Many were unfairly harassed and abused by anti-war protestors. It also led to political reluctance to deploy the needed numbers of personnel except on a "creeping incremental" basis and after serious problems emerged in host country capabilitiesextending the length as well as the cost of the war. But while Ho and his supporters wanted a nation modeled after other communist countries, Bao and many others wanted a Vietnam with close economic and cultural ties to the West. Jack Smith, a psychologist who had served as a Marine in Vietnam, said that everyone blamed everyone else for what had gone wrong: Military men blame policymakers, right-wingers blame the pinkos and the media and protestors, the left blame the right. In 1910, Japanese armies conquered Korea and occupied it until their defeat in 1945 at the end of World War II. Total estimates of the cost through FY2018 have been made earlier. Efforts to integrate net assessment with budget submissions were effectively killed by the Joint Staff decades earlier, during the Reagan Administration. The size of U.S. military spending is difficult to estimate in comparable terms. In addition to the United States, South Korea, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand also committed troops to fight in South Vietnam (albeit on a much smaller scale). Updates? an estimated 25,000 American servicemen and 757,143 Vietnamese dead. The true figures, however, are probably much higher. Such profiles are a key warning of basic problems in planning, programming, and budgeting. Direct link to Jeff Kelman's post "John F. Kennedy expan, Posted 2 years ago. During the Vietnam War's official duration (4 August 1964-27 January 1973), 1,631 Sailors and 13,095 Marines were killed in action; 4,178 and 51,392 respectively were wounded. Agent Orange left its mark on the environment and it also had a serious human impact as it had the potential to damage . was it education, the size of the family etc? Though the NLF claimed to be autonomous and that most of its members were not communists, many in Washington assumed it was a puppet of Hanoi. The functional break out of the cost by theaterIraq and Syriahelps provide a clear picture of mission focus and allocation of resources. It would take years to recover. The U.S. military has estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died. Feeding, supplying and paying the armies and navies was, by far, the largest expenditure of the war. The U.S. Constitution grants Congress sole authority to issue declarations of war. After Hos communist forces took power in the north, armed conflict between northern and southern armies continued until the northern Viet Minhs decisive victory in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in May 1954. Once again, the data on contractors provide a key picture of the actual size of the U.S. effort in country. As the first U.S. troops were withdrawn, those who remained became increasingly angry and frustrated, exacerbating problems with morale and leadership. The total cost of all U.S. aid to Afghanistan through FY2016 is $115.3 billion, which is 16 percent of the total OCO cost of $728.9 billion from FY2001 to FY2016. The human, environmental and economic costs of the Vietnam War were devastating. Past estimates of spending have been consistently wrong, and the inputs have been consistently undercosted. An estimated 18 million gallons of defoliants, bearing codenames like Agent Blue and Agent Orange, were dropped by US planes over the course of the Vietnam War. In an attempt to limit the volume of American casualties, he announced a program called Vietnamization: withdrawing U.S. troops, increasing aerial and artillery bombardment and giving the South Vietnamese the training and weapons needed to effectively control the ground war. The annual cost of all U.S. aid in FY2016 is $5.79 billion, which is 13 percent of the OCO cost of $46.2 billion for that year. During the war, several different nationalist factions fought against the Japanese for Korean independence. The French defeat at the Dien Bien Phu was followed by a peace conference in Geneva. Information and translations of human cost in the most comprehensive dictionary definitions resource on the web. Johnson raised the number of South Vietnam deployments to 23,000 U.S. soldiers by the end of his first year in office. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. The figures of U.S.. Key metrics are also provided on the funding profiles of key types of aid. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., lists more than 58,300 names of members of the U.S. armed forces who were killed or went missing in action. Called the American War in Vietnam (or, in full, the War Against the Americans to Save the Nation), the war was also part of a larger regional conflict (see Indochina wars) and a manifestation of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. Vietnam is a country in south-east Asia. The charts and tables in this section summarize the actual and projected cost of U.S. wars as reported for the OCO accountdrawing heavily largely on earlier work by the Congressional Research Service. Many Americans simply chose not to speak of the Vietnam conflict, described by diplomat George Kennan as the most disastrous undertaking in 200 years of US history. Estimated interest costs by 2050: Up to $6.5 trillion. Both the Executive Branch and the Congress have failed to reform any key aspect of the defense and foreign policy budgets to look beyond input budgeting by line item and by military service, and doing so on an annual