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12/15/24, 12:14 AMHistory - Article - Causes of the Vietnam War

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Causes of the Vietnam War       

Vietnam, a country of roughly 127,000 square miles (about the size of New Mexico), stretches in an S- shaped curve along the eastern seaboard of Southeast Asia. Two fertile river deltas, the Red River in the north and the Mekong River in the south, fan out to the sea. A narrow coastal plain runs up the seacoast, while a series of rugged mountain chains and high plateaus run north and south the length of the country's heavily forested interior. Much of Vietnam's long history was shaped by its geographical proximity to its giant neighbor to the north, China. In fact, the people who became known as "Vietnamese" originally migrated south from China before the beginning of recorded history. The new settlers developed an agricultural society organized around rice farming in the country's wetlands. (The region's tropical monsoon climate is ideal for the cultivation of rice, co!ee, tea, and rubber.)

Vietnam's territory was first annexed by Chinese invaders about a century before the birth of Christ. China ruled Vietnam as its southernmost province for more than 1,000 years, and though Vietnam's culture, language, religion, and government were all shaped by Chinese influences, its people maintained a sense of their separate national identity. Resenting foreign domination, they repeatedly rebelled against the Chinese and other would-be rulers. In A.D. 939, a Vietnamese army defeated the

Chinese and Vietnam became a separate kingdom. When the Chinese invaders returned in the 15th century they once again met determined Vietnamese resistance. The poet Nguyen Trai, who helped devise the strategy to drive o! the Chinese invaders, wrote these lines to commemorate the Vietnamese victory:

Henceforth our country is safe Our mountains and rivers begin life afresh Peace follows war as day follows night We have purged our shame for a thousand centuries

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We have regained tranquility for ten thousand generations.

However, victory over the Chinese did not bring permanent peace and tranquility to Vietnam. Rival family dynasties emerged in the north and south, warring with each other for centuries for control of the entire country. Long divided, the country was finally reunited at the start of the 19th century under a single emperor, Gia Long. But a new threat to Vietnamese independence soon appeared, this time coming from the west rather than the north.

The 15th century marked the beginning of a period of European expansionism, which led to the establishment of religious missions, trading settlements, and colonies in Africa and Asia, as well as to the discovery of the Americas. French Catholic missionaries arrived in Vietnam during the 17th century. Although the great majority of Vietnamese continued to practice a combination of Buddhism and Confucianism, a sizable minority were converted to the Catholic religion. Vietnamese rulers worried about the loyalty of these Catholic converts and periodically persecuted the missionaries.

In the 1850s, under the pretext of protecting its missionaries, the French set out to conquer Vietnam and convert it into a colony of France. In 1861, they captured the southern city of Saigon and, in 1863, the northern city of Hanoi. As before, the Vietnamese used guerrilla warfare tactics to harass the invaders. The rugged terrain made it di!icult for foreign armies to wipe out the resistance. A French commander in southern Vietnam complained in 1862: "Rebel bands disturb the country everywhere. They appear from nowhere in large numbers, destroy everything and then disappear into nowhere." Americans would become familiar with similar complaints a century later.

By 1883, superior French military might prevailed. A treaty signed that year brought a formal end to Vietnamese independence, setting up French-controlled regional governments in the northern region known as Tonkin, the central region known as Annam, and the southern region known as Cochin China. Later, the French placed Vietnam with the other Indochinese countries it controlled, Laos and Cambodia, under the rule of a single governor. Vietnamese emperors were still allowed to sit on the imperial throne, but they were powerless to govern their people. French settlers in Vietnam gained control of the most productive farmland, throwing peasants o! the land or requiring them to work as laborers on their plantations. The colonial government imposed heavy taxes on the Vietnamese, and established government monopolies trading in salt and other necessities. The government also profited from the sale of opium to the Vietnamese, leading to widespread addiction.

Although the French boasted of their mission civilisatrice—the "civilizing mission" of bringing the benefits of Western civilization to the people under their colonial rule—such critics as U.S. president

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Franklin Roosevelt remained unconvinced. Writing to U.S. secretary of state Cordell Hull early in 1944, Roosevelt expressed his dismay over the French record in the region:

France has had the country … for nearly one hundred years, and the people are worse o! than they were at the beginning … The people of Indochina are entitled to something better than that.

