Download War in Vietnam - De Anza College

American Involvement
• Prime Minister (1946–
1955)
• President (1945–1969)
of the North Vietnam,
called the Democratic
Republic of Vietnam
• Lost power in late 1950s,
but remained a
figurehead
• President of South
Vietnam
• Nationalistic
• Catholic
• Anti-communist
• Corrupt and despotic
• US sides with anticommunist South Vietnam
even though its government
is corrupt
• ARVN (Army of the
Republic of Vietnam) South
Vietnam
North Vietnamese aided by
• Vietcong (insurgents in the
South fighting for the
north; enemy of US)
• A US destroyer on patrol off the coast of
Vietnam was torpedoed by No Vietnamese
• Johnson asked and was given a resolution from
the US Congress to engage in conventional
warfare in Southeast Asia without a formal
declaration of war
• Secretary of
Defense
• Most important
policy-maker of
the Vietnam War
• American military
commander
• Strategy of “attrition”
measuring success not by
territory claimed, but by
number of enemy killed
• “body counts”
• A strategy of gradually intensified bombing of
North Vietnam
• Strategic; did not include airfields or missile
sites under construction where Chinese or Soviet
advisors would be; did not include dikes or
dams or anything that would hurt civilian
population;
• January 30, 1968
• Usually Tet had been observed as a truce time
• General Westmoreland had just issued a statement
that the enemy had been dispersed
• North and Vietcong attacked key cities and every
major American base in South Vietnam
• 30,000 from North or Vietcong were killed
Major psychological blow to the US
Could the public believe military or government
officials?
Presidential advisors began to devise plans to
disengage, believing goal of holding communism out
of South Vietnam unlikely.
“Vietnamization”
 Rely on the Vietnamese to make determinations
• "I shall not seek, and I
will not accept, the
nomination of my party
for another term ...
• strengthen South Vietnamese military and
government
• disarm anti-war movement at home by
replacing US soldiers with So Vietnamese
• negotiate with both North Vietnam and Soviet
Union
• intensive bombing
• 1968 there were 543,000 US troops in
Vietnam
• 1971 reduced to 140,000
• During the last four years of the war, 20,000
Americans died
• Spring 1969 Nixon began a secret bombing
campaign in Cambodia
• April 1970, Nixon ordered a joint ARVN –US
invasion of Cambodia
• My Lai Massacre, March 1968
• US Army Company tortured and massacred a village
of between 350 to 500 people
• It was not reported until a year later
• Lt William Calley put on trial beginning November
1970
• He was the only one convicted
• June 1971, publication of the Pentagon Papers,
a secret government study critical of US policy
in Vietnam.
• Daniel Ellsberg, who worked on the project but
did not feel anyone paid attention, gave a
copy to the New York Times
• Later published in book form
• the New York Times said that the Pentagon
Papers "demonstrated, among other things, that
the Johnson Administration had systematically
lied, not only to the public but also to Congress,
about a subject of transcendent national interest
and significance"
• To ensure the possibility of public debate about the content of
the papers, U. S. Senator Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) entered
4,100 pages of the Papers into the record of his Subcommittee
on Public Buildings and Grounds.
• After that, it could not legally be suppressed
• North Vietnam’s poor economy made it need
substantial assistance from China and Soviets
• In 1967 alone, China provided 600,000 tons of rice, and
small arms, ammunition;
• The Soviets contributed (to compete with China) tanks, fighter
planes, surface-to-air missiles, and other weapons.
• Determination of the population
• Ability of the North Vietnamese government to
dispatch tens of thousands of citizens in the effort
1. Would a more aggressive (military) strategy have
brought the Soviets and or China into the war?
2. Can strategic bombing work as well in the third
world guerilla war as between major industrial
powers?
3. Why did Johnson not do a full out bombing
campaign?
• Concerned (like Truman) about upsetting China that had
nuclear weapons and 700 million men