hi I'm Griffin Johnson the armchair
historian for 12 long years the people
of Vietnam waged a grueling Civil War to
determine the fate of their Nation a
conflict that the United States chose to
intervene in the images of Huey's flying
over the jungle and Creedence Clearwater
Revival in the air are seared into
Memories the world over along with the
heartbreaking images of the suffering of
the Vietnamese people but what happened
when the Echoes of the Choppers were
gone what happened when the Napalm
stopped dropping and what happened when
Vietnam was finally and bloodly
reunified in this video we will examine
the aftermath of the Vietnam War
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Vietnam was left with deep scars after
over a decade of Civil War Scar's
physical political and in many cases
personal between one and three million
people died in the Vietnam War and the
preceding Indochina War waged by the
French
the majority of which were young men
leading to a tectonic shift in the
gender makeup of the Vietnamese
population Census Data indicates a
marriage squeeze or imbalance between
single men and women as late as 1989
possibly fueled by a combination of War
mortality and migration
regardless of its gender makeup it was
the same Vietnamese population that was
victimized by both sides of the war the
war crimes of Vietnam demand their own
video but includes the most horrendous
acts against countless civilians as well
as the theft of these same civilians
property and destruction of their homes
much of this destruction and brutality
came not at the hands of crazed soldiers
but simple chemistry in desperation to
deprive the North Vietnamese of the
Jungle that covered and concealed them
the United States began using a variety
of defoliants that destroyed swaths of
Vietnam's native plants though exact
figures are a subject of fierce debate
it is estimated that roughly 10 percent
of Vietnam was defoliated by agent
orange and other chemicals
what is not debatable is the horrors
this chemical warfare wrought on
Vietnam's ecosystem and people birth
defects in humans and animals alike
poisons in the food chain and disease
directly linked to defoliant
contamination continued to be found up
to the time of writing
civilian mistreatment did not end with
the Vietnam War as many South Vietnamese
citizens were sent to re-education camps
by the Victorious Northerners there they
were forced to perform hard labor while
in the grips of starvation and disease
750 000 to 1 million Southern Vietnamese
were simply shipped off to the
Wilderness their homes and land
confiscated and parceled out to Loyal
communists
but some Vietnamese managed to escape
the horrors of peace with 8040 women
immigrating to the United States as War
Brides between 1964 and 1975. a further
26 000 children born to American
servicemen and Vietnamese women were
allowed to immigrate to their father's
Homeland but this was a fraction of the
number born many were simply abandoned
when it was time to head home Colombian
author and winner of the Nobel Prize for
literature Gabriel Garcia Marquez did
his own Grim arithmetic 360
000 people mutilated a million widows
five hundred thousand prostitutes five
hundred thousand drug addicts and a
million tuberculosis cases and more than
a million soldiers of the old regime
impossible to rehabilitate into a new
Society
the Communist takeover of Vietnam did
not lead to a cordial Block of South
Asian Communist States however three
years after reunification of their
country Vietnam invaded Cambodia and
ousted the Khmer Rouge the murderous
dictatorship led by Pol Pot that killed
an estimated quarter of its own people
with a campaign of torture and
starvation the Vietnamese and cambodians
had long been rivals in the region and
while Vietnamese and Cambodian troops
had worked in concert during the
American intervention the Khmer Rouge
had long feared a United communist
Vietnam would attempt to seize control
over the entire indo-chinese region
as the Vietnam War ended Cambodia
conducted cross-border raids prompting
Hanoi to launch an invasion in a bitter
irony Vietnamese troops would find
themselves in a quagmire of their own in
Cambodia Carlisle Thayer of the
Australian Defense Force Academy in
Canberra noted the Vietnamese military
had been trained and experienced in
overthrowing and occupying power and all
of a sudden the shoe was on the other
foot they had to invade Cambodia and
occupy it and succeed in setting up a
government then engineer a withdrawal
despite saving the country from the
murderous Khmer Rouge the Vietnamese
soon found themselves the targets of
Cambodian frustration while still
suffering from their own mental wounds
a veteran of the Cambodian Invasion drew
a grim parallel American soldiers
thought they helped Vietnam then their
illusion was broken we were the same in
Cambodia
but worse than being treated as an
occupier by the cambodians was the
reaction of the Region's most powerful
player the People's Republic of China
Pol Pot was an avid maoist and China had
propped up his regime until the
Vietnamese Invasion Chinese troops
invaded Vietnam in response to their
toppling of the Khmer Rouge leading to a
series of Border clashes that saw 450
000 Vietnamese citizens of Chinese
descent driven from their homes by their
ethnic Vietnamese neighbors but perhaps
the most fascinating if not ironic
impact of the war was economic the
economy of Vietnam was naturally left in
utter ruin by the war with some
stability achieved by the 1980s the
Vietnamese government undertook a
sweeping campaign of economic reform in
1986.
