Nonaligned Movement
Nonaligned Movement (NAM), loose association of countries that, during the Cold War, had no formal commitment to either of the two power blocs in the world, which were led by the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The group was formed in September 1961 by a conference of 25 heads of state in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. The conference was organized by leaders of countries that had recently freed themselves from foreign domination and rejected renewed ties to any big power. Prominent among these leaders were Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of India and Presidents Sukarno of Indonesia, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Sékou Touré of Guinea, and Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia.
The movement has grown to include more than 110 countries, mostly from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. NAM conferences are held every three years. The group has no formal administrative body; at each NAM conference the office of chairperson rotates to the head of state of the host country.
Membership in NAM is distinct from neutrality in that it implies an active participation in international affairs and judgment of issues on their merits rather than from predetermined positions. Thus, a large majority of NAM nations opposed the United States during the Vietnam War (1957-1975) and the USSR after its 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. In practice, however, many NAM nations leaned heavily toward one power bloc or the other.
The early members of NAM saw themselves as an important buffer between rival military alliances, decreasing the possibility of a major confrontation. Any pretension of being a “force,” however, was tempered by the diversity of the nations’ governments, which ranged from leftist to ultraconservative and from democratic to dictatorial, and by the economic and military weaknesses that often made them dependent on foreign aid from the big power blocs. The dissolution of the USSR in 1991 required NAM nations to redefine their role in a world where intense ideological and military rivalry between two superpowers was no longer a factor. Today the movement focuses on promoting cooperation between developing countries and on advocating solutions to global economic and political problems.
Warsaw Pact
Mutual Assistance), military alliance of eight European Communist nations, enacted to counter the rearmament of West Germany, officially called the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), and its admission to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The treaty was signed in Warsaw, Poland, on May 14, 1955, by Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic and Slovakia), East Germany (now part of the united Federal Republic of Germany), Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics (USSR). The alliance was dominated by the USSR, which kept strict control over the other countries in the pact.
In 1961 Albania broke off diplomatic relations with the USSR because of ideological differences and in 1968 withdrew from the pact. From the mid-1950s through the 1980s, two major bodies carried out the functions of the Warsaw Pact: the Political Consultative Committee and the Unified Command of Pact Armed Forces, both headquartered in Moscow.
Under the terms of the treaty, the Political Consultative Committee coordinated all activities, except those purely military, and the Unified
Command of Pact Armed Forces had authority over the troops assigned to it by member states. It was agreed that the supreme commander would be from the USSR. The Warsaw Pact's only military action was directed against Czechoslovakia, a member state. (In the autumn of 1956, the USSR took unilateral military action against Hungary, another Warsaw Pact member state, killing thousands of Hungarians and causing 200,000 to flee the country.) In August 1968, after the Czech government enacted reforms offensive to the USSR, forces of the USSR, Poland, Hungary, East Germany, and Bulgaria invaded Czechoslovakia and forced a return to a Soviet-style system. Romania opposed the invasion and did not participate, but remained a member.
Although the Warsaw Pact was officially renewed in 1985 for another 20 years, the political transformation of Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s profoundly weakened the organization. The USSR began withdrawing its troops from other Warsaw Pact countries, and East Germany pulled out to join West Germany as the reunified nation of Germany in October 1990. All joint military functions ceased at the end of March 1991, and in July leaders of the remaining six member nations agreed to dissolve the alliance.
I -INTRODUCTION
Persian Gulf War, conflict beginning in August 1990, when Iraqi forces invaded and occupied Kuwait. The conflict culminated in fighting in January and February 1991 between Iraq and an international coalition of forces led by the United States. By the end of the war, the coalition had driven the Iraqis from Kuwait.
II -CAUSES OF THE WAR
The Iraqi-Kuwaiti border had been the focus of tension in the past. Kuwait was nominally part of the Ottoman Empire from the 18th century until 1899 when it asked for, and received, British protection in return for autonomy in local affairs. In 1961 Britain granted Kuwait independence, and Iraq revived an old claim that Kuwait had been governed as part of an Ottoman province in southern Iraq and was therefore rightfully Iraq’s. Iraq’s claim had little historical basis, however, and after intense global pressure Iraq recognized Kuwait in 1963. Nonetheless, there were occasional clashes along the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border, and relations between the two countries were sometimes tense.
Relations between the two countries improved during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), when Kuwait assisted Iraq with loans and diplomatic backing. After the war ended in 1988, the Iraqi government launched a costly program of reconstruction. By 1990 Iraq had fallen $80 billion in debt and demanded that Kuwait forgive its share of the debt and help with other payments. At the same time, Iraq claimed that Kuwait was pumping oil from a field that
straddled the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border and was not sharing the revenue. Iraq also accused Kuwait of producing more oil than allowed under quotas set by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), thereby depressing the price of oil, Iraq’s main export.
Iraq’s complaints against Kuwait grew increasingly harsh, but they were mostly about money and did not suggest that Iraq was about to revive its land claim to Kuwait. When Iraqi forces began to mobilize near the Kuwaiti border in the summer of 1990, several Arab states tried to mediate the dispute. Kuwait, seeking to avoid looking like a puppet of outside powers, did not call on the United States or other non-Arab powers for support. For their part, the U.S. and other Western governments generally expected that at worst Iraq would seize some border area to intimidate Kuwait, so they avoided being pulled into the dispute. Arab mediators convinced Iraq and
Kuwait to negotiate their differences in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, on August 1, 1990, but that session resulted only in charges and countercharges. A
second session was scheduled to take place in Baghdād, the Iraqi capital, but Iraq invaded Kuwait the next day, leading some observers to suspect that Iraqi president Saddam Hussein had planned the invasion all along.
III -IRAQ INVADES
The Iraqi attack began shortly after midnight on August 2. About 150,000 Iraqi troops, many of them veterans of the Iran-Iraq War, easily overwhelmed the unprepared and inexperienced Kuwaiti forces, which numbered about 20,000. By dawn Iraq had assumed control of Kuwait city, the capital, and was soon in complete control of the country. Hussein’s political strategy was less clear than his military strategy. The Iraqis initially posed as liberators, hoping to appeal to Kuwaiti democrats who opposed the ruling Sabah monarchy. When this claim attracted neither Kuwaiti nor international support, it was dropped. In place of the Sabahs, most of whom fled during the invasion, Iraq installed a puppet government.
The United Nations Security Council and the Arab League immediately
condemned the Iraqi invasion. Four days later, the Security Council imposed an economic embargo on Iraq that prohibited nearly all trade with Iraq. Iraq responded to the sanctions by annexing Kuwait on August 8, prompting the exiled Sabah family to call for a stronger international response. In October, Kuwait’s rulers met with their democratic opponents in Jiddah, with the hope of uniting during the occupation. The Sabah family promised the democrats that if returned to Kuwait, they would restore constitutional rule and
parliament (both of which had been suspended in 1986).
In return, the democrats pledged to support the government in exile. The unified leadership proved useful in winning international support for an eviction of Iraq. Fewer than half of all Kuwaitis stayed in Kuwait through the occupation; of those who stayed, some formed resistance organizations but with little effect.
