Arms control is an umbrella term for restrictions upon the development, production, stockpiling, proliferation, and usage of weapons, especially weapons of mass destruction. Arms control is typically exercised through the use of diplomacy which seeks to impose such limitations upon consenting participants through international treaties and agreements, although it may also comprise efforts by a nation or group of nations to enforce limitations upon a non-consenting country.

On a national or community level, ''arms control'' can amount to programs to control the access of private citizens to weapons. This is often referred to as ''gun politics'', as firearms are the primary focus of such efforts in most places.

Enactment

Arms control treaties and agreements are often seen as a way to avoid costly arms races which would prove counter-productive to national aims and future peace. Some are used as ways to stop the spread of certain military technologies (such as nuclear weaponry or missile technology) in return for assurances to potential developers that they will not be victims of those technologies. Additionally, some arms control agreements are entered to limit the damage done by warfare, especially to civilians and the environment, which is seen as bad for all participants regardless of who wins a war.

While arms control treaties are seen by many peace proponents as a key tool against war, by the participants, they are often seen as simply ways to limit the high costs of the development and building of weapons, and even reduce the costs associated with war itself. Arms control can even be a way of maintaining the viability of military action by limiting those weapons that would make war so costly and destructive as to make it no longer a viable tool for national policy.

Enforcement

Enforcement of arms control agreements has proven difficult over time. Most agreements rely on the continued desire of the participants to abide by the terms to remain effective. Usually, when a nation no longer desires to abide by the terms, they usually will seek to either covertly circumvent the terms or to simply end their participation in the treaty. This was seen in Washington Naval Treaty (and the subsequent London Naval Treaty), where most participants sought to work around the limitations, some more legitimately than others. The United States developed better technology to get better performance from their ships while still working within the weight limits, the United Kingdom exploited a loop-hole in the terms, the Italians misrepresented the weight of their vessels, and when up against the limits, Japan simply left the treaty. The nations which violated the terms of the treaty did not suffer great consequences for their actions. Within little more than a decade, the treaty was abandoned. The Geneva Protocol has lasted longer and been more successful at being respected, but still nations have violated it at will when they have felt the need. Enforcement has been haphazard, with measures more a matter of politics than adherence to the terms. This meant sanctions and other measures tended to be advocated against violators primarily by their natural political enemies, while violations have been ignored or given only token measures by their political allies.

More recent arms control treaties have included more stringent terms on enforcement of violations as well as verification. This last has been a major obstacle to effective enforcement, as violators often attempt to covertly circumvent the terms of the agreements. Verification is the process of determining whether or not a nation is complying with the terms of an agreement, and involves a combination of release of such information by participants as well as some way to allow participants to examine each other to verify that information. This often involves as much negotiation as the limits themselves, and in some cases questions of verification have led to the breakdown of treaty negotiations (for example, verification was cited as a major concern by opponents of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, ultimately not ratified by the United States).

Nations may remain in a treaty while seeking to break the limits of that treaty as opposed to simply withdrawing from it. This is for two major reasons. To openly defy an agreement, even if one withdraws from it, often is seen in a bad light politically and can carry diplomatic repercussions. Additionally, if one remains in an agreement, competitors who are also participatory may be held to the limitations of the terms, while withdrawal releases your opponents to make the same developments you are making, limiting the advantage of that development.

Theory of Arms Control

Scholars and practitioners such as John Steinbruner, Jonathan Dean or Stuart Croft worked extensively on the theoretical backing of arms control. Arms control is meant to break the security dilemma. It aims at mutual security between partners and overall stability (be it in a crisis situation, a grand-strategy, or stability to put an end to an arms race). Other than stability, arms control comes with cost reduction and damage limitation. It is differs from disarmament since the maintenance of stability might allow for mutually controlled armament and does not take a peace-without-weapons-stance. Nevertheless, arms control is a defensive strategy in principle, since transparency, equality, and stability do not fit into an offensive strategy.

History of Arms Control

One of the first recorded attempts in arms control was a set of rules laid down in ancient Greece by the Amphictyonic Leagues. Rulings specified how war could be waged, and breaches of this could be punished by fines or by war.

There were few recorded attempts to control arms during the period between this and the rise of the Roman Catholic Church. The church used its position as a trans-national organization to limit the means of warfare. The 989 Peace of God (extended in 1033) ruling protected noncombatants, agrarian and economic facilities, and the property of the church from war. The 1027 Truce of God also tried to prevent violence between Christians. The Second Lateran Council in 1139 prohibited the use of crossbows against other Christians, although it did not prevent its use against non-Christians.

The development of firearms led to an increase in the devastation of war. The brutality of wars during this period led to efforts to formalize the rules of war, with humane treatment for prisoners of war or wounded, as well as rules to protect non-combatants and the pillaging of their property. However during the period until the beginning of the 19th century few formal arms control agreements were recorded, except theoretical proposals and those imposed on defeated armies.

One treaty which was concluded was the Strasbourg Agreement of 1675. This is the first international agreement limiting the use of chemical weapons, in this case, poison bullets. The treaty was signed between France and The Holy Roman Empire

The 1817 Rush-Bagot Treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom was the first arms control treaty of what can be considered the modern industrial era, leading to the demilitarization of the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain region of North America. This was followed by the 1871 Treaty of Washington which led to total demilitarisation.

The industrial revolution led to the increasing mechanisation of warfare, as well as rapid advances in the development of firearms; the increased potential of devastation (which was seen in the battlefields of World War I) led to Tsar Nicholas II of Russia calling together the leaders of 26 nations for the First Hague Conference in 1899. The Conference led to the signing of the Hague Convention (of 1899) that led to rules of declaring and conducting warfare as well as the use of modern weaponry, and also led to the setting up of the Permanent Court of Arbitration.

A Second Hague Conference was called in 1907 leading to additions and amendments to the original 1899 agreement. A Third Hague Conference was called for 1915, but this was abandoned due to the First World War.

After the First World War the League of Nations was set up which attempted to limit and reduce arms. However the enforcement of this policy was not effective. Various naval conferences were held during the period between the First and Second World Wars to limit the number and size of major warships of the five great naval powers.

The 1925 Geneva Conference led to the banning of chemical weapons (as toxic gases) during war as part of the Geneva Protocol. The 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact, whilst ineffective, attempted for "providing for the renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy".

After World War II the United Nations was set up as a body to promote world peace. In 1957 the International Atomic Energy Agency was set up to monitor the proliferation of nuclear technology, including that of nuclear weapons. The 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was signed to prevent further spread of nuclear weapons technology to countries outside the five that already possessed them: the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France and China.

The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) between the United States and Soviet Union in the late 1960s/early 1970s led to further weapons control agreements. The SALT I talks led to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and an ''Interim Strategic Arms Limitation Agreement'' (see SALT I), both in 1972. The SALT II talks started in 1972 leading to agreement in 1979. Due to the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan the United States never ratified the treaty, however the agreement was honoured by both sides.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was signed between the United States and Soviet Union in 1987 and ratified in 1988, leading to an agreement to destroy all missiles with ranges from 500 to 5,500 kilometres.

The 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention was signed banning the manufacture and use of chemical weapons.

The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties were signed, as START I and START II, by the US and Soviet Union, further restricting weapons. This was further moved on by the Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions.

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was signed in 1996 banning all nuclear explosions in all environments, for military or civilian purposes.

List of treaties and conventions related to arms control

Some of the more important international arms control agreements follow: Washington Naval Treaty, 1922-1939(as part of the naval conferences)

Geneva Protocol on chemical and biological weapons, 1925

Antarctic Treaty, signed 1959, entered into force 1961

Partial Test Ban Treaty, signed and entered into force 1963

Outer Space Treaty, signed and entered into force 1967

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, signed 1968, entered into force 1970

Seabed Arms Control Treaty, signed 1971, entered into force 1972

Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I), signed and ratified 1972, in force 1972-1977

Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, signed and entered into force 1972, terminated following U.S. withdrawal 2002

Biological Weapons Convention, signed 1972, entered into force 1975

Threshold Test Ban Treaty, signed 1974, entered into force 1990

SALT II signed 1979, never entered into force

Environmental Modification Convention, signed 1977, entered into force 1978

Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, signed 1980, entered into force 1983

Moon Treaty, signed 1979, entered into force 1984

Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed 1987, entered into force 1988

Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, (CFE Treaty) signed 1990, entered into force 1992 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), signed 1991, entered into force 1994, expired 2009

Chemical Weapons Convention, signed 1993, entered into force 1997

START II, signed 1993, ratified 1996 (United States) and 2000 (Russia), terminated following Russian withdrawal 2002

Ottawa Treaty on anti-personnel land mines, signed 1997, entered into force 1999

Open Skies Treaty, signed 1992, entered into force 2002

Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), signed 2002, entered into force 2003, expires 2012

Convention on Cluster Munitions, signed 2008, entered into force 2010

Nuclear weapon free zone treaties

Treaty of Tlatelolco (Latin America and the Caribbean), signed 1967, entered into force 1972

Treaty of Rarotonga (South Pacific), signed 1985, entered into force 1986

Treaty of Bangkok (Southeast Asia), signed 1995, entered into force 1997

Treaty of Pelindaba (Africa), signed 1996, entered into force 2009

Treaty of Semipalatinsk (Central Asia), signed 2006, entered into force 2008

Other treaties also envision the creation of NWFZ, among other objectives. These are the following:

Antarctic Treaty, signed 1959, entered into force 1961

Outer Space Treaty, signed and entered into force 1967

Seabed Arms Control Treaty, signed 1971, entered into force 1972

Pending treaties

Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, signed 1996

New START Treaty, signed by Russia and the United States April 8, 2010, awaiting ratification

Proposed treaties

Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty

Nuclear weapons convention

Space Preservation Treaty

Final document in the framework of the United Nations Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms

Export control regimes

Zangger Committee 1971-

Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) 1974-

Australia Group 1985-

Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), 1987-

Wassenaar Arrangement, 1996-

Nonbinding declarations

Ayacucho Declaration 1974

Arms Control Organizations

The intergovernmental organizations for arms control are the following:

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)

Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)

Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO PrepCom)

Conference on Disarmament (CD)

United Nations Office of Disarmament Affairs (UNODA)

United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR)

the now disbanded United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), the successor to United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM)

failed proposal for Organisation for the Prohibition of Biological Weapons

There are also numerous non-governmental organizations that promote a global reduction in nuclear arms and offer research and analysis about U.S. nuclear weapons policy. Pre-eminent among these organizations is the Arms Control Association, founded in 1971 to promote public understanding of and support for arms control. Others include:

Federation of American Scientists (FAS) -- founded in 1945 as the Federation of Atomic Scientists by veterans of the Manhattan Project.

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament -- a leading disarmament organization in the United Kingdom, founded in 1957.

Peace Action -- formerly SANE (the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy), founded in 1957

Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) -- founded by Bernard Lown in 1961.

Council for a Livable World -- founded in 1962 by physicist Leó Szilárd and other scientists who believed that nuclear weapons should be controlled and eventually eliminated.

Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) -- founded in 1969 by faculty and students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Arms Control Association -- founded in 1971.

Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation -- founded in 1980 as a sister organization to the Council for a Livable World.

International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) -- founded in 1981.

Alliance for Nuclear Accountability -- a national network of organizations working to address issues of nuclear weapons production and waste cleanup, founded in 1987 as the Military Production Network.

Global Zero -- founded in 2008.

See also

Arms embargo

Gun politics

List of chemical arms control agreements

List of international environmental agreements

Naval conference

Nuclear disarmament

SALW

Small Arms Survey

References

Randall Forsberg, ed., ''Arms Control Reporter 1995-2005'', Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995–2004.

Wheeler-Bennett, Sir John ''Disarmament and security since Locarno 1925-1931; being the political and technical background of the general disarmament conference, 1932'', New York, Howard Fertig, 1973.

Giuseppe Gagliano-Maurizio Boni,''Sicurezza internazionale e controllo degli armamenti'',New Press 2001

External links

National Counterproliferation Center - Office of the Director of National Intelligence

UN - Disarmament Affairs

Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

Council for a Livable World

Disarmament Insight initiative

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's Research on Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

Category:Human rights instruments Category:International law

de:Rüstungskontrolle fr:Maîtrise des armements ja:軍備管理

name	The Details
background	group_or_band
origin	Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
genre	Indie rock
years active	2006–present
label	Parliament of Trees
website	www.thedetails.ca
current members	Jon Plett Keli Martin Sean Vidal Shaun Gibson
notable instruments	}}

The Details are an indie rock band from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The band, formed in late 2005, features vocalist and guitarist Jon Plett (The Home Team), bassist Keli Martin (Sixty Stories, The Western States, Rebel Yell), guitarist Sean Vidal (The Home Team) and drummer Shaun Gibson (Boats, Oldfolks Home, The Bonaduces). Sean and Jon were previously in the band The Home Team.

Within a year of playing around Winnipeg, the band released its debut EP, ''Marching Sound''. The band then embarked on several cross-Canada tours, establishing a hard reputation. In September 2007, the band released their debut full-length titled, ''Draw a Distance. Draw a Border.'' which was met with great enthusiasm from radio and bloggers. The Details announced in January 2010 that they had completed work on a yet to be titled full-length album, produced by The Weakerthans guitar player Stephen Carroll and Brandon Reid (The National (band)).

''The Original Mark EP'', a teaser for their upcoming full-length album, was announced for a November 16, 2010, release. It contains a pair of songs from Lost Art, as well as a couple of leftovers from the ''Draw a Distance. Draw a Border.'' sessions, and a remixed version of their song ''Floor Plans''.

''Draw a Distance. Draw a Border.'' included appearances by The Weakerthans' Stephen Carroll and Paper Moon's Allison Shevernoha.

The Details have shared the stage with bands such as Stars (Canadian band), The Constantines, Mother Mother and The Meligrove Band.

Discography

''Marching Sound EP'' (2006)

''Draw a Distance. Draw a Border.'' (2007)

''The Original Mark'' (2010)

''Lost Art'' (2011)

See also

Music of Canada

Music of Manitoba

Canadian rock

List of Canadian musicians

List of bands from Canada

:Category:Canadian musical groups

External links

Official Site

Myspace Music Page

Draw a Distance... review

Much Music Interview

Category:Musical groups established in 2005 Category:Canadian indie rock groups Category:Musical groups from Winnipeg

Partof	the Cold War and the Indochina Wars
Date	– ()
Place	South Vietnam, North Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos
Causes	Reunification of Vietnam (North Vietnam)Containment Policy and Domino Theory, Gulf of Tonkin Incident (United States)
Territory	Unification of North and South Vietnam into the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
Result	Communist Vietnamese victory Withdrawal of American forces from Indochina Dissolution of South Vietnam Communist governments take power in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos
Combatant1	Anti-Communist forces: Khmer Republic Kingdom of Laos ''Supported by:'' 23px Spain
Combatant2	Communist forces: NLF Khmer Rouge Pathet Lao People's Republic of China ''Supported by:''
Strength1	~1,830,000 (1968) South Vietnam: 850,000 United States: 536,100 Free World Military Forces: 65,000 Republic of Korea: 50,000 Australia: 7,672 Thailand, Philippines: 10,450 New Zealand: 552
Strength2	~461,000 North Vietnam: 287,465 (Jan 1968) PRC: 170,000 (1969) Soviet Union: 3,000 DPR Korea: 300–600
Commander1	Ngô Đình Diệm Nguyễn Văn Thiệu Nguyễn Cao Kỳ Cao Văn Viên Lyndon B. Johnson Richard Nixon William Westmoreland Creighton Abrams Park Chung Hee Chae Myung Shin Lon Nol ...''and others''
Commander2	Hồ Chí Minh Lê Duẩn Võ Nguyên Giáp Hoàng Văn Thái Văn Tiến Dũng Trần Văn Trà Nguyễn Văn Linh Nguyễn Hữu Thọ...''and others''
Casualties1	South Vietnam220,357 (low est.) – 316,000 dead (highest est.); 1,170,000 wounded United States58,220 dead; the CRS (Congressional Research Service) Report for Congress, American War and Military Operations Casualties: Lists and Statistics, dated February 26, 2010, and the book Crucible Vietnam: Memoir of an Infantry Lieutenant. Some other sources give different figures (e.g. the 2005/2006 documentary ''Heart of Darkness: The Vietnam War Chronicles 1945–1975'' cited elsewhere in this article gives a figure of 58,159 U.S. deaths, The 2007 book ''Vietnam Sons: For Some, the War Never Ended'' gives a figure of 58,226.)|nameUSd&w|groupA}}

1,687 missing; 303,635 wounded

Total dead: 315,384 – 412,000Total wounded: ~1,490,000+ | |casualties2 = North Vietnam & NLF1,176,000 dead or missing (highest est.); 600,000+ wounded P.R. China1,446 dead; 4,200 wounded Soviet Union16 dead

Total dead: ~1,177,462 (highest est.)Total wounded: ~604,200+ | |casualties3 = Vietnamese civilian dead: ~200,000 – 2,000,000 Cambodian civilian dead: 200,000 – 300,000*|group="A"}} was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 U.S. government reports currently cite 1 November 1955, as the commencement date of the “Vietnam Conflict,” for this was the day when the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) in Indochina (deployed to Southeast Asia under President Truman), was reorganized into country-specific units and MAAG Vietnam was established. So on 1 November 1955 a Vietnamese MAAG was created.

Other start dates include when Hanoi authorized Viet Cong forces in South Vietnam to begin a low level insurgency in December 1956. Where as some view 26 September 1959 when the first battle occurred between the Communist and South Vietnamese army. |group="A"|name="start date"}} to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of South Vietnam, supported by the United States and other anti-communist nations. The Viet Cong, a lightly armed South Vietnamese communist-controlled common front, largely fought a guerrilla war against anti-communist forces in the region. The Vietnam People's Army (North Vietnamese Army) engaged in a more conventional war, at times committing large units into battle. U.S. and South Vietnamese forces relied on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct search and destroy operations, involving ground forces, artillery and airstrikes.

The U.S. government viewed involvement in the war as a way to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam as part of their wider strategy of containment. The North Vietnamese government viewed the war as a colonial war, fought initially against France, backed by the U.S., and later against South Vietnam, which it regarded as a U.S. puppet state. U.S. military advisors arrived beginning in 1950. U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with U.S. troop levels tripling in 1961 and tripling again in 1962. U.S. combat units were deployed beginning in 1965. Operations spanned borders, with Laos and Cambodia heavily bombed. Involvement peaked in 1968 at the time of the Tet Offensive. After this, U.S. ground forces were withdrawn as part of a policy called Vietnamization. Despite the Paris Peace Accords, signed by all parties in January 1973, fighting continued.

