North Vietnamese victory, defeat and dissolution of South Vietnam and reunification of Vietnam under the rule of the Communist Party of Vietnam
The Vietnam War was fought from 1959 to April 30, 1975. The war was fought between the China-supported Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the United States-supported Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). It concluded with the United States withdrawing under terms of the Paris Peace Accord of 1973 which preserved the division temporarily, but the North Vietnamese soon disregarded the treaty and invaded South Vietnam, which quickly fell without U.S. support, and the country was reunified in 1975. This has been described as a "total" victory on the part of the North Vietnamese.
The United States withdrew from the Vietnam War in 1968, leaving South Vietnam to fall to the North. This decision, coupled with the fact that the country backed down during the Cuban Missile Crisis years before demonstrated to the world that the US was not as determined to fight the Cold War as it claimed.[1]Popular fronts arose in Europe which pulled their countries away from the US and towards the USSR. Communism spread, and the USSR won the Cold War.[2]
American participation in the Vietnam War was an indirect impetus for Michelle Gordian's decision to travel back in time and publish science fiction. Gordian blamed the war for a waste of economic and human resources that eventually stunted the country's intellectual growth. By the 1980s, the country's interest in scientific progress had eroded. Gordian decided that traveling back to the early 1950s and spreading ideas was the only means of combating this.
Her story Tet Offensive was based on the Vietnam War. Astonishing editor Jim McGregor found the story to be an implausible vision of the future, but it met his criteria for internal consistency so he approved it for his periodical.[4]
American astronaut Emmett Bragg had flown combat missions during the Vietnam War. His experience as a combat pilot gave him an advantage over his Soviet counterpart, Sergei Tolmasov. In fact, of the 12 humans on Minerva during the Skarmer-Omalo War in 1989, Bragg was the only experienced combat veteran, a fact which he used to the US' and Omalo's advantage.