Vietnam War

Template:TOC-right The area generally called Indochina or South-East Asia has been an region of bloody conflict since the beginning of French colonization in 1858. Collectively, these conflicts can be called the Wars of Vietnam. These wars stretched from the French colonial period, involving nationalist resistance, until events of the Second World War, the Indochinese revolution or the First Indochina War (1946-1954), The Two Vietnams after Geneva (1954-1962), the involvement of outside forces in the Vietnam War (1962-1975) and what has been called the Third Indochina War (1978-1999) involving Vietnam, Cambodia, China and Thailand.

As the most famous of these conflicts, the Vietnam War had several phases, beginning with the North Vietnam's attempt to oust the French colonial government after World War II. After the First Indochinese War, North Vietnam made the policy decision to invade the South and surreptitiously began its preparations. U.S. advisers had been present in the South since 1955, but they began to accompany South Vietnamese combat troops in 1962. The United States became more and more involved in South Vietnam, with the advisory buildup (1962-1964), the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, the U.S. ground combat involvement (1964-1972), South Vietnam fighting its own ground war (1972-1975) until the fall of South Vietnam in 1975.

During the closing days of the Vietnam War in 1973, isolated fighting occurred between Vietnamese and Cambodian Communists. Vietnam first invaded Cambodia in 1978 with varying levels of fighting until a 1991 peace treaty. Related to this fighting, China briefly invaded Vietnam in 1979 and again in 1984, with tension remaining at the border. The last Cambodian rebel surrendered in 1999.

Background

In the West, the 'war' is usually considered to have begun somewhere in the mid-20th century. There were at least two periods of hot war, first the Vietnamese war of independence from the French, including guerilla resistance starting during the Second World War and ending in a 1954 Geneva treaty that partitioned the country into the Communist North (NVN) (Democratic Republic of Vietnam, DRV) and non-Communist South (SVN) (Republic of Vietnam, RVN). A referendum on reunification had been scheduled for 1956, but never took place. Nevertheless, a complex and powerful United States Mission to the Republic of Vietnam was always present after the French had left and the Republic of Vietnam established.

While Communists had long had aims to control Vietnam, the specific decision to conquer the South was made, by the Northern leadership, in May 1959. The Communist side had clearly defined political objectives, and a grand strategy, involving military, diplomatic, covert action and psychological operations to achieve those objectives. Whether or not one agreed with those objectives, there was a clear relationship between long-term goals and short-term actions, within the theory of dau trinh.

Quite separate from its internal problems, South Vietnam faced an unusual military challenges. On the one hand, there was a threat of a conventional, cross-border strike from the North, reminiscent of the Korean War. In the fifties, the U.S. advisors focused on building a "mirror image" of the U.S. Army, designed to meet and defeat a conventional invasion.

Diem (and his successors) were primarily interested in using the ARVN as a device to secure power, rather than as a tool to unify the nation and defeat its enemies. Province and District Chiefs in the rural areas were usually military officers, but reported to political leadership in Saigon rather than the military operational chain of command. The 1960 "Counterinsurgency Plan for Vietnam (CIP)" from the U.S. MAAG was a proposal to change what appeared to be a dysfunctional structure.

Arguably, some of the later southern insurgency was more anti-Diem rather than pro-communist. After the overthrow of Diem, Cao Dai and other factions broke away from the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam; at least briefly, they regarded the absence of Diem as liberation. The hard-line Communists, of course, disagreed.

Further analysis showed the situation reflected not only 'jockeying for power', but also the fact that the province chief had security authority that could conflict with that of tactical military operations in progress, but also had responsibility for the civil administration of the province. That civil administration function became more and more intertwined, starting in 1964 and accelerating in 1966, with the "other war" of rural development.

In contrast, the Southern governments from 1954 did not either have popular support or tight control over the populace. There was much jockeying for power as well as corruption. From 1955 onwards, and especially from 1962, they received substantial training and technical support, as well as assistance in pacification and rural development. While the U.S. and other countries had major roles, the thrust of this article is how it affected Vietnam and the Vietnamese. Issues of U.S. politics and opinion that affected it are in Vietnam, war, and the United States.

