what summarizes the human cost of the vietnam war? what summarizes the human cost of the vietnam war?

A mass exodus in 1975 of people loyal to the South Vietnamese cause was followed by another wave in 1978 of boat people, refugees fleeing the economic restructuring imposed by the communist regime. About us; Stories and Resources . This started with their homecoming and reception. create tension? Opposition to the war in the United States bitterly divided Americans, even after President Richard Nixon signed the Paris Peace Accords and ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1973. You can specify conditions of storing and accessing cookies in your browser. These boats were manned by fishermen unfamiliar with navigating the open sea and some even left without a specific destination in mind. Even before the war had ended, Richard Nixon publicly declared the end of the Truman Doctrine. If one uses CBO estimates, the burden on the economy moved from 5% of GDP in the 1980s to a low of 2.8% in FY1998. Metrics showing allied funding and aid activity help put the U.S. spending effort in the proper perspective. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, but his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, continued the work that Kennedy had started. The terms of this expansion included yet more funding and arms, but a key alteration was the commitment of U.S. soldiers to the region. Thousands struggled to find and hold down jobs, form new relationships and keep their marriages intact. The practical impact of the Vietnam War on the domestic United States was also profound. Five years after the country's partition, the communist leader of North Korea, Kim Il Sung, decided to attempt to reunify Korea under his control. Estimates of the number of people killed in Indochina range from two and a half million to more than four million. Direct link to David Alexander's post Question 1: "did it seem , Posted 4 years ago. One caveat to this, however, was that men who were in college could be excused from the draft. One of the most common defoliants used in Vietnam, Agent Orange, was later found to contain carcinogenic dioxins. Washington withdrew significantly from foreign disputes and crises, becoming less interventionist and assertive. The effort to create meaningful Future Year Defense Programs seem to have been given a final death blow by the Budget Control Act (BCA)legislation originally designed to be so stupid that the Congress could not possibly accept it. Over the following years, additions to the list have brought the total past 58,200. Reporting by the Executive Branch seems almost designed to obscure the real costs of conflict, and avoid linking them to an examination of strategy, its effectiveness, and the prospects for conflict termination. Official data only exist on federal homeland defense efforts, not state and local ones. to the Opponents of the war argued that civilians, not enemy combatants, were the primary victims and that the United States was supporting a corrupt dictatorship in Saigon. Overview The Vietnam War was a prolonged military conflict that started as an anticolonial war against the French and evolved into a Cold War confrontation between international communism and free-market democracy. The war in Iraq, for example, put serious pressure on U.S. capability to properly deploy the numbers and skills needed in Afghanistan, as well as helped force use of the Reserves and National Guard. The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 . Cost and force size pressures also tend to create pressure to rely on sudden and temporary "surges," which may or may not be effective, and the use of short rotations and temporary duty personnelaffecting levels of experience and capability. Why is it important to tell our stories? In 1955, however, the strongly anti-communist politician Ngo Dinh Diem pushed Emperor Bao aside to become president of the Government of the Republic of Vietnam (GVN), often referred to during that era as South Vietnam. American body counts of the enemy were notoriously unreliable and were often little more than ambitious estimates. The North Vietnamese continued to insist on complete and unconditional U.S. withdrawalplus the ouster of U.S.-backed General Nguyen Van Thieuas conditions of peace, however, and as a result the peace talks stalled. The latter report, Another report by Lynn M. Williams and Susan B. Epstein, The GAO has examined the way in which the Department of Defense includes and does not include the cost of war in the OCO account. The defeat in Vietnam, they argued, was a betrayal of the US military by civilian politicians. In September 1945, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the birth of an independent Vietnam. Accordingly, the charts in this section summarize CRS reporting on total DoD/State/USAID OCO costs to date. They do not include the build-up the Trump Administration has said will begin in FY2019. Some argued that Americas violence against civilians in Vietnam from incidental killings to atrocities like My Lai and indiscriminate carpet bombing made the United States no better than the communist regimes it was seeking to contain. These latter estimates update a series of earlier CRS analyses, one of which noted that, "Other observers and analysts define war costs more broadly than congressional appropriations and include estimates of the life-time costs of caring for OEF/OIF/OND veterans, imputed interest costs on the deficit, or increases in