Stalinism
Stalinism is the means of governing and related policies implemented from around 1927 to 1953 by Joseph Stalin. Stalinist policies and ideas as developed in the Soviet Union included rapid industrialization, the theory of socialism in one country, a totalitarian state, collectivization of agriculture, a cult of personality and subordination of the interests of foreign communist parties to those of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, deemed by Stalinism to be the leading vanguard party of communist revolution at the time. Stalinism promoted the escalation of class conflict, utilizing state violence to forcibly purge society of the bourgeoisie, whom Stalinist doctrine regarded as threats to the pursuit of the communist revolution; this policy resulted in persecution of such people. "Enemies" included not only bourgeois people, but working-class people with counter-revolutionary sympathies. Stalinist industrialization was designed to accelerate the development towards communism, stressing the need for such rapid industrialization on the grounds that the Soviet Union was economically backward in comparison with other countries and asserting that socialist society needed industry in order to face the challenges posed by internal and external enemies of communism.
Rapid industrialization was accompanied by mass collectivization of agriculture and by rapid urbanization. Rapid urbanization converted many small villages into industrial cities. To accelerate the development of industrialization, Stalin imported materials, ideas and workers from Western Europe and from the United States and pragmatically set up joint-venture contracts with major American private enterprises, such as the Ford Motor Company, which under state supervision assisted in developing the basis of the industry of the Soviet economy from the late 1920s to the 1930s. After the American private enterprises had completed their tasks, Soviet state enterprises took over; the term came into prominence during the mid-1930s when Lazar Kaganovich, a Soviet politician and associate of Stalin declared: "Let's replace Long Live Leninism with Long Live Stalinism!". Stalin met this usage with hesitancy, dismissing it as excessively praiseful and contributing to a cult of personality. Stalinism is used to describe the period during which Stalin was acting leader of the Soviet Union while serving as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party from 1922 to his death on 5th of March 1953.
While some historians view Stalinism as a reflection of the ideologies of Leninism and Marxism, some argue that it stands separate from the socialist ideals it stemmed from. After a political struggle that culminated in the defeat of the Bukharinists, Stalinism was free to shape policy without opposition, ushering forth an era of harsh authoritarianism that soldiered toward rapid industrialization regardless of the cost. From 1917 to 1924, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky and Stalin appeared united, but they had discernible ideological differences. In his dispute with Trotsky, Stalin de-emphasized the role of workers in advanced capitalist countries. Stalin polemicized against Trotsky on the role of peasants as in China whereas Trotsky's position was in favor of urban insurrection over peasant-based guerrilla warfare. Whilst all other October Revolution 1917 Bolshevik leaders regarded their revolution more or less just as the beginning, they saw Russia as the leapboard on the road towards the World Wide Revolution, Stalin introduced the idea of Socialism in One Country by the autumn of 1924.
This did not just stand in sharp contrast to Trotsky's "Permanent Revolution", but in contrast to all earlier Socialistic theses. But by time and through circumstances, the revolution did not spread outside Russia, as Lenin had assumed it soon would. Not within the other former territories of the Russian Empire such as Poland, Lithuania and Estonia had the revolution been a success. On the contrary, all these countries had returned to capitalist bourgeois rule, but still, by the autumn of 1924, Stalin's idea of socialism in Soviet Russia alone was next to blasphemy in the ears of the other Politburo members- Zinoviev and Kamenev to the intellectual left, Rykov and Tomsky to the pragmatic right and the powerful Trotsky, who belonged to no side but his own. None of them had thought of Stalin's concept as a potential addition to Communist ideology. Hence, Stalin's "Socialism in One Country" doctrine couldn't be imposed until he had become close to being the autocratic ruler of the U. S. S. R.. While traditional communist thought holds that the state will "wither away" as the implementation of socialism reduces class distinction, Stalin argued that the proletarian state must become stronger before it can wither away.
