Viet Nam

last days of the mighty mekong brian adler

mekong delta will be heavily dammed, #1 cause of displacement/migration

choke off sediments ~ food?!

https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-november-11-2019/

also Laos

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AN 4 26

President Donald Trump's profits from the presidency continue to grow, and so do the funds flowing to his friends and family.

NBC News Miami walked through some of the recent updates on Trump World's profits, which are scoring billions.

“I don’t think there’s any line right now between policy decisions and political calculations and the interest of the Trump family,” said presidential historian Julian Zelizer, from Princeton University.

Trump's conflicts of interest aren't new; they were a concern even before he entered the White House in 2017, when he said he would put his businesses into a "blind trust." It never happened, and he claimed that he knew nothing about the Trump Organization, as his sons were running the business. Indeed, they managed to negotiate

The White House and the Trump Organization claim there are no ethical issues. When Donald Trump Jr. was asked about profits from failed cryptocurrency during a conference, he complained, "Frankly, it’s gotten old."

However, during the first term, the Trump Org. wasn't doing deals in foreign countries. There were minor deals like trademarks in China and shortly after the first term, two Trump advisors were given billions by the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF): Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, and Trump's former Treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin.

In the first year of the second term, the Trump Org. has made deals all over the Middle East, including eight agreements, but not directly with foreign governments.

"But governments in authoritarian and one-party states rarely take a hands-off approach — especially when the business belongs to a sitting president," the report said.

That's particularly the case for the Saudis. Currently, a real estate tycoon with close ties to the royal family is developing a project. It will be a “Trump Plaza” resort on the Red Sea.

In Qatar, for example, Trump not only scored a multi-million-dollar plane that taxpayers retrofitted for him, but a Trump golf club and villa project is currently under development. The company that is part of the operation is owned by the Qatari government. The same thing is happening in Vietnam, where the *New York Times*reported the government took land from farmers to build a Trump resort. The report said that the government violated its own laws to do it. The country’s deputy prime minister signed off on the Trump Org. deal in a ceremony, the AP reported.

Meanwhile, what the countries got in return came from the United States. Qatar got U.S. technology, Vietnam got tariff relief and Saudi Arabia scored fighter jets.

The Trump Organization reinforced that none of its deals are done with foreign governments. The claim is that it is a coincidence that after deals were done in those countries, the government got something it needed.

A year after a deal was struck, it was exposed by the *Wall Street Journal* in January. Before the inauguration, a company linked to the UAE government, run by a member of the royal family, bought $500 million in crypto from Trump's "World Liberty Financial."

Then, another UAE company invested in Binance, an offshore cryptocurrency exchange, with $2 billion in digital currency called stablecoin, which came from the Trumps' World Liberty Financial.

"That allowed the Trump company that received the dollars to put it in safe investments such as bonds or money market funds and keep the tens of millions of dollars in interest for itself," the report said.

Suddenly, the new Trump government reversed restrictions on the UAE's access to U.S. chips. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao got a pardon from Trump, even though he'd pleaded guilty. He maintains that there was no connection between the Trump deals and his pardon.

World Liberty also denies any conflicts of interest.

It's only a portion of the cryptocurrency deals, the report said.

The White House alleged that any suggestion that the moves weren't "ethically sound" is either "ill-informed or malicious." It also falsely claimed that Trump's assets are in a trust managed by his children. While Trump pledged to have a blind trust in 2017, it never happened, a Common Cause investigation showed. In the new administration, Trump put about $4 billion in shares of his media company into a trust. There is no "blind trust" in the new administration either. There is, however, a revocable trust, that covers all of Trump's assets and is run by Donald Trump Jr.

The arguments from the White House "are belied by Trump’s failure to limit the appearance or reality that he is using his power to reward people who help enrich him," said *Mother Jones* in a March report. "Trump continues to benefit from the family companies now run by his sons, and ethics experts note that because Trump has not set up a blind trust, the president can keep track of who is paying or investing in those firms in hopes of influencing him."

NBC said that the Trump Organization claims it is “fully compliant with all applicable ethics and conflicts of interest laws” and added, “the implication that politics has enriched the Trump family is unfounded."

Trump, in January, told *The New York Times* that when it comes to potential conflicts of interest, “I prohibited them from doing business in my first term, and I got absolutely no credit for it. I didn’t have to do that. And it’s really unfair to them."

He added, "I found out that nobody cared, and I’m allowed to."

In January 2026, the Pew Research Center found that 42 percent of Trump voters were confident in his ethics. That said, in January 2025, that number was 55 percent. So, he's fallen 13 percent in a year, NBC cited.

In that same year, Forbes estimates Trump has increased his net worth by 60 percent, to $6.3 billion. Before he entered the White House, the Trump Organization was struggling, the report said.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump Jr. started a private club in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. There is a $500,000 "initiation fee." NBC compared it to the Yellowstone Club in Montana. In that case, members get access to multiple resorts, 50 ski trails and more than a dozen restaurants across an area the size of Manhattan. Don Jr.'s club is in a basement and is called the "Executive Branch."

"Meanwhile, as the two oldest brothers’ new drone company" is asking for Pentagon contracts and other government deals that would ensure the Trump's score taxpayer dollars for their companies. There are already companies with government contracts that one or both of the Trump sons have an ownership stake in. It includes a rocket motor maker, an AI chip supplyer and data analytics company, government records show, according to NBC.

When asked about the potential conflicts of interest, a spokesperson for Don Jr. said he doesn't "interface" with the government on companies in his portfolio. He complained that he shouldn't have to stop "living his life and making a living to provide for his five kids just because his dad is president." He said it "is, quite frankly, a laughable and ridiculous standard."

