Nowhere was human suffering greater in Asia
than during the 1960s and 1970s in the lands of
Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. The Vietnam War
was a fratricidal conflict between the Vietnamese
people. It also marked the climax of the Cold War
in Asia, which hugely increased the suffering of
the indigenous peoples. Because American leaders
believed that far more was at stake than just the
future of South Vietnam, that the security of the
non-communist world was being tested here in
the jungles and rice-swamps of Asia, they first
supplied money and arms and eventually half a
million combat troops in an attempt to help one
side in the Vietnamese Civil War defeat the other.
But America’s Western allies saw it differently, so
there was never the unity displayed during the
Korean War. France and Britain gave advice but
sent no troops. In Asia, Australia was the most
enthusiastic supporter and, with New Zealand,
despatched several thousand men; other small
token allies that sent some troops were Thailand
and the Philippines. The Russians and Chinese
gave aid and arms to the communists to support
their fight but were careful to keep out of combat
themselves. The Chinese communists did not
want America on their southern frontier; they had
already fought in North Korea to keep the enemy
from their northern Manchurian border. It suited
the Russians, on the other hand, to see America
quagmired in south-east Asia, far away from
regions bordering on the Soviet Union.
The ordinary people, mostly peasants in
Vietnam, followed their leaders either throughconviction or because they had no choice, con-
scripted and coerced into rival armies or units of
irregular combatants. In Vietnam resistance was
punished by death. Only in a Western democ-
racy was public protest possible. Most young
Americans accepted their call-up, but there were
tens of thousands who did not view the Vietnam
conflict as necessary or just and avoided the draft.
In the US the war became increasingly unaccept-
able after 1968, with its heavy losses of American
life. With the progressive US disengagement on
land, the Vietnamese were left to fight to the
finish. The communist forces were the stronger,
and they would have won the war between the
Vietnamese with less loss of life and destruction
had the US not intervened. The Johnson admin-
istration failed to grasp the true nature of the con-
flict it was facing.
The Vietnam War was also a tragedy for the
US, for the parents of the 58,200 men killed, for
the wives who saw husbands returned in body-
bags, for the more than 300,000 wounded ser-
vicemen whose scars were not only physical. It
was a war fought by 19-year-old American con-
scripts in rice-fields and jungles. The enemy was
everywhere and not necessarily recognisable by
his uniform. There was nothing to distinguish the
Vietcong fighter from unarmed peasants, men,
women and even children. In fear of their own
lives, the US troops shot first, at anyone who ran
away from them or who even looked suspicious;
atrocities were committed, villages burnt, inno-
cent and guilty killed. The Americans’ South(^1) Chapter 55
THE VIETNAM WAR AND AFTER