U.S. military involvement ended on 15 August 1973 as a result of the Case–Church Amendment passed by the U.S. Congress. The capture of Saigon by the North Vietnamese army in April 1975 marked the end of the Vietnam War. North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year. The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities (See: Vietnam War casualties). Estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed vary from less than one million to more than three million. Some 200,000–300,000 Cambodians, 20,000–200,000 Laotians, and 58,220 U.S. service members also died in the conflict. Thus, in Vietnamese, the war is known as ''Chiến tranh Việt Nam'' (The Vietnam War), or as ''Kháng chiến chống Mỹ'' (Resistance War Against America), loosely translated as ''the American War''.

The main military organizations involved in the war were, on one side, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and the U.S. military, and, on the other side, the Vietnam People's Army (VPA), or North Vietnamese Army (NVA), and the Viet Cong, or National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF), a South Vietnamese communist army.

Background to 1949

France began its conquest of Indochina in the late 1850s, and completed pacification by 1893. The Treaty of Huế, concluded in 1884, formed the basis for French colonial rule in Vietnam for the next seven decades. In spite of military resistance, most notable by the Can Vuong of Phan Dinh Phung, by 1888, the area of the current-day nations of Cambodia and Vietnam was made into the colony of French Indochina (Laos was added later). Various Vietnamese opposition movements to the French rule existed during this period, such as the Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang who staged the failed Yen Bai mutiny in 1930, but none were ultimately as successful as the Viet Minh common front, controlled by the Communist Party of Vietnam, founded in 1941 and funded by U.S. and Chinese Nationalist Party in its fight against Japanese occupation.|group=A}}

During World War II, the French were defeated by the Germans in 1940. For French Indochina, this meant that the colonial authorities became Vichy French, allies of the German-Italian Axis powers. In turn this meant that the French collaborated with the Japanese forces after their invasion of French Indochina during 1940. The French continued to run affairs in the colony, but ultimate power resided in the hands of the Japanese. However, they did not have enough power to fight actual battles at first. Ho Chi Minh was suspected of being a communist and jailed for a year by the Chinese national party.

Double occupation by France and Japan continued until the German forces were expelled from France and the French Indochina colonial authorities started holding secret talks with the Free French. Fearing that they could no longer trust the French authorities the Japanese army interned them all on 9 March 1945 and assumed direct control themselves through their puppet state of the Empire of Vietnam under Bảo Đại.

During 1944–1945, a deep famine struck northern Vietnam due to a combination of poor weather and French/Japanese exploitation. 1 million people died of starvation (out of a population of 10 million in the affected area). Exploiting the administrative gap that the internment of the French had created, the Viet Minh in March 1945 urged the population to ransack rice warehouses and refuse to pay their taxes. Between 75 and 100 warehouses were consequently raided. This rebellion against the effects of the famine and the authorities that were partially responsible for it bolstered the Viet Minh's popularity and they recruited many members during this period. After their defeat in the war, the Japanese Army gave weapons to the Vietnamese. To further help the nationalists, the Japanese kept Vichy French officials and military officers imprisoned for a month after the surrender. The Việt Minh had recruited more than 600 Japanese soldiers and given them roles to train or command Vietnamese soldiers.

On 2 September 1945, Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the Viet Minh, declared the independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam before a crowd of 500,000 in Hanoi. When the British landed in the South, they rearmed the interned French forces as well as parts of the surrendered Japanese forces to aid them in retaking southern Vietnam as they did not have enough troops to do this themselves. In January 1946, the Viet Minh won elections across central and northern Vietnam. On March 6, 1946, Ho Chi Minh signed an agreement allowing French forces to replace Nationalist Chinese forces, in exchange for French recognition of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam as a "free" republic within the French Union, with the specifics of such recognition to be determined by future negotiation. The French landed in Hanoi by March 1946 and in November of that year they ousted the Viet Minh from the city. British forces departed on 26 March 1946, leaving Vietnam in the hands of the French. Soon thereafter the Viet Minh began a guerrilla war against the French Union forces, beginning the First Indochina War.

The war spread to Laos and Cambodia where Communists organized the Pathet Lao and the Khmer Serei after the model of the Viet Minh. Globally, the Cold War began in earnest, which meant that the rapprochement that existed between the Western powers and the Soviet Union during World War II disintegrated. The Viet Minh fight was hampered by a lack of weapons; this situation changed by 1949 when the Chinese Communists had largely won the Chinese Civil War and were free to provide arms to their Vietnamese allies. The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 convinced many Washington policymakers that the war in Indochina was an example of communist expansionism directed by the Kremlin.

PRC military advisors began assisting the Viet Minh in July 1950. PRC weapons, expertise, and laborers transformed the Viet Minh from a guerrilla force into a regular army. In September 1950, the United States created a Military Assistance and Advisory Group (MAAG) to screen French requests for aid, advise on strategy, and train Vietnamese soldiers. By 1954, the United States had supplied 300,000 small arms and spent US$1 billion in support of the French military effort and was shouldering 80 percent of the cost of the war.

There were also talks between the French and Americans in which the possible use of three tactical nuclear weapons was considered, though how seriously this was considered and by whom are even now vague and contradictory. One version of plan for the proposed Operation Vulture envisioned sending 60 B-29s from U.S. bases in the region, supported by as many as 150 fighters launched from U.S. Seventh Fleet carriers, to bomb Viet Minh commander Vo Nguyen Giap's positions. The plan included an option to use up to three atomic weapons on the Viet Minh positions. Admiral Arthur W. Radford, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave this nuclear option his backing. U.S. B-29s, B-36s, and B-47s could have executed a nuclear strike, as could carrier aircraft from the Seventh Fleet.

U.S. carriers sailed to the Gulf of Tonkin, and reconnaissance flights over Dien Bien Phu were conducted during the negotiations. According to Richard Nixon the plan involved the Joint Chiefs of Staff drawing up plans to use 3 small tactical nuclear weapons in support of the French. President Eisenhower made American participation contingent on British support, but London was opposed. In the end, convinced that the political risks outweighed the possible benefits, Eisenhower decided against the intervention.As an experienced five-star general, Eisenhower was very wary of getting the United States involved in a land war in Asia.

The Viet Minh received crucial support from the Soviet Union and PRC. PRC support in the Border Campaign of 1950 allowed supplies to come from PRC into Vietnam. Throughout the conflict, U.S. intelligence estimates remained skeptical of French chances of success.

The Battle of Dien Bien Phu marked the end of French involvement in Indochina. The Viet Minh and their mercurial commander Vo Nguyen Giap handed the French a stunning military defeat, and on 7 May 1954, the French Union garrison surrendered. Of the 12,000 French prisoners taken by the Viet Minh only 3000 survived. At the Geneva Conference the French negotiated a ceasefire agreement with the Viet Minh. Independence was granted to Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.

Transition period

Vietnam was temporarily partitioned at the 17th parallel, and under the terms of the Geneva Convention, civilians were to be given the opportunity to move freely between the two provisional states for a 300-day period. Elections throughout the country were to be held in 1956 to establish a unified government. Around one million northerners, mainly minority Catholics, fled south, fearing persecution by the communists, following an American propaganda campaign using slogans such as "The Virgin Mary is heading south", and aided by a U.S. funded $93 million relocation program, which included ferrying refugees with the Seventh Fleet. It is estimated that as many as two million more would have left had they not been stopped by the Viet Minh. The northern, mainly Catholic refugees were meant to give Diem a strong anti-communist constituency. Diem later went on to staff his administration's key posts mostly with northern and central Catholics.

In addition to the Catholics flowing south, up to 130,000 ‘Revolutionary Regroupees’, went north for "regroupment" expecting to return to the South within 2 years. The Viet Minh left roughly 5,000 to 10,000 cadres in South Vietnam as a "politico-military substructure within the object of its irredentism." The last French soldiers were to leave Vietnam in April 1956. The PRC completed their withdrawal from North Vietnam at around the same time. Around 52,000 Vietnamese civilians moved from south to north.

In the north, the Viet Minh ruled as the DRV and engaged in a drastic land reform program in which an estimated eight thousand perceived "class enemies" were executed. In 1956 the Communist Party leaders of Hanoi admitted to "excesses" in implementing this program and restored a large amount of the land to the original owners.

In the south, former Emperor Bảo Đại's State of Vietnam operated, with Ngô Đình Diệm (appointed in July 1954) as his prime minister. In June 1955, Diem announced that elections would not be held. South Vietnam had rejected the agreement from the beginning and was therefore not bound by it, he said. "How can we expect 'free elections' to be held in the Communist North?" Diem asked. President Dwight D. Eisenhower echoed senior U.S. experts when he wrote that, in 1954, "80 per cent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh" over Emperor Bảo Đại.

In April–June 1955, Diem (against U.S. advice) cleared the decks of any political opposition in the south by launching military operations against the Cao Dai religious sect, the Hoa Hao sect of Ba Cut, and the Binh Xuyen organized crime group (which was allied with members of the secret police and some military elements). As broad-based opposition to his harsh tactics mounted, Diem increasingly sought to blame the communists.

In a referendum on the future of the State of Vietnam on 23 October, Diem rigged the poll supervised by his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu and was credited with 98.2 percent of the vote, including 133% in Saigon. His American advisers had recommended a more modest winning margin of "60 to 70 percent." Diem, however, viewed the election as a test of authority. On 26 October 1955, Diem declared the new Republic of Vietnam (ROV), with himself as president. The ROV was created largely because of the Eisenhower administration's desire for an anti-communist state in the region.

Diem era, 1955–1963

The Domino theory, which argued that if one country fell to communist forces, then all of the surrounding countries would follow, was first proposed as policy by the Eisenhower administration. It was, and is still, commonly hypothesized that it applied to Vietnam. John F. Kennedy, then a U.S. senator, said in a speech to the American Friends of Vietnam: "Burma, Thailand, India, Japan, the Philippines and obviously Laos and Cambodia are among those whose security would be threatened if the Red Tide of Communism overflowed into Vietnam."

Rule

A devout Roman Catholic, Diem was fervently anti-communist, nationalist and socially conservative. Historian Luu Doan Huynh notes, however, that "Diem represented narrow and extremist nationalism coupled with autocracy and nepotism." As a wealthy Catholic, Diem was viewed by many ordinary Vietnamese as part of the elite who had helped the French rule Vietnam; Diem had been interior minister in the colonial government. The majority of Vietnamese people were Buddhist, and were alarmed by actions such as his dedication of the country to the Virgin Mary.

Beginning in the summer of 1955, he launched the "Denounce the Communists" campaign, during which communists and other anti-government elements were arrested, imprisoned, tortured, or executed. Diem instituted a policy of death penalty against any activity deemed communist in August 1956. Opponents were labeled Viet Cong ("Vietnamese communist") by the regime to degrade their nationalist credentials. As a measure of the level of political repression, about 12,000 suspected opponents of Diem were killed in the years 1955–1957 and by the end of 1958 an estimated 40,000 political prisoners had been jailed.

In May, 1957, Diem undertook a ten-day state visit to the United States. President Eisenhower pledged his continued support. A parade in New York City was held in his honor. Although Diem was openly praised, in private Secretary of State John Foster Dulles conceded that he had been selected because there were no better alternatives.

Robert McNamara wrote that the new American patrons were almost completely ignorant of Vietnamese culture. They knew little of the language or long history of the country. There was a tendency to assign American motives to Vietnamese actions, and Diem warned that it was an illusion to believe that blindly copying Western methods would solve Vietnamese problems.

Insurgency in the South, 1956–1960

The Sino-Soviet split led to a reduction in the influence of the PRC, which had insisted in 1954 that the Viet Minh accept a division of the country. Trường Chinh, North Vietnam's pro-PRC party first secretary, was demoted and Hanoi authorized communists in South Vietnam to begin a low level insurgency in December 1956. This insurgency in the south had begun in response to Diem's Denunciation of Communists campaign, in which thousands of local Viet Minh cadres and supporters had been executed or sent to concentration camps, and was in violation of the Northern Communist party line, which had enjoined them not to start an insurrection, but rather engage in a political campaign, agitating for a free all-Vietnam election in accordance with the Geneva accords.

Hồ Chí Minh stated, "Do not engage in military operations; that will lead to defeat. Do not take land from a peasant. Emphasize nationalism rather than communism. Do not antagonize anyone if you can avoid it. Be selective in your violence. If an assassination is necessary, use a knife, not a rifle or grenade. It is too easy to kill innocent bystanders with guns and bombs, and accidental killing of the innocent bystanders will alienate peasants from the revolution. Once an assassination has taken place, make sure peasants know why the killing occurred." This strategy was referred to as "armed propaganda."

Soon afterward, Lê Duẩn, a communist leader who had been working in the South, returned to Hanoi to accept the position of acting first secretary, effectively replacing Trường. Duẩn urged a military line and advocated increased assistance to the insurgency. Four hundred government officials were assassinated in 1957 alone, and the violence gradually increased. While the terror was originally aimed at local government officials, it soon broadened to include other symbols of the ''status quo'', such as schoolteachers, health workers, and agricultural officials. Village chiefs were Diem appointees from outside the villages and were hated by the peasantry for their corruption and abuse.) According to one estimate, 20 percent of South Vietnam's village chiefs had been assassinated by the insurgents by 1958. The insurgency sought to completely destroy government control in South Vietnam's rural villages and replace it with a shadow government.

In January 1959, the North's Central Committee issued a secret resolution authorizing an "armed struggle". This authorized the southern communists to begin large-scale operations against the South Vietnamese military. North Vietnam supplied troops and supplies in earnest, and the infiltration of men and weapons from the north began along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In May, South Vietnam enacted Law 10/59, which made political violence punishable by death and property confiscation.

Observing the increasing unpopularity of the Diem regime, on 12 December 1960, Hanoi authorized the creation of the National Liberation Front as a common front controlled by the communist party in the South.

Successive American administrations, as Robert McNamara and others have noted, overestimated the control that Hanoi had over the NLF. Diem's paranoia, repression, and incompetence progressively angered large segments of the population of South Vietnam. According to a November 1960 report by the head of the U.S. military advisory team, Lieutenant General Lionel C. McGarr, a "significant part" of the population in the south supported the communists. The communists thus had a degree of popular support for their campaign to bring down Diem and reunify the country.

During John F. Kennedy's administration, 1961–1963

When John F. Kennedy won the 1960 U.S. presidential election, one major issue Kennedy raised was whether the Soviet space and missile programs had surpassed those of the United States. As Kennedy took over, despite warnings from Eisenhower about Laos and Vietnam, Europe and Latin America "loomed larger than Asia on his sights." In his inaugural address, Kennedy made the ambitious pledge to "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty."

In June 1961, John F. Kennedy bitterly disagreed with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev when they met in Vienna over key U.S.-Soviet issues. The aftermath of the Korean War created the idea of a limited war.

Although Kennedy stressed long-range missile parity with the Soviets, he was also interested in using special forces for counterinsurgency warfare in Third World countries threatened by communist insurgencies. Although they were originally intended for use behind front lines after a conventional invasion of Europe, Kennedy believed that the guerrilla tactics employed by special forces such as the Green Berets would be effective in a "brush fire" war in Vietnam.

The Kennedy administration remained essentially committed to the Cold War foreign policy inherited from the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. In 1961, the U.S. had 50,000 troops based in Korea, and Kennedy faced a three-part crisis—the failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the construction of the Berlin Wall, and a negotiated settlement between the pro-Western government of Laos and the Pathet Lao communist movement. These made Kennedy believe that another failure on the part of the United States to gain control and stop communist expansion would fatally damage U.S. credibility with its allies and his own reputation. Kennedy determined to "draw a line in the sand" and prevent a communist victory in Vietnam, saying, "Now we have a problem making our power credible and Vietnam looks like the place", to James Reston of ''The New York Times'' immediately after meeting Khrushchev in Vienna.

In May 1961, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson visited Saigon and enthusiastically declared Diem the "Winston Churchill of Asia." Asked why he had made the comment, Johnson replied, "Diem's the only boy we got out there." Johnson assured Diem of more aid in molding a fighting force that could resist the communists.

Kennedy's policy toward South Vietnam rested on the assumption that Diem and his forces must ultimately defeat the guerrillas on their own. He was against the deployment of American combat troops and observed that "to introduce U.S. forces in large numbers there today, while it might have an initially favorable military impact, would almost certainly lead to adverse political and, in the long run, adverse military consequences."

The quality of the South Vietnamese military, however, remained poor. Bad leadership, corruption, and political promotions all played a part in emasculating the ARVN. The frequency of guerrilla attacks rose as the insurgency gathered steam. While Hanoi's support for the NLF played a role, South Vietnamese governmental incompetence was at the core of the crisis.

Kennedy advisers Maxwell Taylor and Walt Rostow recommended that U.S. troops be sent to South Vietnam disguised as flood relief workers. Kennedy rejected the idea but increased military assistance yet again. In April 1962, John Kenneth Galbraith warned Kennedy of the "danger we shall replace the French as a colonial force in the area and bleed as the French did." By 1963, there were 16,000 American military personnel in South Vietnam, up from Eisenhower's 900 advisors.

The Strategic Hamlet Program had been initiated in 1961. This joint U.S.-South Vietnamese program attempted to resettle the rural population into fortified camps. The aim was to isolate the population from the insurgents, provide education and health care, and strengthen the government's hold over the countryside. The Strategic Hamlets, however, were quickly infiltrated by the guerrillas. The peasants resented being uprooted from their ancestral villages. In part, this was because Colonel Pham Ngoc Thao, a Diem favourite who was instrumental in running the program, was in fact a communist agent who used his Catholicism to gain influential posts and damage the ROV from the inside.

The government refused to undertake land reform, which left farmers paying high rents to a few wealthy landlords. Corruption dogged the program and intensified opposition.

On 23 July 1962, fourteen nations, including the People's Republic of China, South Vietnam, the Soviet Union, North Vietnam and the United States, signed an agreement promising the neutrality of Laos.

Coup and assassinations

:''See also: Kennedy's role, 1960 South Vietnamese coup attempt, 1962 South Vietnamese Independence Palace bombing, Huế Phật Đản shootings and Xa Loi Pagoda raids'' The inept performance of the South Vietnamese army was exemplified by failed actions such as the Battle of Ap Bac on 2 January 1963, in which a small band of Viet Cong beat off a much larger and better equipped South Vietnamese force, many of whose officers seemed reluctant even to engage in combat. The ARVN were led in that battle by Diem's most trusted General Huynh Van Cao, commander of the IV Corps, and a Catholic who had been promoted due to religion and fidelity rather than skill, and whose main job was to preserve his forces to stave off coups; Cao had earlier vomited during a communist attack. Some policymakers in Washington began to conclude that Diem was incapable of defeating the communists and might even make a deal with Ho Chi Minh. He seemed concerned only with fending off coups, and had become more paranoid after attempts in 1960, 1962, which he partly attributed to U.S. encouragement. As Robert F. Kennedy noted, "Diem wouldn't make even the slightest concessions. He was difficult to reason with..."

