With fighting having resumed in 1974, and the North Vietnamese Army having taken Dong Xoai on December 26, the NVA took Phuoc Long city and the surrounding province.
While a violation of the Paris Peace Accord, the US did nothing, which was not a surprise.
We probably need to expand on this a bit.
As the longtime readers of this blog know, we started tracking daily events of the past with the centennial of the Villista raid of Columbus, New Mexico, in 1916. That fit right into the ostensible purpose of the blog. We kept on keeping on with that, and now we're nearly a decade into centennial posts, given that we are now posting on daily events of 1925, when they see worth posting about.
Events fifty years in the past really got rolling here with 1968, an American Annus horribilius, and we've kept that up since then. There are, for example, eight posts to date that reference 1967, but sixty-six that reference 1968.
After 68, we dept tracking important events that were fifty years in the past, although they dropped way off, after 1968, up until 1973, when there were 110. For 74, there were only seventy one. There would have been more, if we'd more closely tracked the Vietnam War, which we should have done.
The Paris Peace Accords were signed on January 27, 1973. The last US troops were gone by March 29, 1973. The highly valued South Korean troops also left in March, 1973. The last Australian troops were six embassy guards, who left, tellingly, on June 30, 1973 a telling withdrawal. By January 4, 1974, the fighting had ramped back up to such an extent that South Vietnam declared them breached and the war ongoing, a declaration that fully reflected reality.
March 1973 saw the end of a process that had begun in 1969, that of drawing down foreign troops in Vietnam. It left the Army of the Republic of Vietnam without foreign troops in support of it in some fashion for the first time.* North Vietnam and South Vietnam had come about due to the peace treaty that ended the French Indochinese War, but the election that was to have taken place in 1955 never occurred. The ARVN theoretically dated to that year, but in reality it dated to 1949 when the French established the Vietnamese National Army for the State of Vietnam, which it created that same year and which had international recognition as part of the French Union at first, and then as an independent state starting in 1954. In reality, therefore, the ARVN had never lacked foreign support dating all the way back to 1949.
US support for the State of Vietnam's successor state, the Republic of Vietnam, was somewhat halting at first, and looking back its amazing to realize that the US was ever in Vietnam. The US had supplied reluctant support to the French in Indochina and carried that on with the State of Vietnam and the Republic of Vietnam, but it was reluctant. The Eisenhower Administration was only halfheartedly a backer of the Republic of Vietnam, not accepting that its status was vital to US interest and also not supporting latent colonial efforts of France and the United Kingdom everywhere. Indeed, Eisenhower proved to be against the much currently discussed "forever wars" more than any President after the Second World War, not being too keen on the French effort in Algeria, and opposed to the French, British and Israeli intervention over the Suez Canal.
Moreover, Eisenhower clashed with the personality of South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm. Diệm was an anti communist, but he was not really a democrat, being a person who, for lack of a better way to put it, was an early example of a National Conservative (J. D. Vance, R. R. Reno and Rod Dreher would have loved him). He was a Catholic in a majority Buddhist country, albeit one were the influence of Buddhism was waning, and didn't really view Vietnam as a country that was subject to democratic rule, at least at the time.
Things changed with the Kennedy Administration, at least at first, which was much more willing to become involved spats around the world than the Eisenhower Administration was. Kennedy caused the formation of a U.S. military unit, the Special Forced, specifically for this purpose. With Kennedy, in spite of advice to the contrary from Eisenhower, the American involvement in Vietnam became more direct and deeper, with the US giving advice on major tactical oeprations for the first time. The Army of the Republic of Vietnam, however, was not thrilled by the advice it was receiving, viewing its combat history as supporting the proposition that small unit actions in a low grade war, rather than material rich operations, were what best suited its operational environment. It would ultimately be proven to be correct, but much too late.
