The Vietminh, regardless of assistance from China, were forced back from 1950-1951 when General De Lattre De Tassigny inflicted a series of defeats on the Vietminh. The USA supported the French as their opponents were communists. If the French won, Vietnam wouldn’t be communist. The USA began becoming indirectly involved by providing financial aid; $500 million a year was put into the French war effort. Also the USA helped the French set up a non-communist government in the south of the country. France and the USA had very different attitudes to the war. Where France were merely attempting to preserve its empire, the USA was making a stand against the worldwide spread of communism by at first being indirectly involved. By paying for the cost of the war, the USA hoped France would win, hence the discontinuation of the communist spread.
The US hardline Secretary of State – John Foster Dulles told the French “If you don’t quit, we don’t quit.” This showed how America was willing to do almost anything to avoid the communist spread. At the same time, the US president Eisenhower refused a French request to send in US aircraft manned by American crews. This proves at this point help was purely indirect and didn’t yet intend to directly help in the war.
General Navarre, the French commander in Vietnam realised that time was running out and needed to obtain a quick victory over the Vietminh. He was convinced that if he could manoeuvre General Giap into engaging in a large-scale battle, France was bound to win. In December 1953, General Navarre set up a defensive complex at Dien Bien Phu, which would block the route of the Vietminh forces trying to return to camps in neighbouring Laos. Navarre surmised that in an attempt to re-establish the route to Laos, General Giap would be forced to organise a mass-attack on the French forced at Dien Bien Phu. In 1954, the 8-year war culminated in the fierce and brutal battle. It became known as The Battle of Dien Bien Phu. The French used conventional tactics and wore an eye-catching uniform making them an easy target. For the French, it was a desperate attempt to retrieve its empire in Indochina. The Vietminh however, were camouflaged and used bicycles to travel through the forests to access the French. The French underestimated the Vietminh and when the Vietminh won the battle the French were extremely humiliated.
Eisenhower however, refused to intervene; he decided that he wanted to wait for the outcomes of the peace negotiations at Geneva before becoming involved in escalating the war.
The French decided to pull out on May 7th 1954 and the Geneva agreement followed. The USA, French and Vietnam agreed at Geneva to the partitioning of Vietnam at the 17th Parallel (it would be split into two; the north and the south,) ostensibly until reunification elections would take place under the supervision of an International Commission in 1956. North Vietnam would be ruled by Ho Chi Minh and South Vietnam would be ruled by Ngo Dinh Diem, a staunchly anticommunist man. Finally, they agreed that the Vietnamese could freely choose whether to live in the north or the south.
Ngo Dinh Diem, the ruler of South Vietnam and its chief supporter, the United States, reneged on the 1954 agreement and refused to hold unifying elections, fearing that Ho Chi Minh was seen as a national hero and would thus win the presidency. Diem presided over an increasingly corrupt, nepotistic and oppressive regime and being born into an aristocratic, Roman Catholic family he hated communism in every respect. This was because communists were against religion. This is the only reason why the USA wholly supported Diem – he despised communists. The USA sent Diem money, supplies and military equipment.
The year following the cancelled elections saw a large increase in the number of people moving north to communism. As a result, 80 000 guerrillas in South Vietnam who opposed the anti-communist regime there united to form the ‘National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam,’ a terrorist campaign better known as the Vietcong. The Vietcong were trained in guerrilla warfare. Their aim was to take the south and infiltrate the villages in an attempt to gain support to turn them communist.
In a response to the defeat of the French by the Vietminh at Dien Bien Phu, in 1954, President Eisenhower outlined what became known as the Domino Theory. Basically he was describing the spread of communism by using the picture image of a row of dominoes. You knock the first one and then one by one they all fall. If one country fell to communism, then the others would fall, like a row of dominoes. Following the domino theory, Eisenhower had a foreign policy. He believed that the countries of South East Asia were linked together i.e. South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Burma and India.
In 1960, Ho Chi Minh agreed to supply guerrilla units in the north with aid. He encouraged the different armed groups to join together and form a more effective and powerful resistance organisation. This they did and in December 1960 the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF) was formed. The NLF had three main aims; to get rid of the Americans, to reunite North and South Vietnam and to overthrow Diem. At the same time, John F. Kennedy had become president and he increased the number of military advisors from 100 to 16 000 by 1963. He also helped to equip the South Vietnamese Army. In 1961, the USA had spent nearly $270 million in military support for Diem.
