15.4 War in Southweast Asia

Read the following section and answer the questions that follow.                                                                                
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
War in Southwest Asia

Southeast Asia’s wars were, for many local participants, nationalist struggles against foreign domination. Like Korea, however, Southeast Asia eventually played a part in the global Cold War.

Indochina After World War II

In mainland Southeast Asia after World War II, an agonizing liberation struggle tore apart the region once known as French Indochina. The nearly 30-year conflict had two major phases. First was the war against the French, dating from 1946 to 1954. Second was the Cold War conflict that involved the United States and raged from 1955 to 1975.

Indochina Under Foreign Rule 
The eastern part of mainland Southeast Asia, or Indochina, was conquered by the French during
the 1800s. The Japanese overran Indochina during World War II, but faced fierce resistance, especially in Vietnam, from local guerrillas (guh RIL uz), or small groups of loosely organized soldiers making surprise raids. The guerrillas, determined to be free of all foreign rule, turned their guns on the European colonialists who returned after the war. The guerrillas were strongly influenced by communist opposition to European colonial powers.

Ho Chi Minh Fights the French
 After the Japanese were defeated, the French set out in 1946 to re-establish their authority in Indochina. In Vietnam, they faced guerrilla forces led by Ho Chi Minh (ho chee min ). Ho was a
nationalist and communist who had fought the Japanese. He then fought the French in what is known as the First Indochina War. An unexpected Vietnamese victory at the bloody battle of Dienbienphu (dyen byen foo) in 1954 convinced the French to leave Vietnam. Cambodia and Laos had meanwhile gained their independence separately.

Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969) was born in central Vietnam at a time when Vietnam was under French colonial control. Ho discovered communism while working abroad and quickly
adapted it to his struggle against French rule back in Vietnam. While Soviet communism gave a leading role to urban workers, Ho saw rural peasants as the driving force behind a successful revolution. Ho was more interested in national liberation than following a Soviet communist model.
As president of North Vietnam, he led his people first against French control and later against the U.S-backed South Vietnamese government.


Vietnam Is Divided 
After 1954, however, the struggle for Vietnam became part of the Cold War. At an international conference that year, Western and communist powers agreed to a temporary division of Vietnam.
Ho’s communists controlled North Vietnam. A noncommunist government led by Ngo Dinh Diem (ngoh din dee EM), supported by the United States, ruled South Vietnam. The agreement called for elections to reunite the two Vietnams. These elections were never held, largely because the Ameri-
cans and Ngo Dinh Diem feared that the Communists would win.
Some South Vietnamese preferred Ho Chi Minh, a national hero, to the South Vietnamese government backed by the United States, a foreign power. But Ho’s communist rule in the North alienated some Vietnamese. Many Catholic and pro-French Vietnamese fled to the south.
The United States supported Ngo Dinh Diem’s regime against what American leaders saw as the communist threat from North Vietnam. Meanwhile, Ngo Dinh Diem’s dictatorial regime alienated many Vietnamese with its corruption and brutal tactics against political opponents.
By the early 1960s, communist guerrilla fighters had appeared in the jungles of South Vietnam. Many of them were South Vietnamese, but they received strong support from the north. Many saw their fight as a nationalist struggle to liberate Vietnam from foreign domination.

America Enters the Vietnam War

American foreign policy planners saw the situation in Vietnam as part of the global Cold War. They developed the domino theory—the view that a communist victory in South Vietnam would cause noncommunist governments across Southeast Asia to fall to communism, like a row of dom-
inoes. America’s leaders wanted to prevent this from happening. 

The War Intensifies 
Ho Chi Minh remained determined to unite Vietnam under communist rule. He continued to aid the National Liberation Front, or Viet Cong, the communist rebels trying to overthrow South
Vietnam’s government. At first, the United States sent only supplies and military advisors to South Vietnam. Later, it sent thousands of troops, turning a local struggle into a major Cold War conflict.
On August 1, 1964, South Vietnamese commandos conducted raids on North Vietnamese islands in the Gulf of Tonkin. The following day, the North Vietnamese attacked a nearby U.S. Navy destroyer, the Maddox, which they mistakenly believed had assisted the South Vietnamese
raids. Three days later, sailors on the Maddox thought that they had been attacked a second time, although it seems likely that their sonar and radar equipment were malfunctioning due to heavy seas.
U.S. President Johnson reported the attacks to Congress without mentioning the South Vietnamese raids or the doubts about the second attack. Believing that the attacks had been unprovoked, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 7, 1964. The resolution
authorized the President to take all necessary measures to prevent further aggression in Southeast Asia.
After the resolution passed, the United States began bombing targets in North Vietnam. Eventually, more than 500,000 American troops were committed to the war. At the same time, both the Soviet Union and China sent aid—but no troops—to help North Vietnam.
During the Vietnam era, young American men were required to register for the military draft. Men were then selected for the draft in a random lottery. Many saw fighting for their country as their patriotic duty. However, to avoid being drafted, some military-age American men left the country and sought refuge in other nations not involved in the war.

Guerrilla War 
Like the French in Vietnam, America faced a guerrilla war. The rebels in South Vietnam tended to be local peasants. They thus knew the countryside much better than their American enemies. They
also knew the local people. Villagers frequently offered them safe haven against foreign troops. The close connections between guerrilla fighters and the villagers turned the Vietnamese villages themselves into military targets. Supplies for the guerrillas came from the north, following
trails that wound through the jungles of neighboring Cambodia and Laos. In response, American aircraft and ground troops crossed the borders of these nations, drawing them into the war.