After the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which U.S. President Lyndon Baines Johnson claimed that North Vietnamese naval vessels had attacked U.S. warships, U.S. involvement, including large-scale participation in combat, began in 1964, and continued through 1972. There had always been opposition to the war by part of the U.S. electorate, but there was a major fall in popular support in 1968. This was exemplified by President Johnson's statement that he would not accept another nomination for the Presidency. When he was replaced by Richard M. Nixon, the U.S. policy changed to Vietnamization, or attempting to train and equip the South Vietnamese to be self-sufficient, accompanied by the withdrawal of U.S. ground support. During 1972, the South Vietnamese, with U.S. air support, were able to repel, in large part, a conventional invasion by North Vietnam.

After the U.S. withdrawal based on a treaty in Paris, the two halves were forcibly united, by fall of South Vietnam DRV conventional invasion, in 1975. The T-54 tanks that broke down the gates of the Presidential Palace in the southern capital, Saigon, were not driven by ragged guerrillas.

Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam replaced North and South Vietnam. While the Socialist Republic remains officially Communist, in 1986, it introduced market reforms and began to participate in the international economic system, under a system called doi moi.

French Indochina Background

See also: Vietnam, pre-colonial history

While French missionaries had been present since at least 1802, helping Emperor Gia Long reestablish the Nguyen Dynasty, France invaded the region in 1858. The Nguyen Emperor accepted protectorate status for the four parts of what is now Vietnam:

• Cochin China in the south, including the Mekong Delta and what was variously named Gia Dinh, Saigon, and Ho Chi Minh City
• Annam in the center, with the cultural capital of Hue; the mountainous Central Highlands, the home of the Montagnard peoples, considered itself autonomous
• Tonkin in the North, including the Red River Delta, Hanoi, and Haiphong.

By June 1867, the French seized the last provinces of Cochin China. The Siamese government, in July, agreed to the Cambodian protectorate in return for receiving the two Cambodian provinces of Angkor and Battambang, to Siam. Siam was never under French control. Napoleon III fell in 1870, and French colonial officers were freed to focus on expansion in Indochina.

In the 1920s and 1930s, both non-Communist and Communist nationalist groups were developing. As the Japanse expansion in China became evident, France began to suppress resistance, to prepare for possible Japanese expansion.

During World War II, France was defeated by Nazi Germany and the colonial administration of French Indochina passed to the Vichy French government.

Indochina operated as a colony from this time up until 1945, with growing nationalist attempts at Indochinese revolution, accelerating after 1946. There were a variety of nationalist movements, non-Communist (e.g., Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang) and Communist (e.g., Indochinese Communist Party; the Viet Minh became the dominant revolutionary force.

Indochina and the Second World War

The Vichy government ceded control of the main cities of Hanoi and Saigon in 1940 to Japan. Later in 1941, Japan extended its control over the whole of French Indochina. The United States responded to these Japanese acts with export embargoes on steel and oil. The desire to escape from these embargoes and become resource self-sufficient led to Japan's decision to attack Western countries in December 1941; see Vietnam, war, and the United States .

Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh returned to lead an underground independence movement (with some help from the O.S.S., the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency CIA). From 1946 to 1948, the French reestablished control, but, in 1948, began to explore a provisional government. While there is no clear start to what ended in 1954, the more serious nationalist movement was clearly underway by 1948.

Indochinese revolution

While there is no universally agreed name for this period in the history of Vietnam, it is the period between the formation of a quasi-autonomous government within the French Union, and the the eventual armed defeat of the French colonial forces by the Viet Minh. That defeat led to the 1954 Geneva accords that split Vietnam into North and South.

The French first created a provisional government under the last Nguyen Emperor, Bao Dai, then recognized Vietnam as a state within the French Union. In such a status, France would still control the foreign and military policy of Vietnam, which was unacceptable to both Communist and non-Communist nationalists.

The Two Vietnams after Geneva

See also: Government of the Republic of Vietnam

This period was begun by the military defeat of the French in 1954, with a Geneva meeting that partitioned Vietnam into North and South. Two provisions of the agreement never took place: a referendum on unification in 1956, and also banned foreign military support and intervention. Neither the Communist side nor the Diem government, for their own reasons, wanted the referendum to take place. It is sometimes called the beginning of the Second Indochinese War, although others use that term to describe the start of U.S. combat involvement.

In the south, the Diem government was not popular, but there was no obvious alternative that would rise above factionalism, and also gain external support. Anti-Diem movements were not always Communist, although some certainly were. Diem himself, however, had his own authoritarian philosophy with mixed Confucian, French, and Vietnamese roots, and was not psychologically open to the idea of an opposition. Ho and the North probably would have won an election, but free elections were also alien concepts to them, and they wanted to keep overall control, not throw the dice on the reaction of the people.