Any armed attempt to roll back the Iraqi invasion depended on Saudi Arabia, which shares a border with both Iraq and Kuwait. Saudi Arabia had neither the power nor the inclination to fight Iraq alone; if the Saudi government invited foreign troops into the country to attack Iraq, however, it risked appearing to be under their influence. Saudi rulers did eventually open the country to foreign forces, in large part because they were alarmed by Iraq’s
aggressive diplomacy and because U.S. intelligence reports claimed that Iraqi forces were well positioned for a strike against Saudi Arabia. Other Arab countries, such as Egypt, Syria, and the smaller states along the Persian Gulf, feared that even if Iraq’s conquests stopped at Kuwait, Iraq could still
intimidate the rest of the region. Western powers supported a rollback of Iraqi forces because they were afraid Iraq could now dominate international oil supplies. Finally, other members of the United Nations (UN) did not want to allow one UN member state to eliminate another.
Beginning a week after the Iraqi takeover of Kuwait and continuing for several months, a large international force gathered in Saudi Arabia.
The United States sent more than 400,000 troops, and more than 200,000 additional troops came from Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, France, Kuwait, Egypt, Syria, Senegal, Niger, Morocco, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, and Bahrain. Other countries
contributed ships, air forces, and medical units, including Canada, Italy, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Czechoslovakia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Poland, and South Korea. Still other countries made other contributions: Turkey allowed air bases on its territory to be used by coalition planes, and Japan and Germany gave financial support. The initial goal of the force was to prevent further Iraqi action, but most countries were aware the force might ultimately be used to drive Iraq from Kuwait.
The Iraqis tried to deter and split the growing international coalition through several means. They made it clear that their adversaries would pay heavily if war broke out, and they hinted they would use chemical weapons and missile attacks on cities, as they had against Iran during the Iran-Iraq War. Iraq also detained citizens of coalition countries who had been in Kuwait at the time of the invasion and said they would be held in militarily sensitive areas—in effect using them as human shields to deter coalition attacks. Iraq eventually released the last of the foreigners in December 1990 under pressure from several Arab nations. In an effort to weaken Arab support within the coalition, Iraq tried to link its occupation of Kuwait to the larger Arab-Israeli conflict in the region. The Iraqis argued that since the UN had not forced Israel to leave Arab territories it occupied during and after the Six-Day War of 1967, it
should not force Iraq to leave Kuwait. The Iraqis further implied they might leave Kuwait if Israel withdrew from the Occupied Territories. Several Arab countries responded positively to Iraq’s statements; however, most of these were states such as Jordan and Yemen, which were not part of the coalition.
Only in Morocco and Syria did government support for coalition involvement weaken as a result of Iraq’s initiative.
The coalition’s greatest military concern during the closing months of 1990 was that Iraqi forces would attack before coalition forces were fully in place, but no such attack took place. The coalition was also troubled that Iraq might partially withdraw from Kuwait, which could split the coalition between
nations eager to avoid fighting and nations wanting to push for full withdrawal. The United States in particular feared that signs of progress might lessen the resolve of some coalition partners and so discouraged attempts to mediate the crisis. Iraq’s uncompromising stand helped build support among coalition members for the American hard line.
On November 29, with coalition forces massing in Saudi Arabia and Iraq showing no signs of retreat, the UN Security Council passed a resolution to allow member states to “use all necessary means” to force Iraq from Kuwait if Iraq remained in the country after January 15, 1991. The Iraqis rejected the ultimatum. Soon after the vote, the United States agreed to a direct meeting between Secretary of State James Baker and Iraq’s foreign minister. The two sides met on January 9. Neither offered to compromise. The United States underscored the ultimatum, and the Iraqis refused to comply with it, even threatening to attack Israel. For the United States, the meeting was its way of showing the conflict could not be resolved through negotiation.
A large minority of the U.S. population opposed military action. Opponents were concerned that the armed forces would suffer large casualties and argued that the only reason for the invasion was to guarantee a cheap supply of oil. Many such opponents thought economic sanctions would
eventually force Iraq to leave Kuwait. President George Bush maintained that larger political principles were involved and that economic sanctions would not work. He also argued that the UN resolution gave him the authority to use military force. Other Americans believed the president did not have the constitutional authority to order an attack without a congressional
declaration of war. On January 12, 1991, the U.S. Congress narrowly passed a resolution authorizing the president to use force, nullifying the domestic debate.
IV -THE COALITION ATTACKS BY AIR
When the UN deadline of January 15 passed without an Iraqi withdrawal, a vast majority of coalition members joined in the decision to attack Iraq. A few
members, such as Morocco, elected not to take part in the military strikes. In the early morning of January 17, 1991, coalition forces began a massive air attack on Iraqi targets.
The air assault had three goals: to attack Iraqi air defenses, to disrupt command and control, and to weaken ground forces in and around Kuwait. The coalition made swift progress against Iraq’s air defenses, giving the coalition almost uncontested control of the skies over Iraq and Kuwait. The second task, disrupting command and control, was larger and more difficult. It required attacks on the Iraqi electrical system, communications centers, roads and bridges, and other military and government targets. These targets were often located in civilian areas and were typically used by both civilians and the military. Although the coalition air forces often used very precise weapons, the attacks caused many civilian casualties and completely disrupted Iraqi civilian life. The third task, weakening Iraq’s ground forces, was larger still. The coalition used less sophisticated weaponry to strike Iraqi defensive positions in both Iraq and Kuwait, to destroy their equipment, and to undermine morale. After five and a half weeks of intense bombing and more than 100,000 flights by coalition planes, Iraq’s forces were severely damaged.
In an attempt to pry the coalition apart, Iraq fired Scud missiles at both Saudi Arabia and Israel, which especially disrupted Israeli civilian life. Iraq could thus portray its Arab adversaries as fighting on the side of Israel. The
strategy failed to split the coalition, in part because the Israeli government did not retaliate. Iraq also issued thinly veiled threats that it would use chemical and biological weapons. The United States hinted in return that such an attack might provoke a massive response, possibly including the use of nuclear weapons. Iraqi ground forces also initiated a limited amount of ground fighting, occupying the Saudi border town of Khafji on January 30 before being driven back.
One month into the air war, the Iraqis began negotiating with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) over a plan to withdraw from Kuwait. Had this initiative come before the start of the coalition’s attack, it might have split the coalition; now it simply seemed a sign that the war was weighing heavily on Iraq. The war made diplomacy difficult for Iraq: officials had to travel overland to Iran and then fly to Moscow to ferry messages back and forth. Sensing victory, the coalition united behind a demand for Iraq’s unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait.
V -LAND WAR
On February 24 the coalition launched its long-anticipated land offensive. The bulk of the attack was in southwestern Iraq, where coalition forces first moved north, then turned east toward the Iraqi port of Al Başrah. This maneuver surrounded Kuwait, encircling the Iraqi forces there and in southern Iraq, and allowed coalition forces (mainly Arab) to move up the coast and take Kuwait city. Some Iraqi units resisted, but the coalition
offensive advanced more quickly than anticipated. Thousands of Iraqi troops surrendered. Others deserted. Iraq then focused its efforts on withdrawing its elite units and sabotaging Kuwaiti infrastructure and industry. Many oil wells were set on fire, creating huge oil lakes, thick black smoke, and other
environmental damage. Two days after the ground war began, Iraq announced it was leaving Kuwait.
