The Vietnam War was the legacy of France's failure to suppress nationalist forces in Indochina as it struggled to restore its colonial dominion after World War II. Led by Ho Chi Minh, a Communist-dominated revolutionary movement -- the Viet Minh -- waged a political and military struggle for Vietnamese independence that frustrated the efforts of the French and resulted ultimately in their ouster from the region. Map of Vietnam (very slow: 194K) The U.S. Army's first encounters with Ho Chi Minh were brief and sympathetic. During World War II, Ho's anti-Japanese resistance fighters helped to rescue downed American pilots and furnished information on Japanese forces in Indochina. U.S. Army officers stood at Ho's side in August 1945 as he basked in the short-lived satisfaction of declaring Vietnam's independence. Five years later, however, in an international climate tense with ideological and military confrontation between Communist and non-Communist powers, Army advisers of the newly formed U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG), Indochina, were aiding France against the Viet Minh. With combat raging in Korea and mainland China recently fallen to the Communists, the war in Indochina now appeared to Americans as one more pressure point to be contained on a wide arc of Commuhist expansion in Asia. By underwriting French military efforts in Southeast Asia, the United States enabled France to sustain its economic recovery and to contribute, through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), to the collective defense of western Europe. Provided with aircraft, artillery, tanks, vehicles, weapons, and other equipment and supplies -- a small portion of which they distributed to an anti-Communist Vietnamese army they had organized -- the French did not fall for want of equipment. Instead, they put American aid at the service of a flawed strategy that sought to defeat the elusive Viet Minh in set-piece battles, but neglected to cultivate the loyalty and support of the Vietnamese people. Too few in number to provide more than a veneer of security in most rural areas, the French were unable to suppress the guerrillas or to prevent the underground Communist shadow government from reappearing whenever French forces left one area to fight elsewhere. The battle of Dien Bien Phu epitomized the shortcomings of French strategy. Located near the Laotian border in a rugged valley of remote northwestern Vietnam, Dien Bien Phu was not a congenial place to fight. Far inland from coastal supply bases and with roads vulnerable to the Viet Minh, the base depended almost entirely on air support. The French, expecting the Viet Minh to invade Laos, occupied Dien Bien Phu in November 1953 in order to force a battle. Yet they had little to gain from an engagement. Victory at Dien Bien Phu would not have ended the war; even if defeated, the Viet Minh would have retired to their mountain redoubts. And no French victory at Dien Bien Phu would have reduced Communist control over large segments of the population. On the other hand, the French had much to lose, in manpower, equipment, and prestige. Their position was in a valley, surrounded by high ground that the Viet Minh quickly fortified. While bombarding the besieged garrison with artillery and mortars, the attackers tunneled closer to the French positions. Supply aircraft that successfully ran the gauntlet of intense antiaircraft fire risked destruction on the ground from Viet Minh artillery. Eventually, supplies and ammunition could be delivered to the defenders only by parachute drop. As the situation became critical, France asked the United States to intervene. Believing that the French position was untenable and that even massive American air attacks using small nuclear bombs would be futile, General Matthew B. Ridgway, the Army Chief of Staff, helped to convince President Dwight D. Eisenhower not to aid them. Ridgway also opposed the use of U.S. ground forces, arguing that such an effort would severely strain the Army and possibly lead to a wider war in Asia. The fall of Dien Bien Phu on 7 May 1954, as peace negotiations were about to start in Geneva, hastened France's disengagement from Indochina. On 20 July, France and the Viet Minh agreed to end hostilities and to divide Vietnam temporarily into two zones at the 17th parallel. (Map 47) In the North, the Viet Minh established a Communist government, with its capital at Hanoi. French forces withdrew to the South, and hundreds of thousands of civilians, most of whom were Roman Catholics, accompanied them. The question of unification was left to be decided by an election scheduled for 1956. The Emergence of South Vietnam As the Viet Minh consolidated control in the North, Ngo Dinh Diem, a Roman Catholic of Mandarin background, sought to assert his authority over the chaotic conditions in the South in hopes of establishing an anti-Communist state. A onetime minister in the French colonial administration, Diem enjoyed a reputation for honesty. He had resigned his office in 1933 and had taken no part in the tumultuous events that swept over Vietnam after the war. Diem returned to Saigon in the summer of 1954 as premier with no political following except his family and a few Americans. His authority was challenged, first by the independent Hoa Hao and Cao Dal religious sects and then by the Binh Xuyen, an organization of gangsters that controlled Saigon's gambling dens and brothels and had strong influence with the police. Rallying an army, Diem defeated the sects and gained their grudging allegiance. Remnants of their forces, however, fled to the jungle to continue their resistance, and some, at a later date, became the nucleus of Communist guerrilla units. Diem was also challenged by members of his own army, where French influence persisted among the highest ranking officers. But he weathered the threat of an army coup, dispelling American doubts about his ability to survive in the jungle of Vietnamese politics. For the next few years, the United States commitment to defend South Vietnam's independence was synonymous with support for Diem. Americans now provided advice and support to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN); at Diem's request, they replaced French advisers throughout his nation's military establishment. As the American role in South Vietnam was