Vietnam , December 2, 1975 One of Ford's greatest challenges was dealing with the ongoing Vietnam War. American offensive operations against North Vietnam had ended with the
Paris Peace Accords, signed on January 27, 1973. The accords declared a cease fire across both North and South Vietnam, and required the release of American
prisoners of war. The agreement guaranteed the territorial integrity of Vietnam and, like the
Geneva Conference of 1954, called for national elections in the North and South. South Vietnamese President
Nguyen Van Thieu was not involved in the final negotiations, and publicly criticized the proposed agreement, but was pressured by Nixon and Kissinger into signing the agreement. In multiple letters to the South Vietnamese president, Nixon had promised that the United States would defend Thieu's government, should the North Vietnamese violate the accords. Fighting in Vietnam continued after the withdrawal of most U.S. forces in early 1973. As North Vietnamese forces advanced in early 1975, Ford requested Congress approve a $722 million aid package for South Vietnam, funds that had been promised by the Nixon administration. Congress voted against the proposal by a wide margin. Senator
Jacob K. Javits offered "...large sums for evacuation, but not one nickel for military aid". Two days later, on April 23, Ford gave a speech at
Tulane University, announcing that the Vietnam War was over "...as far as America is concerned". In
Operation Frequent Wind, the final phase of the evacuation preceding the
fall of Saigon on April 30, military and
Air America helicopters took evacuees to off-shore
U.S. Navy vessels. During the operation, so many South Vietnamese helicopters landed on the vessels taking the evacuees that some were pushed overboard to make room for more people. The Vietnam War, which had raged since the 1950s, finally came to an end with the Fall of Saigon, and Vietnam was reunified into one country. Many of the Vietnamese evacuees were allowed to enter the United States under the
Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act. The 1975 act appropriated $455 million toward the costs of assisting the settlement of Indochinese refugees. In all, 130,000 Vietnamese refugees came to the United States in 1975. Thousands more escaped in the years that followed. Following the end of the war, Ford expanded the embargo of North Vietnam to cover all of Vietnam, blocked Vietnam's accession to the
United Nations, and refused to establish full diplomatic relations.
Cambodia North Vietnam's victory over the South led to a considerable shift in the political winds in Asia, and Ford administration officials worried about a consequent loss of U.S. influence in the region. The administration proved it was willing to respond forcefully to challenges to its interests in the region on two occasions, once when
Khmer Rouge forces seized an American ship in
international waters and again when American military officers were killed in the
demilitarized zone (DMZ) between
North Korea and
South Korea. In May 1975, shortly after the fall of Saigon and the Khmer Rouge conquest of
Cambodia, Cambodians seized the American merchant ship
Mayaguez in international waters, sparking what became known as the
Mayaguez incident. Ford dispatched
Marines to rescue the crew, but the Marines landed on the wrong island and met unexpectedly stiff resistance just as, unknown to the U.S., the
Mayaguez sailors were being released. In the operation, two military transport helicopters carrying the Marines for the assault operation were shot down, and 41 U.S. servicemen were killed and 50 wounded while approximately 60 Khmer Rouge soldiers were killed. Despite American losses, the rescue operation proved to be a boon to Ford's poll numbers; Senator
Barry Goldwater declared that the operation "shows we've still got balls in this country." Some historians have argued that the Ford administration felt the need to respond forcefully to the incident because it was construed as a Soviet plot. But work by Andrew Gawthorpe, published in 2009, based on an analysis of the administration's internal discussions, shows that Ford's national security team understood that the seizure of the vessel was a local, and perhaps even accidental, provocation by an immature Khmer government. Nevertheless, they felt the need to respond forcefully to discourage further provocations by other Communist countries in Asia.
North Korea A second crisis, known as the
axe murder incident, occurred at
Panmunjom, a village which stands in the DMZ between the two Koreas. At the time, Panmunjom was the only part of the DMZ where forces from North Korea and South Korea came into contact with each other. Encouraged by U.S. difficulties in Vietnam, North Korea had been waging a campaign of diplomatic pressure and minor military harassment to try and convince the U.S. to withdraw from South Korea. In August 1976, North Korean forces killed two U.S. officers and injured South Korean guards who were trimming a tree in Panmunjom's
Joint Security Area. The attack coincided with a meeting of the Conference of
Non-Aligned Nations, at which North Korea presented the incident as an example of American aggression, helping secure the passage of a motion calling for a U.S. withdrawal from South Korea. Determined not to be seen as "the paper tigers of Saigon," the Ford administration decided that it was necessary to respond with a major show of force. A large number of ground forces went to cut down the tree, while at the same time the air force deployed flights over Panmunjom. The North Korean government backed down and allowed the tree-cutting to go ahead, and later issued an unprecedented official apology.
Indonesia U.S. policy since the 1940s has been to support
Indonesia, which hosted American investments in petroleum and raw materials and controlled a highly strategic location near vital shipping lanes. In 1975, the left-wing
Fretilin party seized power after a civil war in
East Timor (now Timor-Leste), a former colony of
Portugal that shared the island of
Timor with the Indonesian region of
West Timor. Indonesian leaders feared that East Timor would serve as a hostile left-wing base that would promote secessionist movements inside Indonesia. Anti-Fretilin activists from the other main parties fled to West Timor and called upon Indonesia to annex East Timor and end the communist threat. On December 7, 1975, Ford and Kissinger met Indonesian President
Suharto in Jakarta and indicated the United States would not take a position on East Timor.
Indonesia invaded the next day, and took control of the country. The United Nations, with U.S. support, called for the withdrawal of Indonesian forces. A bloody civil war broke out, and over one hundred thousand died in the fighting or from executions or starvation. Upwards of half of the population of East Timor became refugees fleeing Fretilin-controlled areas. East Timor took two decades to settle down, and finally, after international intervention in the
1999 East Timorese crisis, East Timor became an independent nation in 2002. ==Middle East==