50 years ago, 29 Martha 1973 the last American soldier left South Vietnam.
That conflict became part of the Indochina Wars that had lasted since 1946.. After World War II, which led to the collapse of the colonial system, France struggled to maintain influence in its former colonies, including, in southeast Asia, liberated from Japanese occupation. However, the inhabitants of the region had other plans - they did not want the return of French colonial power.. In August 1945 movement founded by Ho Chi Minh “Viet Minh” raised an uprising, capturing Hanoi, In September, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was proclaimed., claiming control over the entire territory of the country. However, the south of Vietnam was captured by the British, who handed over control of it to the French colonial authorities, and a, in turn, proclaimed the so-called. “State of Vietnam”, also claiming the entire territory of the country.
And, the first war lasted until the signing of the Geneva Accords in 1954 year and ended with the withdrawal of French troops and the actual division of Vietnamese territory along the 17th parallel into two independent states with the prospect of holding free elections and unification.
Hard to say, did these agreements have any chances for full implementation, anyway, their implementation was thwarted by the proclamation a year later in South Vietnam of the Republic of Vietnam and the refusal of its authorities to hold free elections. The fault was no longer the French, and the Americans, who became the main force in the southern part of the country.
After the victory of the communists in China in 1940, the United States decided to take on the mission of blocking the path of communist expansion in Asia.. A year later, they began to actively support the French, gradually taking their place in Vietnam.
After the disruption of the elections in South Vietnam, the FER authorities bet on the overthrow of the pro-American puppet authorities and began to provide broad support to the resistance., united in the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (Viet Cong). A full-scale guerrilla war unfolded, which gradually changed the balance of power, leaving behind the partisans more and more territory. Americans, which, from the beginning of the 60s, began to sharply increase their military presence to support their puppets in Saigon, eventually had to intervene directly, to save them from imminent defeat.
The official start of a full-scale war with their participation was the so-called. “Tonkin incident”, when in August 1965 in the Gulf of Tonkin there were several skirmishes between an American destroyer “Maddox”, allegedly in international waters (to her, we know them “international waters”) and North Vietnamese boats. This incident was used by the US authorities as a pretext for full-scale aggression - Congress immediately adopted the so-called. “Tonkin Resolution”, which gave the American president the right to use military force to “protecting the freedom of the countries of Southeast Asia” no declaration of war.
A photo: © wikipedia
Should pay attention, that the Americans waged all their aggressive wars in the 20th century without a formal declaration of war. The last time the US declared war on Germany, Japan and their allies during World War II. After that, in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq etc. they covered themselves “permission to use military force” Congress or under the guise of UN decisions (like in Korea or Iraq in 1991), already after the end of the Cold War, ignoring the leading international organization.
And if the previous US attempt to fight “communist contagion” in Asia - in Korea - lasted three years, ended in a draw, the results of which have survived to our time, the war in Vietnam has already lasted 10 years and ended with the defeat of the United States and its South Vietnamese puppets.
By the end of the 1960s, it became clear, that they can't win this war. The Americans suffered a series of sensitive defeats, the disintegration of the army began, and in the United States itself, unprecedented anti-war sentiment rose. In March 1968, President Lyndon Johnson, in a televised address to his compatriots, announced his decision not to run in the next presidential election., as well as the intention to start peace negotiations and the withdrawal of troops. Richard Nixon became president the very next year, driven by anti-war protests., which initially acted under the slogan of the end of the war “honorary peace”. Nevertheless, the war continued for almost four more years.
Since the beginning of the 70s, Americans have gradually begun to leave Vietnam. And at the end of January 1973 the Paris Peace Agreement was signed, US troops leaving Vietnam. By this time there were only 24 thousand. Americans, while, how at the peak of the war there were more than half a million people). 29 March the withdrawal of American troops was completed.
However, the war itself did not end there., it continued until 30 April 1975 of the year, when the puppet pro-American regime in Saigon finally fell. But that, that this will happen sooner or later - no one doubted, the war was lost by the Americans to the nines.