growing, U.S. defense policy was undergoing review. Officials in the Eisenhower administration believed that wars like those in Korea and Vietnam were too costly and ought to be avoided in the future. "Never again" was the rallying cry of those who opposed sending U.S. ground forces to fight a conventional war in Asia. Instead, the Eisenhower administration relied on the threat or use of massive nuclear retaliation to deter or, if necessary, to defeat the armies of the Soviet Union or Communist China. The New Look, as this policy was called, emphasized nuclear air power at the expense of conventional ground forces. If deterrence failed, planners envisioned the next war as a short, violent nuclear conflict of a few days' duration, conducted with forces in being. Ground forces were relegated to a minor role, and mobilization was regarded as an unnecessary luxury. In consequence, the Army's share of the defense budget decreased, the modernization of its forces was delayed, and its strength was reduced by 40 percent -- from 1,404,598 in 1954 to 861,964 in 1956. A strategy dependent on one form of military power, the New Look was sharply criticized by soldiers and academics alike. Unless the United States was willing to risk destruction, critics argued, the threat of massive nuclear retaliation had little credibility. General Ridgway and his successor, General Maxwell D. Taylor, were vocal opponents. Both advocated balanced forces to enable the United States to cope realistically with a variety of military contingencies. The events of the late 1950's appeared to support their demand for flexibility. The United States intervened in Lebanon in 1956 to restore political stability there. Two years later an American military show of force in the Straits of Taiwan helped to dampen tensions between Communist China and the Nationalist Chinese Government on Formosa. Both contingencies underlined the importance of avoiding any fixed concept of war. Advocates of the flexible response doctrine foresaw a meaningful role for the Army as part of a more credible deterrent and as a means of intervening, when necessary, in limited and small wars. They wished to strengthen both conventional and unconventional forces; to improve strategic and tactical mobility; and to maintain troops and equipment at forward bases, close to likely areas of conflict. They placed a premium on highly responsive command and control, to allow a close meshing of military actions with political goals. The same reformers were deeply interested in the conduct of brushfire wars, especially among the underdeveloped nations. In the so-called third world, competing cold war ideologies and festering nationalistic, religious, and social conflicts interacted with the disruptive forces of modernization to create the preconditions for open hostilities. Southeast Asia was one of several such areas identified by the Army. Here the United States' central concern was the threat of North Vietnamese and perhaps Chinese aggression against South Vietnam and other non-Communist states. SEATO The United States took the lead in forming a regional defense pact, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), signaling its commitment to, contain Communist encroachment in the region. Meanwhile the 342 American advisers of MAAG, Vietnam (which replaced MAAG, Indochina, in 1955), trained and organized Diem's fledgling army to resist an invasion from the North. Three MAAG chiefs -- Lt. Gens. John W. O'Damel, Samuel T Williams, and Lionel C. McGarr -- reorganized South Vietnam's light mobile infantry groups into infantry divisions, compatible in design and mission with U.S. defense plans. The South Vietnamese Army, with a strength of about 150,000, was equipped with standard Army equipment and given the mission of delaying the advance of any invasion force until the arrival of American reinforcements. The residual influence of the army's earlier French training, however, lingered in both leadership and tactics. The South Vietnamese had little or no practical experience in administration and the higher staff functions, from which the French had excluded them. The MAAG's training and reorganization work was often interrupted by Diem's use of his army to conduct "pacification" campaigns to root out stay-behind Viet Minh cadre. Hence responsibility for most internal security was transferred to poorly trained and ill-equipped paramilitary forces, the Civil Guard and Self-Defense Corps, which numbered about 75,000. For the most part, the Viet Minh in the South avoided armed action and subscribed to a political action program in anticipation of Vietnam-wide elections in 1956, as stipulated by the Geneva Accords. But Diem, supported by the United States, refused to hold elections, claiming that undemocratic conditions in the North precluded a fair contest. (Some observers thought Ho Chi Minh sufficiently popular in the South to defeat Diem.) Buoyed by his own election as President in 1955 and by the adulation of his American supporters, Diem's political strength rose to its apex. While making some political and economic reforms, he pressed hard his attacks on political opponents and former Viet Minh, many of whom were not Communists at all but patriots who had joined the movement to fight for Vietnamese independence. By 1957 Diem's harsh measures had so weakened the Viet Minh that Communist leaders in the South feared for the movement's survival there. The southerners urged their colleagues in the North to sanction a new armed struggle in South Vietnam. For self-protection, some Viet Minh had fled to secret bases to hide and form small units. Others joined renegade elements of the former sect armies. From bases in the mangrove swamps of the Mekong Delta, in the Plain of Reeds near the Cambodian border, and in the jungle of War Zones C and D northwest of Saigon, the Communists began to rebuild their armed forces, to re-establish an underground political network, and to carry out propaganda, harassment, and terrorist activities. As reforms faltered and Diem became more dictatorial, the ranks of the rebels swelled with the politically disaffected. Back to Table of Contents -- US Army in Vietnam Back to Vietnam Military History List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by Coalition Web, Inc. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com