The estimated death toll of Us soldiers is 58,200 soldiers and around 200k - 250k vietnam soldiers perished. These debates led to a revisiting of Americas Cold War leadership. People were killed during the war. Even before the war had ended, Richard Nixon publicly declared the end of the Truman Doctrine. Wars cost money to fight, and the Civil War was no exception. Once again, the data on contractors provide a key picture of the actual size of the U.S. effort in country. Direct link to PiggyCosette's post The government most likel, Posted 3 years ago. The war had cost 58,000 American and 2 million Vietnamese lives. 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. 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. Background Vietnam had many troubles before the Vietnam War. 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. By 2014, almost 100,000 veterans had taken their own lives. By 1969 more than 500,000 U.S. military personnel were stationed in Vietnam. 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. Direct link to Sean Rim/Dog's post Agent Orange not only eff, Posted 5 months ago. It doesn't take a war for nuclear weapons to hurt people. Yes, to me (who served in Vietnam with the US Army for 11 months in 1970) it seemed like an utter waste of time and resources. Any full costing of America's wars needs to include these costs. By 1957, the Viet Cong and other opponents of Diems repressive regime began fighting back with attacks on government officials and other targets, and by 1959 they had begun engaging the South Vietnamese army in firefights. : Assessing Chinas April 2023 Military Exercises Against Taiwan, ROK President State Visit to Washington: The Capital Cable #69, The Future of U.S. Natural Gas: A Conversation with Charif Souki, Download PDF file of "U.S. Military Spending: The Cost of Wars", Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy, Diversity and Leadership in International Affairs Project, Energy Security and Climate Change Program, As is discussed in several parts of this report, work by Amy Belasco of the CRS has provided two reports that attempted to cost America's wars. We strive for accuracy and fairness. Kissinger and North Vietnamese representatives drafted a peace agreement by early fall, but leaders in Saigon rejected it, and in December Nixon authorized a number of bombing raids against targets in Hanoi and Haiphong. 2023 Center for Strategic & International Studies. All American men had to register for the draft at age 18. Total estimates of the cost through FY2018 have been made earlier. They show the cost by war, by service, and by broad cost category for the entire OCO account. The United States defeat in Vietnam led to a period of despondency in America. This illustrates another critical failure in the preparation and review of both Baseline and War budgets. Or were both parties perhaps working together? Why is it important to tell our stories? According to a survey by the Veterans Administration, some 500,000 of the 3 million troops who served in Vietnam suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and rates of divorce, suicide, alcoholism and drug addiction were markedly higher among veterans. The charts and tables in this section raise several key points about the need for better reporting on manpower: The State Department and USAID provide virtually no meaningful explanation of their strategy for either war, do not explain the challenges they face in meaningful terms, and do not link their budget justification to any clear explanation of a civil-military program. Estimates of the number of people killed in Indochina range from two and a half million to more than four million. Homeland defense has become more expensive than any ongoing U.S. war or active combat effort. Lip service references to a "whole of government approach" thinly disguise a real-world separation of what should be a fully integrated civil-military approach, and what is really a "hole in government" approach where the State Department and USAID often seem at least partially decoupled from the realities of warfighting and the Department of Defense focuses on tactical success rather than the political, economic, or broader strategic goals in warfare. It would take another 30 years and several million lives, including more than 58,000 Americans, before this dream became a reality. For other Americans, opposing the government was considered unpatriotic and treasonous. Ronald H. Spector is Professor of History and International Affairs in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. They will be $770.5 billion for Iraq. 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. Throughout both conflicts, reporting has focused on total personnel rather than on the function and capability of the personnel engaged. Many American Vietnam veterans struggled to readjust to civilian life, suffering from psychological effects, increased risk of suicide and increased rates of cancer, possibly caused by exposure to defoliants. Before World War Two Vietnam . At the heart of the conflict was the desire of North Vietnam, which had defeated the French colonial administration of Vietnam in 1954, to unify the entire country under a single communist regime modeled after those of the Soviet Union and China. American body counts of the enemy were notoriously unreliable and were often little more than ambitious estimates. About us; Stories and Resources . Inscribed on the black granite walls are the names of more than 58,000 men and women who gave