The Vietnam War was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist allies; South Vietnam was supported by the United States and other anti-communist allies. The war is widely considered to be a Cold War-era proxy war. It lasted almost 20 years, with direct U.S. involvement ending in 1973. The conflict also spilled over into neighboring states, exacerbating the Laotian Civil War and the Cambodian Civil War, which ended with all three countries becoming communist states by 1975.
The Laotian Civil War (1959–1975) was a civil war in Laos which was waged between the Communist Pathet Lao and the Royal Lao Government from 23 May 1959 to 2 December 1975. It is associated with the Cambodian Civil War and the Vietnam War, with both sides receiving heavy external support in a proxy war between the global Cold War superpowers. It is called the Secret War among the American CIA Special Activities Center, and Hmong and Mien veterans of the conflict.
James William Fulbright was an American politician, academic, and statesman who represented Arkansas in the United States Senate from 1945 until his resignation in 1974. As of 2022, Fulbright is the longest serving chairman in the history of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. He is best known for his strong multilateralist positions on international issues, opposition to American involvement in the Vietnam War, and the creation of the international fellowship program bearing his name, the Fulbright Program.
William Averell Harriman, better known as Averell Harriman, was an American Democratic politician, businessman, and diplomat. The son of railroad baron E. H. Harriman, he served as Secretary of Commerce under President Harry S. Truman, and later as the 48th governor of New York. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1952 and 1956, as well as a core member of the group of foreign policy elders known as "The Wise Men".
Operation Igloo White was a covert United States joint military electronic warfare operation conducted from late January 1968 until February 1973, during the Vietnam War. These missions were carried out by the 553d Reconnaissance Wing, a U.S. Air Force unit flying modified EC-121R Warning Star aircraft, and VO-67, a specialized U.S. Navy unit flying highly modified OP-2E Neptune aircraft. This state-of-the-art operation utilized electronic sensors, computers, and communications relay aircraft in an attempt to automate intelligence collection. The system would then assist in the direction of strike aircraft to their targets. The objective of those attacks was the logistical system of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) that snaked through southeastern Laos and was known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Thomas Anthony Dooley III was an American physician who worked in Southeast Asia at the outset of American involvement in the Vietnam War. While serving as a physician in the United States Navy and afterwards, he became known for his humanitarian and anti-communist political activities up until his early death from cancer. After his death, the public learned that he had been recruited as an intelligence operative by the Central Intelligence Agency, and numerous descriptions of atrocities by the Viet Minh in his book Deliver Us From Evil had been fabricated.
The United States Air Force (USAF) deployed combat aircraft to Thailand from 1960 to 1975 during the Vietnam War. Today, US military units train with other Asian militaries in Thailand. Royal Thai Air Force Bases are an important element in the Pentagon's "forward positioning" strategy.
Operation Barrel Roll was a covert U.S. Air Force 2nd Air Division and U.S. Navy Task Force 77, interdiction and close air support campaign conducted in the Kingdom of Laos between 14 December 1964 and 29 March 1973 concurrent with the Vietnam War. The operation resulted in 260 million bombs being dropped on Laos, making Laos "the most heavily bombed nation in history".
The Many Flags campaign was an initiative by United States President Lyndon Johnson to get U.S. allies in Asia and the Pacific to participate in the Vietnam War in support of South Vietnam. While it served a military purpose, the program was also a propaganda effort by Johnson to enlist Free World forces in the Cold War against communism. The U.S. supported the Allied forces through direct monetary aid, military contracts, logistic aid, and various forms of economic compensation.
CIA activities in Laos started in the 1950s. In 1959, U.S. Special Operations Forces began to train some Laotian soldiers in unconventional warfare techniques as early as the fall of 1959 under the code name "Erawan". Under this code name, General Vang Pao, who served the royal Lao family, recruited and trained his Hmong and Iu-Mien soldiers. The Hmong and Iu-Mien were targeted as allies after President John F. Kennedy, who refused to send more American soldiers to battle in Southeast Asia, took office. Instead, he called the CIA to use its tribal forces in Laos and "make every possible effort to launch guerrilla operations in North Vietnam with its Asian recruits." General Vang Pao then recruited and trained his Hmong soldiers to ally with the CIA and fight against North Vietnam. The CIA itself claims that the CIA air operations in Laos from 1955-1974 were the "largest paramilitary operations ever undertaken by the CIA."
