10 interesting facts about Vietnam (WW2, ancient, war, 50s)
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1. In 1940, Franklin Roosevelt promised Ho Chi Mihn and the Vietminh that the USA would help them in their fight for freedom and independence. At the time, the US called Ho and the Vietminh "patriots", "nationalists" and "freedom fighters" and they were our allies.
2. At the Tehran Conference, FDR double-crossed Ho and the Vietminh and secretly agreed with Churchill and Stalin that after the war, Vietnam would be divided and the Nationalist Chinese would occupy the North and the UK would occupy the south.
3. At Tokyo Bay in 1945, Harry Truman made good on FDR's treachery and the division and occupation of Vietnam was accomplished. Ho and the Vietnamese people were, obviously, not pleased.
4. The French were a little miffed that the UK had taken a piece of their empire in Indochina and they wanted it back. Ho continued to lead the war for Vietnamese independence. The Brits were up to their ears in the bloodbath in the Mandate of Palestine and couldn't afford to be involved in another unwinnable guerrilla war, so they returned South Vietnam to the French. Ho asked the US to intervene on Vietnam's behalf and to fulfill FDR's promises. Compounding the Tehran and Tokyo treachery, Harry Truman gave US blessing to the transfer.
5. Mao Zedong had won the power struggle in China, removing Nationalist China from the equation and North Vietnam had become independent. The Chinese provided arms and military training to the Vietminh and other freedom fighter and nationalist groups, and in addition to having one of the best, if not the best, guerrilla forces in the world, now Vietnam also had a more than competent regular army. In 1954, Ho, Vo Nguyen Giap and the Vietnamese Army defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu. Humiliated and beaten, the French withdrew.
6. The French withdrawal was accomplished by means of an international treaty, the 1954 Geneva Accords. By that treated, it was guaranteed that free and independent internationally supervised elections, Vietnam would be reunited as an independent nation.
7. The entire world realized that Ho Chi Minh was the Southeast Asian equivalent of George Washington and in any fair election, Ho (a communist) would win. Dwight Eisenhower had already postulated his ridiculous "Domino Theory" and the US was gripped in the panic and horror of world domination and destruction by the Communists. Ike and his CIA had already staged coups toppling democratically elected reform (but leftist) governments in Iran and Guatemala and Greece, replacing them with ruthless, bloodthirsty, corrupt killers like the Shah and Carlos Castillo Armas and the first Greek military junta. CIA was building the Ba'ath Party to preeminence and would eventually groom Saddam Hussein to take over in Iraq. Ike wasn't about to let Ho win an election. Democracy was fine, but only if it produced the result that Washington wanted and in Vietnam, that simply was not going to happen.
The French warned Ike to stay out of Vietnam. Not only were the regular army a formidable foe, but the guerrilla forces were not going to be defeated - they had been successfully carrying on the fight for at least 50 years and some units had enlistments of 3 generations of the same family. Further, it was an ideological battle that couldn't be won. The Vietnamese wanted unity and independence and nothing was going to kill that fundamental desire. The French also warned Ike not to support Ngo Dihn Diem, not just because he was incompetent and corrupt, but because he was a tyrannical madman.
Ignoring the sage advice of the French (which, it turns out from the Pentagon Papers, was confirmed by US estimates and evaluations at the time) Ike ordered CIA to make sure Diem seized control of South Vietnam. In his "election", he carried some districts by as much as 150% of the registered vote.
8. Immediately after taking office, Diem began his reign of terror and suppression of human rights and liberty. Within months, he had more than 100,000 political prisoners in his concentration camps. Even after he cornered the lucrative Golden Triangle opium trade, Diem decided it was a waste of money to imprison dissidents and he began killing them instead. Hundreds of thousands (millions? We'll never know how many.) died. Enlistments in the Vietminh and other nationalist organization like the NLF swelled and Anti-American sentiment grew at an increasingly rapid pace. The Vietnamese people were when aware that the US was supporting and protecting Diem and subjecting them to his kindness and benevolence.
9. In 1956, knowing full well that Ho would beat him by a landslide in a fair election, and even CIA and his secret police couldn't prevent the inevitable, Diem refused to allow the elections required by the 1954 Accords. The US backed him in the refusal, the elections weren't held and Ike sent in more "military advisors" to "keep the peace" and to "stop the communist invasion" and to "preserve freedom and democracy in Vietnam".
10. Over the ensuing two decades, more than 58,000 US servicemen, more than 1.5 million Vietnamese regular and guerrilla troops and more than 4 million Vietnamese civilians would die. The US would be ripped apart by near civil war, two governments would fall, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech and several other basic freedoms in the US would suffer irreversible setbacks, faith and trust in the government and government officials and leaders would crumble and American society would change forever and a drug abuse epidemic would take root that still hasn't been checked, let alone eradicated.