basis. The Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China supported the north, while the United States was determined to maintain an independent, non-communist South Vietnam. February 18, 2018. : Assessing Chinas April 2023 Military Exercises Against Taiwan, ROK President State Visit to Washington: The Capital Cable #69, The Future of U.S. Natural Gas: A Conversation with Charif Souki, Download PDF file of "U.S. Military Spending: The Cost of Wars", Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy, Diversity and Leadership in International Affairs Project, Energy Security and Climate Change Program, As is discussed in several parts of this report, work by Amy Belasco of the CRS has provided two reports that attempted to cost America's wars. The war exacted an enormous human cost: estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed range from 966,000 to 3 million. Which best describes the cost of the Vietnam War in human terms? Official data only exist on federal homeland defense efforts, not state and local ones. There have been several legal attempts to seek compensation from the US government and chemical manufacturers. , arn from other They also assert that the U.S. overall suffered fewer casualties than its opponents. There is no break out in the budget request by war of State/USAID and VA spending for FY2016-FY2018. Kennedys expansion stemmed in part from Cold War-era fears about the domino theory: if communism took hold in Vietnam, it would topple democracies throughout the whole of Southeast Asia, it was thought. The ensuing political instability in South Vietnam persuaded Kennedys successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to further increase U.S. military and economic support. One by Lina J. Blimes puts the total cost at $4 to $6 trillion by end FY2016. The French loss at the battle ended almost a century of French colonial rule in Indochina. The treaty also called for nationwide elections for reunification to be held in 1956. Families had to fight to survive Hope this helps :) Post-traumatic stress disorder in veterans The deaths of over a million communist soldiers Advertisement Those who argue that the United States opponents won the war cite the United States overall objectives and outcomes. For other Americans, opposing the government was considered unpatriotic and treasonous. or a Hoax: How does the At the heart of the conflict was the desire of North Vietnam, which had defeated the French colonial administration of Vietnam in 1954, to unify the entire country under a single communist regime modeled after those of the Soviet Union and China. The memorial, located near the western end of the Mall, is a black granite V-shaped wall inscribed with the names of the approximately 58,000 men and women who were killed or missing in action. Civilian casualties are not assessed in spite of the fact that this has become a critical political and operational issue, and subject of both debate and threat propaganda. Vietnam was ruined. The conflict was intensified by the ongoing Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Active duty strength has gotten far more expensive relative to DoD civilian full time employees and U.S. and foreign contractors. Current official U.S. data only include U.S. military and DoD civilians, and the DoD website does not provide a trend analysis. Vietnam War, (1954-75), a protracted conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam, known as the Viet Cong, against the government of South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. Why did the United States become involved in Vietnam? However, SIGIR stopped its operations in 2011. If you're behind a web filter, please make sure that the domains *.kastatic.org and *.kasandbox.org are unblocked. In peace negotiations at Geneva, the decision was reached to divide Vietnam into northern and southern halves. Though the majority of Vietnam veterans returned home without serious problems, a large number found the readjustment to civilian life difficult. The Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis Continued? B. The Vietnam War was a long, costly and divisive conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. He fully subscribed to the domino theory and to the containment strategy, and also feared appearing weak in the eyes of his domestic political opponents. For more information on usage, please refer to our Terms of Use. De Blasio: How many . The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 . Other allies later joined the war. Thousands of Vietnamese simply vanished, lost in thick jungle or tunnels, obliterated by bombs or incinerated by napalm. The final charts summarize the FY2018 budget submission data for the OCO accounts in the detail provided by the DoD budget summary. Kissinger and North Vietnamese representatives drafted a peace agreement by early fall, but leaders in Saigon rejected it, and in December Nixon authorized a number of bombing raids against targets in Hanoi and Haiphong. Other people may have felt differently. During World War II, Japanese forces invaded Vietnam. It was fought from early November 1955 to the end of April 1975. In 2016, Vietnam's GDP growth was 6.2%, driven by export-oriented manufacturing and robust domestic demand. create tension? However, they were probably mostly focused on stopping the spread of communism because of the domino theory. Seeing an opportunity to seize control, Hos Viet Minh forces immediately rose up, taking over the northern city of Hanoi and declaring a Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) with Ho as president. Was the war in Vietnam a civil war or a global Cold War confrontation? The United States however, is fighting what are civil-military wars where the "hold," "stability," and "recovery and development" effort is critical to winning popular support. Throughout both conflicts, reporting has focused on total personnel rather than on the function and capability of the personnel engaged. Direct link to David Alexander's post Question 1: "did it seem , Posted 4 years ago. Or would he have gone in a quote better direction based upon how he handled other things as president? 