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. Furthermore, domestic unrest and the financial cost of war made peaceand troop withdrawalsa necessity, not a choice. These latter estimates update a series of earlier CRS analyses, one of which noted that, "Other observers and analysts define war costs more broadly than congressional appropriations and include estimates of the life-time costs of caring for OEF/OIF/OND veterans, imputed interest costs on the deficit, or increases in DODs base budget deemed to be a consequence of support for the warSuch costs are difficult to compute, subject to extensive caveats, and often based on methodologies that may not be appropriate". Anne's diary helped the world understand what it was like living in hiding during The communists, headed by Ho Chi Minh, would govern the northern half, with its capital at Hanoi, while South Vietnam, with its capital at Saigon, would remain non-communist. Germany, and the U.K. Meaning of human cost. In peace negotiations at Geneva, the decision was reached to divide Vietnam into northern and southern halves. Question 1: "did it seem like an utter waste of time and resources?" Washington, DC 20036. An even greater number were maimed, disfigured, orphaned, displaced or forced to flee as refugees. "John F. Kennedy expanded US support for the South Vietnamese government, including an increase in US military advisers, the doubling of military assistance, and authorization of the use of napalm, herbicides, and defoliants". Between two million and three million people are believed to have fled these countries in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Yet, the Administration and the Congress have tended to treat warfighting as a temporary aberrationas something to be delt with by supplementals or creating short-term budget categories like the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account that seem to reflect the cost of wars, but have become something of a slush fund and a mechanism for selectively avoiding the caps on defense spending set by the BCA. (At least 100 names on the memorial are those of servicemen who were actually Canadian citizens.) Estimates of the number of people killed in Indochina range from two and a half million to more than four million. On June 25, 1950, Kim launched a surprise invasion of South Korea. It affected 700,000 American veterans. Why is it important to tell our stories? American planes dropped seven million tons of ordnance three times the amount they had dropped in World War II as well as napalm and chemical defoliants. This caused a refugee crisis and thousands of deaths at sea, forcing Western nations to accept large numbers of refugees. In September 1945, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the birth of an independent Vietnam. 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. Further, without such an estimate, there is no credible basis for either Executive Branch or Congressional review of the budgets and plans for such wars, much less of the ability to effectively execute given strategies, and provide credible indicators of the cost effectiveness and progress of key elements of military and civil activity. A third estimate, by Neta Crawford, puts costs at more than $4.8 trillion through FY2017, plus more than $7.9 trillion in cumulative interest on past appropriations, or more than $12.7 trillion. South Vietnam was a viable nation-state by 1972, afflicted by internal armed opposition but not overwhelmed by it. Other allies later joined the war. The Congress, however, can be criticized for failing to insist on adequate reporting of wartime budgets and examining their costs in detail. Here, simply seeing OCO spending data is essentially useless. Believing that the Soviet Union had backed the invasion, United States President Harry Truman and his advisers followed . The program budgeting and integrated force planning efforts pioneered towards the end of the Eisenhower Administrationand put into practice in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrationshave decayed into hollow shells. By 1962, the U.S. military presence in South Vietnam had reached some 9,000 troops, compared with fewer than 800 during the 1950s. He received his B.A. Feeding, supplying and paying the armies and navies was, by far, the largest expenditure of the war. Accordingly, the charts in this section summarize CRS reporting on total DoD/State/USAID OCO costs to date. Total estimates of the cost through FY2018 have been made earlier. 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. The physical devastation of the war, coupled with the socialist policies imposed by new regimes, caused years of famine and suffering in south-east Asia. The charts and tables in this section summarize the actual and projected cost of U.S. wars as reported for the OCO accountdrawing heavily largely on earlier work by the Congressional Research Service. One by Lina J. Blimes puts the total cost at $4 to $6 trillion by end FY2016. Given the estimates that the real costs are already well over $4 trillion, these multipliers would be more than doubled if any of the alternative war costs cited earlier are correct. It was fought from early November 1955 to the end of April 1975. Total personnel are another key measure of the cost of war, particularly when high-cost all-volunteer forces are involved, and casualties are a key political consideration. He was in Vietnam when he was 20 years old. The origins of American involvement in Vietnam date back to the end of the Second World War, when the Vietnamese were struggling against the continued French colonial presence in their country. Global confidence in America as the arsenal of democracy also suffered. During the course of the conflict . Check all of the boxes that apply. These types of metrics provide a tangible picture of what U.S. OCO spending actually buys. For more information on usage, please refer to our Terms of Use. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! For other Americans, opposing the government was considered unpatriotic and treasonous. Reporting by the Executive Branch seems almost designed to obscure the real costs of conflict, and avoid linking them to an examination of strategy, its effectiveness, and the prospects for conflict termination. Official data only exist on federal homeland defense efforts, not state and local ones. 1) The deaths of over a million communist soldiers 2) Post-traumatic stress disorder in veterans Which legislation limited the influence of the president? The U.S. Constitution grants Congress sole authority to issue declarations of war. DoD did so although they were Baseline efforts and should not technically have been counted as war costs because Congress gave it the option of making such a request. Many Americans simply chose not to speak of the Vietnam conflict, described by diplomat George Kennan as the most disastrous undertaking in 200 years of US history. Someone please:(. Direct link to Jeff Kelman's post How come there was a "Vie, Posted 7 years ago. Public trust in the United States government was shattered by the Vietnam War and Watergate. They show the cost by war, by service, and by broad cost category for the entire OCO account. The Korean peninsula off the east cost of Asia has had a long history of foreign invaders. The government most likely knew about these dangers. Vietnam veterans in the US, Australia and other countries have suffered from increased rates of cancers and birth defects in their offspring. It also led to political reluctance to deploy the needed numbers of personnel except on a "creeping incremental" basis and after serious problems emerged in host country capabilitiesextending the length as well as the cost of the war. These issues are discussed in more detail later in this study. Other people may have felt differently. Greeks. The Allies promised Vietnam freedom from French enslavement if they would help fight the Japanese. There are, however, several problems with current projections of FY2018 and beyond. This section compares current total U.S. baseline and war spending with the spending of other states. Those who argue that the United States won the war point to the fact that the U.S. defeated communist forces during most of Vietnams major battles. Direct link to Zob Rombie's post The main reason the war e, Posted 4 years ago. More than 1.3 million Vietnamese soldiers and about 58,000 U.S. troops were killed. How did the fear of the Soviet Union and Communism affect American culture and society? Additionally, supported by aid from China and the Soviet Union, North Vietnam strengthened its air defenses. The Paris Peace Accords of January 1973 had allowed the United States a face-saving way to extricate its troops from the Vietnam War. Omissions? By the end of 1967, Hanois 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. This, in turn, creates a strong incentive to try to create effective local forces as soon as possible. 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. It gives the Greeks a Why are first-hand accounts important? How did the American public react when they heard the news? By nearly every metric, the Vietnam War was, in the common sense of the word, a war. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Was the war in Vietnam a civil war or a global Cold War confrontation? A. In January 1973, the United States and North Vietnam concluded a final peace agreement, ending open hostilities between the two nations. The treaty also called for nationwide elections for reunification to be held in 1956. However, from a constitutional perspective, this conflict did not technically count as a war. That is simply how they viewed the war from their perspective. Overview The Vietnam War was a prolonged military conflict that started as an anticolonial war against the French and evolved into a Cold War confrontation between international communism and free-market democracy. The United States however, is fighting what are civil-military wars where the "hold," "stability," and "recovery and development" effort is critical to winning popular support. 10.5 times the IISS estimate of $58.9 billion for Russia, and 9.0 times the SIPIRI estimate of $69.2 billion. Nixon and Johnson's thoughts on protesters thought they were communists, dangerous, too radical - encouraged the FBI to investigate the movement Congress authorized troop deployment in Vietnam, but, because it did not issue a declaration of war on North Vietnam or the Viet Cong, the Vietnam War is, technically speaking, not considered a war in the United States. Information and translations of human cost in the most comprehensive dictionary definitions resource on the web. 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. Summary This CRS report provides estimates of the costs of major U.S. wars from the American Revolution through current conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. The U.S. military has estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died in the war. Were they correct? As the second of the Indochina Wars, the Vietnam War was originally fought between North and South Vietnam. Even before the war had ended, Richard Nixon publicly declared the end of the Truman Doctrine. I have a question about the draft: how were the young man selected? 