On February 28, with the collapse of Iraqi resistance and the recapture of Kuwait—thereby fulfilling the coalition’s stated goals—the coalition declared a cease-fire. The land war had lasted precisely 100 hours. The cease-fire came shortly before coalition forces would have surrounded Iraqi forces. On March 2the UN Security Council issued a resolution laying down the
conditions for the cease-fire, which were accepted by Iraq in a meeting of military commanders on March 3. More extensive aims, such as overthrowing the Iraqi government or destroying Iraqi forces, did not have the support of all coalition members. Most Arab members, for example, believed the war was fought to restore one Arab country and not to destroy another. The United States also worried that extending the goal would have involved them in endless fighting.
The Iraqis achieved none of their initial goals. Rather than enhancing their economic, military, and political position, they were economically
devastated, militarily defeated, and politically isolated. Yet because the government and many of the military forces remained intact, the Iraqis could claim mere survival as a victory. The surviving military forces were used a short time later to suppress two postwar rebellions: one involving Shia Muslims in southern Iraq and one involving Kurds in the north.
Almost all of the casualties occurred on the Iraqi side. While estimates during the war had ranged from 10,000 to 100,000 Iraqis killed, Western military experts now agree that Iraq sustained between 20,000 and 35,000
were killed, 148 of whom were American. The number of wounded totaled 776, of whom 458 were American.
VI -CONSEQUENCES OF THE WAR
The end of the fighting left some key issues unresolved, including UN
sanctions against Iraq, which did not end with the war. On April 2, 1991, the Security Council laid out strict demands for ending the sanctions: Iraq would have to accept liability for damages, destroy its chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missiles, forego any nuclear weapons programs, and accept international inspections to ensure these conditions were met. If Iraq complied with these and other resolutions, the UN would discuss removing the sanctions. Iraq resisted, claiming that its withdrawal from Kuwait was sufficient compliance.
Many Western observers believed the victory was hollow because Saddam Hussein was still in power. At first, when Hussein was greatly weakened, Western powers believed a rebellion might succeed in overthrowing him. Meanwhile, potential rebels within Iraq believed they might receive
international help if they rebelled. But when the Shia population of southern Iraq rebelled shortly after the cease-fire, they were greeted not with
international help but with Iraqi military forces returning from the southern front. It quickly became clear that the rebels would receive no international help, although several governments gave them verbal support. Under the terms of the cease-fire, which established “no-fly zones” in the north and south, Iraqis could not attack the Shias with airplanes, but could use helicopters, which they did to great effect. Spontaneous and loosely organized, the rebellion was crushed almost as quickly as it arose.
The defeat of the Shias made the debate over helping Iraqi rebels even more urgent. Ultimately, however, most Western governments decided that if Hussein collapsed, Iraq might disintegrate, ushering in a new round of regional instability. A short while later, Kurds in the north of the country rebelled, and they too received no help. The Kurds were able to withstand Hussein longer than the Shias, in part because they had a history of
organized, armed resistance. In the end, though, the Kurds achieved only a very modest success: a UN-guaranteed haven in the extreme north of the country. No permanent solution—such as Kurdish self-rule—was negotiated. Elsewhere the effects of the war were less severe. In Kuwait the prewar
regime was restored, and in 1992 the emir, Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, honored his pledge in exile to reconvene the country’s parliament. Palestinians in Kuwait fared poorly after the war, in large part because Yasir Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and other prominent Palestinians had endorsed Hussein and his anti-Israeli rhetoric. Blamed for collaborating with the Iraqis, most of the Palestinian population (estimated at 400,000 before the war) was expelled from Kuwait or forbidden to return. Following the war, thousands of American soldiers developed mild to
debilitating health problems, including abdominal pain, diarrhea, insomnia, short-term memory loss, rashes, headaches, blurred vision, and aching joints.
The symptoms became known collectively as Gulf War syndrome but their cause was unknown. Speculation about the cause centered on exposure to chemical and biological weapons; experimental drugs given to troops to protect against chemical weapons; vaccinations against illness and disease; insecticides sprayed over troop-populated areas; and smoke from burning oil wells ignited by retreating Iraqis. The U.S. Department of Defense originally stated it had no conclusive evidence that troops had been exposed to
chemical or biological weapons. However, in 1996 the department acknowledged that more than 20,000 American troops may have been
exposed to sarin, a toxic nerve gas (see Chemical and Biological Warfare). In 1997 the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) suggested the deadly gas may have spread farther than previously thought, affecting perhaps
hundreds of thousands of troops.
The UN continued to maintain most of the economic embargo on Iraq after the war, and several coalition countries enforced other sanctions, such as the no-fly zones. In 1995 the UN amended the sanctions to allow Iraq to sell limited amounts of oil for food and medicine if it also designated some of the revenue to pay for damages caused by the war; Iraq initially rejected this plan but then accepted it in 1996.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
I -INTRODUCTION
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), regional defense alliance created by the North Atlantic Treaty signed on April 4, 1949, at the beginning of the
Cold War. NATO has its headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. The original purpose of NATO was to defend Western Europe against possible attack by Communist nations, led by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The original signatories were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Greece and Turkey were admitted to the alliance in 1952, West Germany in 1955, and Spain in 1982. In 1990 the newly unified Germany replaced West Germany as a NATO member.
After the formal end of the Cold War in 1991, NATO reached out to former members of the Warsaw Pact, the Communist military alliance created in 1955 by the USSR to counter NATO. In 1999 former Warsaw Pact members Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic became members of NATO, bringing the total membership to 19 nations. In 2002 Russia, once the USSR’s largest republic, became a limited partner in NATO as a member of the NATO-Russia Council. The same year NATO invited the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, formerly part of the USSR, to join, along with Slovenia, formerly part of Communist Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria, Romania, and Slovakia, once part of Czechoslovakia. These countries were expected to become members of NATO in 2004. Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Romania were all former Warsaw Pact members.
NATO's purpose is to enhance the stability, well-being, and freedom of its members through a system of collective security. Members of the alliance agree to defend one another from attack by other nations. Over the years the existence of NATO has led to closer ties among its members and to a growing community of interests. The treaty itself has provided a model for other collective security agreements.
II -BACKGROUND
In the years after World War II (1939-1945), many Western leaders believed the policies of the USSR threatened international stability and peace. The forcible installation of Communist governments throughout Eastern Europe, territorial demands by the Soviets, and their support of guerrilla war in Greece and regional separatism in Iran appeared to many as the first steps of World War III. Such events prompted the signing of the Dunkirk Treaty in 1947 between Britain and France, which pledged a common defense against aggression. Subsequent events, including the rejection by Eastern European nations of the European Recovery Program (Marshall Plan) and the creation of Cominform, a European Communist organization, in 1947, led to the
Brussels Treaty signed by most Western European countries in 1948. Among the goals of that pact was the collective defense of its members. The Berlin blockade that began in March 1948 led to negotiations between Western Europe, Canada, and the United States that resulted in the North Atlantic Treaty.
