Daniel Orr's Blog, page 79

November 23, 1946 – French forces bombard Haiphong

By September 1946, tensions had risen between French and
Viet Minh forces, which led to armed threats and provocations.  The Viet Minh (“League for the Independence
of Vietnam”; Vietnamese: Việt Nam Độc Lập
Đồng Minh Hội) was a merger of Vietnamese nationalist/independene movements
led by the Indochinese Communist Party which sought the end of French colonial
rule. In November 1946, fighting broke out in Haiphong when French port authorities seized
a Chinese junk, but were in turn fired upon by the Viet Minh.  The French first demanded that the Viet Minh
yield control of Haiphong,
and then bombarded the city using naval and ground artillery, and air strikes.  The French gained control of Haiphong, expelling the
Viet Minh, with 6,000 civilians killed in the fighting.

Southeast Asia today.

(Taken from First Indochina War – Wars of the 20th Century – Twenty Wars in Asia)

Background On
August 14, 1945, Japan
announced its acceptance of the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, marking the
end of the Asia-Pacific theatre of World War II (the European theater of World
War II had ended earlier, on May 8, 1945). 
The sudden Japanese capitulation left a power vacuum that was quickly
filled by the Viet Minh, which in the preceding months, had secretly organized
so-called “People’s Revolutionary Committees” throughout much of the
colony.  These “People’s Revolutionary
Committees” now seized power and organized local administrations in many towns
and cities, more particularly in the northern and central regions, including
the capital Hanoi.  This seizure of power, historically called
the August Revolution, led to the abdication of ex-emperor Bao Dao and the
collapse of his Japanese-sponsored government.

The August Revolution succeeded largely because the Viet
Minh had gained much popular support following a severe famine that hit
northern Vietnam in the summer of 1944 to 1945 (which caused some 400,000 to 2
million deaths).  During the famine, the
Viet Minh raided several Japanese and private grain warehouses.  On September 2, 1945 (the same day Japan
surrendered to the Allies), Ho proclaimed the country’s independence as the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), taking the position of President of a
provisional government.

At this point, Ho sought U.S.
diplomatic support for Vietnam’s
independence, and incorporated part of the 1776 U.S. Declaration of
Independence in his own proclamation of Vietnamese independence.  Ho also wrote several letters to U.S.
President Harry Truman (which were unanswered), and met with U.S. State
Department and OSS officials in Hanoi. 
However, during the war-time Potsdam Conference (July 17 – August 2,
1945), the Allied Powers (including the Soviet Union) decided to allow France
to restore colonial rule in Indochina, but that in the meantime that France was
yet preparing to return, Vietnam was to be partitioned into two zones north and
south of the 16th parallel, with Chinese Nationalist forces tasked to occupy
the northern zone, and British forces (with some French units) tasked to enter
the southern zone.

By mid-September 1945, Chinese and British forces had
occupied their respective zones.  They
then completed their assigned tasks of accepting the surrender of, as well as
disarming and repatriating the Japanese forces within their zones.  In Saigon,
British forces disbanded the Vietnamese revolutionary government that had taken
over the administration of the city. 
This Vietnamese government in Saigon, called the “Provisional Executive
Committee”, was a coalition of many organizations, including the religious
groups Cao Dai and Hoa Hao, the organized crime syndicate Binh Xuyen, the
communists, and nationalist organizations. 
In Cochinchina and parts of Annam,
unlike in Tonkin, the Viet Minh had only
established partial authority because of the presence of these many rival
ideological movements.  But believing
that nationalism was more important than ideology to achieve Vietnam’s independence,
the Viet Minh was willing to work with other groups to form a united front to
oppose the return of French rule.

As a result of the British military actions in the southern
zone, on September 17, 1945, the DRV in Hanoi
launched a general strike in Saigon.  British authorities responded to the strikes
by declaring martial law.  The British
also released and armed some 1,400 French former prisoners of war; the latter
then launched attacks on the Viet Minh, and seized key government
infrastructures in the south.  On
September 24, 1945, elements of the Binh Xuyen crime syndicate attacked and
killed some 150 French nationals, which provoked retaliatory actions by the
French that led to increased fighting. 
British and French forces soon dispersed the Viet Minh from Saigon.  The latter
responded by sabotaging ports, power plants, communication systems, and other
government facilities.

By the third week of September 1945, much of southern Vietnam was
controlled by the French, and the British ceded administration of the region to
them.  In late October 1945, another
British-led operation broke the remaining Viet Minh resistance in the south,
and the Vietnamese revolutionaries retreated to the countryside where they
engaged in guerilla warfare.  Also in October,
some 35,000 French troops arrived in Saigon.  In March 1946, British forces departed from Indochina, ending their involvement in the region.

Meanwhile in the northern zone, some 200,000 Chinese
occupation forces, led by the warlord General Lu Han, allowed Ho Chi Minh and
the Viet Minh to continue exercising power in the north, on the condition that
Ho include non-communists in the Viet Minh government.  To downplay his communist ties, in November
1945, Ho dissolved the ICP and called for Vietnamese nationalist unity.  In late 1945, a provisional coalition
government was formed in the northern zone, comprising the Viet Minh and other
nationalist organizations.  In January
1946, elections to the National Assembly were held in northern and central Vietnam, where
the coalition parties agreed to a pre-set division of electoral seats.

The Chinese occupation forces were disinclined to relinquish
control of northern Vietnam
to the French.  Chinese officers also
enriched themselves by looting properties, engaging in the opium trade in Vietnam and Laos,
and running black market operations in Hanoi and
Haiphong.  However, the Chinese commander also was aware
of the explosive nature of the hostile French and Vietnamese relations, while
the French and Vietnamese suspected the Chinese of harboring territorial
ambitions in northern Vietnam.

But the Chinese Army, which held the real power, also opened
negotiations with the French government, which in February 1946, led to an
agreement where the Chinese would withdraw from Vietnam in exchange for France
renouncing its extraterritorial privileges in China and granting economic
concessions to the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam.

In March 1946, Major Jean Sainteny, a French government
representative, signed an agreement with Ho, where France
would recognize Vietnam as a
“free state
having its own government, its own parliament, its own army, and its own
finances, forming a part of the Indo-china Federation and the French
Union”.  In exchange, the Viet Minh would
allow some 15,000 French troops to occupy northern Vietnam for a period of five
years.  The agreement also stipulated
that the political future of Vietnam,
including whether Cochinchina would form part of Vietnam or remain as a French
possession, was to be determined through a plebiscite.  Soon thereafter, French forces arrived in Hanoi and northern Vietnam.  In June 1946, Chinese forces withdrew from Vietnam.

Throughout the summer of 1946 in Dalat (in Vietnam) and Fontainebleau
(in France), Ho Chi Minh
held talks with French government officials regarding Vietnam’s
future.  The two sides were so far apart
that essentially nothing was accomplished, save for a temporary agreement (a
modus vivendi), signed in September 1946, which called for further
negotiations.  Meanwhile in Saigon,
Georges Thierry d’Argenlieu, the French High Commissioner for Indochina,
refused to acknowledge that the Ho-Sainteny agreement included
Cochinchina.  In June 1946, without
consulting the French national government, he established the “Autonomous
Republic of Cochinchina”, which seriously undermined the ongoing talks in France.

