The Cold War 1950 – 1975

Did the USA manage to contain the spread of Communism ?

A. Focus

The USA was strongly oposed to Communism. By 1948, it seemed to the American government that
Communist might spread all around the world unless it did something to stop it. From the 1950s to the
1970s, American foreign policy was therfore directed to trying to contain or stop the spread of
Communism.

In this chapter:

1. We will explore the different methods of containment used by United States during the Korean
War, the Cuban missile crisis and the Vietnam War.
2. We will consider how each of these Cold War crises and the nuclear arms race affected relations
between the superpowers.
3. We will make up your own mind as to how successful the Americans were in containing the spread
of Communism.

B. The Cold War Timeline

C. Throughout the Cold War the superpowers:

1. Regularly argued with each other in the UN assembly, where each side openly criticised action of
each other.
2. Sometimes criticised each other through their television programmes, newspapers, art and films.
3. Sometimes threatened military confrontation with each other, although it never came to war.
4. Commonly sent troops or advisers to help other states or groups to disrupt the aims and plans of
their opponents.

D. Summary of some important clashes during the Cold War:

1. Korean War 1950 – 1953.
2. Cuban Missile Crisis 1962
3. Vietnam War 1965 – 1973
4. 1960s – 1980s: In Central and South America the USA supported Anti – Communist regimes (e.g.
Generan Pinochet in Chile). The USSR supported Communist rebels.
5. 1967s – 1980s: Israel supported by US Government in Middle East conflict with Arabs. The USSR
supported.
6. 1970s: The Communist rebels in Angola helped by USSR and Cuba.
7. 1979 – 1990s: War in Afghanistan: The Afghan Government supported by Soviet forces in fight
against US-Backed guerilla fighters.

A. Case Study 1: The Korean War.

1. Prologue
Soon after the Soviet take-over of eastern Europe, China became communist in 1949. The
Americans had always regaded China as their mainstas in the far east. Between 1946 – 1949 they
pumped $2 billion in aid into China to largely support Nationalist. Now suddenly a massive new
Communist State appeared on the map. American saw this as conspiracy. They thought that
Communist countries were acting together to spread Communism. They had visions of the
Communist overrunning all of Asia, with country after country being toppled like a row of
dominoes. When South Korea was invaded in 1950, it was time for action!

2. Background
Korea had been ruled by Japan until 1945. At the end of the Second World War the northern half
was liberated by Soviet troops and the southern half by Americans. When the war ended, the
North remained Communist-controlled, with a Communist leader who had been trained in USSR,
and with a Soviet-style one-party system. There was bitter hostility between the North’s
Communist leader, Kim Il Sung, and Shyngman Rhee, President of South Korea. Reunification
didn’t seem likely. In 1950 this hostility pilled over into open warfare. North Korean troops
overwhelmed the South’s forces. By September 1950 all except a small corner of south-east Korea
was under Communist control.
 President Truman immediately sent advisers, supplies and warships to the waters around Korea.
At the same time, he put enormous pressure on the UN security council to condemn the actions
of the North Koreans and to call on them to withdraw their troops. When China became
Communist in 1949, the USA had blocked its entry to the United Nations, since it regarded the
Nationalist (Chian Kai-shek and his followers) as the rightful government of China. The USSR had
walked out of the UN in protest and was not at the meeting to use its veto. The USA was the single
biggest contributor to the UN budget and was therefore in a powerful position to influence UN
decision. The UN was now commited to using imember forces to drive North Korean troops out
of South Korea.

Picture.

UNO or USA ?
18 states including Britain provided troops or support of some kind, but the overwhelming part
of the UN force that was sent to Korea was American. The commander General Douglas McArthur
was also American.

The North Korean troops were driven back beyond their original border (the 38th parallel) within
weeks. By October, US forces had reached the Yalu river and the border with China. The nature
of the war had now changed. It was clear that McArthur and Truman were striving for a bigger
prize – to remove Communism from Korea entirely.

McArthur underestimated the power of the Chinese. Late in October 1950, 200,000 Chinese
troops (calling themselves ‘People’s Volunteers’) joined the North Koreans. They had modern
tanks and planes supplied by the Soviet Union. The UN forces were pushed back into South Korea.
The UN troops then recovered and the fighting finally reached stalemate around the 38th parallel.

