The People's Army of Vietnam, also known as the Vietnamese People's Army (VPA), is the military force of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The PAVN is a part of the Vietnam People's Armed Forces and includes: Ground Force, Navy, Air Force, Border Defence Force, and Coast Guard. However, Vietnam does not have a separate Ground Force or Army branch. All ground troops, army corps, military districts and specialised arms belong to the Ministry of Defence, directly under the command of the Central Military Commission, the Minister of Defence, and the General Staff of the Vietnam People's Army. The military flag of the PAVN is the flag of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, with the words Quyết thắng added in yellow at the top left.
Mainland Southeast Asia is the continental portion of Southeast Asia. It lies east of the Indian subcontinent and south of China and is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the west and the Pacific Ocean to the east. It includes the countries of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar (Burma), Peninsular Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.
French Indochina, officially known as the Indochinese Union from 1887 and the Indochinese Federation after 1947, was a grouping of French colonial territories in Southeast Asia until its demise in 1954. It consisted of three Vietnamese regions of Tonkin (north), Annam (centre), and Cochinchina (south), Cambodia, Laos and the Chinese territory of Guangzhouwan. The capital was Saigon, with the exception of a brief time in Hanoi (Tonkin) from 1902 to 1945.
Việt Minh was a national independence coalition formed at Pác Bó by Hồ Chí Minh on May 19, 1941. The Việt Nam Độc Lập Đồng Minh Hội had previously formed in Nanjing, China, at some point between August 1935 and early 1936 when Vietnamese nationalist parties formed an anti-imperialist united front. This organization soon lapsed into inactivity, only to be revived by the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) and Hồ Chí Minh in 1941. The Việt Minh established itself as the only organized anti-French and anti-Japanese resistance group. The Việt Minh initially formed to seek independence for Vietnam from the French Empire. The United States supported France. When the Japanese occupation began, the Việt Minh opposed Japan with support from the United States and the Republic of China. After World War II, the Việt Minh opposed the re-occupation of Vietnam by France and later opposed South Vietnam and the United States in the Vietnam War. The political leader and founder of Việt Minh was Hồ Chí Minh. The military leadership was under the command of Võ Nguyên Giáp. Other founders were Lê Duẩn and Phạm Văn Đồng.
The Pathet Lao was a communist political movement and organization in Laos, formed in the mid-20th century. The group was ultimately successful in assuming political power in 1975, after the Laotian Civil War. The Pathet Lao were always closely associated with Vietnamese communists. During the civil war, it was effectively organized, equipped and even led by the People's Army of Vietnam. They fought against the anti-communist forces in the Vietnam War. Eventually, the term became the generic name for Laotian communists.
The Third Indochina War was a series of interconnected armed conflicts, mainly among the various communist factions over strategic influence in Indochina after United States withdrawal in 1973 and Communist victory in South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in 1975. The complete American withdrawal instantaneously eliminated the principal and common adversary of all the communist powers. Ever more diverging Chinese and Soviet strategic and political doctrines had increased the Sino-Soviet split of the mid-1950s. The local communist regimes of Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos pledged allegiance with one of these two opposing factions. The ensuing hostilities were fuelled by century-old animosities between Vietnam and Cambodia, and – particularly – Vietnam and China.
The Geneva Conference was a conference involving several nations that took place in Geneva, Switzerland, from April 26 to July 20, 1954. It was intended to settle outstanding issues resulting from the Korean War and the First Indochina War. The part of the conference on the Korean question ended without adopting any declarations or proposals, so is generally considered less relevant. The Geneva Accords that dealt with the dismantling of French Indochina proved to have long-lasting repercussions, however. The crumbling of the French Empire in Southeast Asia would create the eventual states of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the State of Vietnam, the Kingdom of Cambodia, and the Kingdom of Laos.
The Paris Peace Accords, officially titled the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Viet Nam, was a peace treaty signed on January 27, 1973, to establish peace in Vietnam and end the Vietnam War. The treaty included the governments of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the Republic of Vietnam, and the United States, as well as the Republic of South Vietnam (PRG) that represented indigenous South Vietnamese revolutionaries. US ground forces up to that point had been sidelined with deteriorating morale and gradually withdrawn to coastal regions, not partaking in offensive operations or much direct combat for the preceding two-year period. The Paris Agreement Treaty would in effect remove all remaining US Forces, including air and naval forces in exchange. Direct U.S. military intervention was ended, and fighting between the three remaining powers temporarily stopped for less than a day. The agreement was not ratified by the United States Senate.
The Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal, also known as the Vietnam Campaign Medal, is a South Vietnamese military campaign medal which was created in 1949, and awarded to French military personnel during the First Indochina War. During the Vietnam War, the South Vietnamese government awarded the Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal with Device to members of the South Vietnamese military for wartime service and on March 24, 1966, to members of the U.S. military for support of operations in Vietnam. In May 1966, other allied foreign military personnel became eligible for the award.