The report closed by saying, "A new investment firm that the brothers joined as advisers last year has raised $345 million in an initial public offering to buy stakes in U.S. companies designed to help their father revive America’s manufacturing base. After the AP asked Trump’s chief business lawyer about language in a regulatory filing stating the firm would target companies seeking federal grants, tax credits and government contracts, he filed a new document with that language removed."

Commenting on it, the Princeton historian, Zelizer, said that he thinks future presidents will be more restrained or be forced to be more restrained.

“[Trump] has shown politically there is no price to be paid to making money,” he said. “You know you can go there.”

:{---

10 22 something rotten

...Two Books to Help Us See the Lies

Two recent books help us see that spin for what it was. In Because Our Fathers Lied, Craig McNamara, Robert’s son, reflects on his father’s dishonesty about the Vietnam War and the reasons for it. Loyalty was perhaps the lead one, he writes. McNamara suppressed his own serious misgivings out of misplaced loyalty to two presidents, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, while simultaneously preserving his own position of power in the government.

Robert McNamara would, in fact, later pen his own mea culpa,admitting how “terribly wrong” he’d been in urging the prosecution of that war. Yet Craig finds his father’s late confession of regret significantly less than forthright and fully honest. Robert McNamara fell back on historical ignorance about Vietnam as the key contributing factor in his unwise decision-making, but his son is blunt in accusing his dad of unalloyed dishonesty. Hence the title of his book, citing Rudyard Kipling’s pained confession of his own complicity in sending his son to die in the trenches of World War I: “If any question why we died/Tell them, because our fathers lied.”

The second book is Paths of Dissent: Soldiers Speak Out Against America’s Misguided Wars, edited by Andrew Bacevichand Danny Sjursen. In my view, the word “misguided” doesn’t quite capture the book’s powerful essence, since it gathers 15 remarkable essays by Americans who served in Afghanistan and Iraq and witnessed the patent dishonesty and folly of those wars. None dare speak of failure might be a subtheme of these essays, as initially highly motivated and well-trained troops became disillusioned by wars that went nowhere, even as their comrades often paid the ultimate price, being horribly wounded or dying in those conflicts driven by lies....

8/20

predictable mo-fo, see https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/chapter/chapter-2/

2019

In summary, there is very high confidence that glacier and snow cover decline have affected and will continue to change the amounts and seasonality of river runoff in many snow-dominated and/or glacier-fed river basins. The average winter runoff is expected to increase (high confidence), and spring peak maxima will occur earlier (very high confidence). Although observed and projected trends in annual runoff vary substantially among regions and can even be opposite in sign, there is high confidence that average annual runoff from glaciers will have reached a peak, with declining runoff thereafter, at the latest by the end of the 21st century in all regions regardless emission scenario. The projected changes in runoff are expected to affect downstream water management, related hazards and ecosystems (Section 2.3.2, 2.3.3).

https://climate.nasa.gov/news/3008/stunning-forecast-a-century-of-ice-loss-for-nearly-100000-glaciers/

Pat Brennan,

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

The ice in one of the world’s highest concentrations of non-polar glaciers could see significant melting before the end of the century, potentially affecting sea levels around the globe, according to a new computer model from the NASA Sea Level Science Team.

The region, known as High Mountain Asia, could see ice loss run from 29 to 67 percent, depending on the level of greenhouse gas emissions over the period modeled.

According to the study, water flow in monsoon-fed river basins, driven largely by melting glaciers, could hit its peak by 2050 – potentially reducing runoff beyond that time and forcing changes in how water is consumed, or forcing communities to find other water sources. Understanding the coming changes in such flows is critical to proper planning for hydropower, irrigation, and water supplies.

A Leap Forward in Glacier Modeling

The new “Python Glacier Evolution Model,” or PyGEM, uses extensive data sets, instead of less detailed estimates from isolated, regional effects or extrapolations based on a small number of glaciers.

“This is a huge advance compared to previous studies,” said David Rounce, a researcher at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and a member of the NASA Sea Level Science Team, who is lead author of the new modeling study. “We are able to assess changes in glacier mass and runoff at an unprecedented scale.”

By sheer number, High Mountain Asia accounts for 44 percent of all the glaciers in the world—apart from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets—though it accounts for only a fraction of glacial mass. The melting of these glaciers over decades contributes significantly to rapid, and accelerating, global sea-level rise.

As they grow in power and precision, computer models are revealing the intricate dance of climate, ice-melt, and sea-level rise with increasing clarity....[map]

https://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/9654-Source-of-Mekong-Yellow-and-Yangtze-rivers-drying-up

2017

popular culture uber1

https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/6950F840-FB80-FCB0-D505-8AB1FA685F08#-1005

1970, Seymour Hersh won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on how the U.S. slaughtered more than 500 Vietnamese women, children and old men in the village of My Lai on March 16, 1968. The event became known as the My Lai massacre. We speak with Seymour Hersh in New York City.

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/6/20/remembering_the_my_lai_massacre_seymour

speechwriter for eugene mccarthy?

Did Richard Nixon commit treason? Some evidence to that effect has been around for years, specifically in regard to what's become known as the Chennault Affair. According to the theory, Anna Chennault — a Chinese-American Republican insider — sabotaged Lyndon Johnson's efforts to strike a peace deal in Vietnam in October of 1968, and she did so at the direct request of the soon-to-be 37th President.