4.3 times the IISS estimate of $145 billion for China, and 2.9 times the SIPIRI estimate of $215 billion. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, but his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, continued the work that Kennedy had started. Based on the current dollar value, the Vietnam War cost the equivalent of about $1 trillion. Following its 1945 defeat in World War II, Japan withdrew its forces from Vietnam, leaving the French-educated Emperor Bao Dai in control. In view of the surprisingly good performance of the South Vietnamese army at Tet, and responding to growing pressure in the United States to begin a withdrawal of U.S. troops, the Nixon administration decided to accelerate a program to provide South Vietnam . One of the most common defoliants used in Vietnam, Agent Orange, was later found to contain carcinogenic dioxins. By 1957, the Viet Cong and other opponents of Diems repressive regime began fighting back with attacks on government officials and other targets, and by 1959 they had begun engaging the South Vietnamese army in firefights. The objectives of defoliant drops were to remove jungle and vegetation cover used by the Viet Cong; to destroy Viet Cong food crops; and to persuade Vietnamese villagers to move away from Viet Cong strongholds and into protected areas, such as Agrovilles and strategic hamlets. Some argued that Americas violence against civilians in Vietnam from incidental killings to atrocities like My Lai and indiscriminate carpet bombing made the United States no better than the communist regimes it was seeking to contain. Check all of the boxes that apply. Neither this bombing or the ground war was confined by the borders of Vietnam. Posted 7 years ago. The Congressional Research Service (CRS), and the General Accountability Office (GAO), have provided several reports that do provide important insights into the cost of America's wars and the problems in the ways in which they are reported. On June 25, 1950, Kim launched a surprise invasion of South Korea. Clarification: Sal said in the previous video that the Tet Offensive was executed by the Viet Cong, but in this article it states that it was done by the North Vietnamese. Vietnams infrastructure, one of the few positive legacies of French colonialism, was left in ruins. These issues are discussed in more detail later in this study. The arguments about the war were heated and visceral and led Americans to question one anothers morality and good faith. The anti-war movement, which was particularly strong on college campuses, divided Americans bitterly. This website is created and maintained by Alpha History. They make a striking contrast to the total OCO costs. This not only claimed lives but also devastated cities, buildings, infrastructure, farmland and vegetation. This, in turn, creates a strong incentive to try to create effective local forces as soon as possible. Direct link to PiggyCosette's post The government most likel, Posted 3 years ago. They illustrate two reporting problems: The charts and tables in this section focus on total DoD spending by year, and OCO expenditure by war. Vietnam War memory quiz events 1946-1964, Vietnam War memory quiz events 1965-1975, Vietnam War memory quiz terms and concepts (I), Vietnam War memory quiz terms and concepts (II). Meaning of human cost. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. The bombing. Direct link to Bill Vu's post If the vietnam war was ab, Posted 7 years ago. or did they just enlist and were picked randomly? For some young people, the war symbolized a form of unchecked authority they had come to resent. Vietnam was the first significant military defeat in US history and would shape American foreign policy for several years. the Trojans have advanced Military history is often the history of force quality defeating force quantity, and strategies and dollar spending need to be validated by explaining the role and function of deployed personnel. By the end of June 1972, however, after a failed offensive into South Vietnam, Hanoi was finally willing to compromise. By 2014, almost 100,000 veterans had taken their own lives. He received his B.A. The Memorial is dedicated to honor the courage . Despite the later inclusion of the South Vietnamese and the NLF, the dialogue soon reached an impasse, and after a bitter 1968 election season marred by violence, Republican Richard M. Nixon won the presidency. This section supplements the OCO cost data with some brief metrics on the overall size of the U.S. effort in Afghanistan. Examine President Nixon's threefold plan to unilaterally de-escalate the Vietnam War. All Rights Reserved. It is particularly unrealistic because this assumption is critical to estimating steady reduction in military spending, sizing the impact of rising entitlement and mandatory budget costs, and the size of the deficit. Lip service references to a "whole of government approach" thinly disguise a real-world separation of what should be a fully integrated civil-military approach, and what is really a "hole in government" approach where the State Department and USAID often seem at least partially decoupled from the realities of warfighting and the Department of Defense focuses on tactical success rather than the political, economic, or broader strategic goals in warfare. Neighbouring countries Laos and Cambodia both suffered enormous human loss and material devastation, as well as the rise of terroristic and genocidal regimes. It gives the Greeks a In January 1973, the United States and North Vietnam concluded a final peace agreement, ending open hostilities between the two nations. Someone please:(. 