III -TREATY PROVISIONS
The North Atlantic Treaty consists of a preamble and 14 articles. The
preamble states the purpose of the treaty: to promote the common values of its members and to “unite their efforts for collective defense.” Article 1 calls for peaceful resolution of disputes. Article 2 pledges the parties to economic and political cooperation. Article 3 calls for development of the capacity for defense. Article 4 provides for joint consultations when a member is
threatened. Article 5 promises the use of the members' armed forces for “collective self-defense.” Article 6 defines the areas covered by the treaty. Article 7 affirms the precedence of members' obligations under the United Nations Charter. Article 8 safeguards against conflict with any other treaties of the signatories. Article 9 creates a council to oversee implementation of the treaty. Article 10 describes admission procedures for other nations. Article 11 states the ratification procedure. Article 12 allows for
reconsideration of the treaty. Article 13 outlines withdrawal procedures. Article 14 calls for the deposition of the official copies of the treaty in the U.S. Archives.
IV -STRUCTURE
The highest authority within NATO is the North Atlantic Council, composed of permanent delegates from all members, headed by a secretary general. It is responsible for general policy, budgetary outlines, and administrative
actions, and is the decision-making body of NATO. The Secretariat, various temporary committees, and the Military Committee are among the
committees that report to the North Atlantic Council. The secretary general runs the Secretariat, which handles all the nonmilitary functions of the alliance. The temporary committees deal with specific assignments of the council. The Military Committee consists of the chiefs of staff of the various armed forces; it meets twice a year. Between such meetings the Military Committee, in permanent session with representatives of the members, defines military policies. Below the Military Committee are the various
geographical commands: Allied Command Europe, Allied Command Atlantic, and the Canada-U.S. Regional Planning Group. These commands are in charge of deploying armed forces in their areas.
V -HISTORY A -Early Years
Until 1950 NATO consisted primarily of a pledge by the United States to defend other members of the alliance under the terms of Article 5 of the treaty. However, there was no effective military or administrative structure to implement this pledge. The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950
convinced the allies that the Soviets might act against a divided Germany. The result was not only the creation of a military command system, but also the expansion of the organization. In 1952 Greece and Turkey joined the alliance, and in 1955 West Germany was accepted under a complicated arrangement whereby Germany would not be allowed to manufacture
nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons. In its first decade NATO was mainly a military organization dependent on U.S. power for security and for the revival of Europe's economy and national governments.
B -The Cold War Era
NATO’s importance grew with the worsening of relations between the Soviet Union and Western powers. As the Soviet Union achieved parity in nuclear weaponry with Western powers, some European nations feared that the United States would not honor its pledge to defend other members of the alliance. The 1960s were characterized by two consequent developments in NATO: the withdrawal of France, under President Charles de Gaulle, from the organization but not from the alliance in 1966; and the rising influence of the smaller nations, which sought to use NATO as an instrument of détente as well as defense.
The crisis in Czechoslovakia in 1968 was a turning point for NATO; thereafter it was viewed as a source of security for Europe. America's involvement in the Vietnam War (1957-1975) further diminished U.S. authority and
contributed to dissatisfaction within NATO. Although the 1970s began with some agreements as a result of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I), the decade ended in disillusionment as the Soviets rapidly built up their military arsenal. NATO resolved this problem with the dual-track program of 1979, in which new defense efforts were accompanied by new efforts at détente. The 1980s opened with a deepening crisis between the East and West. In 1983 the USSR failed to prevent the deployment of intermediate-range ballistic missiles, designed to cope with Soviet weapons targeted on European cities. The signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty
(INF) in 1987 presaged the breakdown of the Warsaw Pact (see Arms Control). The decade ended with the apparent success of NATO in surmounting the challenge of the Communist bloc.
C -End of the Cold War
In the late 1980s Communist governments began to crumble throughout Eastern Europe. West Germany absorbed East Germany to form the Federal Republic of Germany in 1990, and the Warsaw Pact dissolved in early 1991. The Soviet Union broke apart later that year, drastically reducing the military threat to NATO. Nevertheless, many Western observers saw NATO in the post-Cold War era as an umbrella of security in a Europe buffeted by the nationalist passions unleashed in Eastern Europe and the former USSR. Following the dissolution of the USSR, NATO sought to strengthen relations with the newly independent nations that had formerly made up the USSR and with other Central Eastern European countries that belonged to the Warsaw Pact. The North Atlantic Cooperation Council, established in November 1991, provides a forum for consultations between NATO members, Eastern
European nations, and the former Soviet republics. In 1993 NATO members endorsed a proposal to offer former Warsaw Pact members limited
associations with NATO. Under the plan, known as Partnership for Peace (PFP), nonmembers could be invited to participate in information sharing, joint exercises, and peacekeeping operations. The Partnership for Peace was a step toward providing security and cooperation throughout all of Europe. Many former Soviet satellites were eager to join. Although Russia opposed their membership and threatened to abstain from the Partnership for Peace, it did join eventually. Members of PFP may eventually attain full membership in NATO if other membership requirements, such as a trained army to join NATO troops, are met.
In 1995, after a 30-year boycott, France returned to NATO, accepting a seat on the military committee after U.S. president Bill Clinton accelerated plans for NATO's expansion. Also at this time, the United States and NATO began serious efforts to bring to an end the continuing war in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, which threatened European stability. Leaders of the NATO alliance authorized a campaign of air strikes against Bosnian Serb positions to force the Bosnian Serbs to negotiate a peace settlement. After weeks of air attacks, the Bosnian Serb leaders agreed to be represented at a peace conference near Dayton, Ohio, and in December 1995 the warring parties
signed a peace accord that ended the war (see Dayton Peace Accord). The following month, as part of the Dayton agreement, NATO deployed a multinational force of tens of thousands of troops, known as the
Implementation Force (IFOR), to monitor and enforce the cease-fire in Bosnia. A year later NATO replaced this force with a smaller Stabilization Force
(SFOR). Its mission was extended indefinitely to ensure stability in the region. D -Recent Developments
In March 1999 three former members of the Warsaw Pact—Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic—joined the alliance. The same month, NATO forces began a campaign of air strikes against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY, now the republic of Serbia and Montenegro). The NATO strikes were launched after Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević refused to accept an international peace plan that would have granted a period of autonomy for the Yugoslav province of Kosovo. The province was populated mainly by ethnic Albanians, many of whom were fighting for autonomy or
independence for Kosovo. Western leaders hoped the NATO attacks would bring Milošević back to the bargaining table. They also hoped to end the ongoing repression of the minority ethnic Albanians by the FRY's ethnic Serbian majority.
The first NATO attacks were limited to a few dozen military targets, but the alliance dramatically expanded the air campaign against the FRY after reports of widespread atrocities by Serb forces against Kosovo's ethnic
Albanian civilian population. By April 1999 more than 1,000 warplanes under NATO command were involved in strikes throughout the republic. It was the largest military operation ever undertaken by NATO.
