Ultimately, the U.S. was forced to admit defeat under rising pressure at home and consistent failures in Vietnam in 1973.
Finally, in January 1973, representatives of the United States, North and South Vietnam, and the Vietcong signed a peace agreement in Paris, ending the direct U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War.
Basically because the Vietnamese wanted to win more than the Americans did. There were a couple of reasons for this. First, the Americans were an invading force, and the Vietnamese were fighting on their own soil. Second, the Americans were not willing to make an all-out commitment to win.
The Vietnam Conflict Extract Data File of the Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) Extract Files contains records of 58,220 U.S. military fatal casualties of the Vietnam War. These records were transferred into the custody of the National Archives and Records Administration in 2008.
Nixon's plan worked and in early January 1973, the Americans and North Vietnamese ironed out the last details of the settlement. All parties to the conflict, including South Vietnam, signed the final agreement in Paris on January 27. As it turned out, only America honored the cease-fire.
Vietnam and the United States are strong and growing partners, sharing the goal of an open, connected, prosperous, resilient, and peaceful Indo-Pacific. Addressing the legacies of war is a foundational element of the strong relationship between the United States and Vietnam.
By continuously expanding and improving the Ho Chi Minh Trial—the main conduit for supplies and replacement troops from North Vietnam to the southern battlefields—and by deploying large numbers of troops in Cambodia and Laos, the North Vietnamese defeated the American effort to isolate the battlefield from 1965 to 1968 ...
From the time of the arrival of the first members of the Team in 1962 over 60,000 Australians, including ground troops and air force and navy personnel, served in Vietnam; 523 died as a result of the war and almost 2,400 were wounded.
America did not experience a “lost victory” in Vietnam; in fact, victory was likely out of reach from the beginning. There is a broad consensus among professional historians that the Vietnam War was effectively unwinnable.
Several modern armies operate nuclear weapons with ranges in the thousands of kilometers. The US is therefore vulnerable to nuclear attack by powers such as the United Kingdom, Russia, China, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel (allegedly).
The Vietnam War severely damaged the U.S. economy. Unwilling to raise taxes to pay for the war, President Johnson unleashed a cycle of inflation. The war also weakened U.S. military morale and undermined, for a time, the U.S. commitment to internationalism.
The USA was afraid that communism would spread to South Vietnam and then the rest of Asia. It decided to send money, supplies and military advisers to help the South Vietnamese Government.
Although the war ended where it began, the United States and its allies did succeed in preventing communism from overtaking South Korea.
The American Civil War is the conflict with the largest number of American military fatalities in history. In fact, the Civil War's death toll is comparable to all other major wars combined, the deadliest of which were the World Wars, which have a combined death toll of more than 520,000 American fatalities.
The Second Indochina War—also known as the American War—had begun; it would not end until the United States withdrew and South Vietnam fell to the communist-run Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1975.
The Battle of Verdun, 21 February-15 December 1916, became the longest battle in modern history.
According to historian Niall Ferguson, France is the most successful military power in history.
World War II
The war pitted the Allies and the Axis power in the deadliest war in history, and was responsible for the deaths of over 70 million people. Known for its genocidal campaign against the Jewish people, the war was also responsible for the deaths of more than 50 million civilians.
On 29 April 1965 Prime Minister Robert Menzies announced in parliament that Australia would send a battalion of combat troops to Vietnam. The decision was motivated by a desire to strengthen strategic relations with the United States and to halt the spread of communism in South-East Asia.
'The Team' had lost 33 men killed and 122 wounded. Four of its members were awarded the Victoria Cross, the only VCs won by Australians during the war. All told, some 60,000 Australians served in Vietnam between 1962 and 1973. 521 died and over 3,000 were wounded.
By May 2011 all non-US coalition forces had withdrawn from Iraq and the US military withdraw all forces on 18 December 2011, thus ending the Iraq War. Two Australian service personnel died in the conflict in Iraq between 16 July 2003 and 31 July 2009.
Difficult climate and terrain
The effectiveness of American soldiers was undermined not by a lack of skill or courage but by other factors, such as local conditions, unclear military objectives, the highly politicised nature of the war and the stealth and inventiveness of their enemy.
Firstly most of the war was fought as a guerrilla war. This is a type of war which conventional forces such as the US army in Vietnam, find notoriously difficult to fight. Conventional forces are easy to identify, guerrillas are not. In Vietnam the Vietcong were peasants by day and guerrillas by night.
August 5, 1964
After North Vietnamese torpedo boats alledgedly attacked the U.S.S. Maddox and U.S.S. Turner Joy in the Gulf of Tonkin, President Johnson ordered the retaliatory bombing of military targets in North Vietnam. Congress soon passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave Johnson broad war-making powers.