1. There were debates and recriminations over American involvement and a loss of faith in the US government. The report is now divided into 12 sections, each of which illustrates the need for better planning, programming, and budgeting; as well as the need for far more transparency and better official reporting. These boats were manned by fishermen unfamiliar with navigating the open sea and some even left without a specific destination in mind. He was in Vietnam when he was 20 years old. Articles with the HISTORY.com Editors byline have been written or edited by the HISTORY.com editors, including Amanda Onion, Missy Sullivan and Matt Mullen. The total defense burden is projected to decline from 2.8% in FY2017 to 2.5% in FY2021 and FY2.3% in 2030. You can specify conditions of storing and accessing cookies in your browser. The rise of communist regimes saw more than two million people flee south-east Asia. Fearful that the war would jeopardize his domestic agenda, Johnson concealed the extent of the military escalation from the American public. 10.5 times the IISS estimate of $58.9 billion for Russia, and 9.0 times the SIPIRI estimate of $69.2 billion. Direct link to christopher.fortomaris's post they worked together but . Fall of Saigon, capture of Saigon by North Vietnamese forces, which occurred from March 4 to April 30, 1975. OMB does not report total costs of homeland defense for all departments in the FY2018 budget request for unexplained reasons. Vietnam veterans in the US, Australia and other countries have suffered from increased rates of cancers and birth defects in their offspring. In 1976, Vietnam was unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, though sporadic violence continued over the next 15 years, including conflicts with neighboring China and Cambodia. It affected 700,000 American veterans. I can only speak for myself. The United States lost almost 60,000 personnel and civilians in Vietnam: 58,269 servicemen were killed and another 1,672 recorded as missing. By 1969 more than 500,000 U.S. military personnel were stationed in Vietnam. This was 161% of the $560.7 billion Baseline that include base, defense-related nuclear and other related budget costs. Between three million and five million people were also disabled, disfigured or seriously wounded. The government most likely knew about these dangers. In 1955, however, the strongly anti-communist politician Ngo Dinh Diem pushed Emperor Bao aside to become president of the Government of the Republic of Vietnam (GVN), often referred to during that era as South Vietnam. to the The conflict. The United States has been actively in combat since late 2001, and there is little prospect that it can end the need to use force to check terrorism and violent extremism within the next decade. NARA Resources Core Collections on the Vietnam War From the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, "This guide summarizes core holdings on: the war in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos especially during the Nixon and Ford administrations; the flight of refugees from Indochina after April 1975 and the admittance of many to the United States; the accounting of U.S. armed forces MIAs and Inscribed on the black granite walls are the names of more than 58,000 men and women who gave their lives or remain missing. Even before the war had ended, Richard Nixon publicly declared the end of the Truman Doctrine. Direct link to William H's post At the time of Vietnam th, Posted 7 years ago. Warfare had demolished the countrys infrastructure and economy, and reconstruction proceeded slowly. Trojans' side of the story. What does human cost mean? The total military deaths for all countries have been estimated at 1.3 million, of whom 58,000 were Americans. The latter report, Another report by Lynn M. Williams and Susan B. Epstein, The GAO has examined the way in which the Department of Defense includes and does not include the cost of war in the OCO account. A historians view: An even greater number were maimed, disfigured, orphaned, displaced or forced to flee as refugees. Copyright: The content on this page may not be republished without our express permission. Those who argue that the United States won the war point to the fact that the U.S. defeated communist forces during most of Vietnams major battles. Westmoreland pursued a policy of attrition, aiming to kill as many enemy troops as possible rather than trying to secure territory. DoD did so although they were Baseline efforts and should not technically have been counted as war costs because Congress gave it the option of making such a request. In August 1964, the US government received word that two North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked US destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. military knowledge. It is important to note that separate work by Todd Harrison of CSIS in assessing the overall OCO