Diem was a Roman Catholic and he declared that the religion of South Vietnam would be Roman Catholic. At the same time, he gave his brother who was a bishop a promotion to Archbishop. A civil disobedience campaign led by the country’s Buddhist monks contributed more directly to his downfall.
In 1961 began the ‘strategic hamlet’ programme. It was a way in which to save the peasants from the Vietcong. Diem organised a system whereby whole villages were moved to defended camps known as fortified villages. However, this programme didn’t work because the peasants didn’t want to be removed from their own homes. They became clearly unhappy.
In November 1963 President Kennedy was assassinated and Lyndon Baines Johnson became president. He quoted that “Vietnam is the biggest damn mess I’ve ever seen.” In November 1963 the South Vietnamese Army overthrew and assassinated Diem. This was due to the extent of his unpopularity. Within the agricultural community, there was strong abuse of peasants’ rights and there was confusion at a political level in South Vietnam and this is why there was a spread of communism within the South Vietnamese people.
This development came across as somewhat alarming for President Johnson. He had asked his own military chiefs to formulate plans incase a war would break out. The chiefs-of-staff had only one strong point to make; America was to be seen as the victim before the aggressor.
Johnson had his own version of the Domino Theory. He said that “If you let a bully come into your front garden one day, the next day he’ll be up on your porch, and the day after that he’ll rape your wife in your own bed.” Johnson wanted a more aggressive war against the communists and he didn’t think the South Vietnamese government was able to keep the North Vietnamese out of the South.
All the USA needed was an excuse to be able to become directly involved in Vietnam’s affairs. This excuse came in July 1964 when the ‘Gulf of Tonkin Incident’ occurred. Vietnamese gunboats attacked 2 USA destroyers. The Vietcong in North Vietnam admit to the attack. Johnson heavily exaggerated the damage and it gave him an excuse to pass an emergency power. It became known as the ‘Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.’ It meant that if the USA was attacked again, they would have sufficient justification to go to war.
In February 1965 came the ‘Pleiku Incident.’ Pleiku was an American military base. The Vietcong infiltrated the base with spies, plotting to bomb it. 8 men were killed and it caused a public outrage. There was a profusion of support for Johnson and it launched the Vietnam War.
President Johnson launched his bombing campaign - ‘Operation Rolling Thunder.’ The plan was to destroy the North Vietnam economy and to force the discontinuation of help that was given to guerrilla fighters in the south. Bombing was also directed against territory controlled by the NLF in South Vietnam. Operation Rolling Thunder was the trigger to direct involvement. The plan was for it to last eight weeks but it lasted for the next three years. In that time, the US dropped 1 million tons of bombs on Vietnam.
To conclude, the USA became increasingly involved in the war in Vietnam for a number of reasons. Their involvement increased from indirect intervention to direct in 1965. The main reason for direct involvement was due to the obsessive paranoia that communism was spreading across the rest of Eastern-Asia, but they couldn’t become directly involved unless there was enough justification to do so. Instead, the USA involved themselves by investing billions of dollars into the war. But despite their initial financial aid, they failed to comply with their own extremely important aim. The USA proved unsuccessful in the discontinuation of the communist expansion. The USA felt that it’s national interest was threatened. The explanation to this lies in the fear caused by the spread of communism at the time. They became increasingly involved in Vietnam’s affairs because of the paranoia over the recent communist take-over of China, the Korean War, the communist victory over the French in Vietnam and the Cold War. The climate was already set and the recent events added to the suspicion which made the USA even more desperate to want to stop communism in Vietnam.
In 1954 the US involvement considerably increased when France withdrew from Vietnam. The USA intervened with the Geneva Agreement and persisted with the ever-growing indirect aid given to South Vietnam. The USA after France’s withdrawal began to send in more and more military advisors and they knew that the only solution to help overthrow the Vietcong was to increase drastically their involvement with more equipment, more advisors, more supplies. Even better, they could directly involve themselves in the war.
All the USA needed was a justified reason to transform their indirect involvement to involvement of a direct nature. Their excuse came in 1965 when the Vietcong infiltrated and attacked the US base of Pleiku.
Finally, the USA’s initial indirect involvement over the years proved to be of no help whatsoever. It became purely an immense mistake; with huge financial investments wasted. Despite all the time, money and effort spent, the domino effect had already begun and all that America had done had proved pointless.