In Stalin's view, counter-revolutionary elements will try to derail the transition to full communism, the state must be powerful enough to defeat them. For this reason, Communist regimes influenced by Stalin have been described as totalitarian. Sheng Shicai collaborated with the Soviets, allowing Stalinist rule to be extended to the Xinjiang province in the 1930s. In 1937, Sheng conducted a purge similar to the Great Purge. Stalin blamed the kulaks as the inciters of reactionary violence against the people during the implementation of agricultural collectivisation. In response, the state under Stalin's leadership initiated a violent
People's Army of Vietnam
The People's Army of Vietnam known as the Vietnamese People's Army, is the military force of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The PAVN is a part of the Vietnam People's Armed Forces and includes: Ground Force, Air Force, Border Defence Force, Coast Guard. However, Vietnam does not have a separate Ground Army branch. All ground troops, army corps, military districts and specialised arms belong to the Ministry of Defence, directly under the command of the Central Military Commission, the Minister of Defence, the General Staff of the Vietnam People's Army; the military flag of the PAVN is the flag of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, with the words Quyết thắng added in yellow at the top left. During the French Indochina War, the PAVN was referred to as the Việt Minh. In the context of the Vietnam War, the army was referred to as the North Vietnamese Army; this allowed writers, the U. S. military, the general public, to distinguish northern communists from the southern communists, or Viet Cong.
However, both groups worked under the same command structure. The Viet Cong was considered a branch of the VPA by the North Vietnamese. In 2010 the PAVN undertook the role of leading the 1,000th Anniversary Parade in Hanoi by performing their biggest parade in history, it is recognized as one of the most battle-hardened and best trained militaries in Asia. The first historical record of Vietnamese military history dates back on the era of Hồng Bàng, the first recorded state in ancient Vietnam to have assembled military force. Since military plays a crucial role on developing Vietnamese history due to its turbulent history of wars against China, Cambodia and Thailand; the Southern expansion of Vietnam resulted with the destruction of Champa as an independent nation to a level that it didn't exist anymore. In most of its history, the Royal Vietnamese Armed Forces was regarded to be one of the most professional, battle-hardened and trained armies in Southeast Asia as well as Asia in a large extent.
The PAVN was first conceived in September 1944 at the first Revolutionary Party Military Conference as "armed propaganda brigades" to educate and mobilise the Vietnamese to create a main force to drive the French colonial and Japanese occupiers from Vietnam. Under the guidelines of Hồ Chí Minh, Võ Nguyên Giáp was given the task of establishing the brigades and the Armed Propaganda Unit for National Liberation came into existence on 22 December 1944; the first formation was made up of thirty one men and three women, armed with two revolvers, seventeen rifles, one light machine gun, fourteen breech-loading flintlocks. The United States' OSS agents, led by Archimedes Patti –, sometimes referred as the founding father of the PAVN due to his role, had provided ammunitions as well as logistic intelligence and equipments and they had helped training these soldiers, become the vital backbone of the Vietnamese military to fight the Japanese occupiers as well as the future wars; the group was renamed the "Vietnam Liberation Army" in May 1945.
In September, the army was again renamed the "Vietnam National Defence Army". At this point, it had about 1,000 soldiers. In 1950, it became the People's Army of Vietnam. Võ Nguyên Giáp went on to become the first full general of the VPA on 28 May 1948, famous for leading the PAVN in victory over French forces at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and being in overall command against U. S. backed South Vietnam at the Fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. On 7 January 1947, its first regiment, the 102nd'Capital' Regiment, was created for operations around Hanoi. Over the next two years, the first division, the 308th Division well known as the Pioneer Division, was formed from the 88th Tu Vu Regiment and the 102nd Capital Regiment. By late 1950 the 308th Division had a full three infantry regiments, when it was supplemented by the 36th Regiment. At that time, the 308th Division was backed by the 11th Battalion that became the main force of the 312th Division. In late 1951, after launching three campaigns against three French strongpoints in the Red River Delta, the PAVN refocused on building up its ground forces further, with five new divisions, each of 10–15,000 men, created: the 304th Glory Division at Thanh Hóa, the 312th Victory Division in Vinh Phuc, the 316th Bong Lau Division in the northwest border region, the 320th Delta Division in the north Red River Delta, the 325th Binh Tri Thien Division in Binh Tri Thien province.