Kenndy's administration saw Diệm assassinated in a manner which has been remembered much like Chile's Allende episode, which is to say inaccurately. The US was less involved than imagined, but aware enough that it could have taken steps to prevent it and the men on the ground basically knew it was likely to occur and vaguely indicated that the US wouldn't stanad in the way when the South Vietnamese military became discontent with Diệm and hinted that it could overthrow him. So it did, and Diệm was murdered in the resulting coup, something that hadn't been anticipated.
Diệm was killed on November 2, 1963 and Kennedy twenty days later. Kennedy was horrified by Diệm's murder but his administration had been reckless in regard to Diệm, foreign policy, and Vietnam. It seems that Kennedy was at the point where he was inclined to reduce US support for the nation, which was frankly unnatural as it was, but failed to convey this to Lyndon Johnson who felt honor bound to carry on what Kennedy had started.
The increased US participation in Vietnam at the time was due to the urging of Australia, which has largely conveniently forgotten that it was the single most important factor to the US becoming involved. France resented US involvement and hadn't really wished for it to occur. But Australia was so desperate for it to occur that it seriously considered taking on the project for its own.
Australia, with its location on the globe, and its small population, had always depended on another Western power for its protecdtion. It still does. Prior to 1941, that foreign power had been the United Kingdom, and it had been a loyal, if grumpy, member of the British Empire. It had sent troops to the Boer War and World War One, and of course to the effort in World War Two when it came.
For that reason, when the Japanese attacked in the Pacific on December 7 & 8, 1941, Australia was ill prepared to face the crisis. It's troops were fighting in North Africa. It asked for them back, and the British declined. The British, for that matter, soon proved to be totally unable to face the new Japanese threat and began to lose ground everywhere in the Far East. Soon the crown jewel of the British Empire, India, was itself in jeopardy, with Japanese troops advancing into Thailand from Vietnam, which it had taken over after the French defeat in 1940, although not right away, and then on into Brurma.
As the war closed out, Franklin Roosevelt took a dim view of France and the United Kingdom returning to their empires. Roosevelt was an anti colonial. The British and the French were well aware of this, but the British had a massive military force in the field. The US forces in the war had not exceeded the number of British forces in action until late 1944, and in spite of losing a massive amount of ground to the Japanese in 1942, but 1943 it was back in action in a major way. The French situation was distinctly different, however, as its army had been reconstituted during the war, and in North Africa and Europe, and frankly was badly stressed in its makeup between conservative French republicans, French communists, and French North Africans. Roosevelt frankly hadn't planned on helping the French after the war at all.
On March 9, 1945 Japan launched a coup d'etat against what was left of French independence in Vietnam out of fear that French forces would rise up and displace the Japanese, as had happened in North Africa. Roosevelt made it clear that the French were not to reacquire Vietnam, showing a fare amount of naiveity about who woudl come out in the region, and about the communists in general. He died, however on April 12, 1945.
Like Kennedy, Roosevelt had very little contact with his Vice President and Truman came into office without really knowing that Roosevelt had wanted to do. Unlike Johnson, however, Truman didn't really worry about that and made up his own mind on things. He very rapidly came under the influence of the British and French and didn't take the anti colonial view that Roosevelt had. So France, after a brief period of British occupation, in which Japanese troops were used for garrison duties, came back to Indochina.
Ho Chi Minh, the communist leader of the Viet Minh, persuaded French backed Emperor Bảo Đại to abdicate in his favour, on September 2, 1945. Follong theis, Ho Chi Minh declared independence for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, with hit having to be taken for granted that "Democratic", in the communist context, was a fraud. Vientamese communistm would indeed prove to be just as bloody as communism anywhere else had been. British, Free French, and impressed Japanese troops soon restored French control. Ho Chi Minh agreed to negotiate, but the negotiations failed.
Fighting soon broke out. In 1948 France recognized Indochinese independence with a new State of Vietnam created and Emperor Bảo Đại restored to power. Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia became associated states of the French Union and were granted more autonomy. The communist war against the situation continued on, with the communist being unable to accept any rule other than their own.