The purported goal of this treasonous act was to keep the Democrats from scoring a major coup just weeks before the election showdown between Nixon and his Democratic opponent, Hubert Humphrey. Now, John Farrell's exhaustive new biography Richard Nixon: The Life, presents the Chennault Affair as more than a theory. Farrell substantiates the charges of Nixon's treachery with a slew of new facts, many drawn from a newly unearthed stash of notes written by Nixon's White House Chief of Staff, H. R. Haldeman.

It's bombshell stuff. It's also just one of the book's many revelations. Pulling from recently uncovered diaries, secret reports, and the recorded words of everyone from Nixon aide John Dean to his second White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig, Farrell fills in the cracks and credibly bolsters a range of allegations about Nixon — that he courted favor with white segregationists, that wiretapping electoral adversaries had been in his game plan since the 1940s, and that his defining scandal of Watergate was no anomaly, but the last piece in a decades-long pattern of covert, illegal political machinations. In one especially illuminating chapter, Farrell lifts a rock off of Nixon's 1946 congressional campaign against Democrat Jerry Voorhis in California, uncovering a squirming nest of graft, espionage, and backdoor corporate dealings....

http://www.npr.org/2017/04/12/522926517/nixon-the-life-humanizes-but-doesnt-rehabilitate

https://www.propublica.org/article/a-closer-look-the-best-and-the-brightest-steve-bannon-and-us

"The Best and the Brightest” chronicles how Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were drawn into a catastrophic war in Vietnam. It is a cautionary tale of the dangers of arrogance in power — a risk to every presidency, especially in its earliest days.

There is another lesson from the career of David Halberstam that also strikes us as having resonance at this moment.

In 1962-63 Halberstam was reporting from Vietnam for the Times. He uncovered evidence that the government of South Vietnam was corrupt and failing, and he wrote a succession of stories questioning the key assumptions underlying U.S. policy in the region.

Kennedy was incensed by the coverage, which contradicted everything he was hearing from his military advisors. He confronted the Times’ publisher, Punch Sulzberger, and demanded he recall Halberstam from Vietnam. Sulzberger refused, as any publisher worth his salt should when facing such a request, and the American people were the ultimate beneficiaries. (Halberstam, for his part, won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of Vietnam in 1964.)

If you have not read “The Best and the Brightest,” or have not read it recently, we join Steve Bannon in urging you to do so. ProPublica will benefit, to be sure, but we believe anyone seeking to be an informed citizen will as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War

The Vietnam War (Vietnamese: Chiến tranh Việt Nam), also known as the Second Indochina War,^[41] and known in Vietnam as Resistance War Against America (Vietnamese: Kháng chiến chống Mỹ) or simply theAmerican War, was a Cold War-era proxy war^[42] that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955^[A ^1] to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War (1946–54) and was fought between North Vietnam—supported by the Soviet Union, China and other communist allies—and the government of South Vietnam—supported by the United States, Philippines and other anti-communist allies.^[47] The Viet Cong (also known as the National Liberation Front, or NLF), a South Vietnamese communistcommon front aided by the North, fought a guerrilla war against anti-communist forces in the region. ThePeople's Army of Vietnam, also known as the North Vietnamese Army (NVA), engaged in a more conventional war, at times committing large units to battle.

As the war continued, the part of the Viet Cong in the fighting decreased as the role of the NVA grew. U.S. and South Vietnamese forces relied on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct search and destroyoperations, involving ground forces, artillery, and airstrikes. In the course of the war, the U.S. conducted a large-scale strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam.

The U.S. government viewed its involvement in the war as a way to prevent a Communist takeover of South Vietnam. This was part of a wider containment policy, with the stated aim of stopping the spread of communism. The North Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong were fighting to reunify Vietnam. They viewed the conflict as a colonial war, fought initially against forces from France and then the U.S., and later against South Vietnam.^[48]

Beginning in 1950, American military advisors arrived in what was then French Indochina.^[49][A ^3] U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with troop levels tripling in 1961 and again in 1962.^[50] U.S. involvement escalated further following the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which a U.S. destroyer clashed with North Vietnamese fast attack craft, which was followed by the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave the U.S. president authorization to increase U.S. military presence. Regular U.S. combat units were deployed beginning in 1965. Operations crossed international borders: bordering areas of Laos and Cambodia were heavily bombed by U.S. forces as American involvement in the war peaked in 1968, the same year that the communist side launched the Tet Offensive. The Tet Offensive failed in its goal of overthrowing the South Vietnamese government, but became the turning point in the war, as it persuaded a large segment of the U.S. population that its government's claims of progress toward winning the war were illusory despite many years of massive U.S. military aid to South Vietnam.

Gradual withdrawal of U.S. ground forces began as part of "Vietnamization", which aimed to end American involvement in the war while transferring the task of fighting the Communists to the South Vietnamese themselves. Despite the Paris Peace Accord, which was signed by all parties in January 1973, the fighting continued. In the U.S. and the Western world, a large anti-Vietnam War movement developed as part of a largercounterculture. The war changed the dynamics between the Eastern and Western Blocs, and altered North–South relations.^[51]

Direct U.S. military involvement ended on 15 August 1973.^[52] The capture of Saigon by the North Vietnamese Army in April 1975 marked the end of the war, and North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year. The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities (see Vietnam War casualties). Estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed vary from 800,000^[20] to 3.1 million.^[32][53][54] Some 200,000–300,000Cambodians,^[38][39][40] 20,000–200,000 Laotians,^{[55][56][57][58][59][60]} and 58,220 U.S. service members also died in the conflict, with a further 1,626 missing in action.^[A ^2]

[hide]

Names for the war

Further information: Terminology of the Vietnam War

Various names have been applied to the conflict. Vietnam War is the most commonly used name in English. It has also been called the Second Indochina War and the Vietnam Conflict.

