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The Vietnam war resulted from the liberation attempt by the Vietnamese people from French colonial rule. Several factions among the Vietnamese cooperated in the struggle including the Viet Minh, which was especially popular in the north of the country and which came under the control of Ho Chi Minh. The eviction of the French in the mid-1950s led the Viet Minh to declare that it was a Communist movement and intended to unite the whole country under Communist rule. A brief period of fragile peace ended with civil war, which was accompanied by the widespread movement of refugees. United States military forces intervened on a massive scale on the side of the West-leaning South Vietnam.
Over the next two decades of intense fighting, approximately one million Vietnamese civilians, 900,000 North Vietnamese soldiers, and 200,000 South Vietnamese combatants were killed, with many wounded and dispossessed. American losses were about 47,000, with other allied forces losing smaller contingents.
The war broadened to neighboring Cambodia and Laos, both of which had hoped to remain neutral, but ended up with Communist governments. The people of Laos, across whose unpoliced borders the so-called Ho Chi Minh Trail passed, became, per capita, the most heavily bombed people in the world. Eventually, U.S.-South Vietnamese troops were overwhelmed by massive popular support for the Viet Minh and their international backers. American interests abandoned South Vietnam and paved the way for the creation of a unified, Communist Vietnam in 1976. Countless thousands of South Vietnamese attempted to escape overland and by boat. Other refugees, such as the Hmong of Laos who fought on the side of the CIA, await relocation to a friendly environment 30 years after the war ended.
The impact of the war on the environment was enormous and remains a significant hindrance to development today. It includes the unexploded ordnance that litters much of the land and claims a steady stream of victims, and landmines that are particularly effective at blowing off limbs, especially legs. The legacy of Agent Orange has been hugely problematic. It was a mixture of herbicides sprayed by U.S. airborne forces from low altitude in great volumes and was aimed at destroying foliage and crops that could be used by the Viet Minh troops and their supporters. Agent Orange is linked with a long series of congenital deformities, miscarriages, cancers, and other deadly illnesses. U.S. troops and their representatives brought a successful lawsuit against manufacturers of Agent Orange chemicals and received a substantial out-of-court settlement. However, this was only one of a range of chemicals used against the people of Vietnam and its neighbors. Estimates of the numbers of deaths caused by the remnants of these chemicals in the years since the war ended exceed 50,000.
Bibliography:
- Nigel Cawthorne, Vietnam: A War Lost and Won (Arcturus Publishing, 2006);
- Philip Jones Griffiths, Agent Orange: Collateral Damage in Vietnam (Trolley, 2004).
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