The north was exploring its policy choices, both in terms of the south, and its relations with China and the Soviet Union. The priorities of the latter, just as U.S. and French priorities were not necessarily those of Diem, were not necessarily those of Ho. In 1959, North Vietnam made the explicit decision to overthrow the South by military means. Originally, the military means were guerilla warfare, carried out by the Viet Cong, or the military arm of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF). While the eventual fall of South Vietnam would be due to conventional rather than guerilla warfare, some authors, such as Bui Tin, assert that the NLF was never an indigenous Southern force but always under the control of the North.

Pacification

After partition, there was a continuing struggle for security of the rural population, and to win their support for the government. A convenient general term for the many programs involved is pacification in South Vietnam. It has also been called the "Other War" or "Second War" to differentiate it from direct combat with Communist military forces in the South, although some refer to a "Third War" against Communists outside the South.

There is little doubt that there was some kind of Viet Minh-derived "stay behind" organization betweeen 1954 and 1960, but it is unclear that they were directed to take over action until 1957 or later. Before that, they were unquestionably recruiting and building infrastructure, a basic first step in a Maoist protracted war mode.

While the visible guerilla incidents increased gradually, the key policy decisions by the North were made in 1959. Early in this period, there was more conflict in Laos than in South Vietnam. U.S. combat involvement was, at first, greater in Laos, but the activity of advisors, and increasingly U.S. direct support to South Vietnamese soldiers, increased, under U.S. military authority, in late 1959 and early 1960. Communications intercepts in 1959, for example, confirmed the start of the Ho Chi Minh trail and other preparation for large-scale fighting.

Specific programs included the Strategic Hamlet Program, Revolutionary Development, the U.S. Marine Combined Action Platoon program, and others.

U.S. support to South Vietnam before Gulf of Tonkin

See also: United States Mission to the Republic of Vietnam

To put the situation in a strategic perspective, remember that North and South Vietnam were artificial constructs of the 1954 Geneva agreements. There had been several distinct ethnic regions of Vietnam, and when roughly a million northerners, migrated south into a population of five to ten million of a different religion and ethnicity, there were identity conflicts. Communism has been called a "secular religion", and the North Vietnamese officials responsible for psychological warfare, as well as military operations, were part of a system of cadre. Communism, for its converts, was an organizing belief system that had no equivalent in the South. At best, the southern leadership wanted a prosperous nation, but too often they were focused on personal prosperity. Their Communist counterparts, however, had a mission of conversion by the sword — or the AK-47 assault rifle.

Traditional ethnic geography of Vietnam

Between the 1954 Geneva accords and 1956, the two countries were still forming; the influence of major powers, especially France and the U.S., and to a lesser extent China and the Soviet Union, were as much an influence as any internal matters. In 1957-1958 there was a definite early guerilla movement against the Diem government, involving assassinations, expropriations, recruiting, shadow government, and other things characteristic of Mao's Phase I. The actual insurgents, however, were primarily native to the south or had been there for some time. While there was communication with, and perhaps arms supply from, the north, there is little evidence of any Northern units in the South, although organizers may have infiltrated.

It is clear there was insurgency in the South from after the French defeat to the North Vietnamese decision to invade, but it is far more difficult to judge when and if the insurgency was directed by the North. As both sides operated on the principle that their citizens were either for them or against them, it is difficult to know how much neutralist opinion might have existed.

Guerilla attacks increased in the early 1960s, at the same time as the new John F. Kennedy administration made Presidential decisions to increase its influence. Diem, as other powers were deciding their policies, was facing disorganized attacks and internal political dissent. There were conflicts between the government, dominated by minority Northern Catholics, and both the majority Buddhists and minorities such as the Montagnards, Cao Dai, and Hoa Hao. These conflicts were exploited, initially at the level of propaganda and recruiting, by stay-behind Viet Minh receiving orders from the North

Gulf of Tonkin incident

President Johnson asked for, and received, Congressional authority to use military force in Vietnam after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which was described as a North Vietnamese attack on U.S. warships. After much declassification and study, much of the incident remains shrouded in what Clausewitz called the "fog of war", but serious questions have been raised of whether the North Vietnamese believed they were under attack, who fired the first shots, and, indeed, if there was a true attack. Congress did not declare war, which is defined as its responsibility in the Constitution of the United States; nevertheless, it launched what effectively was the longest war in U.S. history -- and even longer if the covert actions before the August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin situation is considered.

