Part Cold War military conflict, part decolonization, the Vietnam War raged through Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, involving France, the United States, plus some other anticommunist countries, from November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975. The Viet Cong were a dedicated if lightly armed South Vietnamese communist-controlled insurgent group and the official U.S. government justification for participation was to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam and, eventually, all of South Asia, as part of a wider strategy of containment of communism. (The so-called “domino theory” argued that if Vietnam fell, so would the rest of Asia.) The North Vietnamese government considered the war a fight against colonialism, fought initially against France, backed by the United States, and later against South Vietnam, widely regarded as a corrupt puppet state.

Although U.S. military advisors began arriving in 1950, the war did not escalate until the early 1960s. After 1965, U.S. combat units were widely deployed. The Vietnam People’s Army (also called the North Vietnamese Army) fought both a guerrilla and a conventional war. U.S. andSouth Vietnamese forces initially reliedonair superiority and overwhelming firepower, engaging in search and destroy operations using groundforces,artillery,andair strikes. Just prior to the period described by Tuan (Chapter 8), the conflict spilled over into Laos and Cambodia. Events climaxed in 1968 with the North Vietnamese Tet Offensive. Facing increasinganddivisive public opposition at home, the United States began withdrawing ground forces as part of its Vietnamization policy. The Paris Peace Accords were signed in January 1973 and the Case-Church Amendment passed by the U.S. Congress (1973) prohibited further U.S. military action in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. In April 1975, the North Vietnamese captured Saigon, and North and South Vietnam were reunified formally in 1976.