McArthur wanted to carry on the war, invading China and even using nuclear weapons if
necessary. Truman felt that saving South Korea was good enough he convinced by his allies in the
UN that the risk of attacking China and of starting a war that might bring in the USSR were too
great. However, in March 1951 McArthur blantly ignored the UN instruction and openly
threatened an attack on China. In April, Truman removed McArthur from his position as
Commander and brought him back home. He rejected MacArthur’s aggressive policy towards
Communism.

Peace talks between North and South Korea began in June 1951, but bitter fighting continued
until 1952 when Truman was replaced by President Eisenhower who wanted to end the war.
Stalin’s death in March 1953 made the Chinese and North Koreans less confident. An armistice
was finally signed in July 1953.

3. Was the containment the right policy?

Some favoured the aggressive policy proposed by MacArthur. They felt that ‘containment’ wasn’t
enough. They thought that the President had been weak in not going for outright victory in Korea.
They wanted USA to take fight to the Communist. Even those who didn’t want war with the Soviet
Union still wanted to push back the frontiers of Communism. JF Dulles, US Secretary of State set
up a network of anti-Communist alliances around the world. The South-East Asia Treaty
Organization (SEATO) was formed in 1954. The Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) was formed
in 1955. The USSR saw this alliances as having a more aggressive purpose. The Soviet felt
threatened by them and accusedthe USA of trying to encircle the Communist world. In 1955,
therefore, the Warsaw Treaty Organization, better known as Warsaw Pact, was set up between
the USSR and all the Communist east European countries except Yugoslavia.
Pict: Membership of the organization allied to the USA and the USSR in 1955.

B. The Arms Race

The USA takes the lead
 1951 US Strategic Air Command (SAC) develops policy of constant readiness. SAC commander
Curtis Le May identifies 6000 targets in the USSR to be hit in event of war.
Nov 1952 USA detonates the first Hydrogen bomb. The H-Bomb is 1000 times more powerful
than the atom bom.
Mar 1954 USA develops an H-Bomb small enough to be dropped from a bomber.
July 1956 USA develops U-2 spy plane to spy on Soviet weapons development.
Jan 1958 USA puts a satellite into an orbit
1959 USA develops sophisticated Atlas and Minuteman ICBMs. USA also develops Polaris
missiles which can be fired from submarines. The US public is alarmed that the USSR has many
more nuclear missiles than the USA. President Eisenhower knows this isn’t the case from
intellegence reports, but doesn’t tell the American public.

The USSR takes the lead

Aug 1949 USSR detonates its first atomic bomb. This causes great concern in the USA. US
intellegence had predicted that the USSR wouldn’t be able to develop a bomb until1953.
Aug 1953 USSR detonates its own H-bomb.
Sept 1954 USSR drops a test H-bomb from a bomber
May 1957 USSR develops the first ICBM.
Oct 1957 USSR launches the Sputnik satellite into orbit around the earth. USA is shocked by
Soviet advances in the ‘Space Race’. USSR now has the technology to launch rocket out of the
earth’s atmosphere and guide them to the target. This technology could be applied to missiles
with nuclear warheads.
April 1961 Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first an in space.
USSR detonates the largest H-bomb ever seen, with more power than all the explosives used
by all sides in the second world war.

Oct 1962 The Cuban Missile Crisis

5 Aug 1963 USA and USSR sign the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in Moscow, agreeing not to test
any more new nuclear weapons.

The arms race: Proaganda and Intellegence

The arms race developed into a propaganda and intellegence war as well as a forum for
technological rivalry. Each side was anxious to show the other to be the one building all the
bombs. Their own bombs were purely for protection! Thus the need for intellegence. The
USSR tended to use human spies like Rudolf Abel. He worked in New York until he was
arrested in 1957. The USA, on the other hand, preferred high-tech spying using equipment
like the U-2.
Pict: Inter-continental Ballistic Missiles.

C. Case Study 2: The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962

Cuba is a large island just 160 km from Florida in the southern USA. It had long been an American ally.
Americans owned most of the businesses on the island and they had a huge naval base there. Then in
1959, after a 3 year guerilla campaign, Fidel Castro overthrew the American-backed dictator Batista. With
a new pro-communist state in what it regarded as its own ‘sphere of influence’ this was going to be a real
test for USA’s policy of containment.

