OH+Research

Topic - Life as a child and teenager during the Korean and Vietnam War

Interview subject(s) - Uncle and/or Aunt

Korean War Info - U.S. policy toward Korea before 1950 was not a high priority for the State Department and was therefore characterized by misunderstanding and broken promises. After 1950, U.S. policy toward Korea changed from limited defense below the 38th parallel to reactionary politics caused by fear of expanding communism in Asia.

Not until World War II did the United States take a real interest in Korea. President Franklin D. Roosevelt favored a trusteeship in Korea, whereby the United States, Great Britain, China, and the Soviet Union would temporarily govern the country until they decided that Korea could govern itself.

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in April 1945, Korea became a pawn in a power struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. Both countries agreed that the 38th parallel would be the demarcation line for the surrender of Japanese forces. The Soviets would take Korea north of that line, and the United States would do the same south of it.

Efforts to reunify Korea diminished during the cold war when the Communist northern government refused to allow a United Nations commission into its territory. In May 1948, the commission held elections in the southern half of Korea, and Syngman Rhee was elected president of the Republic of Korea. The North responded by inaugurating the Democratic People's Republic of Korea with Kim Il Sung, who had ties to China and the Soviet Union, as its premier.

When President Harry Truman began his second term of office on January 20, 1949, Mao Zedong and the Communists continued to dominate the civil war in China against Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists. Mao also appeared to be taking a more anti-American stance, and in October 1949, Mao proclaimed the People's Republic of China in Beijing. By June 1949, the United States had withdrawn its remaining forces from South Korea and left behind the 500-man Korea Military Advisory Group to train Republic of Korea forces. On January 12, 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson defined the U.S. strategic defense perimeter in Asia as excluding the Korean peninsula. On June 25, 1950, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea launched a well-executed surprise invasion of the Republic of Korea. This act initiated the ** Korean War ** and dramatically changed U.S. policy toward Korea and all of East Asia.

President Truman and Secretary Acheson sought a more pragmatic policy and distanced the United States from China and Korea. Truman's policy was in accordance with his assessment that the Nationalists would fail without massive U.S. military aid, therefore, he announced in January 1950 that the United States would not seek bases on Taiwan, become involved in the Chinese Civil War, or provide further military aid or advice to the Nationalists.

The controversial nature of U.S.-East Asia policy was further highlighted when Congress initially failed to pass an appropriations bill for continuing economic assistance to the Republic of Korea. This heightened the perception of an American retreat from Korea following the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces, which had occupied Korea south of the 38th parallel beginning in September 1945. In early 1948, Washington began to redeploy U.S. combat units, and by early 1950, only the 500-man Korea Military Advisory Group remained to train and support the Republic of Korea armed forces. Soviet military units also withdrew from the North, but they also left administrative and training cadres.

This minimal U.S. military and economic aid signaled diminished American commitment to the Republic of Korea. As Secretary of State Acheson later asserted, "the damage had been done. Without question, the government and the people of the United States wished to end their responsibility for the government and the future of Korea." In a speech on January 12, 1950, Acheson did further damage when he implied that Korea and Taiwan were outside the U.S. defensive perimeter in East Asia. Japan was the key regional state for U.S. Far East security. With the U.S. diplomatic and military retreat from Korea and the Sino-Soviet alliance, reunification by force of the Korean peninsula by the Kim Il Sung regime seemed inevitable.

The attack by North Korea on June 25, 1950 tested United States' policies toward the Nationalists on Taiwan and South Korea. President Truman authorized a limited commitment of U.S. air and naval units, military equipment to the Republic of Korea, and ordered the Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait to deter a concurrent escalation of fighting between the two Chinas.

In addition to its own unilateral actions, the United States forwarded the matter to the United Nations (UN), which condemned the North Korean invasion. The United States requested that member states provide military support to assist the South Korean defenders. Since the Soviet Union was boycotting the Security Council, the UN resolution condemning the Democratic People's Republic of Korea passed unanimously. Washington then began the process of gaining UN agreement for direct military action by member states under U.S. command.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who conducted a personal reconnaissance to Korea on June 29-30, appraised the situation and recommended direct U.S. military action to stem the invasion. Truman then authorized MacArthur to commit U.S. ground combat forces to defend South Korea. The initial U.S. policy was to stop the invasion and restore the territorial integrity of the Republic of Korea. On July 7, the UN passed a resolution that called for a multinational effort under Gen. MacArthur's direction.

