BA HISTORY VI SEM CONTEMPORARY WORLD MODULE 1

United Nation’s Four Main GoalsThe organization’s purpose an principles are outlined in the U.N. Charter. According to the document, the United Nations’ four main purposes are to:

·        Maintain international peace and security;

·        Develop friendly relations among nations;

·        Achieve international cooperation in solving international problems; and

·        Be a center for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.

U.N. Bodies

The U.N. is divided into different bodies, including the following:

General Assembly: The General Assembly is the main policymaking body of the U.N. that votes on decisions the organization makes. All 193 members are represented in this branch.

Security Council: This 15-member council oversees measures that ensure the maintenance of international peace and security. The Security Council determines if a threat exists and encourages the parties involved to settle it peacefully.

Economic and Social Council: The Economic and Social Council makes policies and recommendations regarding economic, social and environmental issues. It consists of 54 members who are elected by the General Assembly for three-year terms.

Trusteeship Council: The Trusteeship Council was originally created to supervise the 11 Trust Territories that were placed under the management of seven member states. By 1994, all the territories had gained self-government or independence, and the body was suspended. But that same year, the Council decided to continue meeting occasionally, instead of annually.

International Court of Justice: This branch is responsible for settling legal disputes submitted by the states and answering questions in accordance with international law.

Secretariat: The Secretariat is made up of the Secretary-General and thousands of U.N. staffers. Its members carry out the daily duties of the U.N. and work on international peacekeeping missions.

U.N. Members

What started as a group of 51 states has grown increasingly over the years. War, independence movements and decolonization have all helped boost membership in the U.N.

Currently, there are 193 members, representing countries from all over the world.

New members must be recommended by the United Nations’ Security Council and accepted by a two-thirds vote from the General Assembly.

The U.N. states that membership in the organization is “open to all peace-loving States that accept the obligations contained in the United Nations Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able to carry out these obligations.”

U.N. Successes

Since its inception, the United Nations has performed numerous humanitarian, environmental and peace-keeping undertakings, including:

·        Providing food to 90 million people in over 75 countries

·        Assisting more than 34 million refugees

·        Authorizing 71 international peacekeeping missions

·        Working with 140 nations to minimize climate change

·        Assisting about 50 countries per year with their elections

·        Providing vaccinations for 58 percent of children in the world

·        Helping about 30 million women a year with maternal health efforts

·        Protecting human rights with 80 treaties and declarations

United Nations Criticisms

Over the years, the role of the U.N. has expanded from an organization that focused on peace and security to one that includes a wide range of global concerns. Today, the U.N. provides solutions for problems related to healthcare, the environment, criminal justice, refugee dilemmas and more.

Though many support including these extended responsibilities, others believe the organization may be overstepping its boundaries.

The U.N. has also faced criticism for promoting globalization, not being effective enough, backing provocative policies, providing controversial health options, being too bureaucratic, giving certain countries more power than others and spending too much money.

U.N. Failures

Some of the more well-known U.N. efforts that ended in failure or a publicized scandal include:

The 1994 Rwanda Mission: During this undertaking, the U.N. tried to stop the Rwandan genocide, but the Hutus slaughtered nearly a million members of the Tutsi minority.

Cholera in Haiti: After the 2010 earthquake, U.N.-led Nepali aid workers were blamed for spreading cholera throughout Haiti. More than 10,000 people died from the outbreak.

Oil for Food Program: This initiative was designed to allow Iraq to sell oil through the U.N. in exchange for food and medicine. But, accusations surfaced that much of the money was funneled to the Iraqi government and to U.N. officials.

Sexual abuse allegations: In early 2005, U.N. peacekeepers were accused of rape or paying for sex in the Republic of Congo. Similar allegations of sexual misconduct were also reported in Cambodia, Haiti and other countries.

Crisis in South Sudan: A U.N. peacekeeping mission, which was established in 2011, was unsuccessful at protecting civilians from death, torture or rape in South Sudan.

While every organization has its flaws and shortcomings, the majority of international leaders and experts agree that the U.N. continues to play a critical role in securing peace, stability and prosperity throughout the world.

COLD WAR ALLIANCES

NATO officials develop plans for the defence of western Europe

The mid-20th-century world was dominated by several alliances, particularly the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact. Cold War alliances both defined and intensified the divisions between democratic and socialist nations.

Early alliances

These alliances took shape in the years following World War II, as European nations aligned with others to protect themselves from future aggression. Some believed this aggression might come from resurgent Nazism, either as a secret counter-attack or guerrilla resistance to Allied occupation. Others thought the Soviet Union and communist agents and revolutionaries posed a greater threat.