In the summer of 1946, the Viet Minh purged non-communists
from its party ranks, effectively restoring the DRV into a fully communist
entity.  By September 1946, tensions had
risen between French and Viet Minh forces, which led to armed threats and
provocations.  In November 1946, fighting
broke out in Haiphong
when French port authorities seized a Chinese junk, but were in turn fired upon
by the Viet Minh.  The French first
demanded that the Viet Minh yield control of Haiphong, and then bombarded the city using
naval and ground artillery, and air strikes. 
The French gained control of Haiphong,
expelling the Viet Minh, with 6,000 civilians killed in the fighting.

November 22, 1975 – Juan Carlos becomes King of Spain following death of General Franco

On November 22, 1975, Juan Carlos became King of Spain after the death of General Francisco Franco two days earlier. Franco had ruled Spain as a dictator since emerging victorious in the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s. As his health declined, Franco appointed Prince Juan Carlos as his successor in 1969, which was approved by the Spanish parliament on July22, 1969. Juan Carlos also temporarily took over as the country’s head of state during periods of Franco’s incapacity in 1974 and 1975.

Franco had hoped that Juan Carlos would continue the government’s
ultra-conservative and authoritarian policies. Instead, King Juan Carlos dismantled
Franco’s totalitarian regime and transitioned Spain into democracy and a parliamentary
monarchy which it is today.

Taken from Spanish Civil War – Wars of the 20th Century – Volume 3)

Aftermath Following
the war, General Franco established a right-wing, anti-communist dictatorial
government centered on the Falange Party. 
Socialists, communists, and anarchists, were outlawed, as were
free-party politics.  Political enemies
were killed or jailed; perhaps as many as 200,000 lost their lives in prison or
through executions.  The political
autonomies of Basque and Catalonia
were voided.  These regions’ culture,
language, and identity were suppressed, and a single Spanish national identity
was enforced.

After World War II ended, Spain
became politically and economically isolated from most of the international
community because of General Franco’s affiliation with the defeated fascist
regimes of Germany and Italy.  Then with increasing tensions in the Cold War
between the United States
and Soviet Union, the U.S.
government became drawn to Spain’s
staunchly anti-communist stance and strategic location at the western end of
the Mediterranean Sea.

In September 1953, Spain
and the United States
entered into a defense agreement known as the Pact of Madrid, where the U.S. government infused large amounts of
military assistance to Spain’s
defense.  As a result, Spain’s diplomatic isolation ended,
and the country was admitted to the United Nations in 1955.

Its economy devastated by the civil war, Spain experienced phenomenal
economic growth during the period from 1959 to 1974 (known as the “Spanish
Miracle”) when the government passed reforms that opened up the financial and
investment sectors.  Spain’s totalitarian regime ended
with General Franco’s death in 1975; thereafter, the country transitioned to a
democratic parliamentary monarchy which it is today.

November 21, 1971 – Indian-Pakistani War of 1971: Indian forces, aided by Bangladeshi fighters, defeat the Pakistanis at the Battle of Garibpur

On November 21, 1971, Indian forces and Bangladeshi resistance fighters of the Mukti Bahini decisively defeated a Pakistani infantry and armoured attack during the two-day Battle of Garibpur (located in present-day Bangladesh). The Pakistanis lost 180 troops killed, 14 tanks destroyed or captured, and 3 planes downed or damaged, while Indian/Bangladeshi casualties were only 40 wounded. The aerial combat between the Indian and Pakistani air forces during this battle is known as the Battle of Boyra, where 2 Pakistani planes were shot down, and another was damaged but managed to land to safety.

(Taken from Bangladesh War of Independence and Indian-Pakistani War of 1971 – Wars of the 20th Century – Volume 3)

Since its independence, India
had fought two wars against Pakistan
and faced the perennial threat of fighting against or being attacked
simultaneously from East Pakistan and West Pakistan.  India
therefore saw that the crisis in East Pakistan yielded one benefit – if the
threat from East Pakistan was eliminated, India would not have to face the
threat of a war on two fronts.  Thus,
just two days into the uprising in East Pakistan,
India began to secretly
support the independence of Bangladesh.  The Indian Army covertly trained, armed, and
funded the East Pakistani rebels, which within a few months, grew to a force of
100,000 fighters.

In May 1975, India
finalized preparations for an invasion of East Pakistan,
but moved the date of the operation to later in the year when the Himalayan
border passes were inaccessible to a possible attack by the Chinese Army.  India
had been defeated by China
in the 1962 Sino-Indian War, and thus was wary of Chinese intentions, more so
since China and Pakistan maintained friendly relations and both
considered India
their common enemy.  As a result, India entered into a defense treaty with the
Soviet Union that guaranteed Soviet intervention in case India was attacked by a foreign
power.

In late spring and summer of 1971, East Pakistani rebels
based in West Bengal entered East Pakistan and
carried out guerilla attacks against the Pakistani Army.  These infiltration attacks included
sabotaging military installations and attacking patrols, outposts, and other
lightly defended army positions. 
Government forces threw back the attacks and sometimes entered into India
in pursuit of the rebels.

By October 1971, the Indian Army became involved in the
fighting, providing artillery support for rebel infiltrations and even openly
engaging the Pakistani Army in medium-scale ground and air battles along the
border areas near Garibpur and Boyra (Map 14).

India’s
involvement in East Pakistan was condemned in West
Pakistan, where war sentiment was running high by November
1971.  On November 23, Pakistan declared a state of emergency and
deployed large numbers of troops to the East Pakistani and West Pakistani
borders with India.  Then on December 3, 1971, Pakistani planes
launched air strikes on air bases in India,
particularly those in Jammu and
Kashmir, Indian Punjab, and Haryana.

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The next day, India
declared war on Pakistan.
 India held a decisive military
advantage, which would allow its armed forces to win the war in only 13
days.  India
had a 4:1 and 10:1 advantage over West Pakistan and East
Pakistan, respectively, in terms of numbers of aircraft, allowing
the Indians to gain mastery of the sky by the second day of the war.

India’s
objective in the war was to achieve a rapid victory in East Pakistan before the
UN imposed a ceasefire, and to hold off a possible Pakistani offensive from West Pakistan.  In
turn, Pakistan hoped to hold
out in East Pakistan as long as possible, and to attack and make territorial
gains in western India,
which would allow the Pakistani government to negotiate in a superior position
if the war went to mediation.

In the western sector of the war where opposing forces were
more evenly matched, the fighting centered in three volatile areas: Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab,
and Sindh-Rhajastan.  Pakistan launched offensives that were generally
unsuccessful, except in Chamb, a town in Kashmir
which its forces overran and held temporarily. 
In the Longewal Desert in India’s
Rajasthan State, a Pakistani armored thrust was
thwarted by an Indian air attack, which resulted in heavy Pakistani losses.

In the Pakistani coast, Indian Navy ships attacked Karachi, Pakistan’s
main port, and destroyed many Pakistani vessels as well as fuel storage
facilities.  Indian ships then blockaded
the Bay of Bengal, cutting off East Pakistan from the sea and denying Pakistan maritime access to transfer troops and
supplies from West Pakistan to East Pakistan.

The arduous topography of East Pakistan consisting of four
major river systems and their thousands of smaller tributaries was thought by India
to be the greatest natural obstacle for its armed forces to achieve a quick
victory.  With the support of East
Pakistani fighters, the Indian Army therefore merely hoped to win as much
territory as possible within a two-week period, and then allow Bangladeshis to
install their government in the captured territory.

November 20, 1910 – Mexican Revolution: Defeated candidate Francisco Madero calls for the ouster of President Porfirio Diaz

On November 5, 1910, defeated presidential candidate Francisco Madero, who had escaped from prison, wrote and issued the Plan de San Luis, where he called on the Mexican people to rise up in rebellion against President Porfirio Diaz. (In Mexican politics, a Plan is a declaration of principles that accompanies an uprising against the national government.)

The Plan called for the rebellion to start on November 20, 1910, nullified the 1910 election of Porfirio Diaz citing electoral fraud, and stipulated a provisional government with Madero as president. Diaz’s government was also condemned as dictatorial, corrupt, and the cause for the current socio-economic degradation of the country.

(Taken from Mexican Revolution – Wars of the 20th Century – Volume 2)

Background During
the early 1900s, Mexico
experienced increasing levels of prosperity. 
Mexican president Porifirio Diaz’s thirty-year rule had achieved high
levels of economic growth, allowing the country to make rapid strides to full
industrialization.  Foreign investments
from the United States and Europe were boosting the local economy.  The country’s natural resources were being
developed, agricultural plantations yielded rich harvests, and urban centers
showed many signs of progress.

Deep within, however, Mexico’s society was rife with
discontent.  Wealth remained with and
grew only with the small ruling elite. 
Workers, peasants, and villagers were extremely poor.  Land ownership was grossly disproportionate –
5% of the population owned 95% of all lands. 
Perhaps as many as 90% of Mexicans were peasants who did not own land
and were completely dependent on the plantation owners.  Some very wealthy landowners owned vast
tracts of land that covered many hundreds of thousands of acres; however, their
farm workers were paid token wages and lived in miserable conditions.

Landowners dealt ruthlessly with disloyal peasants.  President Diaz also wanted the status quo and
thus kept all forms of dissent in check with his army, paramilitaries, and
bands of thugs.  Mexico outwardly was a practicing
democracy; however, President Diaz always manipulated the elections in his
favor and often used the army and paramilitaries to rein in the political
opposition.

Mexico’s
presidential election of 1910 appeared to be no different from the past, as
President Diaz again prevailed by resorting to electoral fraud.  Francisco Madero, the main opposition
presidential contender, escaped from prison and called on the people to rise up
in rebellion.  Madero promised to bring
about major social and economic reforms, which appealed to the masses who
rushed to join the many rebel groups that had sprung up.

Some key sites during the Mexican Revolution

War In November
1910, fighting broke out, first with intermittent, disorganized firefights
between government troops and rebels groups that soon escalated into full-scale
battles in many parts of the country. 
The various rebel movements were led by revolutionaries who were
motivated partly by personal ambitions, but with the collective desire to overthrow
the government and implement major socio-economic reforms.

During the revolution’s early stages, the most prominent
rebel leaders included Pascual Orozco and Francisco Villa from the northern province of Chihuahua,
and Emiliano Zapata from the southern province of Morelos
(Map 35).  The rebels dealt successive
defeats on the government’s forces.  Then
with the fall of Ciudad Juarez
to the rebels in May 1911, President Diaz abdicated and fled into exile.

Madero and the other rebel leaders triumphantly entered Mexico City, the country’s
capital, where they were greeted as liberators by large, enthusiastic
crowds.  Then in the general elections
held in November 1911, Madero became Mexico’s new president.  While in office, however, President Madero
appeared to be in no hurry to carry out the promised reforms, but instituted a
policy of national reconciliation.  Being
an aristocrat who descended from a landowning family, President Madero retained
the previous regime’s political bureaucracy, which was composed of wealthy
politicians.  At the same time, he
continued to promise the rebel leaders, most of whom were poor, that major
reforms were coming.  Soon, the rebel
leaders became disillusioned, leading many of them to return to their regions
and restart the revolution.

While each revolutionary leader wanted varying levels of
reforms, even the return of the country to the socially progressive 1857
national constitution, Zapata, in particular, was angered by President Madero’s
procrastination and apparent non-commitment to bring about the reforms.  Zapata wanted a complete overhaul of the
social and economic systems, starting with the government’s return of
expropriated ancestral lands to the indigenous people.  Zapata also demanded that the large
agricultural estates be broken up and distributed to landless peasants and
farmers.

November 17, 1970 – Vietnam War: 14 U.S. officers, including Lt. William Calley, are indicted by a court-martial for the My Lai Massacre

On November 17, 1970, U.S. Army Lt. William Calley went on court-martial trial for the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War. He was one of 14 officers charged for the crime. In March 1971, Lt. Calley was the only officer found guilty of murdering 22 villagers and was handed down a life sentence. He was also the only one of 26 men (officers and men) who was convicted. In August 1971, his sentence was reduced to twenty years. In September 1974, he was paroled by the U.S. Army after having served three and one-half years under house arrest in a military base.

The My Lai Massacre occurred on March 16, 1968 when a U.S. Army Company descended on the hamlets of My Lai and My Khe (located in Son My Village in Quang Ngai Province) and killed some 350 to 500 civilians (men, women, children, and infants). The incident has been described as “the most shocking episode of the Vietnam War”.

(Taken from Vietnam War – Wars of the 20th Century – Twenty Wars in Asia)

Before the Cambodian Campaign began, President Nixon had
announced in a nationwide broadcast that he had committed U.S. ground troops to the
operation.  Within days, large
demonstrations of up to 100,000 to 150,000 protesters broke out in the United States,
with the unrest again centered in universities and colleges.  On May 4, 1970, at Kent State University, Ohio,
National Guardsmen opened fire on a crowd of protesters, killing four people
and wounding eight others.  This incident
sparked even wider, increasingly militant and violent protests across the
country.  Anti-war sentiment already was
intense in the United States
following news reports in November 1969 of what became known as the My Lai
Massacre, where U.S. troops
on a search and destroy mission descended on My Lai
and My Khe villages and killed between 347 and 504 civilians, including women
and children.

American public outrage further was fueled when in June
1971, the New York Times began publishing the “Pentagon Papers” (officially
titled: United States
– Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense),
a highly classified study by the U.S. Department of Defense that was leaked to
the press.  The Pentagon Papers showed
that successive past administrations, including those of Presidents Truman, Eisenhower,
and Kennedy, but especially of President Johnson, had many times misled the
American people regarding U.S.
involvement in Vietnam.  President Nixon sought legal grounds to stop
the document’s publication for national security reasons, but the U.S. Supreme
Court subsequently decided in favor of the New York Times and publication
continued, and which was also later taken up by the Washington Post and other
newspapers.

As in Cambodia,
the U.S. high command had
long desired to launch an offensive into Laos to cut off the logistical
portion of the Ho Chi Minh Trail system located there.  But restrained by Laos’ official neutrality,
the U.S. military instead carried out secret bombing campaigns in eastern Laos
and intelligence gathering operations (the latter conducted by the top-secret
Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group, MACV-SOG
that involved units from Special Forces, Navy SEALS, U.S. Marines, U.S. Air
Force, and CIA) there.

The success of the Cambodian Campaign encouraged President
Nixon to authorize a similar ground operation into Laos.  But as U.S. Congress had prohibited American
ground troops from entering Laos,
South Vietnamese forces would launch the offensive into Laos with the objective of destroying the Ho Chi
Minh Trail, with U.S. forces
only playing a supporting role (and remaining within the confines of South Vietnam).  The operation also would gauge the combat
capability of the South Vietnamese Army in the ongoing Vietnamization program.