The Tet Offensive 
Despite massive American support, South Vietnam failed to defeat the communist guerrillas and their North Vietnamese allies. In 1968, guerrilla forces came out of the jungles and attacked
American and South Vietnamese forces in cities all across the south. The assault was unexpected because it took place during Tet, the Vietnamese New Year. The communists lost many of their best troops and did not hold any cities against American counterattacks. Nevertheless, the bloody Tet Offensive marked a turning point in public opinion in the United States.

The Vietnam War Ends

As the fighting continued, civilian deaths caused by the bombing of North Vietnam and growing American casualties inflamed antiwar opinion in the United States. Growing numbers of American troops were prisoners of war (POWs) or missing in action (MIAs). Some Americans began
to think that the Vietnam War was a quagmire, or swamp, in which the United States was becoming more and more bogged down.

More Americans Oppose the War
 As the war continued, the nation became deeply and bitterly divided over the ongoing struggle. Many Americans of all ages continued to support the war effort in Vietnam. Others wanted to end the loss of lives. More and more young people turned out for massive street demonstrations, all part of a growing anti- war movement. It was clear that an increasing number of Americans wanted no more “body bags” coming back or television footage of burned Vietnamese villages. At the same time, many agreed with a housewife who said, “I want to get out, but I don’t want to give up.”

America Withdraws 
In the end, American leaders decided that they had to get out of Vietnam. Faced with conflict at home and abroad, President Lyndon Johnson, who had presided over the massive expansion of

the war in the 1960s, decided not to run for a second term. Johnson also opened peace talks with North Vietnam in Paris.
Although American troops had seldom lost a battle in the long strug- gle, they had not destroyed the Vietnamese Communists’ determination to keep fighting. Johnson’s successor, President Nixon, came under increasing pressure to terminate American involvement. Nixon finally
negotiated the Paris Peace Accord in January 1973. This agreement established a cease-fire, or a halt in fighting. The United States agreed to withdraw its troops, and North Vietnam agreed not to send any more troops into the South. The accord left South Vietnam to determine its own future and set a goal of peaceful reunification with the North.

North Vietnam Wins the War 
Two years after American troops had withdrawn from the country, the North Vietnamese conquered South Vietnam. The South Vietnamese capital, Saigon, was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in 1976 in honor of the late leader. The North Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, became the capital of the reunited nation.

Southeast Asia After the War

After the American withdrawal from Vietnam, some dominos did fall. Both Cambodia and Laos ended up with governments dominated by Communist Vietnam. However, the falling dominos stopped at the former borders of French Indochina. Other parts of Southeast Asia remained thoroughly capitalist, if less than democratic.

Tragedy in Cambodia 
During the Vietnam War, fighting had spilled over into neighboring Cambodia. In 1970, the United States bombed North Vietnamese supply routes in Cambodia and then briefly invaded the country.
Afterwards, the Khmer Rouge (kuh MEHR roozh), a force of Cambodian communist guerrillas, gained ground in Cambodia. Finally, in 1975, the Khmer Rouge overthrew
the Cambodian government. 
Led by the brutal dictator Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge unleashed a reign of terror. To destroy all Western influences, they drove people from the cities and forced them to work in the fields. They slaughtered, starved, or worked to death more than a million Cambodians, about
a third of the population.
In the end, it took a Vietnamese invasion to drive Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge back into the jungle. Vietnam imposed an authoritarian government on Cambodia, but they at least ended the genocide.

Vietnam Under the Communists 
In the newly reunited Vietnam, the communist victors imposed a harsh rule of their own on the south. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese fled their country, most in small boats. Many of these “boat people” drowned. Survivors landed in refugee camps in neighboring countries. Eventually, some settled in the United States. Meanwhile, Vietnam had to rebuild a land destroyed by war. Recovery was slow due to a lack of resources and an American-led embargo, or blockage of trade. For years, the country remained mired in poverty.

( define ) guerrillas

( define ) Ho Chi Minh

( define ) Dienbienphu

( define ) domino theory

( define ) Viet Cong

( define ) Tet Offensive

( define ) Khmer Rouge

( define ) Pol Pot

( checkpoint ) Why did Vietnamese guerrillas fight the French in Indochina?

( checkpoint ) How did the domino theory lead the United States to send troops to Vietnam?

( checkpoint ) Why did the United States withdraw its troops from Vietnam?

( checkpoint ) How did communist Vietnam dominate parts of Southeast Asia after the Vietnam War?

( assessment ) Why did the French withdraw from Indochina in the 1950s?

( assessment ) How did a local struggle in Vietnam become a major Cold War conflict?

( assessment ) What different opinions did Americans have about U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War?

( assessment ) When the text states that “dominos fell” after the Vietnam War, what does this mean?

( objectives ) List and describe events in Indochina after World War II.

( objectives ) List events which led  America to entered the Vietnam War.

( objectives ) Explain how the Vietnam War ended.

( objectives ) List  and explain the impact on Southeast Asia after the war.

( focus question) What were the causes and effects of war in Southeast Asia, and what was the American role in this region?