In 1951, the first artillery Division, the 351st Division was formed, before Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, for the first time in history, it was equipped by 24 captured 105mm US howitzers supplied by the Chinese People's Liberation Army. The first six divisions became known as Iron' divisions. In 1954 four of these divisions defeated the French Union forces at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, ending 83 years of French rule in Indochina. Soon after the 1954 Geneva Accords, the 330th and 338th Divisions were formed by southern Vietminh members who had moved north in conformity with that agreement, by 1955, six more divisions were formed: the 328th, 332nd, 350th in the north of the DRV, the 305th and the 324th near the DMZ, the 335 Division of soldiers repatriated from Laos. In 1957, the theatres of the war with the French were reorganis
First Indochina War
The First Indochina War began in French Indochina on December 19, 1946, lasted until July 20, 1954. Fighting between French forces and their Việt Minh opponents in the south dated from September 1945; the conflict pitted a range of forces, including the French Union's French Far East Expeditionary Corps, led by France and supported by Bảo Đại's Vietnamese National Army against the Việt Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh and the People's Army of Vietnam led by Võ Nguyên Giáp. Most of the fighting took place in Tonkin in northern Vietnam, although the conflict engulfed the entire country and extended into the neighboring French Indochina protectorates of Laos and Cambodia. At the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, the Combined Chiefs of Staff decided that Indochina south of latitude 16° north was to be included in the Southeast Asia Command under British Admiral Mountbatten. Japanese forces located south of that line surrendered to him and those to the north surrendered to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. In September 1945, Chinese forces entered Tonkin, a small British task force landed at Saigon.
The Chinese accepted the Vietnamese government under Ho Chi Minh in power in Hanoi. The British refused to do in Saigon, deferred to the French there from the outset, against the ostensible support of the Việt Minh authorities by American OSS representatives. On V-J Day, September 2, Ho Chi Minh had proclaimed in Hanoi the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam; the DRV ruled as the only civil government in all of Vietnam for a period of about 20 days, after the abdication of Emperor Bảo Đại, who had governed under Japanese rule. On 23 September 1945, with the knowledge of the British commander in Saigon, French forces overthrew the local DRV government, declared French authority restored in Cochinchina. Guerrilla warfare began around Saigon but the French retook control of the South and North of Indochina. Hô Chi Minh agreed to negotiate the future status of Vietnam, but the talks, held in France, failed to produce a solution. After over one year of latent conflict, all-out war broke out in December 1946 between French and Việt Minh forces as Hô and his government went underground.
The French tried to stabilize Indochina by reorganizing it as a Federation of Associated States. In 1949, they put former Emperor Bảo Đại back in power, as the ruler of a newly established State of Vietnam; the first few years of the war involved a low-level rural insurgency against the French. In 1949 the conflict turned into a conventional war between two armies equipped with modern weapons supplied by the United States and the Soviet Union. French Union forces included colonial troops from the whole former empire, French professional troops and units of the French Foreign Legion; the use of metropolitan recruits was forbidden by the government to prevent the war from becoming more unpopular at home. It was called the "dirty war" by leftists in France; the strategy of pushing the Việt Minh into attacking well-defended bases in remote parts of the country at the end of their logistical trails was validated at the Battle of Nà Sản. However, this base was weak because of a lack of concrete and steel.
French efforts were made more difficult due to the limited usefulness of armored tanks in a jungle environment, lack of strong air forces for air cover and carpet bombing, use of foreign recruits from other French colonies. Võ Nguyên Giáp, used efficient and novel tactics of direct fire artillery, convoy ambushes and massed anti-aircraft guns to impede land and air supply deliveries together with a strategy based on recruiting a sizable regular army facilitated by wide popular support, a guerrilla warfare doctrine and instruction developed in China, the use of simple and reliable war material provided by the Soviet Union; this combination proved fatal for the bases' defenses, culminating in a decisive French defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. At the International Geneva Conference on July 21, 1954, the new socialist French government and the Việt Minh made an agreement which gave the Việt Minh control of North Vietnam above the 17th parallel; the south continued under Bảo Đại. The agreement was denounced by the United States.