In February-March 1971, about 17,000 troops of the South Vietnamese
Army, (some of whom were transported by U.S.
helicopters in the largest air assault operation of the war), and supported by U.S. air and artillery firepower, launched
Operation Lam Son 719 into southeastern Laos.  At their furthest extent, the South
Vietnamese seized and briefly held Tchepone village, a strategic logistical hub
of the Ho Chi Minh Trail located 25 miles west of the South Vietnamese
border.  The main South Vietnamese column
was stopped by heavy enemy resistance and poor road conditions at A Luoi, some
15 miles from the border.  North
Vietnamese forces, initially distracted by U.S. diversionary attacks
elsewhere, soon assembled 50,000 troops against the South Vietnamese, and
counterattacked.  North Vietnamese
artillery particularly was devastating, knocking out several South Vietnamese
firebases, while intense anti-aircraft fire disrupted U.S. air transport operations.  By early March 1971, the attack was called
off, and with the North Vietnamese intensifying their artillery bombardment,
the South Vietnamese withdrawal turned into a chaotic retreat and a desperate
struggle for survival.  The operation was
a debacle, with the South Vietnamese losing up to 8,000 soldiers killed, 60% of
their tanks, 50% of their armored carriers, and dozens of artillery pieces;
North Vietnamese casualties were 2,000 killed. 
American planes were sent to destroy abandoned South Vietnamese armor,
transports, and equipment to prevent their capture by the enemy.  U.S. air losses were substantial:
84 planes destroyed and 430 damaged and 168 helicopters destroyed and 618
damaged.

Buoyed by this success, in March 1972, North Vietnam launched the Nguyen Hue Offensive
(called the Easter Offensive in the West), its first full-scale offensive into South Vietnam,
using 300,000 troops and 300 tanks and armored vehicles.  By this time, South Vietnamese forces carried
practically all of the fighting, as fewer than 10,000 U.S. troops remained in South Vietnam, and who were soon
scheduled to leave.  North Vietnamese
forces advanced along three fronts.  In
the northern front, the North Vietnamese attacked through the DMZ, and captured
the northern provinces, and threatened Hue and Da Nang.  In late June 1972, a South Vietnamese
counterattack, supported by U.S.
air firepower, including B-52 bombers, recaptured most of the occupied
territory, including Quang Tri, near the northern border.  In the Central Highlands front, the North
Vietnamese objective to advance right through to coastal Qui Nhon and split South Vietnam
in two, failed to break through to Kontum and was pushed back.  In the southern front, North Vietnamese
forces that advanced from the Cambodian border took Tay Ninh and Loc Ninh, but
were repulsed at An Loc because of strong South Vietnamese resistance and
massive U.S.
air firepower.

To further break up the North Vietnamese offensive, in April
1972, U.S. planes including B-52 bombers under Operation Freedom Train,
launched bombing attacks mostly between the 17th and 19th parallels in North
Vietnam, targeting military installations, air defense systems, power plants
and industrial sites, supply depots, fuel storage facilities, and roads,
bridges, and railroad tracks.  In May
1972, the bombing attack was stepped up with Operation Linebacker, where
American planes now attacked targets across North Vietnam.  A few days earlier, U.S. planes air-dropped thousands of naval mines
off the North Vietnamese coast, sealing off North Vietnam from sea traffic.

At the end of the Easter Offensive in October 1972, North
Vietnamese losses included up to 130,000 soldiers killed, missing, or wounded
and 700 tanks destroyed.  However, North
Vietnamese forces succeeded in capturing and holding about 50% of the
territories of South Vietnam’s
northern provinces of Quang Tri, Thua Thien,
Quang Nam,
and Quang Tin, as well as the western edges of II Corps and III Corps.  But the immense destruction caused by U.S. bombing in North
Vietnam forced the latter to agree to make concessions at
the Paris peace
talks.

At the height of North Vietnam’s
Easter Offensive, the Cold War took a dramatic turn when in February 1972,
President Nixon visited China
and met with Chairman Mao Zedong.  Then
in May 1972, President Nixon also visited the Soviet Union
and met with General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev and other Soviet leaders.  A period of superpower détente followed.  China
and the Soviet Union, desiring to maintain their newly established friendly
relations with the United States,
aside from issuing diplomatic protests, were not overly provoked by the massive
U.S. bombing of North Vietnam.  Even then, the two communist powers stood by
their North Vietnamese ally and continued to send large amounts of military
support.

November 16, 1912 – First Balkan War: Start of the Battle of Bitola between Serbian and Ottoman forces

On November 16, 1912, Serbian forces pushed into Bitola, starting an
intense three-day battle during the First Balkan War.  The Ottomans were defeated, and forced to
abandon the whole the province and retreat to the Berat region in central
Albania, as well as to the fortress city of Ioannina, which was then under
siege by the Greek Army.

The Serbians then advanced toward Albania,
taking most of the region north of Vlora and into the Adriatic
Coast, thereby achieving Serbia’s ambition of gaining access to the Mediterranean Sea.  Montenegrin forces also occupied a section of
northern Albania, and
advanced to the fortified city of Shkoder,
where they began a siege on October 28, 1912 that would last for several
months.

(Taken from First Balkan War – Wars of the 20th Century – Volume 3)

The Ottoman Empire’s last remaining possession in the European mainland was Rumelia, a long strip of the Balkans extending from Eastern Thrace, to Macedonia, and into Albania in the Adriatic Coast.

Background At the start of the twentieth century, the Ottoman Empire was a spent force, a shadow of its former power of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that had struck fear in Europe.  The empire did continue to hold vast territories, but only tolerated by competing interests among the European powers who wanted to maintain a balance of power in Europe.  In particular, Britain and France supported and sometimes intervened on the side of the Ottomans in order to restrain expansionist ambitions of the emerging giant, the Russian Empire.

In Europe, the Ottomans had
lost large areas of the Balkans, and all of its possessions in central and
central eastern Europe.  By 1910, Serbia, Bulgaria,
Montenegro, and Greece
had gained their independence.  As a
result, the Ottoman Empire’s last remaining possession in the European mainland
was Rumelia (Map 4), a long strip of the Balkans extending from Eastern Thrace,
to Macedonia, and into Albania in the Adriatic Coast.  And even Rumelia itself was coveted by the
new Balkan states, as it contained large ethnic populations of Serbians,
Belgians, and Greeks, each wanting to merge with their mother countries.

The Russian Empire, seeking to bring the Balkans into its
sphere of influence, formed a military alliance with fellow Slavic Serbia, Bulgaria, and Montenegro.  In March 1912, a Russian initiative led to a
Serbian-Bulgarian alliance called the Balkan League.  In May 1912, Greece joined the alliance when the
Bulgarian and Greek governments signed a similar agreement.  Later that year, Montenegro
joined as well, signing separate treaties with Bulgaria
and Serbia.

The Balkan League was envisioned as an all-Slavic alliance,
but Bulgaria saw the need to
bring in Greece, in
particular the modern Greek Navy, which could exert control in the Aegean Sea
and neutralize Ottoman power in the Mediterranean Sea,
once fighting began.  The Balkan League
believed that it could achieve an easy victory over the Ottoman
Empire, for the following reasons. 
First, the Ottomans currently were locked in a war with the Italian
Empire in Tripolitania (part of present-day Libya), and were losing; and
second, because of this war, the Ottoman political leadership was internally
divided and had suffered a number of coups.

Most of the major European powers, and especially Austria-Hungary, objected to the Balkan League
and regarded it as an initiative of the Russian Empire to allow the Russian
Navy to have access to the Mediterranean Sea through the Adriatic Coast.  Landlocked Serbia
also had ambitions on Bosnia and Herzegovina
in order to gain a maritime outlet through the Adriatic
Coast, but was frustrated when Austria-Hungary, which had occupied
Ottoman-owned Bosnia and
Herzegovina since 1878, formally annexed the
region in 1908.

