04 - Globalisation of the Cold War - The Vietnam War

Hwa Chong Institution (College) Paper 1 Theme I: Understanding the Cold War, 1945 -1991 How was the global Cold War fought? 1 EXTENSION OF THE COLD WAR OUTSIDE EUROPE (THE VIETNAM WAR) ______________________________________________________________________________________________ Why was there a North and South Vietnam?  At the end of the war in 1945, the Vietminh had established control over much of northern and central Vietnam and declared the formation of an independen t Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). While the Americans had lent support to the Vietminh during the war, they now supported the French in restoring their control over Vietnam, convinced that the Vietminh were receiving help from the Soviets and were supported by the Communist China after 1949. After their capitulation at Dien Bien Phu, a conference was held at Geneva to determine the future of Vietnam. Under the terms of the Geneva Accords, Vietnam would be divided at the 17th parallel (though the Vietminh controlled 2/3 of the country) and elections for unification would happen within two years with a view to reuniting Vietnam and creating a multi-party system of government. 1  Under Ho Chi Minh, the North Vietnamese government implemented land reforms to build-up support for the Communist government in the forthcoming free elections. Landlords were pilloried, imprisoned and executed, and their land distributed to the peasantry. A million refugees fled to the South. In addition, from 1960 onwards, guerrilla troops (the National Liberation Front) were trained in the North contrary to the Geneva agreements. These guerrillas, known as the Vietcong, terrorised villages and country districts in the South forcing them to support them with food, shelter, information and recruits. They were supplied by the North via a series of routes through the jungle and over the highlands of neighbouring Laos, known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. 2 1 Isaacs and Downing, Cold War, pp. 231-232. 2 Ibid., pp. 235-236.

Hwa Chong Institution (College) Paper 1 Theme I: Understanding the Cold War, 1945 -1991 How was the global Cold War fought? 2  In the south, Ngo Dinh Diem established the Republic of Vietnam, having rigged a referendum which made him the president of the new republic. His principal sources of power were the United States, his family and Catholics, the latter hated by most of the southern Buddhist population becaus e of their religion and northern origin. In 1957, he started a ‘mopping up campaign’, using emergency powers and vague definitions of espionage and treason to carry out arbitrary arrests of communists and non-communist alike. By then, Diem’s state had become a quasi-police state and he had alienated all major sections of the South Vietnamese population – the intellectual elite were rendered politically mute, labour unions impotent, Buddhists distrus