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Реферат: Вьетнамская война

Реферат: Вьетнамская война

Plan:

I. INTRODUCTION

II. VIETNAMESE INDEPENDENCE STRUGGLE

III. THE NEW WAR BEGINS

IV. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL TURBULENCE IN SOUTH VIETNAM

V. DEEPENING US INVOLVEMENT

VI. THE TET OFFENSIVE

VII. VIETNAMIZATION OF THE WAR (1969-1971)

VIII. CONTROVERSY IN THE UNITED STATES

IX. NEGOTIATION IMPASSES

X. QUANG TRI OFFENSIVE

XI. RE-ESCALATION

XII. TEMPORARY PEACE

XIII. CEASEFIRE AFTERMATH

XIV. NATURE OF THE WAR

XV. SUMMARY

At the Vienna conference in 1961 Kennedy and Khrushchev had agreed on the

establishment of a neutralist government in Laos. In South Vietnam, however,

increased pressure by the Communist-dominated nationalists known as the

Vietcong led Kennedy to expand US military aid for the government of Ngo Dinh

Diem. On November 1, 1963, Diem’s unpopular regime was deposed and Diem was

assassinated with tacit US approval. The succeeding military junta received

immediate US recognition.

INTRODUCTION

Vietnam War, military struggle fought in Vietnam from 1959 to 1975. It began

as a determined attempt by Communist guerrillas (the so-called Vietcong) in

the South, backed by Communist North Vietnam, to overthrow the government of

South Vietnam. The struggle widened into a war between South Vietnam and

North Vietnam and ultimately into a limited international conflict. The

United States and some 40 other countries supported South Vietnam by

supplying troops and munitions, and the USSR and the People's Republic of

China furnished munitions to North Vietnam and the Vietcong. On both sides,

however, the burden of the war fell mainly on the civilians.

The war also engulfed Laos, where the Communist Pathet Lao fought the

government from 1965 to 1973 and succeeded in abolishing the monarchy in

1975; and Cambodia, where the government surrendered in 1975 to the Communist

Khmer Rouge.

This article is concerned primarily with the military aspects of the war; for

further discussion of the historical and political issues involved, see

Vietnam: History.

VIETNAMESE INDEPENDENCE STRUGGLE

(1945-1954). The war developed as a sequel to the struggle (1946-1954)

between the French, who were the colonial rulers of Indo-China before World

War II, and the Communist-led Vietminh, or League for the Independence of

Vietnam, founded and headed by the revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh. Having

emerged as the strongest of the nationalist groups that fought the Japanese

occupation of French Indo-China during World War II, the league was

determined to resist the re-establishment of French colonial rule and to

implement political and social changes.

Following the surrender of Japan to the Allies in August 1945, Vietminh

guerrillas seized the capital city of Hanoi and forced the abdication of

Emperor Bao Dai. On September 2 they declared Vietnam to be independent and

announced the creation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, commonly called

North Vietnam, with Ho Chi Minh as president. France officially recognized

the new state, but the subsequent inability of the Vietminh and France to

reach satisfactory political and economic agreements led to armed conflict

beginning in December 1946. With French backing Bao Dai set up the state of

Vietnam, commonly called South Vietnam, on July 1, 1949, and established a

new capital at Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City).

The following year, the United States officially recognized the Saigon

government, and to assist it, US President Harry S. Truman dispatched a

military assistance advisory group to train South Vietnam in the use of US

weapons. In the meantime, the two main adversaries in Vietnam—France and the

Vietminh—were steadily building up their forces. The decisive battle of the war

developed in the spring of 1954 as the Vietminh attacked the French fortress of

Điên Biên Phu (also known as Điên Biên) in

northern Vietnam. On May 8, 1954, after a 55-day siege, the French surrendered.

On the same day, both North and South Vietnamese delegates met with those of

France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States, Communist China,

and the two neighbouring states, Laos and Cambodia, in Geneva, to discuss the

future of all of Indo-China. Under accords drawn up at the conference, France

and North Vietnam agreed to a truce. It was further agreed to partition the

country temporarily along the 17th parallel, with the north going to the

Communists and the south placed under the control of the Saigon government.

The agreement stipulated that elections for reunification of the country

would be held in 1956.