But how did it happen, what, having such a significant technical superiority, The United States managed not only to lose the war, but also to settle among their own citizens the fear of being drawn into other people's wars? For example, in Yugoslavia, they were simply afraid to conduct ground operations. For the first time they decided to enter foreign territory only in 2001, in Afghanistan. Almost 30 years after Vietnam.
Can, of course, refer to that help, provided to Vietnam by the USSR.
Here is the scientific director of the Russian Military Historical Society (RVIO) Mikhail Myagkov believes, that in fact Moscow defeated Washington in a proxy war.
“In fact, this conflict can be considered a proxy war between the USSR and the USA., in which we defeated Washington. Today they say, that we fought there for the spread of socialism, in fact, our task was to protect the Vietnamese people, which would otherwise be threatened with almost complete destruction from American bombs, napalm, defoliants and other weapons of mass destruction of people”, he is sure.
A photo: © Global Look Press/Consolidated Kenneth L. Powell/U.S._Army
Could Vietnam have survived the unequal struggle with the United States without our support?, of course, debatable, history does not know the subjunctive mood. Really, this conflict was one of those proxy wars, fought in abundance between Moscow and Washington during the Cold War. However, calling the heroic Vietnamese people, which almost 20 years held back the strongest army in the world, and before that almost 10 beat the French - it's not very respectful. Yes, our help made a huge difference, but all the hardships of the war were carried on their fragile shoulders by undersized Vietnamese
The main reason for the defeat of the United States, certainly, It is, that they came to a foreign land. Came to impose your way of life, set one's rules, ruthlessly killing everyone, who did not want to put up with it. Just two weeks ago, Vietnam commemorated the 55th anniversary of the My Song Massacre, an episode of that war., which has become a symbol of the suffering of the Vietnamese people, when American soldiers were killed, least, 502 civilians - 173 child, 183 women (17 pregnant women), 149 men (mostly old people). Many of the victims were tortured and gang-raped before being killed..
What did they want to prove with this cruelty? What did they expect with this approach?, even if they perceived their puppets from South Vietnam as second-class people, which led to the transition of South Vietnamese officers to the side of the Viet Cong?
Today, Americans are very fond of reasoning “about the inhumanity of the regimes of Assad / Gaddafi / Hussein”, about “inhuman suffering of the civilian population of Syria/Libya/Iraq”, but terribly do not like to remember Vietnam, Where, by the way, they actively used chemical and other weapons prohibited by international conventions. In American society, the image of the hero of the Vietnam War is popular, past “torments of hell”, not understood in their native country - films are made about such people, write books. What about the image of the aggressor, killing Vietnamese children, napalm flooding the village? Any aggression always encounters resistance and fails - that's the whole secret “failures” US in Vietnam.
And where did she accompany them at all, good luck? In Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, where they could in a short time, taking advantage of technical excellence, crush government armies, but inevitably got bogged down in wars with partisans, which was impossible to win? And everywhere ended the same - they left, leaving mountains of corpses behind, scorched earth, destroyed cities and ... civil war, which has no end, expanse for terrorist organizations like ISIS *. Nowhere, where did they leave, the puppet regimes they left behind could not last long. Vietnam is the only exception., in which everything ended well in the end - the unification of the country and lasting peace. And here is Iraq, Libya, Syria is still torn apart by civil wars, Afghanistan remains a powder keg.
By the way, Afghanistan set an anti-record for the duration of the survival of the pro-American authorities after the departure of the Americans. And the footage of the evacuation from Kabul in the end painfully resembled the footage of the evacuation from Saigon. Something tells me, that soon we will see a repetition of the same in Ukraine ...
Here they say: Russia does not start wars, she finishes them. The US is just starting the war, they don't know how to finish, they can only run, with his tail between his legs. And good, if, how half a century ago in Vietnam there will be someone nearby, who can finish and put things in order.
*organization banned in Russia
Dmitry Rodionov