As there have been several conflicts in Indochina, this particular conflict is known by the names of its primary protagonists to distinguish it from others.^[65] In Vietnamese, the war is generally known as Kháng chiến chống Mỹ (Resistance War Against America). It is also called Chiến tranh Việt Nam (The Vietnam War).^[66]

The primary military organizations involved in the war were, on one side, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam(ARVN) and the U.S. military, and, on the other side, the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) (more commonly called the North Vietnamese Army, or NVA, in English-language sources), and the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF, more commonly known as the Viet Cong in English language sources), a South Vietnamese communist guerrilla force.^[67]

Background to 1949

France began its conquest of Indochina in the late 1850s, and completed pacification by 1893.^[68][69][70] The 1884 Treaty of Huế formed the basis for French colonial rule in Vietnam for the next seven decades. In spite of military resistance, most notably by the Cần Vương of Phan Đình Phùng, by 1888 the area of the current-day nations of Cambodia and Vietnam was made into the colony of French Indochina (Laos was later added to the colony).^[71] Various Vietnamese opposition movements to French rule existed during this period, such as the Việt Nam Quốc Dân Đảng who staged the failed Yên Bái mutiny in 1930, but none were ultimately as successful as the Viet Minh common front, which was founded in 1941, controlled by the Indochinese Communist Party, and funded by the U.S. and the Chinese Nationalist Party in its fight against Imperial Japanese occupation.^[72][A ^4]

In 1940, during World War II, the French were defeated by the Germans. The French State (commonly known as Vichy France) was established as a client state of Nazi Germany. The French colonial authorities, in French Indochina, sided with the Vichy regime. In September 1940, Japan invaded Indochina. Following the cessation of fighting and the beginning of the Imperial Japanese occupation, the French colonial authorities collaborated with the Japanese. The French continued to run affairs in Indochina, but ultimate power resided in the hands of the Imperial Japanese.^[72]

The Viet Minh was founded as a league for independence from France, but also opposed Japanese occupation in 1945 for the same reason. The U.S. and Chinese Nationalist Party supported them in the fight against the Imperial Japanese.^[74] However, they did not have enough power to fight actual battles at first. Viet Minh leaderHo Chi Minh was suspected of being a communist and jailed for a year by the Chinese Nationalist Party.^[75]

Double occupation by France and Japan continued until the German forces were expelled from France and the French Indochina colonial authorities started holding secret talks with the Free French. Fearing that they could no longer trust the French authorities, the Imperial Japanese military interned the French authorities and troops on 9 March 1945^[76] and created the puppet Empire of Vietnam state, under Bảo Đại instead.

During 1944–1945, a deep famine struck northern Vietnam due to a combination of bad weather and French/Japanese exploitation (French Indochina had to supply grains to Japan).^[77] Between 400,000 and 2 million^[20] people died of starvation (out of a population of 10 million in the affected area).^[78] Exploiting the administrative gap^[79] that the internment of the French had created, the Viet Minh in March 1945 urged the population to ransack rice warehouses and refuse to pay their taxes.^[80]Between 75 and 100 warehouses were consequently raided.^[81] This rebellion against the effects of the famine and the authorities that were partially responsible for it bolstered the Viet Minh's popularity and they recruited many members during this period.^[79]

On 22 August 1945, following the Imperial Japanese surrender, OSS agents Archimedes Patti and Carleton B. Swift Jr. arrived in Hanoi on a mercy mission to liberate allied POWs and were accompanied by Jean Sainteny, a French government official.^[82] The Japanese forces informally surrendered (the official surrender took place on 2 September 1945 in Tokyo Bay) but being the only force capable of maintaining law and order the Imperial Japanese military remained in power while keeping French colonial troops and Sainteny detained.^[83]

During August the Imperial Japanese forces remained inactive as the Viet Minh and other nationalist groups took over public buildings and weapons, which began theAugust Revolution.OSS officers met repeatedly with Ho Chi Minh and other Viet Minh officers during this period^[84] and on 2 September 1945 Ho Chi Minh declared theindependent Democratic Republic of Vietnam before a crowd of 500,000 in Hanoi.^[81] In an overture to the Americans, he began his speech by paraphrasing the United States Declaration of Independence: "All men are created equal. The Creator has given us certain inviolable Rights: the right to Life, the right to be Free, and the right to achieve Happiness."^[81]

The Viet Minh took power in Vietnam in the August Revolution.^[81] The Viet Minh, downplaying their Communist agenda and stressing nationalism enjoyed large popular support (Vietnamese independence being popular at the time),^[85] although Arthur J. Dommen cautions against a "romanticized view" of their success: "The Viet Minh use of terror was systematic….the party had drawn up a list of those to be liquidated without delay."^[86] After their defeat in the war, the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) gave weapons to the Vietnamese, and kept Vichy French officials and military officers imprisoned for a month after the surrender. The Viet Minh had recruited more than 600 Imperial Japanese soldiers and given them roles to train or command Vietnamese soldiers.^[87][88]