A year Bảo Đại would be deposed by his prime minister, Ngô Đình Diệm, creating the Republic of Vietnam. Soon an insurgency, backed by the north, developed against Diệm's government; the conflict escalated into the Vietnam War. Vietnam was absorbed into French Indochina in stages between 1858 and 1887. Nationalism grew. Early Vietnamese resistance centered on the intellectual Phan Bội Châu. Châu looked to Japan, which had modernized and was one of the few Asian nations to resist European colonization. With Prince Cường Để, Châu started two organizations in Japan, the Duy Tân hội and Vietnam Cong Hien Hoi. Due to French pressure, Japan deported Phan Bội Châu to China. Witnessing Sun Yat-sen's Xinhai Revolution, Châu was inspired to commence the Viet Nam Quang Phục Hội movement in Guangzhou. From 1914 to 1917, he was imprisoned by Yuan Shikai's counterrevolutionary government. In 1925, he was captured by French agents in spirited to Vietnam. Due to his popularity, Châu was spared from execution and placed under house arrest until his death in 1940.
In September 1940, shortly after Phan Bội Châu's death, Japan launched its invasion of French Indochina, mirroring its ally Germany's co
Vietnamese border raids in Thailand
After the 1978 Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and defeat of Democratic Kampuchea in 1979, the anti-Hanoi Khmer Rouge fled to the border regions of Thailand, with assistance from China, Pol Pot's troops managed to regroup and reorganise in forested and mountainous zones on the Thai-Cambodian border. During the 1980s and early 1990s Khmer Rouge forces operated from inside refugee camps in Thailand, in an attempt to de-stabilize the pro-Hanoi People's Republic of Kampuchea's government, which Thailand refused to recognise. Thailand and Vietnam faced off across the Thai-Cambodian border with frequent Vietnamese incursions and shellings into Thai territory throughout the 1980s in pursuit of Cambodian guerrillas who kept attacking Vietnamese occupation forces. Thailand's suspicion of Vietnamese long-term objectives and fear of Vietnamese support for an internal Thai communist insurgency movement led the Thai government to support United States objectives in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
In 1973 a new civilian government in Thailand created a chance for some degree of reconciliation with North Vietnam, when it proposed to remove United States military forces from Thai soil and adopt a more neutralist stance. Hanoi responded by sending a delegation to Bangkok, but talks broke down before any progress in improving relations could be made. Discussions resumed in August 1976, after Hanoi had defeated the South Vietnamese and united the country under its rule, they resulted in a call for an exchange of ambassadors and for an opening of negotiations on trade and economic co-operation, but a military coup in October 1976 ushered in a new Thai government less sympathetic to the Vietnamese communists. Contact was resumed in May 1977, when Vietnam and Laos held a conference to discuss resuming work on the Mekong Development Project, a major cooperative effort, halted by the Vietnam War. Beginning in December 1978, the conflict in Cambodia dominated diplomatic exchanges, seasonal Vietnamese military offensives that included incursions across the Thai border and numerous Thai casualties strained the relationship.
In 1979, after Vietnam's military occupation of Cambodia Bangkok allied itself with the Khmer Rouge, an adversary of Vietnam and looked to Beijing for security assistance. In both instances, Thailand's actions hardened Hanoi's attitude toward Bangkok; as the ASEAN member most vulnerable to a hypothetical Vietnamese attack for having given shelter to the Khmer Rouge in camps within its territory, Thailand was foremost among the ASEAN partners opposing Vietnam's 1978 invasion of Cambodia. October: A major offensive by the Vietnamese against Khmer Rouge hide-outs in their mountain sanctuaries pushed thousands of Khmer Rouge soldiers, their families and the civilians under their control to the Thai border. 8 November: Thai artillery fire hit Nong Chan Refugee Camp, killing about 100 refugees. 12 November: Vietnamese attacks opposite Ban Laem drove 5,000 Khmer Rouge troops and villagers into Thailand. About half went to Kamput Holding Center. 23 June: In response to the organised repatriation of thousands of refugees, 200 Vietnamese troops crossed the border at 02:00 into the Ban Non Mak Mun area, including Nong Chan Refugee Camp, setting off a three-day artillery battle that left about 200 dead, including around 22–130 Thai soldiers, one Thai villager, scores of refugees and 72–100 People's Army of Vietnam troops.