Mineral Resources - Vietnam is richly endowed with mineral wealth, holding some of the world’s largest reserves in bauxite (7 percent of world’s reserves), tungsten (expected to have 7 percent of world’s production by 2013) and significant deposits of rare earths, titanium and iron ore. Other mineral resources include copper, gold, nickel, zinc, tin, lead, chromite and manganese. Vietnam’s mineral resources potential remains largely untapped as many areas remain unexplored.
Maybe this is the true interest? Also, being in the backdoor of the Golden Triangle?
Vietnam has a current population of 90-million, almost one third of the entire population of the USA. The sole purpose of the Vietnam war was to ensure that the Vietnamese (and domino nations around them) would become first a labor and resource pool and then a consumer market for corporate American industries, which then, maybe even more than now, unilaterally and unchallengedly controlled all foreign policy of the USA according to their own corporate interests.
You mention this history back to WW2, clearly the Japanese were the enemy here. The enemy of our enemy was our friend here, like it was with Soviet Russia.
Let's also not potray Ho Chi Minh as a saint here. In a sense, it was not the U.S. that betrayed him, but he betrayed the U.S....and his own people, by rejecting the principles of freedom that he evoked as a young student in exile in Paris and an admirer of the US decleration of indepencence. Ho's ruled over a one party state with freedom severly curtailed, responsible for supressing or murdering political opposition, and with certain "reforms" that lead to hundred's of thousands of deaths of his citizens in the 50s during N. Vietnams short spells of peace (as many as half a million), otherwise he also participated in setting up a government that was at war with almost all it's neighbors for one period or another for almost 30 years straight, not only the American war period.
It is fairly factual. A group in the US State Department favored rapprochement with Ho. They were over-ruled and some were fired during the McCarthy era.
You mention this history back to WW2, clearly the Japanese were the enemy here. The enemy of our enemy was our friend here, like it was with Soviet Russia.
Let's also not potray Ho Chi Minh as a saint here. In a sense, it was not the U.S. that betrayed him, but he betrayed the U.S....and his own people, by rejecting the principles of freedom that he evoked as a young student in exile in Paris and an admirer of the US decleration of indepencence. Ho's ruled over a one party state with freedom severly curtailed, responsible for supressing or murdering political opposition, and with certain "reforms" that lead to hundred's of thousands of deaths of his citizens in the 50s during N. Vietnams short spells of peace (as many as half a million), otherwise he also participated in setting up a government that was at war with almost all it's neighbors for one period or another for almost 30 years straight, not only the American war period.
You left out a lot of history in your post, for example:
The international agreement hammered out by Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, France, Laos, the People's Republic of China, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom which set national elections for 1956 to unify Vietnam and elect a national government. Of course the United States and South Vietnam rejected the agreement (so much for the will of the people). I hasten to add that the then government of Republic of Vietnam was headed by Ngô Đình Diệm who had the fortune of being elected by 386,000 more votes than there were voters. Of course Diem was democratically killed in a coup engineered by the U.S. so much for the multi-party democracy of the Republic of Vietnam.
As for Vietnam waging war against its neighbors, being invaded by the Chinese (who had their hat's handed to them) because.... Vietnam had the temerity to bring an end to Pol Pot's genocidal regime. Now that doesn't sanctify the People's Republic of Vietnam and the atrocities committed in its name before or after American involvement in what was clearly a war of national liberation but the story of Vietnam isn't as glorious as some on the left would telling nor as nefarious as the right would have us to believe.
Yes we tend to simplify wars - heroes and villains, that sort of thing. I don't think American intentions were altruistic in the slightest, though, evidenced by their support of the French imperialists as well as the atrocities committed against the Vietnamese people. Also Vietnam's role in ousting the Khmer Rouge is not usually acknowledged in the west.
Also Vietnam's role in ousting the Khmer Rouge is not usually acknowledged in the west.
You mean North Vietnam's role in the CREATION of the Khmer Rouge's murderious reign of power. Without the support of N. Vietnam in the early 70s (which included such blatant activities as NVA forces fighting side by side with Khmer Rouge rebels in fighting the Cambodian government), which shared communist ideologies, Pol Pot would have never come to power.
N. Vietnam couldn't give a damn about Pol Pot's killing fields or ending the attrocities in Cambodia. The Vietnames/Cambodian war was a territorial/regional power dispute with also some roots in ancient historical rivalries, and their goal was simply to remove a threat. The fact that Vietnam's victory resulted in the end of the killing fields is just incidental.
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