On the urging of the Soviet Union, Ho Chi Minh initially attempted to negotiate with the French, who were slowly re-establishing their control across the area.^[90] In January 1946, the Viet Minh won elections across central and northern Vietnam.^[91] On 6 March 1946, Ho signed an agreement allowing French forces to replace Nationalist Chinese forces, in exchange for French recognition of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam as a "free" republic within the French Union, with the specifics of such recognition to be determined by future negotiation.^[92][93][94] The French landed in Hanoi by March 1946 and in November of that year they ousted the Viet Minh from the city.^[90] British forces departed on 26 March 1946, leaving Vietnam in the hands of the French.^[95] Soon thereafter, the Viet Minh began a guerrilla war against the French Union forces, beginning the First Indochina War.However, the major allied victors of World War II, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union, all agreed the area belonged to the French.^[81] As the French did not have the means to immediately retake Vietnam, the major powers came to an agreement that British troops would occupy the south while Nationalist Chinese forces would move in from the north.^[81] Nationalist Chinese troops entered the country to disarm Imperial Japanese troops north of the 16th parallel on 14 September 1945.^[89] When the British landed in the south, they rearmed the interned French forces as well as parts of the surrendered Imperial Japanese forces to aid them in retaking southern Vietnam, as they did not have enough troops to do this themselves.^[81]

The war spread to Laos and Cambodia, where communists organized the Pathet Lao and the Khmer Serei, both of which were modeled on the Viet Minh.^[96] Globally, the Cold War began in earnest, which meant that the rapprochement that existed between the Western powers and the Soviet Union during World War II disintegrated. The Viet Minh fight was hampered by a lack of weapons; this situation changed by 1949 when the Chinese Communists had largely won the Chinese Civil War and were free to provide arms to their Vietnamese allies.^[96]

Exit of the French, 1950–54

...

Transition period

Main articles: Geneva Conference (1954), Operation Passage to Freedom, Battle of Saigon (1955), Ba Cụt, State of Vietnam referendum, 1955 and Land reform in North Vietnam

In addition to the Catholics flowing south, up to 130,000 "Revolutionary Regroupees" went to the north for "regroupment", expecting to return to the south within two years.^[116] The Viet Minh left roughly 5,000 to 10,000 cadres in the south as a "politico-military substructure within the object of its irredentism."^[117] The last French soldiers were to leave Vietnam in April 1956.^[101] The PRC completed its withdrawal from North Vietnam at around the same time.^[100] Around 52,000 Vietnamese civilians moved from south to north.^[118]Vietnam was temporarily partitioned at the 17th parallel, and under the terms of the Geneva Accords, civilians were to be given the opportunity to move freely between the two provisional states for a 300-day period. Elections throughout the country were to be held in 1956 to establish a unified government.^[110] Around one million northerners, mainly minority Catholics, fled south, fearing persecution by the communists^[111] following an American propaganda campaign using slogans such as "The Virgin Mary is heading south",^[112] and aided by a U.S.-funded $93 million relocation program, which included the use of the Seventh Fleet to ferry refugees.^[113] As many as two million more would have left had they not been stopped by the Viet Minh.^[114] The northern, mainly Catholic refugees were meant to give the later Ngô Đình Diệm regime a strong anti-communist constituency.^[115] Diệm later went on to staff his administration's key posts mostly with northern and central Catholics.

Between 1953 and 1956, the North Vietnamese government instituted various agrarian reforms, including "rent reduction" and "land reform", which resulted in significant political oppression. Declassified Politburo documents confirm that 1 in 1,000 North Vietnamese (i.e., about 14,000 people) were the quota targeted for execution during the "rent reduction" campaign.^[119] During the land reform, testimony from North Vietnamese witnesses suggested a ratio of one execution for every 160 village residents, which extrapolated nationwide would indicate nearly 100,000 executions. Because the campaign was concentrated mainly in the Red River Delta area, a lower estimate of 50,000 executions became widely accepted by scholars at the time.^{[120][121][122]} In 1956, leaders in Hanoi admitted to "excesses" in implementing this program and restored a large amount of the land to the original owners.^[123]

The south, meanwhile, constituted the State of Vietnam, with Bảo Đại as Emperor and Ngô Đình Diệm (appointed in July 1954) as his prime minister.Neither the United States government nor Ngô Đình Diệm's State of Vietnam signed anything at the 1954 Geneva Conference. With respect to the question of reunification, the non-communist Vietnamese delegation objected strenuously to any division of Vietnam, but lost out when the French accepted the proposal of Viet Minh delegate Phạm Văn Đồng,^[124] who proposed that Vietnam eventually be united by elections under the supervision of "local commissions".^[125] The United States countered with what became known as the "American Plan", with the support of South Vietnam and the United Kingdom.^[126] It provided for unification elections under the supervision of the United Nations, but was rejected by the Soviet delegation.^[126] The United States said, "With respect to the statement made by the representative of the State of Vietnam, the United States reiterates its traditional position that peoples are entitled to determine their own future and that it will not join in any arrangement which would hinder this".^[127]

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote in 1954, "I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held as of the time of the fighting, possibly eighty percent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader rather than Chief of State Bảo Đại. Indeed, the lack of leadership and drive on the part of Bảo Đại was a factor in the feeling prevalent among Vietnamese that they had nothing to fight for."^[128] According to the Pentagon Papers, however, from 1954 to 1956 "Ngô Đình Diệm really did accomplish miracles" in South Vietnam:^[129] "It is almost certain that by 1956 the proportion which might have voted for Ho—in a free election against Diệm—would have been much smaller than eighty percent."^[130] In 1957, independent observers from India, Poland, and Canada representing the International Control Commission (ICC) stated that fair, unbiased elections were not possible, with the ICC reporting that neither South nor North Vietnam had honored the armistice agreement^[131]

From April to June 1955, Diệm eliminated any political opposition in the south by launching military operations against two religious groups: the Cao Đài and Hòa Hảo ofBa Cụt. The campaign also focused on the Bình Xuyên organized crime group which was allied with members of the communist party secret police and had some military elements. As broad-based opposition to his harsh tactics mounted, Diệm increasingly sought to blame the communists.^[25]