In March 1947, Britain and France signed the Treaty of Dunkirk, a bipartisan military alliance. In March 1948, they extended this alliance by signing the Treaty of Brussels, a new agreement that included Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

Though the Treaty of Brussels did not mention the Soviet Union specifically, it was predicated on resisting communism and communist expansion. The preamble to the Brussels treaty expressed clear aims to “fortify and preserve the principles of democracy, personal freedom and political liberty, the constitutional traditions and the rule of law” that were the “common heritage” of the five signatory nations.

The seeds of NATO

Just weeks after the signing of the Treaty of Brussels, Soviet forces initiated their blockade of Berlin. Interpreting this as an act of aggression, the signatories to the Brussels treaty formed their own military agency: the Western Union Defence Organisation.

Despite this, these nations held grave fears about their ability to respond to Soviet military aggression. Like most European nations, Brussels signatories had demobilised and reduced their military forces at the end of World War II. Even their combined forces were incapable of serving as a deterrent to Soviet aggression or responding militarily to the USSR. These nations began lobbying the United States, urging the formation of a trans-Atlantic military alliance.

Following lengthy negotiations, the North Atlantic Treaty was signed in Washington in April 1949.

Harry S. Truman and other leaders sign the NATO treaty in 1949

Initial member-states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) included the United States and all five Brussels treaty nations, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Norway and Portugal. Several countries were invited to join NATO but refused, including Finland, Ireland, Sweden and the ever-neutral Switzerland. Three more countries (Greece, Turkey and West Germany) were later admitted to NATO during the 1950s. France was a foundation member but its military commitment to NATO was gradually reduced between 1959 and 1966, as Charles de Gaulle and his government chose to formulate their own defence strategies.

Under the terms of the North Atlantic Treaty, an “armed attack” against any of the signatory nations was to be “considered an attack against them all”, requiring members to take “such action as [they deem] necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area”.

NATO takes shape

The emblems of NATO, then and now

In its first year, NATO was little more than a loose affiliation of nations exchanging military expertise, advice and hardware. The onset of the Korean War in 1950 hardened the alliance, prompting NATO to expand and develop new command structures.

In 1952, the office of NATO secretary-general was created and NATO’s headquarters were moved from small offices in London to a dedicated complex in Paris. Exercise Mainbrace, the first NATO war games, were conducted in northern European waters by the navies of nine member-states. NATO commanders also drew up war plans and strategies to deal with various Soviet attack or invasion scenarios.

In 1954, a year after the death of Joseph Stalin, NATO was tested by a request for membership from the Soviet Union. The proposal was rejected by NATO member-states, who said ‘the unrealistic nature of the proposal does not warrant discussion’.

The Soviet response

The Warsaw Pact conference of Soviet bloc nations, 1955

The final straw for the Soviets came on May 9th 1955 when West Germany was offered membership of NATO. Five days later, Moscow convened a conference of communist delegates in the Polish capital Warsaw. They drafted and signed the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, more commonly known as the Warsaw Pact. Its eight member-states were the USSR, Poland, East Germany, Albania (until 1968), Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania.

Like NATO, the Warsaw Pact had civil, political and military committees, as well as its own headquarters, located in Warsaw. Despite this, its planning, decision-making and military command were dominated by the Soviet Union. Warsaw Pact bodies were led by Soviet politicians, diplomats or bureaucrats; the supreme commander of Warsaw Pact forces was also the Soviet deputy defence minister. This stood in contrast with American involvement in NATO: the United States was undoubtedly the major military partner but did not command or control the alliance.

Military activities

NATO troops participate in a simulated landing in Turkey in 1957

The formation of the Warsaw Pact triggered a review of NATO and an escalation of its activities. NATO members moved to grant membership to West Germany, believing its population would be crucial in the event of a war with the Soviet bloc. NATO also increased the size and frequency of its exercises.

In September 1957, more than 300 NATO ships and a quarter-million men took part in joint exercises in the North Atlantic Sea and the Mediterranean. The first of these, Operation Strikeback, took the form of a mock battle against an enemy submarine fleet.

NATO forces also participated in Operation Deep Water, responding to a simulated Soviet invasion of the Dardanelles (Turkey). In central Europe, Operation Counter Punch tested NATO’s air defence capabilities.