DODs base budget deemed to be a consequence of support for the warSuch costs are difficult to compute, subject to extensive caveats, and often based on methodologies that may not be appropriate". Reporting on the civil dimensions of war is often lacking, and the civil and military budgets of war are developed and implemented separately by the departments and then reviewed (if at all) by separate Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees in each house and by separate elements in the appropriations committees. The Costs Don't. Amount Bilmes estimates the United States will pay in health care, disability, burial and other costs for . More than 1.3 million Vietnamese soldiers and about 58,000 U.S. troops were killed. Before World War Two Vietnam . Past estimates of spending have been consistently wrong, and the inputs have been consistently undercosted. De Blasio: How many . URL: https://alphahistory.com/vietnamwar/costs-of-the-vietnam-war/ These pressuresplus political sensitivity over U.S casualtieshelped create plans and/or the willingness to withdraw quickly from Iraq and Afghanistan. In view of the surprisingly good performance of the South Vietnamese army at Tet, and responding to growing pressure in the United States to begin a withdrawal of U.S. troops, the Nixon administration decided to accelerate a program to provide South Vietnam . Vietnam emerged from the war as a potent military power within Southeast Asia, but its agriculture, business, and industry were disrupted, large parts of its countryside were scarred by bombs and defoliation and laced with land mines, and its cities and towns were heavily damaged. The war in Vietnam had lasting consequences for US foreign policy. The United States committed some 550,000 troops to the Vietnam front at the height of the conflict, suffered more than 58,000 casualties, and engaged in battle after battle with communist forces in the region until its withdrawal in 1973. The Afghan and Iraq/Syria wars are more than five times more expensive than World War I. 10.5 times the IISS estimate of $58.9 billion for Russia, and 9.0 times the SIPIRI estimate of $69.2 billion. 5. from Johns Hopkins and his MA and Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. More than 58,000 Americans died in Vietnam, and more than 150,000 were wounded. 1. Explore the final years of the war in Vietnam, which saw the United States and her Allies confront the brutal realities of loss and withdrawal from a jungle . The economic and human costs of the Vietnam War were devastating. In August 1964, the US government received word that two North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked US destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. The functional break out of the cost by theaterIraq and Syriahelps provide a clear picture of mission focus and allocation of resources. The final charts summarize the FY2018 budget submission data for the OCO accounts in the detail provided by the DoD budget summary. The United States pays $22 billion per year in war compensations to Vietnam veterans and their families. . One key aspect of the current cost of U.S. wars is thatdespite their high costthey represent a comparatively low burden on the U.S. economy in terms of GDP, total federal spending, labor, capital, and use of the U.S. industrial base. These costs do not address the combat and aid contributions of U.S. allies, and 11 of the other top 15 military spenders are allies of, or have close security ties to, the United States. Center for Strategic and International Studies Direct link to Kim Kutz Elliott's post All American men had to r, Posted 2 years ago. This illustrates another critical failure in the preparation and review of both Baseline and War budgets. The human cost of war is perhaps the most critical single metric of warfighting. The fighting ability of pro-Hanoi forces in the South had been badly wounded in . Direct link to Carla Cristina Almeida's post I have a question about t, Posted 6 years ago. The total military deaths for all countries have been estimated at 1.3 million, of whom 58,000 were Americans. by Anthony H. Cordesman. Throughout both conflicts, reporting has focused on total personnel rather than on the function and capability of the personnel engaged. In an attempt to limit the volume of American casualties, he announced a program called Vietnamization: withdrawing U.S. troops, increasing aerial and artillery bombardment and giving the South Vietnamese the training and weapons needed to effectively control the ground war. These chemicals also had an insidious impact on both Vietnamese civilians and American soldiers and their allies. In 2016, Vietnam's GDP growth was 6.2%, driven by export-oriented manufacturing and robust domestic demand. The Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis Continued? When a draft took place, it randomly selected men between the ages of 18 to 25. Ironically, members of Congress are fond of criticizing the Administration for lacking a strategy. Congress authorized troop deployment in Vietnam, but, because it did not issue a declaration of war on North Vietnam or the Viet Cong, the Vietnam War is, technically speaking, not considered a war in the United States. Both sides wanted the same thing: a unified Vietnam. We strive for accuracy and fairness. The bombing was not limited to Vietnam; from 1964-1973, the United States covertly dropped two million tons of bombs on neighboring, neutral Laos during the CIA-led Secret War in Laos.