Neither the United States nor the Saigon government agreed to the Geneva

accords, but the United States announced it would do nothing to undermine the

agreement. Once the French had withdrawn from Vietnam, the United States

moved to bolster the Saigon government militarily and, as asserted by some

observers, engaged in covert activities against the Hanoi government. On

October 24, 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower offered South Vietnam direct

economic aid, and the following February, US military advisers were

dispatched to train South Vietnamese forces. American support for the Saigon

government continued even after Bao Dai was deposed, in a referendum on

October 23, 1955, and South Vietnam was made a republic, with Ngo Dinh Diem

as president. One of Diem's first acts was to announce that his government

would refuse to hold reunification elections, on the grounds that the people

of North Vietnam would not be free to express their will and because of the

probability of falsified votes (although Diem and other South Vietnamese

officials were also accused of fraudulent election practices).

THE NEW WAR BEGINS

The position taken by Diem won the backing of the United States. The

Communist government in Hanoi, however, indicated its determination to

reunify the nation under their rule. The truce arranged at Geneva began to

crumble and by January 1957, the International Control Commission set up to

implement the Geneva accords was reporting armistice violations by both North

and South Vietnam. Throughout the rest of the year, Communist sympathizers

who had gone north after partition began returning south in increasing

numbers. Called Vietcong, they began launching attacks on US military

installations that had been established, and in 1959 began their guerrilla

attacks on the Diem government.

The attacks were intensified in 1960, the year in which North Vietnam

proclaimed its intention “to liberate South Vietnam from the ruling yoke of

the US imperialists and their henchmen”. The statement served to reinforce

the belief that the Vietcong were being directed by Hanoi. On November 10,

the Saigon government charged that regular North Vietnamese troops were

taking a direct part in Vietcong attacks in South Vietnam. To show that the

guerrilla movement was independent, however, the Vietcong set up their own

political arm, known as the National Liberation Front (NLF), with its

headquarters in Hanoi.

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL TURBULENCE IN SOUTH VIETNAM

In the face of the deteriorating situation, the United States restated its

support for Saigon. In April 1961, a treaty of amity and economic relations

was signed with South Vietnam, and in December, President John F. Kennedy

pledged to help South Vietnam maintain its independence. Subsequently, US

economic and military assistance to the Diem government increased

significantly. In December 1961, the first US troops, consisting of 400

uniformed army personnel, arrived in Saigon in order to operate two

helicopter companies; the United States proclaimed, however, that the troops

were not combat units as such. A year later, US military strength in Vietnam

stood at 11,200.

The Diem government, meanwhile, proved unable to defeat the Communists or to

cope with growing unrest among South Vietnamese Buddhists and other religious

groups. Anti-government agitation among the Buddhists was especially strong,

with many burning themselves to death as a sign of protest. Still others were

placed under arrest, the government charging that the Buddhist groups had

become infiltrated by politically hostile individuals, including Communists.

Although this contention was supported by outside observers, including a US

fact-finding team, religious friction between the Buddhists and the Catholic-

led government was at least as powerful a force as political conflict.

On November 1, 1963, the Diem regime was overthrown in a military coup. Diem

and his brother and political adviser, Ngo Dinh Nhu, were executed. The

circumstances surrounding the coup were not fully clear at the time. In the

summer of 1971, however, with the publication by the US press of a secret

Pentagon study of the war (see Controversy in the United States below), it

was revealed that the coup had been known to be imminent and that the United

States was prepared to support a successor government.

The government that replaced the Diem regime was a revolutionary council

headed by Brigadier General Duong Van Minh. A series of other coups followed,

and in the 18 months after Diem's overthrow South Vietnam had ten different

governments. None of these proved capable of dealing effectively with the

country's military situation. A military council under General Nguyen Van

Thieu and General Nguyen Cao Ky was finally created in 1965, and it restored

basic political order. Later, in September 1967, elections were held and

Thieu became president of South Vietnam.

DEEPENING US INVOLVEMENT

Unlike conventional wars, the war in Vietnam had no defined front lines. Much

of it consisted of hit-and-run attacks, with the guerrillas striking at

government outposts and retreating into the jungle. In the early 1960s some

North Vietnamese troops, however, began to infiltrate into South Vietnam to

help the Vietcong, and supplies sent to Hanoi from the USSR and China were

sent south down the so-called Ho Chi Minh Trail. The war began to escalate in

the first week of August 1964, when North Vietnamese torpedo boats were

reported to have attacked two US destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. Acting on

the resolution passed on August 7 by the US Senate (the so-called Tonkin Gulf

Resolution), authorizing increased military involvement, President Lyndon B.

Johnson ordered jets to South Vietnam and the retaliatory bombing of military

targets in North Vietnam. From 1964 to 1968 General William C. Westmoreland

was commander of US forces in South Vietnam; he was replaced in 1968 by

General Creighton Abrams.