Hundreds of refugees were reported killed, many by a Thai artillery barrage that struck one of the camps. Others were caught in the crossfire. Several hundred refugees who resisted the Vietnamese were executed. Vietnamese troops temporarily seized two Thai border villages including Ban Non Mak Mun and shelled others. 24 June: Still controlling Nong Chan, Vietnamese forces fought artillery and small arms duels with Thai troops and attacked guerrilla strongpoints. The Vietnamese shot down two Thai military aircraft. 26 June: Vietnamese troops seized two relief officials and two American photographers at Nong Chan Refugee Camp. 4 January: Vietnamese forces stormed across the border, opened fire with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons, battled with Thai troops before being pushed back. Two Thai soldiers were killed and one was wounded during the early morning, 90-minute battle. Between 50 and 60 Vietnamese soldiers opened fire on a Thai patrol half a mile inside Thailand. Vietnamese casualties are unknown.
Thai troop reinforcements were rushed to the border on the next day and put on alert against another cross-border raid by Hanoi's troops. Early March: A spate of incidents along the border, culminating in the intrusion of 300 Vietnamese troops and the killing of a number of Thai Border Patrol Police. 21 October: Vietnamese gunners opened fire on a Thai reconnaissance plane near the border, but did not hit the aircraft. The plane returned to its base inside Thailand. January: Cambodian government troops, backed by Vietnamese units, conducted a major offensive against the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea, which united three resistance factions; the fighting spilled over onto Thai soil. More than 47,000 Cambodians flee to Thailand. 16 January: Vietnamese troops recaptured the hamlet of Yeang Dangkum, east of Nong Chan. Insurgents from the non-Communist Khmer People's National Liberation Front captured the hamlet on 26 December and held it as part of a series of initiatives at year's end.
21 January: Vietnamese artillery attack forced the KPNLF base in the 0'Bok pass to move into Thailand. Non-combatants return at the end of the month. 31 January – 1 February: With heavy artillery support, 4,000 armour-led Vietnamese troops launched an assault aga
North Vietnam
North Vietnam the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, was a country in Southeast Asia from 1954 to 1975. Vietnamese revolutionary leader Hồ Chí Minh declared independence from French Indochina on 2 September 1945 and announced the creation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. France reasserted its colonial dominance and a war ensued between France and the Viet Minh, led by President Ho Chi Minh; the Viet Minh was a coalition of nationalist groups led by communists. In February 1951, the communists announced the creation of the Lao Động Party marginalizing non-communists in the Việt Minh. Between 1946 and 1954, the Việt Minh controlled most of the rural areas of Vietnam. In 1954, after the French were defeated, the negotiation of the Geneva Accords ended the war between France and the Việt Minh and granted Vietnam independence; the Geneva Accords divided the country provisionally into northern and southern zones, stipulated general elections in July 1956 to "bring about the unification of Viet-Nam".
The northern zone was called North Vietnam, the southern zone was called South Vietnam. Supervision of the implementation of the Geneva Accords was the responsibility of an international commission consisting of India and Poland; the United States did not sign the Geneva Accords, which stated that the United States "shall continue to seek to achieve unity through free elections supervised by the United Nations to insure that they are conducted fairly". In July 1955, the prime minister of the Republic of Vietnam, Ngô Đình Diệm, announced that South Vietnam would not participate in elections to unify the country, he said that South Vietnam was not bound by it. After the failure to reunify Vietnam by elections, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam attempted to unify the country by force in the Vietnam War. North Vietnam and the Việt Cộng insurgents supported by their communist allies, including the Soviet Union and China, fought against the military of South Vietnam, the United States and other anti-communist military forces, including South Korea, Australia and smaller players.