Nuclear sharing

A diagram showing the deployment of US nuclear weapons in Europe

One of the more controversial aspects of NATO was its nuclear-sharing arrangements. Under this scheme, American nuclear weapons, bombers and missile systems were provided to non-nuclear NATO states. Access codes remained with the US military – but in the event of war with the Soviet bloc, these nuclear codes were to be provided to host states.

Nuclear sharing began in 1954 with the deployment of US nuclear weapons in Britain. Other European countries provided with nuclear weapons included West Germany, Italy, Greece, Belgium and Turkey. In contrast, the Warsaw Pact resisted any form of nuclear-sharing. Soviet nuclear weapons were certainly deployed in satellite states but their use was controlled entirely by Moscow.

A historian’s view:
“NATO began as a military alliance, but it was never just a military alliance of the traditional sort. As US secretary Dean Acheson said, ‘the North Atlantic Treaty is far more than a defensive arrangement. It is an affirmation of the moral and spiritual values we hold in common.’ Stanley Sloan affirms this: ‘What made NATO different from previous military alliances was that the Treaty’s preamble clearly articulated allied support for democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law.'”
Michael J. Williams

Other treaties and alliances

NATO and the Warsaw Pact existed alongside several other Cold War treaties and alliances.

In September 1951, the US, Australia and New Zealand signed the ANZUS treaty, a tripartite military alliance. The US-NZ arm of this alliance broke down in 1985, following disputes over American nuclear ships docking in New Zealand ports.

Washington signed a Mutual Defence Treaty with the Republic of China (Taiwan) in 1954. This provided Taiwan with American support in the event of an attack or invasion by communist China.

A September 1954 pact, signed in Manila, formed the South-East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO), an anti-communist alliance – in effect, an Asian-Pacific version of NATO.

A number of other smaller treaties and agreements were signed by individual nations. These treaties reflected both their domestic and regional interests as well as Cold War factors.

1. The Cold War world was shaped and divided by political and military alliances. The best known of these alliances were NATO and the Warsaw Pact, formed in Europe after World War II.

2. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation or NATO was formed in 1949, an expansion of the Treaty of Brussels. It was formed to counter the threat of Soviet expansion or aggression in Europe.

3. After unsuccessfully seeking to join NATO, the Soviet Union responded by forming its own military alliance. The eight-nation Warsaw Pact was signed in 1955.

4. The Warsaw Pact led to an increase in NATO planning and operations. NATO held a number of multilateral exercises and war games. The US also engaged in nuclear-sharing with member-states.

5. There were bilateral and multilateral Cold War treaties signed in other regions too, such as the ANZUS treaty between the US, Australia and New Zealand, and the formation of SEATO in the Asia-Pacific.

Cold War Era

The Suez Crisis began on October 29, 1956, when Israeli armed forces pushed into Egypt toward the Suez Canal after Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-70) nationalized the canal, a valuable waterway that controlled two-thirds of the oil used by Europe. The Israelis were soon joined by French and British forces, which nearly brought the Soviet Union into the conflict and damaged their relationships with the United States. In the end, Egypt emerged victorious, and the British, French and Israeli governments withdrew their troops in late 1956 and early 1957. The event was a pivotal event among Cold War superpowers.

Where Is the Suez Canal?

The Suez Canal was built in Eygpt under the supervision of French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps. The man-made waterway opened in 1869 after ten years of construction. At 120 miles long, it connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean by way of the Red Sea, allowing goods to be shipped from Europe to Asia and back more directly. Its value to international trade made it a nearly instant source of conflict among Egypt’s neighbors… and Cold War superpowers vying for dominance.

The catalyst for the joint Israeli-British-French attack on Egypt was the nationalization of the Suez Canal by Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser in July 1956. The situation had been brewing for some time. Two years earlier, in the wake of World War II, the Egyptian military had begun pressuring the British to end their military presence (which had been granted in the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty) in the canal zone. Nasser’s armed forces also engaged in sporadic battles with Israeli soldiers along the border between the two countries, and the Egyptian leader did nothing to conceal his antipathy toward the Zionist nation.

Did you know? The Suez canal was developed by Frenchman Ferdinand de Lesseps, who in the 1880s made an unsuccessful attempt to develop the Panama Canal.

Supported by Soviet arms and money, and furious with the United States for reneging on a promise to provide funds for construction of the Aswan Dam on the Nile River, Nasser ordered the Suez Canal seized and nationalized, arguing tolls from the ships passing through the canal would pay for the Dam. The British were angered by the move and sought the support of the French (who believed that Nasser was supporting rebels in the French colony of Algeria) and neighboring Israel in an armed assault to retake the canal.

