Vietnam War

Introduction

Between 1965 and 1973, the United States became embroiled in Vietnam in an expensive and ultimately unsuccessful war to contain what it saw as the expansion of communism in Southeast Asia. US military involvement grew out of an earlier war between 1946 and 1954, when France fought, also unsuccessfully, to reassert its colonial authority over the country against the Viet Minh, nationalist insurgents with strong communists links, based in the north. Both stages of the conflict had significant international implications, raising questions about the relationship of the United States with its allies, particularly Britain, in the wider context of the Cold War.

During World War II, British policy in Indochina had been guided by the assumption that when the war ended, colonial control of the region should return to France. British policy was generally opposed to resistance movements like the Viet Minh, which sought to link fighting the Japanese to eventual national liberation. Despite its alliance with the United States, Britain was suspicious of US intelligence involvement with the Viet Minh, fearing that it might lead to overt US support for colonial independence, particularly in light of President Franklin Roosevelt's avowed hostility to imperialism. In fact, in the latter stages of the war, US support for the dismantling of the French empire was tempered first by proposals for a trusteeship in Indochina, and then by a tacit admission that it would not intervene to prevent the return of French rule. Maintaining a friendly relationship in Western Europe with Britain and France was a much higher US priority than backing independence movements.

Discussion

After the Japanese surrender in August 1945, British troops restored order in southern Indochina, a process that involved open conflict with the Viet Minh and that culminated in the return of Saigon to French rule in January 1946. However, official British policy was generally cautious about further military involvement to support the French. In 1954 the Churchill government rejected any intervention to help the besieged French army at Dien Bien Phu. Admiral Arthur W. Radford, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, favored a quick aerial, perhaps nuclear, strike on Hanoi to stem the communist advance.

Churchill, however, warned about the dangers of a wider war with China and Russia, in which Britain would be in the front line of any Soviet nuclear attack. Whatever the effect of British pressure, the Americans chose to stay their hand. At the Geneva Conference of 1954, which sought to broker a future for the region after French withdrawal, British foreign secretary Anthony Eden played an important role in negotiating the temporary division of Vietnam at the 17th parallel. That bought time, but it failed in the longer term to solve the problems of the future of the country. When President Diem established the Republic of Vietnam in Saigon in 1955, the British, along with the Americans, recognized its legitimacy to govern the whole country, ignoring the claims of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam based in Hanoi.

As the commitment of the United States to ...