The Ottomans soon discovered the invasion plan and prepared
for war as well.  By August 1912,
increasing tensions in Rumelia indicated an imminent outbreak of hostilities.

November 15, 1988 – PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat declares the independence of Palestine

On November 15, 1988, Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), declared the establishment of the state of Palestine in front of an assembly of Palestinian leaders in ceremonies held in Algiers, Algeria. The assembly then proclaimed Arafat as “President of Palestine”, which was later confirmed in April 1989 by the PLO Central Council that acknowledged him as Palestine’s first president. The declaration of independence was made in the midst of the Palestinian Uprising of 1987-1993 against Israel.

In the Madrid Conference of October 1991, which was jointly
sponsored by the United States
and the Soviet Union, the community of nations urged Israel
and the Palestinians, as well as Jordan,
Syria, and Lebanon, to begin a negotiated settlement to the
Middle East conflict.

(Taken from Palestinian Uprising of 1987 – 1993 – Wars of the 20th Century – Volume 2)

Background As a
consequence of the 1947-48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine and the 1948
Arab-Israeli War, some 700,000 Palestinian Arabs lost their homes and became
refugees.  Most of them eventually
settled in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.  The Palestinian Jews emerged victorious, in
the process establishing the state of Israel.  Then with the Israeli Army’s victory in the
Six-Day War in 1967 (separate article), the Israelis gained control of Gaza, the West Bank, and East
Jerusalem.  Israel imposed militarized authority over the
“occupied territories” (as the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and East
Jerusalem were called collectively) as a means to deter
opposition.  Check points and road blocks
were raised, searches and arrests conducted, and civilian movement curtailed
and monitored.  Perceived enemies were
eliminated, imprisoned, or deported. 
Furthermore, the Israeli government encouraged its citizens to migrate
to the occupied territories, where Israeli housing settlements soon began to
emerge.

The Palestinians greatly resented the presence of the
Israelis, whom they regarded as a foreign force occupying Palestinian
land.  Furthermore, as the Israeli
authority became established and greater numbers of Israeli settlements were
being built, the Palestinians believed that their lands eventually would be
integrated into Israel.  The Israeli occupation was also perceived as
a serious blow to the Palestinian people’s aspirations for establishing a
Palestinian state.

The Palestinian Liberation Organization, or PLO, a political
and armed movement, was formed in 1964 and was headed by Chairman Yasser Arafat
to lead the Palestinians’ struggle for independence.  However, the PLO experienced many setbacks,
not only in the hands of Israel
but also by the Arab countries to which the Palestinians had turned for
support.  In 1970, the PLO was expelled
from Jordan and thereafter
moved to Lebanon
where, in 1982, it also was forced to leave. 
Subsequently, the PLO moved its headquarters to Tunisia, whose distant location
prevented the Palestinian leadership from exercising direct control and
influence over the affairs of Palestinians in the occupied territories.  The PLO itself was wracked by internal
dissent among some factions that opposed Arafat, who had cast aside his
hard-line stance against Israel
and adopted a more conciliatory approach.

Furthermore, later developments in the Middle
East boded ill for the Palestinians.  Egypt,
the militarily strongest Arab country and a main supporter of the PLO, had
signed a peace treaty with Israel
in 1979 and ceased its claim to the Gaza Strip. 
Jordan had not only
expelled the PLO but had relinquished its claim to the West
Bank and consequently stripped the Palestinian residents there of
Jordanian citizenship.  Syria, another major backer of the PLO, had a
falling out with Arafat during the 1982 Lebanon War and began to support a
rival PLO faction that ultimately forced Arafat and his Fatah faction to leave Lebanon
a second time.  For so long, the Arab
countries’ regional security concerns centered on the Palestinians’ struggle
for statehood.  In the 1980s, however,
much of the concentration was on the Iran-Iraq War, relegating the Palestinian
issue to a lesser focus.  Palestinians
believed that many Arab countries, because of the Arab military defeats to the
Israelis, generally had abandoned active support for the Palestinians’
nationalist aspirations.

The Palestinians’ frustrations were compounded by dire
economic circumstances in the West Bank and Gaza. 
Nearly half of all Palestinians were poor and lived in refugee camps in
cramped, squalid, and poorly serviced conditions.  Unemployment was high and so was the
Palestinians’ birth rate, leading to more people competing for limited opportunities
and resources.

Uprising Ever
since the Israelis took over the occupied territories, tensions between
Israelis and Palestinians persisted, which often erupted in violence.  Then during the second half of 1987, these
tensions rose dramatically, ultimately leading to a major Palestinian uprising
that was triggered by the following events.

On December 6, 1987, an Israeli citizen was murdered in Gaza.  Two days later, four Palestinian residents of
the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza
were killed in a road accident by a truck belonging to the Israeli Army.  Many residents of the Jabaliya camp took to
the streets in protest, believing that the four Palestinians were killed
deliberately in reprisal for the Gaza
murder.  Israeli security forces moved in
to disperse the crowd, but in the process, opened fire and killed a
protester.  Demonstrations then broke out
in other refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank, triggering a full-blown uprising.

The 1987 Palestinian uprising is more commonly known as the
First Intifada, where the word “intifada” is Arabic that means “to shake off”,
and has come to denote an uprising or rebellion.  The 1987 Intifada initially took the form of
spontaneous, disorganized street rallies and demonstrations consisting of tens
of thousands of Palestinians who incited anarchy and clashed with Israeli
security forces.  Youths and minors often
formed the front lines, leading Israeli authorities to accuse the Palestinians
of using the children as “human shields”. 
The protesters lobbied stones and Molotov cocktails (home-made
incendiary bombs) at the police, burned tires, and set up road blocks and
barricades.  Militancy increased when the
protesters began using firearms and grenades as weapons.  Other Palestinians supported the intifada
through non-violent means, such as not paying taxes, boycotting Israeli
products, and undertaking other forms of civil disobedience.

The depth and speed of the intifada surprised Israeli
authorities, who believed that the actions were being planned and carried out
by the PLO.  In fact, each local protest
action was organized by community leaders in response to and in support of
other uprisings that were already taking place, creating a snowball effect.  Eventually, however, the intifada came under
the centralized command of the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising
(UNLU), an alliance of PLO factions in the occupied territories, which began to
carry out more organized militant actions. 
Two other Palestinian armed groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, also rose to
prominence during the intifada and emerged as the political and military rivals
to the PLO.

Israeli authorities recorded 3,600 incidents involving the
use of Molotov cocktails, 100 cases with hand grenades, and 600 instances with
firearms and other explosives.  The
militarized nature of the intifada forced Israel to deploy military units to
confront the protesters.  In the ensuing
clashes, however, hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed.  As a result, the United Nations issued condemnations
against Israel,
while Amnesty International and other human rights groups criticized the
Israeli government.  Israeli authorities
responded to the Palestinians’ acts of civil disobedience by imposing heavy
fines for non-payment of taxes, and confiscated the violators’ goods,
merchandise, and properties.  The
government also closed schools, conducted mass arrests, and imposed
curfew.  The school closures had the
contrary effect, however, as more youths joined the protest actions.