The Multinational Force and Observers Medal is an international military decoration which was first created on March 24, 1982. The medal was established under the authority of the Director-General of the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) which were established to monitor a neutral ceasefire zone, between Egypt and Israel, as the result of the Yom Kippur War of 1973.
An international decoration is a military award which is not bestowed by a particular country, but rather by an international organization such as the United Nations or NATO. Such awards are normally issued as service medals, for participation in various international military operations, and not for specific acts of heroism or bravery.
The International Control Commission (ICC), or in French la Commission Internationale de Contrôle (CIC), was an international force established in 1954. More formally called the International Commission for Supervision and Control, the organisation was actually organised as three separate but interconnected bodies, one for each territory with Vietnam, being treated as a single state having two temporary administrations: the ICSC for Vietnam; the ICSC for Laos; and the ICSC for Cambodia.
The Indochina Wars were a series of wars fought in Southeast Asia from 1945 to 1991, between communist Indochinese forces against mainly French, South Vietnamese, American, Cambodian, Laotian and Chinese forces. The term "Indochina" originally referred to French Indochina, which included the current states of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. In current usage, it applies largely to a geographic region, rather than to a political area. The wars included:
The International Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos is an international agreement signed in Geneva on July 23, 1962 between 14 states including Laos. It was a result of the International Conference on the Settlement of the Laotian Question which lasted from May 16, 1961 to July 23, 1962.
The role of the United States in the Vietnam War began after World War II and escalated into full commitment during the Vietnam War from 1955 to 1973. The U.S. involvement in South Vietnam stemmed from a combination of factors: France's long colonial history in French Indochina, the US War with Japan in the Pacific, and both Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong's pledge in 1950 to support Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh's guerrilla forces. Related to this, Roosevelt was adamantly against providing any aid to France that would in any way prop up France's struggle to maintain its pre WWII colonial empire. However, Stalin and Mao's offering their support to the Viet Minh in 1950, changed the battlefield dynamic and geopolitical character of the struggle to one of a global conflict against Maoist and Stalinist expansionism. It was at the time, in September 1950, that French forces began to be moderately backed by America. Beginning with $10M USD worth of military supplies, President Harry S. Truman from that initial support provided progressively increasing amounts of financial and military assistance to French forces fighting in what was still in the minds of the Western powers French Indochina. Beginning in 1950, US involvement increased from just assisting French collision forces to providing direct military assistance to the associated states. Eventually, U.S. missions were carried out at a more consistent rate by sending out increasing amounts of military assistance from the United States. Their main intent was to restrict Communist expansion in Indochina as they thought it would soon lead to Communist takeovers in Thailand, Laos, Malaya, and all of what later became Vietnam. This would have resulted in a change in balance of power throughout Asia. The U.S. foreign policy establishment saw national security US and Western Europe's interests being marginalized due to the rise of this Communist expansion, and thus it strived to take measures to restrict it. Under Truman the support went from $10M in September 1950 to $150M by the end of 1951. The struggle passed from Truman to Eisenhower who saw the fall of French Indochina, and in 1961 the Eisenhower administration passed the conflict to Kennedy. In May 1961 Kennedy sent 500 more military advisers, bringing American forces there to 1,400. With the budget increased and with American boot on the ground in Vietnam by at least 1961, these actions came to be questioned by other segments of the US government and among the people of the United States.
FCU – UNTAC, the Force Communications Unit UNTAC, was the Australian component of the UNTAC mission in Cambodia.
William Edward Bauer is a Canadian former diplomat. He was concurrently appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Laos and Thailand then Myanmar. He was later appointed ambassador to Korea.
The United Issarak Front was a Cambodian anti-colonial movement 1950–1954., organized by the left-wing members of the Khmer Issarak movement. The UIF coordinated the efforts of the movement as of 1950, and waged war against the French Union forces. At the time of the Geneva Peace Conference in 1954, it is estimated that UIF controlled about half of the Cambodian territory.
India–Laos relations are bilateral relations between South Asian country India and South East Asian country Laos. Diplomatic relations between two nations were established in February 1956. First Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru visited Laos in 1954 while first President of India Rajendra Prasad visited Laos in 1956. India considers Laos as strategically important in accordance with China's growing land-reclamation activities in the South China Sea. Laos has been supportive to India's efforts to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
The International Commission of Control and Supervision Medal is a service medal awarded to personnel from the four countries that made up the International Commission of Control and Supervision (ICCS). The ICCS was established by the Paris Peace Accords in 1973 to supervise the cease-fire, the withdrawal of troops, the dismantlement of military bases, the activity at ports of entry, and the return of captured military personnel and foreign civilians in Vietnam. It was to report on the implementation, or violation, of the Peace Agreement and Protocols. Initially made up of personnel from Canada, Hungary, Indonesia, and Poland, the Canadians withdrew in July 1973 being replaced by personnel from Iran. The work of the ICCS continued until the April 1975 Fall of Saigon.
