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Vietnam The United States
The Communist victory in South Vietnam in 1975 abruptly
concluded three decades of United States intervention in Vietnam
and brought to a close a painful and bitter era for both
countries. The war generated considerable social and political
discord in the United States, massive disruption in Vietnam, and
was enormously costly to both sides. Vietnam endured physical
destruction--ravaged battle sites, leveled factories and cities,
and untold numbers of military and civilian casualties. The
United States escaped physical devastation, but it suffered the
loss of 58,000 lives (2,400 unaccounted for) and spent roughly
$150 billion in direct expenses to sustain the war. The war also
divided and confused American society.
To the Vietnamese communists, the war against the United
States simply extended the war for independence initiated against
the French. In Hanoi's view, when the United States displaced the
French in Indochina, it assumed the French role as a major-power
obstacle to Vietnam's eventual reunification.
For the United States, intervention was derived from
considerations that largely transcended Vietnam. In the closing
months of World War II, the United States had supported the idea
of an international trusteeship for all of Indochina.
Subsequently, in spite of misgivings in Washington about French
intentions to reimpose colonial rule in Indochina, the United
States eventually tilted in support of the French war effort in
the embattled region. Anticolonial sentiment in the United States
after World War II thus failed to outweigh policy priorities in
Europe, such as the evolving North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) relationship. The formal creation of NATO and the
communist victory in China, both of which occurred in 1949, led
the United States to support materially the French war effort in
Indochina. The perception that communism was global and
monolithic led the administration of President Dwight D.
Eisenhower to support the idea of a noncommunist state in
southern Vietnam, after the French withdrawal under the Geneva
Agreements of 1954. Although this goal arguably ran counter to
two key features of the Geneva Agreements (the stipulation that
the line separating North and South Vietnam be neither a
political nor territorial boundary and the call for reunification
elections), it was based on the United States assessment that the
Viet minh--which, contrary to the agreements, had left several
thousand cadres south of the demarcation line--was already in
violation. The first United States advisers arrived in the South
within a year after Geneva to help President Ngo Dinh Diem
establish a government that would be strong enough to stand up to
the communist regime in the North.
Although Washington's advisory role was essentially
political, United States policy makers determined that the effort
to erect a non-communist state in Vietnam was vital to the
security of the region and would be buttressed by military means,
if necessary, to inhibit any would-be aggressor. Defending
Vietnam's security against aggression from the North and from
southern-based communist insurgency was a mission Washington
initially perceived as requiring only combat support elements and
advisers to South Vietnamese military units. The situation,
however, rapidly deteriorated, and in 1965, at a time when
increasing numbers of North Vietnamese-trained soldiers were
moving in South Vietnam, the first increment of United States
combat forces was introduced into the South and sustained bombing
of military targets in North Vietnam was undertaken. Nearly eight
more years of conflict occurred before the intense involvement of
the United States ended in 1973.
An "Agreement Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam"
was signed in Paris on January 27, 1973, by Washington, Hanoi,
Saigon, and the Provisional Revolutionary Government,
representing the Vietnamese communist organization in the South,
the
Viet Cong
(see Glossary--contraction of Viet Nam Cong San).
The settlement called for a cease-fire, withdrawal of all United
States troops, continuance in place of North Vietnamese troops in
the South, and the eventual reunification of the country "through
peaceful means." In reality, once United States Forces were
disengaged in early 1973 there was no effective way to prevent
the North from overwhelming the South's defenses and the
settlement proved unenforceably. Following the fragile cease-fire
established by the agreement, PAVN units remained in the South
Vietnamese countryside, while Army of the Republic of Vietnam
(
ARVN--see Glossary) units fought to dislodge them and expand the
areas under Saigon's control. As a result, the two sides battled
from 1973 to 1975, but the ARVN, having to fight without the
close United States air, artillery, logistical, and medevac
(medical evacuation) support to which it had become accustomed,
acquitted itself badly, losing more and more ground to the
community.
The surprisingly swift manner in which the South Vietnamese
government finally collapsed in 1975 appeared to confirm that the
Paris agreement had accomplished little more than to delay an
inevitable defeat for the United States ally, South Vietnam, and
that Washington had been impotent to avert this outcome.
Following the war, Hanoi pursued the establishment of
diplomatic relations with the United States, initially in order
to obtain US$3.3 billion in reconstruction aid, which President
Richard M. Nixon had secretly promised after the Paris Agreement
was signed in 1973. Under Article 21 of the agreement, the United
States had pledged "to contribute to healing the wounds of war
and to postwar reconstruction of the DRV . . ." but had
specifically avoided using terminology that could be interpreted
to mean that reparations were being offered for war damages.
