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There are several competing views on the conflict. Some on the North
Vietnamese and National Liberation Front side view the struggle
against U.S. forces as a colonial war and a continuation of the First
Indochina War against forces from France and later on the United
States,[79] especially in light of the failed 1954 Geneva Conference
calls for elections. Other interpretations of the North Vietnamese side
include viewing it as a civil war, especially in the early and later phases
following the U.S. interlude between 1965 and 1970,[80] as well as a
war of liberation.[79] In the perspective of some, the Provisional
Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam, the
successor to the Việt Cộng, was motivated in part by significant social
changes in the post-World War II Vietnam, and had initially seen it as
a revolutionary war supported by Hanoi.[81][82] The pro-government
side in South Vietnam viewed it as a civil war, a defensive war against
communism,[80][83] or were motivated to fight to defend their homes
and families.[84] The U.S. government viewed its involvement in the
war as a way to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam. This
was part of the domino theory of a wider containment policy, with the
stated aim of stopping the spread of communism.[85]
Beginning in 1950, American military advisors arrived in what was
then French Indochina.[86][A 3] Most of the funding for the French
war effort was provided by the U.S.[87] The Việt Cộng, also known as
Front national de libération du Sud-Viêt Nam or FNL (the National
Liberation Front), a South Vietnamese communist common front aided
by the North, fought a guerrilla war against anti-communist forces in
the region, while the People's Army of Vietnam, also known as the
North Vietnamese Army (NVA), engaged in more conventional
warfare, and had launched armed struggles from 1959 onward. U.S.
involvement escalated in 1960 under President John F. Kennedy, with
troop levels gradually surging under the MAAG program from just
under a thousand in 1959 to 16,000 in 1963.[88][89]
By 1964 there were 23,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam, but this escalated
further following the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which a U.S.
destroyer was alleged to have clashed with North Vietnamese fast
attack craft. In response the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution gave Lyndon
B. Johnson authorization to increase U.S. military presence, deploying
ground combat units for the first time and increasing troop levels to
184,000.[88] Every year onward there was significant build-up despite
little progress, with Robert McNamara, one of the principal architects
of the war, beginning to express doubts of victory by the end of
1966.[90] 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. conducted
a large-scale strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam.
Following the Tết Offensive, U.S. forces began withdrawal under the
Vietnamization phase; the Army of the Republic of Vietnam
unconventional and conventional capabilities increased following a
period of neglect and became modeled on heavy fire-power focused
doctrines like US forces. Operations crossed international borders:
bordering areas of Laos and Cambodia were used by North Vietnam
as supply routes and were heavily bombed by U.S. forces.
Despite the Paris Peace Accord, which was signed by all parties in
January 1973, the fighting continued in which both Saigon and Hanoi
attempted to take territory before and after the accord and the ceasefire
was broken just days after its signing.[97] In the U.S. and the Western
world, a large anti-Vietnam War movement developed as part of a
larger counterculture, the largest such anti-war movement up to that
point in history.[98] The war changed the dynamics between the
Eastern and Western Blocs, and altered North–South relations,[99] and
had significantly influenced the political landscape in the United
States,[100] across much of Western Europe[101] and U.S. ground-
force intervention spurred the rise of transnational political movements
and campaigning.[102]