Exposure to Western culture and political ideas increased native opposition to French rule. Vietnamese students studying in French schools in Hanoi and Saigon wondered how France could still take such pride in 18th-century revolutionary slogans such as "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," while denying all three to its colonial subjects.

Southern Vietnamese Workers

The European colonial empires, which grew to their greatest strength in the 19th century, were not destined to survive the 20th century. World War II proved to be the turning point for the British in India; the British, French, and Belgians in Africa; and the French in Indochina. The man most responsible for bringing an end to French colonialism in Indochina was born in 1890, a half-century before the start of World War II, in Nghe An province in central coastal Vietnam. As a young man he was known as Nguyen Tat Thanh. Though well educated, Nguyen was determined to see the world, and signed onto a ship in 1912 as a common laborer. Over the next few years he sailed to Africa, Europe,

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and the United States—he lived in Brooklyn for nearly a year—and took on the new name of Nguyen Ai-Quoc ("Nguyen the Patriot"). It would not be until 1944 that he adopted the name by which he became best known to history, Ho Chi Minh ("He Who Enlightens").

Ho Chi Minh did not return to Vietnam for nearly three decades, but his country's lack of independence was never far from his mind. Ho settled in Paris during World War I. In 1919, the leaders of Great Britain, France, and the United States met in Versailles, near Paris, to draw up the peace treaty that would bring a formal end to the war with Germany. U.S. president Woodrow Wilson insisted that the agreement, which would redraw the map of central and eastern Europe, be based on the principle of national self-determination. Ho Chi Minh thought that the principles applied to the defeated empires in central Europe should also be applied to the overseas empires of the victorious Allies. If Czechoslovakians deserved national independence, why not Vietnamese? Ho drew up a petition calling for Vietnamese independence, and tried to present it to the Allied leaders. No one in Versailles was interested.

Disappointed at Versailles, Ho turned elsewhere for support. In 1920, he joined the French Communist Party. Leaders of the Soviet Union, who directed the international communist movement, called for world revolution, including the overthrow of the colonial regimes of Asia and Africa. To Ho, the communist movement represented a long-sought ally for Vietnamese independence: As he wrote many years later, "it was patriotism and not Communism that originally inspired me." He rose quickly within the leadership of the international communist movement, traveling to Moscow and China on its behalf.

In 1930, Ho held a secret meeting in Hong Kong to organize the Vietnamese Communist Party. However, the party could not function openly in Vietnam; Ho faced a death sentence if he was captured by the French authorities. Despite repression by the colonial government, unrest increased in Vietnam. A noncommunist nationalist group staged a revolt in 1930, put down bloodily by the French colonialists. A Communist-led revolt in several Vietnamese provinces the following year met the same fate. Most of the Communist leaders in Vietnam were arrested; Ho, still living in Hong Kong, was picked up by Chinese police and imprisoned for two years. It was not until the outbreak of World War II that Vietnamese Communists found the opportunity they had been waiting for. In 1940, France was defeated by the Nazis, and Vietnam occupied by the Japanese. Ho slipped back into Vietnam early in 1941, and formed the Vietnamese Independence Brotherhood League, or Viet Minh, to do battle with both Japan and France.

On Christmas Eve, 1944, the Viet Minh launched the Vietnamese war for independence. A small group

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of fighters under the command of a former history teacher named Vo Nguyen Giap attacked two French outposts, killing the o!icers, capturing much-needed weapons, and calling on local villagers to support the revolutionaries. Giap, a brilliant and hard-bitten Communist, whose wife had died while imprisoned by the French and whose sister-in-law had been executed by a French firing squad in Saigon, would become the master strategist of the war against the French and, later, the Americans.

The Japanese occupiers and the French colonialists had collaborated during most of the war. But in March 1945, the Japanese attacked the French colonial army, fearing it might come to the aid of an Allied invasion of Indochina. As the colonial regime collapsed, the Japanese instructed the Vietnamese emperor, a weak, luxury-loving man named Bao Dai, to declare Vietnamese "independence." Bao Dai went along with the Japanese demands, as willing to serve as a puppet for the Japanese as he had already done for the French. But the Japanese had only a few more months to give orders in Vietnam. In August, a"er two atom bombs were dropped on their home islands, the Japanese surrendered to the Allies. Ho Chi Minh seized the opportunity to make his triumphant entry into Hanoi.

Not many Vietnamese would have been sorry to see the French leave for good in 1945. Although few Vietnamese were Communists, many regarded Ho Chi Minh as the father of Vietnamese independence. The Communists reinforced their power by assassinating non-Communist rivals. Although Ho was capable of ruthless actions in pursuit of his goals, he downplayed his communist beliefs in 1945. When he addressed that crowd in Hanoi in September 1945, he still hoped that the United States would recognize his newly established government. But his hopes would soon be dashed. As far as American policy makers were concerned, Vietnam was a pawn in a much larger game.

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Truman, Harry S.

With the defeat of Nazi Germany and Japan, the temporary wartime alliance of the United States and the Soviet Union swi"ly unraveled. A "cold war" took its place, as the Soviet Union imposed a system of harsh dictatorships over the countries of Eastern Europe. American leaders were determined to block further Soviet expansion. President Harry Truman, Roosevelt's successor in the White House, told Congress on March 12, 1947: "It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressure." In other words, the United States had to be willing to take on a new role as global policeman, prepared to step in with political or military aid any place where Communist-led movements threatened to overturn governments friendly to the United States.

With Eastern Europe firmly under the control of the Soviet Union, the United States was especially determined to shore up anticommunist governments in Western Europe, including France. Roosevelt's highly critical attitude toward French colonialism during the war seemed to policy makers in the

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Truman administration like a luxury they could no longer a!ord. If the French wanted to reestablish their empire in Indochina, the U.S. government made it clear that it would not stand in their way.

North and South Vietnam

By late fall 1945, Vietnam was divided between the Viet Minh–controlled north and the French- controlled south. Negotiations dragged on for more than a year between the French and Communist forces. Ho was willing to concede the right of French troops to remain in Vietnam for another five years, in exchange for recognition of Vietnamese independence. But the French were determined to crush Ho's government as soon as possible. In November 1946, French naval forces shelled the northern port of Haiphong, killing at least 6,000 civilians. The attack marked the beginning of the first Indochinese war. The Viet Minh soon abandoned the cities, and fought back from the countryside using guerrilla tactics. The French brought the former emperor Bao Dai back from exile to head a new "independent" state that was in reality still controlled by France.

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In the war that followed, the French controlled all of Vietnam's cities and enjoyed an overwhelming advantage in weaponry. In 1946, the Viet Minh military forces consisted only of lightly armed infantry; not until a"er 1949 did they begin receiving Chinese and Soviet weapons, including heavy artillery. The Viet Minh's great advantage was its ability to hide in Vietnam's rugged landscape and vast jungles. They also enjoyed popular support. They could move openly throughout the countryside without fear of betrayal, while every French military move was reported to the Viet Minh by local civilians. The French army was tied down defending cities and rural strong points, while the Viet Minh remained constantly on the o!ensive, staging small-scale but e!ective attacks on scattered French units and outposts.

Other armies were on the march in Asia. In 1949 the Chinese Communists drove the American-backed Nationalist forces o! the Chinese mainland. In June 1950, the army of Communist North Korea invaded anticommunist South Korea. The United States, acting under the banner of the United Nations, came to the aid of the South Koreans. For the first time Americans were engaged in a full- scale shooting war against a Communist enemy. The U.S. government, fearing that all of Asia might soon be ruled by the Communists, now decided to throw its weight behind the French war e!ort in Indochina. On June 29, 1950, eight U.S. military transport planes flew to Vietnam delivering weapons to the beleaguered French army, the first direct American military aid to the anticommunist cause in Vietnam. Shortly a"erward, the United States recognized the Bao Dai administration as the legitimate government of Vietnam. Over the next few years, the United States would provide $3 billion in aid to the French in Vietnam, funding 80 percent of their war e!ort.

The French su!ered a series of military setbacks in Vietnam during the late 1940s and early 1950s. In May 1953, a new French commander, Gen. Henri Navarre, took command in Vietnam, declaring "Now we can see [military success] clearly, like light at the end of a tunnel." Seeking a showdown with the Communists, Navarre stationed 15,000 of his best troops in a remote village in northwestern Vietnam called Dien Bien Phu in the late fall of 1953. Navarre hoped to lure Viet Minh troops into an open battle where French superiority in arms could prevail. But Navarre's opponent, the self-taught military strategist General Giap, turned out to have a better grasp of the lay of the land than the French commander.