Suez Crisis: 1956-57

The Israelis struck first on October 29, 1956. Two days later, British and French military forces joined them. Originally, forces from the three countries were set to strike at once, but the British and French troops were delayed.

Behind schedule but ultimately successful, the British and French troops landed at Port Said and Port Fuad and took control of the area around the Suez Canal. However, their hesitation had given the Soviet Union–also confronted with a growing crisis in Hungary–time to respond. The Soviets, eager to exploit Arab nationalism and gain a foothold in the Middle East, supplied arms from Czechoslovakia to the Egyptian government beginning in 1955, and eventually helped Egypt construct the Aswan Dam on the Nile River after the United States refused to support the project. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971) railed against the invasion and threatened to rain down nuclear missiles on Western Europe if the Israeli-French-British force did not withdraw.

The response of President Dwight Eisenhower’s administration was measured. It warned the Soviets that reckless talk of nuclear conflict would only make matters worse, and cautioned Khrushchev to refrain from direct intervention in the conflict. However, Eisenhower (1890-1969) also issued stern warnings to the French, British and Israelis to give up their campaign and withdraw from Egyptian soil. Eisenhower was upset with the British, in particular, for not keeping the United States informed about their intentions. The United States threatened all three nations with economic sanctions if they persisted in their attack. The threats did their work. The British and French forces withdrew by December; Israel finally bowed to U.S. pressure in March 1957, relinquishing control over the canal to Egypt.

Aftermath of The Suez Crisis

In the aftermath of the Suez Crisis, Britain and France found their influence as world powers weakened. The crisis made Nassar a powerful hero in the growing Arab and Egyptian nationalist movements. Israel, while it did not gain the right to utlizie the canal, was once again granted rights to ship goods along the Straits of Tiran.

Ten years later, Egypt shut down the canal following the Six-Day War (June 1967). For almost a decade, the Suez Canal became the front line between the Israeli and Egyptian armies.

In 1975 as a gesture of peace, Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat reopened the Suez Canal. Today, about 300 million tons of goods pass through the canal each year.

The Korean War and the Cold War

Even so, the North Korean invasion came as an alarming surprise to American officials. As far as they were concerned, this was not simply a border dispute between two unstable dictatorships on the other side of the globe. Instead, many feared it was the first step in a communist campaign to take over the world. For this reason, nonintervention was not considered an option by many top decision makers. (In fact, in April 1950, a National Security Council report known as NSC-68 had recommended that the United States use military force to “contain” communist expansionism anywhere it seemed to be occurring, “regardless of the intrinsic strategic or economic value of the lands in question.”)

“If we let Korea down,” President Harry Truman (1884-1972) said, “the Soviet[s] will keep right on going and swallow up one [place] after another.” The fight on the Korean peninsula was a symbol of the global struggle between east and west, good and evil. As the North Korean army pushed into Seoul, the South Korean capital, the United States readied its troops for a war against communism itself.

At first, the war was a defensive one–a war to get the communists out of South Korea–and it went badly for the Allies. The North Korean army was well-disciplined, well-trained and well-equipped; Rhee’s forces, by contrast, were frightened, confused, and seemed inclined to flee the battlefield at any provocation. Also, it was one of the hottest and driest summers on record, and desperately thirsty American soldiers were often forced to drink water from rice paddies that had been fertilized with human waste. As a result, dangerous intestinal diseases and other illnesses were a constant threat.

By the end of the summer, President Truman and General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964), the commander in charge of the Asian theater, had decided on a new set of war aims. Now, for the Allies, the Korean War was an offensive one: It was a war to “liberate” the North from the communists.

Initially, this new strategy was a success. An amphibious assault at Inchon pushed the North Koreans out of Seoul and back to their side of the 38th parallel. But as American troops crossed the boundary and headed north toward the Yalu River, the border between North Korea and Communist China, the Chinese started to worry about protecting themselves from what they called “armed aggression against Chinese territory.” Chinese leader Mao Zedong (1893-1976) sent troops to North Korea and warned the United States to keep away from the Yalu boundary unless it wanted full-scale war

“No Substitute for Victory”?

This was something that President Truman and his advisers decidedly did not want: They were sure that such a war would lead to Soviet aggression in Europe, the deployment of atomic weapons and millions of senseless deaths. To General MacArthur, however, anything short of this wider war represented “appeasement,” an unacceptable knuckling under to the communists.

As President Truman looked for a way to prevent war with the Chinese, MacArthur did all he could to provoke it. Finally, in March 1951, he sent a letter to Joseph Martin, a House Republican leader who shared MacArthur’s support for declaring all-out war on China–and who could be counted upon to leak the letter to the press. “There is,” MacArthur wrote, “no substitute for victory” against international communism.

