9 Questions About the Vietnam War Answered

The United States had provided funding, armaments, and training to South Vietnam’s government and military since Vietnam’s partition into the communist North and the democratic South in 1954. Tensions escalated into armed conflict between the two sides, and in 1961 U.S. President John F. Kennedy chose to expand the military aid program. The terms of this expansion included yet more funding and arms, but a key alteration was the commitment of U.S. soldiers to the region. Kennedy’s expansion stemmed in part from Cold War-era fears about the “domino theory”: if communism took hold in Vietnam, it would topple democracies throughout the whole of Southeast Asia, it was thought.

Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, but his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, continued the work that Kennedy had started. Johnson raised the number of South Vietnam deployments to 23,000 U.S. soldiers by the end of his first year in office. Political turbulence there and two alleged North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. naval vessels spurred Johnson to demand the passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964. It granted him broad latitude in handling the struggle against communism in Southeast Asia.

By nearly every metric, the Vietnam War was, in the common sense of the word, a war. The United States committed some 550,000 troops to the Vietnam front at the height of the conflict, suffered more than 58,000 casualties, and engaged in battle after battle with communist forces in the region until its withdrawal in 1973. However, from a constitutional perspective, this conflict did not technically count as a war. The U.S. Constitution grants Congress sole authority to issue declarations of war. Since 1941 Congress has declared war only six times, all during World War II. Congress authorized troop deployment in Vietnam, but, because it did not issue a declaration of war on North Vietnam or the Viet Cong, the Vietnam War is, technically speaking, not considered a war in the United States.

Ho Chi Minh led a long and ultimately successful campaign to make Vietnam independent. He was president of North Vietnam from 1945 to 1969, and he was one of the most influential communist leaders of the 20th century. His seminal role is reflected in the fact that Vietnam’s largest city is named for him.

As president of South Vietnam (1955–63), Ngo Dinh Diem assumed dictatorial powers. Diem’s heavy-handed tactics against the Viet Cong insurgency deepened his government’s unpopularity, and his brutal treatment of the opposition to his regime alienated the South Vietnamese populace, notably Buddhists. In 1963 he was murdered during a coup d’état by some of his generals.

As head of U.S. forces in Vietnam, William Westmoreland pursued a war of attrition: the number of dead enemy fighters was the key measure of merit. In response to Westmoreland’s requests for more forces, the American presence in Vietnam grew to well over 500,000 troops. Domestic support for the war plunged as U.S. deaths rose.

Richard Nixon, arguably, tried to prolong the Vietnam War during the 1968 presidential campaign in an effort to win the presidency. Once he became president, he sought to establish enough stability in the region for the South Vietnamese government to take over. The result was an expanded U.S. military presence and increased military activity in neutral Cambodia. After hasty attempts of “Vietnamization”—the process of training and arming South Vietnamese troops for fighting alone after U.S. forces would pull out—all U.S. troops were evacuated by March 29, 1973.

Agent Orange is a mixture of herbicides used during the Vietnam War by the U.S. military to defoliate forests and clear other vegetation. This herbicide mix was deployed in urban, agricultural, and forested areas in Vietnam to expose the enemy and destroy crops. Agent Orange was used along with several other herbicides, code-named Agents White, Purple, Blue, Pink, and Green.

The question of who won the Vietnam War has been a subject of debate, and the answer depends on the definition of victory. Those who argue that the United States won the war point to the fact that the U.S. defeated communist forces during most of Vietnam’s major battles. They also assert that the U.S. overall suffered fewer casualties than its opponents. The U.S. military reported 58,220 American casualties. Although North Vietnamese and Viet Cong casualty counts vary wildly, it is generally understood that they suffered several times the number of American casualties.

Those who argue that the United States’ opponents won the war cite the United States’ overall objectives and outcomes. The United States entered Vietnam with the principal purpose of preventing a communist takeover of the region. In that respect, it failed: the two Vietnams were united under a communist banner in July 1976. Neighbouring Laos and Cambodia similarly fell to communists. Furthermore, domestic unrest and the financial cost of war made peace—and troop withdrawals—a necessity, not a choice.

In 1995 Vietnam released its official estimate of the number of people killed during the Vietnam War: as many as 2,000,000 civilians on both sides and some 1,100,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters. The U.S. military has estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., lists more than 58,300 names of members of the U.S. armed forces who were killed or went missing in action. Among other countries that fought for South Vietnam, South Korea had more than 4,000 dead, Thailand about 350, Australia more than 500, and New Zealand some three dozen.