account Enduring Dilemma of Overseas Contingency Operations Funding, Transition45 Series, January 11, 2017states that both Congress and the Obama administration moved items from the base budget to the OCO budget as a way of circumventing the BCA budget caps. Further, without such an estimate, there is no credible basis for either Executive Branch or Congressional review of the budgets and plans for such wars, much less of the ability to effectively execute given strategies, and provide credible indicators of the cost effectiveness and progress of key elements of military and civil activity. The defeat in Vietnam, they argued, was a betrayal of the US military by civilian politicians. Anne's diary helped the world understand what it was like living in hiding during Updated: March 28, 2023 | Original: October 29, 2009. Some declared that Vietnam was a nationalist conflict that Washington had no business intervening in. Direct link to Sean Rim/Dog's post Agent Orange not only eff, Posted 5 months ago. The costs of the Vietnam War One of the most famous images of the war, nine-year-old Kim Phuc running from a napalm attack. Even if one uses the higher estimate of military spending used by Todd Harrison, the total is now under 6.0%. The economic impact of the war was felt in both nations, especially Vietnam, where years of sustained American bombing and defoliation caused inestimable damage to farmland and infrastructure. Furthermore, domestic unrest and the financial cost of war made peaceand troop withdrawalsa necessity, not a choice. Which best describes the cost of the Vietnam War in human terms? In March 1965, Johnson made the decisionwith solid support from the American publicto send U.S. combat forces into battle in Vietnam. Direct link to David Alexander's post Oh, I think that if you c, Posted 4 years ago. In September 1945, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the birth of an independent Vietnam. Data on cost per solider warn that efforts to minimize personnel may have sharply raised cost per soldier deployed, creating major diseconomies of scale. More than 58,000 Americans died in Vietnam, and more than 150,000 were wounded. The escalating US involvement in Southeast Asia was driven by the logic of the. 1) The deaths of over a million communist soldiers 2) Post-traumatic stress disorder in veterans Which legislation limited the influence of the president? This report addresses a number of the issues that result from the failure to deal with the cost of America's wars by providing an overview of the historical trends involved, the broader climate of U.S. defense spending, and the data that have been reported on each war as part of the Overseas budget for the Contingency Operations (OCO) account. Tens of thousands of soldiers received dishonorable discharges for desertion, and about 500,000 American men from 1965-73 became draft dodgers, with many fleeing to Canada to evade conscription. Even today, there are an estimated five million pieces of unexploded ordnance still scattered around Vietnam. The war had cost 58,000 American and 2 million Vietnamese lives. Reports of the Tet Offensive stunned the U.S. public, however, especially after news broke that Westmoreland had requested an additional 200,000 troops, despite repeated assurances that victory in the Vietnam War was imminent. The data for FY2018 show that the civil effort is being slashed without any explanation or justification of the cutsparticularly in key areas like economic growthwhere poverty is now steadily increasing and both sets of populations face major humanitarian crisesand in governance, where all of the host country governments are ranked as some of the most corrupt and incapable governments in the world and a lack of popular support is a key issue. Though the issue remains contentious, these increased rates have been linked to their exposure to Agent Orange. The civil war in Vietnam lasted from 1955 to 1975, with direct U.S. military involvement from 1964 to 1973. . Center for Strategic and International Studies Heavy bombing by B-52 aircraft or shelling made these zones uninhabitable, as refugees poured into camps in designated safe areas near Saigon and other cities. The war claimed between 2.5-4 million lives, the vast majority Vietnamese civilians plus more than 58,000 Americans. In December 1960, Diems many opponents within South Vietnamboth communist and non-communistformed the National Liberation Front (NLF) to organize resistance to the regime. $65.7 billion in FY2016 total budget authority and $41.2 billion in adjusted budget authority. The bombing was not limited to Vietnam; from 1964-1973, the United States covertly dropped two million tons of bombs on neighboring, neutral Laos during the CIA-led Secret War in Laos. These estimates do not include post-war deaths from famine and disease; or the millions killed by regimes like the Khmer Rouge, who came to power largely because of the disruption created by the Vietnam War. Omissions? With training and equipment from American military and the CIA, Diems security forces cracked down on Viet Minh sympathizers in the south, whom he derisively called Viet Cong (or Vietnamese Communist), arresting some 100,000 people, many of whom were brutally tortured and executed. While the number of American deaths was well documented, neither the South Vietnamese, the North Vietnamese or the NLF (Viet Cong) kept stringent records about personnel or losses. The fighting ability of pro-Hanoi forces in the South had been badly wounded in .
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