their lives or remain missing. Did you know? The anti-war movement, which was particularly strong on college campuses, divided Americans bitterly. Since 1941 Congress has declared war only six times, all during World War II. Direct link to David Alexander's post Question 1: "did it seem , Posted 4 years ago. There were a number of long-term and short-term reasons to explain why the USA became involved in Vietnam in the late 1950s. In 1982 the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C., inscribed with the names of 57,939 members of U.S. armed forces who had died or were missing as a result of the war. This was 161% of the $560.7 billion Baseline that include base, defense-related nuclear and other related budget costs. A great deal of agricultural land was poisoned with defoliant or drenched with napalm or diesel and set alight. These chemicals also had an insidious impact on both Vietnamese civilians and American soldiers and their allies. 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. 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. Work by Todd Harrison, for example, shows that total U.S. defense-related costs totaled some $905 billion in FY2017: At the same time, if one does use the $619.7 billion total for the U.S., it is: U.S. military spending has risen steadily over time, but without any serious net assessment of the patterns in that growth, the comparative efficiency of U.S. spending on baseline and war activity, and how allied and potential threat states use their budgets and resources. Date updated: December 20, 2022 This section updates part of another CRS studyone by Stephen Daggetthat attempted to cost past American wars from the American Revolution through the Persian Gulf War, and the early phases of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Called the American War in Vietnam (or, in full, the War Against the Americans to Save the Nation), the war was also part of a larger regional conflict (see Indochina wars) and a manifestation of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. Nixon and Johnson's thoughts on protesters thought they were communists, dangerous, too radical - encouraged the FBI to investigate the movement South Vietnam was a viable nation-state by 1972, afflicted by internal armed opposition but not overwhelmed by it. Active duty strength has gotten far more expensive relative to DoD civilian full time employees and U.S. and foreign contractors. The total defense burden is projected to decline from 2.8% in FY2017 to 2.5% in FY2021 and FY2.3% in 2030. The main reason the war escalated so badly and quickly was because LBJ and Nixon right? NARA Resources Core Collections on the Vietnam War From the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, "This guide summarizes core holdings on: the war in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos especially during the Nixon and Ford administrations; the flight of refugees from Indochina after April 1975 and the admittance of many to the United States; the accounting of U.S. armed forces MIAs and Some war fighting and support costs are not included in the OCO request. peoples' experiences? , arn from other 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. They all reflect a common pattern of erratic funding and slow reaction to the return of the Taliban. Seeing an opportunity to seize control, Hos Viet Minh forces immediately rose up, taking over the northern city of Hanoi and declaring a Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) with Ho as president. These activities are not designated as emergency or OCO/GWOT and are subject to the BCA limits. The ensuing political instability in South Vietnam persuaded Kennedys successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to further increase U.S. military and economic support. Despite the concerns of some of his advisers about this escalation, and about the entire war effort amid a growing anti-war movement, Johnson authorized the immediate dispatch of 100,000 troops at the end of July 1965 and another 100,000 in 1966. Military history is often the history of force quality defeating force quantity, and strategies and dollar spending need to be validated by explaining the role and function of deployed personnel. Westmoreland pursued a policy of attrition, aiming to kill as many enemy troops as possible rather than trying to secure territory. Anne's diary helped the world understand what it was like living in hiding during If you're behind a web filter, please make sure that the domains *.kastatic.org and *.kasandbox.org are unblocked. reason to finally surrender Public trust in the United States government was shattered by the Vietnam War and Watergate. Though the NLF claimed to be autonomous and that most of its members were not communists, many in Washington assumed it was a puppet of Hanoi. Trojans. The Department of Defense's OCO costs of the Afghan conflict since FY2001 will rise to $840.7 billionif the President's FY2018 budget request is met. This site is using cookies under cookie policy . By June, 82,000 combat troops were stationed in Vietnam, and military leaders were calling for 175,000 more by the end of 1965 to shore up the struggling South Vietnamese army. Direct link to Logan's post Everyone had made mistake, Posted 4 years ago. By nearly every metric, the Vietnam War was, in the common sense of the word, a war. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. Agent Orange left its mark on the environment and it also had a serious human impact as it had the potential to damage . The DoD semi-annual report now focuses almost exclusively on military activity, and there is no State/USAID counterpart. For the last several decades, there has been little real effort to examine the costs of key missions and strategic commitments and the longer term trends in force planning and cost. 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. The United States had provided funding, armaments, and training to South Vietnams government and military since Vietnams partition into the communist North and the democratic South in 1954. I've read that the Vietnam War is referred to as the 'American War' (in full, War Against the Americans to Save the Nation) in Vietnam. In addition to the United States, South Korea, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand also committed troops to fight in South Vietnam (albeit on a much smaller scale). It was 146% of the $619.7 billion total ($560.7 Baseline plus the $58.8 billion in OCO costs). You can specify conditions of storing and accessing cookies in your browser. What were some human costs of the Vietnam War? It was 146% of the $619.7 billion total ($560.7 Baseline plus the $58.8 billion in OCO costs). Information and translations of human cost in the most comprehensive dictionary definitions resource on the web. Between three million and five million people were also disabled, disfigured or seriously wounded. The Costs of War Project is a team of 35 scholars, legal experts, human rights practitioners, and physicians, which began its work in 2011. . Reporting adds up to half a budget at best. More than 10 times the military expenditures of the three leading NATO European states: France. $66.0 billion in FY2017 total budget authority and $41.3 billion in adjusted budget authority. A coup by some of his own generals succeeded in toppling and killing Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, in November 1963, three weeks before Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. to the Tens of thousands of soldiers received dishonorable discharges for desertion, and about 500,000 American men from 1965-73 became draft dodgers, with many fleeing to Canada to evade conscription. One by Lina J. Blimes puts the total cost at $4 to $6 trillion by end FY2016. Direct link to Angela Hilario's post Clarification: Sal said i, Posted 4 years ago. Taken by surprise, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces nonetheless managed to strike back quickly, and the communists were unable to hold any of the targets for more than a day or two. The Korean peninsula off the east cost of Asia has had a long history of foreign invaders. This section compares current total U.S. baseline and war spending with the spending of other states. As Mr. Dagget notes, there are serious uncertainties in the cost estimates of past wars, but it is striking that if the cost to date of the Afghan and Iraq/Syria wars are shown in constant dollars, even the comparatively low end estimate of $2 trillion through FY2018 would makes these wars more expensive than every other period of conflict in American history except the American revolution, the Civil War, and World War II. That is simply how they viewed the war from their perspective. Authors: Jennifer Llewellyn, Jim Southey, Steve Thompson The budget data created a functionally meaningless pool of theater support personnel with little or no explanation, no allocation by war, and that make up 65% of all military personnel assigned to both Afghanistan and Syria/Iraq. Warfare had demolished the countrys infrastructure and economy, and reconstruction proceeded slowly. During the war, several different nationalist factions fought against the Japanese for Korean independence. an estimated 25,000 American servicemen and 757,143 Vietnamese dead about 200,000 American servicemen and an estimated 4 million Vietnamese dead 58,000 American servicemen and an estimated 1.5 million Vietnamese dead 58,000 American servicemen and an estimated 250,000 Vietnamese dead Moreover, the Cold War may be over, but the United States still faces strategic challenges from Russia and the emergence of China as a major global power in what is already a multipolar world. or is it saying that the south fought the north with america or did america never ally with the south of vietnam? The figures of U.S.. The South Vietnamese government, on the other hand, fought to preserve a Vietnam more closely aligned with the West. Agent Orange not only effected Vietcong but also US Infantry so that was more horrid than anything I could think of of. One caveat to this, however, was that men who were in college could be excused from the draft. 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. The Presidents FY2017 budget request included $1,553.6 billion for contingency operations funded in the base budget. "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". Direct link to Jacob, Samour's post 1) It became involved in , Posted 7 years ago. ^1 1. introduction in the play 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. Neighbouring Laos and Cambodia similarly fell to communists. This caused a refugee crisis and thousands of deaths at sea, forcing Western nations to accept large numbers of refugees. They illustrate two reporting problems: The charts and tables in this section focus on total DoD spending by year, and OCO expenditure by war. Which best describes the cost of the Vietnam War in human terms? These reports never address the costs of war, or planning, programming, and