Vietnam Aftermath

Report Outline
Situation One Year After Cease-Fire
Communist Threat Since World War II
Proposals to End Fighting in Indochina
Special Focus

Situation One Year After Cease-Fire

Fear of Communist Offensive Early This Year

The agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam was signed at the International Conference Center in Paris on Jan. 27, 1973. The cease-fire agreed to that day by the United States, the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Vietnam (Vietcong) officially ended the longest war in American history. But in Vietnam, there has been little surcease from the hostilities that have tormented Southeast Asia for three decades.

President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam, never happy with the agreement, spoke bitterly about the present situation in a message to the nation on Nov. 1. “All of you must have seen it as clearly as I do,” he said, “that…there has been no cease-fire at all; in fact, there has been no peace; in fact, the boiling war may erupt all over again at any time.” “The hope entertained by this nation and the world which a year ago was infectious, now turns out to be so much disillusionment,” he continued.

Since the cease-fire went into effect on Jan. 28, as many as 50,000 Vietnamese on both sides have died in military action—more than the number of Americans killed in 10 years of war in Indochina. Only two Americans have been killed in Vietnam in the past year; the first was shot the day after the cease-fire took effect and the second, Army Capt. Richard M. Rees, was machine-gunned to death on Dec. 15 in a Vietcong attack on an unarmed recovery team searching for the body of a U.S. helicopter crewman shot down in 1966.