Vietnam War (1964): Gulf of Tonkin

A 1955-75 Indochina war that fused decolonisation, civil war and US intervention -- and remade English-language memory of limited war. The Vietnam War, or Second Indochina War, grew out of the First Indochina War (1946-54) and the 1954 Geneva partition at the 17th parallel. Ngo Dinh Diem's Republic of Vietnam in the south and Ho Chi Minh's Democratic Republic in the north never held the promised nationwide elections. By the late 1950s an insurgency -- the National Liberation Front -- was fighting the southern state with northern support.

The United States moved from advisers to a bombing campaign (Rolling Thunder, 1965) and a peak of more than 500,000 troops. The Tet Offensive (January 1968) failed militarily for the NLF/PAVN and succeeded politically in the US. Vietnamization, the 1970-71 Cambodian and Laotian campaigns, and the 1973 Paris Accords preceded the final northern offensive. Saigon fell on 30 April 1975.

Scholarly estimates of Vietnamese dead run from about 1.3 to 3.8 million, including civilians; US military deaths are about 58,000, with Australian, South Korean, Thai and other allied dead in the thousands. Agent Orange, unexploded ordnance and a refugee diaspora are part of the bill. In English-speaking countries this war -- not Korea -- became the template for arguing about intervention, media and veterans' welcome.