In February 1965, US planes began regular bombing raids over North Vietnam. A

halt was ordered in May in the hope of initiating peace talks, but when North

Vietnam rejected all negotiations, the bombings were resumed. In the meantime,

the United States continued to build up its troop strength in South Vietnam. On

March 6, 1965, a brigade of American marines landed at Đa Nãng,

south of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that had originally been set up at the

time of partition. The marines, the first US combat ground-force units to serve

in the country, brought the number in the US military forces in Vietnam to some

27,000. By the end of the year American combat strength was nearly 200,000.

While continuing the military build-up in Vietnam, the United States made

another attempt to end the war. In December 1965, President Johnson again

halted the bombing of North Vietnam in an effort to achieve a peaceful

settlement. Again he was unsuccessful, and the raids were resumed. In June

1966, US planes began bombing major installations near Hanoi and the

neighbouring port of Haiphong, both of which had hitherto been spared.

In October 1966, government representatives from the United States,

Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, South Korea, and the Philippines—all of

which had contributed troops to South Vietnam—met in Manila and pledged

their withdrawal within six months after North Vietnam abandoned the war. The

offer was rejected by North Vietnam. In June 1967, President Johnson met with

Soviet Premier Aleksey N. Kosygin and sought his help in bringing Hanoi to

the peace table. The war, however, dragged on.

Two months after the meeting, President Johnson announced that US forces in

Vietnam would be further increased to 525,000 by 1968. At the same time, US

planes extended their bombings of North Vietnam to within 16 km (10 mi) of

the Chinese border. Shortly thereafter, President Johnson again offered to

stop the bombardment of North Vietnam provided peace talks would follow. As

in the past, Hanoi rejected the offer.

The war continued, and casualty figures rose. In November 1967, the Pentagon

announced that total US casualties in Vietnam since the beginning of 1961 had

reached 15,058 killed and 109,527 wounded. The mounting toll was accompanied

by a growing call within the United States for an end to the war, the cost

of which, apart from the loss of life, was estimated by the president at $25

billion per year.

THE TET OFFENSIVE

From February 1965 to the end of all-out US involvement in 1973, South

Vietnamese forces mainly fought against the Vietcong guerrillas, while US and

allied troops fought the North Vietnamese in a war of attrition marked by

battles in such places as the Ia Dang Valley, Dak To, Loc Ninh, and Khe

Sanh—all victories for the non-Communist forces. During his 1967-68 campaign,

the North Vietnamese strategist, General Vo Nguyen Giap, launched the famous

Tet offensive (from the name of the Vietnamese lunar new year in mid-

February), a coordinated series of fierce attacks on more than 100 urban

targets. Despite its devastating psychological effect, the campaign, which

Giap hoped would be decisive, failed, and Vietcong forces were ultimately

driven back from most of the positions they had gained. In the fighting,

North Vietnam lost 85,000 of its best troops.

In spite of this US victory, however, by the early spring of 1968 much of the

American public had concluded that the war was unwinnable. On March 31

President Johnson announced a halt in US bombings over North Vietnam. (He

simultaneously announced that he would not be seeking re-election as

president.) The announcement, intended as a new peace gesture, evoked a

positive response from Hanoi, and in May peace talks between the United

States and North Vietnam opened in Paris. Later in the year, the talks were

expanded to include South Vietnam and the Vietcong NLF. The talks, however,

made no progress despite the fact that US raids on North Vietnam were

completely halted in November.

VIETNAMIZATION OF THE WAR (1969-1971)

In 1969, within a few months after taking office, Johnson's successor,

President Richard M. Nixon, announced that 25,000 US troops would be

withdrawn from Vietnam by August 1969. Another withdrawal of 65,000 troops

was ordered by the end of the year. The programme, known as Vietnamization of

the war, came into effect, as President Nixon emphasized additional

responsibilities of the South Vietnamese. Neither the US troop reduction,

however, nor the death of North Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh, on

September 3, 1969, served to break the stalemate in Paris; the North

Vietnamese delegates continued to insist upon complete US withdrawal as a

condition for peace.

In April 1970, US combat troops entered Cambodia following the political coup

there. Within three months, the US campaign in Cambodia ended, but air

attacks on North Vietnam were renewed.

By 1971 South Vietnamese forces were playing an increasing role in the war,

fighting in both Cambodia and Laos as well as in South Vietnam. At this

point, however, the Paris talks and the war itself were overshadowed by the

presidential election in South Vietnam. The chief contestants were Nguyen Van

Thieu, who was running for re-election, Vice-President Nguyen Cao Ky, and

General Duong Van Minh. Both Ky and Minh, after charging that the election

had been rigged, withdrew, and Thieu won another 4-year term.