Instead of persuading Yugoslav leaders to accept a negotiated peace, the air strikes appeared to deepen Serbian resolve to oppose NATO demands and intensified the violence directed at ethnic Albanians. Serbian army and police forces destroyed villages, killed civilians in Kosovo, and forced hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians to flee the province. The flight of refugees was the largest mass migration in Europe since World War II. Critics charged that NATO failed to anticipate the refugee crisis.
International opposition to the NATO assault came swiftly. Russia, China, and India accused NATO of violating international law by not seeking the approval of the United Nations (UN) before striking Yugoslavia. Russia broke off all
diplomatic ties with NATO and introduced a resolution to the UN Security Council that called for an end to the bombardment. The resolution was rejected decisively. (Russia and NATO did not formally resume contact until early 2000.)
NATO was further criticized after warplanes under its command bombed civilian structures and convoys of ethnic Albanians trying to flee Kosovo. NATO leadership apologized for the attacks, which it maintained were accidental, but insisted that Milošević was responsible for the continuing conflict. After NATO warplanes bombed China's embassy in Belgrade by mistake, Chinese officials called on NATO to end the air campaign. In June 1999, after 11 weeks of NATO bombing had incapacitated or
destroyed much of Yugoslavia's infrastructure, the FRY consented to most of the alliance's demands. FRY leaders signed an agreement that ended the bombing and placed Kosovo under international control. As part of the agreement, a NATO-led multinational force of thousands of troops occupied Kosovo to help ensure the safe return of ethnic Albanian refugees. The Kosovo peacekeeping force, known as KFOR, saw its mission extended indefinitely to protect public safety, demilitarize Kosovo, and provide
humanitarian assistance. The agreement also mandated the disarmament of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a guerrilla army organized prior to the NATO campaign that had attempted to drive Serb troops and police forces from the province.
The campaign against the FRY revealed the difficulty of sustaining military action that requires the consensus of the entire 19-country NATO alliance, and it exposed differences of opinion in the expanded organization. During the conflict, British leaders advocated attacking the FRY with ground forces, while other members of the alliance publicly opposed plans to invade
Kosovo. Despite these disagreements, the core members of the alliance continued to support the air campaign.
NATO's involvement in Kosovo also indicated the expanded role of the
alliance in European and world affairs. Prior to the hostilities, military forces under NATO command served primarily to deter would-be attackers. During the Kosovo operation, NATO attempted to use its military might to advance humanitarian goals, to force compliance with the alliance's wishes, and to prevent the possibility of a wider conflict in Europe. NATO intervened in Kosovo despite the fact that none of the alliance's members were directly
attacked by the FRY.
In 2002 Russia became a limited partner in NATO as part of the NATO-Russia Council. The creation of the council gave Russia the opportunity to take part in discussions about NATO decisions but without having a binding vote. Most key decisions, such as NATO’s expansion, remained exclusive to the 19-member council of ministers.
Also in 2002, NATO invited seven other countries—Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovenia, and Slovakia—to become members of the organization. All seven were expected to be admitted in 2004, bringing NATO’s total membership to 26.
Vietnam War
I -INTRODUCTION
Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, military struggle fought in Vietnam from 1959 to 1975, involving the North Vietnamese and the National Liberation Front (NLF) in conflict with United States forces and the South Vietnamese army. From 1946 until 1954, the Vietnamese had struggled for their independence from France during the First Indochina War. At the end of this war, the country was temporarily divided into North and South Vietnam. North Vietnam came under the control of Vietnamese
Communists who had opposed France and who aimed for a unified Vietnam under Communist rule. The South was controlled by non-Communist
Vietnamese.
The United States became involved in Vietnam because American policymakers believed that if the entire country fell under a Communist government, Communism would spread throughout Southeast Asia. This belief was known as the “domino theory.” The U.S. government, therefore, helped to create the anti-Communist South Vietnamese government. This government’s repressive policies led to rebellion in the South, and in 1960 the NLF was formed with the aim of overthrowing the government of South Vietnam and reunifying the country.
In 1965 the United States sent in troops to prevent the South Vietnamese government from collapsing. Ultimately, however, the United States failed to achieve its goal, and in 1975 Vietnam was reunified under Communist
control; in 1976 it officially became the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. During the conflict, approximately 3.2 million Vietnamese were killed, in addition to another 1.5 million to 2 million Lao and Cambodians who were drawn into the war. Nearly 58,000 Americans lost their lives.
II -BACKGROUND
From the 1880s until World War II (1939-1945), France governed Vietnam as part of French Indochina, which also included Cambodia and Laos. Vietnam was under the nominal control of an emperor, Bao Dai. In 1940 Japanese troops invaded and occupied French Indochina. In May 1941 Vietnamese nationalists established the League for the Independence of Vietnam, or Viet Minh, seeing the turmoil of World War II as an opportunity to overthrow
French colonial rule. The Viet Minh, a front organization of the Indochinese Communist Party, sought popular support for national independence, as well as social and political reform.
The United States demanded that Japan leave Indochina, warning of military action. The Viet Minh began guerrilla warfare against Japan and entered an effective alliance with the United States. Viet Minh troops rescued downed U.S. pilots, located Japanese prison camps, helped U.S. prisoners to escape, and provided valuable intelligence to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Ho Chi Minh, the principal leader of the Viet Minh, was even made a special OSS agent.
When the Japanese formally surrendered to the Allies on September 2, 1945, Ho used the occasion to declare the independence of Vietnam, which he called the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). Emperor Bao Dai had abdicated the throne a week earlier. The French, however, refused to acknowledge Vietnam’s independence, and later that year drove the Viet Minh into the north of the country. There they regrouped as the Lien Viet Front, which sought a broader base of support, including moderates; it was replaced in 1955 by the Fatherland Front, which served as the Communist-front organization of the DRV. (The NLF later served as the southern Communist-front.) However, the term Viet Minh continued to be commonly used for supporters of the movement for a unified Vietnam. Also in 1951 some Vietnamese nationalists created the Lao Dong (Workers’ Party) as the successor to the Indochinese Communist Party, which had been operating clandestinely since 1945 in the war against the French. The Lao Dong was conceived as a
Hanoi. By 1953 most Viet Minh were members of the Lao Dong.
Immediately after Ho declared the formation of the DRV, he wrote eight letters to U.S. president Harry Truman, imploring him to recognize Vietnam’s independence. Many OSS agents informed the U.S. administration that
despite being a Communist, Ho Chi Minh was not a puppet of the
Communist-led Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and that he could potentially become a valued ally in Asia. Tensions between the United States and the USSR had mounted after World War II, resulting in the Cold War. The foreign policy of the United States during the Cold War was driven by a fear of the spread of Communism. After World War II Communist
governments came to power in Eastern European nations that had fallen under the domination of the USSR, and in 1949 Communists took control of China. United States policymakers felt they could not afford to lose Southeast Asia as well to Communist rule. The United States therefore condemned Ho Chi Minh as an agent of international Communism and offered to assist the French in reestablishing a colonial regime in Vietnam.
