Vietnam War (1973): Paris Accords

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.

Decolonisation, partition and a televised intervention Vietnam was a Vietnamese civil and revolutionary war that the US, China and the USSR internationalised -- and that Laos and Cambodia paid for as sideshows that were not sideshows. The 1954 French defeat at Dien Bien Phu and the Geneva Accords created a "temporary" partition. Diem, with US backing, refused elections that Ho was expected to win. Nation-building in the south was a police and landlord war as much as a development project.