The Gulf of Tonkin resolution, although later revoked, was considered, by Lyndon Johnson, his basic authority to conduct military operations in Southeast Asia. It was another example of how declarations of war have become extremely rare following the Second World War.

South Vietnamese government

After the French colonial authority ended, there was a nominally civilian government, first under Bao Dai and then Ngo Dinh Diem, who ruled from 1954 to 1963; neither were elected. Diem was eventually overthrown and killed in a military coup. There was a gradual transition from overt military government to at least the appearance of democratic government, but South Vietnam neither developed a true popular government, nor rooted out the corruption that caused a lack of support. After the Diem coup in November 1963, for example, there was a nominal civilian government really under military control, which was overthrown by yet another military group in January 1964. Some of the same generals were in both the November and January coups.

Power constantly shifted in 1964 to 1967. This was not, as some have suggested, purely a series of struggles among military juntas. There were multiple Buddhist and other factions competing from outside the government. William Colby, then chief of the Central Intelligence Agency Far Eastern Division, observed that civilian politicians "divided and sub-divided into a tangle of contesting ambititions and claims and claims to power and participation in the government." Some of these contests were simple drives for political power or wealth, while other reflected feeling of seeking to avoid preference for some groups, Catholic vs. Buddhist in the Diem Coup.

Not all the competing groups, such as the Vietnamese Buddhists, were monolithic, and had their own internal struggles. There were a number of groups, often derived from religious sects, which became involved in the jockeying for political power, such as the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao. At varying times, sects, organized crime such as the Binh Xuyen, and individual provincial leaders had paramilitary groups that affected the political process. The Montagnard ethnic groups wanted substantial autonomy.

Vietnamese and U.S. goals were also not always in complete agreement. Until 1969, the U.S. was generally anything opposed to any policy, nationalist or not, which might lead to the South Vietnamese becoming neutralist rather than anticommunist. The Cold War containment policy was in force through the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Administrations, while the Nixon administration supported a more multipolar model of detente.

While there were still power struggles and internal corruption, there was much more stability between 1967 and 1975. Still, the South Vietnamese government did not enjoy either widespread popular support, or even an enforced social model of a Communist state. It is much easier to disrupt a state without common popular or decisionmaker goals.

U.S. policy and combat involvement

See also: Vietnamization

See also: Air operations against North Vietnam

See also: Air campaigns against Cambodia and Laos

See also: Joint warfare in South Vietnam 1964-1968

See also: Vietnamization

This section focuses on those parts of the U.S. political system, which either set an overall U.S. foreign policy, or were principally directed at another audience than in the U.S. It also covers the period when U.S. forces were involved in combat. George Kennan, considered a consummate diplomat and diplomatic theorist, observed that American leaders, starting with the 1899-1900 "Open Door" policy to China, have a

neurotic self-consciousness and introversion, the tendency to make statements and take actions with regard not to their effect on the international scene byt rather to their effect on those echelons of American opinion, congressional opinion first and foremost, to which the respect statesmen are anxious to appeal. The question became not: How effective is what I am doing in terms of the impact it makes on our world environment? but rather: how do I look, in the mirror of American domestic opinon, as I do it?

Even when leaders' goals are sincere, the need to be seen as doing the popular thing can become counterproductive. There were many times, in the seemingly inexorable advance of decades of American involvement in Southeast Asia, where reflection might have led to caution. Instead, the need to be seen as active, as well as the clashes of strong egos, separate the needs of policy from the dictates of politics.

The line is sometimes hard to draw, but the pure U.S. political, as much as possible, is in Vietnam, war, and the United States, and the policy in the main article and its Vietnam-specific subaricles. Sometimes, an issue needs to be in both: for example, a possible peace offer through Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) is at least summarized in the main Vietnam War article, but the personal dynamics between RFK and Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) are in the Vietnam, war, and the United States.

The greatest U.S. involvement was from mid-1964 through 1972, with some activity on both ends. So, much of the detailed U.S. political action with other countries will be in Joint warfare in South Vietnam 1964-1968, Vietnamization, and air operations against North Vietnam. It is not practical to draw a hard-and-fast line. Many, but by no means all, of the key political decisions were under Johnson, but Presidents from Truman through Ford all had roles.

