While the war in Korea had been taking place the French (financed mainly by the Americans) had been fighting against another set of communists. Though in 1954 they were defeated at Dien Bien Phu by the North Vietnamese. The day after this defeat a meeting was set up in Geneva between; USA,USSR,China,Britain,France and Vietnam. American president Eisenhower wanted the French to carry on fighting, he said “if you don’t quit we won’t quit” but the French said “no”.
Eventually though 3 points were agreed, these were: Vietnam would be divided temporarily in two along the 17th parallel the north under Ho Chi Minh and the south under Ngo Dinh Diem.
.The Vietminh forces would withdraw from the south and the French would pull out of the north.
.A date for the elections was fixed July 1956.
Also in 1954 SEATO was set up. It was an organization designed to prevent the spread of communism. The member nations vowed to help any country threatened by communism, one of the members was the USA one reason for this is that the US secretary for state believed in the ‘Domino Theory’ this was the theory that if one country fell to communism then so would its neighbour and so on SEATO was trying to prevent the spread of communism.
After the Geneva conference Diem was on charge of South Vietnam. The USA supported Diem because he waas against communism. In 1954 president Eisenhower gave 17 officers sealed orders sending them to Saigon. They were there to train the ARVN in the use of conventional weapons to help them fight an expected invasion from the North. By 1956 the USA had taken over the training of the South Vietnamese army and by 1961 the time Eisenhower left office there were 685 advisors in South Vietnam. Eisenhower did not want to send combat troops because they had recently suffered 40000 casualties in the Korean war.
In fact the reason why he sent the advisors to train the ARVN so that thy could fight for themselves and that no more American lives would have to be lost as they had lost 40000 in Korea.
The USA supported Diem and his regime by sending them military advisors, military equipment, supplies, money and experts to train and equip the ARVN.
Diem was very unpopular in 1956 he had refused to hold elections. Diem was catholic he discriminated against the Buddhists in favour of the catholics. Diem also gave the top jobs in his government to his family and friends (nepotism). In response to NFL popularity in the south and the fact that the peasants were passing tactical information about the ARVN to the Vietcong Diem’s ‘Strategic hamlet’ programme was put into action. This entailed moving whole villages kilometres from there homes away from areas where there was strong NFL support. They were re-housed in new areas and ‘protected’ from the Vietcong by south Vietnamese troops. Diem made himself even more unpopular by charging the Vietnamese families who had been moved for the materials to rebuild there homes and even the barbed wire which was there to protect them evenvough these materials had been provided by the Americans for free. The strategic hamlet programme was unsuccessful as the camps were heavily infiltrated by the Vietcong so therefore it had failed to stop the Vietcong getting to the ordinary peasants.
When it became clear that Diem wasn’t going to hold any elections and the fact that he was very unpopular made people feel the need to fight for elections. A lot of people turned towards Ho Chi Minh and the NFL. The Vietcongs numbers increased rapidly from 2000 in 1957 to 20000 in 1961 to 100000 in 1964, the situation was urgent.
But kennedy had other communist threats to worry about other than the North Vietnamese.
Cuba was an island just off the coast of Florida, The USSR had put missiles on Cuba after a failed invasion by 1400 Cuban exiles armed with American weapons.
After the missile crisis which proved the Domino Theory Kennedy realized that Diem was too unpopular to defeat the Vietcong, he therefore needed to get rid of him and find someone who was. The government in Washington gave their approval for a coup d’etat to overthrow Diem and his brother. When Diem learned of the plot he turned to the US ambassador for help but none was forthcoming. Diem and his brother were later shot in the back of an armoured vehichle after they had given themselves up. Kennedy was shocked by the assassination as he did not expect that Diem and his brother would be killed. He was assassinated three weeks later in Dallas, Texas.
The new government tried to improve relations with all groups badly treated by Diem, they also aimed for a ‘neutral’ Vietnam. This did not go down well with the new president Lyndon Johnson who wanted to be seen as tough on communism. His version of the Domino Theory was to the point; “if you let a bully come into your front yard one day, the next day he’ll be on your porch, and the day after that he’ll rape your wife in your own bed”.
So far America had been drawn further into Vietnams affairs as a result of Diem’s policies and there fear of communism, this was known as the ‘quagmire theory’ (getting pulled deeper into the quagmire), but as yet they had not sent any ground troops of their own in. The US had hoped that the ‘advisors’ they had sent would be able to train an effective South Vietnamese army as training and paying for an effective South Vietnamese army was not a problem but losing American lives was. Although the advisors could train the south Vietnamese army they could not give it the will to fight. The Vietcong on the other hand had tremendous will to fight. They also did not need any more guns from the North Vietnamese as they had captured over 200000 American guns from the South Vietnamese army.
In 1964 a US air force commander recommended the bombing of the North he said; “ we are swotting the flies when we should be going after the manure pile”. Before they could go ahead with the raids the USAAF would need information about north Vietnamese radar stations. South Vietnamese commandos went on raids to find out this information. The USS Maddox was to monitor signals from the radar stations so the commandos could locate them more easily. On August 2nd in the morning 3 North Vietnamese torpedo boats approached the Maddox which fired at them, the torpedo boats each launched a torpedo at the Maddox two of the torpedos mist one hit but it did not explode. Johnson played down the incident as there were no US casualties but the Maddox was to stay in the area. On the night of August the 3rd the Maddox reported that they and the USS Joy were being fired upon, they fired back at the other ship for hours which according to USAAF pilots was not there. Johnson knew there was no second attack “Hell, those dumb, stupid sailors they were just shooting at flying fish?” he told an official days later. Although he knew of this fact there were elections in November and one of his Republican opponents had accused him of being soft on Vietnam. So he used the incident as an excuse to order attacks on 25 North Vietnamese torpedo boat bases. Also congress believed that the second attack had occurred and that the North should suffer the cosequences. On the sixth of August president Johnson proposed the gulf of Tonkin resolution to congress. This gave the president power to escalate American military involvment on the south. But Johnson did not want to do this as his advisors believed that further airstrikes would be sufficient for victory. It soon became obvious that the Vietcong were not goig to be defeated by just the South Vietnamese army. December 1964, 700 elite South Vietnamese troops were killed, wounded or captured this was the best the south had to offer. The NFL also attacked USAAF bases. February 1965, 10 USAAF helicopters destroyed, 8 servicemen killed and 100 wounded.
February 13th the president approves operation ‘rolling thunder’. This meant that north Vietnam would be bombed on a regular basis. In March 3500 US combat troops were sent to Vietnam to protect the air bases. By the end of the year there would be 200,000 US combat troops in Vietnam. The Americans had been well and truly sucked into the ‘quagmire’.