In September, MacArthur's Inchon campaign (Operation Chromite) defeated the Korean People's Army and put UN forces on the offensive. After two months of intense fighting in Korea, the Truman administration was now confronted with the policy issue of whether or not to allow MacArthur to cross the 38th parallel with ground forces. This action had the potential to trigger the direct intervention by either China, Russia, or both. Thus, the decision was that U.S. ground forces would stay south of the 38th parallel, while South Korean forces could conduct limited operations north of that line. If either Chinese or Russian forces entered the war, MacArthur's forces were to assume the defensive.

The Korean People's Army, clearly defeated in the South, retreated into North Korea but refused to surrender. On October 1, South Korean forces entered North Korea against minimal resistance. Gen. MacArthur reorganized the UN forces with the intent of destroying the People's Army. In early October—avoiding the UN Security Council, as the Soviet Union had ended its boycott of that body—the United States pressed the General Assembly for a resolution to guide follow-on actions. With this new "guidance," planning began for the occupation of North Korea and a phased program under UN auspices leading to a reunified and democratic Korea. Despite specific warnings from Beijing and growing evidence of a Chinese build-up in Manchuria, U.S. forces entered North Korea on October 7, 1950.

A United Nations Command military victory appeared to be within reach when the People's Republic of China intervened. Chinese forces began to deploy into North Korea in October. While Washington ordered MacArthur to call for air strikes against Chinese targets for the destruction of the bridges over the Yalu River, President Truman reassessed the situation. Truman was determined not to widen the war, while MacArthur argued the military necessity of hitting targets in Manchuria that supported the Chinese deployment. The growing feud between Truman and MacArthur over how to deal with China culminated with the general's removal from command in April 1951.

The size and initial success of the late-November Chinese intervention changed the complexion of the conflict. United Nations Command forces, after losing Seoul for a second time, finally stopped the Chinese, mounted a major offensive, and were able to restore a defensive line just north of the 38th parallel.

By May 1951, the war had settled into a costly stalemate. The unification by force of the Korean peninsula was no longer possible without expanding the conflict. The Truman administration now was willing to settle for a diplomatic solution and a return to the antebellum status quo, and the Soviets and the Chinese were also ready to negotiate.

Meetings over a settlement began on July 10, 1951. However, the negotiations were delayed over the next 18 months as disagreements over venues, meeting agendas, cease-fire agreements, the exchange of prisoners, withdrawal of foreign forces, the demarcation line, and the widening of the talks to include the Taiwan situation prolonged the complicated negotiations. In the meantime, both sides attempted to display their resolve by continuing limited military actions with significant additional casualties.

In December 1952, President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower visited Korea to make his own personal appraisal. Despite additional pressures exerted by the new administration, there was more than six months of bitter fighting before the difficult negotiations succeeded, and the armistice was signed on July 27, 1953. Critical to the negotiations was ROK president Syngman Rhee, who opposed a settlement that would leave Korea divided and Chinese troops in North Korea. To secure his support, the Eisenhower administration had to promise substantial additional aid and a postconflict security pact. Rhee was placated, but the armistice that ended the fighting left Korea politically and geographically divided.

Vietnam War - Marking one of the most traumatic periods of U.S. history, the ** Vietnam War ** spanned more than a decade and caused massive disruption both in Southeast Asia and on the American home front. Although U.S. leaders were often ambiguous about American involvement in Vietnam, they nevertheless pursued a fairly unbroken policy of interference in the country in an effort to halt the spread of communism during the cold war. In the end, the U.S. defeat in Vietnam proved costly, both financially and in terms of the number of lives lost, and diminished America's reputation as the defender of democracy and freedom throughout the world.

When the French moved into Indochina in the mid-19th century to capitalize on trade potential in Asia, the U.S. government voiced concern that the French posed a threat to American interests in China. Nevertheless, the French quickly colonized Indochina (primarily the country of Vietnam), holding control over this Asian colony for nearly the next century, despite a growing nationalist movement within Vietnam led by a group known as the Viet Minh.