Although the combination of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the political authority granted to Lyndon Johnson by being elected to the presidency rather than succeeding to it gave him more influence, and there was certainly an immense infusion of U.S. and allied forces into the theater of operations, never forget the chief participants in the war were Vietnamese.

Truman and Eisenhower legacy

Truman, on taking office, said he felt as if the moon and stars had landed on him, and one can be sympathetic. He had not been in the inner circles of a mythic President, but immediately was faced with immense decisions. As soon as the war ended, he was under great pressure to return the country to normal civilian conditions; the electorate, much as the British electorate rejected Winston Churchill as the European war ended, wanted a peacetime look.

There were no such pressures to demobilize, however, on Josef Stalin and Mao Tse Tung. There was much blame for "losing" Eastern Europe and China, but it is less clear what could have been done to stop it. Certainly, the pressure to cut military commitment came home to roost in the Korean War, when Truman had few forces to dispatch.

Eisenhower was able to capitalize on the perceived losses under Truman, and formulate a strong policy of containing Communism. John Foster Dulles was its most visible advocate, supported, inside the establishment, by his brother Allen Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Eisenhower's background generally gave him great confidence in dealing with military hard-liners such as Admiral Arthur Radford, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who wanted to intervene at Dien Bien Phu. Eisenhower would listen to the Chiefs, and be decisive, while the Kennedy administration would hold them at arms' length.

John F. Kennedy (JFK) administration

Its term for itself, the "New Frontier", was superficially apt; JFK saw himself in a transformational role. Its rougher operatives had a different style than Joe McCarthy, although it is sometimes forgotten that Robert Kennedy (RFK) had been on McCarthy's staff.

While he, and his key staff, came from an elite, it was from a different elite than that which had spawned John Foster Dulles. Even though the Sino-Soviet split was evident by 1961, the assumption of monolithic Communism was not really examined on the road to involvement in Southeast Asia. While the form was different, a militant anti-Communism was underneath many of the Administration policies.

Where Republicans during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations blamed Democrats who had "lost China", the Kennedy Administration was not out to lose anything, but to win. When Fidel Castro took control of Cuba, the Eisenhower Administration broke diplomatic relations and began studying destabilization, the Kennedy administration did not intend merely to study.

It is not unfair to say that Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy (RFK) despised one another, which began in the JFK administration and grew worse over time. In February 1967, the situation grew worse as a possible peace feeler was assumed, incorrectly, as leaked by Kennedy, and that Kennedy increasingly positioned himself as the 1968 Democratic Party peace candidate, portraying Johnson as a warmonger.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) administration

Johnson's motives were different from Kennedy's, just as Nixon's motivations would be different from Johnson's. Of the three, Johnson was most concerned with U.S. domestic policy, with protecting his 'domestic legacy'. Karnow quotes his comment to his biographer, Doris Kearns, as

"I knew from the start that I was bound to be crucified either way I moved. If I left the woman I really loved — the Great Society — in order to get invoved with that bitch of a war on the other side of the world, then i would lose everything at home. All my programs. All my hopes to feed the hungry and shelter the homeess. All my dreams to provide education and medical care to the browns and the blacks and the lame and the poor. But if I left that war and let the Communists take over South Vietnam, I would be seen as a coward and my nation seen as an apeaser, and we would both find it impossible to accomplish anything for anybody anywhere on the entire globe."

He probably did want to see improvements in the life of the Vietnamese, but the opinions of his electorate were most important. His chief goal was implementing the set of domestic programs that he called the "Great Society". He judged actions in Vietnam not only on their own merits, but how they would be perceived in the U.S. political system. To Johnson, Vietnam was a "political war" only in the sense of U.S. domestic politics, not a political settlement for the Vietnamese. He also saw it political in the sense of both his personal, and the U.S., position vis-a-vis the reso of the world.

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who had been appointed by Kennedy, became Johnson's principal adviser, and continued to push an economic and signaling grand strategy. Johnson and McNamara, although it would be hard to find two men of more different personality, formed a quick bond. McNamara appeared more impressed by economics and Schelling's compellence theory than by Johnson's liberalism or Senate-style deal-making, but they agreed in broad policy.