For Truman, this letter was the last straw. On April 11, the president fired the general for insubordination.

The Korean War Reaches a Stalemate

In July 1951, President Truman and his new military commanders started peace talks at Panmunjom. Still, the fighting continued along the 38th parallel as negotiations stalled. Both sides were willing to accept a ceasefire that maintained the 38th parallel boundary, but they could not agree on whether prisoners of war should be forcibly “repatriated.” (The Chinese and the North Koreans said yes; the United States said no.) Finally, after more than two years of negotiations, the adversaries signed an armistice on July 27, 1953. The agreement allowed the POWs to stay where they liked; drew a new boundary near the 38th parallel that gave South Korea an extra 1,500 square miles of territory; and created a 2-mile-wide “demilitarized zone” that still exists today.

Casualties of the Korean War

The Korean War was relatively short but exceptionally bloody. Nearly 5 million people died. More than half of these–about 10 percent of Korea’s prewar population–were civilians. (This rate of civilian casualties was higher than World War II’s and Vietnam’s.) Almost 40,000 Americans died in action in Korea, and more than 100,000 were wounded.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a tense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores. In a TV address on October 22, 1962, President John Kennedy (1917-63) notified Americans about the presence of the missiles, explained his decision to enact a naval blockade around Cuba and made it clear the U.S. was prepared to use military force if necessary to neutralize this perceived threat to national security. Following this news, many people feared the world was on the brink of nuclear war. However, disaster was avoided when the U.S. agreed to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s (1894-1971) offer to remove the Cuban missiles in exchange for the U.S. promising not to invade Cuba. Kennedy also secretly agreed to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey.

Discovering the Missiles

After seizing power in the Caribbean island nation of Cuba in 1959, leftist revolutionary leader Fidel Castro (1926-2016) aligned himself with the Soviet Union. Under Castro, Cuba grew dependent on the Soviets for military and economic aid. During this time, the U.S. and the Soviets (and their respective allies) were engaged in the Cold War (1945-91), an ongoing series of largely political and economic clashes.

Did you know? The actor Kevin Costner (1955-) starred in a movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis titled "Thirteen Days." Released in 2000, the movie's tagline was "You'll never believe how close we came."

The two superpowers plunged into one of their biggest Cold War confrontations after the pilot of an American U-2 spy plane making a high-altitude pass over Cuba on October 14, 1962, photographed a Soviet SS-4 medium-range ballistic missile being assembled for installation.

President Kennedy was briefed about the situation on October 16, and he immediately called together a group of advisors and officials known as the executive committee, or ExCom. For nearly the next two weeks, the president and his team wrestled with a diplomatic crisis of epic proportions, as did their counterparts in the Soviet Union.

A New Threat to the U.S.

For the American officials, the urgency of the situation stemmed from the fact that the nuclear-armed Cuban missiles were being installed so close to the U.S. mainland–just 90 miles south of Florida. From that launch point, they were capable of quickly reaching targets in the eastern U.S. If allowed to become operational, the missiles would fundamentally alter the complexion of the nuclear rivalry between the U.S. and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), which up to that point had been dominated by the Americans.

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had gambled on sending the missiles to Cuba with the specific goal of increasing his nation’s nuclear strike capability. The Soviets had long felt uneasy about the number of nuclear weapons that were targeted at them from sites in Western Europe and Turkey, and they saw the deployment of missiles in Cuba as a way to level the playing field. Another key factor in the Soviet missile scheme was the hostile relationship between the U.S. and Cuba. The Kennedy administration had already launched one attack on the island–the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961–and Castro and Khrushchev saw the missiles as a means of deterring further U.S. aggression.

Weighing the Options

From the outset of the crisis, Kennedy and ExCom determined that the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba was unacceptable. The challenge facing them was to orchestrate their removal without initiating a wider conflict–and possibly a nuclear war. In deliberations that stretched on for nearly a week, they came up with a variety of options, including a bombing attack on the missile sites and a full-scale invasion of Cuba. But Kennedy ultimately decided on a more measured approach. First, he would employ the U.S. Navy to establish a blockade, or quarantine, of the island to prevent the Soviets from delivering additional missiles and military equipment. Second, he would deliver an ultimatum that the existing missiles be removed.