Although America continued to show its disapproval of France's colonial domination of Indochina through World War II, by 1945, growing fear of Russian activity worldwide prompted the United States to reverse its position and support French colonialism in Southeast Asia. When the nationalist movement, led by the devoted communist figure Ho Chi Minh, threatened to topple the French government right after World War II and usher in a communist regime, President Harry Truman committed limited U.S. resources to assist the French in reestablishing their presence in Vietnam.

On September 2, 1945, Ho proclaimed Vietnam's independence from the French and expressed the hope that the United States and Great Britain would eventually support his anticolonial effort. At that moment, though, the British were publicly backing the French, and a little more than a month after Ho's declaration, Secretary of State Dean Acheson publicly noted that the United States would not oppose the reestablishment of French control in Vietnam.

Although the French government and Ho held a series of talks in an attempt to negotiate a settlement, such efforts proved fruitless, and fighting erupted between the two sides in December 1946. In the United States, debate continued throughout the late 1940s as to how much support the United States should give to the French effort in Southeast Asia, particularly as charges of corruption and incompetence began to spread about the French puppet ruler, Emperor Bao Dai. After the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, however, the U.S. commitment to French rule in Vietnam was never in serious doubt.

In 1950, the U.S. government established a Military Assistance and Advisory Group (MAAG) in Vietnam to help train a viable army, screen French requests for aid, and make helpful suggestions regarding strategy. The French generally ignored MAAG and seemed insulted that Americans presumed to give them advice. Despite such French recalcitrance, Washington continued to pour in aid.

The French military effort went badly, however, and opposition to the war grew among the population in France. For that reason, the French government began to talk about hammering out a negotiated settlement with the Vietnamese, a resolve that was further strengthened by French military reverses in May 1954, most notably at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. At peace talks held in Geneva, Switzerland, the French agreed to a gradual withdrawal from Vietnam. In addition, the country was temporarily divided into North and South regions until open elections could be held to allow the Vietnamese to select their new political leaders. The Geneva Accords marked the beginning of the end of French influence in the region, which was almost entirely gone by 1956.

With the French capitulation at Geneva in 1954, the United States, by its own decision, assumed responsibility for South Vietnam. Long frustrated with the French, both for their political handling of Indochina and for what was perceived as their weak military performance against the Viet Minh, the United States sought to play the decisive hand in the future of the area. At first, President Dwight D. Eisenhower attempted to work with the French and other Western allies to contain communism, which had already firmly established itself in North Vietnam, in Southeast Asia. He and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles engineered the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization in September 1954, which under a separate protocol gave Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnam a special protected status.

In the spring of 1955, Eisenhower abandoned the allied approach and moved in a unilateral direction as the United States dedicated itself to building a strong Vietnamese nation in the South under the leadership of the enigmatic Ngo Dinh Diem. The United States also began to structure the South Vietnamese armed forces into a carbon copy of its own military and prepared the country to fight a mid-intensity conventional war against an invasion from communists in North Vietnam.

Diem faced enormous challenges in governing South Vietnam, not least because of the small cadres of Viet Minh left behind in the South, known as Viet Cong, still advocating for the adoption of communism in the country. He also faced several other civil insurrections of groups opposed to his rule. Charges of corruption also plagued his government. Despite sometimes tense relations with the United States, he managed to retain U.S. support for his shaky regime. Then, in 1956, he announced that the Geneva-mandated reunification elections would not be held, as he feared the communists would win such a contest. Furthermore, with the assistance of operatives from the Central Intelligence Agency, Diem successfully ousted Bao Dai, converted the State of Vietnam into the Republic of Vietnam (RVN), and claimed its presidency. Although the RVN was not the citadel of democracy that the United States proclaimed and Diem not the model leader, the United States had cast its lot with him.

Full-scale insurrection against Diem resurfaced in 1957. The origins were primarily indigenous, with little direction from the North. However, the U.S. military mission continued to concentrate on building the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces (RVNAF) along conventional lines to repel an external aggressor. U.S. economic assistance was generous, in excess of $250 million per year through the Eisenhower years—80% of which went to the military.

