The Vietnam War and Cultural Revolution diplomacy, 1965–8

In the course of the ‘long 1964’, the Lyndon Johnson administration gradually escalated the war in Vietnam, which culminated in the July 1965 decision to commit American ground troops to South Vietnam. In response to the US escalation, China increased its military and economic assistance to North Vietnam and the National Liberation Front (NLF) in the South. After Mao unleashed the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1966, China found itself confronting not only the United States and the Soviet Union but almost all members of the world community.