Essay 3 North Vietnam And South Vietnam

Submitted By sweetdiamondsky
Words: 511
Pages: 3

Vietnam Solutions to problems can often create new problems. A solution to several historical problems is the division of Vietnam into North and South Vietnam in 1954. One historical problem the solution was attempting to correct was the French who controlled it as a colony. In 1954 a conference took place at Geneva, Switzerland, to resolve the conflicts in Indochina. The United States took part in the conference as an “observer” not a full participant. French, Vietnamese, and other diplomats agreed to divide Vietnam at the 17th parallel of latitude into a communist north and a noncommunist south. They further agreed that, within two years, elections would be held to unite the two halves of Vietnam under a single government. The nationwide elections, however, never took place. Instead, a civil war broke out in the south between force support Ho Chi Minh and forces backing South Vietnamese government led by Ngo Dinh Diem. Ho Chi Minh established a communist dictatorship, increased the army’s manpower, eliminated most private enterprise, and received considerable Russian and Chinese aid. The communists seek to gain control of South Vietnam. In 1955 President Ngo Dinh Diem made his country full independent of France. To combat the communists, Diem attempted to provide land for the peasants and to improve his army’s fighting ability. He rejected plans for all-Vietnam elections. Diem argued that honest elections were impossible in the communist north. During the Vietnam conflict of the 1960’s the legislative and executive branches clashed over their respective war-making powers. Critics charged the president’s handling of the fighting in Vietnam was illegal because congress had not passed a declaration of war. Johnson engaged the Vietnamese in secret negotiations in the spring of 1968 in Parisand soon it was made public that Americans and Vietnamese were meeting to discuss an end to the long and costly war. Despite the progress in Paris, the Democratic Party could not rescue the presidency from Republican challenger Richard Nixon who claimed he