Indochina wars

The wars included: The French colonization and occupation of Vietnam were a result of secular imperialism, driven by economic interests and strategic considerations.

While Gia Long tolerated Catholicism, his successors Minh Mạng and Thiệu Trị were orthodox, fundamentalist Confucians, admiring ancient Chinese culture.

They forbade Catholic proselytism and resisted European and American attempts to establish colonial trade posts, which France tried to impose.

Isolationist and chauvinist policy led the Vietnamese to refuse industrial modernization, so that they were not able to resist military power of a French invasion.

In August 1858, Napoleon III ordered the landing of French forces at Tourane, (present-day Da Nang), beginning a colonial occupation that was to last almost a century.

When World War II ended, the August Revolution expelled the Japanese colonial army and gave control of the country to Viet Minh.

In South Vietnam, the Japanese had surrendered to British forces, who had supported the Free French in fighting the Viet Minh, along with the armed religious Cao Đài and Hòa Hảo sects and the Bình Xuyên organized crime group.

It ended in a resounding defeat of the French Colonial Troops (Troupes coloniales) by the People's Army of Vietnam at Dien Bien Phu.

Although the 1968 Tet offensive resulted in a military victory for South Vietnam and the United States, with virtually complete destruction of the NLF forces combat capability, it was, by the intensity of the combats, the contradiction it implied with recent reports of withdrawals of US troops and status of the war,[8] also a turning point in American voter opposition to U.S. support for their Cold War Vietnamese allies.

The North Vietnamese Army in South Vietnam had been ravaged during the Easter offensive in 1973, and it was projected that it would take until 1976 to rebuild their logistical capabilities.

Shortly after the Paris Peace Accords, the United States Congress made major budget cuts in military aid to the South Vietnamese.

The fighting that took place between North and South Vietnam following United States withdrawal is sometimes called the Third Indochina War; this term usually refers to a later 1979 conflict, however (see below).

In August 1975, Vietnam returned the island of Koh Wai to Kampuchea and both governments started making peaceful noises, but behind the scenes tensions were mounting.