Discontent with Diem's policies exploded following the Huế Phật Đản shootings of majority Buddhists who were protesting against the ban on the Buddhist flag on Vesak, the Buddha's birthday. This resulted in mass protests against discriminatory policies that gave privileges to the Catholic Church and its adherents. Diem's elder brother Ngo Dinh Thuc was the Archbishop of Huế and aggressively blurred the separation between church and state. Thuc's anniversary celebrations shortly before Vesak had been bankrolled by the government and Vatican flags were displayed prominently. There had also been reports of Buddhist pagodas being demolished by Catholic paramilitaries throughout Diem's rule. Diem refused to make concessions to the Buddhist majority or take responsibility for the deaths. On 21 August 1963, the ARVN Special Forces of Colonel Le Quang Tung, loyal to Diem's younger brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, raided pagodas across Vietnam, causing widespread damage and destruction and leaving a death toll estimated to range into the hundreds.

U.S. officials began discussing the possibility of a regime change during the middle of 1963. The United States Department of State was generally in favor of encouraging a coup, while the Defense Department favored Diem.

Chief among the proposed changes was the removal of Diem's younger brother Nhu, who controlled the secret police and special forces was seen as the man behind the Buddhist repression and more generally the architect of the Ngo family's rule. This proposal was conveyed to the U.S. embassy in Saigon in Cable 243.

The CIA was in contact with generals planning to remove Diem. They were told that the United States would not oppose such a move nor punish the generals by cutting off aid. President Diem was overthrown and executed, along with his brother, on 2 November 1963. When he was informed, Maxwell Taylor remembered that Kennedy "rushed from the room with a look of shock and dismay on his face." He had not approved Diem's murder. The U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge, invited the coup leaders to the embassy and congratulated them. Ambassador Lodge informed Kennedy that "the prospects now are for a shorter war".

Following the coup, chaos ensued. Hanoi took advantage of the situation and increased its support for the guerrillas. South Vietnam entered a period of extreme political instability, as one military government toppled another in quick succession. Increasingly, each new regime was viewed as a puppet of the Americans; whatever the failings of Diem, his credentials as a nationalist (as Robert McNamara later reflected) had been impeccable.

U.S military advisers were embedded at every level of the South Vietnamese armed forces. They were, however, almost completely ignorant of the political nature of the insurgency. The insurgency was a political power struggle, in which military engagements were not the main goal. The Kennedy administration sought to refocus U.S. efforts on pacification and "winning over the hearts and minds" of the population. The military leadership in Washington, however, was hostile to any role for U.S. advisers other than conventional troop training. General Paul Harkins, the commander of U.S. forces in South Vietnam, confidently predicted victory by Christmas 1963. The CIA was less optimistic, however, warning that "the Viet Cong by and large retain de facto control of much of the countryside and have steadily increased the overall intensity of the effort".

Paramilitary officers from the CIA's Special Activities Division trained and led Hmong tribesmen in Laos and into Vietnam. The indigenous forces numbered in the tens of thousands and they conducted direct action missions, led by paramilitary officers, against the Communist Pathet Lao forces and their North Vietnamese supporters. The CIA also ran the Phoenix Program and participation Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group (MAC-V SOG), which was originally named the Special Operations Group, but was changed for cover purposes.

Lyndon B. Johnson escalates the war, 1963–1969

Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ), as he took over the presidency after the death of Kennedy, initially did not consider Vietnam a priority and was more concerned with his "Great Society" and progressive social programs. Presidential aide Jack Valenti recalls, "Vietnam at the time was no bigger than a man's fist on the horizon. We hardly discussed it because it was not worth discussing."

On 24 November 1963, Johnson said, "the battle against communism... must be joined... with strength and determination." The pledge came at a time when Vietnam was deteriorating, especially in places like the Mekong Delta, because of the recent coup against Diem.

Johnson had reversed Kennedy's disengagement policy from Vietnam in withdrawing 1,000 troops by the end of 1963 (NSAM 263 on 11 Oct.), with his own NSAM 273 (26 Nov.) to expand the war.

The military revolutionary council, meeting in lieu of a strong South Vietnamese leader, was made up of 12 members headed by General Duong Van Minh—whom Stanley Karnow, a journalist on the ground, later recalled as "a model of lethargy." Lodge, frustrated by the end of the year, cabled home about Minh: "Will he be strong enough to get on top of things?" His regime was overthrown in January 1964 by General Nguyen Khanh. However, there was persistent instability in the military as several coups—not all successful—occurred in a short space of time. On 2 August 1964, the , on an intelligence mission along North Vietnam's coast, allegedly fired upon and damaged several torpedo boats that had been stalking it in the Gulf of Tonkin.

A second attack was reported two days later on the and ''Maddox'' in the same area. The circumstances of the attack were murky. Lyndon Johnson commented to Undersecretary of State George Ball that "those sailors out there may have been shooting at flying fish."

The second attack led to retaliatory air strikes, prompted Congress to approve the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and gave the president power to conduct military operations in Southeast Asia without declaring war. In the same month, Johnson pledged that he was not "... committing American boys to fighting a war that I think ought to be fought by the boys of Asia to help protect their own land."

An undated NSA publication declassified in 2005, however, revealed that there was no attack on 4 August. It had already been called into question long before this. "Gulf of Tonkin incident", writes Louise Gerdes, "is an oft-cited example of the way in which Johnson misled the American people to gain support for his foreign policy in Vietnam." George C. Herring argues, however, that McNamara and the Pentagon "did not knowingly lie about the alleged attacks, but they were obviously in a mood to retaliate and they seem to have selected from the evidence available to them those parts that confirmed what they wanted to believe."

"From a strength of approximately 5,000 at the start of 1959 the Viet Cong's ranks grew to about 100,000 at the end of 1964...Between 1961 and 1964 the Army's strength rose from about 850,000 to nearly a million men." The numbers for U.S. troops deployed to Vietnam during the same period were quite different; 2,000 in 1961, rising rapidly to 16,500 in 1964. The National Security Council recommended a three-stage escalation of the bombing of North Vietnam. On 2 March 1965, following an attack on a U.S. Marine barracks at Pleiku, Operation Flaming Dart (initiated when Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin was at a state visit to North Vietnam), Operation Rolling Thunder and Operation Arc Light commenced. The bombing campaign, which ultimately lasted three years, was intended to force North Vietnam to cease its support for the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF) by threatening to destroy North Vietnam's air defenses and industrial infrastructure. As well, it was aimed at bolstering the morale of the South Vietnamese. Between March 1965 and November 1968, "Rolling Thunder" deluged the north with a million tons of missiles, rockets and bombs.

Bombing was not restricted to North Vietnam. Other aerial campaigns, such as Operation Commando Hunt, targeted different parts of the NLF and VPA infrastructure. These included the Ho Chi Minh trail, which ran through Laos and Cambodia. The objective of forcing North Vietnam to stop its support for the NLF, however, was never reached. As one officer noted "this is a political war and it calls for discriminate killing. The best weapon... would be a knife... The worst is an airplane." The Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force Curtis LeMay, however, had long advocated saturation bombing in Vietnam and wrote of the Communists that "we're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age".

Escalation and ground war

After several attacks upon them, it was decided that U.S. Air Force bases needed more protection. The South Vietnamese military seemed incapable of providing security. On 8 March 1965, 3,500 U.S. Marines were dispatched to South Vietnam. This marked the beginning of the American ground war. U.S. public opinion overwhelmingly supported the deployment.

In a statement similar to that made to the French almost two decades earlier, Ho Chi Minh warned that if the Americans "want to make war for twenty years then we shall make war for twenty years. If they want to make peace, we shall make peace and invite them to afternoon tea." As former First Deputy Foreign Minister Tran Quang Co has noted, the primary goal of the war was to reunify Vietnam and secure its independence. The policy of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) was not to topple other non-communist governments in South East Asia.

The Marines' assignment was defensive. The initial deployment of 3,500 in March was increased to nearly 200,000 by December. The U.S. military had long been schooled in offensive warfare. Regardless of political policies, U.S. commanders were institutionally and psychologically unsuited to a defensive mission. In December, ARVN forces suffered heavy losses at the Battle of Bình Giã, in a battle that both sides viewed as a watershed. Previously communist forces had utilized hit-and-run guerrilla tactics, however at Binh Gia they had successfully defeated a strong ARVN force in conventional warfare. Tellingly, South Vietnamese forces were again defeated in June, at the Battle of Đồng Xoài.

Desertion rates were increasing, and morale plummeted. General William Westmoreland informed Admiral U.S. Grant Sharp, Jr., commander of U.S. Pacific forces, that the situation was critical. He said, "I am convinced that U.S. troops with their energy, mobility, and firepower can successfully take the fight to the NLF [National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam]." With this recommendation, Westmoreland was advocating an aggressive departure from America's defensive posture and the sidelining of the South Vietnamese. By ignoring ARVN units, the U.S. commitment became open-ended. Westmoreland outlined a three-point plan to win the war:

Phase 1. Commitment of U.S. (and other free world) forces necessary to halt the losing trend by the end of 1965.

Phase 2. U.S. and allied forces mount major offensive actions to seize the initiative to destroy guerrilla and organized enemy forces. This phase would end when the enemy had been worn down, thrown on the defensive, and driven back from major populated areas.

Phase 3. If the enemy persisted, a period of twelve to eighteen months following Phase 2 would be required for the final destruction of enemy forces remaining in remote base areas.

The plan was approved by Johnson and marked a profound departure from the previous administration's insistence that the government of South Vietnam was responsible for defeating the guerrillas. Westmoreland predicted victory by the end of 1967. Johnson did not, however, communicate this change in strategy to the media. Instead he emphasized continuity. The change in U.S. policy depended on matching the North Vietnamese and the NLF in a contest of attrition and morale. The opponents were locked in a cycle of escalation. The idea that the government of South Vietnam could manage its own affairs was shelved. The one-year tour of duty deprived units of experienced leadership. As one observer noted "we were not in Vietnam for 10 years, but for one year 10 times." As a result, training programs were shortened.

South Vietnam was inundated with manufactured goods. As Stanley Karnow writes, "the main PX [Post Exchange], located in the Saigon suburb of Cholon, was only slightly smaller than the New York Bloomingdale's..." The American buildup transformed the economy and had a profound impact on South Vietnamese society. A huge surge in corruption was witnessed.

Washington encouraged its SEATO allies to contribute troops. Australia, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Thailand, and the Philippines all agreed to send troops. Major allies, however, notably NATO nations Canada and the United Kingdom, declined Washington's troop requests. The U.S. and its allies mounted complex operations, such as operations Masher, Attleboro, Cedar Falls, and Junction City. However, the communist insurgents remained elusive and demonstrated great tactical flexibility.

Meanwhile, the political situation in South Vietnam began to stabilize with the coming to power of Prime Minister Air Marshal Nguyễn Cao Kỳ and figurehead Chief of State, General Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, in mid 1965 at the head of a military junta. This ended a series of coups that had happened more than once a year. In 1967, Thieu became president with Ky as his deputy, after rigged elections. Although they were nominally a civilian government, Ky was supposed to maintain real power through a behind-the-scenes military body. However, Thieu outmanoevred and sidelined Ky by filling the ranks with generals from his faction. Thieu was also accused of murdering Ky loyalists through contrived military accidents. Thieu, mistrustful and indecisive, remained president until 1975, having won a one-man election in 1971.

The Johnson administration employed a "policy of minimum candor" in its dealings with the media. Military information officers sought to manage media coverage by emphasizing stories that portrayed progress in the war. Over time, this policy damaged the public trust in official pronouncements. As the media's coverage of the war and that of the Pentagon diverged, a so-called credibility gap developed.

Tet Offensive

Having lured General Westmoreland's forces into the hinterland at Khe Sanh in Quảng Trị Province, in January 1968, the NVA and NLF broke the truce that had traditionally accompanied the Tết (Lunar New Year) holiday. They launched the surprise Tet Offensive in the hope of sparking a national uprising. Over 100 cities were attacked, with assaults on General Westmoreland's headquarters and the U.S. Embassy, Saigon.

Although the U.S. and South Vietnamese forces were initially taken aback by the scale of the urban offensive, they responded quickly and effectively, decimating the ranks of the NLF. In the former capital city of Huế, the combined NLF and VPA troops captured the Imperial Citadel and much of the city, which led to the Battle of Huế. Throughout the offensive, the American forces employed massive firepower; in Huế where the battle was the fiercest, that firepower left 80% of the city in ruins. During the interim between the capture of the Citadel and end of the "Battle of Huế", the communist insurgent occupying forces massacred several thousand unarmed Huế civilians (estimates vary up to a high of 6,000). After the war, North Vietnamese officials acknowledged that the Tet Offensive had, indeed, caused grave damage to NLF forces. But the offensive had another, unintended consequence.

General Westmoreland had become the public face of the war. He was featured on the cover of ''Time'' magazine three times and was named 1965's Man of the Year. ''Time'' described him as "the sinewy personification of the American fighting man... (who) directed the historic buildup, drew up the battle plans, and infused the... men under him with his own idealistic view of U.S. aims and responsibilities." In November 1967 Westmoreland spearheaded a public relations drive for the Johnson administration to bolster flagging public support. In a speech before the National Press Club he said that a point in the war had been reached "where the end comes into view." Thus, the public was shocked and confused when Westmoreland's predictions were trumped by Tet. The American media, which had been largely supportive of U.S. efforts, rounded on the Johnson administration for what had become an increasing credibility gap. Despite its military failure, the Tet Offensive became a political victory and ended the career of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who declined to run for re-election. Johnson's approval rating slumped from 48 to 36 percent.

As James Witz noted, Tet "contradicted the claims of progress... made by the Johnson administration and the military." The Tet Offensive was the turning point in America's involvement in the Vietnam War. It had a profound impact on domestic support for the conflict. The offensive constituted an intelligence failure on the scale of Pearl Harbor. Journalist Peter Arnett quoted an unnamed officer, saying of Bến Tre (laid to rubble by U.S. firepower) that "it became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it" (though the authenticity of this quote is disputed). According to one source, this quote was attributed to Major Booris of 9th Infantry Division.

Westmoreland became Chief of Staff of the Army in March, just as all resistance was finally subdued. The move was technically a promotion. However, his position had become untenable because of the offensive and because his request for 200,000 additional troops had been leaked to the media. Westmoreland was succeeded by his deputy Creighton Abrams, a commander less inclined to public media pronouncements.

On 10 May 1968, despite low expectations, peace talks began between the United States and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Negotiations stagnated for five months, until Johnson gave orders to halt the bombing of North Vietnam. The Democratic candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, was running against Republican former vice president Richard Nixon.

As historian Robert Dallek writes, "Lyndon Johnson's escalation of the war in Vietnam divided Americans into warring camps... cost 30,000 American lives by the time he left office, (and) destroyed Johnson's presidency..." His refusal to send more U.S. troops to Vietnam was seen as Johnson's admission that the war was lost. It can be seen that the refusal was a tacit admission that the war could not be won by escalation, at least not at a cost acceptable to the American people.

Vietnamization, 1969–1972

Nixon Doctrine / Vietnamization

Severe communist losses during the Tet Offensive allowed U.S. President Richard Nixon to begin troop withdrawals. His plan, called the Nixon Doctrine, was to build up the ARVN, so that they could take over the defense of South Vietnam. The policy became known as "Vietnamization". Vietnamization had much in common with the policies of the Kennedy administration. One important difference, however, remained. While Kennedy insisted that the South Vietnamese fight the war themselves, he attempted to limit the scope of the conflict.

Nixon said in an announcement, "I am tonight announcing plans for the withdrawal of an additional 150,000 American troops to be completed during the spring of next year. This will bring a total reduction of 265,500 men in our armed forces in Vietnam below the level that existed when we took office 15 months ago."

On 10 October 1969, Nixon ordered a squadron of 18 B-52s loaded with nuclear weapons to race to the border of Soviet airspace to convince the Soviet Union that he was capable of anything to end the Vietnam War.

Nixon also pursued negotiations. Theater commander Creighton Abrams shifted to smaller operations, aimed at communist logistics, with better use of firepower and more cooperation with the ARVN. Nixon also began to pursue détente with the Soviet Union and rapprochement with the People's Republic of China. This policy helped to decrease global tensions. Détente led to nuclear arms reduction on the part of both superpowers. But Nixon was disappointed that the PRC and the Soviet Union continued to supply the North Vietnamese with aid. In September 1969, Ho Chi Minh died at age seventy-nine.

The anti-war movement was gaining strength in the United States. Nixon appealed to the "silent majority" of Americans to support the war. But revelations of the My Lai Massacre, in which a U.S. Army platoon raped and killed civilians, and the 1969 "Green Beret Affair" where eight Special Forces soldiers, including the 5th Special Forces Group Commander were arrested for the murder of a suspected double agent provoked national and international outrage.

The civilian cost of the war was again questioned when U.S. forces concluded Operation Speedy Express with a claimed bodycount of 10,889 Communist guerillas with only 40 U.S. losses; Kevin Buckley writing in ''Newsweek'' estimated that perhaps 5,000 of the Vietnamese dead were civilians.

Beginning in 1970, American troops were being taken away from border areas where much more killing took place, and instead put along the coast and interior, which is one reason why casualties in 1970 were less than half of 1969's totals.

Operation Menu: the secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos

Prince Norodom Sihanouk had proclaimed Cambodia neutral since 1955, but the communists used Cambodian soil as a base and Sihanouk tolerated their presence, because he wished to avoid being drawn into a wider regional conflict. Under pressure from Washington, however, he changed this policy in 1969. The Vietnamese communists were no longer welcome. President Nixon took the opportunity to launch a massive secret bombing campaign, called Operation Menu, against their sanctuaries along the Cambodia/Vietnam border.

This violated a long succession of pronouncements from Washington supporting Cambodian neutrality. Richard Nixon wrote to Prince Sihanouk in April 1969 assuring him that the United States respected "the sovereignty, neutrality and territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Cambodia..." In 1970, Prince Sihanouk was deposed by his pro-American prime minister Lon Nol. The country's borders were closed, while U.S. forces and ARVN launched incursions into Cambodia to attack VPA/NLF bases and buy time for South Vietnam.

The invasion of Cambodia sparked nationwide U.S. protests. Four students were killed by National Guardsmen at Kent State University during a protest in Ohio, which provoked public outrage in the United States. The reaction to the incident by the Nixon administration was seen as callous and indifferent, providing additional impetus for the anti-war movement.

In 1971 the Pentagon Papers were leaked to ''The New York Times''. The top-secret history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, commissioned by the Department of Defense, detailed a long series of public deceptions. The Supreme Court ruled that its publication was legal.

The ARVN launched Operation Lam Son 719 in February 1971, aimed at cutting the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos. The ostensibly neutral Laos had long been the scene of a secret war. After meeting resistance, ARVN forces retreated in a confused rout. They fled along roads littered with their own dead. When they ran out of fuel, soldiers abandoned their vehicles and attempted to barge their way on to American helicopters sent to evacuate the wounded. Many ARVN soldiers clung to helicopter skids in a desperate attempt to save themselves. U.S. aircraft had to destroy abandoned equipment, including tanks, to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. Half of the invading ARVN troops were either captured or killed. The operation was a fiasco and represented a clear failure of Vietnamization. As Karnow noted "the blunders were monumental... The (South Vietnamese) government's top officers had been tutored by the Americans for ten or fifteen years, many at training schools in the United States, yet they had learned little."