budgeting. Even if one uses the higher estimate of military spending used by Todd Harrison, the total is now under 6.0%. Vietnams infrastructure, one of the few positive legacies of French colonialism, was left in ruins. Washington withdrew significantly from foreign disputes and crises, becoming less interventionist and assertive. What would you have done in Ho's place? The most important key figures provide you with a compact summary of the topic of "U . They make a striking contrast to the total OCO costs. By Winnie Smith Morrow, 352 pages, $22 Until recently, the critical role played by women in the Vietnam War as Army nurses, dedicated to treating the wounded and dying despite being endangered. It contains 186,751 words in 265 pages and was updated last on March 27th, 2022. He authorized a series of bombing campaigns, most notably Operation Rolling Thunder, and also committed hundreds of thousands of US ground troops to the fight. Someone please:(. 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. Only limited break outs of these key data are provided by war. Publisher: Alpha History Johnsons new tack, laid out in a March 1968 speech, met with a positive response from Hanoi, and peace talks between the U.S. and North Vietnam opened in Paris that May. This meant that often wealthier men (who could afford college tuition) could avoid being sent to Vietnam, while men from poorer families could not avoid it. The Wooden Horse: A Gift Thousands of Vietnamese simply vanished, lost in thick jungle or tunnels, obliterated by bombs or incinerated by napalm. Johnson raised the number of South Vietnam deployments to 23,000 U.S. soldiers by the end of his first year in office. He believed that if one Southeast Asian nation fell to communism, more would follow. During one, on May 4, 1970, at Kent State University in Ohio, National Guardsmen shot and killed four students. Both the Executive Branch and the Congress have failed to reform any key aspect of the defense and foreign policy budgets to look beyond input budgeting by line item and by military service, and doing so on an annual basis. All Rights Reserved. The civil war in Vietnam lasted from 1955 to 1975, with direct U.S. military involvement from 1964 to 1973. . What is even more striking, is the failure of both recent presidents and the Congress to properly analyze and justify the cost of America's wars. In September 1945, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the birth of an independent Vietnam. The U.S. bombings made Laos the most heavily bombed country per capita in the world. Congress passed the. Discussions of the cost of the Vietnam War have tended to underemphasize human capital considerations. Among other countries that fought for South Vietnam, South Korea had more than 4,000 dead, Thailand about 350, Australia more than 500, and New Zealand some three dozen. Vietnam, a nation in Southeast Asia on the eastern edge of the Indochinese peninsula, had been under French colonial rule since the 19th century. The difficulties in defining military expenditures do create differences in estimates of the percent of GDP, but they are comparatively minor. Learn about the war that enmeshed the United States in a battle against communism in Southeast Asia for more than twenty years. 834 E. Washington Ave., Suite 333 Madison, WI 53703, . The American death toll in Vietnam is dwarfed by the devastating losses suffered by local people. The status of the FY2018 OCO requests for DoD and State are now highly uncertain and these charts focus on FY2001-FY2017. Many were unfairly harassed and abused by anti-war protestors. The American soldiers who returned as veterans of the Vietnam War faced their own personal challenges. Johnson was motivated by both domestic political and international balance of power considerations. De Blasio: How many . Believing that the Soviet Union had backed the invasion, United States President Harry Truman and his advisers followed . The closest the Congress has come to establishing a credible system of formal review is to create limited public reporting requirements on the Iraq and Afghan wars for the DoD, and the requirement for Iraq lapsed at the end of combat activity in 2011. It also presents some key metrics developed by SIGAR on the annual and cumulative costs of U.S. aid efforts in Afghanistan. Despite the later inclusion of the South Vietnamese and the NLF, the dialogue soon reached an impasse, and after a bitter 1968 election season marred by violence, Republican Richard M. Nixon won the presidency. The number of civilians killed ranges from 627,000 to two million. He was in Vietnam when he was 20 years old. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial stands as a symbol of America's honor and recognition of the men and women who served and sacrificed their lives in the Vietnam War. 