1. 1959 – 1961 For 2 years Cuba and the USA maintained a frosty relationship but without any direct
confrontation. Castro took over American-owned businesses in Cuba, but he let the USA keeps it
naval base. Castro assured American living in Cuba that they were safe. He said, he simply want
to run Cuba without interference. However, from the summer of 1960 he was receiving arms from
Soviet Union and American spies know this.
2. January 1961 The USA broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba. Castro thought that the USA was
preparing to invade. Itdidn’t or not directly. But it was clear that the USA was no longer prepared
to tolerate a Sovet satelite in the heart of its own ‘sphere of influence’.
3. April 1961 President Kennedy supplied arms, equipment and transport for 1400 anti-Castro exiles
to invade Cuba and overthrow him. The exiles landed on the Bay of Pigs. They were met by 20,000
Cuban troops armed with tanks and modern weapons. The invasion failed disastrously. Castro
 captured or kill them all within days. To Cuba and Soviet Union, the failed invasion suggested that
the USA was unwilling to get directly involved in Cuba. The Soviet leader Khruschev was scornful
of Kennedy’s pathetic attempt to oust Communism from Cuba.

Looking back, President Kennedy said he thought that US policy in Cuba – backing the hated dictator
Batista – had itself been responsible for the strength of Communism in the first place. Historians too
argue that the Bay of Pigs fiasco further encouraged the spread of Communism. On the one hand, it
suggested to the USSR that Kennedy was weak. On the other hand, it made Castro and Khruschev very
suspicious of US policy.

What was the Soviet Union doing in Cuba ?

After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Soviet arms flooded into Cuba. In May 1962 the Soviet Union announced
publicly for the first time that it was supplying Cuba with arms. By July 1962 Cuba had the best-
equipped army in Latin America. By September it had thousands of Soviet missiles, plus patrol boats,
tanks, radar vans, missile erectors, jet bombers, jet fighters and 5000 Soviet technicians to help to
maintain the weapons. On 11 September, Kennedy warned the USSR that he would prevent ‘by
whatever means might be necessary’ Cuba is becoming an offensive millitary base – by which,
everyone knew, he meant a nuclear missile base. The same day the USSR assured the USA that it had
no need to put nuclear missiles on Cuba and no intention of doing so.

The October Crisis

On Sunday, 14 October 1962, an American U-2 spy plane flew over Cuba. It took amazingly detailed
photographs of missile sites in Cuba. To the military experts two things were obvious – that these
were nuclear missile sites, and that they were being built by the USSR. American spy planes also
reported that 20 Soviet ships were currently on the way to Cuba carrying missiles.

What Happened Next ?

1. Tue 16 Oct President Kennedy is informed of the missile build-up. Ex Comm formed.
2. Sat 20 Oct Kennedy decides on a blockade of Cuba.
3. Mon 22 Oct Kennedy announces the blockade and calls on the Socviet Union to withdraw its
missiles. ‘I call on Chairman Khruschev to halt and eliminate this reckless and provocative threat
to world peace. He has the oppurtunity now to move the world back from abyss of destruction
withdrawing these weapons from Cuba.
4. Tue 23 Oct Kennedy receives a letter from Khruschev saying that Soviets ships will not observe
the blockade. Khruschev does not admit the presence of nuclear missiles on Cuba.
5. Wed 24 Oct The blockade begins. The first missile-carrying ships, accompanied by a Soviet
submarine, approach the 500-mile (800km) blockade zone. Then suddenly, at 10.32 q.m., the 20
Soviet ships which are closest to the zone stop or turn around.
6. Thu 25 Oct Despite this, intensive aerial photography reveals that work on the missile bases in
Cuba is proceeding rapidly.
7. Fri 26 Oct Kennedy receives a long personal letter from Khruschev. The letter claims that the
missiles on Cuba are purely defensive, but goes on: If assurances were given that the USA would
not participate in an attack on Cuba and the blockade was lifted, then the question of the removal
or the destruction of the missile sites would be an entirely different question.’ This is the first time
Khruschev has admitted the presence of the missiles.
8. Sat 27 Oct Khruschev sends a second letter – revising his proposals – saying that condition for
removing missiles from Cuba is that the USA withdraw its missiles from Turkey. Kennedy cannot
accept this condition. An American U-2 plane is shot down over Cuba. The pilot is killed. The
President is advised to launch an immediate reprisal attack on Cuba. Kennedy decides to delay an
attack. He also decides to ignore the second Khruschev letter, but accepts the terms suggested by
Khruschev on 26 October. He says that if the Soviet Union does not withdraw, an attack will follow.
9. Sun 28 October Khruschev replies to Kennedy: ‘In order to eliminate as rapidly as possible the
conflict which endangers the cause of peace… the Soviet Government has given a new order to
dismantle the arms which you described as offensive and to crate and return them to the Soviet
Union.

Why did the Soviet Union place nuclear missiles on Cuba ?

It was an incredibly risky strategy. The USSR must have known that it would cause a crisis. What’s more,
the USSR made no attempt to camouflage the sites, and even allowed the missiles to travel on open deck.
This has caused much debate as to what Khruschev was really doing. Historians have suggested five
possible explanations.

1. To bargain with the USA.

2. To test the USA.
3. To get upper hand in the arms race.
4. To defend Cuba.
5. To trap the USA.

The Outcome

1. Cuba stayed Communist and highly armed. However, the nuclear mission were withdrawn under
United Nations supervision.
2. Both leaders emerged with something from the crisis. Kennedy came out of the crisis with a
greatly improved reputation in his own country and throughout the Wes. He had stood up to
Khruschev and had made him back down. Khruschev was also able to claim a personal triumph.
Cuba remained a useful ally in ‘Uncle Sam’s backyard’.
3. They were more prepared to take steps to reduce the risk of nuclear war. A permanent ‘hot line’
phone link direct from the White House to the Kremlin was set up. The following year, in 1963,
they signed a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. It didn’t stop the development of weapons, but it limited
test and was important step forward.
4. Within the USA, the crisis had an effect on anti-Communist opinion. Critics of containment had
wanted the USA to invade Cuba – to turn back Communism. However the Cuban crisis highlighted
the weakness of their case. Such intervention was not worth the high risk. A Communist Cuba was
an inconvenience to the USA. A nuclear war would be the end of civilisation.

D. Case Study 3: the Vietnam War

Although many Americans regarded the Cuban missile crisis as a victory for the US, it didn’t reduce their
fear of Communism. Very soon they found themselves locked into a costly war in Vietnam which put a
massive question mark over the very policy of containment.

1. The origins of the conflict.

Since the late nineteenth century, Vietnam had been ruled by France and it was known as Indochina. The
first major blow to French power came in 1940 when France was defeated in the Second World War by
Germany.The Japanese (Germany’s allies) took control of the main resources of Vietnam (coal, rice,
rubber, railways, roads). During the war, a strong anti-Japanese resistance movement (the Viet Minh)
emerged under the leadership of Communist Ho Chi Minh. The Viet Minh entered the city of Hanoi in
1945 and declared Vietnamese independence.

The French had other ideas. In 1945 they came back wanting to rule Vietnam again. However, Ho had not
fought the Japanese only then to hand over power to the French. In 1946 war broke out between the
French and the Viet Minh. Ho Chi Minh cleverly kept quit about wanting a Communist Vietnam and so
countries such us the USA were, if anything, quite symphatetic to him. The struggle was seen as a fight
against the colonial rule of France.

However, in 1949 the picture changed. The Communist took over in China and began to give help to Ho
Chi Minh. Now the Americans saw the Viet Minh as the puppets of Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese
Communist. They feared a Communist plan to dominate all of south-east Asia. The USA poured $500
million a year into the French war effort and helped the French to set up a non-Communist government
in the south of the Country.

The war dragged on from 1946 to 1954. The French generally controlled the towns, the Viet Minh the
countryside. The Viet Minh’s guerilla tactics made them impossible to beat. They tied up 190,000 French
troops in hit-and-run raids, causing 90,000 French casualties. French raids against peasant villages simply
increased support for the Viet Minh. The decisive event came in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu. A large, well-
armed force of French paratroopers was comprehensively defeateed. There were several important
consequences;

a. The French lost 3000 dead in the battle and 8000 more died in the captivity.
b. The Viet Minh forces had defeated the French in open battle with the help of modern weapons
from the USSR and China.
 c. A small Asian state had defeated a rich European state through a combination of effective
leadership, the right tactics and sheer determination (for example, at Dien Bien Phu, the
equipment and supplies for the 40,000 Viet Minh soldiers were carried by hand by peasants).
d. At the 1954 peace conference held in Geneva, the country was effectively divided into North and
South Vietnam until elections could be held to decide its future.

2. Why did the USA become increasingly involved in Vietnam?

Under the terms if the cease fire, elections were to be held within two years to reunite the country. You
will remember how the USA criticised Stalin for not holding free elections in Soviet-Controlled eastern
Europe after the war. In Vietnam in 1954 the USA applied a different rule. It prevented the elections from
taking place because it feared that the Communist would win.

