The Cold War and Vietnam

Abstract

likely have remained a localized anticolonial struggle in French Indochina. The cold war shaped the way the Vietnam War was fought and significantly affected its outcome. The war in Vietnam in turn influenced the direction taken by the cold war after 1975. The conflict in Vietnam stemmed from the interaction of two major phenomena of the post-World War II era, decolonization?the dissolution of colonial empires?and the cold war. The rise of nation alism in the colonial areas and the weakness of the European powers after the Second World War combined to destroy a colonial system that had been an established feature of world politics for centuries. A change of this magnitude did not occur smoothly, and in Vietnam it led to war. When France fell to Germany in 1940, Japan imposed a protectorate upon the French colony in Vietnam, and in March 1945 the Japanese overthrew the French puppet government. In August 1945, Vietnamese nationalists led by the charismatic patriot Ho Chi Minh seized the opportunity presented by Japan's surrender to pro claim the independence of their country. Determined to recover their empire, the French set out to regain control of Vietnam. After more than a year of ultimately futile negotiations, a war began in November 1946 that would not end until Saigon fell in April 1975. At the very time Vietnamese nationalists were engaged in a bloody anticolonial war with France, the cold war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was evolving into an ideological and power struggle with global dimensions. The conjunction of these historical trends ex plains the internationalization of the war in Vietnam. What was unique about decolonization in Vietnam?and from the American standpoint most significant?was that the nationalist move ment, the Viet Minh, was led by Communists, and this would have enormous implications, transforming what began as a struggle against French colonialism into an international conflict of dangerous pro portions. At least from 1949 on, U.S. officials viewed the struggle in Indochina in terms of the cold war. Ho Chi Minh had been a