Through the later months of 1971, American withdrawal continued. It

coincided, however, with a new military build-up in North Vietnam, thought to

be in preparation for a major drive down the Ho Chi Minh Trail into Laos and

Cambodia. Heavy US air attacks followed throughout the Indo-China war sector.

On the ground, meanwhile, Vietnamese Communist forces had launched massive

effective attacks against government forces in South Vietnam, Cambodia, and

Laos. It was feared also that Hanoi might launch a major offensive in South

Vietnam's central highlands, timing the operation for the Tet observance.

Casualty figures in 1971 reflected the intensification of South Vietnam's own

fighting efforts against the Communists. While US deaths in Vietnam declined

dramatically to 1,380, compared to 4,221 in 1970, the Saigon forces, on the

other hand, suffered about 21,500 dead, some in Cambodia and Laos but the

majority in South Vietnam. The South Vietnamese claimed the enemy death toll

to be 97,000.

CONTROVERSY IN THE UNITED STATES

Before troop withdrawal, US military strength in South Vietnam had peaked at

over 541,000 in 1969. In the United States itself, as military involvement

increased, the war issue had increasingly became highly controversial. A

peace movement developed and gathered momentum, organizing marches and

moratoriums against the war in major US cities. Accelerating this movement

was the issue of atrocities committed by US troops in Vietnam. One widely

publicized case was the massacre of unarmed civilians at the village of My

Lai in 1968. Lieutenant William L. Calley, charged with responsibility for

their deaths, was found guilty by a military jury in 1971.

A major reinterpretation of US involvement in the Vietnam War was spurred by the

controversial publication in 1971 in the New York Times and other

newspapers of the so-called Pentagon Papers—a collection of classified US

government documents concerning the Vietnamese situation. The papers cast a

new, and to many, a dismaying, light on the US handling of the war and of the

peace negotiations through the 1960s.

NEGOTIATION IMPASSES

On January 25, 1972, President Nixon publicly recounted the many proposals

that the administration had secretly put before the North Vietnamese during

the last two-and-a-half years. At the same time, he unveiled a new eight-

point plan for peace in Vietnam, including a new presidential election to be

held in South Vietnam.

The Nixon plan was followed by a revised version of a peace plan submitted by

the Vietcong in July 1971. The new version called for the immediate

resignation of President Thieu, to be followed by negotiations with the

Saigon administration once it had abandoned what the Vietcong described as

its policies of waging war and repression. The same insistence on the

immediate resignation of the South Vietnamese president was voiced by Hanoi

through the North Vietnamese delegation in Paris, which announced that US

prisoners of war would be released only when the United States had withdrawn

its support from the Thieu administration and the war was brought to an end.

South Vietnamese forces, meanwhile, conducted three drives into Cambodia

during February 1972. The United States announced that it would no longer

disclose the number of planes involved in raids over North Vietnam. Peace

talks were broken off on March 23.

QUANG TRI OFFENSIVE

The tide of the war took an ominous turn for the worse one week later. On

March 30 North Vietnam launched a massive offensive south across the DMZ into

Quang Tri Province. In April, the United States retaliated with the first

deep-penetration bombing raids over the north since 1967.

On May 8 President Nixon ordered the mining of major ports of North Vietnam,

notably Haiphong, to destroy enemy supply routes. Air strikes were directed

against North Vietnamese railway lines, causing, as a Hanoi newspaper

admitted, serious economic problems. Quang Tri City, after being held by the

Communists for four-and-a-half months, was recaptured by South Vietnamese

forces on September 15.

RE-ESCALATION

As the war continued into the second half of 1972, secret peace meetings were

held at intervals in Paris between Henry Kissinger, assistant to the

president for national security affairs, and the North Vietnamese delegate Le

Duc Tho, beginning on October 8. A breakthrough was achieved when, for the

first time, the Communist side expressed acceptance of a peace plan

separating the military from the political settlement of the war,

relinquishing its demand for a coalition government in South Vietnam, and

agreeing to a formula for simultaneous discussion of the situation in Laos

and Cambodia. On October 26 Kissinger disclosed a nine-point peace plan, but

technical issues remained unresolved, and President Thieu of South Vietnam

called the plan a sellout.