In 1971 Australia and New Zealand withdrew their soldiers. The U.S. troop count was further reduced to 196,700, with a deadline to remove another 45,000 troops by February 1972. As peace protests spread across the United States, disillusionment and ill-discipline grew in the ranks.

Vietnamization was again tested by the Easter Offensive of 1972, a massive conventional invasion of South Vietnam. The VPA and NLF quickly overran the northern provinces and in coordination with other forces attacked from Cambodia, threatening to cut the country in half. U.S. troop withdrawals continued. But American airpower came to the rescue with Operation Linebacker, and the offensive was halted. However, it became clear that without American airpower South Vietnam could not survive. The last remaining American ground troops were withdrawn in August.

1972 election and Paris Peace Accords

thumb|left|Phan Thị Kim Phúc, center, running down a road near [[Trảng Bàng District|Trảng Bàng, Vietnam, on 8 June 1972, after a napalm bomb was dropped on the village of Trảng Bàng by a plane of the Vietnam Air Force Photo: Nick Ut / The Associated Press]]. The war was the central issue of the 1972 presidential election. Nixon's opponent, George McGovern, campaigned on a platform of withdrawal from Vietnam. Nixon's National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, continued secret negotiations with North Vietnam's Lê Ðức Thọ. In October 1972, they reached an agreement.

However, South Vietnamese President Thieu demanded massive changes to the peace accord. When North Vietnam went public with the agreement's details, the Nixon administration claimed that the North was attempting to embarrass the President. The negotiations became deadlocked. Hanoi demanded new changes.

To show his support for South Vietnam and force Hanoi back to the negotiating table, Nixon ordered Operation Linebacker II, a massive bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong 18–29 December 1972. The offensive destroyed much of the remaining economic and industrial capacity of North Vietnam. Simultaneously Nixon pressured Thieu to accept the terms of the agreement, threatening to conclude a bilateral peace deal and cut off American aid.

On 15 January 1973, Nixon announced the suspension of offensive action against North Vietnam. The Paris Peace Accords on "Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam" were signed on 27 January 1973, officially ending direct U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. A cease-fire was declared across North and South Vietnam. U.S. POWs were released. The agreement guaranteed the territorial integrity of Vietnam and, like the Geneva Conference of 1954, called for national elections in the North and South. The Paris Peace Accords stipulated a sixty-day period for the total withdrawal of U.S. forces. "This article", noted Peter Church, "proved... to be the only one of the Paris Agreements which was fully carried out."

Opposition to the Vietnam War: 1962–1975

Some advocates within the peace movement advocated a unilateral withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam. One reason given for the withdrawal is that it would contribute to a lessening of tensions in the region and thus less human bloodshed. Early opposition to U.S. involvement in Vietnam was centered around the Geneva conference of 1954. American support of Diem in refusing elections was thought to be thwarting the very democracy that America claimed to be supporting. John Kennedy, while Senator, opposed involvement in Vietnam.

Opposition to the Vietnam War tended to unite groups opposed to U.S. anti-communism, imperialism and colonialism and, for those involved with the New Left such as the Catholic Worker Movement, capitalism itself. Others, such as Stephen Spiro opposed the war based on the theory of Just War. Some wanted to show solidarity with the people of Vietnam, such as Norman Morrison emulating the actions of Thích Quảng Đức. Some critics of U.S. withdrawal predicted that it would not contribute to peace but rather vastly increase bloodshed. These critics advocated U.S. forces remain until all threats from the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army had been eliminated. Advocates of U.S. withdrawal were generally known as "doves", and they called their opponents "hawks", following nomenclature dating back to the War of 1812.

High-profile opposition to the Vietnam War turned to street protests in an effort to turn U.S. political opinion. On 15 October 1969, the Vietnam Moratorium attracted millions of Americans. The fatal shooting of four anti-war protesters at Kent State University led to nation-wide university protests. Riots broke out at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. After explosive news reports of American military abuses, such as the 1968 My Lai Massacre, brought new attention and support to the anti-war movement, some veterans joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Anti-war protests ended with the final withdrawal of troops after the Paris Peace Accords were signed in 1973. South Vietnam was left to defend itself alone when the fighting resumed. Many South Vietnamese subsequently fled to the United States.

Exit of the Americans: 1973–1975

The United States began drastically reducing their troop support in South Vietnam during the final years of "Vietnamization". Many U.S. troops were removed from the region, and on 5 March 1971, the United States returned the 5th Special Forces Group, which was the first American unit deployed to South Vietnam, to its former base in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. |group="A"}}

Under the Paris Peace Accords, between North Vietnamese Foreign Minister Lê Ðức Thọ and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and reluctantly signed by South Vietnamese President Thiệu, U.S. military forces withdrew from South Vietnam and prisoners were exchanged. North Vietnam was allowed to continue supplying communist troops in the South, but only to the extent of replacing materials that were consumed. Later that year the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Kissinger and Thọ, but the Vietnamese negotiator declined it saying that a true peace did not yet exist.

The communist leaders had expected that the ceasefire terms would favor their side. But Saigon, bolstered by a surge of U.S. aid received just before the ceasefire went into effect, began to roll back the Vietcong. The communists responded with a new strategy hammered out in a series of meetings in Hanoi in March 1973, according to the memoirs of Trần Văn Trà.

As the Vietcong's top commander, Trà participated in several of these meetings. With U.S. bombings suspended, work on the Ho Chi Minh Trail and other logistical structures could proceed unimpeded. Logistics would be upgraded until the North was in a position to launch a massive invasion of the South, projected for the 1975–76 dry season. Trà calculated that this date would be Hanoi's last opportunity to strike before Saigon's army could be fully trained. [[Image:93 us house membership.png|thumb|left|300px| {| style="background-color:transparent" ! align=center colspan=2 | In the 1972 Congressional Election, the majority of Americans voted for Democratic Congressmen. This map shows the House seats by party holding plurality in state |- | | |- | | |- | | |}]]

In the November 1972 Election, McGovern lost 49 of 50 states to Richard Nixon, who was re-elected U.S. president. Despite supporting Nixon over McGovern, many American voters split their tickets, returning a Democratic majority to both houses of Congress.

On 15 March 1973, U.S. President Richard Nixon implied that the United States would intervene militarily if the communist side violated the ceasefire. Public and congressional reaction to Nixon's trial balloon was unfavorable and in April Nixon appointed Graham Martin as U.S. ambassador to Vietnam. Martin was a second stringer compared to previous U.S. ambassadors and his appointment was an early signal that Washington had given up on Vietnam. During his confirmation hearings in June 1973, Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger stated that he would recommend resumption of U.S. bombing in North Vietnam if North Vietnam launched a major offensive against South Vietnam. On 4 June 1973, the U.S. Senate passed the Case-Church Amendment to prohibit such intervention.

The oil price shock of October 1973 caused significant damage to the South Vietnamese economy. The Vietcong resumed offensive operations when dry season began and by January 1974 it had recaptured the territory it lost during the previous dry season. After two clashes that left 55 South Vietnamese soldiers dead, President Thiệu announced on 4 January that the war had restarted and that the Paris Peace Accord was no longer in effect. There had been over 25,000 South Vietnamese casualties during the ceasefire period.

Gerald Ford took over as U.S. president on 9 August 1974 after President Nixon resigned due to the Watergate scandal. At this time, Congress cut financial aid to South Vietnam from $1 billion a year to $700 million. The U.S. midterm elections in 1974 brought in a new Congress dominated by Democrats who were even more determined to confront the president on the war. Congress immediately voted in restrictions on funding and military activities to be phased in through 1975 and to culminate in a total cutoff of funding in 1976.

The success of the 1973–74 dry season offensive inspired Trà to return to Hanoi in October 1974 and plead for a larger offensive in the next dry season. This time, Trà could travel on a drivable highway with regular fueling stops, a vast change from the days when the Ho Chi Minh Trail was a dangerous mountain trek. Giáp, the North Vietnamese defense minister, was reluctant to approve Trà's plan. A larger offensive might provoke a U.S. reaction and interfere with the big push planned for 1976. Trà appealed over Giáp's head to first secretary Lê Duẩn, who approved of the operation.

Trà's plan called for a limited offensive from Cambodia into Phuoc Long Province. The strike was designed to solve local logistical problems, gauge the reaction of South Vietnamese forces, and determine whether U.S. would return to the fray.

On 13 December 1974, North Vietnamese forces attacked Route 14 in Phuoc Long Province. Phuoc Binh, the provincial capital, fell on 6 January 1975. Ford desperately asked Congress for funds to assist and re-supply the South before it was overrun. Congress refused. The fall of Phuoc Binh and the lack of an American response left the South Vietnamese elite demoralized.

The speed of this success led the Politburo to reassess its strategy. It was decided that operations in the Central Highlands would be turned over to General Văn Tiến Dũng and that Pleiku should be seized, if possible. Before he left for the South, Dũng was addressed by Lê Duẩn: "Never have we had military and political conditions so perfect or a strategic advantage as great as we have now."

At the start of 1975, the South Vietnamese had three times as much artillery and twice the number of tanks and armoured cars as the opposition. They also had 1,400 aircraft and a two-to-one numerical superiority in combat troops over their Communist enemies. However, the rising oil prices meant that much of this could not be used. They faced a well-organized, highly determined and well-funded North Vietnam. Much of the North's material and financial support came from the communist bloc. Within South Vietnam, there was increasing chaos. Their abandonment by the American military had compromised an economy dependent on U.S. financial support and the presence of a large number of U.S. troops. South Vietnam suffered from the global recession that followed the Arab oil embargo.

Campaign 275

On 10 March 1975, General Dung launched Campaign 275, a limited offensive into the Central Highlands, supported by tanks and heavy artillery. The target was Buôn Ma Thuột, in Đắk Lắk Province. If the town could be taken, the provincial capital of Pleiku and the road to the coast would be exposed for a planned campaign in 1976. The ARVN proved incapable of resisting the onslaught, and its forces collapsed on 11 March. Once again, Hanoi was surprised by the speed of their success. Dung now urged the Politburo to allow him to seize Pleiku immediately and then turn his attention to Kon Tum. He argued that with two months of good weather remaining until the onset of the monsoon, it would be irresponsible to not take advantage of the situation.

President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, a former general, was fearful that his forces would be cut off in the north by the attacking communists; Thieu ordered a retreat. The president declared this to be a "lighten the top and keep the bottom" strategy. But in what appeared to be a repeat of Operation Lam Son 719, the withdrawal soon turned into a bloody rout. While the bulk of ARVN forces attempted to flee, isolated units fought desperately. ARVN General Phu abandoned Pleiku and Kon Tum and retreated toward the coast, in what became known as the "column of tears".

As the ARVN tried to disengage from the enemy, refugees mixed in with the line of retreat. The poor condition of roads and bridges, damaged by years of conflict and neglect, slowed Phu's column. As the North Vietnamese forces approached, panic set in. Often abandoned by the officers, the soldiers and civilians were shelled incessantly. The retreat degenerated into a desperate scramble for the coast. By 1 April the "column of tears" was all but annihilated.

On 20 March, Thieu reversed himself and ordered Huế, Vietnam's third-largest city, be held at all costs, and then changed his policy several times. Thieu's contradictory orders confused and demoralized his officer corps. As the North Vietnamese launched their attack, panic set in, and ARVN resistance withered. On 22 March, the VPA opened the siege of Huế. Civilians flooded the airport and the docks hoping for any mode of escape. Some even swam out to sea to reach boats and barges anchored offshore. In the confusion, routed ARVN soldiers fired on civilians to make way for their retreat.

On 25 March, after a three-day battle, Huế fell. As resistance in Huế collapsed, North Vietnamese rockets rained down on Da Nang and its airport. By 28 March, 35,000 VPA troops were poised to attack the suburbs. By 30 March 100,000 leaderless ARVN troops surrendered as the VPA marched victoriously through Da Nang. With the fall of the city, the defense of the Central Highlands and Northern provinces came to an end.

Final North Vietnamese offensive

With the northern half of the country under their control, the Politburo ordered General Dung to launch the final offensive against Saigon. The operational plan for the Ho Chi Minh Campaign called for the capture of Saigon before 1 May. Hanoi wished to avoid the coming monsoon and prevent any redeployment of ARVN forces defending the capital. Northern forces, their morale boosted by their recent victories, rolled on, taking Nha Trang, Cam Ranh, and Da Lat.

On 7 April, three North Vietnamese divisions attacked Xuan Loc, 40 miles (64 km) east of Saigon. The North Vietnamese met fierce resistance at Xuan Loc from the ARVN 18th Division, who were outnumbered six to one. For two bloody weeks, severe fighting raged as the ARVN defenders made a last stand to try to block the North Vietnamese advance. By 21 April, however, the exhausted garrison were ordered to withdraw towards Saigon.

An embittered and tearful President Thieu resigned on the same day, declaring that the United States had betrayed South Vietnam. In a scathing attack, he suggested U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had tricked him into signing the Paris peace agreement two years ago, promising military aid that failed to materialise. Having transferred power to Tran Van Huong, he left for Taiwan on 25 April. At the same time, North Vietnamese tanks had reached Bien Hoa and turned toward Saigon, brushing aside isolated ARVN units along the way.

By the end of April, the ARVN had collapsed on all fronts except in the Mekong Delta. Thousand of refugees streamed southward, ahead of the main communist onslaught. On 27 April 100,000 North Vietnamese troops encircled Saigon. The city was defended by about 30,000 ARVN troops. To hasten a collapse and foment panic, the VPA shelled the airport and forced its closure. With the air exit closed, large numbers of civilians found that they had no way out.

Fall of Saigon

Chaos, unrest, and panic broke out as hysterical South Vietnamese officials and civilians scrambled to leave Saigon. Martial law was declared. American helicopters began evacuating South Vietnamese, U.S., and foreign nationals from various parts of the city and from the U.S. embassy compound. Operation Frequent Wind had been delayed until the last possible moment, because of U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin's belief that Saigon could be held and that a political settlement could be reached.

Schlesinger announced early in the morning of 29 April 1975 the evacuation from Saigon by helicopter of the last U.S. diplomatic, military, and civilian personnel. Frequent Wind was arguably the largest helicopter evacuation in history. It began on 29 April, in an atmosphere of desperation, as hysterical crowds of Vietnamese vied for limited space. Martin pleaded with Washington to dispatch $700 million in emergency aid to bolster the regime and help it mobilize fresh military reserves. But American public opinion had soured on this conflict.

In the United States, South Vietnam was perceived as doomed. President Gerald Ford had given a televised speech on 23 April, declaring an end to the Vietnam War and all U.S. aid. Frequent Wind continued around the clock, as North Vietnamese tanks breached defenses on the outskirts of Saigon. In the early morning hours of 30 April, the last U.S. Marines evacuated the embassy by helicopter, as civilians swamped the perimeter and poured into the grounds. Many of them had been employed by the Americans and were left to their fate.

On 30 April 1975, VPA troops overcame all resistance, quickly capturing key buildings and installations. A tank crashed through the gates of the Independence Palace, and at 11:30 a.m. local time the NLF flag was raised above it. President Duong Van Minh, who had succeeded Huong two days earlier, surrendered. His surrender marked the end of 116 years of Vietnamese involvement in conflict either alongside or against various countries, primarily France, China, Japan, Britain, and America.

Other countries' involvement

Pro-Hanoi

People's Republic of China

In 1950, the People's Republic of China extended diplomatic recognition to the Viet Minh's Democratic Republic of Vietnam and sent weapons, as well as military advisors led by Luo Guibo to assist the Viet Minh in its war with the French. The first draft of the 1954 Geneva Accords was negotiated by French Prime Minister Pierre Mendès France and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai who, fearing U.S. intervention, urged the Viet Minh to accept a partition at the 17th parallel.

China's ability to aid the Viet Minh declined when Soviet aid to China was reduced following the end of the Korean War in 1953. Moreover, a divided Vietnam posed less of a threat to China. China provided material and technical support to the Vietnamese communists worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Chinese-supplied rice allowed North Vietnam to pull military-age men from the paddies and to impose a universal draft beginning in 1960.

In the summer of 1962, Mao Zedong agreed to supply Hanoi with 90,000 rifles and guns free of charge. Starting in 1965, China sent anti-aircraft units and engineering battalions to North Vietnam to repair the damage caused by American bombing, rebuild roads and railroads, and to perform other engineering works. This freed North Vietnamese army units for combat in the South.

Sino-Soviet relations soured after the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia in August 1968. In October, the Chinese demanded North Vietnam cut relations with Moscow, but Hanoi refused. The Chinese began to withdraw in November 1968 in preparation for a clash with the Soviets, which occurred at Zhenbao Island in March 1969. The Chinese also began financing the Khmer Rouge as a counterweight to the Vietnamese communists at this time. China's withdrawal from Vietnam was completed in July 1970.

The Khmer Rouge launched ferocious raids into Vietnam in 1975–1978. Vietnam responded with an invasion that toppled the Khmer Rouge. In response, China launched a brief, punitive invasion of Vietnam in 1979.

Soviet Union

Soviet ships in the South China Sea gave vital early warnings to NLF forces in South Vietnam. The Soviet intelligence ships would pick up American B-52 bombers flying from Okinawa and Guam. Their airspeed and direction would be noted and then relayed to COSVN headquarters. COSVN using airspeed and direction would calculate the bombing target and tell any assets to move "perpendicularly to the attack trajectory." These advance warning gave them time to move out of the way of the bombers and while the bombing runs caused extensive damage, because of the early warnings from 1968–1970 they did not kill a single military or civilian leader in the headquarter complexes.

The Soviet Union supplied North Vietnam with medical supplies, arms, tanks, planes, helicopters, artillery, anti-aircraft missiles and other military equipment. Soviet crews fired USSR-made surface-to-air missiles at the B-52 bombers, which were the first raiders shot down over Hanoi. Fewer than a dozen Soviet citizens lost their lives in this conflict. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian officials acknowledged that the Soviet Union had stationed up to 3,000 troops in Vietnam during the war.

Some Russian sources give more specific numbers: the hardware donated by the USSR included 2,000 tanks, 7,000 artillery guns, over 5,000 anti-aircraft guns, 158 surface-to-air rocket launchers. Over the course of the war the Soviet money donated to the Vietnamese cause was equal to 2 million dollars a day. From July 1965 to the end of 1974, fighting in Vietnam was attended by some 6,500 officers and generals, as well as more than 4,500 soldiers and sergeants of the Soviet Armed Forces. In addition, military schools and academies of the USSR began training Vietnamese soldiers — more than 10 thousand people.

