Vietnam War (nov 1, 1955 – apr 30, 1975)

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The Vietnam War was an armed conflict between North Vietnam and South Vietnam, with North Vietnam supported by the Soviet Union and China, and South Vietnam by the United States and other anti-communist nations. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and a major proxy war of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and US. Direct US military involvement escalated from 1965 until its withdrawal in 1973, spilling over into the Laotian and Cambodian Civil Wars, which ended with all three countries becoming communist in 1975.

After the defeat of the French Union in the First Indochina War, Vietnam gained independence in the 1954 Geneva Conference but was divided into two parts at the 17th parallel. North Vietnam began supplying and directing the Viet Cong (VC), intensifying a guerrilla war from 1957. In 1958, North Vietnam invaded Laos, establishing the Ho Chi Minh trail to supply and reinforce the VC. By 1963, the north had covertly sent 40,000 soldiers of its own People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), armed with Soviet and Chinese weapons, to fight in the insurgency in the south.

President John F. Kennedy increased US involvement from 900 military advisors in 1960 to 16,300 in 1963 and sent more aid to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). In 1963, Diem was killed in a US-backed military coup, adding to the south's instability. Following the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, the US Congress passed a resolution giving President Lyndon B. Johnson authority to increase military presence without a declaration of war. Johnson launched a bombing campaign of the north and began sending combat troops, dramatically increasing deployment to 184,000 by the end of 1965 and 536,000 by the end of 1968.

The war resulted in an enormous human cost, with estimates of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed ranging from 970,000 to 3 million. The end of the war precipitated the Vietnamese boat people and the larger Indochina refugee crisis, with millions leaving Indochina.

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