Over a period of several months, Giap's troops surrounded the isolated French base, blocking all roads for reinforcement. Civilian laborers cut a road through seemingly impassable jungles and over mountains to enable the Viet Minh to drag heavy artillery onto mountaintops overlooking Dien Bien Phu. On March 13, 1954, Giap launched his o!ensive. For the next two months the Viet Minh pounded the French garrison night and day with artillery and dug their trenches ever closer to French lines. The

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only way the French soldiers could be resupplied was by air, including missions flown by Americans in unmarked planes owned by the Central Intelligence Agency; two American pilots were shot down and killed in the e!ort. Heavy Viet Minh antiaircra" fire and the arrival of the monsoon rains in late March cut o! most French supplies. Before Dien Bien Phu was surrendered on May 7, 1954, 5,000 French troops died.

French Legionnaire Walks Along a Rice Paddy in the Red River Delta

In Washington, the news from Dien Bien Phu had been closely monitored by government and military leaders. Adm. Arthur Radford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Sta!, proposed to President Dwight D. Eisenhower that the U.S. launch air strikes to relieve the defenders of Dien Bien Phu, possibly including the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Several influential lawmakers, including Massachusetts senator John F. Kennedy and Texas senator Lyndon B. Johnson, warned against such intervention. Army chief of sta! Matthew Ridgway also was strongly opposed. Air strikes alone would not work. And if U.S. ground forces were sent in, he warned, it might take more than 500,000 troops to win the war

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against the Viet Minh.

President Eisenhower, who had been elected to o!ice in 1952 in part because of his promise to end the war in Korea, was reluctant to get involved in another costly land war in Asia. In the end he decided against aiding the defenders of Dien Bien Phu. However, he remained convinced that Vietnam's preservation as part of the "free world" was essential to U.S. security. At a press conference in April 1954, he warned: "You have a row of dominoes set up, and you knock over the first one and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly." This was the origin of what became known as the "domino theory," the idea that the fall of Vietnam would bring further Communist triumphs throughout Southeast Asia, Japan, and the Philippines, perhaps even threatening Hawaii and the American mainland in the long run.

Dwight D. Eisenhower Speaks to the Press

In Geneva, Switzerland, one day a"er the fall of Dien Bien Phu, an international summit of Western and Communist powers turned to the issue of Indochina. Although Ho Chi Minh expected to take power in all of Vietnam, the French struck a deal with Ho's allies—the Soviet Union and the People's

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Republic of China—to force him to settle for less. The compromise agreement, known as the Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities in Viet-Nam (Geneva accords), provided for the temporary division of Vietnam along the 17th parallel, with the Communist forces in power in the north and non- Communists in control of the south. The question of who would in the end rule over a reunified Vietnam was to be decided by an internationally supervised election in 1956, two years later. The U.S. government disapproved of any settlement turning territory over to the Communists and did not sign the Geneva accords. Over the next few months, the first small and fateful steps were taken that would eventually lead to the dispatch of hundreds of thousands of Americans to fight in South Vietnam.

Vietnamese Refugees Board the USS Montague

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Record Information

From: Vietnam War, Fourth Edition

Series: America at War

By: Maurice Isserman

Published: 2016

Record Type: Book Chapter

Table of Contents

Ch. 1: America and Vietnam Ch. 2: Causes of the Vietnam War Ch. 3: Origins of U.S. Involvement in Vietnam Ch. 4: John F. Kennedy and the Vietnam War Ch. 5: Lyndon B. Johnson and the Vietnam War Ch. 6: Escalation in Vietnam Ch. 7: Soldiers of the Vietnam War Ch. 8: Ground War in Vietnam Ch. 9: Air War in Vietnam Ch. 10: The Home Front during the Vietnam War Ch. 11: The Tet O!ensive Ch. 12: Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War Ch. 13: Weapons and Tactics of the Vietnam War Ch. 14: End of the Vietnam War

Definitions Agent Orange airborne aircra" carrier AK-47 ammunition amphibious warfare appeasement ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) atrocity attrition + Show More

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Communism in Vietnam First Indochina War French Indochina Geneva Conference Ho Chi Minh

North Vietnam southeast Asia Viet Minh Vietnam Vietnam War Võ Nguyên Giáp World history

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