In a referendum on the future of the State of Vietnam on 23 October 1955, Diệm rigged the poll supervised by his brother Ngô Đình Nhu and was credited with 98.2 percent of the vote, including 133% in Saigon. His American advisors had recommended a more modest winning margin of "60 to 70 percent." Diệm, however, viewed the election as a test of authority.^[132] Three days later, he declared South Vietnam to be an independent state under the name Republic of Vietnam (ROV), with himself as president.^[133] Likewise, Ho Chi Minh and other communist officials always won at least 99% of the vote in North Vietnamese "elections".^[134]

The domino theory, which argued that if one country fell to communism, then all of the surrounding countries would follow, was first proposed as policy by the Eisenhower administration.^[135] John F. Kennedy, then a U.S. Senator, said in a speech to the American Friends of Vietnam: "Burma, Thailand, India, Japan, the Philippines and obviously Laos and Cambodia are among those whose security would be threatened if the Red Tide of Communism overflowed into Vietnam."^[136]

Diệm era, 1955–63

Main articles: Ngô Đình Diệm and War in Vietnam (1954–59)

A devout Roman Catholic, Diệm was fervently anti-communist, nationalist, and socially conservative. Historian Luu Doan Huynh notes that "Diệm represented narrow and extremist nationalism coupled with autocracy and nepotism."^[137] The majority of Vietnamese people were Buddhist, and were alarmed by actions such as Diệm's dedication of the country to the Virgin Mary.See also: Ngô Đình Diệm presidential visit to Australia

Beginning in the summer of 1955, Diệm launched the "Denounce the Communists" campaign, during which communists and other anti-government elements were arrested, imprisoned, tortured, or executed. He instituted the death penalty against any activity deemed communist in August 1956.^[138] According to Gabriel Kolko about 12,000 suspected opponents of Diệm were killed between 1955 and 1957 and by the end of 1958 an estimated 40,000 political prisoners had been jailed.^[139] However,Guenter Lewy argues that such figures were exaggerated and that there were never more than 35,000 prisoners of all kinds in the whole country.^[140]

In May 1957, Diệm undertook a ten-day state visit to the United States. President Eisenhower pledged his continued support, and a parade was held in Diệm's honor in New York City. Although Diệm was publicly praised, in private Secretary of State John Foster Dulles conceded that Diệm had been selected because there were no better alternatives.^[141]

Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara wrote in Argument Without End (1999) that the new American patrons of the Republic of Vietnam (ROV) were almost completely ignorant of Vietnamese culture. They knew little of the language or long history of the country.^[97] There was a tendency to assign American motives to Vietnamese actions, though Diệm warned that it was an illusion to believe that blindly copying Western methods would solve Vietnamese problems.^[97]

Insurgency in the South, 1954–60

Main articles: Viet Cong and War in Vietnam (1959–63)

In December 1960, the National Liberation Front (NLF, a.k.a. the Viet Cong) was formally created with the intent of uniting all anti-GVN activists, including non-communists. According to the Pentagon Papers, the Viet Cong "placed heavy emphasis on the withdrawal of American advisors and influence, on land reform and liberalization of the GVN, on coalition government and the neutralization of Vietnam." Often the leaders of the organization were kept secret.^[46]Between 1954 and 1957 there was large-scale but disorganized dissidence in the countryside which the Diệm government succeeded in quelling. In early 1957 South Vietnam had its first peace in over a decade. However, by mid-1957 through 1959 incidents of violence increased but the government "did not construe it as a campaign, considering the disorders too diffuse to warrant committing major GVN [Government of Vietnam] resources." By early 1959 however, Diệm considered it an organized campaign and implemented Law 10/59, which made political violence punishable by death and property confiscation.^[142] There had been some division among former Viet Minh whose main goal was to hold the elections promised in the Geneva Accords, leading to "wildcat" activities separate from the other communists and anti-GVN activists.^[46]

The reason for the continued survival of the NLF was the class relations in the countryside. The vast majority of the population lived in villages in the countryside where the key issue was land reform. The Viet Minh had reduced rents and debts; and had leased communal lands, mostly to the poorer peasants. Diem brought the landlords back to the villages. People who were farming land they held for years now had to return it to landlords and pay years of back rent. This rent collection was enforced by the South Vietnamese army. The divisions within villages reproduced those that had existed against the French: "75 percent support for the NLF, 20 percent trying to remain neutral and 5 percent firmly pro-government,"^[143]

North Vietnamese involvement

Sources disagree on whether North Vietnam played a direct role in aiding and organizing South Vietnamese rebels prior to 1960. Kahin and Lewis assert:

Contrary to United States policy assumptions, all available evidence shows that the revival of the civil war in the South in 1958 was undertaken by Southerners at their own—not Hanoi's—initiative…Insurgency activity against the Saigon government began in the South under Southern leadership not as a consequence of any dictate from Hanoi, but contrary to Hanoi's injunctions.^[46]

Similarly, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. states that "it was not until September, 1960 that the Communist Party of North Vietnam bestowed its formal blessing and called for the liberation of the south from American imperialism".^[46]

By contrast, the author of War Comes to Long An Jeffrey Race interviewed communist defectors in 1967 and 1968 who found such denials "very amusing", and who "commented humorously that the Party had apparently been more successful than was expected in concealing its role."^[144] James Olson and Randy Roberts assert that North Vietnam authorized a low-level insurgency in December 1956.^[45] To counter the accusation that North Vietnam was violating the Geneva Accord, the independence of the Viet Cong was stressed in communist propaganda.^[145]