The nature of the U.S. advisory role changed in the early 1960s. In December 1960, the communist government in North Vietnam announced the birth of the National Liberation Front in South Vietnam, although the organization had already existed for at least a couple of years. President John F. Kennedy feared that Indochina was a prime theater for Soviet-sponsored "wars of national liberation," and he prepared to meet this global challenge. Influenced by his reading of //The Uncertain Trumpet// (1960) by former army chief of staff Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, Kennedy extended Taylor's proposal for a more "flexible military response" to include low-intensity warfare and assigned this counterinsurgency role to the U.S. Special Forces.

Kennedy also dispatched advisers Taylor and Walter Rostow to South Vietnam in October 1961 to report on the situation. Their pessimistic report called for more assistance of all kinds, including a task force that would include combat troops. Kennedy stepped up assistance but rejected the idea of combat troops, fearing that the first group of troops would engender requests for more. At the same time, Kennedy also rejected a negotiated settlement in Vietnam and thus opted for a midposition between fighting and negotiating—a commitment of aid and advisers, which he recognized from the beginning might prove unsuccessful. For the most part, however, Kennedy was optimistic. Like Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and others of his advisers, Kennedy viewed Vietnam predominantly as a military problem to be "managed" successfully.

Nevertheless, Kennedy and his advisers also held serious concerns about the political situation in Vietnam. U.S. leaders never persuaded Diem to undertake the reforms needed to win support for his government from the Vietnamese people nor to address seriously the corruption that engulfed the country. In his turn, Diem increasingly came to fear the escalating American presence as much as he feared his internal enemies. His concerns were not totally unwarranted.

As American journalists began to attack Diem and American Vietnam policy, Kennedy became increasingly frustrated by Diem and his pernicious brother Ngo Dinh Nhu. Diem's heavy-handed and inept handling of the Buddhist uprising in the spring and summer of 1963 weakened American support for his regime. Despite the official rhetoric, disenchantment with the RVNAF's capacity and willingness to fight grew. With his advisers greatly divided over what to do about Diem, Kennedy finally tacitly acquiesced to a coup effort by South Vietnamese generals against Diem in November 1963, although Kennedy was later shocked by Diem's murder during the coup. When Kennedy was assassinated three weeks later, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson inherited a growing political and military quagmire.

Johnson retained the Kennedy team to run the war, and he continued the same basic policies. After an extensive policy review in March 1964, the president concluded that "the only reasonable alternative" was "to do more of the same and do it more efficiently." Johnson expanded the number of advisers and increased financial assistance. He hoped to keep Vietnam on the back burner at least through the 1964 presidential election, and he proceeded cautiously. However, at the same time, he authorized secret plans for possible military action against North Vietnam as punishment for supporting the insurgents in South Vietnam.

Meanwhile, political intrigue and instability dominated the South Vietnamese government and the RVNAF, as the civil strife escalated. The Viet Cong controlled more than 40% of the territory and more than 50% of the population. In many areas, the Viet Cong was so entrenched that only massive military force would dislodge them.

On August 2, 1964, the budding crises between the United States and North Vietnam intensified with a North Vietnamese attack on the USS //Maddox,// which was engaged in electronic espionage in the Gulf of Tonkin off the North Vietnamese coast. The United States launched air strikes against North Vietnam, and Johnson seized the moment to extort from the frenzied U.S. Congress the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which authorized the president to employ military power against communist North Vietnam. Senator Ernest Gruening of Alaska, one of only two senators to vote against the resolution, correctly labeled it a "predated declaration of war." Surprisingly, though, Johnson reverted to a cautious strategy after the Tonkin Gulf incident, at least for the moment.

In 1965, the United States made the fateful decision to commit major ground combat forces to the war in Vietnam. In early March 1965, Johnson sent U.S. Army chief of staff Gen. Harold Johnson on a mission to Vietnam. Returning to Washington at midmonth, Johnson submitted to the president a report containing 21 recommendations, including an intensified air war against North Vietnam and the deployment of many more ground forces. Most of these proposals were approved, and in mid-June, Secretary of Defense McNamara announced additional deployments. At the end of 1964, about 23,500 Americans had been serving in Vietnam, but by the close of 1968, that number would grow to 525,000 in a steady stream of additional deployments.

