iGCSE History - The Vietnam War: US Involvement

(Source of picture: xinhuanet.com)

(Source of pic: valorremembered.org)

         Dien Bien Phu was a town in northwest Vietnam with an isolated air base built and used by the Japanese in World War Two. After the World War Two, the French tried to regain its colony in Vietnam. However, the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu on May 7th, 1954 by General Vo Nguyen Giap's forces from Ho Chi Minh's Vietminh signalled the end of French influence in Indochina. Following the defeat, French government announced the withdrawal of its army from Vietnam and agreed to most of the Vietminh demands at the Geneva Peace Talks on June 1954.  It was agreed at Geneva to split Vietnam into north (led by Ho Chi Minh's communist party) and south (supported by America) at the 17^th Parallel. The split of the country planted the seed of the Vietnam war.

         The battle fought around Dien Bien Phu was the last major campaign by a European state in the region; by the end of the decade the United States was to become the prominent foreign power in Vietnam and the influence of France dwindled to barely nothing.

         The Domino Theory was first developed under the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower. It was argued that if the first domino is knocked over then the rest topple in turn. Applying this to South-east Asia Eisenhower argued that if South Vietnam was taken by communists, then the other countries in the region such as Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia and Indonesia, would follow. The Domino Theory was accepted by those who followed Eisenhower: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. It was the main justification for sending troops to Vietnam.

(Source of picture: history.com)

         The Gulf of Tonkin is off the coast of northeastern Vietnam. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident took place on August 2 & 4, 1964. It was the name given to the confrontations involving North Vietnam and the United States in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. USA claimed there was a pair of alleged attacks by North Vietnamese gunboats on two American destroyers.  However, there have been many controversies regarding the incident and later research report released by the National Security Agency (NSA) indicates that the US initiated the incident by violating North Vietnamese territorial waters, drawing a defensive response that was called the first “attack” and the second attack did not occur. 

       Whether or not the North Vietnamese shot at US destroyers, this incident was utilized strategically to escalate military operations in the region and initiate the public into the war. The incident in the Gulf of Tonkin led to USA's open entry into the Vietnam War. The outcome of the incident was the passage by Congress of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted President Lyndon B. Johnson the authority to assist any Southeast Asian country whose government was considered to be jeopardized by "communist aggression". The resolution served as Johnson's legal justification for deploying US conventional forces and the commencement of open warfare against North Vietnam.

    According to the terms of the Geneva Accords, Vietnam was devided into two states: the communist north and the non-communist south. It was agreed that Vietnam would hold national elections in 1956 to reunify the country. The division at the seventeenth parallel, a temporary separation without cultural precedent, would vanish with the elections. The United States, however, did not support the Geneva Accords because they thought the Communist Party would won the election. The failure of the South to fulfill the terms of the Geneva Accord led the North Vietnamese to distrust diplomacy as a way to achieve a settlement.

      After the non-election of 1956, Ho Chi Minh encouraged the Vietminh resistance movement in the South. Their guerrillas - now called the Vietcong - attacked soft targets in the South. The Vietcong were supplied with arms by China and Russia from the North via the Ho Chi Minh Trail which was a 1000 mile trail along the border with Laos with heavy jungle coverage so that detection from the air was very difficult. The Vietcong learned from the tactics used by the Chinese communists and fought a very effective guerrilla war. By 1964, there were 100,000 Vietcong in the South. Meanwhile, the weakness of the South Vietnamese government required more help from USA. USA kept pouring modern weapons and military advisors to the South but made very little difference. The USA decided to send its own troops.