North Vietnam supported indigenous communist rebels in Cambodia and Laos against their respective U. S.-backed governments. The war ended when North Vietnamese forces and the Việt Cộng defeated South Vietnam and in 1976 united the two parts of the country into the Socialist Republic of Vietnam; the expanded Democratic Republic retained North Vietnam's political culture under Soviet influence and continued its existing memberships in international organisations such as Comecon. After about 300 years of partition by feudal dynasties, Vietnam was again under one single authority in 1802 when Gia Long founded the Nguyễn dynasty, but the country became a French protectorate after 1883 and under Japanese occupation after 1940 during World War II. Soon after Japan surrendered on 2 September 1945, the Việt Minh in the August Revolution entered Hanoi, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was proclaimed on 2 September 1945: a government for the entire country, replacing the Nguyễn dynasty. Hồ Chí Minh became leader of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
U. S. President Franklin Roosevelt had spoken against French rule in Indochina, the U. S. was supportive of the Viet Minh at this time. The Democratic Republic of Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh claimed dominion over all of Vietnam, but during this time South Vietnam was in profound political disorder; the successive collapse of French Japanese power, followed by the dissension among the political factions in Saigon had been accompanied by widespread violence in the countryside. On 16 August 1945, Hồ Chí Minh organized the National Congress in Tân Trào; the Congress adopted 10 major policies of the Việt Minh, passed the General Uprising Order,decided the National Flag, in the middle with 5-pointed gold star, selected the national anthem and selected the National Committee for the Liberation of Vietnam becoming the Provisional Revolutionary Government, led by Hồ Chí Minh. On 12 September 1945, the first British troops arrived in Saigon. On 23 September 28 days after the people of Saigon seized political power, French troops occupied the police stations, the post office, other public buildings.
The salient political fact of life in Northern Vietnam was Chinese Nationalist army of occupation, the Chinese presence had forced Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh to accommodate Chinese-backed Viet Nationalists. In June 1946, Chinese Nationalist troops evacuated Hanoi, on the 15 June, the last detachments embarked at Haiphong. After the departure of the British in 1946, the French controlled a part of Cochinchina, South Central Coast, Central Highlands since the end Southern Resistance War. In January 1946, the Viet Minh held an election to establish a National Assembly. Public enthusiasm for this event suggests that the Viet Minh enjoyed a great deal of popularity at this time, although there were few competitive races and the party makeup of the Assembly was determined in advance of the vote. On 18 and 19 September 1945, the Việt Minh held secret meetings with Việt Quốc. In these two meetings, Nguyễn Hải Thần represented Việt Cách and Nguyễn Tường Tam represent Việt Quốc. Hồ Chí Minh agree to unite the Việt Minh with Việt Quốc.
Thus, the Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam led by the Việt Minh will receive the financial and political support of the Republic of China. For this proposal, within the Việt Minh there are many different opinions. Võ Nguyên Giáp disagrees with the suggestion that the proposals are not valid and not honest, as if replacing French col
Cold War
The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the Soviet Union with its satellite states, the United States with its allies after World War II. A common historiography of the conflict begins between 1946, the year U. S. diplomat George F. Kennan's "Long Telegram" from Moscow cemented a U. S. foreign policy of containment of Soviet expansionism threatening strategically vital regions, the Truman Doctrine of 1947, ending between the Revolutions of 1989, which ended communism in Eastern Europe, the 1991 collapse of the USSR, when nations of the Soviet Union abolished communism and restored their independence. The term "cold" is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two sides, but they each supported major regional conflicts known as proxy wars; the conflict split the temporary wartime alliance against Nazi Germany and its allies, leaving the USSR and the US as two superpowers with profound economic and political differences. The capitalist West was led by the United States, a federal republic with a two-party presidential system, as well as the other First World nations of the Western Bloc that were liberal democratic with a free press and independent organizations, but were economically and politically entwined with a network of banana republics and other authoritarian regimes, most of which were the Western Bloc's former colonies.