Why did the American do this? Their policy was a strange combination of determination and ignorance.
President Eisenhower and his Secretary of State JF Dulles were convinced that China and the USSR were
planning to spread Communism throughout Asia. The idea was often referred to as the Domino Theory. If
Vietnam fell to Communism, then Laos, Cambodia Thailand, Burma and possibly even India might also fall
– just like a row of dominoes. The Americans were determined to resist the spread of Communism in
Vietnam which they saw as the first domino in the row. However, their methods and policies showed their
ignorance of the Vietnamese people and the region.

The USA supported Diem’s regime with around $1.6 billion in the 1950s. Diem was overthrown by his own
army leaders in November 1963, but the government that followed were equally corrupt. Even so, they
also received massive US support. The actions of these anti-Communist governmnts increased support
among the ordinary peasants for the Communist-led National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam,
set up in 1960. This movement was usually referred to as the Viet Cong. The Viet Cong also started a
guerilla war against the South Vietnamese government.

By 1962 President Kennedy was sending military personnel (he always called them ‘advisers’) to fight the
Viet Cong. In 1963 and 1964 tension between North and South Vietnam increased and so did Ameican
involvement (11,500 troops by the end of 1962; 23,000 by the end of 1964). However, Kennedy said he
was determined that the USA would not ‘blunder into war, unclear about aims or how to get out again’.

President Kennedy was assasinated in 1963 and then replaced by his successor Lyndon Johnson. In August
1964, North Vietnamese patrol boats opened fire on US ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. In a furious reaction,
the US Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. The Resolution gave Lyndon Johnson the power to
take all the necessary measures to prevent further aggression and achieve peace and security. It
effectively meant that he could take the USA into a full scale war if he felt it was necessary, and very soon
that was the case. On March 8 1965, 3500 US marines, combat troops rather than advisers, came ashore
at Da Nang, America was at war in Vietnam.

3. Viet Cong and guerilla tactics.

The principle of Guerilla tactics were simple: retreat when enemy attacks; raid when the enemy camps;
attack when the enemy tires; pursue when enemy retreats. The aim of guerilla attack was to wear down
the enemy soldiers and wreck their morale. This was very effective. The US soldiers lived in constant fear
of ambushes or booby traps. The greatest strength of the Viet Cong fighters was that they simply refused
to give in. The Viet Cong depended on supplies from North Vietnam that came along Ho Chi Minh trail. US
and South Vietnamese planes bombed this constantly, but 40,000 worked to keep it open whatever the
cost. The total of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese dead in the war has been estimated at 1 million – far
higher than US losses. However, this was a price that Ho Chi Minh was prepared to pay. Whatever the
casualties, there were replacement troops available.

4. US tactics in Vietnam, 1965 – 1972

a. Bombing
It certainly damaged North Vietnam’s war effort and it disrupted supply routes. It enabled the
USA to strike at Communist forces even when it was reducing US ground forces in Vietnam after
1969. From 1970 to 1972, intense bombing campaigns against Hanoi (North Vietnam’s capital)
and the port of Haiphong force the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table.
b. Chemical Weapons
The US developed a powerful chemical weapon called Agent Orange. It was a sort of highly toxic
‘weedkiller’. It was used to destroy the jungle where the Viet Cong hid. The Americans used 82
 million litres of Agent Orange to spray thousands of square kilometres of jungle. Napalm was
another widely-used chemical weapon. It destroyed jungles where guerillas might hide. It also
burned through skin to the bone. Many civilians and soldiers were also killed by these chemical
weapons.
c. Search and Destroy
US and South Vietnamese forces launched search-and-destroy raids from helicopters. They would
descend on a village and destroy any Viet Cong forces they found. Soldiers had to send back
reports of body count. Search-and-destroy missions did kill Viet Cong soldiers, but there were
problems:
1. The raids were often based on inadequate information.
2. Inexperienced US troops often walked into traps.
3. Innocent villages were mistaken for Viet Cong strongholds.
4. Civilian casualties were extremely high in these raids. For every Viet Cong weapon captured by
search-and-destroy , there was a body count of 6. Many of these were innocent civilians.
5. Search-and-destroy tactics made the US and South Vietnamese forces very unpopular with the
peasants. It pushed them towards supporting the Viet Cong.

