Vietnam War
Armed conflict between communist and noncommunist forces in South Vietnam
United States involved from 1965 to 1975
After many frustrating years of attempting to maintain the existence of a noncommunist government in South Vietnam, the United States in 1973 agreed to end active participation in the war, and two years later, North Vietnam successfully unified all of Vietnam into a single communist country.
American involvement in Vietnam was an application of the Containment Policy, which was a long-standing commitment of U.S. foreign policy makers to stop the expansion of communism (also called Marxist-Leninism). Before 1954, the U.S. government financially supported French colonialism in Vietnam because Ho Chi Minh and other rebel leaders were dedicated communists. After 1954, Vietnam was “temporarily” divided into two countries, with the South having a noncommunist government and the North having a Marxist-Leninist system. The South Vietnamese confronted an insurgency of pro-communist guerrilla fighters, called the Viet Cong. Although most of the Viet Cong were poor peasants living in the South, many “volunteers” from the North were among the insurgents. Beginning in 1965, regular U.S. combat troops directly participated in the war, and U.S. bombers attacked North Vietnam on a massive scale.
(Salem Press Encyclopedia, 2015)