Some major Cold War frontlines such as Indochina and the Congo were still Western colonies in 1947. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, was a self-proclaimed Marxist–Leninist state led by its Communist Party, which in turn was dominated by a totalitarian leader with different titles over time, a small committee called the Politburo; the Party controlled the state, the press, the military, the economy, many organizations throughout the Second World, including the Warsaw Pact and other satellites, funded communist parties around the world, sometimes in competition with communist China following the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s. The two worlds were fighting for dominance in low-developed regions known as the Third World. In time, a neutral bloc arose in these regions with the Non-Aligned Movement, which sought good relations with both sides. Notwithstanding isolated incidents of air-to-air dogfights and shoot-downs, the two superpowers never engaged directly in full-scale armed combat. However, both were armed in preparation for a possible all-out nuclear world war.
Each side had a nuclear strategy that discouraged an attack by the other side, on the basis that such an attack would lead to the total destruction of the attacker—the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. Aside from the development of the two sides' nuclear arsenals, their deployment of conventional military forces, the struggle for dominance was expressed via proxy wars around the globe, psychological warfare, massive propaganda campaigns and espionage, far-reaching embargoes, rivalry at sports events, technological competitions such as the Space Race; the first phase of the Cold War began in the first two years after the end of the Second World War in 1945. The USSR consolidated its control over the states of the Eastern Bloc, while the United States began a strategy of global containment to challenge Soviet power, extending military and financial aid to the countries of Western Europe and creating the NATO alliance; the Berlin Blockade was the first major crisis of the Cold War. With the victory of the Communist side in the Chinese Civil War and the outbreak of the Korean War, the conflict expanded.
The USSR and the US competed for influence in Latin America and the decolonizing states of Africa and Asia. The Soviets suppressed the Hungarian Revolution of 1956; the expansion and escalation sparked more crises, such as the Suez Crisis, the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the closest the two sides came to nuclear war. Meanwhile, an international peace movement took root and grew among citizens around the world, first in Japan from 1954, when people became concerned about nuclear weapons testing, but soon in Europe and the US; the peace movement, in particular the anti-nuclear movement, gained pace and popularity from the late 1950s and early 1960s, continued to grow through the'70s and'80s with large protest marches and various non-parliamentary activism opposing war and calling for global nuclear disarmament. Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, a new phase began that saw the Sino-Soviet split complicate relations within the Communist sphere, while US allies France, demonstrated greater independence of action.
The USSR crushed the 1968 Prague Spring liberalization program in Czechoslovakia, while the US experienced internal turmoil from the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War, which ended with the defeat of the US-backed Republic of Vietnam, prompting further adjustments. By the 1970s, both sides had become interested in making allowances in order to create a more stable and predictable international system, ushering in a period of détente that saw Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the US opening relations with the People's Republic of China as a strategic counterweight to the Soviet Union. Détente collapsed at the end of the decade with the beginning of the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979; the early 1980s were another period of elevated tension, with the Soviet downing of KAL Flight 007 and the "Able Archer" NATO military exercises, both in 1983. The United States increased diplomatic and economic pressures on the Soviet Union, at a time when the communist state was suffering from economic stag
Cambodian–Vietnamese War
The Cambodian–Vietnamese War, otherwise known in Vietnam as the Counter-offensive on the Southwestern border, was an armed conflict between the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and Democratic Kampuchea. The war began with isolated clashes along the land and maritime boundaries of Vietnam and Kampuchea between 1975 and 1978 involving division-sized military formations. On 25 December 1978, Vietnam launched a full-scale invasion of Kampuchea and subsequently occupied the country and removed the Communist Party of Kampuchea government from power. During the Vietnam War and Cambodian communists had formed an alliance to fight U. S.-backed regimes in their respective countries. Despite their open display of cooperation with the Vietnamese, the Khmer Rouge leadership feared that the Vietnamese communists were scheming to form an Indochinese federation with Vietnam as the dominant force in the region. In order to pre-empt an attempt by the Vietnamese to dominate them, the Khmer Rouge leadership began purging Vietnamese-trained personnel within their own ranks as the Lon Nol regime capitulated in 1975.
