In the early 1950's, the French occupation of Vietnam was meeting fierce resistance from the Viet Minh, In response America began sending limited financial and military aid to the French occupying forces. By 1954, the occupation was virtually broken and the French hold on Vietnam was in dire straits. Conditions in Asia were seen as critical by the U.S. leadership. France was requesting urgent American assistance, and the Chinese Communist Party was gaining increasing power in opposition to the U.S. friendly Chinese government of Jiang Jieshi. The French situation and the prospect of an independent Vietnam posed two major problems for America. Firstly, to withhold assistance from the French would be to risk losing a major ally in the Cold War. Secondly, an independent Vietnam left an open door for the expansion of Chinese communism into Vietnam and a significant barrier to U.S. economic development in Asia. In order to confront these problems, America began to increase financial aid to massive proportions, as well as military hardware and advisors. At the same time an agreement in Geneva resulted in the partition of Vietnam into the North and South sectors, to be controlled by the Viet Minh and a nominal 'moderate' power, respectively. This arrangement was to exist pending a re-unification election for Vietnam within two years.
By 1955, America, unhappy with the status quo in Vietnam had installed a pro-American anti-communist as governor of the Southern sector. Diem subsequently proclaimed his sector as the Republic of Vietnam. The South now became the central focus for the U.S. and with the inauguration of John F. Kennedy as U.S. President in 1961, came increased involvement. Kennedy, reluctant to commit to all out war in Vietnam said:
We will continue to assist [Diem regime] them, but I don't think that the war can be won unless the people support the effort
However, Kennedy was dealing with other problems, and his solutions often went against the grain of more hawkish elements in Washington, which led to pressure on him. His dealings with the Russians and Cuba resulted in critics strongly advising that a stand needed to be taken with which to assert the image of superpower and that the stand should be made in Vietnam. Buzzanco (1999, p.65) writes:
one of his closest advisors, suggested that clean-cut success in Vietnam could erase the stain of the Bay of Pigs. In Saigon General Lionel McGarr, likewise noted the White House's strong determination to stop the deterioration of US prestige
By the time of Kennedy's death in 1963, over 16,000 U.S. military 'advisors' were deployed in South Vietnam, against increasing strikes by the Viet Minh from within South Vietnam and from the North.
Linden Johnson took over the presidency from Kennedy in 1963, and vowed to continue the policy of involvement in Vietnam. In the same year resistance in South Vietnam increased significantly so that by 1964 the possibility of the overthrow of the U.S. installed regime loomed large. Johnson responded with an escalation in U.S. involvement. By 1965, sustained, intensive bombing campaigns were being carried out on North Vietnam, and the number of American troops deployed in the South had risen to over 184,000, leaving thousands of American troops dead along with thousands of Vietnamese troops and civilians. This was despite the misgivings of leading senators who were agreed that:
insofar as Vietnam is concerned we are deeply enmeshed in a place where we ought not to be; that the situation is rapidly going out of control and every effort should be made to extricate ourselves (Siff, 1999, p.40)
The military also were against escalation. The Commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, General Westmoreland expressed strong reservations:
Westmoreland was likewise reluctant to fight in Vietnam. In September 1964, the commander did not contemplate putting US troops into combat; that would be a mistake, because it is the Vietnamese's wara purely military solution is not possible (Buzzanco, p.74)
By the end of 1967, the number of U.S. troops deployed in Vietnam had reached half a million. Despite this, there was no sign of an American victory, and despite increasing conviction among the military, senators, financial institutions and large portions of the American public, there was no movement by its leadership to extricate the nation from a seemingly losing battle. The fear of Communism and losing face in the eyes of the world left America locked into a no-win nightmare.