North Korea

As a result of a decision of the Korean Workers' Party in October 1966, in early 1967 North Korea sent a fighter squadron to North Vietnam to back up the North Vietnamese 921st and 923rd fighter squadrons defending Hanoi. They stayed through 1968, and 200 pilots were reported to have served.

In addition, at least two anti-aircraft artillery regiments were sent as well. North Korea also sent weapons, ammunition and two million sets of uniforms to their comrades in North Vietnam. Kim Il-sung is reported to have told his pilots to "fight in the war as if the Vietnamese sky were their own".

Cuba

The extent of manpower contributions to North Vietnam by the communist Republic of Cuba, under Fidel Castro, is still a matter of debate. Then and since, the communist Vietnamese and Cuban governments have not divulged any information on this matter. There are numerous reports by former U.S. prisoners of war that Cuban military personnel were present at North Vietnamese prison facilities during the war, and that they participated in torture activities, in what is known as the "Cuba Program". Witnesses to this include Senator John McCain, 2008 U.S. Presidential candidate and former Vietnam prisoner of war, according to his 1999 book ''Faith of My Fathers''. That there was at least a small contingent of Cuban military advisors present in North Vietnam during the war is without question. Some, notably Vietnam War POW/MIA issue advocates, claim evidence that Cuba's military and non-military involvement may have run into the "thousands" of personnel.

Pro-Saigon

South Korea

On the anti-communist side, South Korea had the second-largest contingent of foreign troops in South Vietnam after the United States. In November 1961, Park Chung Hee proposed South Korean participation in the war to John F. Kennedy, but Kennedy disagreed. On May 1, 1964 Lyndon Johnson requested South Korean participation. The first South Korean troops began arriving in 1964 and large combat battalions began arriving a year later, with the South Koreans soon developing a reputation for effectiveness. Indeed arguably, they conducted counterinsurgency operations so well that American commanders felt that Korean area of responsibility was the safest.

Approximately 320,000 South Korean soldiers were sent to Vietnam, each serving a one year tour of duty. Maximum troop levels peaked at 50,000 in 1968, however all were withdrawn by 1973. About 5,000 South Koreans were killed and 11,000 were injured during the war. South Korea killed 41,000 Viet Congs. United States paid South Korean soldiers 235,560,000 dollars for their service in Vietnam, and South Korean GNP increased five times during the war.

Australia and New Zealand

Australia and New Zealand, close allies of the United States and members of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and the ANZUS military co-operation treaty, sent ground troops to Vietnam. Both nations had gained experience in counterinsurgency and jungle warfare during the Malayan Emergency and World War II. Their governments subscribed to the Domino theory. Australia began by sending advisors to Vietnam in 1962, and combat troops were committed in 1965. New Zealand began by sending a detachment of engineers and an artillery battery, and then started sending special forces and regular infantry which were attached to Australian formations. Australia's peak commitment was 7,672 combat troops and New Zealand's 552. More than 60,000 Australian personnel were involved during the course of the war, of which 521 were killed and more than 3,000 wounded. Approximately 3,000 New Zealanders served in Vietnam, losing 37 killed and 187 wounded. Most Australians and New Zealanders served in the 1st Australian Task Force in Phước Tuy province.

Philippines

Some 10,450 Filipino troops were dispatched to South Vietnam. They were primarily engaged in medical and other civilian pacification projects. These forces operated under the designation PHLCAG-V or Philippine Civic Action Group-Vietnam.

Thailand

Thai Army formations, including the "Queen's Cobra" battalion, saw action in South Vietnam between 1965 and 1971. Thai forces saw much more action in the covert war in Laos between 1964 and 1972, though Thai regular formations there were heavily outnumbered by the irregular "volunteers" of the CIA-sponsored Police Aerial Reconnaissance Units or PARU, who carried out reconnaissance activities on the western side of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Republic of China (Taiwan)

Since November 1967, the Republic of China (Taiwan) secretly operated a cargo transport detachment to assist the United States and the ROV.

Taiwan also provided military training units for the South Vietnamese diving units, later known as the Lien Doi Nguoi Nhai (LDMN) or ''Frogman unit'' in English. In addition to the diving trainers there were several hundred military personnel. Military commandos from Taiwan were captured by communist forces three times trying to infiltrate North Vietnam.

Canada and the ICC

Canada, India and Poland comprised the International Control Commission, which was supposed to monitor the 1954 ceasefire agreement. Officially, Canada did not have partisan involvement in the Vietnam War and diplomatically it was "non-belligerent". Victor Levant suggested otherwise in his book ''"Quiet Complicity: Canadian Involvement in the Vietnam War" (1986)''.

Women in Vietnam

American nurses

During the Vietnam War, women served on active duty doing a variety of jobs. Early in 1963, the Army Nurse Corps (ANC) launched Operation Nightingale, an intensive effort to recruit nurses to serve in Vietnam. Most nurses who volunteered to serve in Vietnam came from predominantly working or middle class families with histories of military service. The majority of these women were white Catholics and Protestants. Because the need for medical aid was great, many nurses underwent a concentrated four-month training program before being deployed to Vietnam in the ANC Due to the shortage of staff, nurses usually worked twelve-hour shifts, six days per week and often suffered from exhaustion. 1st Lieutenant Sharon Lane was the only female military nurse to be killed by enemy gunfire during the war. She died on June 8, 1969.

At the start of the Vietnam War, it was commonly thought that American women had no place in the military. Their traditional place had been in the domestic sphere, but with the war came opportunity for the expansion of gender roles. In Vietnam, women held a variety of jobs which included operating complex data processing equipment and serving as stenographers. Although a small number of women were assigned to combat zones, they were never allowed directly in the field of battle. The women who served in the military were solely volunteers. They faced a plethora of challenges, one of which was the relatively small number of female soldiers. Living in a male-dominated environment created tensions between the sexes. While this high male to female ratio was often uncomfortable for women, many men reported that having women in the field with them boosted their morale. Although this was not the women’s purpose, it was one positive result of the their service.

By 1973, approximately 7,500 women had served in Vietnam in the Southeast Asian theater. In that same year, the military lifted the prohibition on women entering the armed forces. However, women were gradually granted greater mobility within the military, and by the end of 1978, the Coast Guard removed all limitations on assignments based on sex. (334) However, it was not until 1993 that Congress allowed women to serve in combat units in the air force. Women in the army today are still prohibited from serving in combat positions.

American women serving in Vietnam were subject to societal stereotypes. Many Americans either considered female in Vietnam mannish for living under the army discipline, or judged them to be women of questionable moral character who enlisted for the sole purpose of seducing men. To address this problem, the ANC released advertisements portraying women in the ANC as “proper, professional and well protected.” (26) This effort to highlight the positive aspects of a nursing career reflected the ideas of second-wave feminism that occurred during the 1960s-1970s in the United States. Although female military nurses lived in a heavily male environment, very few cases of sexual harassment were ever reported. This does not mean that harassment never occurred; rather, there are few cases that have been officially documented by the military. In 2008, by contrast, approximately one-third of women in the military felt that they had been sexually harassed compared with one-third of men.

Vietnamese women

Unlike the American women who went to Vietnam, Vietnamese women fought in the combat zone as well as provided manual labor to keep the Ho Chi Minh Trail open; they also worked in the rice fields to provide food for their families and the war effort. Women were enlisted in both the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and the VietCong guerrilla force in South Vietnam.

Nguyen Thi Dinh was an example of a woman who had fought most of her adult life against foreign forces in her country. She was a member of the Vietminh fighting against the French and was imprisoned in the 1940s but on her release continued to fight and led a revolt in 1945 in Ben Tre and also in 1960 against Diems government. In the mid 1960s, she became a deputy commander of the Viet Cong, the highest ranking combat position held by a woman during the war.

Nguyen Thi Duc Hoan, who would later go on to be an actress-director, also joined the fight at a young age and would later become a guerrilla fighter against the Americans, at the time her own daughter was training in the militia.

Weapons

Communist forces were principally armed with Chinese and Soviet weaponry though some Viet Cong guerrilla units were equipped with Western infantry weapons either captured from French stocks during the first Indochina war or from ARVN units or requisitioned through illicit purchase. The ubiquitous Soviet AK-47 was widely regarded as the best assault rifle of the war and it was not uncommon to see U.S. special forces with captured AK-47s. The American M16, which replaced the M14, was considered more accurate and was lighter than the AK-47 but was prone to jamming. Oftentimes the gun suffered from a jamming flaw known as “failure to extract,” which meant that a spent cartridge case remained lodged in the chamber after a bullet flew out the muzzle. According to a congressional report, the jamming was caused primarily by a change in gunpowder which was done without adequate testing and reflected a decision for which the safety of soldiers was a secondary consideration. The heavily armored, 90mm M48A3 Patton tank tank saw extensive action during the Vietnam War and over 600 were deployed with US Forces. They played an important role in infantry support though there were few actual tank versus tank battles. The M67A1 flamethrower tank (nicknamed the Zippo) was an M48 variant used in Vietnam. Artillery was used extensively by both sides but the Americans were able to ferry the lightweight 105mm M102 howitzer by helicopter to remote locations on quick notice. With its range, the Soviet 130mm M-46 towed field gun was a highly regarded weapon and used to good effect by the NVA. It was countered by the long-range, American 175mm M107 Self-Propelled Gun. The United States had air superiority though many aircraft were lost to surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft artillery. U.S. air power was credited with breaking the siege of Khe Sanh and blunting the 1972 Communist offensive against South Vietnam. At sea, the U.S. Navy had the run of the coastline, using aircraft carriers as platforms for offshore strikes and other naval vessels for offshore artillery support. Offshore naval fire played a pivotal role in the Battle for the city of Hue, providing accurate fire in support of the U.S. counter-offensive to retake the city. The Vietnam War was the first conflict that saw wide scale tactical deployment of helicopters. The Bell UH-1 Iroquois was used extensively in counter-guerilla operations both as a troop carrier and a gunship. |- ! Infantry weapons | MAT-49, SKS, AK-47, RPK, RPD, DShK HMG, RPG-7, RPG-2, B-10 recoilless rifle and B-11 recoilless rifle || M14, M16, M79 grenade launcher, M60 machine gun, M2 Browning, LAW, M18 Claymore anti-personnel mines, TOW, and M40 recoilless rifle, L1A1 SLR (ADF), Owen Gun (ADF) |- ! Air-to-Air Missiles | Vympel K-13 || AIM-9 Sidewinder, AIM-7 Sparrow |- ! Air-to-Surface Missiles | || AGM-45 Shrike anti radiation missile, AGM-12 Bullpup, AGM-78 Standard ARM, AGM-62 Walleye, Zuni rocket |- ! Specialized weapons | IEDs || BLU-82 Daisy Cutter, Laser-guided bombs, Napalm |}

Aftermath

Events in Southeast Asia

Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, fell to followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, commonly known as the Khmer Rouge, on 17 April 1975. Over the next four years, the Khmer Rouge enacted a genocidal policy that killed over one-fifth of all Cambodians, or more than a million people. After repeated border clashes in 1978, Vietnam invaded Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) and ousted the Khmer Rouge in the Cambodian–Vietnamese War.

In response, China invaded Vietnam in 1979. The two countries fought a brief border war, known as the Third Indochina War or the Sino-Vietnamese War. From 1978 to 1979, some 450,000 ethnic Chinese left Vietnam by boat as refugees or were expelled across the land border with China.

The Pathet Lao overthrew the royalist government of Laos in December 1975. They established the Lao People's Democratic Republic. From 1975 to 1996, the United States resettled some 250,000 Lao refugees from Thailand, including 130,000 Hmong.

More than 3 million people fled from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, many as "boat people". Most Asian countries were unwilling to accept refugees. Since 1975, an estimated 1.4 million refugees from Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries have been resettled to the United States, while Canada, Australia, and France resettled over 500,000.

Effect on the United States

In the post-war era, Americans struggled to absorb the lessons of the military intervention. As General Maxwell Taylor, one of the principal architects of the war, noted "first, we didn't know ourselves. We thought that we were going into another Korean War, but this was a different country. Secondly, we didn't know our South Vietnamese allies... And we knew less about North Vietnam. Who was Ho Chi Minh? Nobody really knew. So, until we know the enemy and know our allies and know ourselves, we'd better keep out of this kind of dirty business. It's very dangerous."

Some have suggested that "the responsibility for the ultimate failure of this policy [America's withdrawal from Vietnam] lies not with the men who fought, but with those in Congress..." Alternatively, the official history of the United States Army noted that "tactics have often seemed to exist apart from larger issues, strategies, and objectives. Yet in Vietnam the Army experienced tactical success and strategic failure... The...Vietnam War...legacy may be the lesson that unique historical, political, cultural, and social factors always impinge on the military...Success rests not only on military progress but on correctly analyzing the nature of the particular conflict, understanding the enemy's strategy, and assessing the strengths and weaknesses of allies. A new humility and a new sophistication may form the best parts of a complex heritage left to the Army by the long, bitter war in Vietnam."

U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote in a secret memo to President Gerald Ford that "in terms of military tactics, we cannot help draw the conclusion that our armed forces are not suited to this kind of war. Even the Special Forces who had been designed for it could not prevail." Even Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara concluded that "the achievement of a military victory by U.S. forces in Vietnam was indeed a dangerous illusion."

Doubts surfaced as to the effectiveness of large-scale, sustained bombing. As Army Chief of Staff Harold Keith Johnson noted, "if anything came out of Vietnam, it was that air power couldn't do the job." Even General William Westmoreland admitted that the bombing had been ineffective. As he remarked, "I still doubt that the North Vietnamese would have relented."

The inability to bomb Hanoi to the bargaining table also illustrated another U.S. miscalculation. The North's leadership was composed of hardened communists who had been fighting for independence for thirty years. They had defeated the French, and their tenacity as both nationalists and communists was formidable. Ho Chi Minh is quoted as saying, "You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours...But even at these odds you will lose and I will win." The Vietnam War called into question the U.S. Army doctrine. Marine Corps General Victor H. Krulak heavily criticised Westmoreland's attrition strategy, calling it "wasteful of American lives... with small likelihood of a successful outcome." As well, doubts surfaced about the ability of the military to train foreign forces.

Between 1965 and 1975, the United States spent $111 billion on the war ($686 billion in FY2008 dollars). This resulted in a large federal budget deficit.

More than 3 million Americans served in the Vietnam War, some 1.5 million of whom actually saw combat in Vietnam. James E. Westheider wrote that "At the height of American involvement in 1968, for example, there were 543,000 American military personnel in Vietnam, but only 80,000 were considered combat troops." Conscription in the United States had been controlled by the President since World War II, but ended in 1973."

By war's end, 58,220 soldiers were killed, According to Dale Kueter, "Sixty-one percent of those killed were age 21 or younger. Of those killed in combat, 86.3 percent were white, 12.5 percent were black and the remainder from other races." Approximately 830,000 Vietnam veterans suffered symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder. An estimated 125,000 Americans fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam draft, and approximately 50,000 American servicemen deserted. In 1977, United States President Jimmy Carter granted a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all Vietnam-era Draft dodgers. The Vietnam War POW/MIA issue, concerning the fate of U.S. service personnel listed as missing in action, persisted for many years after the war's conclusion.

Chemical defoliation

One of the most controversial aspects of the U.S. military effort in Southeast Asia was the widespread use of chemical defoliants between 1961 and 1971. They were used to defoliate large parts of the countryside. These chemicals continue to change the landscape, cause diseases and birth defects, and poison the food chain.

Early in the American military effort it was decided that since the enemy were hiding their activities under triple-canopy jungle, a useful first step might be to defoliate certain areas. This was especially true of growth surrounding bases (both large and small) in what became known as Operation Ranch Hand. Corporations like Dow Chemical Company and Monsanto were given the task of developing herbicides for this purpose.

The defoliants, which were distributed in drums marked with color-coded bands, included the "Rainbow Herbicides"—Agent Pink, Agent Green, Agent Purple, Agent Blue, Agent White, and, most famously, Agent Orange, which included dioxin as a by-product of its manufacture. About 12 million gallons (45,000,000 L) of Agent Orange were sprayed over Southeast Asia during the American involvement. A prime area of Ranch Hand operations was in the Mekong Delta, where the U.S. Navy patrol boats were vulnerable to attack from the undergrowth at the water's edge.

In 1961 and 1962, the Kennedy administration authorized the use of chemicals to destroy rice crops. Between 1961 and 1967, the U.S. Air Force sprayed 20 million U.S. gallons (75,700,000 L) of concentrated herbicides over 6 million acres (24,000 km²) of crops and trees, affecting an estimated 13% of South Vietnam's land. In 1965, 42% of all herbicide was sprayed over food crops. Another purpose of herbicide use was to drive civilian populations into RVN-controlled areas.

As of 2006, the Vietnamese government estimates that there are over 4,000,000 victims of dioxin poisoning in Vietnam, although the United States government denies any conclusive scientific links between Agent Orange and the Vietnamese victims of dioxin poisoning. In some areas of southern Vietnam dioxin levels remain at over 100 times the accepted international standard.

The U.S. Veterans Administration has listed prostate cancer, respiratory cancers, multiple myeloma, Diabetes mellitus type 2, B-cell lymphomas, soft-tissue sarcoma, chloracne, porphyria cutanea tarda, peripheral neuropathy, and spina bifida in children of veterans exposed to Agent Orange. Although there has been much discussion over whether the use of these defoliants constituted a violation of the laws of war, the defoliants were not considered weapons, since exposure to them did not lead to immediate death or incapacitation.

Casualties

The number of military and civilian deaths from 1955 to 1975 is debated. Some reports fail to include the members of South Vietnamese forces killed in the final campaign, or the Royal Lao Armed Forces, thousands of Laotian and Thai irregulars, or Laotian civilians who all perished in the conflict. They do not include the tens of thousands of Cambodians killed during the civil war or the estimated one and one-half to two million that perished in the genocide that followed Khmer Rouge victory, or the fate of Laotian Royals and civilians after the Pathet Lao assumed complete power in Laos.

In 1995, the Vietnamese government reported that its military forces, including the NLF, suffered 1.1 million dead and 600,000 wounded during Hanoi's conflict with the United States. Civilian deaths were put at two million in the North and South, and economic reparations were demanded. Hanoi concealed the figures during the war to avoid demoralizing the population. Estimates of civilian deaths caused by American bombing in Operation Rolling Thunder range from 52,000 to 182,000. The U.S. military has estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died in the war.

Popular culture

The Vietnam War has been featured heavily in television, film, video games, and literature in the participant countries. The war also influenced a generation of musicians and songwriters in Vietnam and the United States, both anti-war and pro/anti-communist. The band Country Joe and the Fish recorded "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag" / The "Fish" Cheer in 1965, and it became one of the most influential anti-Vietnam protest anthems.

Trinh Cong Son was a South Vietnamese songwriter famous for his anti-war songs.