Israel
soon deployed specially trained anti-riot teams to confront the
protesters.  Furthermore, Shin Bet (Israel’s
internal security service) secretly hired Palestinians to collect information
on the uprising, particularly the leaders of the intifada.  As a result, a spate of violence took place,
where Palestinians began targeting other Palestinians who were believed to be
spying for Israel.  Palestinians who associated with or worked
for Israelis also were targeted.  The
crackdown also became used as a way to level false accusations on, take revenge
against, or settle a personal feud, against one’s enemies.  As intra-violence among Palestinians began to
reach alarming rates, the intifada’s leaders called for an end to the uprising,
declaring that Palestinians had lost sight of their original goal, which was to
force the Israelis out of the occupied territories.  In the end, the number of deaths caused by
intra-violence among Palestinians exceeded the total attributable to the
intifada itself.

On November 15, 1988, or eleven months after the start of
the intifada, Chairman Arafat established the state of Palestine
in ceremonies held in Algiers,
Algeria.  Then in the Madrid Conference of October
1991, which was jointly sponsored by the United
States and the Soviet Union, the community of nations
urged Israel and the
Palestinians, as well as Jordan,
Syria, and Lebanon, to begin a negotiated settlement to the
Middle East conflict.

November 13, 1941 – World War II: A German U-boat torpedoes the British carrier HMS Ark Royal

One of the main assets of the German U-boat (submarine; German: U-boot, shortened from Unterseeboot, literally “underseaboat”) was stealth, and the first naval casualty of the war, the British ocean liner, SS Athenia, was attacked and sunk by a U-boat (which it mistook for a British warship) on September 3, 1939, with 128 lives lost.  Also in September 1939 and just a few days apart, two British aircraft carriers, the HMS Ark Royal and HMS Courageous, were both attacked by a U-boat, with the former narrowly being hit by torpedoes, while the latter was hit and sunk.  Then in October 1939, another U-boat penetrated undetected near Scapa Flow, the main British naval base, attacking and sinking the battleship, the HMS Royal Oak. On November 13, 1941 off Gibraltar, a U-boat fired one torpedo on the HMS Ark Royal, which sank the next day.

(Taken from Battle of the Atlantic – Wars of the 20th Century – World War II in Europe)

At the start of the war, the British military was
hard-pressed on how to deal with the U-boat threat.  During the interwar period, prevailing naval
thought and budgetary resources, both Allied and German alike, focused on
surface ships, and the belief that battleships would play the dominant role in
naval warfare in a future war.  German
U-boats had proved highly effective in World War I, causing heavy losses on
merchant shipping that nearly forced Britain out of the war, before the
British introduced the convoy system that turned fortunes around.

However, the British Navy’s implementing the ASDIC system
(acronym for “Anti-Submarine Detection Investigation Committee”; otherwise known
as SONAR), which could detect the presence of submerged submarines, appeared to
have solved the U-boat threat.  Naval
tests showed that once detected by ASDIC, the submarine could then be destroyed
by two destroyers launching depth charges overboard continuously in a long
diamond pattern around the trapped vessel. 
The British concept was that the U-boats could operate only in coastal
waters to threaten harbor shipping, as they had done in World War I, and these
tests were conducted under daylight and calm weather conditions.  But by the outbreak of World War II, German
submarine technology had rapidly advanced, and were continuing so, that U-boats
were able to reach farther out into the Atlantic Ocean, eventually ranging as
far as the American eastern seacoast, and also were able to submerge to greater
depths beyond the capacity of depth charges. 
These factors would weigh heavily in the early stages of the Battle of the Atlantic.

In December 1939, hostilities were suspended by the harsh
Atlantic weather, and German surface ships and U-boats returned to their bases
in Germany.  In May 1940, the eight-month “Phoney War”
period of combat inactivity in the West was broken by the German invasion of France and the Low Countries, which had been
preceded one month earlier, April 1940, with the conquest of the Scandinavian
countries of Denmark and Norway.  By late June 1940, these campaigns were
complete, Italy had joined
the war on Germany’s side,
and Britain remained the
sole defiant nation in Western Europe.

These triumphs in Scandinavia and Western Europe were
important for the Kriegsmarine: in the Norwegian campaign, the German Navy,
which played a major role by transporting the troops and war supplies to the
landing points, lost a large part of its surface fleet, and for a time, was
rendered virtually incapacitated, while the conquest of France allowed the
Kriegsmarine to establish new bases in western France, at Brest, Lorient, La
Rochelle, and Saint-Nazaire, which greatly reduced (by 450 miles) the distance to
the Atlantic, allowing the U-boats to range further west and spend more time at
sea.  The campaigns also eased the
difficult war-time economy of Germany,
as more agricultural and industrial resources became available.  Germany’s
position would later improve further with more conquests, as well as with
forming Axis treaties, in Eastern Europe,
rendering the British blockade (temporarily) ineffective.

But for Britain, these campaigns were disastrous: in Norway,
the Dunkirk evacuation, and clashes in the English Channel and the North Sea,
the Royal Navy lost 23 destroyers sunk, and dozens more damaged; there loomed
the possibility that the Germans might seize the French fleet and use it to
invade Britain; and more Royal Navy ships had to return for the defense of the
homeland, thus reducing security for the merchant convoys in the Atlantic.  To preclude the possibility that the French
ships would fall to the Germans, in July 1940, the British Navy attacked the
French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir, French Algeria, while the French squadron at Alexandria, Egypt,
was forced to be interned by the British fleet there.  These naval actions infuriated the new,
nominally sovereign Vichy government in France, which had declared its neutrality in the
war, and also because it had assured Britain that the French Navy would
not fall into German hands.

In July 1940, Hitler launched the Luftwaffe over the English Channel and British skies, starting the air war
known as the Battle of Britain.  The air
attacks peaked in August 1940, when the Luftwaffe turned its attention from
attacking British military and industrial infrastructures to bombing civilian
targets in London
and other cities, which would continue with some intensity until early
1941.  By then, the threat of a German
cross-channel invasion (Operation Sea Lion) had diminished, and ended
completely in May 1941 when Hitler was fully engaged in the forthcoming
invasion of the Soviet Union, set for June
1941.

Meanwhile, in the second half of 1940, hostilities in the
Atlantic again escalated following the end of the campaigns in Scandinavia and Western Europe. 
Launching from their new bases in western France,
in June 1940, U-boats in increasing numbers prowled the Atlantic,
immediately coming upon and attacking and sinking many merchant ships.  In a radical change from World War I U-boats
that operated singly as lone ambushers of isolated ships, in September 1940,
Admiral Karl Donitz, head of the U-boat arm of the Kriegsmarine, devised Rudeltaktik
(“pack tactics”), where a squadron of U-boats would simultaneously attack a
convoy of ships.  This strategy, soon
called “wolf pack” by the British, consisted of several U-boats spaced out in a
single long line across the anticipated path of an incoming convoy.  One U-boat, upon sighting the convoy, would
maintain contact with it, while the other U-boats were alerted by radio and be
brought forward.  Together, the U-boats
would attack at night, generally with impunity against the lightly escorted
convoys, inflicting heavy losses in men and ships.  Convoy protection was provided by corvettes,
which were too slow to chase away a U-boat. 
ASDIC also proved unreliable in the turbulent conditions that the
battles generated and in inclement weather, and underwater detection was
further defeated by U-boats that stayed at the surface at night.

