Meanwhile, in 1945 Vietnamese insurgents declared Vietnam's independence from France, and French forces (such as they were following the German occupation) hastily invaded in an attempt to hold on to the French colony of Indochina. Figure 13.1.1: Refugees fleeing south after the invasion by North Korean forces. A United Nations force consisting mostly of the American army fought alongside South Korean troops against the North Korean and Chinese forces. This was a case in which both the Soviets and the Chinese directly supported an invasion in the name of spreading communism, something that would become far less common in subsequent conflicts. In 1950, North Korean troops supported with Soviet arms and allied Chinese troops invaded the south in the name of reuniting the country under communist rule. After the defeat of Japan, Korea was divided between a communist north and an anti-communist republican south. Korea had been occupied by Japan since 1910, one of the first countries to be conquered during Japan’s bid to create an East Asian and Pacific empire that culminated in the Pacific theater of World War II. In other words, many conflicts in the postwar era represented a combination of battles for independence from European empires and proxy wars between the two camps of the Cold War. It did, however, lead to wars around the world that were part of Cold War setting but also involved conflicts between colonizers and the colonized. \)įortunately for the human species, the Cold War never turned into a “hot” war between the two superpowers, despite close calls like that of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
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