In 1946 United States warships ferried elite French troops to Vietnam where they quickly regained control of the major cities, including Hanoi, Haiphong, Da Nang, Hue, and Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), while the Viet Minh
controlled the countryside. The Viet Minh had only 2,000 troops at the time Vietnam’s independence was declared, but recruiting increased after the arrival of French troops. By the late 1940s, the Viet Minh had hundreds of thousands of soldiers and were fighting the French to a draw. In 1949 the French set up a government to rival Ho Chi Minh’s, installing Bao Dai as head of state.
In May 1954 the Viet Minh mounted a massive assault on the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu, in northwestern Vietnam near the border with Laos. The Battle of Dien Bien Phu resulted in perhaps the most humiliating defeat in French military history. Already tired of the war, the French public forced their government to reach a peace agreement at the Geneva Conference.
France asked the other world powers to help draw up a plan for French
withdrawal from the region and for the future of Vietnam. Meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, from May 8 to July 21, 1954, diplomats from France, Great
Britain, the USSR, the People’s Republic of China, and the United States, as well as representatives from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, attended
These agreements provided for a cease-fire throughout Vietnam and a
temporary partition of the country at the 17th parallel. French troops were to withdraw to the south of the dividing line until they could be safely removed from the country, while Viet Minh forces were to retreat to the north. Ho Chi Minh maintained control of North Vietnam, or the DRV, while Emperor Bao Dai remained head of South Vietnam. Elections were to be held in July 1956 throughout the North and South under the supervision of the International Control Commission, comprised of representatives from Canada, Poland, and India. Following these elections, Vietnam was to be reunited under the
government chosen by popular vote. The Viet Minh reluctantly agreed to the partitioning of Vietnam in the expectation that the elections would reunify the country under Communist rule.
The United States did not want to allow the possibility of Communist control over Vietnam. In June 1954, during the Geneva Conference, the United States pressured Bao Dai to appoint Ngo Dinh Diem prime minister of the government in South Vietnam. The United States chose Diem for his
nationalist and anti-Communist credentials. With U.S. support, Diem refused to sign the Geneva Accords. The United States, which acted as an observer during the delegations, also did not become a signatory. Immediately after the Geneva Conference, the U.S. government moved to establish the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), a regional alliance that extended protection to South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos in cases of Communist subversion or insurrection. SEATO, which came into force in 1955, became the mechanism by which Washington justified its support for South Vietnam; this support eventually became direct involvement of U.S. troops.
Meanwhile, Diem announced he had no intention of participating in the planned national elections, which Ho Chi Minh and the Lao Dong were favored to win. Instead, Diem held elections only in South Vietnam, in October 1955.
He won the elections with 98.2 percent of the vote, but many historians believe these elections were rigged, since about 150,000 more people voted in Saigon than were registered. Diem then deposed Bao Dai, who had been the only other candidate, and declared South Vietnam to be an independent nation called the Republic of Vietnam (RVN), with himself as president and Saigon as its capital. Vietnamese Communists and many non-Communist Vietnamese nationalists saw the creation of the RVN as an effort by the
United States to interfere with the independence promised at Geneva. III -THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR: 1959-1965
Diem represented the interests of the urban, Catholic minority in South Vietnam. Although Diem also found some support in the countryside among non-Communists, he did not enjoy a broad base of support. The repressive measures of the Diem government, designed to persecute Viet Minh activists and gain control of the countryside, eventually led to increasingly organized opposition within South Vietnam. The United States initially backed Diem’s government with military advisers and financial assistance to keep it from collapsing. The political situation in South Vietnam became even more unstable after Diem was killed in a military coup in 1963, leading to more direct involvement by the United States. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 1964 gave President Lyndon B. Johnson permission to launch a full-scale military intervention in Vietnam. The first American combat troops arrived in Vietnam in March 1965.
A -Rebellion in South Vietnam
When Vietnam was divided in 1954, many Viet Minh who had been born in the southern part of the country returned to their native villages to await the 1956 elections and the reunification of their nation. When the elections did not take place as planned, these Viet Minh immediately formed the core of opposition to Diem’s government and sought its overthrow. They were greatly aided in their efforts to organize resistance in the countryside by Diem’s own policies, which alienated many peasants.
Beginning in 1955, the United States created the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) in South Vietnam. Using these troops, Diem took land away from peasants and returned it to former landlords, reversing the land
redistribution program implemented by the Viet Minh. He also forcibly moved many villagers from their ancestral lands to controlled settlements in an attempt to prevent Communist activity, and he drafted their sons into the ARVN.
Diem sought to undermine the Viet Minh, whom he derogatorily referred to as Viet Cong (the Vietnamese equivalent of calling them “Commies”), yet their influence continued to grow. Most southern Viet Minh were committed to the Lao Dong’s program of national liberation, reunification of Vietnam, and reconstruction of society along socialist principles. By the late 1950s they were anxious to begin full-scale armed struggle against Diem but were
held in check by the northern branch of the party, which feared that this would invite the entry of U.S. armed forces. In 1960, however, widespread opposition to Diem in rural areas convinced the party leadership to officially sanction the formation of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (commonly known as the National Liberation Front, or NLF).
The NLF was a classical Communist-front organization; although Communists dominated the NLF leadership, the organization also embraced
non-Communists who opposed the South Vietnamese government. The aim of the NLF was to overthrow the Diem government and reunify Vietnam. Toward this end, the NLF began to train and equip a guerrilla force that was formally organized in 1961 as the People’s Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF).
Diem’s support was concentrated mainly in the cities. Although he had been a nationalist opposed to French rule, he welcomed into his government those Vietnamese who had collaborated with the French, and many of these
became ARVN officers. Catholics were a minority throughout Vietnam, amounting to no more than 10 percent of the population, but they
predominated in government positions because Diem himself was Catholic. Between 1954 and 1955, operatives paid by the CIA spread rumors in
northern Vietnam that Communists were going to launch a persecution of Catholics, which caused nearly 1 million Catholics to flee to the south. Their resettlement uprooted Buddhists who already deeply resented Diem’s rule because of his severe discrimination against them.
In May 1963 Buddhists began a series of demonstrations against Diem, and the demonstrators were fired on by police. At least 7 Buddhist monks set themselves on fire to protest the repression. Diem dismissed these suicides as publicity stunts and promptly arrested 1,400 monks. He then arrested thousands of high school and grade school students who were involved in protests against the government. After this, Diem was viewed as an
embarrassment both by the United States and by many of his own generals. The Saigon government’s war against the NLF was also going badly. In January 1963 an ARVN force of 2,000 encountered a group of 350 NLF soldiers at Ap Bac, a village south of Saigon in the Mekong River Delta. The ARVN troops were equipped with jet fighters, helicopters, and armored personnel carriers, while the NLF forces had only small arms. Nonetheless, 61 ARVN soldiers were killed, as were 3 U.S. military advisers. By contrast, the NLF forces lost only 12 men. Some U.S. military advisers began to report
that Saigon was losing the war, but the official military and embassy press officers reported Ap Bac as a significant ARVN victory. Despite this official account, a handful of U.S. journalists began to report pessimistically about the future of U.S. involvement in South Vietnam, which led to increasing public concern.
