CIA map of “dissident activities” in French Indochina as at 3 November 1950, Page 8 of the Pentagon Papers – public domain image

(20) INDOCHINA WARS / VIETNAM WAR

(1940-1979)

“In Indochina, a nativist political movement rose up to oppose the resumption of French colonial rule; one of the factions that struggled for supremacy was the Communist Viet Minh led by Ho Chi Minh.”

You knew this one was coming – the iconic twentieth century war after 1945 and second only to the Second World War itself as visual image in popular culture or imagination, and as metaphor or archetype in history or politics.

Of course, it serves as the counterpoint to the Second World War in those things, particularly in moral terms, highlighted by the defeat of the United States and its allies in Vietnam, with the diminished number of its allies as further counterpoint to the Second World War.

It also serves as counterpoint in its nature, both as a limited war and as insurgency or guerilla warfare, contrasting with the Second World War as both unlimited and as more straightforward conventional warfare. Indeed, a common criticism of American military proficiency or strategy in the Vietnam War is that it essentially sought to fight an unconventional war by conventional means more suited to the Second World War and hence entirely misplaced in the Vietnam War, resulting or at least contributing to defeat.

Few things encapsulate the unconventional Vietnam War wrongly fought by conventional Second World War strategy in popular culture or imagination more than American bombing during the war, usually seen as futilely dropping bombs on jungle.

In popular culture or imagination, the Vietnam War is typically that involving the United States in varying levels of engagement from about 1954, with the height of its military engagement from about 1965 to 1972. However, that war was actually the Second Indochina War, which followed almost directly from the First Indochina War from 1945 to 1954 against the French colonial regime – and the First Indochina War commenced immediately as the last shots were fired in the Second World War.

The First Indochina War in turn took shape in the Second World War itself. The Vietnamese resistance to French colonial rule predated the Second World War but took its definitive shape in that war – as the Vichy French colonial administration effectively had to concede control to Japanese occupation from 1940 onwards until Japan “had extended its control over the whole of French Indochina”.

Interestingly, the Japanese occupation and control of French Indochina was the trigger point for the United States to embargo Japan, which in turn led to war with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Interestingly that is, because it illuminates Vietnam as another American trigger point for the Cold War in Asia.

During the Pacific War, however, the United States placed little weight on French Indochina – with President Roosevelt even offering it to Chiang Kai-Shek. In fairness, this may have reflected the predominant role of China for Vietnamese resistance – “most of the Vietnamese resistance to Japan, France, or both, including both communist and non-communist groups, remained based over the border, in China”.

One exception was Ho Chi Minh and the underground communist resistance he led within Vietnam from 1941 onwards – gaining mass support from the effects of the 1945 Vietnamese famine on the populace.

In March 1945, the Japanese effectively sought to salt the earth of the remnants of the French colonial administration – which the Japanese revoked, imprisoning French administrators and taking full control of Indochina, nominally under Vietnamese emperor Bao Dai who proclaimed the Empire of Vietnam.

As Japan lurched to its surrender, the communists or Viet Minh under Ho Chi Minh launched firstly their August Revolution from Hanoi and secondly declared Vietnamese independence. The latter had little real effect as the Allies had agreed to China occupying north Vietnam while the British occupied the south.

The Viet Minh remained largely intact under Chinese occupation of the north – such that they were even able to purge non-communist nationalist resistance – but British occupation of the south was another matter. I always recall reading how the British, having accepted the surrendering Japanese garrisons laying down their arms, then immediately rearmed them to keep order in Vietnam – which essentially translated to keeping order for the return of French colonial rule.

However, the Vietnamese communist resistance under Ho Chi Minh came out swinging against the restoration of French colonial rule from the outset and the First Indochina War took shape, along similar north-south lines as the postwar occupation and the subsequent Second Indochina War with the United States, with the Third Indochina War against China in 1979 echoing the postwar Chinese occupation of northern Vietnam.

RATING: 4 STARS*****

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Spot the difference! Map of the first month and last month of the Korean War taken in screenshots and placed together in collage by me from an animated series of maps through the war by Leomonaci98 for Wikipedia “Korean War” under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

(19) KOREAN WAR

(1945-1953)

“Korea became a powder keg with the Russians and Americans entangled in its north and south.”

The Korean War may have been its own distinct war, but it directly arose from the circumstances of the Second World War before it, overlaid by the new Cold War of which it was part (and for which it was the first major conflict).

The primary circumstance which gave rise to the Korean War was the occupation of the northern and southern halves of Korea by the Soviet Union and the United States respectively – similarly to the eastern and western halves of Germany in Europe.

Ironically, Japan itself was fortunate to avoid the division of Germany into Europe, because of its sole occupation by the United States (and selected western allies), but its former imperial territory of Korea was not. Indeed, Korea was doubly unfortunate in that, unlike Germany, war was fought along the lines of that division.

Of course, the key distinction between Korea and Germany was that any war along the lines of division in Germany would have involved war directly between the United States and the Soviet Union – the very thing that they sought to avoid in the Cold War, with its potential escalation to nuclear war after 1949.

In Korea, however, the Soviet Union could wage war by proxy – firstly the North Korean communist regime that was already fighting low-level warfare across the border with its non-communist counterpart in South Korea from 1945 onwards, and secondly the new communist government in China on North Korea’s behalf.

The Korean War was also “largely fought by the same commanders and with the same doctrines, weapons, and equipment as the Second World War” – including strategic bombing on the same scale, dropping more bombs than in the whole Pacific War, ranking North Korea as one of the most heavily bombed countries in history.