Reports through the late spring of 1965 indicated that the RVNAF could not survive without extensive additional assistance. On July 28, Johnson announced to Americans that he was sending more troops and that draft calls would be increased. The buildup of American troops thus moved into high gear.

Beginning in early March 1965, Johnson authorized a series of retaliatory air strikes against the North Vietnamese that continued nearly unabated until October 31, 1968. It was in the conduct of the air war that the greatest controversy arose over the administration's "graduated response" approach. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as the field command, sought to apply massive force in the shortest possible time. Instead, frustrating impediments to this strategy were imposed by the civilian hierarchy. Even though the scope and magnitude of the air war continued to increase, albeit punctuated by numerous pauses of varying duration, the incremental approach permitted the communists to make adjustments at successive levels and to put in place a continuously improving air defense system until Johnson eliminated the air strike program altogether in early November 1968.

In June 1964, Gen. William C. Westmoreland had taken command of U.S. land forces in Vietnam, devising the strategy of attrition and search-and-destroy tactics that characterized the ground war through the end of his tenure. The measure of merit under this approach became the body count; the defining objective and the so-called crossover point became the point at which enemy soldiers were being killed at a greater rate than they could be replaced by infiltration from North Vietnam or by in-country recruitment in South Vietnam.

In pursuit of this strategy, Westmoreland made repeated requests for additional troops in 1966 and 1967, many of which Washington denied or significantly scaled back. With a force of just over half a million men, Westmoreland mounted large multibattalion operations aimed at bringing communist main force units to battle. The first of these engagements took place in the Ia Drang Valley in November 1965. When it was over, the Americans had inflicted an estimated 3,561 deaths on the communists, losing 305 of their own in the process.

The American military establishment in South Vietnam grew larger and more pervasive with each passing year. An elaborate system of base camps was developed, ports and airfields built or improved, and massive logistical support provided. Naval and air force elements grew proportionately, with naval gunfire as well as air elements contributing to the massive firepower at the military's disposal. Meanwhile, the essence of communist control over the populace, the Viet Cong infrastructure in the hamlets and villages, continued essentially undisturbed as pacification in the countryside and improvement of South Vietnamese forces were largely ignored. Nevertheless, U.S. military leaders sent fairly optimistic accounts of the progress of war back to politicians in the United States.

In January 1968, the Viet Cong launched the massive surprise attack that became collectively known as the Tet Offensive. The largest single battle of the war, the Tet Offensive saw the communists attack five of South Vietnam's six major cities, as well as hundreds of smaller towns and villages. Although surprised by the attack, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces rallied against the offensive quickly and managed to push back the communist surge within a matter of weeks. The American press portrayed the U.S. response as a tremendous victory.

After the Tet Offensive, however, Westmoreland informed his superiors that he would need nearly 200,000 additional American troops to defeat the Viet Cong in South Vietnam, a request that surprised U.S. officials. Westmoreland had been describing the Tet Offensive as a battlefield victory for Allied forces, one that had cost the communists severe losses. Now this request for hundreds of thousands more troops seemed to undermine the credibility of that claim, just as the fact of the Tet Offensive itself had undermined Westmoreland's optimistic forecasts for the progress of the war.

The request precipitated a comprehensive review of American policy on Vietnam. The result was a series of dramatic changes, all with the goal of capping U.S. involvement and shifting the main burden to larger and more capable South Vietnamese forces. The high-water mark of American commitment to the war had passed. Westmoreland himself was replaced as U.S. commander in Vietnam by Gen. Creighton Abrams on June 11, 1968.

Abrams changed the tactics from search and destroy to clear and hold, the measure of merit from body count to population security, and the philosophy to conducting "one war" in which pacification, improvement, and modernization of the RVNAF and the conduct of military operations were integrated and of equal importance. Abrams understood the war and the dominant influence of the domestic support base, and he understood the need to work within the limits of that fragile and waning support. For a number of years, public, congressional, and, to some extent, even media backing had been strong, but that had been squandered as year after year went by with no discernible progress in bringing the war to a successful conclusion. American protests against the war on the home front, particularly on college campuses around the country, were becoming louder and gaining ground with every month that the war dragged on.

