French-Vietminh War over control of Vietnam (1 gen 1946 anni – 1 gen 1954 anni)

Descrizione:

domino theory: President Eisenhower’s theory of containment, which warned that the fall of a non-Communist government to communism in Southeast Asia would trigger the spread of communism to neighboring countries.

When covert operations failed or proved impractical, the American approach to emerging nations risked entanglement in deeper, more intractable conflicts. One example was already unfolding in a distant country unknown to most Americans: Vietnam. At the close of World War II, the Japanese occupiers of the area surrendered to China in the north of the country and to Britain in the south. The Vietminh, the nationalist movement that had led the resistance against the Japanese (and the French, prior to 1940), seized control in the north. But their leader, Ho Chi Minh, was a Communist, and this fact outweighed American and British commitment to self-determination. When France moved to restore colonial control of Vietnam, the United States and Britain sided with their European ally. President Truman rejected Ho’s plea to support the Vietnamese nationhood, and France rejected Ho’s offer of a negotiated independence. Shortly after the French returned in late 1946, the Vietminh resumed their war of national liberation.

Eisenhower picked up where Truman had left off. If the French failed, Eisenhower argued, all non-Communist governments in the region would fall like dominoes. This so-called domino theory — which represented an extension of the containment doctrine — guided U.S. policy in Southeast Asia for the next twenty years. The United States eventually provided most of the financing for the French war, but money was not enough to defeat the determined Vietminh. After a fifty-seven-day siege in early 1954, the huge French fortress at Dien Bien Phu fell, and with it France’s hopes of victory. Later that year, the Geneva Accords partitioned Vietnam temporarily at the 17th parallel and called for elections within two years to form a single government for a reunited Vietnam.

The United States rejected and undermined the Geneva Accords. With the help of the CIA, a pro-American government took power in South Vietnam in June 1954. The next year, in a rigged election, the anticommunist Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem became president of an independent South Vietnam. Facing certain defeat by the popular Ho Chi Minh in the scheduled reunification vote, Diem simply called off the vote. The Eisenhower administration propped up Diem with an average of $200 million a year in aid and a contingent of 675 American military advisors. This support was just the beginning.

Aggiunto al nastro di tempo:

Data: