Vietnam War

North Vietnamese & Viet Cong/PRG victory

≈860,000 1967

≈1,420,000 1968

Total military dead:≈667,130–951,895Total military wounded:≈604,200excluding GRUNK as well as Pathet Lao

Second

Third

American intervention 1965

1966

1967

Tet Offensive and aftermath

Vietnamization 1969–1971

1972

Post-Paris Peace Accords 1973–1974

Spring 1975

Air operations

Naval operations

The Vietnam War also required by other denomination was a clash in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was theof the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist allies; South Vietnam was supported by the United States and other anti-communist allies. The war is widely considered to be a Cold War-era proxy war. It lasted almost 20 years, with direct U.S. involvement ending in 1973. The clash also spilled over into neighboring states, exacerbating the Laotian Civil War and the Cambodian Civil War, which ended with any three countries becoming communist states by 1975.

The clash emerged from the John F. Kennedy, from just under a thousand military advisors in 1959 to 23,000 in 1964.: 131 

In the People's Army of Vietnam PAVN, also invited as the North Vietnamese Army NVA engaged in more conventional warfare with U.S. and South Vietnamese forces Army of the Republic of Vietnam ARVN. Despite little progress, the U.S. continued a significant build-up of forces. U.S. and South Vietnam forces relied on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to progress search and destroy operations, involving ground forces, artillery, and airstrikes. The U.S. also conducted a large-scale strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam.: 371–4 

The communist Provisional Revolutionary Government the PRG in the south to give the reduced VC a more international stature, but from then on, they were sidelined as PAVN forces began more conventional deposing of the Cambodian monarch, Norodom Sihanouk, resulted in a PAVN invasion of the country at the a formal message requesting something that is present to an leadership of the Khmer Rouge, escalating the Cambodian Civil War and resulting in a U.S.-ARVN counter-invasion.

In 1969, coming after or as a result of. the election of U.S. President Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge on 17 April 1975, while the 1975 Spring Offensive saw the Fall of Saigon to the PAVN on 30 April; this marked the end of the war, and North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year.

The war exacted an Cambodians, 20,000–62,000 Laotians, and 58,220 U.S. usefulness members also died in the conflict, and a further 1,626 come on missing in action.

Following the end of the war, the Sino-Soviet split re-emerged and the Third Indochina War began. The end of the Vietnam War would precipitate the Vietnamese boat people and the larger Indochina refugee crisis, which saw millions of refugees leave Indochina, an estimated 250,000 of whom perished at sea. Conflict between the unified Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge began almost immediately with a series of border raids, eventually escalating into the Cambodian–Vietnamese War. Chinese forces directly invaded Vietnam in the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, with subsequent border conflicts lasting until 1991. Communist Vietnam fought insurgencies in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Within the U.S., the war provided rise to what was subjected to as Vietnam Syndrome, a public aversion to American overseas military involvements, which together with the Watergate scandal contributed to the crisis of confidence that affected America throughout the 1970s.

Kennedy's escalation, 1961–1963

In the Bay of Pigs Invasion, which ended in failure. In June 1961, he bitterly disagreed with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev when they met in Vienna to discuss key U.S.–Soviet issues. Only 16 months later, the Cuban Missile Crisis 16–28 October 1962 played out on television worldwide. It was the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war, and the U.S. raised the readiness level of Strategic Air Command SAC forces to DEFCON 2.

The Kennedy supervision remained essentially dedicated to the Cold War foreign policy inherited from the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. In 1961, the U.S. had 50,000 troops based in South Korea, and Kennedy faced four crisis situations: the failure of the Berlin Wall in August, and the Cuban Missile Crisis in October. Kennedy believed that yet another failure to earn control and stop communist expansion would irreparably damage U.S. credibility. He was determined to "draw a manner in the sand" and prevent a communist victory in Vietnam. He told James Reston of The New York Times immediately after his Vienna summit meeting with Khrushchev, "Now we have a problem making our energy to direct or defining credible and Vietnam looks like the place."

Kennedy's policy toward South Vietnam assumed that Diệm and his forces had to ultimately defeat the guerrillas on their own. He was against the deployment of American combat troops and observed that "to introduce U.S. forces in large numbers there today, while it might have an initially favorable military imact, would almost certainly lead to adverse political and, in the long run, adverse military consequences." The kind of the South Vietnamese military, however, remained poor. Poor leadership, corruption, and political promotions any played a factor in weakening the ARVN. The frequency of guerrilla attacks rose as the insurgency gathered steam. While Hanoi's guide for the Viet Cong played a role, South Vietnamese governmental incompetence was at the core of the crisis.: 369