IB History Political Impact Including US Troop Withdrawal and Vietnam's Reunification Notes

Political Impact: US Withdrawal and Vietnam's Reunification

Vietnamization and declining US commitment

1. Under Vietnamization, President Nixon expanded South Vietnamese responsibility for combat after 1969, increasing US training and equipment for the South Vietnamese armed forces even as American troop numbers steadily fell.
2. Domestic pressure intensified alongside this shift. The draft, mounting casualties and televised combat footage deepened opposition within the USA, and the leak of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 further eroded public trust in official government explanations of the war, narrowing the political room available for continued US intervention.

Paris negotiations and the Peace Accords

1. Formal peace talks opened in Paris in 1968 and continued for years amid ongoing fighting. Disputes over the legitimacy of the South Vietnamese government and the status of North Vietnamese troops already stationed in the south repeatedly delayed agreement.
2. Between 1970 and 1971, Nixon expanded US operations into Cambodia and Laos to disrupt communist supply routes and protect the withdrawal, but this widened regional instability and provoked fierce domestic controversy, including protests at Kent State.
3. The Paris Peace Accords (January 1973) ended direct US military participation, but allowed North Vietnamese forces already present in the south to remain in place. The settlement ended US involvement without resolving the underlying Vietnamese civil war.

Collapse and reunification, 1972-1976

1. The Easter Offensive (March 1972), North Vietnam's major conventional offensive, was met with heavy US air and naval attacks that helped South Vietnamese forces avoid immediate collapse, but the episode revealed how far Saigon still depended on American support.
2. After the Peace Accords, Congress restricted further US military action and reduced financial and material assistance to Saigon, leaving South Vietnamese forces short of fuel, ammunition and equipment maintenance by 1974.
3. North Vietnam tested southern resistance in 1974 and accelerated its final offensive in early 1975. The collapse of Ban Me Thuot triggered a disorderly southern retreat, and the speed of South Vietnam's military disintegration surprised both Vietnamese and foreign observers.
4. Communist forces entered Saigon on 30 April 1975, prompting an emergency evacuation of remaining Americans and selected Vietnamese allies. The fall of Saigon symbolised the failure of prolonged US intervention to secure a non-communist South Vietnam.
5. Vietnam was formally reunified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam on 2 July 1976, as the new government extended northern political institutions across the south. Victory ended decades of partition, but it introduced coercive integration measures, including re-education camps, and new waves of displacement.