The Vietnam War
Read this article on the history of the Vietnam War. What began as a conflict over decolonization became a Cold War battlefield by the late 1960s, with U.S. troops fighting communist North Vietnamese troops, who were given weapons and support from China and the Soviet Union.
Aftermath
The last official American military action in Southeast Asia occurred on May 15, 1975, when 18 Marines and airmen were killed during a rescue operation known as the Mayagüez incident involving a skirmish with the Khmer Rouge on an island off the Cambodian coast. The names of those men are listed on the last panel of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
By April 12, the Khmer Rouge had entered the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. Only hours before their arrival, the United States had launched Operation Eagle Pull, an evacuation similar to Frequent Wind. U.S. Ambassador John G. Dean boarded a Marine helicopter and left the city. The communist victory plunged the nation into darkness as the cities and towns were forcibly evacuated, their inhabitants herded into the countryside to begin the construction of a Maoist paradise in Democratic Kampuchea.
Both Vietnams were united on July 2, 1976, to form the new Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in honor of the former president of North Vietnam. Hundreds of thousands of supporters of the South Vietnamese government were rounded up and sent to reeducation camps. The new regime considered these supporters to be American collaborators and traitors.
North Vietnam followed up its southern victory by first making Laos a virtual puppet state. Socialist fraternalism did not last long. The Khmer Rouge, who had historical territorial ambitions in Vietnam, began a series of border incursions that finally led to a Vietnamese invasion. The VPA onslaught overthrew Pol Pot's murderous regime, and a pro-Vietnamese government was installed (see Third Indochina War).
The United States did not recognize the new government of Cambodia and, along with the United Nations, continued to consider the Khmer Rouge (perpetrators of the greatest genocide since World War II) as their ally. In 1979, the Chinese, furious with the Vietnamese for eliminating their Khmer Rouge allies, launched an invasion of Vietnam's northern provinces. After fighting to a stalemate, the Chinese withdrew.