public opinion in the USA to withdraw from Vietnam. Some Of his military experts told Johnson that the USA could not win the war at any reasonable cost. On 31 March 1968 Johnson ‘therefore announced that he would suspend the bombing of North Vietnam,freeze troop levels and seek a negotiated peace. In May, peace talks opened in Paris — but quick compromise could be reached, and the talks went on for another five years. Richard Nixon (1969-74) fealized that a new approach was needed, since public ‘opinion would hardly allow him to send any more American troops. Early in 1969 _ there were half a million Americans, 50 000 South Koreans and 750 000 South ietinamese against 450 000 Vietcong plus perhaps 70 000 North Vietnamese. lixon’s new idea was known as Ieiernanittion the Americans would rearm.and in the South Vietnamese army to look; ie. defence.of South.Vietnam;. this uld allow a gradual withdrawal of American.troops fin fact about half had been nt home by mid-1971). On the other hand, Nixon began the heavy bombing of orth Vietnam again, and also began to bomb the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos d Cambodia, along which supplies and troops came from North Vietnam. Tt was all to no avail: at the end of 1972 the Vietcong controlled the entire west- half of the country. By now Nixon was under pressure both at home and from Id opinion to withdraw. Several factors caused a revulsion of feeling against the ment and introduced the ‘safe a policy, * the terrible bombing of North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia; * the use of chemicals to destroy jungle foliage and of inflammable napalm Jelly, which burned people alive; the after-effects of the chemicals caused Many babies to be born deformed and handicapped; deaths of thousands of innocent civilians. The most notorious incident took Place in March 1968, when American soldiers rounded up the inhabitants of ‘THE SPREAD OF COMMUNISM OUTSIDE EUROPE 153.eg See et of My Lai, including old people carrying young chitdre : e ‘n, the ahold buried in mass graves; Between 450 and 500 pep a 2 : killed. i ally acl ledged that there was no monolithic communis, Ne nekow lasions between Chind and the USSR woe Pe sorte nd there were numerous border clashes between the two in Not Sine iyed his chance 10 improve relations with China: trade and travel ra eae removed, and so were the US navy patrols in the Taiwan Straits, Qo Chinese side, some of Mao’s generals had told him that it was time to unfy; t ¢ tO unfreeze tions with the USA. In February 1972, Nixon paid a successful visit to B eijing a ne fire was arranged for January 1973. It was agreed that all Amerie, Geel eeeihinyn from Vietnam, and both North and South would Tespec ty frontier along the 17th parallel) However, the Vietcong continued their campaign ang without the Americans, Presidént ‘Thieu’s government in Saigon soon collapsed ay i badly led armies crumbled. In April 1975 Saigon was occupied by the North Vietnane and Vietcong. Vietnam was at last united and free from foreign intervention ~ under communist government in the same year communist governments were also established jg Laos and Cambodia, The American policy of preventing the spread of communism south-east Asia had ended in complete failure. |The main reason was that the Vietcong and the NLF had widespread support among ordinary people, who had genuine grievances against an inefficient governmen, which failed to introduce necessary reforms. When the NLF was formed in 1960 the communists were only one of several opposition groups; by ignoring the righines. of the NLF case and choosing to prop up such an obviously deficient regime in thet obsession with the fight against communism, the Americans actually encouraged the spread of communism in the South, ; The Vietcong, like the Vietminh before them, were experts at guerrilla warfare and were fighting on familiar territory. The Americans found them much more difficult © deal with than the conventional armies they faced in Korea. With no distinguishing uniform, guerrillas could easily merge into the local peasant population. It proved impossible to stop supplies and reinforcements moving down the Ho Chi Minh Tel 3 The Vietcong received important help from North Vietnam in the way of {100ps and from China and Russia, who supplied arms. After 1970 the Russian conti: tion was vitally important and included rifles, machine-guns, long-range atillety anti-aircraft missiles and tanks, Z 4 The North Vietnamese were dedicated to eventual victory and the unification their country. They showed amazing resilience: in spite of appalling casualties damage during the American bombings, they responded by evacuating city popu tions and rebuilding factories outside the cities, 7 (e), ya he effects of the war were wide-reaching 5 { Vietnam was united but the cost was Civilians had lost their lives and Vietnamese army probably lost as appalling. Between one and two million Viet! around 18 million were left homeless. The many as 900 000 men, while the South lost I 184 PARTI WAR AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS48 000 American servicemen lost their lives, with a further 300 000 wounded. gathird of the South was severely damaged by explosives and defoliants. The prob- « of reconstruction were enormous, and the new government’s policies had unpleasant such as concentration camps for opponents and no freedom of speech. well as being a blow to American Prestige, this failure had a profound effect on ican society; involvement in the war was seen in many circles as a terrible mistake, together with the Watergate scandal, which forced Nixon to resign (see Section , shook confidence in a political system that could allow such things to happen. War ns, instead of being treated as heroes, often found themselves shunned. Future can governments would have to think very carefully before committing the country eply in any similar situation. The war was a victory for the communist world, though Russians and Chinese reacted with restraint and did not boast about it to any great ‘This perhaps indicated that they wished to relax international tensions, though they ad another powerful force on their side in the Vietnamese army.