See also

Regional:

Cambodian Civil War

Indochina Wars

Laotian Civil War

Mayaguez Incident

North Vietnamese invasion of Laos

General:

History of Cambodia

History of Laos

List of conflicts in Asia

Annotations

Notes

References

Secondary sources

Anderson, David L. ''Columbia Guide to the Vietnam War'' (2004).

Baker, Kevin. "Stabbed in the Back! The past and future of a right-wing myth", ''Harper's Magazine'' (June 2006)

Angio, Joe. ''Nixon a Presidency Revealed'' (2007) The History Channel television documentary

Berman, Larry. ''Lyndon Johnson's War: The Road to Stalemate'' (1991).

Blaufarb, Douglas. ''The Counterinsurgency Era'' (1977) a history of the Kennedy Administration's involvement in South Vietnam.

Brigham, Robert K. ''Battlefield Vietnam: A Brief History'' a PBS interactive website

Buckley, Kevin. "Pacification’s Deadly Price", ''Newsweek'', 19 June 1972. Buzzanco, Bob. "25 Years After End of Vietnam War: Myths Keep Us From Coming To Terms With Vietnam", ''The Baltimore Sun'' (17 April 2000)

Church, Peter ed. ''A Short History of South-East Asia'' (2006).

Cooper, Chester L. ''The Lost Crusade: America in Vietnam'' (1970) a Washington insider's memoir of events.

Demma, Vincent H. "The U.S. Army in Vietnam." ''American Military History'' (1989) the official history of the United States Army. Available online

Duiker, William J. ''The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam'' (1996).

Duncanson, Dennis J. ''Government and Revolution in Vietnam'' (1968).

Fincher, Ernest Barksdale, ''The Vietnam War'' (1980).

Ford, Harold P. ''CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers: Three Episodes, 1962–1968.'' (1998).

Gerdes, Louise I. ed. ''Examining Issues Through Political Cartoons: The Vietnam War'' (2005).

Gettleman, Marvin E.; Franklin, Jane; Young, Marilyn ''Vietnam and America: A Documented History.'' (1995).

Hammond, William. ''Public Affairs: The Military and the Media, 1962–1968'' (1987); ''Public Affairs: The Military and the Media, 1068–1973'' (1995). full-scale history of the war by U.S. Army; much broader than title suggests.

Herring, George C''. America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975'' (4th ed 2001), most widely used short history.

Hitchens, Christopher. ''The Vietnam Syndrome''.

; popular history by a former foreign correspondent; strong on Saigon's plans.

Kutler, Stanley ed. ''Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War'' (1996).

Leepson, Marc ed. ''Dictionary of the Vietnam War'' (1999) New York: Webster's New World.

Lewy, Guenter. ''America in Vietnam'' (1978), defends U.S. actions.

Logevall, Fredrik. ''The Origins of the Vietnam War'' (Longman [Seminar Studies in History] 2001).

McMahon, Robert J. ''Major Problems in the History of the Vietnam War: Documents and Essays'' (1995) textbook.

McNamara, Robert, James Blight, Robert Brigham, Thomas Biersteker, Herbert Schandler, ''Argument Without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy'', (Public Affairs, 1999).

Milne, David. ''America's Rasputin: Walt Rostow and the Vietnam War'' (Hill & Wang, 2008).

Moise, Edwin E. ''Historical Dictionary of the Vietnam War'' (2002).

Moss, George D. ''Vietnam'' (4th ed 2002) textbook.

Moyar, Mark. ''Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965'', (Cambridge University Press; 412 pages; 2006). A revisionist history that challenges the notion that U.S. involvement in Vietnam was misguided; defends the validity of the domino theory and disputes the notion that Ho Chi Minh was, at heart, a nationalist who would eventually turn against his Communist Chinese allies.

Major General Spurgeon Neel. ''Medical Support of the U.S. Army in Vietnam 1965–1970'' (Department of the Army 1991) official medical history

Nulty, Bernard.''The Vietnam War'' (1998) New York: Barnes and Noble.

Palmer, Bruce, Jr. ''The Twenty-Five Year War'' (1984), narrative military history by a senior U.S. general.

Schell, Jonathan. ''The Time of Illusion'' (1976).

Schulzinger, Robert D. ''A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941–1975'' (1997).

Sorley, Lewis, ''A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam'' (1999), based upon still classified tape-recorded meetings of top level US commanders in Vietnam, ISBN 0-15-601309-6

Spector, Ronald. ''After Tet: The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam'' (1992), very broad coverage of 1968.

Summers, Harry G. ''On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War'', Presidio press (1982), ISBN 0-89141-563-7 (225 pages)

Tucker, Spencer. ed. ''Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War'' (1998) 3 vol. reference set; also one-volume abridgement (2001).

Witz, James J. ''The Tet Offensive: Intelligence Failure in War'' (1991).

Young, Marilyn, B. ''The Vietnam Wars: 1945–1990.'' (1991).

Xiaoming, Zhang. "China's 1979 War With Vietnam: A Reassessment", ''China Quarterly.'' Issue no. 184, (December 2005)

Primary sources

Carter, Jimmy. ''By The President Of The United States Of America, A Proclamation Granting Pardon For Violations Of The Selective Service Act, 4 August 1964 To 28 March 1973'' (21 January 1977)

Central Intelligence Agency. "Laos", ''CIA World Factbook''

Kolko, Gabriel The End of the Vietnam War, 30 Years Later

Eisenhower, Dwight D. ''Mandate for Change.'' (1963) a presidential political memoir

Ho, Chi Minh. "Vietnam Declaration of Independence", ''Selected Works.'' (1960–1962) selected writings

LeMay, General Curtis E. and Kantor, MacKinlay. ''Mission with LeMay'' (1965) autobiography of controversial former Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force

Kissinger, United States Secretary of State Henry A. "Lessons on Vietnam", (1975) secret memoranda to U.S. President Ford

Kim A. O'Connell, ed. ''Primary Source Accounts of the Vietnam War'' (2006)

McCain, John. ''Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir'' (1999) *Marshall, Kathryn. ''In the Combat Zone: An Oral History of American Women in Vietnam, 1966–1975'' (1987)

Martin, John Bartlow. ''Was Kennedy Planning to Pull out of Vietnam?'' (1964) oral history for the John F. Kennedy Library, tape V, reel 1.

Myers, Thomas. ''Walking Point: American Narratives of Vietnam'' (1988)

''Public Papers of the Presidents, 1965'' (1966) official documents of U.S. presidents.

Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr. ''Robert Kennedy and His Times.'' (1978) a first-hand account of the Kennedy administration by one of his principal advisors

Sinhanouk, Prince Norodom. "Cambodia Neutral: The Dictates of Necessity." ''Foreign Affairs.'' (1958) describes the geopolitical situation of Cambodia

Tang, Truong Nhu. ''A Vietcong Memoir'' (1985), revealing account by senior NLF official

Terry, Wallace, ed. ''Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans'' (1984)

- Total pages: 350

The landmark series Vietnam: A Television History, first broadcast in 1983, is a special presentation of the award-winning PBS history series, American Experience.

''The Pentagon Papers'' (Gravel ed. 5 vol 1971); combination of narrative and secret documents compiled by Pentagon. excerpts

U.S. Department of State. ''Foreign Relations of the United States'' (multivolume collection of official secret documents) vol 1: 1964; vol 2: 1965; vol 3: 1965; vol 4: 1966;

U.S. Department of Defense and the House Committee on Armed Services. ''U.S.-Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967.'' Washington, D.C. Department of Defense and the House Committee on Armed Services, 1971, 12 volumes.

Vann, John Paul ''Quotes from Answers.com'' Lt. Colonel, U.S. Army, DFC, DSC, advisor to the ARVN 7th Division, early critic of the conduct of the war.

Historiography

Hall, Simon, “Scholarly Battles over the Vietnam War,” ''Historical Journal'' 52 (Sept. 2009), 813–29.

External links

American Ethnography – On collecting engraved Zippos from the Vietnam War

Battlefield Vietnam PBS interactive site

Casualties – U.S. vs NVA/VC

Complete text of the Gravel Edition of the Pentagon Papers with supporting documents, maps, and photos

Documents Relating to American Foreign Policy-Vietnam primary sources on U.S. involvement

The Effects of Vietnamization on the Republic of Vietnam's Armed Forces, 1969–1972

Glossary of Military Terms & Slang from the Vietnam War

History of US Interventions, by Derek, Mitchell

Impressions of Vietnam and descriptions of the daily life of a soldier from the oral history of Elliott Gardner, U.S. Army

Sober thoughts on 30 April : The South Vietnam Liberation Front and Hanoi, Myth and Reality Speech by the former Minister of Information of the Republic of Vietnam.

Stephen H. Warner Southeast Asia Photograph Collection at Gettysburg College

Timeline US – Vietnam (1947–2001) in Open-Content project

The U.S. Army in Vietnam the official history of the United States Army

UC Berkeley Library Social Activism Sound Recording Project: Anti-Vietnam War Protests

Vietnam Casualties database searchable by first name, last name and location

Vietnam War Bibliography covers online and published resources

The Vietnam War at The History Channel

Vietnam war timeline comprehensive timeline of the Vietnam War

Virtual Vietnam Archive – Texas Tech University

War, propaganda, and the media: Vietnam

Category:Cambodian Civil War Category:Cold War Category:History of Vietnam Category:Laotian Civil War Category:Military history of the United States Category:Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower Category:Presidency of Gerald Ford Category:Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson Category:Presidency of John F. Kennedy Category:Presidency of Richard Nixon Category:Revolution-based civil wars * * Category:Wars involving Australia Category:Wars involving Cambodia Category:Wars involving Canada Category:Wars involving Germany Category:Wars involving Laos Category:Wars involving New Zealand Category:Wars involving Nicaragua Category:Wars involving North Korea Category:Wars involving the People's Republic of China Category:Wars involving the Philippines Category:Wars involving South Korea Category:Wars involving the Soviet Union Category:Wars involving Spain Category:Wars involving Thailand Category:Wars involving Vietnam

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Name	Jimmy Carter
Office	39th President of the United States
Vicepresident	Walter Mondale
Term start	January 20, 1977
Term end	January 20, 1981
Predecessor	Gerald Ford
Successor	Ronald Reagan
Order2	76th Governor of Georgia
Lieutenant2	Lester Maddox
Term start2	January 12, 1971
Term end2	January 14, 1975
Predecessor2	Lester Maddox
Successor2	George Busbee
Office3	Georgia State Senatorfrom the 14th District
Term start3	January 14, 1963
Term end3	January 10, 1967
Predecessor3	Constituency established
Successor3	Hugh Carter
Constituency3	Sumter County
Birth date	October 01, 1924
Birth place	Plains, Georgia, U.S.
Party	Democratic Party
Spouse	Rosalynn Smith (1946–present)
Children	JackJamesDonnelAmy
Alma mater	Georgia Southwestern State UniversityGeorgia Institute of TechnologyUnited States Naval Academy
Profession	FarmerOfficer
Religion	Baptist
Signature	Jimmy Carter Signature-2.svg
Signature alt	Cursive signature in ink
Branch	United States Navy
Serviceyears	1946–1953
Rank	Lieutenant
Awards	Nobel Peace Prize }}

James "Jimmy" Earl Carter, Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States (1977–1981) and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office. Before he became President, Carter served two terms as a Georgia State Senator and one as Governor of Georgia (1971–1975), and was a peanut farmer and naval officer.

As President, Carter created two new cabinet-level departments: the Department of Energy and the Department of Education. He established a national energy policy that included conservation, price control, and new technology. In foreign affairs, Carter pursued the Camp David Accords, the Panama Canal Treaties, the second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II), and returned the Panama Canal Zone to Panama.

Throughout his career, Carter strongly emphasized human rights. He took office during a period of international stagflation, which persisted throughout his term. The end of his presidential tenure was marked by the 1979–1981 Iran hostage crisis, the 1979 energy crisis, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (at the end of 1979), and the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.

By 1980, Carter's popularity had eroded. He survived a primary challenge against Ted Kennedy for the Democratic Party nomination in the 1980 election, but lost the election to Republican candidate Ronald Reagan. On January 20, 1981, minutes after Carter's term in office ended, the 52 U.S. captives held at the U.S. embassy in Iran were released, ending the 444-day Iran hostage crisis.

After leaving office, Carter and his wife Rosalynn founded the Carter Center in 1982, a nongovernmental, not-for-profit organization that works to advance human rights. He has traveled extensively to conduct peace negotiations, observe elections, and advance disease prevention and eradication in developing nations. Carter is a key figure in the Habitat for Humanity project, and also remains particularly vocal on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Early life

James Earl Carter, Jr., was born on October 1, 1924, in the tiny southwest Georgia city of Plains, near Americus. The first president born in a hospital, he is the eldest of four children of James Earl Carter and Bessie Lillian Gordy. Carter's father was a prominent business owner in the community and his mother was a registered nurse.

The Carter family had come from southern England (Carter's paternal ancestor arrived in the American Colonies in 1635), and had lived in the state of Georgia for several generations. Carter has documented ancestors who fought in the American Revolution, and he is a member of the Sons of the American Revolution. Carter's great-grandfather, Private L.B. Walker Carter (1832–1874), served in the Confederate States Army.

Carter was a gifted student from an early age who always had a fondness for reading. By the time he attended Plains High School, he was also a star in basketball. He was greatly influenced by one of his high school teachers, Julia Coleman (1889–1973). While he was in high school he was in the Future Farmers of America, which later changed its name to the National FFA Organization, serving as the Plains FFA Chapter Secretary.

After high school, Carter enrolled at Georgia Southwestern College, in Americus. Later, he applied to the United States Naval Academy and, after taking additional mathematics courses at Georgia Tech, he was admitted in 1943. Carter graduated 59th out of 820 midshipmen at the Naval Academy.

Carter had three younger siblings: sisters Gloria Carter Spann (1926–1990) and Ruth Carter Stapleton (1929–1983), and brother William Alton "Billy" Carter (1937–1988). During Carter's Presidency, Billy was often in the news, usually in an unflattering light.

He married Rosalynn Smith in 1946. They have four children: John William "Jack" Carter (born 1947); James Earl "Chip" Carter III (born 1950); Donnel Jeffrey "Jeff" Carter, (born 1952) and Amy Lynn Carter (born 1967).

He is a first cousin of politician Hugh Carter and a distant cousin of Motown founder Berry Gordy Jr. on his mother's side, and a cousin of June Carter Cash.

Naval career

Carter served on surface ships and on diesel-electric submarines in the Atlantic and Pacific fleets. As a junior officer, he completed qualification for command of a diesel-electric submarine. He applied for the US Navy's fledgling nuclear submarine program run by then Captain Hyman G. Rickover. Rickover's demands on his men and machines were legendary, and Carter later said that, next to his parents, Rickover had the greatest influence on him. Carter has said that he loved the Navy, and had planned to make it his career. His ultimate goal was to become Chief of Naval Operations. Carter felt the best route for promotion was with submarine duty since he felt that nuclear power would be increasingly used in submarines. Carter was based in Schenectady, New York, and working on the nuclear propulsion system for prototype of a new submarine.

On December 12, 1952, an accident with the experimental NRX reactor at Atomic Energy of Canada’s Chalk River Laboratories caused a partial meltdown. The resulting explosion caused millions of liters of radioactive water to flood the reactor building’s basement, and the reactor’s core was no longer usable. He was now ordered to Chalk River, joining other Canadian and American service personnel. Carter was the officer in charge of the U.S. team assisting in the shutdown of the Chalk River Nuclear Reactor.

Once they arrived, Carter's team used a model of the reactor to practice the steps necessary to disassemble the reactor and seal it off. During execution of the actual disassembly each team member, including Carter, donned protective gear, was lowered individually into the reactor, stayed for only a few seconds at a time to minimize exposure to radiation, and used hand tools to loosen bolts, remove nuts and take the other steps necessary to complete the disassembly process.

During and after his presidency Carter indicated that his experience at Chalk River shaped his views on nuclear power and nuclear weapons, including his decision not to pursue completion of the neutron bomb.

Upon the death of his father James Earl Carter, Sr., in July 1953, he was urgently needed to run the family business. Lieutenant Carter resigned his commission, and he was discharged from the Navy on October 9, 1953.

Farming and prayer

Carter took over and expanded his family business in Plains. His farming business was successful, and during the 1970 gubernatorial campaign, he was considered a wealthy peanut farmer.

From a young age, Carter showed a deep commitment to Christianity, serving as a Sunday School teacher throughout his life. Even as President, Carter prayed several times a day, and professed that Jesus Christ was the driving force in his life. Carter had been greatly influenced by a sermon he had heard as a young man, called, "If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?"

Early political career

State Senate

Jimmy Carter started his career by serving on various local boards, governing such entities as the schools, hospitals, and libraries, among others. In the 1960s, he served two terms in the Georgia Senate from the fourteenth district of Georgia.

His 1961 election to the state Senate, which followed the end of Georgia's County Unit System (per the Supreme Court case of ''Gray v. Sanders''), was chronicled in his book ''Turning Point: A Candidate, a State, and a Nation Come of Age''. The election involved corruption led by Joe Hurst, the sheriff of Quitman County; system abuses included votes from deceased persons and tallies filled with people who supposedly voted in alphabetical order. It took a challenge of the fraudulent results for Carter to win the election. Carter was reelected in 1964, to serve a second two-year term.

For a time in State Senate he chaired its Education Committee.

In 1966, Carter declined running for re-election as a state senator to pursue a gubernatorial run. His first cousin, Hugh Carter, was elected as a Democrat and took over his seat in the Senate.

Campaigns for Governor

In 1966, during the end of his career as a state senator, he flirted with the idea of running for the United States House of Representatives. His Republican opponent, Howard Callaway, dropped out and decided to run for Governor of Georgia. Carter did not want to see a Republican Governor of his state, and, in turn, dropped out of the race for Congress and joined the race to become Governor. Carter lost the Democratic primary, but drew enough votes as a third place candidate to force the favorite, liberal former governor Ellis Arnall, into a runoff election, setting off a chain of events which resulted in the nomination of segregationist Democrat Lester Maddox. Maddox would go on to be selected governor of Georgia by the Georgia General Assembly despite finishing a close second in a three-way general election race between Maddox, Callaway, and Arnall, who ran as a write-in candidate. During the primary Carter ran as a moderate alternative to both liberal Arnall and conservative Maddox. Although he lost, his strong third place finish was viewed as a success for a little-known state senator.

For the next four years, Carter returned to his agriculture business and carefully planned for his next campaign for Governor in 1970, making over 1,800 speeches throughout the state.

During his 1970 campaign, he ran an uphill populist campaign in the Democratic primary against former Governor Carl Sanders, labeling his opponent "Cufflinks Carl". Carter was never a segregationist, and refused to join the segregationist White Citizens' Council, prompting a boycott of his peanut warehouse. His family was also one of only two that voted to admit blacks to the Plains Baptist Church.

"Carter himself was not a segregationist in 1970. But he did say things that the segregationists wanted to hear. He was opposed to busing. He was in favor of private schools. He said that he would invite segregationist governor George Wallace to come to Georgia to give a speech.", according to historian E. Stanly Godbold.

