By 1969 more than 500,000 U.S. military personnel were stationed in Vietnam. On November 15, 1969, the largest anti-war demonstration in American history took place in Washington, D.C., as over 250,000 Americans gathered peacefully, calling for withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam. Metrics showing allied funding and aid activity help put the U.S. spending effort in the proper perspective. 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. By Ward Wilson. The war exacted an enormous human cost: estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed range from 966,000 to 3 million. More than 1.3 million Vietnamese soldiers and about 58,000 U.S. troops were killed. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). The human costs of the long conflict were harsh for all involved. military knowledge. The French loss at the battle ended almost a century of French colonial rule in Indochina. Families had to fight to survive Hope this helps :) Post-traumatic stress disorder in veterans The deaths of over a million communist soldiers Advertisement These reports never address the costs of war, or planning, programming, and budgeting. The Human Cost. to the The Department of Defense has, however, provided a supplement to the FY2018 budget request that does provide many useful insights, and the only integrated discussion of civil-military issues in the FY2018 budget submission. When the war was over France received their "colony" back. Psychologically, the effects ran even deeper. Trojans. By June, 82,000 combat troops were stationed in Vietnam, and military leaders were calling for 175,000 more by the end of 1965 to shore up the struggling South Vietnamese army. February 18, 2018. In the early 1900s the country was part of a French colony. Work by Todd Harrison, for example, shows that total U.S. defense-related costs totaled some $905 billion in FY2017: At the same time, if one does use the $619.7 billion total for the U.S., it is: U.S. military spending has risen steadily over time, but without any serious net assessment of the patterns in that growth, the comparative efficiency of U.S. spending on baseline and war activity, and how allied and potential threat states use their budgets and resources. The nation grew to distrust its leaders as a result of governmental deceit, and Americans with differing views of the war were distrustful of and hostile to one another. Examine President Nixon's threefold plan to unilaterally de-escalate the Vietnam War. As many as one-quarter of these boat people as they became known are believed to have perished at sea. This section compares current total U.S. baseline and war spending with the spending of other states. Though the issue remains contentious, these increased rates have been linked to their exposure to Agent Orange. Date updated: December 20, 2022 The next few years would bring even more carnage, including the horrifying revelation that U.S. soldiers had mercilessly slaughtered more than 400 unarmed civilians in the village of My Lai in March 1968. Given the estimates that the real costs are already well over $4 trillion, these multipliers would be more than doubled if any of the alternative war costs cited earlier are correct. Estimates of the number of people killed in Indochina range from two and a half million to more than four million. The French defeat at the Dien Bien Phu was followed by a peace conference in Geneva. During the course of the conflict . Throughout both conflicts, reporting has focused on total personnel rather than on the function and capability of the personnel engaged. Fall of Saigon, capture of Saigon by North Vietnamese forces, which occurred from March 4 to April 30, 1975. Among other countries that fought for South Vietnam, South Korea had more than 4,000 dead, Thailand about 350, Australia more than 500, and New Zealand some three dozen. Some declared that Vietnam was a nationalist conflict that Washington had no business intervening in. They are more than five times more expensive than the Korean War. 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 status of the FY2018 OCO requests for DoD and State are now highly uncertain and these charts focus on FY2001-FY2017. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Even as the enemy body count (at times exaggerated by U.S. and South Vietnamese authorities) mounted steadily, DRV and Viet Cong troops refused to stop fighting, encouraged by the fact that they could easily reoccupy lost territory with manpower and supplies delivered via the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Cambodia and Laos. Trojans' side of the story. Key metrics are also provided on the funding profiles of key types of aid. From 1975 to the early 1980s, the world press was filled with horror stories about refugee boats sinking or disintegrating at sea, while thousands of refugees drowned, starved or were murdered by pirates. Updates? Vietnam veterans in the US, Australia and other countries have suffered from increased rates of cancers and birth defects in their offspring. Why are first-hand accounts important? A historians view: The discussion of how activities link to a strategy is the one example of such a public budget justification in more than 15 years of official reporting on the wars. Long term budget projections by the CBO and others invariably assume the end to war with one or two years in the future and no major contingency thereafter. Which best describes the cost of the Vietnam War in human terms? US Air Force commander Curtis Le May once threatened to bomb [Vietnam] back to the Stone Age, a promise that was very nearly delivered. URL: https://alphahistory.com/vietnamwar/costs-of-the-vietnam-war/ 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. These chemicals also had an insidious impact on both Vietnamese civilians and American soldiers and their allies. The Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis Continued? 