With the resumption of talks between Kissinger and Tho on December 4, general

anticipation of a final, signed agreement was perhaps the highest it had been

since the beginning of the Paris negotiations in 1968. But the talks

abruptly collapsed on December 16, and the following day President Nixon

ordered further massive bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong. Subsequent night raids

by B-52s and attack planes were termed the most severe aerial assaults in all

of history, and the reaction of both the American people and the world to the

sudden reescalation of the bitter conflict was for the most part one of

shock. The air attacks also resulted in the loss of 15 B-52s and in the loss

or capture of 93 US Air Force personnel.

TEMPORARY PEACE

Despite the stepping up of US bombing, both sides appeared anxious to salvage

the progress made in negotiation. On December 29, the United States announced

a halt to the bombing above the 20th parallel, effective the next day.

With the new year came the resumption of the secret peace meetings in Paris.

Sensing progress in the first days, President Nixon ordered a halt to all

bombing, mining, and artillery fire in North Vietnam. After six days of

conferring, Kissinger and Tho met once again on January 23, 1973, and, on

that evening, President Nixon announced over nationwide television that

agreement on all terms for a formal ceasefire had finally been reached.

On January 27, in Paris, delegations representing the United States, South

Vietnam, North Vietnam, and the Provisional Revolutionary Communist

Government of South Vietnam signed an Agreement on Ending the War and

Restoring Peace in Vietnam. The ceasefire officially went into effect on

January 28. Both the United States and North Vietnam asserted that there were

no secret peace terms.

The peace accord called for complete cessation of hostilities; withdrawal of

all US and allied forces from South Vietnam within 60 days of the signing;

return of all captured military personnel by both sides at 15-day intervals

within 60 days; recognition of the DMZ as “only provisional and not a

political or territorial boundary”; an international control commission

(composed of representatives of Canada, Hungary, Indonesia, and Poland) to

oversee implementation of the peace; and provision for an international

conference to be held within 30 days. The accord allowed some 145,000 North

Vietnamese troops to remain in South Vietnam, but with limitation on their

future replacement and supplies.

CEASEFIRE AFTERMATH

By the end of March 1973, all US fighting forces had been withdrawn. Although

President Nixon had apparently assured the Thieu government that US forces

would step in to support them in the event of a major treaty violation,

further military assistance to South Vietnam became politically impossible.

One of the reasons for this was the concurrent outbreak of the Watergate

scandal.

Fighting between Vietnamese antagonists died down shortly after the ceasefire,

only to be renewed as each side attempted to hold or expand its military

positions. During 1974 fighting escalated, with major engagements occurring

throughout the year. US military aid was drastically cut, undermining the South

Vietnamese position. In December the North Vietnamese and their southern allies

launched a major offensive that quickly resulted in unprecedented success. The

government of South Vietnam lost control of numerous important cities; and by

the time that Huê was captured in mid-March 1975, the war had become a

rout, with a mass evacuation of remaining US personnel. On April 30, the

capital city of Saigon was captured, and the Republic of Vietnam surrendered

unconditionally to the Provisional Revolutionary Government.

NATURE OF THE WAR

The Vietnam War marked a turning point in the history of modern conventional

warfare both in the extent of guerrilla and antiguerrilla combat involved and

in the increased reliance on helicopters, which afforded mobility in a

difficult terrain. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the Vietnam

War was essentially a people's war; because guerrilla fighters were not

easily distinguished from non-combatants and because most civilians were

mobilized into some sort of active participation, the civilian populace of

Vietnam suffered heavily, in unprecedented numbers. The extensive use of

napalm by US forces maimed and killed many thousands of civilians, and the

employment of defoliants to destroy heavy ground cover devastated the ecology

of an essentially agricultural country.

SUMMARY

As a result of more than eight years of these methods of warfare, it is

estimated that more than 2 million Vietnamese were killed, 3 million wounded,

and hundreds of thousands of children orphaned. It has been estimated that

about 12 million people became refugees. Between April 1975 and July 1982,

approximately 1,218,000 were resettled in more than 16 countries. About

500,000, the so-called boat people, tried to flee Vietnam by sea; according

to rough estimates, 10 to 15 per cent of these died, and those who survived

the great hardships of their voyages were eventually faced with immigration

barriers, and quotas even in the countries that agreed to accept them for

resettlement.

In the Vietnam War US casualties rose to a total of 57,685 killed and about

153,303 wounded. At the time of the ceasefire agreement there were 587 US

military and civilian prisoners of war, all of whom were subsequently

released. A current unofficial estimate puts the number of personnel still

unaccounted for in the neighbourhood of 2,500.

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