Vietnam War

Vietnam War
Main articles: Vietnam War, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, Buddhist crisis, Role of United States in the Vietnam War, ARVN, Vietcong, Ho Chi Minh Trail, and Operation Menu
Children running down a road near Trang Bang after a VNAF napalm attack. June 8, 1972

In July 1955, South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem rejected the nationwide elections agreed to by France and North Vietnam at the Geneva Conference of 1954. The pro-Hanoi Vietcong began a guerrilla campaign in the late 1950s to overthrow Diem's government, which an official Vietcong statement described as a "disguised colonial regime".[14]

In 1963, Buddhist discontent with Diem's pro-Catholic discrimination erupted following the banning of the Buddhist flag and the Hue Vesak shootings. This resulted in a series of mass demonstrations known as the Buddhist crisis. With Diem unwilling to bend, his brother orchestrated the Xa Loi Pagoda raids. As a result, America's relationship with Diem broke down and resulted in coup that saw Diem killed.

Diem was followed by a series of military regimes that often lasted only months before being toppled by another. With this instability, the communists began to gain ground.

To support South Vietnam's struggle against the communist insurgency, the US began increasing its contribution of military advisers. US forces became embroiled in combat operations in 1965 and at their peak they numbered more than 500,000.[15] North Vietnamese forces attacked most major targets in southern Vietnam during the 1968 Tet Offensive.[16] Communist forces supplying the Vietcong carried supplies along the Truong Son Road, which passed through Laos and Cambodia. The US president authorized Operation Menu, a SAC bombing campaign in Laos and Cambodia, which he kept secret from the US Congress.[17][18]

Its own casualties mounting, and facing opposition to the war at home and condemnation abroad, the U.S. began transferring combat roles to the South Vietnamese military according to the Nixon Doctrine; the process was subsequently called Vietnamization. The effort had mixed results. The Paris Peace Accords of January 27, 1973, formally recognized the sovereignty of Vietnam "as recognized by the 1954 Geneva Agreements". Under the terms of the accords all American combat troops were withdrawn by March 29, 1973. Limited fighting continued, but all major fighting ended until the North once again sent troops to the South during the Spring of 1975, culminating in the Fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975. South Vietnam briefly come under the nominal rule of a Provisional Revolutionary Government while under military occupation by North Vietnam. On July 2, 1976, North and South were merged to form a Socialist Republic of Vietnam.