Abrams quickly organized a team to devise a comprehensive plan for the coming year. Known as the Program for the Pacification and Long-Term Development of South Vietnam, the resulting study maintained that the way the war was being prosecuted under Westmoreland was not working, indeed could not work, and that a radical redirection of effort was required to achieve success. "The critical actions are those that occur at the village, district, and provincial levels," the study maintained. "This is where the war must be fought; this is where the war and the object which lies beyond it must be won." That object was the security and loyalty of the South Vietnamese people, the single-minded pursuit of which was to be the focus of the final years of American involvement in Vietnam.

With the advent of the Nixon administration in Washington in early 1969 came formalization of the drastically changed approach to the war in Vietnam. Vietnamization, the process of progressively turning the primary burden of fighting the war back over to the South Vietnamese as American forces disengaged, became the dominant theme.

Beginning in August 1969, the U.S. government began withdrawing American ground forces from Vietnam, beginning a steady stream of troop reductions that was nearly complete by the spring of 1972. At the same time, the revised tactics specified by Abrams involved remaining American combat units in thousands of small patrols by day and ambushes by night. Abrams had perceived that the communists, rather than being served by a logistical "tail" as was common in warfare, were forced to push out in front of planned operations a logistical "nose" of caches, prepared positions, and the like that were essential to their battlefield success. Finding and seizing these caches and positions became a primary objective, one that preempted many planned communist attacks.

The really big caches, however, were in base areas across the border in Laos and Cambodia. In the spring of 1970, Nixon authorized U.S. forces to do something about those sanctuaries. Launching attacks coordinated with simultaneous South Vietnamese thrusts, at the end of April, American forces drove into Cambodia on a 60-day rampage that captured thousands of tons of weapons and ammunition, supplies of every description, and piles of documents. A major benefit of the Cambodian incursion was choking off the communists' lifeline of supplies. The operation was also assessed as having bought up to a year's additional time for Vietnamization to progress, as well as providing increased security for the dwindling American forces still in the theater.

In late January 1971, there followed another attempt to sweep enemy sanctuaries and interfere with logistical operations along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the major supply line from North to South Vietnam. Known as Operation Lam Son 719, this effort consisted of a large-scale raid by South Vietnamese forces into southern Laos. U.S. forces had by this time been prohibited by statute from engaging in ground operations in Laos or Cambodia, so they played a supporting, albeit critically important, role in the operation.

Again much materiel was captured or destroyed, and the communists took horrifying casualties in resisting the incursion, but the results were mixed. Because of congressional restrictions, South Vietnamese units had been operating for the first time without their American advisers, an arrangement that proved particularly disadvantageous when it came to calling for various kinds of assistance, from artillery to medevac to close air support. Meanwhile, the communists, relieved of any necessity to leave forces to defend the North by the perception that U.S. policy foreclosed ground intervention there, were able to concentrate virtually their entire military establishment in the path of the invading forces. An unprecedented density of antiaircraft weaponry proved particularly effective. Nevertheless, severe losses had been imposed on the communists, and additional time was gained for Vietnamization to proceed. As the American pullout continued, it also became clear that Lam Son 719 was the last major action in which U.S. ground elements would take part.

One measure of the effectiveness of the cross-border operations into Cambodia and Laos was that it took the communists until the spring of 1972 to gear up for another major offensive. When it came, however, it provided a severe test of the expanded and improved South Vietnamese armed forces, now left with only air, naval, and logistical support from the Americans. In what came to be known as the Easter Offensive, at the end of March, communist forces struck in force at three key locations—along the Demilitarized Zone, north of Saigon around An Loc, and in the Central Highlands at Kontum.

These attacks triggered major retaliatory strikes by U.S. air and naval forces, including renewed bombing of Hanoi and Hai Phong in North Vietnam for the first time since the halt ordered by Johnson in November 1968. Large numbers of additional ships and aircraft were dispatched to the theater of war, and Hai Phong and North Vietnam's other major ports were mined, an action often urged by military leaders but never before authorized by civilian authorities.