Ngô Đình Diệm, the President of South Vietnam, made a state visit to the United States, the main ally of his government, in 1957. Diệm received a glowing welcome and was heaped with praise as a leader of a "free country" in the midst of the Cold War. The receptions during the visit were in large part organized by the American Friends of Vietnam (AFV), a lobby group dedicated to resolute US support of South Vietnam and which included many politicians from both major parties. The visit was mainly celebratory and ceremonial, rather than being a policy or planning mission. It was part of a year of travelling for Diệm, as he made a visit to Australia in September, as well as to fellow anti-communist countries South Korea and Thailand.
The year 1961 saw a new American president, John F. Kennedy, attempt to cope with a deteriorating military and political situation in South Vietnam. The Viet Cong (VC) with assistance from North Vietnam made substantial gains in controlling much of the rural population of South Vietnam. Kennedy expanded military aid to the government of President Ngô Đình Diệm, increased the number of U.S. military advisors in South Vietnam, and reduced the pressure that had been exerted on Diệm during the Eisenhower Administration to reform his government and broaden his political base.
1959 saw Vietnam still divided into South and North. North Vietnam authorized the Viet Cong (VC) to undertake limited military action as well as political action to subvert the Diệm government. North Vietnam also authorized the construction of what would become known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail to supply the VC in South Vietnam. Armed encounters between the VC and the government of South Vietnam became more frequent and with larger numbers involved. In September, 360 soldiers of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) were ambushed by a force of about 100 VC guerrillas.
Ngo Dinh Diem consolidated his power as the President of South Vietnam. He declined to have a national election to unify the country as called for in the Geneva Accords. In North Vietnam Ho Chi Minh apologized for certain consequences of the land reform program he had initiated in 1955. The several thousand Viet Minh cadres the North had left behind in South Vietnam focused on political action rather than insurgency. The South Vietnamese army attempted to root out the Viet Minh.
The United States foreign policy during the presidency of John F. Kennedy from 1961 to 1963 included John F. Kennedy's diplomatic and military initiatives in Western Europe, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, all conducted amid considerable Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Kennedy deployed a new generation of foreign policy experts, dubbed "the best and the brightest". In his inaugural address Kennedy encapsulated his Cold War stance: "Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate".
Dr. America: The Lives of Thomas A. Dooley, 1927–1961 is a book written by James T. Fisher, providing a historical discussion of Thomas Anthony Dooley III, an American medical missionary who worked in Vietnam and Laos in the 1950s and early 1960s. The book itself is viewed not only as a statement on Dooley's "lives" as a medical missionary, but it is also a socially scientific analysis of his life. A central argument of the book is that Dooley's work laid the ideological foundation for U.S. entry into Vietnam. Other important topics discussed are Dooley's personal journey towards becoming a "Jungle Doctor," Dooley's similarities and differences from Albert Schweitzer, Dooley as a contemporary Jesus or a redeemed man, and Dooley as a "historical bridge" between anticommunist McCarthyism and the President Kennedy's Vietnam policy. The biography is one volume of a series titled Culture, Politics, and the Cold War edited by Christian G. Appy.
When 1954 began, the French had been fighting the insurgent communist-dominated Viet Minh for more than seven years attempting to retain control of their colony Vietnam. Domestic support for the war by the population of France had declined. The United States was concerned and worried that a French military defeat in Vietnam would result in the spread of communism to all the countries of Southeast Asia—the domino theory—and was looking for means of aiding the French without committing American troops to the war.
Operation Booster Shot was a rural aid program run by the United States in the Kingdom of Laos between March and April 1958. Its purpose was to influence Lao peasantry to vote during May National Assembly elections for those politicians the U.S. favored. Because of the lack of roads in Laos, Booster Shot became an air delivery operation. It proceeded somewhat haphazardly due to rushed planning. Although logistically successful, the result was an electoral victory by the communist candidates opposed to the U.S..
Project Hotfoot was a secretive military training mission from the United States in support of the Kingdom of Laos. It ran from 22 January 1959 through 19 April 1961. Working in civilian clothing in conjunction with a French military mission, it concentrated on technical training of the Royal Lao Army.
This bibliography of John F. Kennedy is a list of published works about John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States.