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. Washington, DC 20036. After the United States withdrew from the conflict, North Vietnam invaded the South and united the country under a communist government. Only limited break outs of these key data are provided by war. Two decades of military intervention and bankrolling friendly regimes cost the United States almost $US170 billion (close to $1 trillion in todays terms). Once again, the data on contractors provide a key picture of the actual size of the U.S. effort in country. A. It also has been revised to show the FY2018 costs of the U.S. train and assist missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria in depth. This illustrates another critical failure in the preparation and review of both Baseline and War budgets. Past estimates of spending have been consistently wrong, and the inputs have been consistently undercosted. The Presidents FY2017 budget request included $1,553.6 billion for contingency operations funded in the base budget. The contribution and sacrifices made by host country and allied forces is not recognized. U.S. military advisers, present in small numbers throughout the 1950s, were introduced on a large scale beginning in 1961, and active combat units were introduced in 1965. A decade of warfare left Vietnam, particularly its northern provinces, utterly devastated. Global confidence in America as the arsenal of democracy also suffered. Corrections? 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. This caused a refugee crisis and thousands of deaths at sea, forcing Western nations to accept large numbers of refugees. How did the American public react when they heard the news? De-escalation, negotiation, and Vietnamization, The United States negotiates a withdrawal, 9 Questions About the Vietnam War Answered, https://www.britannica.com/event/Vietnam-War, Vietnam War - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11), Vietnam War - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up). Neither this bombing or the ground war was confined by the borders of Vietnam. The United States entered Vietnam with the principal purpose of preventing a communist takeover of the region. You can specify conditions of storing and accessing cookies in your browser. The subsequent treaty signed in July 1954 at a Geneva conference split Vietnam along the latitude known as the 17th Parallel (17 degrees north latitude), with Ho in control in the North and Bao in the South. South Vietnam was a viable nation-state by 1972, afflicted by internal armed opposition but not overwhelmed by it. Other charts summarize work by Todd Harrison of CSIS showing the extent to which non-OCO expenditures became included in the OCO budget accounts. 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 The United States lost almost 60,000 personnel and civilians in Vietnam: 58,269 servicemen were killed and another 1,672 recorded as missing. 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 war had cost 58,000 American and 2 million Vietnamese lives. It cost America over $100bn, and damaged its reputation and morale at home. They also assert that the U.S. overall suffered fewer casualties than its opponents. It also presents some key metrics developed by SIGAR on the annual and cumulative costs of U.S. aid efforts in Afghanistan. The Vietnam War was fought for civilians, by civilians and among civilians and the majority of casualties were civilians. Under a broad free market policy put in place in 1986, the economy began to improve, boosted by oil export revenues and an influx of foreign capital. It affected 700,000 American veterans. It was 150% of the IISS estimate of $604.5 billion for 2016. Among other countries that fought for South Vietnam on a smaller scale, South Korea suffered more than 4,000 dead, Thailand about 350, Australia more than 500, and New Zealand some three dozen. They are nearly 2.5 times more expensive than the Vietnam War. What is even more striking, is the failure of both recent presidents and the Congress to properly analyze and justify the cost of America's wars. . Despite the concerns of some of his advisers about this escalation, and about the entire war effort amid a growing anti-war movement, Johnson authorized the immediate dispatch of 100,000 troops at the end of July 1965 and another 100,000 in 1966. 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. According to a survey by the Veterans Administration, some 500,000 of the 3 million troops who served in Vietnam suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and rates of divorce, suicide, alcoholism and drug addiction were markedly higher among veterans. Media Relations Manager, External Relations. A team sent by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to report on conditions in South Vietnam advised a build-up of American military, economic and technical aid in order to help Diem confront the Viet Cong threat. 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. Yet, the Administration and the Congress have tended to treat warfighting as a temporary aberrationas something to be delt with by supplementals or creating short-term budget categories like the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account that seem to reflect the cost of wars, but have become something of a slush fund and a mechanism for selectively avoiding the caps on defense spending set by the BCA. The physical devastation of the war, coupled with the socialist policies imposed by new regimes, caused years of famine and suffering in south-east Asia. This not only claimed lives but also devastated cities, buildings, infrastructure, farmland and vegetation. Anne's diary helped the world understand what it was like living in hiding during These boats were manned by fishermen unfamiliar with navigating the open sea and some even left without a specific destination in mind. One of the most common defoliants used in Vietnam, Agent Orange, was later found to contain carcinogenic dioxins.
Houses For Rent In Long Island Ny Craigslist,
Ohio Air Test Passing Scores,
Articles W