Vietnam experienced generations of oppressive and exploitative French imperial rule that began in the late 19th century. Vietnam’s experience as a colonial possession was similar to that of other colonies; there was an absence of civil liberties for the native population, and attempts by the French to impose ‘civilization Francais’, which ultimately stifled Vietnamese culture. French occupation was beneficial for the elite; social discrepancies grew as land ownership became concentrated amongst a small class of the wealthy and this began to create an attraction amongst ordinary Vietnamese for the socialist ideology. Vietnam also had another imperial experience: the invasion of imperial Japan during the Second World War. This invasion was significant as in response to another imperial attempt the League for Independence was created, under its leader with socialist sympathies - Ho Chi Minh.
After the war and in the tense climate of the Cold War in the 1950s this leadership became increasingly threatening to the US, who perceived Minh as a Communist menace, something which would lead to their withdrawal in 1973, as they failed to realise that he was a leader far more committed to Vietnam’s independence than creating a communist state modelled on China. The US, in the atmosphere of McCarthyism, was hysterical about the expansion of Communism, they feared the prospect of a Vietnamese satellite state, of what Cuba had become in 1965, and in this fear would then wage war against an enemy whose purpose for fighting they failed to fully grasp.
When the French were finally driven out of the country after losing the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and Vietnam was split at Geneva that same year, the US was even more alarmed by this perception of a Communist threat. President Eisenhower gave his support to the anti-Communist leader of the South and under Kennedy soldiers were sent to ‘advise’ Southern troops. This intervention paved the way for complete military involvement and was a mistake as the US were globally criticised for behaving like an imperial power, engaging in affairs that did not directly involve them. This comparison had a striking affinity to the earlier French and Japanese colonisers and in turn made the Vietnamese response even more relentless and unyielding; they possessed experience battling imperialists, and the superpower US with large global influence must have seemed similar to European colonisers.
Part of the US’s inability to understand Minh’s leadership and aims for full independence and not solely his socialist sympathies was their commitment to preventing Communism’s expansion. In fact, their foreign policy had been changed to containment in 1947 as part of the Truman Doctrine to prevent the USSR spreading Communism; many countries in Eastern Europe had become a soviet buffer zone and the US sought to prevent more countries from falling to Communism also. This policy of containment was why President Johnson’s Defence Secretary McNamara encouraged intervention in Vietnam because of the possibility of a ‘Red Asia’ if Communism continued to spread, as they believed it would if Vietnam continued under Minh’s leadership. Containment encompassed the ‘domino theory’, the idea that if one country fell to Communism others would also, and this is what the US was averse to. Yet, as this article has previously argued, the US was wrong to assume that Minh was primarily dedicated to a Communist state and fighting America neo-imperialism, rather than Capitalism. Containment, therefore, was not needed so urgently as the US perceived and their limited view would lead to US withdrawal in 1973 because the Vietnamese fought with unyielding determination against more oppressors who sought to undermine their independence.
Proof of this military resolve was the Tet Offensive of 1968 launched by the North. Although the US and their Southern allies eventually crushed it, its initial success cast doubt on the US’s imminent victory. Furthermore, it became evident the US was not fighting a newly formed Communist force of a small country, but rather a group whose commitments to Vietnam’s liberation stretched back decades and were deeply rooted from when it was colonised by the French. This led to withdrawal as the US were not able to sustain this war, it drained over $100 billion whilst more than 58,000 US soldiers were killed; the North were relentless in the fight against these US ‘imperialists’ which the legacy of the French had created.
Of course, other factors such as protests within the US and the disproportionate selecting of draft cards contributed to America’s withdrawal as it became too much of an unpopular war, but a fundamental reason for their withdrawal was the legacy of the French imperialists. As this article has contended, the French impact cannot be undermined as it shaped the events of the 1950s; the rise of the League of Independence (a coalition body which fought and campaigned for Vietnamese independence) had socialist sympathies and was threatening to the US, which meant that the French retreat led to the US becoming far more involved. This involvement was fuelled by the view that Minh was solely dedicated to Communism when in reality he cared far more for Vietnam’s independence and this nationalist effort forged the relentless battle of the North as it had a deeply rooted ideology, something the US had not anticipated. Therefore, the significance of French rule in causing US withdrawal is greatly significant, as the US were fighting a war in the legacy of the imperialists they represented to the North and they themselves failed to grasp the true meaning of the conflict to their enemy.
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