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. When the war was over France received their "colony" back. was it education, the size of the family etc? This version has been revised to correct some of the terminology used and to make it clear that there is no way to fully reflect the proposed FY2018 costs of OCO activity because the President has not yet determined the FY2018 level of effort in Afghanistan, and the current OCO budget data for FY2018 are the cost of extending the FY2017 program. Civilian casualties are not assessed in spite of the fact that this has become a critical political and operational issue, and subject of both debate and threat propaganda. However, from a constitutional perspective, this conflict did not technically count as a war. Opponents of the war argued that civilians, not enemy combatants, were the primary victims and that the United States was supporting a corrupt dictatorship in Saigon. Check all of the boxes that apply. While the number of American deaths was well documented, neither the South Vietnamese, the North Vietnamese or the NLF (Viet Cong) kept stringent records about personnel or losses. It was the last major event of the Vietnam War. In March 1965, Johnson made the decisionwith solid support from the American publicto send U.S. combat forces into battle in Vietnam. The United States has been actively in combat since late 2001, and there is little prospect that it can end the need to use force to check terrorism and violent extremism within the next decade. Posted 7 years ago. The fighting ability of pro-Hanoi forces in the South had been badly wounded in . In 1995 Vietnam released its official estimate of the number of people killed during the Vietnam War: as many as 2,000,000 civilians on both sides and some 1,100,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. 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. Working under the domino theory, which held that if one Southeast Asian country fell to communism, many other countries would follow, Kennedy increased U.S. aid, though he stopped short of committing to a large-scale military intervention. Washington, DC 20036. This draft disproportionately targeted certain populations, mostly the poor making it very unpopular. War protesters: it costs too much money, social problems at home, it's not our war, it can't be won, begins WWII against China and Russia, we should not be the 'police power' around the world. Based on the current dollar value, the Vietnam War cost the equivalent of about $1 trillion. The defeat in Vietnam, they argued, was a betrayal of the US military by civilian politicians. By Ward Wilson. The cost of all-volunteer forces limits the total force pool. Title: The costs of the Vietnam War (At least 100 names on the memorial are those of servicemen who were actually Canadian citizens.) While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Tensions escalated into armed conflict between the two sides, and in 1961 U.S. President John F. Kennedy chose to expand the military aid program. The Department of Defense also provides a range of other metrics on U.S. activities, and a costing of air support activity, although these are not linked to the budget. 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 War Powers Resolution The chart shows that the number of draftees _____ before the War Powers Resolution. Vietnam is a country in south-east Asia. This section supplements the OCO cost data with some brief metrics on the overall size of the U.S. effort in Afghanistan. It affected 700,000 American veterans. Nevertheless, there was an inevitable wave of justifications, criticisms and retributions. 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. Date accessed: May 01, 2023 It was 150% of the IISS estimate of $604.5 billion for 2016. Feeding, supplying and paying the armies and navies was, by far, the largest expenditure of the war. Summary: Between 1945 and 1954, the Vietnamese waged an anti-colonial war against France, which received $2.6 billion in financial support from the United States. Whereas the men of World War II had been welcomed home with crowds, ticker tape and fanfare, Vietnam veterans returning to the US were received with a combination of indifference, embarrassment and contempt. Meaning of human cost. The total military deaths for all countries have been estimated at 1.3 million, of whom 58,000 were Americans. The bombing. 2. Those who argue that the United States opponents won the war cite the United States overall objectives and outcomes. Psychologically, the effects ran even deeper. impossible challenge for the Among other countries that fought for South Vietnam on a smaller scale, South Korea suffered more than 4,000 dead, Thailand about 350, Australia more than 500, and New Zealand some three dozen. Accordingly, the charts in this section summarize CRS reporting on total DoD/State/USAID OCO costs to date. Date published: July 3, 2019 4. they worked together but the north attacked areas around the the first 3 sectors of vietnam like the DMZ, the highlands and around saigon. Direct link to Jeff Kelman's post "John F. Kennedy expan, Posted 2 years ago. Direct link to Carla Cristina Almeida's post I have a question about t, Posted 6 years ago. An even greater number were maimed, disfigured, orphaned, displaced or forced to flee as refugees. The memorial, located near the western end of the Mall, is a black granite V-shaped wall inscribed with the names of the approximately 58,000 men and women who were killed or missing in action. Metrics showing allied funding and aid activity help put the U.S. spending effort in the proper perspective. Direct link to Angela Hilario's post I've read that the Vietna, Posted 4 years ago. The data for FY2018 show that the civil effort is being slashed without any explanation or justification of the cutsparticularly in key areas like economic growthwhere poverty is now steadily increasing and both sets of populations face major humanitarian crisesand in governance, where all of the host country governments are ranked as some of the most corrupt and incapable governments in the world and a lack of popular support is a key issue.

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