Vietnam War

“North Vietnam, officially recognized and supported by most Communist countries, is engaged in massive insurgency operations against the government of South Vietnam. Elements from the ground, air and sea forces of North Vietnam have directly engaged corresponding forces of South Vietnam and its supporters in combat operations. During the period of research and writing, North Vietnamese Government authorities were in the process of carrying out several major domestic programs designed to solve some of their most pressing problems …”

"Vietnam, a country with 2,000 years of cultural and political history, forms the eastern flank of the Indochinese Peninsula. It is bordered to the North by China, to the east and south by the China Sea and to the west by Laos and Cambodia. Late in the nineteenth century, Vietnam became a part of the French colonial empire. For nearly 80 years it remained under French domination, and not until 1954, when the Geneva Agreement ended 8 years of warfare against France, did Vietnam gain full independence. As a result of the Agreement the country was partitioned at the Demarcation Line near the 17th parallel, dividing it into two distinct political entities, each claiming to be the legitimate government of the entire country. To the south is the Republic of Vietnam, aligned with the Western powers of the Free World; to the north of the Line the country is governed by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, firmly aligned with the Communist countries. "

"The current study focuses on the years between 1975 and the mid-1980s, when a nascent and newly reunified nation struggled to develop a postwar identity. It was a period marked by a change in leadership, as Vietnam's first generation of communist leaders began to retire in favor of younger technocrats; by the introduction of significant economic reforms, including the preservation of private enterprise in the South; and by major foreign policy developments, particularly the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation signed with the Soviet Union, the invasion and occupation of Cambodia, and the 1979 border war with China."