Abstract
The Vietnam War was the United States’ first military defeat. It was not a small one. When Vietnam declared its independence from French colonial domination in 1945, the United States backed British and French troops in their effort to regain control. From 1946 to 1954 the United States supported France in its colonial war to crush the Vietnamese independence movement, the Vietminh; after 1950 it paid 80 per cent of France’s costs. After the French defeat in 1954, the United States created a government in southern Vietnam, and sent hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance and several hundred advisers and intelligence agents.
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Notes
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© 1989 Editorial Board, Lumiere (Co-operative) Press Ltd
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Gibson, J.W. (1989). American Paramilitary Culture and the Reconstitution of the Vietnam War. In: Walsh, J., Aulich, J. (eds) Vietnam Images: War and Representation. Insights. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19916-7_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19916-7_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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