In a television broadcast on October 22, 1962, the president notified Americans about the presence of the missiles, explained his decision to enact the blockade and made it clear that the U.S. was prepared to use military force if necessary to neutralize this perceived threat to national security. Following this public declaration, people around the globe nervously waited for the Soviet response. Some Americans, fearing their country was on the brink of nuclear war, hoarded food and gas.

Showdown at Sea

A crucial moment in the unfolding crisis arrived on October 24, when Soviet ships bound for Cuba neared the line of U.S. vessels enforcing the blockade. An attempt by the Soviets to breach the blockade would likely have sparked a military confrontation that could have quickly escalated to a nuclear exchange. But the Soviet ships stopped short of the blockade.

Although the events at sea offered a positive sign that war could be averted, they did nothing to address the problem of the missiles already in Cuba. The tense standoff between the superpowers continued through the week, and on October 27, an American reconnaissance plane was shot down over Cuba, and a U.S. invasion force was readied in Florida. (The 35-year-old pilot of the downed plane, Major Rudolf Anderson, is considered the sole U.S. combat casualty of the Cuban missile crisis.) “I thought it was the last Saturday I would ever see,” recalled U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (1916-2009), as quoted by Martin Walker in “The Cold War.” A similar sense of doom was felt by other key players on both sides.

A Deal Ends the Standoff

Despite the enormous tension, Soviet and American leaders found a way out of the impasse. During the crisis, the Americans and Soviets had exchanged letters and other communications, and on October 26, Khrushchev sent a message to Kennedy in which he offered to remove the Cuban missiles in exchange for a promise by U.S. leaders not to invade Cuba. The following day, the Soviet leader sent a letter proposing that the USSR would dismantle its missiles in Cuba if the Americans removed their missile installations in Turkey.

Officially, the Kennedy administration decided to accept the terms of the first message and ignore the second Khrushchev letter entirely. Privately, however, American officials also agreed to withdraw their nation’s missiles from Turkey. U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy (1925-68) personally delivered the message to the Soviet ambassador in Washington, and on October 28, the crisis drew to a close.

Both the Americans and Soviets were sobered by the Cuban Missile Crisis. The following year, a direct “hot line” communication link was installed between Washington and Moscow to help defuse similar situations, and the superpowers signed two treaties related to nuclear weapons. The Cold War was far from over, though. In fact, another legacy of the crisis was that it convinced the Soviets to increase their investment in an arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the U.S. from Soviet territory.

The Vietnam War was a long, costly and divisive conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The conflict was intensified by the ongoing Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. More than 3 million people (including over 58,000 Americans) were killed in the Vietnam War, and more than half of the dead were Vietnamese civilians. Opposition to the war in the United States bitterly divided Americans, even after President Richard Nixon ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1973. Communist forces ended the war by seizing control of South Vietnam in 1975, and the country was unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam the following year.

Roots of the Vietnam War

Vietnam, a nation in Southeast Asia on the eastern edge of the Indochinese peninsula, had been under French colonial rule since the 19th century.

During World War II, Japanese forces invaded Vietnam. To fight off both Japanese occupiers and the French colonial administration, political leader Ho Chi Minh—inspired by Chinese and Soviet communism—formed the Viet Minh, or the League for the Independence of Vietnam.

Following its 1945 defeat in World War II, Japan withdrew its forces from Vietnam, leaving the French-educated Emperor Bao Dai in control. Seeing an opportunity to seize control, Ho’s 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.

Seeking to regain control of the region, France backed Emperor Bao and set up the state of Vietnam in July 1949, with the city of Saigon as its capital.

Both sides wanted the same thing: a unified Vietnam. But while Ho and his supporters wanted a nation modeled after other communist countries, Bao and many others wanted a Vietnam with close economic and cultural ties to the West.

Did you know? 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.

When Did the Vietnam War Start?

The Vietnam War and active U.S. involvement in the war began in 1954, though ongoing conflict in the region had stretched back several decades.

After Ho’s communist forces took power in the north, armed conflict between northern and southern armies continued until a decisive the northern Viet Minh’s decisive victory in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in May 1954. The French loss at the battle ended almost a century of French colonial rule in Indochina.

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. The treaty also called for nationwide elections for reunification to be held in 1956.

In 1955, however, the strongly anti-communist politician Ngo Dinh Diem pushed Emperor Bao aside to become president of the Government of the Republic of Vietnam (GVN), often referred to during that era as South Vietnam.

The Viet Cong

With the Cold War intensifying worldwide, the United States hardened its policies against any allies of the Soviet Union, and by 1955 President Dwight D. Eisenhower had pledged his firm support to Diem and South Vietnam.