The French Indochinese War was fought hte way that Donald Trump would have Ukraine fight, with a poverty of resources. The US did help France, but not to the degree the French would have liked and not to the degree that the French were ever more than fighting the Viet Minh on a more or less equal footing. The French defeat at Dien Bien Phu was only part of a string of such slow losses that doomed their efforts in the region.
As noted, a new political reality that nobody woudl really adhere to emerged in 1954. South Vietnam came about as a republic but not a really well functioning one. North Vietnam became a communist dictatorship bent on taking over the south. The war that had commenced during hte Japanese occupation of the country never really ceased.
It was a low grade war, for the most part, however. Be that as it may, it was serious enough to worry Australia, which saw South Vietnam falling to the North and a new communist nation emerging to its north. Australia, for its part, had its own problems after the war in spite of being a stalwart western ally. Communism in Australia had been strong in the 1930s and emerged strong from World War Two. Conservative forces in Australia came to rely heavily on the Catholic Church and the Irish Catholic population to hold off what was a very real slide on the continent into the far left. Australian communists nearly took the nation into the Soviet bloc.
While that was occurring the Australian government sided with the United Kingdom in regional conflicts against Communist forces, the most notable being the Malaysian Emergency in which Australian troops served. Very successfully waged on a military and political basis, it, along with the early post World War Two American efforts against the Huk Rebellion showed what could be done.
Australia looked at the post Indochinese War sitaution with gravec concern. Indochina seemed to be to Australia what the Japanese expansion of 1942 had been, a stepping stone into Australia itself, where it already was dealing with an extreme left wing movement as it was. World War Two had taught Australia that the United Kingdom was no longer a dependable world power, and duiring hte war it had switched its dependency upon the United States. Accordingly, it agitated iwth the US to become involved, which the Eisenhower Adminisration did on a small scale, and the Kennedy Administration did on a larger one.
By the time of Kennedy's death in 1963 the US was chaning its mind. The ARVN was reluctant in its acceptance of US advice, seening small scale actions with limited recources, like those it had fought with the French, as being what better suited its needs. It was planning for a long police action, in essence, rather than a definitive victory in the field. However, as France could no longer supply the ARVN's needs, which ironially had always depended on US aid in any event, it had little choice.
The US came, Diệm fell, and the war expanded.
As the US tends to do, when the US entered the war, as odd as it was for the US, it did so with great enthusiasm, but a few years later was tired of it. In the mean time, the US commitment to the war had become massive. The level of US participation was in fact destroying the communist effort, proving, in a way, that American advisors had been right. The Tet Offensive of 1968 was a communist last gasp that destroyed the South Vietnamese communist militia, the Viet Cong, and ruined the North Vietnamese Army. Nonetheless, it was a massive propaganda victory for North Vietnam, to its huge surprise, and helped commit the US to a withdrawal from then unpopular war.
At the same time, however, it was undeniable that the NVA had been wrecked. The foolishly launched 1972 Easter Offensive was turned back by the ARVN, which leant credence to the thesis that the then ongoing American withdrawal from the country made sense. Even now you can find those who maintain that the "Vietnamization" of the war made perfect strategic sense and was Nixon's plan.
In reality, the Nixon Administration had calculated that South Vietnam was doomed and basically forced the Republic of Vietnam into the peace that the Paris Peace Accords produced. The plan was to give the US enough time to leave the country before what Nixon thought would be an ultimate South Vietnamese collapse to provide plausible deniability to the US for the South Vietnamese defeat.
The peace never really broke out, which resulted in the South Vietnamese negotiator to refuse to accept the Nobel Peace Prize that Kissinger accepted. By 1974 a North Vietnamese offensive, although slow moving, was back on, showing the willingness of Communist regimes to kill their population readily. Things were beginning, as today's entry shows, to pick up speed.
Wheel of Fortune, hosted by Chuck Woolery and Susan Stafford, premiered.
Last edition:
Sunday, January 5, 1975. Ed Herschler inaugurated.
*Some French support remained until 1956 by which time US support had already started.