The South Vietnamese fought well, and Abrams noted in a report to Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird that they had made great progress over the past year, although American support remained crucially important. In late June 1972, Abrams departed Vietnam after five years of service there and headed home to be army chief of staff. He was succeeded as commander by Gen. Frederick Weyand, his deputy for the past two years and a man with vast experience in the war. Weyand inherited the difficult and thankless task of closing down the American expeditionary force.

Apparent progress in the Paris peace talks had hit a snag in late autumn of 1972, and although Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had reported virtually on the eve of the U.S. presidential election that "peace is at hand," the prospect seemed to fade away. Ever-narrowing U.S. expectations and aspirations for the war now focused on getting back American prisoners of war. On December 18, Nixon unleashed the most concentrated bombing campaign of the war on North Vietnam. The onslaught continued until December 31, when the North Vietnamese agreed to resume the peace talks. Agreement was then swiftly reached, and on January 23, 1973, the document was initialed by Kissinger and Le Duc Tho. The Paris Peace Accord (1973) called for a cease-fire, the withdrawal of all U.S. military forces within 60 days, the return of all captured personnel, efforts to locate missing persons on both sides, and the beginning of talks aimed at achieving "national conciliation and concord."

Although U.S. involvement in Vietnam steadily diminished after the signing of the Paris Peace Accords, it did not cease altogether. Immediately after the Paris agreement, a number of U.S. bases were signed over to the South Vietnamese, enough planes and helicopters were brought in to give the RVNAF the fourth largest air force in the world, and at least 9,000 U.S. servicemen hastily resigned their commissions so that they could be legally retained by the Vietnamese as civilians. Nixon also ordered occasional reconnaissance flights over North Vietnam so that he could match his previous promises to supply $4.75 billion in reconstruction aid with threats to drop the aid and resume bombing if the cease-fire failed to hold. The U.S. Air Force also continued to bomb both Cambodia and Laos during this period.

Meanwhile, Nixon began to experience political trouble at home on a number of issues, including the emerging Watergate scandal. The decline in his political power, combined with an increasing war weariness among Americans, undercut his military efforts in Southeast Asia. Despite intense Nixon administration lobbying, Congress cut the amount of aid authorized for Vietnam dramatically in 1974.

The Nixon administration faced even more difficulties in its own air war. Deeply upset by the disclosure of illegal bombings in Cambodia, on May 10, 1973, a rebellious, heavily Democratic Congress cut off all funding for further U.S. air operations in the theater. By late June, Congress went beyond that to pass a law forbidding further military operations of any sort in Southeast Asia. Nixon's angry veto was overridden after negotiations extended the final deadline to August 15, 1973. By November 6, 1973, Congress overrode another Nixon veto, and the War Powers Act became law, requiring the president to inform Congress within 48 hours of the dispatch of U.S. troops to another country and specifying that the troops must be withdrawn within 60 days unless Congress explicitly authorized their presence.

In August 1974, after the Watergate scandal forced Nixon to resign from office and Gerald Ford assumed the presidency, American interest in Vietnam declined even further. Kissinger still talked of preserving American credibility in the region and lobbied hard for continued aid, but a generally hostile Congress cut appropriations for 1975. Even charges that Americans might still be held against their will in Vietnam were largely discounted by a war-weary public.

The decline in American interest in Vietnam became clear to the world when the United States did not respond to the North Vietnamese push far into South Vietnam during the first half of 1975. The South Vietnamese government surrendered on April 30, 1975, a mere 55 days after the final communist offensive began. As television screens in America displayed dramatic images of Americans being evacuated by helicopter from the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, communist forces quickly solidified their power in Cambodia and Laos as well.

After the fall of the South Vietnamese government in April 1975, the United States conducted a punitive policy toward Vietnam. Not only did Washington refuse to normalize relations with the newly reunited state, but it actively sought to isolate Vietnam politically, economically, and diplomatically.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter's administration cautiously sought to move away from this punitive policy, but Vietnam's invasion and subsequent occupation of Cambodia, the unresolved issue of missing POWs, and other problems led to little progress between Vietnam and the United States in normalizing diplomatic relations or in ending the crippling trade embargo that was costing Vietnam billions of dollars in potential loans and credits. The two countries did not establish normal diplomatic relations until July 1995.