Vietnam

Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam is a country located in Asia. It borders China, Laos and Cambodia.
==History==
===Pre-Cold War===
Vietnam was one of the countries which can be classified as one which remained unconquered by empires, a proud title which Afghanistan also shares among historians. It was indominable for a long time, until eventually being colonized by the French, and then the Empire Of Japan.
===Cold War===
thumb|250px|American soldiers during the Vietnam WarAfter the Japanese occupation in the 1945, the Vietnamese fought French colonial rule, and on 2 September 1945, Hồ Chí Minh declared Vietnam's independence from France under the new name of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. After Vietnam declared independence, it was divided into two political states, North Vietnam (officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (officially the Republic of Vietnam). Conflicts between the two sides eventually erupted in the Vietnam War, in which North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea, and South Vietnam was set up by the United States and supported by South Korea, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines.
The Vietnam War was by far the most heated proxy war of the Cold War - the US feared that Vietnam might spread communism to nearby countries, eventually overtaking all of Asia - thus, many American soldiers were send to Vietnam to help battle Hồ Chí Minh's Viet Cong and other North Vietnamese. The war was a chaotic mess, fought between one of world's most prominent superpowers, and what many saw as just a bunch of rice farmers - farmers that knew the jungles of Vietnam like the back of their own hands, and by engaging in guerrilla warfare, eventually won by taking control of Saigon, which was renamed to Ho Chi Minh City. Veterans of this conflict included, among milion others, the mercenary Bonebreaker and the Georgian Soviet soldier Maxim Paletashvili.
thumb|250px|American protest against the Vietnam WarIt was the first war in history of mankind to feature live television coverage and the first major armed conflict that the United States lost. It was the source of much political and societal division in the United States, with many Americans and people from other NATO and neutral countries opposing the war. Even after the conflict ended, it was not the end of trouble for American soldiers - many of them came back to the States suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and were treated poorly by their own countrymen - people who opposed the war saw them as killers, and people who supported the war saw them as losers. And the Communist mocked the American failure in Vietnam with a malicious glee until their own bitter end in 1990.
===Third World War and aftermath===
thumb|250px|Vietnamese soldiers waving to the camera for a newspaper photo in 1990 as they drive their way into Thailand; after the camera was turned off, their smiles instantly vanished, and one started drawing an unflattering caricature of Premier Alexander engaging in certain things with a Chinese premier.When the Third World War erupted, Vietnam aided other Communist countries of Asia in invading neutral and NATO-supporting states of Asia. How was it possible that Vietnam joined the fight alongside the People's Republic Of China, which they detested ever since the Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979? It was all thanks to the silver tongue of Aleksander Vitalevich Rukov. The man was a spectacular manipulator and knew both geopolitics and psychology like the back of his hand, knowing exactly what to say to each of the leaders to get them to agree to the massive alliance, playing them all like a fiddle. The common Vietnamese were not that pleased with that alliance anyway, and the Vietnamese Army avoided interacting with the Chinese or Cambodians, with the People's Army of Vietnam leading incursions into other countries others on their own, not cooperating with the People's Liberation Army.
The Vietnamese populace's opinion on the war was critically low; a social movement was formed around opposing the war. Military morale was already low, but it eventually snapped after the Soviet Union punished China in 1991 for attempting to steer the war in their favor behind the scenes by commencing a slaughter of it's highest officers in Tibet; the sheer fear of the Vietnamese caused them to retreat back into their own borders; this fate was shared by other Communist countries of Asia, sans North Korea.
After the war ended, Communism fell out of favor with the public in Vietnam, who blamed it on much death and suffering of the Vietnamese population; this led to the slow democratization of the country, and by 1992, a new democratic government was formed, the Communist Party of Vietnam too defeated to fight them, with a new democratic party taking over. By 2000, it had re-instated diplomatic relations with all nations and it's economic growth has been among the highest in the world. Its successful economic reforms resulted in its becoming a member of the World Trade Organization in 2007.
Category:Countries Category:Former Communist Countries