5. The Tet Offensive, 1968 – a turning point

In 1968 the Communist launched a major offensive. Viet Cong fighters attacked over 100 cities and other
military targets. One Viet Cong commando unit tried to capture the US embassy in Saigon. US forces had
to fight to regain control room by room. Around 4500 fighters tied down a much larger US and South
Vietnamese force in Saigon for 2 days.

In many ways the Tet Offensive was a disaster for the Communist. They hoped that the people of South
Vietnam would rise and join them. They didn’t. The Viet Cong lost around 10,000 expereienced fighters
and were badly weakened by it. However, The Tet Offensive proved to be a turning point in the war,
because it raised hard question about the war in the USA.

6. The Peace Movement in the USA

For a war on such a scale the USA had to have the support of the American public, but it was increasingly
difficult to keep it. Public opinion in the USA was turning against the war even before the Tet Offensive.
After it, the war became very unpopular. Many Americans felt deeply uncomfortable with what was going
on in Vietnam. The media showed crying children burned by American napalm boms. Was this why
900,000 young Americans had been drafted? Instead of Vietnam being a symbol of a US crusade against
Communism, it had become a symbol defeat and confussion. There were anti-war protest all over the
country. Students taunted the American President Lyndon B. Johnson with the chant ‘Hey, Hey LBJ, how
many kids did you kill today?’ Thousand began to ‘draft dodge’ – refusing to serve in Vietnam when they
were called up. There were hundreds of demonstrasions in universities across the USA. Against this
background one event had a particularly devastating effect on American and international support for the
war – the My Lai massacre.

In March 1968, a unit of young American soldiers called Charlie Company started a search-and-destroy
mission in the Quang Ngai region of South Vietnam. They had been told that in the My Lai area there was
a Viet Cong headquarters, and 200 Viet Cong guerillas. Early in the morning of 16 March, Charlie company
arrived in My Lai. In the next 4 hours, between 300 and 400 civillians were killed. They were mostly
women, children, and old men. Some were killed while they worked in their fields. Many of them were
mown down by machine gun fire as they were herded into an irrigation ditch. Others were shot in their
homes. No Viet Cong were found in the village. Only 3 weapons recovered.

The revelation about My Lai deeply shocked the American public. It was the clearest evidence the war had
gone wrong. In November 1969, almost 700,000 anti-war protesters demonstrated in Washington DC. It
was the largest political protest in American history.

7. Ending the war in Vietnam

After the Tet Offensive President Johnson concluded that the war could not be won militarily. He reduced
the bombing campaign against North Vietnam and instructed his officials to begin negotiating for peace
with the Communist. In March 1968 a peace conference began in Paris.

Johnson also announced that he would not be seeking re-election as President. It was an admission of
failure. In the election campaign both Republican and Democrat candidates campaign to end US
involvement in Vietnam. The anti-Vietnam feeling was so strong that if they had supported continuing the
war they would have had no chance of being elected anyway. It was no longer a question of ‘could the
USA win the war?’ – now it was ‘how can the USA get out of Vietnam without it looking like a defeat?’

In November 1968 Richard Nixon was elected President. From 1969 to 1973 he and his National Security
Adviser Henry Kissinger worked tirelessly to end US involvement in Vietnam. This was not easy because
the bigger question of how to contain world Communism – the one that had got the USA into Vietnam in
the first place – had not gone away. They did not want to appear simply to hand Vietnam to the
Communist. They used a range of strategies.

a. Peace Negotiation with North Vietnam. From early 1969, Kissinger had regular meetings with the
chief Vietnamese peace negotiator, Le Duc Tho.
b. ‘Vietnamisation’ of the war effort. In Vietnam Nixon began up the the process of Vietnamisation
– forces and withdrawing US troops. Between April 1969 and the end of 1971 almost 400,000 US
troops left Vietnam.
c. Bombing. Nixon increased bombing campaigns against North Vietnam to show he was not weak.
He also invaded Viet Cong bases in Combodia, causing outrage across the world, and even in the
USA.
d. Pressure on the USSR and China. In 1969 the USSR and China fell out. Indeed, late in 1969, it
seemed possible that there would even be a war between these two powerful Communist
countries. As a result both the USSR and China tried to improve relations with the USA.
- In 1970 Nixon began Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) with the USSR, to limit nuclear
weapons. He asked Moscow to encourage North Vietnam to end the war.
- Nixon also started to improve relations with China. In February 1972 Nixon was invited to
China. As with the USSR, he asked China to pressure North Vietnam to end the war.