The Vietnamese Nationalist forces, although sustaining heavy casualties throughout the war, constantly gained the upper hand and were always able to replace their losses. A major figure behind the success of their campaign for independence was Ho Chi Minh. Minh was inspired by the historic resistance of the Vietnamese people throughout centuries of invasion by other nations. The Mongols, Chinese and French had all encountered fanatical opposition to occupation. Even if it took years, the Vietnamese fought doggedly to victory, and when World War 2 brought another occupation, this time by the Japanese, Ho Chi Minh:
Led an underground, communist-led resistance movement called the Viet Minh (the League for Vietnamese Independence) against the Japanese invaders Well-organised but under-funded the Viet Minh carried out a campaign of terrorism and intelligence-gathering (Elliot, 1996, p.22).
The Japanese surrendered to allied troops in 1944 and the prospect of an independent Vietnam looked possible. It was not to be though. The French re-established control with the help of the British and once again the Vietnamese found themselves fighting for freedom. Over the next thirty years the Viet Minh (came to be known as the Viet Cong in the South) proved to consist of soldiers and supporters with high discipline, motivation and confidence in their quest for liberation from first the French and then the U.S. and its puppet regime. Those qualities and the advantage of fighting in their own land and on their own terrain were factors in their eventual ejection of America. In Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh, the Americans:
Would face a leader and organisation that seemed dedicated to their defeat and who carefully and effectively used the images of rebellion that resonated deep in the Vietnamese past (Edmonds, 1998, p.33).
The American forces contrasted sharply with that of their enemy. Apart from having to fight a guerrilla war, for which they were not trained or experienced, on unknown terrain, civil unrest at home impacted deeply on morale and discipline. At the height of the Vietnam War, America was seeing violent protest and mass demonstrations on civil rights issues. Martin Luther King was openly condemning the Vietnam War along with other civil rights campaigners. A member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee:
Warned blacks that when LBJ talks all that garbage about he's sending boys over there to fight for the rights of coloured people, you ought to know that's a lie. 'Cause we live here with them, and they don't ever do a thing for us. He went on to describe the war as white people sending black people to make war on yellow people to defend the land they stole from red people.(Buzzanco, p.206)
The message resonated with the thousands of black soldiers in Vietnam and contributed to racial division, often resulting in ghetto environments in which ethnic groups swore allegiance only to themselves and rejected others. Further, a lack of leadership conviction in the war caused by deep rifts in policy making and the direction it should take, inevitably filtered down through the chain of command to the white soldiers on the ground. Disillusionment in the cause for war, and exposure to the brutalities caused by it, hit morale hard, and drugs and alcohol use became rife among troops. Capps (1991, p.34) writes:
What was experienced was the harshness of war: brutality, death, and atrocity without a comprehensive rationale to seal over the reality. The Vietnam War provided no transcendent meaning by which the national purpose could be interpreted
American unwillingness to accept the prospect of defeat and loss of face continued after Johnson and throughout the Nixon presidency, keeping its troops in Vietnam until 1975.
I have argued that the emergence of America from World War 2, as a superpower with aspirations of global expansion and a dedication to oppose Communism wherever it deemed fit, led to its involvement in Vietnam. A refusal to withdraw in the face of defeat, in order to maintain its image as a superpower in the eyes of the world, and in fear of the Communist threat, meant an involvement that lasted over two decades. The last thirteen years of it cost 58,000 American and at least 1.5 million Vietnamese lives, as well as the destruction of millions of acres of land. By misjudging the resources of the Vietnamese people, and disregarding the voice of its own people, the cost paid failed to achieve the aims for America's involvement and resulted in them getting it Wrong, terribly wrong.
Bibliography
Buzzanco, R. (1999) Vietnam and the Transformation of American Life Oxford, Blackwell.
Capps, W. (1991) The Vietnam Reader New York, Routledge.
Edmonds, A. (1998) The War in Vietnam U.S.A., Greenwood Press.
Elliott, P. (1996) Vietnam Conflict and Controversy New York, Arms & Armour Press.
Kissinger, H. (2003) Ending the Vietnam War New York, Simon & Schuster.
Logevall, F. (1999) Choosing War California, University of California Press.
Prados, J. (1995) The Hidden History of the Vietnam War U.S.A., Ivan R. Dee.
Siff, E. (1999) Why the Senate Slept U.S.A., Praeger Publishers.