In March 1956, southern communist leader Lê Duẩn presented a plan to revive the insurgency entitled "The Road to the South" to the other members of the Politburo in Hanoi, but as both China and the Soviets opposed confrontation at this time, Lê Duẩn's plan was rejected.^[145] However the North Vietnamese leadership approved tentative measures to revive the southern insurgency in December 1956.^[146] Communist forces were under a single command structure set up in 1958.^[147] The North Vietnamese Communist Party approved a "people's war" on the South at a session in January 1959^[148] and in May, Group 559 was established to maintain and upgrade the Ho Chi Minh trail, at this time a six-month mountain trek through Laos. About 500 of the "regroupees" of 1954 were sent south on the trail during its first year of operation.^[149] The first arms delivery via the trail was completed in August 1959.^[150]

North Vietnam invaded Laos in 1959, and used 30,000 men to build invasion routes through Laos and Cambodia by 1961.^[151] About 40,000 communist soldiers infiltrated into the south from 1961–63.^[145] North Vietnam sent 10,000 troops of the North Vietnamese Army to attack the south in 1964, and this figure increased to 100,000 in 1965.^[152]

Kennedy's escalation, 1961–63

Main articles: Strategic Hamlet Program and Phạm Ngọc Thảo

In the 1960 U.S. presidential election, Senator John F. Kennedy defeated incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon. Although Eisenhower warned Kennedy about Laos and Vietnam, Europe and Latin America "loomed larger than Asia on his sights."^[153] In his inaugural address, Kennedy made the ambitious pledge to "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty."^[154] In June 1961, he bitterly disagreed with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev when they met in Vienna to discuss key U.S.–Soviet issues. Only 16 months later, the U.S.–Soviet issues included the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 16–28, 1962) played out on television worldwide and was the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war, and the U.S. raised the readiness level of Strategic Air Command(SAC) forces to DEFCON 2.

In May 1961, U.S. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson visited Saigon and enthusiastically declared Diệm the "Winston Churchillof Asia."^[158] Asked why he had made the comment, Johnson replied, "Diệm's the only boy we got out there."}:^[141] Johnson assured Diệm of more aid in molding a fighting force that could resist the communists.The Kennedy administration remained essentially committed to the Cold War foreign policy inherited from the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. In 1961, the U.S. had 50,000 troops based in Korea, and Kennedy faced a three-part crisis – the failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the construction of the Berlin Wall, and a negotiated settlement between the pro-Western government of Laos and the Pathet Lao communist movement.^[155] These crises made Kennedy believe that another failure on the part of the United States to gain control and stop communist expansion would fatally damage U.S. credibility with its allies and his own reputation. Kennedy was thus determined to "draw a line in the sand" and prevent a communist victory in Vietnam. He told James Reston of The New York Times immediately after his Vienna meeting with Khrushchev, "Now we have a problem making our power credible and Vietnam looks like the place."^[156][157]

Kennedy's policy toward South Vietnam rested on the assumption that Diệm and his forces had to ultimately defeat the guerrillas on their own. He was against the deployment of American combat troops and observed that "to introduce U.S. forces in large numbers there today, while it might have an initially favorable military impact, would almost certainly lead to adverse political and, in the long run, adverse military consequences."^[159] The quality of the South Vietnamese military, however, remained poor. Poor leadership, corruption, and political promotions all played a part in weakening the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN). The frequency of guerrilla attacks rose as the insurgency gathered steam. While Hanoi's support for the Viet Cong played a role, South Vietnamese governmental incompetence was at the core of the crisis.^[160]

Kennedy advisors Maxwell Taylor and Walt Rostow recommended that U.S. troops be sent to South Vietnam disguised as flood relief workers. Kennedy rejected the idea but increased military assistance yet again. In April 1962, John Kenneth Galbraithwarned Kennedy of the "danger we shall replace the French as a colonial force in the area and bleed as the French did."^[161] By November 1963, there were 16,000 American military personnel in South Vietnam, up from Eisenhower's 900 advisors.^[162]One major issue Kennedy raised was whether the Soviet space and missile programs had surpassed those of the United States. Although Kennedy stressed long-range missile parity with the Soviets, he was also interested in using special forces forcounterinsurgency warfare in Third World countries threatened by communist insurgencies. Although they were originally intended for use behind front lines after a conventional Soviet invasion of Europe, Kennedy believed that the guerrilla tactics employed by special forces such as the Green Berets would be effective in a "brush fire" war in Vietnam.

The Strategic Hamlet Program was initiated in late 1961. This joint U.S.-South Vietnamese program attempted to resettle the rural population into fortified camps. It was implemented in early 1962 and involved some forced relocation, village internment, and segregation of rural South Vietnamese into new communities where the peasantry would be isolated from Communist insurgents. It was hoped these new communities would provide security for the peasants and strengthen the tie between them and the central government. However, by November 1963 the program had waned, and it officially ended in 1964.^[163]

On 23 July 1962, fourteen nations, including China, South Vietnam, the Soviet Union, North Vietnam and the United States, signed an agreement promising to respect the neutrality of Laos.^[164]

Ousting and assassination of Ngô Đình Diệm

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On 2 August 1964, the USS *Maddox*, on an intelligence mission along North Vietnam's coast, allegedly fired upon and damaged several torpedo boats that had been stalking it in the Gulf of Tonkin.^[184] A second attack was reported two days later on the USS *Turner Joy* and Maddox in the same area. The circumstances of the attack were murky. Lyndon Johnson commented to Undersecretary of State George Ball that "those sailors out there may have been shooting at flying fish."^[185]

