The United States, Australia and New Zealand had signed the ANZUS treaty in 1951. In 1962 the United States asked Australia to send military advisers to Vietnam as a way of making the war against North Vietnam appear more international. The United States, South Vietnam and later Australia, New Zealand and other allies faced communist forces in two forms: the regular North Vietnamese Army, and the Viet Cong, who were mainly South Vietnamese guerrillas raised and supplied by North Vietnam and who were often indistinguishable from civilians. This was motivated by US concerns about the so-called ‘Domino Effect’, which held that if North Vietnam defeated the South, communism would spread across all of South-East Asia. From the late 1950s, the United States committed troops to help South Vietnam defend itself, rapidly escalating its deployments under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations through the early and mid-1960s. In 1956 North Vietnam began trying to seize control of the south. The Geneva Accords peace agreement in July that year saw the country divided between the communist north and a quasi-democratic (though corrupt and dictatorial) south. A bitter war ensued that ended with the French being defeated in 1954. In 1945 the French returned, but Ho Chi Minh, leader of the Vietnamese Communist Party, saw an opportunity for his country to become independent. During the Second World War Japan invaded the French colonies of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
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