US Intervention in Vietnam

Abstract

After the victory of the anticolonial communist (Viet Minh) forces in 1954 and the achievement of a temporary military settlement with the French at Geneva, the US became increasingly involved in Vietnamese politics. The 17th Parallel, which had been designated in the Geneva agreement as a demilitarized zone, was turned into a border between the Viet Minh-controlled North and the South, where a US-supported government was headed by Ngo Dinh Diem. The specifics of the origin of the US involvement are well documented elsewhere, and we need only recall here that by 1954 the US was providing 80 per cent of the funding for the French war in Indochina, and that by January 1955, the US had become the direct paymaster of the South Vietnamese military (Porter 1975: 4).