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The Vietnam War (also known as the Second Indochina War and colloquially as Vietnam or Nam as well as the American War or Kháng chi?n ch?ng M?, the Resistance War Against America in Vietnam) was a conflict in which the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRVN, or North Vietnam) and its allies fought against the Republic of Vietnam (RVN, or South Vietnam) and its allies. North Vietnam's allies included the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. South Vietnam's allies included the United States and South Korea. US combat troops were involved from 1965 until their official withdrawal in 1973. A large number of civilian casualties resulted from the war, which ended on April 30, 1975 with the capitulation of South Vietnam.The Vietnam War began after the division of Vietnam into two zones with a de-militarized zone (DMZ) between them. The Vietnam War ostensibly began as a civil war between feuding governments. Being Western-oriented and perceived as less popular than H? Chà Minh's northern government, the South Vietnamese government fought largely to maintain its governing status within the partitioned entity, rather than to "unify the country" as was agreed to at the Geneva Conference. Fighting began in 1957, and steadily escalated from there, with the United States, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China all eventually becoming involved. The conflict spilled over into the neighboring countries of Cambodia and Laos.The U.S. involvement in the war has been described as an escalation. This is typically meant to refer to the incremental increase in forces in response to greater need, rather than an intentional strategy. However a key element was that there was no traditional declaration of war which would have involved a national commitment to using all available means to secure victory.
Instead U.S. involvement increased over several years, beginning with the deployment of noncombatant military advisors to the South Vietnamese army, followed by the use of special forces for commando-style operations, followed by the introduction of regular troops for defensive purposes, until regular troops were used in offensive combat. Once U.S. troops were engaged in active combat, escalation meant increasing their numbers.
Successive U.S. administrations also hoped that by limiting its involvement to defending only the South and not directly invading the North, it could support South Vietnam without provoking a major response from China and/or the Soviet Union, as had happened in the Korean War. President Johnson maintained the Kennedy administration's position that South Vietnam's independence was a crucial U.S. defense against Soviet aggression, while at the same time trying to avoid provoking direct participation in the conflict by the Warsaw Pact.
The situation caused friction between the US armed services and the civilian authorities in Washington. Military officials such as General William Westmoreland resented the Johnson Administration's restraints on their operations but feared making outspoken policy criticisms lest they suffer the same fate as General Douglas MacArthur who had been dismissed by Truman on such grounds during the Korean War. The military leadership of the United States also resented the micromanagement of the war by the President and Secretary of Defense.
The relatively slow process of escalation also tended to mute U.S. political debate, since no individual instance of escalation dramatically increased the level of U.S. involvement. However in 1968 the Joint Chiefs of Staff considered increasing the total number of active reserve troops by 200,000, concerned about having roughly a third of U.S. forces committed to one theater of conflict. The Joint Chiefs of Staff asked General Westmoreland, the only military official then commanding U.S. troops in a conflict, to testify to the need to increase. The press portrayed this increase as a need for more troops in Vietnam to reconcile the situation after the Tet Offensive. When this possibility was made public, popular criticism caused the Johnson Administration to abandon the idea. Presidential candidate Richard Nixon called for a decrease in U.S. troop levels. By the end of 1969, under his new administration, they were reduced by 60,000 from their wartime peak.
Of the U.S. military, 58,226 were killed in action or classified as missing in action. A further 153,303 US military personnel were wounded to give total casualties of 211,529. The United States Army took the majority of the casualties with 38,179 killed and 96,802 wounded; the Marine Corps lost 14,836 killed and 51,392 wounded; the Navy 2,556 and 4,178; the Air Force lost 2,580 and 931; with the lowest deaths in terms of numbers and percentages among the branches being the Coast Guard, with seven dead and 60 wounded.