With training and equipment from American military and the CIA, Diem’s security forces cracked down on Viet Minh sympathizers in the south, whom he derisively called Viet Cong (or Vietnamese Communist), arresting some 100,000 people, many of whom were brutally tortured and executed.

By 1957, the Viet Cong and other opponents of Diem’s repressive regime began fighting back with attacks on government officials and other targets, and by 1959 they had begun engaging the South Vietnamese army in firefights.

In December 1960, Diem’s many opponents within South Vietnam—both communist and non-communist—formed the National Liberation Front (NLF) to organize resistance to the regime. Though the NLF claimed to be autonomous and that most of its members were not communists, many in Washington assumed it was a puppet of Hanoi.

Domino Theory

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.

Working under the “domino theory,” which held that if one Southeast Asian country fell to communism, many other countries would follow, Kennedy increased U.S. aid, though he stopped short of committing to a large-scale military intervention.

By 1962, the U.S. military presence in South Vietnam had reached some 9,000 troops, compared with fewer than 800 during the 1950s.

Gulf of Tonkin

A coup by some of his own generals succeeded in toppling and killing Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, in November 1963, three weeks before Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

The ensuing political instability in South Vietnam persuaded Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to further increase U.S. military and economic support.

In August of 1964, after DRV torpedo boats attacked two U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, Johnson ordered the retaliatory bombing of military targets in North Vietnam. Congress soon passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave Johnson broad war-making powers, and U.S. planes began regular bombing raids, codenamed Operation Rolling Thunder, the following year.

The bombing was not limited to Vietnam; from 1964-1973, the United States covertly dropped two million tons of bombs on neighboring, neutral Laos during the CIA-led “Secret War” in Laos. The bombing campaign was meant to disrupt the flow of supplies across the Ho Chi Minh trail into Vietnam and to prevent the rise of the Pathet Lao, or Lao communist forces. The U.S. bombings made Laos the most heavily bombed country per capita in the world.

In March 1965, Johnson made the decision—with solid support from the American public—to send U.S. combat forces into battle in Vietnam. 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.

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. In addition to the United States, South Korea, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand also committed troops to fight in South Vietnam (albeit on a much smaller scale).

In contrast to the air attacks on North Vietnam, the U.S.-South Vietnamese war effort in the south was fought primarily on the ground, largely under the command of General William Westmoreland, in coordination with the government of General Nguyen Van Thieu in Saigon.

Westmoreland pursued a policy of attrition, aiming to kill as many enemy troops as possible rather than trying to secure territory. By 1966, large areas of South Vietnam had been designated as “free-fire zones,” from which all innocent civilians were supposed to have evacuated and only enemy remained. Heavy bombing by B-52 aircraft or shelling made these zones uninhabitable, as refugees poured into camps in designated safe areas near Saigon and other cities.

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. Additionally, supported by aid from China and the Soviet Union, North Vietnam strengthened its air defenses.

Vietnam War Protests

By November 1967, the number of American troops in Vietnam was approaching 500,000, and U.S. casualties had reached 15,058 killed and 109,527 wounded. As the war stretched on, some soldiers came to mistrust the government’s reasons for keeping them there, as well as Washington’s repeated claims that the war was being won.

The later years of the war saw increased physical and psychological deterioration among American soldiers—both volunteers and draftees—including drug use, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), mutinies and attacks by soldiers against officers and noncommissioned officers.

READ MORE: Why Were Vietnam War Vets Treated Poorly When They Returned Home

Between July 1966 and December 1973, more than 503,000 U.S. military personnel deserted, and a robust anti-war movement among American forces spawned violent protests, killings and mass incarcerations of personnel stationed in Vietnam as well as within the United States.

Bombarded by horrific images of the war on their televisions, Americans on the home front turned against the war as well: In October 1967, some 35,000 demonstrators staged a massive Vietnam War protest outside the Pentagon. Opponents of the war argued that civilians, not enemy combatants, were the primary victims and that the United States was supporting a corrupt dictatorship in Saigon.

Tet Offensive

By the end of 1967, Hanoi’s communist leadership was growing impatient as well, and sought to strike a decisive blow aimed at forcing the better-supplied United States to give up hopes of success.

On January 31, 1968, some 70,000 DRV forces under General Vo Nguyen Giap launched the Tet Offensive (named for the lunar new year), a coordinated series of fierce attacks on more than 100 cities and towns in South Vietnam.

Taken by surprise, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces nonetheless managed to strike back quickly, and the communists were unable to hold any of the targets for more than a day or two.