President John F. Kennedy still believed that the ARVN could become
effective. Some of his advisers advocated the commitment of U.S. combat forces, but Kennedy decided to try to increase support for the ARVN among the people of Vietnam through counterinsurgency. United States Special Forces (Green Berets) would work with ARVN troops directly in the villages in an effort to match NLF political organizing and to win over the South
Vietnamese people.
To support the U.S. effort, the Diem government developed a “strategic hamlet” program that was essentially an extension of Diem’s earlier relocation practices. Aimed at cutting the links between villagers and the NLF, the program removed peasants from their traditional villages, often at gunpoint, and resettled them in new hamlets fortified to keep the NLF out. Administration was left up to Diem’s brother Nhu, a corrupt official who
charged villagers for building materials that had been donated by the United States. In many cases peasants were forbidden to leave the hamlets, but many of the young men quickly left anyway and joined the NLF. Young men who were drafted into the ARVN often also worked secretly for the NLF. The Kennedy administration concluded that Diem’s policies were alienating the peasantry and contributing significantly to NLF recruitment.
The number of U.S. advisers assigned to the ARVN rose steadily. In January 1961, when Kennedy took office, there were 800 U.S. advisers in Vietnam; by November 1963 there were 16,700. American airpower was assigned to support ARVN operations; this included the aerial spraying of herbicides such as Agent Orange, which was intended to deprive the NLF of food and jungle cover. Despite these measures, the ARVN continued to lose ground.
As the military situation deteriorated in South Vietnam, the United States sought to blame it on Diem’s incompetence and hoped that changes in his administration would improve the situation. Nhu’s corruption became a principal focus; Diem was urged to remove his brother, but he refused. Many in Diem’s military were especially dissatisfied with Diem’s government and the ARVN’s inability to rout the NLF, and they hoped for increased U.S. aid.
General Duong Van Minh informed the CIA and U.S. ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge of a plot to conduct a coup d’état against Diem. Although the United States wanted to remove Diem from power, it did not give formal support for a coup. When the military generals finally staged the coup on November 1, 1963, it resulted in the murder of both Diem and Nhu. In the political
confusion that followed, the security situation in South Vietnam continued to deteriorate. Meanwhile, the CIA was forced to admit that the strength of the NLF was continuing to grow.
************************************************** ***************** B -The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
Succeeding to the presidency after Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963, Lyndon B. Johnson felt he had to take a forceful stance on Vietnam so that other Communist countries would not think that the United States lacked resolve. Kennedy had begun to consider the possibility of withdrawal from Vietnam and had even ordered the removal of 1,000 advisers shortly before he was assassinated, but Johnson increased the number of U.S. advisers to 27,000 by mid-1964. Even though intelligence reports clearly stated that most of the support for the NLF came from the south, Johnson, like his predecessors, continued to insist that North Vietnam was
orchestrating the southern rebellion. He was determined that he would not be held responsible for allowing Vietnam to fall to the Communists.
Johnson believed that the key to success in the war in South Vietnam was to frighten North Vietnam’s leaders with the possibility of full-scale U.S. military intervention. In January 1964 he approved top-secret, covert attacks against North Vietnamese territory, including commando raids against bridges, railways, and coastal installations. Johnson also ordered the U.S. Navy to conduct surveillance missions along the North Vietnamese coast. He
increased the secret bombing of territory in Laos along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a growing network of paths and roads used by the NLF and the North
Vietnamese to transport supplies and troops into South Vietnam. Hanoi concluded that the United States was preparing to occupy South Vietnam and indicated that it, too, was preparing for full-scale war.
On August 2, 1964, North Vietnamese coastal gunboats fired on the destroyer USS Maddox, which had penetrated North Vietnam’s territorial boundaries in the Gulf of Tonkin. Johnson ordered more ships to the area, and on August 4 both the Maddox and the USS Turner Joy reported that North
Vietnamese patrol boats had fired on them. Johnson then ordered the first air strikes against North Vietnamese territory and went on television to seek approval from the U.S. public. (Subsequent congressional investigations would conclude that the August 4 attack almost certainly had never occurred.) The U.S. Congress overwhelmingly passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which effectively handed over war-making powers to Johnson until such time as "peace and security" had returned to Vietnam.
After the Gulf of Tonkin incident Johnson declared, “We seek no wider war.” United States bombing was significantly reduced. Meanwhile, North Vietnam began to dispatch well-trained units of its People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) into the south. The NLF guerrillas coordinated their attacks with PAVN forces. On February 7, 1965, the NLF launched surprise attacks on the U.S.
helicopter base at Pleiku, killing 8 Americans, wounding 126, and destroying 10aircraft; on February 10 they struck again at Qui Nhon, killing 23 U.S. servicemen and wounding 21 at the U.S. enlisted personnel’s quarters there. The attacks coincided with two high-level diplomatic visits: one in Hanoi by Soviet premier Aleksey Kosygin, and the other in Saigon by U.S. national security adviser McGeorge Bundy.
Within hours of the attacks, Johnson approved reprisal air strikes against North Vietnam. In Hanoi, Kosygin abandoned his initiative to persuade North Vietnamese leaders to consider negotiations with the United States, and instead promised them unconditional military aid. Johnson’s advisers, chiefly Bundy and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, believed it was imperative to conduct an intensive air campaign against the North, in part to
demonstrate it would pay a price for supporting the NLF. Johnson authorized a sustained bombing campaign to begin on March 2. Johnson’s senior
planners reached the consensus that U.S. combat forces would be required to protect U.S. air bases, as the ARVN was considered to be too weak for the task. On March 8 the first of these forces, 3,500 U.S. Marines, landed at Da Nang. By the end of April, 56,000 other combat troops had joined them; by June the number had risen to 74,000.
IV -ESCALATED UNITED STATES INVOLVEMENT: 1965-1969
When some of the soldiers of the U.S. 9th Marine Regiment landed in Da Nang in March 1965, their orders were to protect the U.S. air base, but the mission was quickly escalated to include search-and-destroy patrols of the area around the base. This corresponded in miniature to the larger strategy of General William Westmoreland. Westmoreland, who took over the Military
Assistance Command in Vietnam (MACV) in 1964, advocated establishing a large American force and then unleashing it in big sweeps. His strategy was that of attrition—eliminating or wearing down the enemy by inflicting the highest death toll possible. There were 80,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam by the end of 1965; by 1969 a peak of about 543,000 troops would be reached. Having easily pushed aside the ARVN, both the North Vietnamese and the NLF had anticipated the U.S. escalation. With full-scale movement of U.S. troops onto South Vietnamese territory, the Communists claimed that the Saigon regime had become a puppet, not unlike the colonial collaborators with the French. Both the North Vietnamese and NLF appealed to the nationalism of the Vietnamese to rise up and drive this new foreign army from their land.
A -DRV and NLF Strategy
The strategy developed against the United States was the result of intense debate between the northern and southern members of the Lao Dong’s Political Bureau in Hanoi. Truong Chinh, a northerner and the leading
Communist ideologist in Hanoi, argued that the southern Vietnamese must liberate themselves, in accordance with a “people’s war” strategy that
would, if successful, result in a reunified Vietnam; Le Duan, a southerner who became secretary general of the Lao Dong, advocated the North’s full
support of the armed struggle in the South, on the premise that Vietnam was one nation and therefore dependent on all Vietnamese for its independence and reunification.