They directed a plan for South Vietnam that they believed would end the war quickly. Note that the initiative was coming from Washington; the unstable South Vietnamese government was not part of defining their national destiny. The plan selected was from GEN William Westmoreland, the field commander in Vietnam. By 1968, and perhaps in 1967, Johnson's chief adviser on the war, McNamara, had increasingly less faith in the Johnson-Westmoreland model. McNamara quotes GEN William DuPuy, Westmoreland's chief planner, as recognizing that as long as the enemy could fight from the sanctuaries of Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam, it was impossible to bring adequate destruction on the enemy, and the model was inherently flawed.

Opposition against him peaked in 1968; see Tet Offensive. On March 31, 1968, Johnson said on national television,

"I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president"

In March, Johnson had also announced a bombing halt, in the interests of starting talks. The first discussions were limited to starting broader talks, as a quid-pro-quo for a bombing halt.:

Richard M. Nixon (RMN) administration

During the Presidential campaign, a random wire service story headlined that Nixon had a "secret plan for ending the war, but, in reality, Nixon was only considering alternatives at this point. He remembered how Eisenhower had deliberately leaked, to the Communist side in the Korean War, that he might be considering using nuclear weapons to break the deadlock. Nixon adapted this into what he termed the "Madman Strategy".

He told H.R. Haldeman, one of his closest aides,

"I call it the madman theory, Bob.I want the North Vietnamese to believe that I've reached the point that I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can't restrain him when he's angry, and he has his hand on the nuclear button, and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace."

After the election of Richard M. Nixon, a review of U.S. policy in Vietnam was the first item on the national security agenda. Henry Kissinger, the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, asked all relevant agencies to respond with their assessment, which they did on March 14, 1969.

While Nixon hesitated to authorize a military request to bomb Cambodian sanctuaries, which civilian analysts considered less important than Laos, he authorized, in March, bombing of Cambodia as a signal to the North Vietnamese. While direct attack against North Vietnam, as was later done in Operation LINEBACKER I, might be more effective, he authorized the Operation MENU bombing of Cambodia, starting on March 17. These bombings were kept secret from the U.S. leadership and electorate; the North Vietnamese clearly knew hey were being bombed. It first leaked to the press in May, and Nixon ordered warrantless surveillance of key staff.

Nixon also directed Cyrus Vance to to to Moscow in March, to encourage the Soviets to put pressure on the North Vietnamese to open negotiations with the U.S. The Soviets, however, either did not want to get in the middle, or had insufficient leverage on the North Vietnamese.

U.S. policy changed to one of turning ground combat over to South Vietnam, a process called Vietnamization, a term coined in Janaury 1969. Nixon, in contrast, saw resolution not just in Indochina, in a wider scope. He sought Soviet support, saying that if the Soviet Union helped bring the war to an honorable conclusion, the U.S. would "do something dramatic" to improve U.S.-Soviet relations. In worldwide terms, Vietnamization replaced the earlier containment policy with detente.

In October 1969, Nixon began to explore nuclear options, with the intent of pressuring North Vietnam and the Soviet Union.

Gerald R. Ford administration

While Ford, Nixon's final vice-president, succeeded Nixon, most major policies had been set by the time he took office. He was under a firm Congressional and public mandate to withdraw.

Allied ground troops depart

In the transition to full "Vietnamization," U.S. and third country ground troops turned ground combat responsibility to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. Air and naval combat, combat support, and combat service support from the U.S. continued. While the ARVN improved in local security and small operations, Operation Lam Son 719, in February 1971, the first large operation with only ARVN ground forces, they took casualties that the South Vietnamese leadership considered unacceptable, and withdrew. This operation still had U.S. helicopters lifting the crews, and U.S. intelligence and artillery support.

They did much better against the 1972 Eastertide invasion, but this still involved extensive U.S. air support. To stop the logistical support of the Eastertide invasion, Nixon launched Operation LINEBACKER I, with the operational goal of disabling the infrastructure of infiltration. One of the problems of the Republic of Vietnam's Air Force is that it never operated under central control, even for a specific maximum-effort air offensive. South Vietnamese aircraft always were controlled by regional corps commanders, so never developed skills in deep battlefield air interdiction.

When the North refused to return to negotiations in late 1972, Nixon, in mid-December, ordered bombing at an unprecedented level of intensity, Operation LINEBACKER II. This was at the strategic and grand strategic levels, attacking not so much the infiltration infrastructure, but North Vietnam's ability to import supplies, its internal transportation and logistics, command and control, and integrated air defense system. Within a month of the start of the operation, a peace agreement was signed.