Nixon's promise was in the form of a letter, confirming the
intent of Article 21 and offering a specific figure. Barely two
months after Hanoi's victory in 1975, Premier Pham Van Dong,
speaking to the National Assembly, invited the United States to
normalize relations with Vietnam and to honor its commitment to
provide reconstruction funds. Representatives of two American
banks--the Bank of America and First National City Bank--were
invited to discuss trade possibilities, and American oil
companies were informed that they were welcome to apply for
concessions to search for oil in offshore Vietnamese waters.
Washington neglected Dong's call for normal relations,
however, because it was predicated on reparations, and the
Washington political climate in the wake of the war precluded the
pursuit of such an outcome. In response, the administration of
President Gerald R. Ford imposed its own precondition for normal
relations by announcing that a full accounting of Americans
missing in action
(
MIAs--see Glossary), including the return of
any remains, would be required before normalization could be
effected. No concessions were made on either side until President
Jimmy Carter softened the United States demand from a full
accounting of MIAs to the fullest possible accounting and
dispatched a mission to Hanoi in 1977 to initiate normalization
discussions.
Although the Vietnamese at first were adamant about United
States economic assistance (their first postwar economic plan
counted on the amount promised by President Nixon), the condition
was dropped in mid-1978 when Hanoi made additional gestures
toward normal relations. At that time, Vietnamese Foreign
Minister Nguyen Co Thach and the United States government reached
an agreement in principle on normalization, but the date was left
vague. When Thach urged November 1978, a date that in retrospect
is significant because he was due in Moscow to sign the Treaty of
Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union, Washington was
noncommittal. During this period, United States officials were
preoccupied with the question of the Indochinese refugees, and
they were in the process of normalizing relations with China.
This was an action that could have been jeopardized had
Washington concurrently sought a rapprochement with Vietnam, a
nation whose relationship with Beijing was growing increasingly
strained. Policy makers in Hanoi correctly reasoned that the
United States had opted to strengthen its ties with China rather
than with Vietnam, and they moved to formalize their ties with
the Soviets in response. Their original hope, however, had been
to gain both diplomatic recognition from the United States and a
friendship treaty with Moscow, as a double guarantee against
future Chinese interference.
In the United States, the issue of normalizing relations with
Vietnam was complicated by Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia in
December 1978, the continuing plight of Vietnamese refugees, and
the unresolved MIA issue
(see Ethnic Groups and Languages
, ch.
2). In 1987, under President Ronald Reagan, the United States
continued to enforce the trade embargo imposed on Hanoi in 1975
and barred normal ties as long as Vietnamese troops occupied
Cambodia. Any efforts to improve relations remained closely tied
to United States willingness to honor its 1973 aid commitment to
Vietnam and to Hanoi's failure to account for the whereabouts of
more than 2,400 MIAs in Indochina. From the signing of the Paris
agreements in 1973 until mid-1978, the Vietnamese had routinely
stressed the linkage between the aid and MIA issues. Beginning in
mid-1978, however, Hanoi dropped its insistence that the MIA and
aid questions be resolved as a precondition for normalization and
stopped linking the MIA question to other unresolved matters
between the two countries. Vietnamese leaders contrasted their
restraint on the MIA issue with its alleged political
exploitation by the United States as a condition for normal
relations. As additional signs of goodwill, Hanoi permitted the
joint United States-Vietnamese excavation of a B-52 crash site in
1985 and returned the remains of a number of United States
servicemen between 1985 and 1987. Vietnamese spokesmen also
claimed during this period to have a two-year plan to resolve the
MIA question but failed to reveal details.
Although Vietnam's Sixth National Party Congress in December
1986 officially paid little attention to relations with the
United States, the report of the congress noted that Vietnam was
continuing to hold talks with Washington on humanitarian issues
and expressed a readiness to improve relations. Although
ambivalent in tone, the message was more positive than the 1982
Fifth National Party Congress report, which had attributed the
stalemated relationship to Washington's "hostile policy." The
improved wording was attributable to the influence of newly
appointed Party General Secretary Nguyen Van Linh, who was
expected to attach high priority to expanding Vietnam's links
with the West.
Within a few months of the Sixth National Party Congress,
however, Hanoi began to send conflicting signals to Washington.
In mid-1987 the Vietnamese government, having determined that
cooperation had gained few concessions from the United States,
reverted to its pre-1978 position linking the aid and MIA issues.
The resumption of its hardline stand, however, was brief. A
meeting between Vietnamese leaders and President Reagan's special
envoy on MIAs, General John W. Vessey, in August 1987 yielded
significant gains for both sides. In exchange for greater
Vietnamese cooperation on resolving the MIA issue, the United
States agreed officially to encourage charitable assistance for
Vietnam. Although the agreement fell short of Hanoi's requests
for economic aid or war reparations, it marked the first time
that the United States had offered anything in return for
Vietnamese assistance in accounting for the MIAs and was an
important step toward an eventual reconciliation between the two
countries.
Data as of December 1987
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