The Vietnam War was fought roughly from 1957 to 1975 after the North Vietnamese government secretly agreed to begin involvement in South Vietnam.
Many Americans considered the Vietnam War, the conflict between US and NVA troops, to have not begun until 1965 after the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The war was fought in South Vietnam and bordering areas of Cambodia and Laos as well as a strategic bombing campain in North Vietnam. In Vietnam, the conflict is known as the American War.
Fighting on one side was a coalition of forces that included the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam or the "RVN"), the United States, South Korea, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines. Other countries normally allied with the United States in the Cold War, including the United Kingdom and Canada, refused to participate in the coalition.
Fighting on the other side was a coalition of forces that included the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the National Liberation Front, a South Vietnamese opposition movement with a guerrilla militia known in the West as the "Viet Cong". The USSR provided military and financial aid along with diplomatic support to the North Vietnamese and to the NLF, partly as support against the U.S. and South Vietnamese government and partly as a counter to Chinese influence in the region.
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