Peace accords and forcible unification, 1973-75

Peace accords were finally signed on 27 January 1973, in Paris. U.S combat troops immediately began withdrawal, and prisoners of war were repatriated. U.S. supplies and limited advise could continue. In theory, North Vietnam would not reinforce it troops in the south. The North, badly damaged by the bombings of 1972, recovered quickly and remained committed to the destruction of its rival. There was little U.S. popular support for new combat involvement, and no Congressional authorizations to expend funds to do so.

North Vietnam, by its own statement, launched a new conventional invasion in 1975 and seized Saigon on April 30.

Final U.S. evacuation

No American combat units were present until the final days, when Operation FREQUENT WIND was launched to evacuate Americans and 5600 senior Vietnamese government and military officials, and employees of the U.S. The 9th Marine Amphibious Brigade, under the tactical commmand of Alfred M. Gray, Jr., would enter Saigon to evacuate the last Americans from the American Embassy to ships of the Seventh Fleet. Ambassador Graham Martin was among the last civilians to leave. In parallel, Operation EAGLE PULL evacuated U.S. and friendly personnel from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on April 12, 1975, under the protection of the 31st Marine Amphibious Unit, part of III MAF.

Vietnam was unified under Communist rule, as nearly a million refugees escaped by boat. Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City.

A new perspective for the PAVN

The People's Army of Viet Nam captured much of the equipment of the ARVN, and was now among the most experienced armies in the world. While its operations in 1975 did not show mastery of high-technology combined arms warfare, it became a very credible opponent, in direct combat, for forces lower in technology than the Warsaw Pact or NATO. While many of the personnel of the ARVN were purged or imprisoned, others eventually joined the new forces, bringing their expertise.

The PAVN had been growing for 40 years, and indeed reached its greatest size in 1976. PAVN infantry divisions were increased from 27 to 61 (48 regular infantry divisions and 13 smaller economic construction divisions), and military corps from six to 14. The Vietnamese Air Force was raised from three to five Air Divisions including one helicopter division. The Vietnamese Navy doubled the number of its combat vessels. According to Pike, in late 1990 about 500,000 had been demobilized from the PAVN (apparently to about 800,000 regulars and 1.6 million militia).

Third Indochina War (1978-1999)

A series of conflicts directly involving Vietnam, Cambodia, and China began to flare in 1978, which waxed and waned until a treaty in 1991, with small-scale actions until 1999. These have been called the Third Indochina War. Given the Vietnamese invaded with relatively high technology, were frustrated by guerillas who had sanctuaries into which they could retreat, and that it seemed an endless war, cynics have called it "Vietnam's Vietnam". The action was "deplored" by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, (ASEAN) with a statement from the then-chairman of the ASEAN Standing Committee, Indonesian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mochtar Kusumaatmadja; this became the ASEAN position. ASEAN members brought the matter to the United Nations Security Council.

In this situation, Thailand, an ASEAN member, was the "frontline state". ASEAN faced a problem of showing support for Thailand, the "frontline state," but Indonesia decided that the apparent strategy there, of prolonging the war and "bleeding Vietnam white", was not in the interest of Southeast Asia as a whole. It was believed that Thailand was providing sanctuaty to the Khmer Rouge, frustrating the Vietnamese generals who were forbidden to pursue into Thailand, much as the Americans were not allowed to pursue the Viet Cong into Laos and Cambodia. While always insisting on the central demand of Vietnamese withdrawal and Khmer (i.e., Cambodian) self-determination, Indonesia encouraged the Khmers and Vietnamese and their external sponsors to a more stable settlement. Negotiations for such a settlement began in 1982, and ended formally with the Final Act of the Paris International Conference on Cambodia on October 23, 1991. Mochtar and the next Indonesian foreign minister, were key in these negotiations.

Even though the eventual 1991 Paris Peace Accords for Cambodia mandated elections and a ceasefire, which was not fully respected by the Khmer Rouge. UN-sponsored elections in 1993 helped restore some semblance of normalcy under a coalition government. Factional fighting in 1997 ended the first coalition government, but a second round of national elections in 1998 led to the formation of another coalition government and renewed political stability. The remaining elements of the Khmer Rouge surrendered in early 1999.

Vietnam invades Cambodia

Since 1973 there had been skirmishes between North Vietnamese and Cambodian Communist Khmer Rouge units, both wanting the same Cambodian rice. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge captured all cities and towns, and drove the populace into the countryside, a self-genocide killing at least 1.5 million people.