The German effort also was strengthened when in August 1940,
the Italian Navy (Regia Marina) sent a fleet of submarines to operate in the
Atlantic from a naval base in Bordeaux,
France.  Over-all, the Italian contribution was small,
with only a few dozen submarines taking part, and accounted for 3% of the total
number of merchant ships sunk in the Battle of
the Atlantic. 
From June to October 1940, in what German U-boat crews celebrated as
“The Happy Time” (German: Die Glückliche Zeit), German U-boats sunk 274 Allied
ships (totaling 1.5 million tons) for the loss of only 6 U-boats.  This stunning success brought instant fame to
many U-boat commanders and their crews, who were welcomed as heroes on their
return to Germany.

In November 1940, Britain
introduced some counter-measures: convoys were diverted away from the regular
trade routes to further north near Iceland and shipping codes were
changed.  More measures were adopted in
early 1941: the merchant convoys and British reconnaissance aircraft were
equipped with radar to detect surfaced U-boats; the British Western Approaches
Command (tasked with safeguarding the Atlantic trade) was moved to Liverpool,
allowing better strategic control; and the convoys were given naval escort
protection all along the length of the Atlantic.  In the latter, the convoys at their assembly
point in St. John’s, Newfoundland,
Canada were escorted by
Royal Canadian Navy ships to a designated point off Iceland,
where the British Royal Navy then would take over escort protection for the
rest of the way to Britain.  Furthermore, the British Navy introduced a
new convoy system: a few large convoys (rather than many smaller convoys) were
organized, as British experience thus far showed that their less frequency
meant that they were exposed to less time to attack, and they required fewer
escorts measured on a prorated basis against smaller convoys.

The end of the U-boat’s “Happy Time” in November 1940
coincided with the German Navy’s surface ships rampaging through the Atlantic Ocean.  In
early November 1940, the German heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer came upon an
Allied merchant convoy, sinking five ships and damaging many others.  In January-March 1941, in a series of
actions, two German battleships, the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, sunk or
captured 22 merchant ships.  And in
February 1941, the cruiser Admiral Hipper ambushed a 19-ship unescorted convoy,
sinking 13 ships.

By then, British battleships were tasked to protect merchant
ships, and in a number of incidents, they warded off German surface raiders
from attacking the convoys.  This measure
paid off materially when two German ships, the new battleship Bismarck
and the cruiser Prinz Eugen, were sighted off Iceland
by a British naval squadron, and in the ensuing clash, the Bismarck was damaged, although it sank the
British battle cruiser HMS Hood.  While
attempting to escape to France,
the Bismarck
was intercepted and sunk.  The increasing
British Navy presence in the Atlantic and Hitler’s displeasure with the loss of
the Bismarck compelled the Fuhrer to suspend
surface fleet operations in the Atlantic.  The German Navy’s surface vessels finally
ceased to have any impact in the Atlantic when in February 1942, in the
“Channel Dash”, the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Prinz Eugen boldly crossed the
heavily protected English Channel from their base in western France to Norway.  The transfer was prompted by reports of an
imminent British invasion of Norway,
as well as the need for greater German naval presence in the Norwegian Arctic
to stop the Allied convoys supplying the beleaguered Soviet
Union.

In the second half of 1941, Admiral Donitz focused U-boat
operations along the “mid-Atlantic air gap”, which accounted for 70% of Allied
merchant ship losses during this period. 
Improved Allied aircraft technology, which allowed greater air range,
was yet unable to provide cover for the full distance of the vast Atlantic Ocean. 
Allied shipping losses in the Atlantic war was eased somewhat when many
U-boats were withdrawn to other sectors, first in June 1941 to the Arctic to
help stop the flow of Allied supplies to the Soviet Union, and in October 1941,
in the Mediterranean Sea to cut British supply lines in the North African
campaign.

November 12, 1995 – The Croatian War of Independence: A peace treaty is signed

On November 12, 1995, representatives of the warring sides, Republic of Croatia and Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK), signed the Erdut Agreement (officially titled: “Basic Agreement on the Region of Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Sirmium”), a peace treaty that ended the Croatian War of Independence. Erdut is a village in present-day Croatia. Instructed to sign by the Yugoslav central government, RSK comprised Croatian Serbs in the regions of Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Syrmia.

As stipulated in the agreement, Eastern Slavonia would be reintegrated with Croatia in exchange for the Croatian government promising political concessions to ethnic Serbs.  A UN mission, called the United Nations Transitional Authority for Eastern Slavonia, Baranja, and Western Sirmium (UNTAES), arrived to implement the peace agreement.  In January 1988, Croatia regained sovereignty over Eastern Slavonia, thereby restoring its pre-war territorial boundaries.

Yugoslavia comprised six republics, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia, and Macedonia, and two autonomous provinces, Kosovo and Vojvodina.

Taken from Croatian War of Independence – Wars of the 20th Century – Volume 2)

Background By the late 1980s, Yugoslavia was faced with a major political crisis, as separatist aspirations among its ethnic populations threatened to undermine the country’s integrity (see “Yugoslavia”, separate article).  Nationalism particularly was strong in Croatia and Slovenia, the two westernmost and wealthiest Yugoslav republics.  In January 1990, delegates from Slovenia and Croatia walked out from an assembly of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, the country’s communist party, over disagreements with their Serbian counterparts regarding proposed reforms to the party and the central government.  Then in the first multi-party elections in Croatia held in April and May 1990, Franjo Tudjman became president after running a campaign that promised greater autonomy for Croatia and a reduced political union with Yugoslavia.

Ethnic Croatians, who comprised 78% of Croatia’s population, overwhelmingly supported
Tudjman, because they were concerned that Yugoslavia’s
national government gradually had fallen under the control of Serbia, Yugoslavia’s largest and most
powerful republic, and led by hard-line President Slobodan Milosevic.  In May 1990, a new Croatian Parliament was
formed and subsequently prepared a new constitution.  The constitution was subsequently passed in
December 1990.  Then in a referendum held
in May 1991 with Croatian Serbs refusing to participate, Croatians voted
overwhelmingly in support of independence. 
On June 25, 1991, Croatia,
together with Slovenia,
declared independence.

Croatian Serbs (ethnic Serbs who are native to Croatia) numbered nearly 600,000, or 12% of Croatia’s
total population, and formed the second largest ethnic group in the
republic.  As Croatia
increasingly drifted toward political separation from Yugoslavia, the Croatian Serbs
became alarmed at the thought that the new Croatian government would carry out
persecutions, even a genocidal pogrom against Serbs, just as the pro-Nazi
ultra-nationalist Croatian Ustashe government had done to the Serbs, Jews, and
Gypsies during World War II.  As a
result, Croatian Serbs began to militarize, with the formation of militias as
well as the arrival of armed groups from Serbia.

Croatian Serbs formed a population majority in south-west Croatia
(northern Dalmatian and Lika).  There, in
February 1990, they formed the Serb Democratic Party, which aimed for the
political and territorial integration of Serb-dominated lands in Croatia with Serbia
and Yugoslavia.  They declared that if Croatia wanted to secede from Yugoslavia, they, in turn, should be allowed to
separate from Croatia.  Serbs also interpreted the change in their
status in the new Croatian constitution as diminishing their civil rights.  In turn, the Croatian government opposed the
Croatian Serb secession and was determined to keep the republic’s territorial
integrity.