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. America was deeply affected by these heavy losses and struggled to understand the meaning, significance and lessons of the Vietnam War. It would take years to recover. The French defeat at the Dien Bien Phu was followed by a peace conference in Geneva. The war exacted an enormous human cost: estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed range from 966,000 to 3 million. Which best describes the cost of the Vietnam War in human terms? Metrics showing allied funding and aid activity help put the U.S. spending effort in the proper perspective. Publisher: Alpha History The Memorial is dedicated to honor the courage . Current official U.S. data only include U.S. military and DoD civilians, and the DoD website does not provide a trend analysis. The Afghan and Iraq/Syria wars are more than five times more expensive than World War I. Conservative estimates suggest the war claimed around 1.9 million Vietnamese lives, as well as the lives of 200,000 Cambodians and 100,000 Laotians. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, but his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, continued the work that Kennedy had started. All Rights Reserved. Past estimates of spending have been consistently wrong, and the inputs have been consistently undercosted. Long term budget projections by the CBO and others invariably assume the end to war with one or two years in the future and no major contingency thereafter. The war had cost 58,000 American and 2 million Vietnamese lives. 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. The struggle for Vietnam was one of the 20th centurys great human tragedies. Key metrics are provided for the U.S. use of airpower, showing a major rise in support of Afghan forces in CY2017. A mass exodus in 1975 of people loyal to the South Vietnamese cause was followed by another wave in 1978 of boat people, refugees fleeing the economic restructuring imposed by the communist regime. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., lists more than 58,300 names of members of the U.S. armed forces who were killed or went missing in action. They make a striking contrast to the total OCO costs. The Department of Defense has, however, provided a supplement to the FY2018 budget request that does provide many useful insights, and the only integrated discussion of civil-military issues in the FY2018 budget submission. Direct link to armor.pro57's post When the United States te, Posted 2 years ago. The war in Iraq, for example, put serious pressure on U.S. capability to properly deploy the numbers and skills needed in Afghanistan, as well as helped force use of the Reserves and National Guard. One of the striking aspects of American military power is how little serious attention is spent on examining the key elements of its total cost by war and mission, and the linkage between the use of resources and the presence of an effective strategy. As many as one-quarter of these boat people as they became known are believed to have perished at sea. The U.S. bombings made Laos the most heavily bombed country per capita in the world. 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. Nixon ended draft calls in 1972, and instituted an all-volunteer army the following year. Trade and diplomatic relations between Vietnam and the U.S. resumed in the 1990s. All recent estimates show that the burden the Afghan and Iraq/Syria wars placed on the economy did not equal the burden that the peacetime Reagan build up created, and that the percentage has dropped sharply since most U.S. combat troops left Afghanistan and Iraq. The fighting ability of pro-Hanoi forces in the South had been badly wounded in . The effort to create meaningful Future Year Defense Programs seem to have been given a final death blow by the Budget Control Act (BCA)legislation originally designed to be so stupid that the Congress could not possibly accept it. These defoliants denuded large areas of Vietnam, leaving farmland barren and untouchable for several years. Vietnam War, (195475), a protracted conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam, known as the Viet Cong, against the government of South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. Authors: Jennifer Llewellyn, Jim Southey, Steve Thompson 2. 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 economic and human costs of the Vietnam War were devastating. Once again, a valid approach to resourcing and costing the war must look beyond the number of military personnel and justify the total number of personnel. It was 146% of the $619.7 billion total ($560.7 Baseline plus the $58.8 billion in OCO costs). . Direct link to Jeff Kelman's post "John F. Kennedy expan, Posted 2 years ago. Almost two million refugees were eventually relocated to the US, Australia, Canada, France and other European countries. 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. After the United States withdrew from the conflict, North Vietnam invaded the South and united the country under a communist government. Confidence in the Domino Theory was undermined, if not destroyed. The human cost of war is perhaps the most critical single metric of warfighting.
Andrew Keegan Found,
Articles W