Vietnam invaded in December 1978, after incidents with both the Khmer Rouge and their Chinese patrons. This led to ten years of Vietnamese occupation, and touched off almost 13 years of civil war. In Douglas Pike's opinion, the Politburo, now more accustomed to success through conventional arms, not even armed dau trinh, believed they could quickly use their military against Cambodia and get a quick result.

China invades Vietnam, 1979

In response to an invasion of their client, China invaded Vietnam in February 1979. Smaller-scale artillery exchanges and border incidents between China and Vietnam ended in November 1991.

The Vietnamese had invaded Cambodia to oust a Chinese client, the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot. Pike thought that the Politburo felt that a "militant high" posture toward China would properly realign postwar Sino-Vietnamese relations. They eventually seized three provincial capitals, Lao Cai City (the capital of Lao Cai Province is now Dien Bien Phu), Cao Bang and Lang Son, and withdrew a month later.

A 1988 estimate put the PAVN stood at 1.2 million in the regular "main force" and 1.7 million in the militia or "para-military" force). A demobilization program planned to send 800,000 back to civilian life, still leaving a military establishment with 1.6 million personnel. Probably in June 1988, the Vietnamese decided to accept their losses and, with great ceremony, start withdrawing ground troops to let the Cambodians fight their own civil war. There are eerie parallels to the United States against Vietnam, with "Khmerization" replacing "Vietnamization".

1979 Chinese invasion of Vietnam

The Chinese People's Liberation Army sent 180,000 troops against an estimated 75,000 to 100,000 PAVN regular and border troops, essentially using tactics unchanged from the Korean War. While the PLA achieved tactical surprise in a five-pronged attack, it "did not use its manpower advantage, trade space for time, or use deception techniques." In general, the PAVN equipment, including that captured from the ARVN, was more advanced than the Chinese, especially with respect to communications. "the Chinese had nearly half as many soldiers killed in action in Vietnam as the US lost in 10 years." . Neither side used close air support. The PAVN did resupply units by parachute drop. There appeared to be no Chinese equivalent to the elite PAVN sappers.

Chinese commander in this war were to achieve later political prominence. Zhang Wannian commanded the 127th Division (which was transferred to the 54th Army as its parents 43rd Army and Wuhan MR were eliminated in the 1985 downsizing). Fu Quanyou commanded the 1st Army in the battle to take Mount Laoshan in 1984 during the protracted post-1979 Sino-Vietnamese border skirmishes. Both men later jointed the Central Military Committee of the Party, apparently indicating approval of their conduct.

Cambodia, China, Thailand and Vietnam

In the autumn of 1983, the 95th PAVN regiment conducted what were termed training exercises in Cambodia. On March 24, 1984, other PAVN units attacked Khmer Rouge headquarters, echoing U.S. attacks on the elusive Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN), while the 95th Regiment crossed into Thailand to block the Khmer Rouge retreat, not denying it as the Vietnamese Airborne, at the Battle of the Ia Drang, moved to block PAVN retreat. China responded with heavy shelling of towns on the Sino-Vietnamese border. The PAVN withdrew from Thailand in early April, but the shelling continued, and the PAVN units in Cambodia continued until they overran the Khmer Rouge headquarters on April 15.

The Chinese then attacked toward the Laoshan hills on the border, fighting from May to July. In yet another irony, the Chinese headquarters was in Kunming, where the Viet Minh had met with the U.S. Office of Strategic Services team during the Second World War. The Laoshan area is considerably farther from Hanoi than was the 1979 attack, and the reasons for picking this site are not known. O'Dowd speculated that one reason may have been to draw PAVN troops out of Cambodia, as the Battle of Khe Sanh may have been meant to draw U.S. troops away from the cities to be attacked in the Tet Offensive. China may also have wanted the psychological blow of capturing a provincial capital that could not easily be reinforced, Ha Giang City. The Chinese failed to take Ha Giang, and were beaten to a stalemate much as in 1979.

As an example of the conflict, Peking Daily made the claim in a story about a local war hero identified as Xu Xiaodan, a scout for artillery units near Laoshan, a frequently reported flashpoint in the six-year-old undeclared China-Vietnam border war. No exact date or Chinese casualties were given in the Associated Press report from 1985 report, which followed two days after a Vietnamese report forces killed 313 Chinese soldiers last month in repulsing land-grabbing attacks in its Ha Tuyen Province, which borders the Yunnan province of China.