Some of those weapons were developed from their versions introduced or tested in the last days of the Second World War. Notably, jet aircraft – while the Allies had eschewed replacing their propellor-driven prop counterparts in service at that late stage of the Second World War, they came into their own in the Korean War. Jet aircraft confronted each other in air-to air combat for the first time in history and it was the first war in which jets played the central role in air combat. Similarly, the Korean War also featured the first large-scale deployment of helicopters, which had been developed during the Second World War.

It was also the closest the United States came to using nuclear weapons against an adversary in war since the Second World War, actively contemplating or planning their use against China, or North Korean and Chinese forces.

The Korean War also featured General Macarthur’s daring amphibious invasion behind enemy lines for the Battle of Inchon as the closest comparison to Normandy since the Second World War. The Battle of Inchon has commonly been considered among historians and military scholars as a strategic masterpiece or one of the most decisive military operations in modern warfare, a particularly distinctive accolade for an amphibious operation – “a brilliant success, almost flawlessly executed,” which remained “the only unambiguously successful, large-scale US combat operation” for the next 40 years.

That said, but for its first year which did resemble the more mobile warfare of the Second World War, the Korean War mostly resembled the First World War and the conventional static stalemate of the Western Front, albeit crammed into the narrower space of the Korean peninsula.

Ironically enough, the war stabilized at or close to the original border between South and North Korea. That is where the fighting largely stayed for the next two years – and also where it ended at ceasefire.

In this the Korean War again more closely resembled the First World War than the Second, with their inconclusive armistices or ceasefires that are far more typical of modern war than the Second World War with its decisive victories. The Korean War is still very much with us – with the ceasefire division of the Korean peninsula into opposing North and South Korea, still technically at war with each other, in a frozen conflict like bugs preserved in some strange Cold War amber.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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Map of the United States of Indonesia, December 1949 by Milenioscuro for Wikipedia “Indonesian National Revolution” under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en

(18) INDONESIAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE

(1942-1949)

And now we come to the focus of my wild-tier special mentions for conflicts or wars after the Second World War, but which took definitive shape during that war – the wars in east or south east Asia.

Of course, we’ve already seen one of the biggest such wars in my previous special mention for the Chinese Civil War, but it is also one that encapsulates many of the features of “the deadly confrontations that broke out–or merely continued–in Asia after peace was proclaimed at the end of World War II”.

“Under occupation by the victorious Allies, this part of the world was plunged into new power struggles or back into old feuds that in some ways were worse than the war itself”, compounded by the circumstance that “the U.S. and Soviet governments, as they secretly vied for influence in liberated lands, were soon at odds”.

“Within weeks of the famous surrender ceremony aboard the U.S.S. Missouri, civil war, communal clashes, and insurgency engulfed the continent, from Southeast Asia to the Soviet border. By early 1947, full-scale wars were raging in China, Indonesia, and Vietnam, with growing guerrilla conflicts in Korea and Malaya. Within a decade after the Japanese surrender, almost all of the countries of South, East, and Southeast Asia that had formerly been conquests of the Japanese or colonies of the European powers experienced wars and upheavals that resulted in the deaths of at least 2.5 million combatants and millions of civilians.”

Unlike British India, Indonesia had to fight a war of independence, also known as the Indonesian National Revolution, against the Netherlands that had ruled it as the Dutch East Indies – expanding from the original holdings of the Dutch East India Company in 1603 through to its full extent under the Dutch government until Japanese occupation in 1942.

There are some ironies here. That was the Dutch government in exile, as the Netherlands had been occupied by Germany in 1940, so the Dutch government found itself exiled twice over with the loss of the Dutch East Indies to Japan. Also, while Indonesia may not have had British India’s more “peaceful” cession of independence, it had fewer casualties from its war for independence than British India had from its partition into two states. Indeed, it was fortunate that its war for independence involved comparatively few casualties among the new or continuing wars that emerged in east or south-east Asia after the Second World War.

The Indonesian independence movement began well before the Second World War, but the occupation by Japan from 1942 to 1945 “was a critical factor in the subsequent revolution”. Firstly, Japan “spread and encouraged Indonesian nationalist sentiment”, even if more for their own advantage. Secondly, the Japanese occupation effectively “destroyed and replaced much of the Dutch-created economic, administrative, and political infrastructure”. Hence I’ve chosen 1942 as the starting date for this special mention.

And the Indonesian independence movement came out swinging straight from the end of the war, with their declaration of independence on 17 August 1945 – only two days after the announcement of Japan’s unconditional surrender (and prior to the formal ceremony of surrender on the U.S.S. Missouri).

The Dutch were able to regain some control of major towns or cities when they returned as a significant military force in early 1946. In the interim, other Allied forces occupied Indonesia or at least parts of it, primarily the British as it was assigned to Britain’s South East Asia Command.

Ironically, despite surrendering, the former Japanese occupying forces found themselves on both sides of the war. The overwhelming majority of them complied with the terms of surrender to assist the Allied forces to maintain order, albeit both Japanese and Allied forces often sought to avoid direct confrontation with Indonesian nationalists. However, some Japanese holdouts joined the Indonesian national revolutionaries – as did some defecting Indian soldiers from British forces.

Ultimately, Dutch forces were not able to extend or preserve the control they regained, partly because of the military situation facing “well-organized resistance with popular support”, but primarily because of international diplomatic and political opposition. That opposition came from neighboring Australia – where Australian maritime workers in their characteristic style boycotted loading or unloading Dutch ships – but also India, the Soviet Union, and most significantly, the United States. The opposition from the United States was the most significant because it threatened to cut off economic aid to the Netherlands under the Marshall Plan. The Dutch gave in, ceding sovereignty to Indonesia in 1949.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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