After his election, Carter would make a statement that would displease the segregationists: "I say to you quite frankly, that the time for racial discrimination is over. No poor, rural, weak, or black person should ever have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity of an education, a job, or simple justice."

Leroy Johnson, Georgia State Senator reflected: "We were extremely pleased. Many of the white segregationists were displeased. And I'm convinced that those people that supported him, would not have supported him if they had thought that he would have made that statement."

Carter's campaign aides handed out a photograph of his opponent celebrating with black basketball players. Following his close victory over Sanders in the primary, he was elected Governor over Republican Hal Suit.

Governor of Georgia

Carter was sworn in as the 76th Governor of Georgia on January 12, 1971 and held this post for one term, until January 14, 1975. Governors of Georgia were not allowed to succeed themselves at the time. His predecessor as Governor, Lester Maddox, became the Lieutenant Governor. Carter and Maddox found little common ground during their four years of service, often publicly feuding with each other.

Civil rights politics

Carter declared in his inaugural speech that the time of racial segregation was over, and that racial discrimination had no place in the future of the state, the first statewide office holder in the Deep South to say this in public. Afterwards, Carter appointed many African Americans to statewide boards and offices. He was often called one of the "New Southern Governors" much more moderate than their predecessors, and supportive of racial desegregation and expanding African-Americans' rights.

Abortion

Although "personally opposed" to abortion, after the landmark US Supreme Court decision ''Roe v. Wade'', 410 US 113 (1973) Carter supported legalized abortion. He did not support increased federal funding for abortion services as president and was criticized by the ACLU for not doing enough to find alternatives.

State government reforms

Carter improved government efficiency by merging about 300 state agencies into 30 agencies. One of his aides recalled that Governor Carter "was right there with us, working just as hard, digging just as deep into every little problem. It was his program and he worked on it as hard as anybody, and the final product was distinctly his." He also pushed reforms through the legislature, providing equal state aid to schools in the wealthy and poor areas of Georgia, set up community centers for mentally handicapped children, and increased educational programs for convicts. Carter took pride in a program he introduced for the appointment of judges and state government officials. Under this program, all such appointments were based on merit, rather than political influence.

Vice-Presidential aspirations in 1972

In 1972, as US Senator George McGovern of South Dakota was marching toward the Democratic nomination for President, Carter called a news conference in Atlanta to warn that McGovern was unelectable. Carter criticized McGovern as too liberal on both foreign and domestic policy, yet when McGovern's nomination became a foregone conclusion, Carter lobbied to become his vice-presidential running mate.

During the 1972 Democratic National Convention he endorsed the candidacy of Senator Henry M. Jackson of Washington. Carter received 30 votes at the Democratic National Convention in the chaotic ballot for Vice President. McGovern offered the second spot to Reubin Askew, from next door Florida and one of the "new southern governors", but he declined.

Death penalty and crime

After the US Supreme Court overturned Georgia's death penalty law in 1972, Carter quickly proposed state legislation to replace the death penalty with life in prison (an option that previously didn't exist).

When the legislature passed a new death penalty statute, Carter, despite voicing reservations about its constitutionality, signed new legislation on March 28, 1973 to authorize the death penalty for murder, rape and other offenses, and to implement trial procedures that conformed to the newly announced constitutional requirements. In 1976, the Supreme Court upheld Georgia's new death penalty for murder. In the case of ''Coker v. Georgia'', the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional as applied to rape.

Many in America were outraged by William Calley's life sentence at Fort Benning for his role in the My Lai Massacre; Carter instituted "American Fighting Man's Day" and asked Georgians to drive for a week with their lights on in support of Calley. Indiana's governor asked all state flags to be flown at half-staff for Calley, and Utah's and Mississippi's governors also disagreed with the verdict. Currently, Carter is known for his outspoken opposition to the death penalty in all forms; in his Nobel Prize lecture, he urged "prohibition of the death penalty".

United States Senate appointment

Richard Russell, Jr., then-President pro tempore of the United States Senate, died in office on January 21, 1971. Carter, only nine days into his governorship, appointed state Democratic Party chair David H. Gambrell to fill an unexpired Russell term in the Senate on February 1. Gambrell was defeated in the next Democratic primary by the more conservative Sam Nunn.

Other activities

In 1973, while Governor of Georgia, Carter filed a report on his 1969 UFO sighting with the International UFO Bureau in Oklahoma City. In 2007, Carter stated that he did not remember why he filed the report and that he believes he probably only did it at the request of one of his children. He also stated he does not believe it was an alien spacecraft, but rather that it was likely some sort of military experiment being conducted from a nearby military base.

Carter made an appearance as the first guest of the evening on an episode of the game show ''What's My Line'' in 1974, signing in as "X", lest his name give away his occupation. After his job was identified on question seven of ten by Gene Shalit, he talked about having brought movie production to the state of Georgia, citing ''Deliverance'', and the then-unreleased ''The Longest Yard''.

In 1974, Carter was chairman of the Democratic National Committee's congressional, as well as gubernatorial, campaigns.

1976 presidential campaign

When Carter entered the Democratic Party presidential primaries in 1976, he was considered to have little chance against nationally better-known politicians. He had a name recognition of only two percent. When he told his family of his intention to run for President, his mother asked, "President of what?" The Watergate scandal was still fresh in the voters' minds, and so his position as an outsider, distant from Washington, D.C., became an asset. The centerpiece of his campaign platform was government reorganization.

Carter became the front-runner early on by winning the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. He used a two-prong strategy: In the South, which most had tacitly conceded to Alabama's George Wallace, Carter ran as a moderate favorite son. When Wallace proved to be a spent force, Carter swept the region. In the North, Carter appealed largely to conservative Christian and rural voters and had little chance of winning a majority in most states. He won several Northern states by building the largest single bloc. Carter's strategy involved reaching a region before another candidate could extend influence there. He traveled over 50,000 miles, visited 37 states, and delivered over 200 speeches before any other candidates even announced that they were in the race. Initially dismissed as a regional candidate, Carter proved to be the only Democrat with a truly national strategy, and he eventually clinched the nomination.

The media discovered and promoted Carter, as Lawrence Shoup noted in his 1980 book ''The Carter Presidency and Beyond'':

Carter was interviewed by Robert Scheer of ''Playboy'' for its November 1976 issue, which hit the newsstands a couple of weeks before the election. It was here that in the course of a digression on his religion's view of pride, Carter admitted: "I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times." He remains the only American president to be interviewed by this magazine.

As late as January 26, 1976, Carter was the first choice of only four percent of Democratic voters, according to a Gallup poll. Yet "by mid-March 1976 Carter was not only far ahead of the active contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, he also led President Ford by a few percentage points", according to Shoup.

He chose Senator Walter F. Mondale as his running mate. He attacked Washington in his speeches, and offered a religious salve for the nation's wounds.

Carter began the race with a sizable lead over Ford, who was able to narrow the gap over the course of the campaign, but was unable to prevent Carter from narrowly defeating him on November 2, 1976. Carter won the popular vote by 50.1 percent to 48.0 percent for Ford and received 297 electoral votes to Ford's 240. He became the first contender from the Deep South to be elected President since the 1848 election.

Presidency

Carter was elected over Gerald Ford in 1976. His tenure was a time of continuing inflation and recession, as well as an energy crisis. On January 7, 1980, Carter signed Law H.R. 5860 aka Public Law 96-185 known as ''The Chrysler Corporation Loan Guarantee Act of 1979'' bailing out Chrysler Corporation. He led the plan to deregulate the airline industry. He canceled military pay raises during a time of high inflation and government deficits. He declared amnesty to Vietnam draft dodgers. He encouraged energy conservation, installed solar panels on the White House, and wore sweaters while turning down the heat. While attempting to calm various conflicts around the World, most visibly in the Middle East resulting in the signing of the Camp David Accords, giving back the Panama Canal and signing the SALT II nuclear arms reduction treaty with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, the final year of his administration was marred by the Iran hostage crisis, which contributed to his losing his 1980 re-election campaign to Ronald Reagan

Carter wore a sweater on April 17, 1977 while delivering a televised "fireside chat" and declaring during the speech (with clenched his fist for dramatic effect) that the U.S. energy situation during the 1970s was the moral equivalent of war.

In 1978, Carter declared a federal emergency in the neighborhood of Love Canal in the city of Niagara Falls, New York. More than 800 families were evacuated from the neighborhood, which was built on top of a toxic waste landfill. The Superfund law was created in response to the situation. Federal disaster money was appropriated to demolish the approximately 500 houses, the 99th Street School, and the 93rd Street School, which were built on top of the dump and to remediate the dump and construct a containment area. This was the first time that such a thing had been done. He then said that there were several more "Love Canals" across the country, and that discovering such dumpsites was "one of the grimmest discoveries of our modern era".

During 1979, Carter deregulated the American beer industry by opening access of the home-brew market back up to the craft brewers, making it again legal to sell malt, hops, and yeast to American home brewers for the since the effective 1920 beginning of Prohibition in the United States.

One of Carter's most bitterly controversial decisions was his boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow in response to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. This marks the only time since the founding of the modern Olympics in 1896 that the United States has ever failed to participate in a Summer or Winter Olympics. The Soviet Union retaliated by boycotting the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and did not withdraw troops from Afghanistan until 1989 (eight years after Carter left office).

Carter wrote that the most intense and mounting opposition to his policies came from the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, which he attributed to Ted Kennedy’s ambition to replace him as president. Kennedy, originally on board with Carter's health plan, pulled his support from that legislation in the late stages; Carter states that this was in anticipation of Kennedy's own candidacy, and when neither won, the tactic effectively delayed comprehensive health coverage for decades.

Carter's campaign for re-election in 1980 was one of the most difficult, and least successful, in history. He faced strong challenges from the right (Ronald Reagan), the center (John B. Anderson), and the left (Ted Kennedy). He had to run against his own "stagflation"-ridden economy. He alienated liberal college students, who should have been his base, by re-instating registration for the draft. He was defeated by Ronald Reagan.

Post-Presidency

In 1981, Carter returned to Georgia to his peanut farm, which he had placed into a blind trust during his presidency to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest. He found that the trustees had mismanaged the trust, leaving him over one million dollars in debt. In the years that followed, he has led an active life, establishing The Carter Center, building his presidential library, teaching at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and writing numerous books.

Legacy

}} When he first left office, Carter's presidency was viewed by some as a failure. In historical rankings of US presidents, the Carter presidency has ranged from #19 to #34. Although Carter's presidency received mixed reviews from some historians, his all-around peace keeping and humanitarian efforts since he left office have led him to be widely renowned as one of the most successful ex-presidents in US history.

Although Carter has also received mixed reviews in both television and film documentaries, such as the ''Man from Plains'' (2007), the 2009 documentary, ''Back Door Channels: The Price of Peace'', credits Carter's efforts at Camp David, which brought peace between Israel and Egypt, with bringing the only meaningful peace to the Middle East. The film opened the 2009 Monte-Carlo Television Festival in an invitation-only royal screening on June 7, 2009 at the Grimaldi Forum in the presence of Albert II, Prince of Monaco.

Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale are the longest-living post-presidential team in American history. On December 11, 2006, they had been out of office for 25 years and 325 days, surpassing the former record established by President John Adams and Vice President Thomas Jefferson, who both died on July 4, 1826.

Jimmy Carter is one of only four presidents, and the only one in modern history, who did not have an opportunity to nominate a judge to serve on the Supreme Court. He was the only president out of the four to have served at least a full four years in office. The other three are William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, and Andrew Johnson.

Public image

The Independent writes, "Carter is widely considered a better man than he was a president." While he began his term with a 66% approval rating, this had dropped to 34% approval by the time he left office, with 55% disapproving.

Much of this image in the public eye results from the Presidents proximate to him in history. In the wake of Nixon's Watergate Scandal, exit polls from the 1976 Presidential election suggested that many still held Gerald Ford's pardon of Nixon against him, and Carter by comparison seemed a sincere, honest, and well-meaning Southerner.

Carter's administration suffered from his inexperience in politics: Carter paid too much attention to detail, was quick to retreat when under fire from political rivals, he frequently appeared to be indecisive and ineffective, and did not define his priorities clearly. He seemed uninterested in working with other groups, or even with Congress controlled by his own party, which he denounced for being controlled by special interest groups. Though he made efforts to address many of these issues in 1978, the approval he won from his reforms did not last long.

When Carter ran for reelection, Ronald Reagan's nonchalant self-confidence contrasted to Carter's serious and introspective temperament. Carter's personal attention to detail, his pessimistic attitude, seeming indecisiveness and weakness with people was also accentuated by Reagan's charm and easy delegation of tasks to subordinates. Ultimately, the combination of the economic problems, Iran hostage crisis, and lack of Washington cooperation made it easy for Reagan to portray him as a weak and ineffectual leader, causing Carter to become the first president since 1932 to lose a reelection bid, and his presidency was largely considered a failure.

Notwithstanding perceptions while Carter was in office, his reputation has much improved. Carter's presidential approval rating, which sat at 31% just prior to the 1980 election, was polled in early 2009 at 64%. Carter's continued post-Presidency activities have also been favorably received. Carter explains that a great deal of this change was owed to Reagan's successor, George H. W. Bush, who actively sought him out and was far more courteous and interested in his advice than Reagan had been.

Carter Center

As President, Carter expressed a goal of making government "competent and compassionate." In pursuit of that vision, he has been involved in a variety of national and international public policy, conflict resolution, human rights and charitable causes.

In 1982, he established The Carter Center in Atlanta to advance human rights and alleviate unnecessary human suffering. The non-profit, nongovernmental Center promotes democracy, mediates and prevents conflicts, and monitors the electoral process in support of free and fair elections. It also works to improve global health through the control and eradication of diseases such as Guinea worm disease, river blindness, malaria, trachoma, lymphatic filariasis, and schistosomiasis. It also works to diminish the stigma of mental illnesses and improve nutrition through increased crop production in Africa. A major accomplishment of The Carter Center has been the elimination of more than 99% of cases of Guinea worm disease, a debilitating parasite that has existed since ancient times, from an estimated 3.5 million cases in 1986 to 3,190 reported cases in 2009. The Carter Center has monitored 81 elections in 33 countries since 1989. It has worked to resolve conflicts in Haiti, Bosnia, Ethiopia, North Korea, Sudan and other countries. Carter and the Center actively support human rights defenders around the world and have intervened with heads of state on their behalf.

Nobel Peace Prize

In 2002, President Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work "to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development" through The Carter Center. Three sitting presidents, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Barack Obama, have received the prize; Carter is unique in receiving the award for his actions after leaving the presidency. He is, along with Martin Luther King, Jr., one of only two native Georgians to receive the Nobel.

Diplomacy

North Korea

In 1994, North Korea had expelled investigators from the International Atomic Energy Agency and was threatening to begin processing spent nuclear fuel. In response, then-President Clinton pressured for US sanctions and ordered large amounts of troops and vehicles into the area to brace for war.

Bill Clinton secretly recruited Carter to undertake a peace mission to North Korea, under the guise that it was a private mission of Carter's. Clinton saw Carter as a way to let North Korean President Kim Il-sung back down without losing face.

Carter negotiated an understanding with Kim Il-sung, but went further and outlined a treaty, which he announced on CNN without the permission of the Clinton White House as a way to force the US into action. The Clinton Administration signed a later version of the Agreed Framework, under which North Korea agreed to freeze and ultimately dismantle its current nuclear program and comply with its nonproliferation obligations in exchange for oil deliveries, the construction of two light water reactors to replace its graphite reactors, and discussions for eventual diplomatic relations.

The agreement was widely hailed at the time as a significant diplomatic achievement. In December 2002, the Agreed Framework collapsed as a result of a dispute between the George W. Bush Administration and the North Korean government of Kim Jong-il. In 2001, Bush had taken a confrontational position toward North Korea and, in January 2002, named it as part of an "Axis of Evil". Meanwhile, North Korea began developing the capability to enrich uranium. Bush Administration opponents of the Agreed Framework believed that the North Korean government never intended to give up a nuclear weapons program, but supporters believed that the agreement could have been successful and was undermined.

In August 2010, Carter traveled to North Korea in an attempt to secure the release of Aijalon Mahli Gomes. Gomes, a U.S. citizen, was sentenced to eight years of hard labor after being found guilty of illegally entering North Korea. Carter successfully secured the release.

Middle East

Carter and experts from The Carter Center assisted unofficial Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in designing a model agreement for peace–-called the Geneva Accord–-in 2002–2003.

Carter has also in recent years become a frequent critic of Israel's policies in Lebanon, West Bank, and Gaza.

In 2006, at the UK Hay Festival, Carter stated that Israel has at least 150 nuclear weapons. He expressed his support for Israel as a country, but criticized its domestic and foreign policy; "One of the greatest human rights crimes on earth is the starvation and imprisonment of 1.6m Palestinians," said Carter.

He mentioned statistics showing nutritional intake of some Palestinian children was below that of the children of Sub-Saharan Africa and described the European position on Israel as "supine".

In April 2008, the London-based Arabic newspaper ''Al-Hayat'' reported that Carter met with exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal on his visit to Syria. The Carter Center initially did not confirm nor deny the story. The US State Department considers Hamas a terrorist organization. Within this Mid-East trip, Carter also laid a wreath on the grave of Yasser Arafat in Ramallah on April 14, 2008. Carter said on April 23 that neither Condoleezza Rice nor anyone else in the State Department had warned him against meeting with Hamas leaders during his trip. Carter spoke to Mashaal on several matters, including "formulas for prisoner exchange to obtain the release of Corporal Shalit."

In May 2007, while arguing that the United States should directly talk to Iran, Carter again stated that Israel has 150 nuclear weapons in its arsenal.

In December 2008, Carter visited Damascus again, where he met with Syrian President Bashar Assad, and the Hamas leadership. During his visit he gave an exclusive interview to Forward Magazine, the first ever interview for any American president, current or former, with a Syrian media outlet.

Carter visited with three officials from Hamas who have been living at the International Red Cross office in Jerusalem since July 2010. Israel believes that these three Hamas legislators had a role in the 2006 kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, and has a deportation order set for them.

Africa

Carter held summits in Egypt and Tunisia in 1995–1996 to address violence in the Great Lakes region of Africa.

Carter played a key role in negotiation of the Nairobi Agreement in 1999 between Sudan and Uganda.

On July 18, 2007, Carter joined Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg, South Africa, to announce his participation in a new humanitarian organization called The Elders. In October 2007, Carter toured Darfur with several of The Elders, including Desmond Tutu. Sudanese security prevented him from visiting a Darfuri tribal leader, leading to a heated exchange.

On June 18, 2007, Carter, accompanied by his wife, arrived in Dublin, Ireland, for talks with President Mary McAleese and Bertie Ahern concerning human rights. On June 19, Carter attended and spoke at the annual Human Rights Forum at Croke Park. An agreement between Irish Aid and The Carter Center was also signed on this day.