The second attack led to retaliatory air strikes, prompted Congress to approve the **Gulf of Tonkin Resolution** on 7 August 1964,^[186]signed by Johnson, and gave the president power to conduct military operations in Southeast Asia without declaring war.^[187] Although Congressmen at the time denied that this was a full-scale war declaration, the Tonkin Resolution allowed the president unilateral power to launch a full-scale war if the president deemed it necessary.^[187] In the same month, Johnson pledged that he was not "… committing American boys to fighting a war that I think ought to be fought by the boys of Asia to help protect their own land."^[188]

An undated NSA publication declassified in 2005, however, revealed that there was no attack on 4 August.^[189] It had already been called into question long before this. "Gulf of Tonkin incident", writes Louise Gerdes, "is an oft-cited example of the way in which Johnson misled the American people to gain support for his foreign policy in Vietnam."^[190] George C. Herring argues, however, that McNamara and the Pentagon "did not knowingly lie about the alleged attacks, but they were obviously in a mood to retaliate and they seem to have selected from the evidence available to them those parts that confirmed what they wanted to believe."^[191]

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Tet Offensive

Main article: Tet Offensive

Although the U.S. and South Vietnamese forces were initially shocked by the scale of the urban offensive, they responded quickly and effectively, decimating the ranks of the Viet Cong. In the former capital city of Huế, the combined NVA and Viet Cong troops captured the Imperial Citadel and much of the city and massacred over 3,000 unarmed Huế civilians.^[221] In the following Battle of Huế American forces employed massive firepower that left 80 percent of the city in ruins.^[222] Further north, at Quảng Trị City, members of the 1st Cavalry Division and 1st ARVN Infantry Division killed more than 900 NVA and Vietcong troops in and around the city.^[223][224] In Saigon, 1,000 NLF (Viet Cong) fighters fought off 11,000 U.S. and ARVN troops for three weeks.In late 1967 the Communists lured American forces into the hinterlands at Đắk Tô and at the Marine Khe Sanh combat base inQuảng Trị Province where the United States was more than willing to fight because it could unleash its massive firepower unimpeded by civilians. However, on 31}: January 1968, the NVA and the Viet Cong broke the truce that traditionally accompanied the Tết (Lunar New Year) holiday by launching the largest battle of the war, the Tet Offensive, in the hope of sparking a national uprising. Over 100 cities were attacked by over 85,000 enemy troops including assaults on General Westmoreland's headquarters and the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.^[220]

But the Tet Offensive had another, unintended consequence. General Westmoreland had become the public face of the war. He had been named Time magazine's 1965's Man of the Year and eventually was featured on the magazine's cover three times.^[226] Time described him as "the sinewy personification of the American fighting man… (who) directed the historic buildup, drew up the battle plans, and infused the… men under him with his own idealistic view of U.S. aims and responsibilities."^[226]Six weeks after the Tet Offensive began, "public approval of his overall performance dropped from 48 percent to 36 percent–and, more dramatically, endorsement for his handling of the war fell from 40 percent to 26 percent."^[227]Across South Vietnam, 1,100 Americans and other allied troops, 2,100 ARVN, 14,000 civilians, and 32,000 NVA and Viet Cong lay dead.^[224][225]

Although the Tet Offensive was a significant victory for allied forces, in terms of casualties and control of territory, it was a sound defeat when evaluated from the point of view of strategic consequences: it became a turning point in America's involvement in the Vietnam War because it had a profound impact on domestic support for the conflict. Despite the military failure for the Communist forces, the Tet Offensive became a political victory for them and ended the career of president Lyndon B. Johnson, who declined to run for re-election as his approval rating slumped from 48 to 36 percent.^[228] As James Witz noted, Tet "contradicted the claims of progress… made by the Johnson administration and the military."^[228] The offensive constituted anintelligence failure on the scale of Pearl Harbor.^[215][230] Journalist Peter Arnett, in a disputed article, quoted an officer he refused to identify,^[231] saying of Bến Tre (laid to rubble by U.S. attacks)^[232] that "it became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it".^[233]A few months earlier, in November 1967, Westmoreland had spearheaded a public relations drive for the Johnson administration to bolster flagging public support.^[228] In a speech before the National Press Club he had said a point in the war had been reached "where the end comes into view."^[229] Thus, the public was shocked and confused when Westmoreland's predictions were trumped by Tet.^[228] The American media, which had until then been largely supportive of U.S. efforts, turned on the Johnson administration for what had become an increasing credibility gap.

Westmoreland became Chief of Staff of the Army in March 1968, just as all resistance was finally subdued. The move was technically a promotion. However, his position had become untenable because of the offensive and because his request for 200,000 additional troops had been leaked to the media. Westmoreland was succeeded by his deputy}: Creighton Abrams, a commander less inclined to public media pronouncements.^[238]Walter Cronkite said in an editorial, "To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion."^[234][235] Following Cronkite's editorial report, President Lyndon Johnson is reported to have said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."^[236][237]

On 10 May 1968, despite low expectations, peace talks began between the United States and North Vietnam in Paris. Negotiations stagnated for five months, until Johnson gave orders to halt the bombing of North Vietnam.

As historian Robert Dallek writes, "Lyndon Johnson's escalation of the war in Vietnam divided Americans into warring camps… cost 30,000 American lives by the time he left office, (and) destroyed Johnson's presidency…"^[239] His refusal to send more U.S. troops to Vietnam was seen as Johnson's admission that the war was lost.^[240] It can be seen that the refusal was a tacit admission that the war could not be won by escalation, at least not at a cost acceptable to the American people.^[240] As Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara noted, "the dangerous illusion of victory by the United States was therefore dead."^[241]

Vietnam was a major political issue during the United States presidential election in 1968. The election was won by Republican party candidate Richard Nixon.