Ho Chi Minh, revered widely throughout Vietnam as the father of
independence, and other party leaders ultimately sided with Duan’s point of view. Duan’s triumph represented a major turning point within the party in which southerners came to dictate party policy in Hanoi. The Central
Committee Directorate for the South (also known as the Central Office for South Vietnam, or COSVN), formed in 1961 as the leadership group of the newly merged southern and central branches of the Lao Dong, was able to coordinate a unified strategy. COSVN was under the direction of Nguyen Chi Thanh, a southerner and a PAVN general, for most of the war.
After the United States initiated large-scale bombing against the DRV in 1964, in the wake of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, Hanoi dispatched the first unit of northern-born regular soldiers to the south. Previously, southern-born Viet Minh, known as regroupees, had returned to their native regions and joined NLF guerrilla units. Now PAVN regulars, commanded by generals who
usually had been born in the south, began to set up bases in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam in order to gain strategic position.
Unable to cross the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) at the 17th parallel separating North from South Vietnam, PAVN regulars moved into South Vietnam along the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos and Cambodia. In use since 1957, the trail was originally a series of footpaths; by the late 1960s it would become a network of paved highways that enabled the motor transport of people and equipment. The NLF guerrillas and North Vietnamese troops were poorly armed compared to the Americans, so once they were in South Vietnam they avoided open combat. Instead they developed hit-and-run tactics designed to cause steady casualties among the U.S. troops and to wear down popular support for the war in the United States.
B -United States Strategy
In June 1964 retired general Maxwell Taylor replaced Henry Cabot Lodge as ambassador to South Vietnam. A former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the military advisory group to the president, Taylor at first opposed the
introduction of American combat troops, believing that this would make the ARVN quit fighting altogether. By 1965 he agreed to the request of General Westmoreland for combat forces. Taylor initially advocated an enclave
strategy, where U.S. forces would seek to preserve areas already considered to be under Saigon’s control. This quickly proved impossible, since NLF
strength was considerable virtually everywhere in South Vietnam.
In October 1965 the newly arrived 1st Cavalry Division of the U.S. Army fought one of the largest battles of the Vietnam War in the Ia Drang Valley, inflicting a serious defeat on North Vietnamese forces. The North Vietnamese and NLF forces changed their tactics as a result of the battle. From then on both would fight at times of their choosing, hitting rapidly, with surprise if possible, and then withdrawing just as quickly to avoid the impact of
American firepower. The success of the American campaign in the Ia Drang Valley convinced Westmoreland that his strategy of attrition was the key to U.S. victory. He ordered the largest search-and-destroy operations of the war in the “Iron Triangle,” the Communist stronghold in the rural provinces near Saigon. This operation was intended to find and destroy North Vietnam and NLF military headquarters, but the campaign failed to wipe out Communist forces from the area.
McNamara to increase the ferocity of the air war. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had been pressing for this for some time, but there was already some indication that intensified bombing would not produce the desired results. In 1966 the bombing of North Vietnam’s oil facilities had destroyed 70 percent of their fuel reserves, but the DRV’s ability to wage the war had not been affected. Planners wished to avoid populated areas, but when 150,000 sorties per year were being flown by U.S. warplanes, civilian casualties were inevitable. These casualties provoked revulsion both in the United States and internationally. In 1967 the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Earle Wheeler,
declared that no more “major military targets” were left. Unable to widen the bombing to population centers for fear of Chinese and Soviet reactions in support of North Vietnam, the U.S. Department of Defense had to admit stalemate in the air war as well. The damage that had already been inflicted on Vietnam’s population was enormous.
C -The Tet Offensive and Beyond
In 1967 North Vietnam and the NLF decided the time had come to mount an all-out offensive aimed at inflicting serious losses on both the ARVN and U.S. forces. They planned the Tet Offensive with the hope that this would
significantly affect the public mood in the United States. In December 1967 North Vietnamese troops attacked and surrounded the U.S. Marine base at Khe Sanh, placing it under siege. Westmoreland ordered the outpost held at all costs. To prevent the Communists from overrunning the base, about 50,000 U.S. Marines and Army troops were called into the area, thus weakening positions further south.
This concentration of American troops in one spot was exactly what the COSVN strategists had hoped would happen. The main thrust of the Tet Offensive then began on January 31, 1968, at the start of Tet, or the
Vietnamese lunar new year celebration, when a lull in fighting traditionally took place. Most ARVN troops had gone home on leave, and U.S. troops were on stand-down in many areas. Over 85,000 NLF soldiers simultaneously struck at almost every major city and provincial capital across South Vietnam, sending their defenders reeling. The U.S. Embassy in Saigon, previously thought to be invulnerable, was taken over by the NLF, and held for eight hours before U.S. forces could retake the complex. It took three weeks for U.S. troops to dislodge 1,000 NLF fighters from Saigon.
fighting of the entire war. South Vietnamese were assassinated by
Communists for collaborating with Americans; then when the ARVN returned, NLF sympathizers were murdered. United States Marines and paratroopers were ordered to go from house to house to find North Vietnamese and NLF soldiers. Virtually indiscriminate shelling was what killed most civilians, however, and the architectural treasures of Hue were laid to waste. More than 100,000 residents of the city were left homeless.
The Tet Offensive as a whole lasted into the fall of 1968, and when it was over the North Vietnamese and the NLF had suffered acute losses. The U.S. Department of Defense estimated that a total of 45,000 North Vietnamese and NLF soldiers had been killed, most of them NLF fighters. Although it was covered up for more than a year, one horrifying event during the Tet
Offensive would indelibly affect America’s psyche. In March 1968 elements of the U.S. Army’s Americal Division wiped out an entire hamlet called My Lai, killing 500 unarmed civilians, mostly women and children.
After Tet, Westmoreland said that the enemy was almost conquered and requested 206,000 more troops to finish the job. Told by succeeding
administrations since 1955 that there was “light at the end of the tunnel,” that victory in Vietnam was near, the American public had reached a
psychological breaking point. The success of the NLF in coordinating the Tet Offensive demonstrated both how deeply rooted the Communist resistance was and how costly it would be for the United States to remain in Vietnam. After Tet a majority of Americans wanted some closure to the war, with some favoring an immediate withdrawal while others held out for a negotiated peace. President Johnson rejected Westmoreland’s request for more troops and replaced him as the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam with
Westmoreland’s deputy, General Creighton Abrams. Johnson himself decided not to seek reelection in 1968. Republican Richard Nixon ran for the
presidency declaring that he would bring “peace with honor” if elected. V -ENDING THE WAR: 1969-1975
Promising an end to the war in Vietnam, Richard Nixon won a narrow victory in the election of 1968. Slightly more than 30,000 young Americans had been killed in the war when Nixon took office in January 1969. The new president retained his predecessor’s goal of a non-Communist South
Vietnam, however, and this could not be ensured without continuing the war. Nixon’s most pressing problem was how to make peace and war at the same