In November 2008, President Carter, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and Graca Machel, wife of Nelson Mandela, were stopped from entering Zimbabwe, to inspect the human rights situation, by President Robert Mugabe's government.

Americas

Carter led a mission to Haiti in 1994 with Senator Sam Nunn and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell to avert a US-led multinational invasion and restore to power Haiti's democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Carter visited Cuba in May 2002 and had full discussions with Fidel Castro and the Cuban government. He was allowed to address the Cuban public uncensored on national television and radio with a speech that he wrote and presented in Spanish. In the speech, he called on the US to end "an ineffective 43-year-old economic embargo" and on Castro to hold free elections, improve human rights, and allow greater civil liberties. He met with political dissidents; visited the AIDS sanitarium, a medical school, a biotech facility, an agricultural production cooperative, and a school for disabled children; and threw a pitch for an all-star baseball game in Havana. The visit made Carter the first President of the United States, in or out of office, to visit the island since the Cuban revolution of 1959.

Carter observed the Venezuela recall elections on August 15, 2004. European Union observers had declined to participate, saying too many restrictions were put on them by the Hugo Chávez administration. A record number of voters turned out to defeat the recall attempt with a 59% "no" vote. The Carter Center stated that the process "suffered from numerous irregularities," but said it did not observe or receive "evidence of fraud that would have changed the outcome of the vote". On the afternoon of August 16, 2004, the day after the vote, Carter and Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary General César Gaviria gave a joint press conference in which they endorsed the preliminary results announced by the National Electoral Council. The monitors' findings "coincided with the partial returns announced today by the National Elections Council," said Carter, while Gaviria added that the OAS electoral observation mission's members had "found no element of fraud in the process." Directing his remarks at opposition figures who made claims of "widespread fraud" in the voting, Carter called on all Venezuelans to "accept the results and work together for the future". A Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates (PSB) exit poll had predicted that Chávez would lose by 20%; when the election results showed him to have won by 20%, Schoen commented, "I think it was a massive fraud". ''US News and World Report'' offered an analysis of the polls, indicating "very good reason to believe that the [Penn, Schoen & Berland] exit poll had the result right, and that Chávez's election officials and Carter and the American media got it wrong." The exit poll and the government's programming of election machines became the basis of claims of election fraud. An Associated Press report states that Penn, Schoen & Berland used volunteers from pro-recall organization Súmate for fieldwork, and its results contradicted five other opposition exit polls.

Following Ecuador's severing of ties with Colombia in March 2008, Carter brokered a deal for agreement between the countries' respective presidents on the restoration of low-level diplomatic relations announced June 8, 2008.

Vietnam

On November 18, 2009, Carter visited Vietnam to build houses for the poor. The one-week program, known as Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project 2009, built 32 houses in Dong Xa village, in the northern province of Hai Duong. The project launch was scheduled for November 14, according to the news source which quoted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Nguyen Phuong Nga. Administered by the non-governmental and non-profit Habitat for Humanity International (HFHI), the annual program of 2009 would build and repair 166 homes in Vietnam and some other Asian countries with the support of nearly 3,000 volunteers around the world, the organization said on its website. HFHI has worked in Vietnam since 2001 to provide low-cost housing, water, and sanitation solutions for the poor. It has worked in provinces like Tien Giang and Dong Nai as well as Ho Chi Minh City.

Criticism of US policy

In 2001, Carter criticized President Bill Clinton's controversial pardon of Marc Rich, calling it "disgraceful" and suggesting that Rich's financial contributions to the Democratic Party were a factor in Clinton's action.

Carter has also criticized the presidency of George W. Bush and the Iraq War. In a 2003 ''New York Times'' editorial, Carter warned against the consequences of a war in Iraq and urged restraint in use of military force. In March 2004, Carter condemned George W. Bush and Tony Blair for waging an unnecessary war "based upon lies and misinterpretations" to oust Saddam Hussein. In August 2006, Carter criticized Blair for being "subservient" to the Bush administration and accused Blair of giving unquestioning support to Bush's Iraq policies. In a May 2007 interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, he said, "I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history," when it comes to foreign affairs. Two days after the quote was published, Carter told NBC's Today that the "worst in history" comment was "careless or misinterpreted," and that he "wasn't comparing this administration with other administrations back through history, but just with President Nixon's." The day after the "worst in history" comment was published, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said that Carter had become "increasingly irrelevant with these kinds of comments."

On May 19, 2007, Mr. Blair made his final visit to Iraq before stepping down as British Prime Minister, and Carter used the occasion to criticize him once again. Carter told the BBC that Blair was "apparently subservient" to Bush and criticized him for his "blind support" for the Iraq war. Carter described Blair's actions as "abominable" and stated that the British Prime Minister's "almost undeviating support for the ill-advised policies of President Bush in Iraq have been a major tragedy for the world." Carter said he believes that had Blair distanced himself from the Bush administration during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, it might have made a crucial difference to American political and public opinion, and consequently the invasion might not have gone ahead. Carter states that "one of the defenses of the Bush administration ... has been, okay, we must be more correct in our actions than the world thinks because Great Britain is backing us. So I think the combination of Bush and Blair giving their support to this tragedy in Iraq has strengthened the effort and has made the opposition less effective, and prolonged the war and increased the tragedy that has resulted." Carter expressed his hope that Blair's successor, Gordon Brown, would be "less enthusiastic" about Bush's Iraq policy.

In June 2005, Carter urged the closing of the Guantanamo Bay Prison in Cuba, which has been a focal point for recent claims of prisoner abuse.

In September 2006, Carter was interviewed on the BBC's current affairs program ''Newsnight'', voicing his concern at the increasing influence of the Religious Right on US politics.

Due to his status as former President, Carter was a superdelegate to the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Carter announced his endorsement of Senator (now president) Barack Obama. This occurred on June 3, 2008, near the end of the primary season.

Speaking to the English Monthly Forward magazine of Syria, Carter was asked to give one word that came to mind when mentioning President George W. Bush. His answer was: the end of a very disappointing administration. His reaction to mentioning Barack Obama was: honesty, intelligence, and politically adept.

In 2009 he put weight behind allegations by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, pertaining to United States involvement in the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt by a civilian-military junta, saying that Washington knew about the coup and may have taken part.

Death penalty

Carter continues to speak out against the death penalty in the US and abroad. Most recently, in his letter to the Governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, Carter urged him to sign a bill to eliminate the death penalty and institute life in prison without parole instead. The bill has already been passed by the state House and Senate. Carter wrote: ''As you know, the United States is one of the few countries, along with nations such as Saudi Arabia, China, and Cuba, which still carry out the death penalty despite the ongoing tragedy of wrongful conviction and gross racial and class-based disparities that make impossible the fair implementation of this ultimate punishment''.

Carter also called for commutations of death sentences for many death-row inmates, including Brian K. Baldwin (executed in 1999 in Alabama), Kenneth Foster (sentence in Texas commuted in 2007) and Troy Anthony Davis (Georgia, case pending).

Torture

In a 2008 interview with Amnesty International, Carter criticized the alleged use of torture at Guantanamo Bay, saying that it "contravenes the basic principles on which this nation was founded." He stated that the next President should publicly apologize upon his inauguration, and state that the United States will "never again torture prisoners."

Author

Carter has been a prolific author in his post-presidency, writing 21 of his 23 books. Among these is one he co-wrote with his wife, Rosalynn, and a children's book illustrated by his daughter, Amy. They cover a variety of topics, including humanitarian work, aging, religion, human rights, and poetry.

''Palestine Peace Not Apartheid''

In a 2007 speech to Brandeis University, Carter stated: "I have spent a great deal of my adult life trying to bring peace to Israel and its neighbors, based on justice and righteousness for the Palestinians. These are the underlying purposes of my new book."

In his book ''Palestine Peace Not Apartheid'', published in November 2006, Carter states: He declares that Israel's current policies in the Palestinian territories constitute "a system of apartheid, with two peoples occupying the same land, but completely separated from each other, with Israelis totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving Palestinians of their basic human rights." In an Op-Ed titled "Speaking Frankly about Israel and Palestine," published in the ''Los Angeles Times'' and other newspapers, Carter states: While somesuch as a former Special Rapporteur for both the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and the International Law Commission, as well as a member of the Israeli Knessethave praised Carter for speaking frankly about Palestinians in Israeli occupied lands, othersincluding the envoy to the Middle East under Clinton, as well as the first director of the Carter Centerhave accused him of anti-Israeli bias. Specifically, these critics have alleged significant factual errors, omissions and misstatements in the book.

The 2007 documentary film, ''Man from Plains'', follows President Carter during his tour for the controversial book and other humanitarian efforts.

In December 2009, Carter apologized for any words or deeds that may have upset the Jewish community in an open letter meant to improve an often tense relationship. He said he was offering an ''Al Het'', a prayer said on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.

Involvement with Bank of Credit and Commerce International

After Carter left the presidency, his interest in the developing countries led him to having a close relationship with Agha Hasan Abedi, the founder of Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). Abedi was a Pakistani, whose bank had offices and business in a large number of developing countries. He was introduced to Carter in 1982 by Bert Lance, one of Carter's closest friends. (Unknown to Carter, BCCI had secretly purchased an interest in 1978 in National Bank of Georgia, which had previously been run by Lance and had made loans to Carter's peanut business.) Abedi made generous donations to the Carter Center and the Global 2000 Project. Abedi also traveled with Carter to at least seven countries in connection with Carter's charitable activities. The main purpose of Abedi's association with Carter was not charitable activities, but to enhance BCCI's influence, in order to open more offices and develop more business. In 1991, BCCI was seized by regulators, amid allegations of criminal activities, including illegally having control of several U.S. banks. Just prior to the seizure, Carter began to disassociate himself from Abedi and the bank.

Faith, family, and community

Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, are also well known for their work as volunteers with Habitat for Humanity, a Georgia-based philanthropy that helps low-income working people to build and buy their own homes.

He teaches Sunday school and is a deacon in the Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains, Georgia. In 2000, Carter severed ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, saying the group's doctrines did not align with his Christian beliefs. In April 2006, Carter, former-President Bill Clinton and Mercer University President Bill Underwood initiated the New Baptist Covenant. The broadly inclusive movement seeks to unite Baptists of all races, cultures and convention affiliations. Eighteen Baptist leaders representing more than 20 million Baptists across North America backed the group as an alternative to the Southern Baptist Convention. The group held its first meeting in Atlanta, January 30 through February 1, 2008.

Carter's hobbies include painting, fly-fishing, woodworking, cycling, tennis, and skiing.

The Carters have three sons, one daughter, eight grandsons, three granddaughters, and two great-grandsons. They celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary in July 2011, making them the second-longest wed Presidential couple after George and Barbara Bush, a position they have held since passing John and Abigail Adams on July 10, 2000. Their eldest son Jack was the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Nevada in 2006, losing to incumbent John Ensign. Jack's son Jason was elected to the Georgia State Senate in 2010.

Honors and awards

Carter has received honorary degrees from many American and foreign colleges and universities. They include:

LL.D. (''honoris causa'') Morehouse College, 1972; Morris Brown College, 1972; University of Notre Dame, 1977; Emory University, 1979; Kwansei Gakuin University, 1981; Georgia Southwestern College, 1981; New York Law School, 1985; Bates College, 1985; Centre College, 1987; Creighton University, 1987; University of Pennsylvania, 1998

D.E. (''honoris causa'') Georgia Institute of Technology, 1979

PhD (''honoris causa'') Weizmann Institute of Science, 1980; Tel Aviv University, 1983; University of Haifa, 1987

D.H.L. (''honoris causa'') Central Connecticut State University, 1985; Trinity College, 1998; Hoseo University, 1998

Doctor (''honoris causa'') G.O.C. University, 1995; University of Juba, 2002

Honorary Fellow of Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, 2007

Honorary Fellow of Mansfield College, Oxford, 2007

Among the honors Carter has received are the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1999 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Others include:

Freedom of the City of Newcastle upon Tyne, England, 1977

Silver Buffalo Award, Boy Scouts of America, 1978

Gold medal, International Institute for Human Rights, 1979

International Mediation medal, American Arbitration Association, 1979

Martin Luther King, Jr., Nonviolent Peace Prize, 1979

International Human Rights Award, Synagogue Council of America, 1979

Conservationist of the Year Award, 1979

Harry S. Truman Public Service Award, 1981

Ansel Adams Conservation Award, Wilderness Society, 1982

Human Rights Award, International League of Human Rights, 1983

World Methodist Peace Award, 1985

Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism, 1987

Edwin C. Whitehead Award, National Center for Health Education, 1989

Jefferson Award, American Institute of Public Service, 1990

Liberty Medal, National Constitution Center, 1990

Spirit of America Award, National Council for the Social Studies, 1990

Physicians for Social Responsibility Award, 1991

Aristotle Prize, Alexander S. Onassis Foundation, 1991

W. Averell Harriman Democracy Award, National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, 1992

Spark M. Matsunaga Medal of Peace, US Institute of Peace, 1993

Humanitarian Award, CARE International, 1993

Conservationist of the Year Medal, National Wildlife Federation, 1993

Rotary Award for World Understanding, 1994

J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding, 1994

National Civil Rights Museum Freedom Award, 1994

UNESCO Félix Houphouët-Boigny Peace Prize, 1994

Great Cross of the Order of Vasco Nunéz de Balboa, Panama, 1995

Bishop John T. Walker Distinguished Humanitarian Award, Africare, 1996

Humanitarian of the Year, GQ Awards, 1996

Kiwanis International Humanitarian Award, 1996

Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development, 1997

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Awards for Humanitarian Contributions to the Health of Humankind, National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, 1997

United Nations Human Rights Award, 1998

The Hoover Medal, 1998

The Delta Prize for Global Understanding, University of Georgia, 1999

International Child Survival Award, UNICEF Atlanta, 1999

William Penn Mott, Jr., Park Leadership Award, National Parks Conservation Association, 2000

Zayed International Prize for the Environment, 2001

Jonathan M. Daniels Humanitarian Award, VMI, 2001

Herbert Hoover Humanitarian Award, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, 2001

Christopher Award, 2002

Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album, National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, 2007

Berkeley Medal, University of California campus, May 2, 2007

International Award for Excellence and Creativity, Palestinian Authority, 2009

Mahatma Gandhi Global Nonviolence Award, Mahatma Gandhi Center for Global Nonviolence, James Madison University (to be awarded September 21, 2009, in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and to be shared with his wife, Rosalynn Carter)

Recipient of 2009 American Peace Award along with Rosalynn Carter

International Catalonia Award 2010

In 1998, the US Navy named the third and last Seawolf-class submarine honoring former President Carter and his service as a submariner officer. It became one of the first US Navy vessels to be named for a person living at the time of naming.

World Justice Project

President Jimmy Carter serves as an Honorary Chair for the World Justice Project. The World Justice Project works to lead a global, multidisciplinary effort to strengthen the Rule of Law for the development of communities of opportunity and equity.

Participation in ceremonial events

Carter has participated in many ceremonial events such as the opening of his own presidential library and those of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. He has also participated in many forums, lectures, panels, funerals and other events. Carter delivered a eulogy at the funeral of Coretta Scott King and, most recently, at the funeral of his former political rival, but later his close, personal friend and diplomatic collaborator, Gerald Ford.

Race in politics

Carter ignited debate in September 2009 when he stated, "I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he is African-American." Obama disagreed with Carter's assessment. On CNN Obama stated, "Are there people out there who don't like me because of race? I'm sure there are...that's not the overriding issue here."

Funeral and burial plans

Carter intends to be buried in front of his home in Plains, Georgia. In contrast, most Presidents since Herbert Hoover have been buried at their presidential library or presidential museum, with the exception of John F. Kennedy, who is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, and Lyndon B. Johnson, who is buried at his own ranch. Both President Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, were born in Plains. Carter also noted that a funeral in Washington, D.C. with visitation at the Carter Center is being planned as well.

See also

Electoral history of Jimmy Carter

Jack Carter (politician) (born 1947; eldest son of former US President Jimmy Carter)

Jason Carter (politician)

Raymond Lee Harvey assassination conspirator

Jimmy Carter rabbit incident

History of the United States (1964-1980)

History of the United States (1980-1988)

References

Further reading

Primary sources

Califano, Joseph A., Jr. ''Governing America: An insider's report from the White House and the Cabinet''. 1981

Jordan, Hamilton. ''Crisis: The Last Year of the Carter Presidency''. 1982

Lance, Bert. ''The Truth of the Matter: My Life in and out of Politics''. 1991

External links

Jimmy Carter Library and Museum

The Carter Center: Advancing Human Rights and Alleviating Suffering

Oral History Interview with Jimmy Carter from Oral Histories of the American South

PBS American Experience Video Biography of Jimmy Carter

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Partnership Foundation

Text and Audio of Carter's Crisis of Confidence (Malaise) Speech

Text and Notes to Carter's Undelivered Energy Speech

Simon & Schuster Audio homepage for Jimmy Carter

Interpretive essay in New Georgia Encyclopedia

Website about Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter

Jimmy Carter's Visit to Cuba – May 12–17, 2002

Extensive essay on Jimmy Carter and shorter essays on each member of his cabinet and First Lady from the Miller Center of Public Affairs

Wit and Wisdom of Jimmy Carter – slideshow by ''Life magazine''

Extensive collection of Oral History Transcripts on the Carter Administration from the Miller Center of Public Affairs (UVa)

Oral History Interview with President Jimmy Carter, May 4, 1993 Georgia's Political Heritage Program, Digital Library of Georgia

Biographical pages

Biography, via whitehouse.gov

Biography, via Britannica.com – Jimmy Carter

Biography via ourgeorgiahistory.com

Navy Years, via submarinehistory.com

Other links

Interview about the SALT II negotiations for the WGBH series

War and Peace in the Nuclear Age

Inaugural Address of Jimmy Carter via re-quest.net

Encyclopaedia Britannica, Jimmy Carter

State of the Union Addresses: 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981 (written message) at UCSB's American Presidency Project

Audio recordings of Carter's speeches, via Michigan State University

Nobel lecture, Oslo, Norway (December 10, 2002)

* Nobel Prize for Carter

About the malaise speech, via PBS

* The malaise speech text, via PBS

The 1980 October Surprise

about Carterpuri, a village in Haryana, India named after President Carter">"The US President was here" about Carterpuri, a village in Haryana, India named after President Carter

Instruments of Statecraft: US Guerrilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency, and Counterterrorism, 1940–1990 Chap. 3 The Carter Years

Korea Society Podcast: A Moment of Crisis: Jimmy Carter's 1994 Mission to Pyongyang

Jimmy Carter's thoughts on Earth Day 2006

Jimmy Carter's op/ed commentaries for Project Syndicate

Interview with Jimmy Carter (August 2006)

Interview with Jimmy Carter on Current Campaign (April 2007)

Interview with Jimmy Carter (April 2007) on Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett

Jimmy Carter on The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos

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