dubbed DOI Moy it saw efforts to shift
from their comic-con-dependent economy
to a more socialist-oriented market
economy eliminating communist Mainstays
of price control and state monopolies
fifteen percent of government jobs were
cut and all centralization and
collectivization of Industries and
markets was undone the results have been
staggering in 1990 58 of Vietnamese
people lived in poverty by 2006 that
number had dropped to 16 percent
urbanization has well and truly taken
root and Vietnam has gone from a nation
requiring International Aid just to make
it through the day to a burgeoning
market inviting International Investment
foreign
Johnson escalated American involvement
in the conflict he also sought to Gin up
military support and build a coalition
of Nations to keep Vietnam from turning
red
his efforts bore some fruit as Australia
South Korea Thailand and New Zealand
would deploy troops to the aid of the
American effort in public leaders and
presidents from Canada to Japan gave
moral support to America's intervention
while privately being skeptical of the
Domino Theory guiding American foreign
policy
European heads of state in particular
viewed Vietnam as a nationalist cause
rather than some existential battle
between communism and the rest of the
world Charles de Gaulle president of
France often and loudly ridiculed
American involvement in Vietnam as a
foolish Endeavor one that it should be
noted his country had already tried
after the indo-china war French military
planners had compiled a three-volume
after action report in 1955. this was
valuable intelligence real narratives
about the fight America was heading into
paid for in blood so naturally American
military leaders ignored the French
reports out of hand the Pentagon was
sure of American Military superiority
over the French Empire besides this
wasn't a war to hold on to some
far-flung Asian Colony this was a fight
for freedom and democracy and to keep
those supposed dominoes from falling
America's doggedness would prove
divisive and the knock-on effects of
going into Vietnam would cast a shadow
over America's International
relationships
de Gaulle continued to give voice
publicly to what other leaders thought
privately until his time as president
came to a close and even afterward
France would Place itself front and
center in the narrative around the war
Paris would serve as the site of the
peace talks between the U.S and North
Vietnam and France advocated often and
loudly in the halls of NATO for
restraint and neutrality as France spoke
its mind other European nations would
find themselves having to give some
opinion on Vietnam despite not actively
participating in the conflict the United
Kingdom a staunch American Ally was
rather busy with Rising tensions between
India and Pakistan the Malaysian
Insurgency and Chinese threats to Hong
Kong when Vietnam escalated leading to
the UK sidelining itself in Italy the
government made a board of attempts to
facilitate peace talks as the war
inflamed tensions between Myriad
political parties neo-fascists
monarchists and other conservatives were
outraged at the efforts by the Christian
democrats to mend fences with Italian
socialists and this raging debate only
intensified as the war dragged on Rome
feared angering the U.S and between this
anxiety and the mounting political
Discord any attempt at peacemaking was
abandoned in the Netherlands Firebrand
anti-communist and americophile Yosef
loans advocated for military action in
Vietnam first as Dutch foreign secretary
and later as NATO Secretary General
the neutral Nation most antagonistic to
the U.S during Vietnam was arguably
Sweden which publicly invited Americans
fleeing conscription to settle there
relations between the U.S and Sweden
utterly broke down in 1968 when then
education Minister Olaf Palma
participated in an anti-war protest
alongside the North Vietnamese
ambassador to the USSR leading to the
U.S recalling its own ambassador to
Sweden until 1970 in 1972 now prime
minister Palma made a radio address
following the American bombings of Hanoi
likening American actions to the worst
atrocities committed by the Third Reich
and leading to a second breakdown in
diplomacy
Sweden's opposition to the war including
sending medical supplies and doctors to
train and treat North Vietnamese
Personnel was framed as a protest of the
United States ignoring the will of the
Vietnamese people
[Applause]
the U.S remained active in world affairs
after Vietnam with VIP visits to
European allies made to show continued
faith in America's foreign ties but as
the U.S licked its wounds and learned
its lessons an idea began to form that
would be cited in future crises and
interventions Vietnam syndrome allegedly
coined by Nixon Vietnam syndrome is the
idea that the defeat in Vietnam so
wounded the American psyche that it
induced a sense of pacifism that
reverberates into the present day a
wound that was self-inflicted Alexander
Hague Secretary of State to Ronald
Reagan opined that America could have
won Vietnam if it had only applied to
the full range of American power to
bring about a successful outcome with
Reagan himself stating that the American
Military was denied permission to win
the Democratic party to whom President
Kennedy and Johnson belonged was written
by the Vietnam war with both Pro and
anti-war sentiment motivating people to
disassociate those against the war left
on principle while other Democrats who
supported Vietnam left in frustration at
the perceived domination of the Party by
anti-war elements both camps would
either register with the Rival
Republican party or become independent
voters one of the most unpopular aspects
of America's involvement was the draft
America's version of conscription for
most of America's history outside the
world wars there were sufficient
volunteers that the draft was not a
serious consideration but as the
popularity of Vietnam and volunteer
numbers both plummeted draft calls Rose
the failure of Vietnam's soured
Americans on the draft and President
Nixon allowed the law authorizing
conscription to expire in 1973. the
United States has had an all-volunteer
Force since and Americans continue to
resent the idea of conscription although
American men are legally required to
register for the draft reintroducing it
remains an unpopular idea with the most
recent push in the early days of the war
on terror failing despite the
emotionally charged atmosphere of the
time but the impacts of Vietnam were
economic as much as they were political
President Johnson refused to Levy new
taxes to pay for the war sparking a
cycle of inflation that damaged the
American economy demand for resources
increased as military spending rose with
1965 seeing the use of manufacturing
infrastructure reach a level unseen
since the second world war these demands
coincided with Johnson's war on poverty
initiatives and a tax cut intended to
incentivize economic activity both
factors that accelerated inflation in
the American economy all told the
Vietnam War cost the United States
roughly 977 billion in 2022 saddling the
nation with interest payments and debt
servicing for decades to come
the United States unequivocally failed
to prevent communism from taking over
Vietnam but in the post-cold war world
spurts of capitalist investment have
seen the country shift into a mixed
economy Vietnam and the United States
normalized diplomatic relations in 1995.
and the former opponents are now much
closer the People's Republic of China
continues to apply pressure to Vietnam
as part of its attempts to expand its
influence despite a mixed reputation
throughout the rest of Southeast Asia
today Vietnam finds itself needing to
balance its relationships with China and
the United States as it wishes to pursue
cooperation with both Powers the Vietnam
of today is a nation of mixtures the
scars of the past mixed with hope for
the future and the ideas of Communism
mixed with these systems of capitalism
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