Reports of the Tet Offensive stunned the U.S. public, however, especially after news broke that Westmoreland had requested an additional 200,000 troops, despite repeated assurances that victory in the Vietnam War was imminent. With his approval ratings dropping in an election year, Johnson called a halt to bombing in much of North Vietnam (though bombings continued in the south) and promised to dedicate the rest of his term to seeking peace rather than reelection.

Johnson’s new tack, laid out in a March 1968 speech, met with a positive response from Hanoi, and peace talks between the U.S. and North Vietnam opened in Paris that May. Despite the later inclusion of the South Vietnamese and the NLF, the dialogue soon reached an impasse, and after a bitter 1968 election season marred by violence, Republican Richard M. Nixon won the presidency.

Vietnamization

Nixon sought to deflate the anti-war movement by appealing to a “silent majority” of Americans who he believed supported the war effort. In an attempt to limit the volume of American casualties, he announced a program called Vietnamization: withdrawing U.S. troops, increasing aerial and artillery bombardment and giving the South Vietnamese the training and weapons needed to effectively control the ground war.

In addition to this Vietnamization policy, Nixon continued public peace talks in Paris, adding higher-level secret talks conducted by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger beginning in the spring of 1968.

The North Vietnamese continued to insist on complete and unconditional U.S. withdrawal—plus the ouster of U.S.-backed General Nguyen Van Thieu—as conditions of peace, however, and as a result the peace talks stalled.

My Lai Massacre

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.

After the My Lai Masscre, anti-war protests continued to build as the conflict wore on. In 1968 and 1969, there were hundreds of protest marches and gatherings throughout the country.

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.

The anti-war movement, which was particularly strong on college campuses, divided Americans bitterly. For some young people, the war symbolized a form of unchecked authority they had come to resent. For other Americans, opposing the government was considered unpatriotic and treasonous.

As the first U.S. troops were withdrawn, those who remained became increasingly angry and frustrated, exacerbating problems with morale and leadership. Tens of thousands of soldiers received dishonorable discharges for desertion, and about 500,000 American men from 1965-73 became “draft dodgers,” with many fleeing to Canada to evade conscription. Nixon ended draft calls in 1972, and instituted an all-volunteer army the following year.

Kent State Shooting

In 1970, a joint U.S-South Vietnamese operation invaded Cambodia, hoping to wipe out DRV supply bases there. The South Vietnamese then led their own invasion of Laos, which was pushed back by North Vietnam.

The invasion of these countries, in violation of international law, sparked a new wave of protests on college campuses across America. During one, on May 4, 1970, at Kent State University in Ohio, National Guardsmen shot and killed four students. At another protest 10 days later, two students at Jackson State University in Mississippi were killed by police.

By the end of June 1972, however, after a failed offensive into South Vietnam, Hanoi was finally willing to compromise. 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. Known as the Christmas Bombings, the raids drew international condemnation.

When Did the Vietnam War End?

In January 1973, the United States and North Vietnam concluded a final peace agreement, ending open hostilities between the two nations. War between North and South Vietnam continued, however, until April 30, 1975, when DRV forces captured Saigon, renaming it Ho Chi Minh City (Ho himself died in 1969).

More than two decades of violent conflict had inflicted a devastating toll on Vietnam’s population: After years of warfare, an estimated 2 million Vietnamese were killed, while 3 million were wounded and another 12 million became refugees. Warfare had demolished the country’s infrastructure and economy, and reconstruction proceeded slowly.

In 1976, Vietnam was unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, though sporadic violence continued over the next 15 years, including conflicts with neighboring China and Cambodia. 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. Trade and diplomatic relations between Vietnam and the U.S. resumed in the 1990s.

In the United States, the effects of the Vietnam War would linger long after the last troops returned home in 1973. The nation spent more than $120 billion on the conflict in Vietnam from 1965-73; this massive spending led to widespread inflation, exacerbated by a worldwide oil crisis in 1973 and skyrocketing fuel prices.

Psychologically, the effects ran even deeper. The war had pierced the myth of American invincibility and had bitterly divided the nation. Many returning veterans faced negative reactions from both opponents of the war (who viewed them as having killed innocent civilians) and its supporters (who saw them as having lost the war), along with physical damage including the effects of exposure to the toxic herbicide Agent Orange, millions of gallons of which had been dumped by U.S. planes on the dense forests of Vietnam.

In 1982, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was unveiled in Washington, D.C. On it were inscribed the names of 57,939 American men and women killed or missing in the war; later additions brought that total to 58,200.