Cold War Conflicts - Southeast Asia

Cold War Conflicts HIST 1301 | History Southeast Asia The United States' resolve to stop the development of communism in Vietnam was further fortified by the lessons learned in Korea. France wanted to take back control of Vietnam after Japan had taken it as a colony in 1940. This was after World War II. But Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh, a nationalist organisation in Vietnam, wanted to take advantage of Japan's capitulation to declare their own independence. During World War II, the Viet Minh had battled the Japanese and frequently supported American forces. Ho Chi Minh was very certain that America would back them. The US military personnel who had collaborated with Ho held him in high regard. He was a communist, too, even though his primary ideology was nationalism and no one questioned his patriotism. In addition to wanting to back its friend France, which it considered was necessary to stop communism from spreading throughout Europe, the United States also wanted to stand hard against what it saw to be Soviet-directed communist growth. The United States therefore took up the majority of France's financial load for the conflict while the First Indochina conflict raged between French forces and the followers of Ho Chi Minh. The Soviet Union and China sent support to Ho's army. Following its loss at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia were awarded independence by France. Vietnam was split at the seventeenth parallel latitude in accordance with the Geneva Accords, the peace pact that put an end to the war, with the understanding that it would be reunited after national elections in 1956. As the leader of the North, Ho Chi Minh was predicted to win support from voters in both the North and the South. The emperor Bao Dai and his prime minister Ngo Dinh Diem served as the South's leaders.But Ngo Dinh Diem had no intention of stepping down; he maintained that South Vietnam was not obliged by the Geneva Accords since it had not signed them. As a member of SEATO and certain that Ho Chi Minh would undoubtedly win the majority of votes in both the North and the South, the United States backed Diem's candidature. Instead, a referendum was held in South Vietnam in 1955, long before any elections could be held. After the results of the manipulated election showed that Diem was supported by almost 98% of votes, he declared himself the winner and took office. He was actually a brutal leader who attacked South Vietnamese Buddhists and students who opposed his authority with the military and tolerated no dissent. Diem prohibited the flying of the Buddhist flag due to pressure from his brother, Ngo Dinh Thuc, the archbishop of Hue. In addition, his government gave Catholics extra help and transferred land that had been confiscated from Buddhist peasants to Catholic ones. Buddhist monks in South Vietnam committed many acts of self-immolation in 1963, lighting themselves on fire in public spaces to call attention to the wrongdoings of Diem's despotic and dishonest government. Foreign media asked Diem's sister-in-law, Madame Nhu, the unofficial First Lady of South Vietnam, why the monks felt the need to stage such a theatrical protest. Madame Nhu likened the suicides to "barbecues." The North Vietnamese Communist Party declared a "people's war" against the South Vietnamese government in 1959 in an attempt to unite the nation under communist control. This marked the start of the Second Indochina War, often known as the Vietnam War. China and the Soviet Union both provided assistance to North Vietnam. A number of South Vietnamese communists, many of whom had moved to North Vietnam after the Geneva Accords, were also assisting the North. Officially, these men and women comprised the National Liberation Diem was a staunch opponent of communism who hailed from a privileged Roman Catholic family in a nation where the majority of people were Buddhists and impoverished. About a million Vietnamese Catholics from the North relocated to the South prior to the elections, escaping communist control and supporting Diem, who had the support of the US. Nonetheless, the majority of Vietnamese people continued to dislike him. But Ngo Dinh Diem had no intention of stepping down; he maintained that South Vietnam was not obliged by the Geneva Accords since it had not signed them. As a member of SEATO and certain that Ho Chi Minh would undoubtedly win the majority of votes in both the North and the South, the United States backed Diem's candidature. Instead, a referendum was held in South Vietnam in 1955, long before any elections could be held. After the results of the manipulated election showed that Diem was supported by almost 98% of votes, he declared himself the winner and took office. He was actually a brutal leader who attacked South Vietnamese Buddhists and students who opposed his authority with the military and tolerated no dissent. Diem prohibited the flying of the Buddhist flag due to pressure from his brother, Ngo Dinh Thuc, the archbishop of Hue. In addition, his government gave Catholics extra help and transferred land that had been confiscated from Buddhist peasants to Catholic ones. Buddhist monks in South Vietnam committed many acts of self-immolation in 1963, lighting themselves on fire in public spaces to call attention to the wrongdoings of Diem's despotic and dishonest government. Foreign media asked Diem's sister-in-law, Madame Nhu, the unofficial First Lady of South Vietnam, why the monks felt the need to stage such a theatrical protest. Madame Nhu likened the suicides to "barbecues." The North Vietnamese Communist Party declared a "people's war" against the South Vietnamese government in 1959 in an attempt to unite the nation under communist control. This marked the start of the Second Indochina War, often known as the Vietnam War. China and the Soviet Union both provided assistance to North Vietnam. A number of South Vietnamese communists, many of whom had moved to North Vietnam after the Geneva Accords, were also assisting the North. In 1960, these men and women in North Vietnam formally established the National Liberation Front (NLF). The NLF, sometimes referred to as the Viet Cong, made a comeback to the South to organise peasants and launch an insurgency against both the US and South Vietnamese governments. In response, U.S. President John F. Kennedy carried out the actions of his forerunners by providing financial support and advisors to the South Vietnamese government while declining to send in ground forces.