In Paris in January 1973, Le Duc Tho, Nixon and South Vietnamese President Thieu signed a peace
agreement. Noxon was jubilant. He described the agreement as ‘peace with honour’. Other disagreed,
but the door was now open for Nixon to put out all US troops. By 29 March 1973, the last American forces
had left Vietnam.

8. The Fall of South Vietnam, 1973-75

It is not clear whether Nixon really believed he had secured a lasting peace settlement. But within 2 years
it was meaningless and South Vietnam had fallen to the Communist. Nixon had promised continuing
financial aid and military support to Vietnam, but Congress refused to allow it. They didn’t want to was
American money. The evidence was that the South Vietnamese regime was corrupt and lacked the
support of majority of population. Even more important, Nixon himself was in big political trouble with
the Watergate Scandal. In 1974 Nixon was forced to resign over Watergate, but the new President, Gerald
Ford, also failed to get the backing of Congress over Vietnam.

Without US air power or military back-up and without the support of the majoruty of pupulation, the
South Vietnamese government couldn’t survive for long. In December 1974 the North Vietnamese launch
a major military offensive against South Vietnam. The capital, Saigon fell to Communist forces in April
1975.

One of the bleakest symbols of American failure in Vietnam was the televised news images of desperate
Vietnamese men, women and children tying to clamber aboard American helicopters taking off from the
US embassy. All around them Communist forces swarmed through Saigon. After 30 years of constant
conflict, the struggle for control of Vietnam had finally been settled and the Communist had won.

9. How did the Vietnam War affect the policy of containment?

The American policy of containment was in tatters. Instead of slowing down, American policies actually
speeded up the domino effect in the region. By 1975 both Laos and Cambodia had Communist
government. The failure greatly affected the USA’s policies towards Communist states. After the war, the
Americans tried to improve their relations with China. They ended their block on China’s membership of
the UN, and the President made visits to China. They entered into a period of greater understanding with
the Soviet Union and China got on better with the USA than they did with each other. The Americans
became very suspicious of involving their troops in any other conflict which they could not asily and
overwhelmingly win. This was an attitude that continued to affect American foreign policy into the
twenty-first century.

10. What were the consequences of the Vietnam War?

Thirty years of war leaves its mark on a country. War is not a game. After a war you don’t just pack up
your kit, have a shower and get on with life. The diagram below summarises some of the consequences
of the war om Vietnam and the USA.

a. Environment (Chemical warfare)

- Damaged crops which led to food shortgages.
- Destroyed 5.4 million acres of Forest areas and the animals and plants living there.
- Poisoned streams and rivers.

b. Effects on US Troops
- Drug Addiction – official US asmy estimates put heroin use by American troops at 30 %.
- Confusion and bitterness. US forces weren’t welcomed home. Many found it difficult to adjust
to civilian life.
- Stress. Strains of war led to post traumatic stress.
- Cancer. Some Troops who handled Agent Orange contracted Cancer.

c. Effects on Vietnamese Citizens

- Chemical warfare meant that South Vietnamese citizens had in their bodies levels of dioxin (a
powerful poison used in Agent Orange) 3 times as high as US citizens.
- Large numbers of unexploded mines and bombs caused death and injury to adults and
children for years to come.
- Napalm caused horrific burns which killed or disfigured victims, often civilians caught in
crossfire.

d. Effects on Vietnamese Society

- Morals
- Fighting drove thousand of peasants into shanty town near US bases – poverty, prostitution
and drug abuse were common.
- US forces were supplied with vast amounts of luxuries as well as military supplies – this
created a huge black market with corrupt South Vietnamese government officials.
- Buddhist priest protested about the effect of the American presence in Vietnam in the late
1960s.
- Refugees
- Around 5 million South Vietnamese were displaced from their homes. Town and villages in
North and South Vietnam were devastated by bombing and ground fighting.
- Vietnam took well over 20 years to start recovering from the war. Poverty, Communist
policies and the hope of a better life led thousands of Vietnamese to become ‘boat people’ in
the late 1970s onwards. They tried to sail to Malaysia and Hongkong in makeshift boats.
Around 1 million refugees escaped to the West (mainly USA). At least 50,000 were drowned
or murdered by pirates. In the mid 1990s the USA finally ended its trade ban with Vietnam
and the World Bank was allowed to invest in the country.