In May 1975, the newly formed Democratic Kampuchea, dominated by the Khmer Rouge, began attacking Vietnam, beginning with an attack on the Vietnamese island of Phú Quốc. In spite of the fighting, the leaders of reunified Vietnam and Kampuchea made several public diplomatic exchanges throughout 1976 to highlight the strong relations between them. However, behind the scenes, Kampuchean leaders continued to fear what they perceived as Vietnamese expansionism. Therefore, on 30 April 1977, they launched another major military attack on Vietnam. Shocked by the Kampuchean assault, Vietnam launched a retaliatory strike at the end of 1977 in an attempt to force the Kampuchean government to negotiate. In January 1978, the Vietnamese military withdrew because their political objectives had not been achieved. Small-scale fighting continued between the two countries throughout 1978, as China tried to mediate peace talks between the two sides. However, neither country could reach an acceptable compromise at the negotiation table.
By the end of 1978, Vietnamese leaders decided to remove the Khmer Rouge-dominated regime of Democratic Kampuchea, perceiving it as being pro-Chinese and too hostile towards Vietnam. On 25 December 1978, 150,000 Vietnamese troops invaded Democratic Kampuchea and overran the Kampuchean Revolutionary Army in just two weeks, thereby ending the excesses of Pol Pot's regime, responsible for the deaths of a quarter of all Cambodians between 1975 and December 1978. Vietnamese military intervention and the occupying forces' subsequent allowing in of international food aid to mitigate the massive famine is viewed as ending the Cambodian genocide. On 8 January 1979, the pro-Vietnamese People's Republic of Kampuchea was established in Phnom Penh, marking the beginning of a ten-year Vietnamese occupation. During that period, the Khmer Rouge's Democratic Kampuchea continued to be recognised by the United Nations as the legitimate government of Kampuchea, as several armed resistance groups were formed to fight the Vietnamese occupation.
Behind the scenes, Prime Minister Hun Sen of the PRK regime approached factions of the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea to begin peace talks. Under heavy diplomatic and economic pressure from the international community, the Vietnamese government implemented a series of economic and foreign policy reforms, which led to their withdrawal from Kampuchea in September 1989. At the Third Jakarta Informal Meeting in 1990, under the Australian-sponsored Cambodian Peace Plan, representatives of the CGDK and the PRK agreed to a power-sharing arrangement by forming a unity government known as the Supreme National Council; the SNC's role was to represent Cambodian sovereignty on the international stage, while the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia was tasked with supervising the country's domestic policies until a Cambodian government was elected by the people through a peaceful, democratic process. Cambodia's pathway to peace proved to be difficult, as Khmer Rouge leaders decided not to participate in the general elections, but instead they chose to disrupt the electoral process by launching military attacks on UN peacekeepers and killing ethnic Vietnamese migrants.
In May 1993, Sihanouk's FUNCINPEC movement defeated the Cambodian People's Party the Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party, to win the general elections. However, the CPP leadership refused to accept defeat, they announced that the eastern provinces of Cambodia, where most of the CPP's votes were drawn from, would secede from Cambodia. To avoid such an outcome, Norodom Ranariddh, the leader of FUNCINPEC, agreed to form a coalition government with the CPP. Shortly afterwards, the constitutional monarchy was restored and the Khmer Rouge was outlawed by the newly formed Cambodian Government. Angkor, the seat of the Khmer Empire, was subjected to Vietnamese influence as early as the 13th century. Vietnamese influence spread and indirectly, it was not until the early 19th century that Vietnam exercised direct control. In 1813, Nak Ong Chan gained the Cambodian throne with the help of Vietnam, under his rule Cambodia became a protectorate. Following his death in 1834, Vietnam colonised Cambodia. Throughout the 1830s, Vietnam attempted to erase Khmer culture, which had derived the basis of Cambodian society and religion from India rather than China.
The trend of Vietnamese dominance continued during French colonization, under which