In July 1990, a Croatian Serb Assembly was formed that
called for Serbian sovereignty and autonomy. 
In December, Croatian Serbs established the SAO Krajina (SAO is the
acronym for Serbian Autonomous Oblast) as a separate government from Croatia in the regions of northern Dalmatia and Lika. 
Croatian Serbs formed a majority population in two other regions in Croatia, which they also transformed into
separate political administrations called SAO Western Slavonia, and SAO Eastern
Slavonia (officially SAO Eastern Slavonia, Baranja, and Western
Syrmia).  (Map 17 shows
locations in Croatia
where ethnic Serbs formed a majority population.) In a referendum held in
August 1990 in SAO Krajina, Croatian Serbs voted overwhelmingly (99.7%) for
Serbian “sovereignty and autonomy”.  Then
after a second referendum held in March 1991 where Croatian Serbs voted
unanimously (99.8%) to merge SAO Krajina with Serbia, the Krajina government
declared that “… SAO Krajina is a constitutive part of the unified state
territory of the Republic
of Serbia”.

November 11, 1968 – Vietnam War: The U.S. military launches Operation Commando Hunt

On November 11, 1968, the United States military initiated Operation Commando Hunt aimed at stopping the flow of men and supplies through the Ho Chi Minh Trail from North Vietnam to South Vietnam.  Operation Commando Hunt lasted until March 1972 and consisted of bombing and strafing air attacks on enemy targets inside the thickly forested Ho Chi Minh Trail. Throughout the war, the U.S. military launched similar aerial operations (Steel Tiger, Tiger Hound) on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, all of which ultimately proved unsuccessful. From the outset, U.S. military planners viewed these campaigns as incapable of completely stopping infiltration, but were meant to inflict as much destruction to the logistical system and tie down as many North Vietnamese units in static roles. In this way, it was hoped that North Vietnam would be forced to abandon the route. To counter the U.S. air attacks, which intensified as the war progressed, North Vietnam massively fortified the Trail system, which eventually was bristling with 1,500 anti-aircraft guns.  Supply convoys also traveled only at night to lessen the risk to U.S. air attacks.

Southeast Asia in the 1960s

Because the United States used massive air firepower, North Vietnam, eastern Laos, and eastern Cambodia were heavily bombed.  U.S. planes dropped nearly 8 million tons of bombs (twice the amount the United States dropped in World War II), and Indochina became the most heavily bombed area in history.  Some 30% of the 270 million so-called cluster bombs dropped did not explode, and since the end of the war, they continue to pose a grave danger to the local population, particularly in the countryside.  Unexploded ordnance (UXO) has killed some 50,000 people in Laos alone, and hundreds more in Indochina are killed or maimed each year.

Vietnam War showing Ho Chi Minh Trail

(Taken from Vietnam War – Wars of the 20th Century – Twenty Wars in Asia)

Ho Chi Minh Trail Throughout
the war, the United States
launched other aerial operations (Steel Tiger, Tiger Hound, and Commando Hunt)
on the Ho Chi Minh Trail to try and stop the flow of men and materiel from North Vietnam to South Vietnam, but all of these
ultimately proved unsuccessful.

Over the course of the war, the Ho Chi Minh Trail system
expanded considerably into an elaborate network of small and wide roads, foot
and bike paths, and concealed river crossings across a vast and ever-increasing
area in the eastern regions of Laos
and Cambodia.  With 43,000 North Vietnamese and Laotian
laborers, dozens of bulldozers, road graders, and other road-building equipment
working day and night, by December 1961, the Trail system allowed for truck
traffic, which became the main source of transporting men and supplies for the
rest of the war.  Apart from construction
crews, other units in the Ho Chi Mnh Trail were tasked with providing food,
housing, and medical care, and other services to soldiers and transport crews
moving along the system.  To counter U.S.
air attacks, which intensified as the war progressed, the Trail system was
massively fortified with air defenses, eventually bristling with 1,500
anti-aircraft guns.  Supply convoys also
traveled only at night to lessen the risk of U.S. air attacks.

But because of the U.S. air campaign, American bases
came under greater threat of Viet Cong retaliatory attacks. Thus, in March
1965, on President Johnson’s orders, 3,500 U.S. Marines arrived to protect Da Nang air base.  These Marines were the first U.S. combat troops to be deployed in Vietnam.  Then in April 1965, when the U.S. government’s offer of economic aid to North Vietnam in exchange for a peace agreement
was rejected by the Hanoi government, President
Johnson soon sent more U.S.
ground forces, raising the total U.S.
personnel strength in Vietnam
to 60,000 troops.  At this point, U.S.
forces were authorized only to defend American military installations.

Then in May 1965, in a major effort to overthrow South Vietnam, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese
forces launched attacks in three major areas: just south of the DMZ, in the
Central Highlands, and in areas around Saigon.  U.S.
and South Vietnamese forces repulsed these attacks, with massive U.S. air firepower being particularly effective,
and in mid-1965, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces retreated, and the
danger to the Saigon government passed.  By that time also, President Johnson agreed
to the U.S. military’s
request and sent more troops to Vietnam,
raising the total to 184,000 by the end of 1965.  More crucially, he now authorized U.S. forces to not merely defend U.S.
facilities, but to undertake offensive combat missions, in line with American
military doctrine to take the war to the enemy.

Meanwhile in June 1965, South Vietnam’s political climate
eased considerably with the appointment of Nguyen Cao Ky as Prime Minister and
Nguyen Van Thieu as (figurehead) Chief of State.  The new South Vietnamese regime imposed
censorship and restrictions on civil liberties because of the unstable security
situation, as well as to curb widespread local civilian unrest.  In 1966, Prime Minister Ky
quelled a Buddhist uprising and brought some stability to the South Vietnamese
military.  Ky and Thieu were political
rivals, and after Thieu was elected president in the 1967 presidential
election, a power struggle developed between the two leaders, with President
Thieu ultimately emerging victorious.  By
the late 1960s, Thieu had consolidated power and thereafter ruled with near
autocratic powers.

During the Vietnam War, the United States, which soon was
joined with combat forces from its anti-communist allies Australia, New
Zealand, South Korea, Thailand, and the Philippines, began to take direct
command of the war in what was called the period of the “Americanization” of
the war, relegating the South Vietnamese military to a supporting role.  Nevertheless, President Johnson imposed
restrictions on the U.S. military – that it was to engage only in a limited war
(as opposed to a total war) that was sufficiently aggressive enough to deter
North Vietnam from attacking South Vietnam, but should not be too overpowering
to incite a drastic response from the major communist powers, China and the
Soviet Union.

The United States was concerned that China might intervene directly for North Vietnam (as it had done for North Korea in the Korean War), or worse, that
the Soviet Union might invade Western Europe.  A consequence of U.S. policy in Vietnam to
not incite a wider war with China and the Soviet Union meant that U.S. forces
could not invade North Vietnam, and that U.S. bombing missions in North Vietnam
were to be screened so as not to kill or harm Chinese or Soviet military
personnel there or destroy Chinese and Soviet assets (e.g. ships docked at
North Vietnamese ports).  Thus, U.S. ground forces were limited to operating in South Vietnam,
where subsequently nearly all of the land fighting took place.  Even then, the U.S.
high command was confident of success, and General William Westmoreland,
commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam,
predicted American victory over the Viet Cong/NLF by the end of 1967.

To achieve this goal, the U.S. military employed the “search
and destroy” strategy (which was developed by the British in the 1950s), where
U.S. intelligence would locate large Viet Cong/NLF concentrations, which would
be destroyed using massive American firepower involving air, artillery,
infantry, and in some cases armored, units. 
U.S.
military planners believed that the use of overwhelming force would inflict
such heavy losses that the Viet Cong would be unable to replace its manpower
and material losses, ultimately leading to the defeat of the southern
insurgency.