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Smiley Smile

Smiley Smile is the twelfth studio album by the American rock band the Beach Boys, released on September 18, 1967. Conceived as a simpler and more relaxed version of their unfinished Smile album, Smiley Smile is distinguished for its homespun arrangements, "stoned" aesthetic, and lo-fi production. Critics and fans generally received the album and its lead single, "Heroes and Villains", with confusion and disappointment. The album reached number 9 on UK record charts, but sold poorly in the U.S., peaking at number 41—the band's lowest chart placement to that point.

Following principal songwriter Brian Wilson's declaration that most of the original Smile tapes would be abandoned, the majority of the recording sessions lasted for six weeks at his makeshift home studio using radio broadcasting equipment, a detuned piano, electronic bass, melodica, found objects for percussion, and a Baldwin theater organ. The unconventional recording process juxtaposed an experimental party-like atmosphere with short pieces of music edited together in a disjointed manner, combining the engineering methods of "Good Vibrations" (1966) with the loose feeling of Beach Boys' Party! (1965). Despite leading these sessions, Wilson deliberately credited the album's production to the group collectively for the first time.

From late 1966 to mid-1967, Smile had been repeatedly delayed while the Beach Boys were subject to a considerable level of media hype proclaiming Wilson to be a "genius". After settling payment disputes with Capitol Records, Smiley Smile was distributed in collaboration with Brother Records, the band's new self-owned record company. A second single, "Gettin' Hungry", was credited to Wilson and Mike Love and failed to chart. Smile was left incomplete as the band immediately moved onto the recording of Lei'd in Hawaii, an unfinished live album featuring performances in the style of Smiley Smile, and Wild Honey, released in December 1967.

Smiley Smile has since become a critical and cult favorite, influencing the development of the lo-fi, ambient, and bedroom pop genres. It is often regarded as one of the finest chill-out albums for having positive effects on listeners experiencing an LSD comedown, a usage adopted by at least one drug clinic. In 1974, it was ranked number 64 in NME's list of the greatest albums of all time. Outtakes and session highlights from the album were included on the compilations The Smile Sessions (2011) and 1967 – Sunshine Tomorrow (2017).

Original Smile sessions (1966–1967)

The Beach Boys' album Pet Sounds, issued on May 16, 1966, was massively influential upon its release, containing lush and sophisticated orchestral arrangements that raised the band's prestige to the top level of rock innovators. Early reviews for the album in the US ranged from negative to tentatively positive, but the reception from music journalists in the UK was very favorable. The group had recently employed the Beatles' former press officer Derek Taylor as their publicist. Bothered by the popular view of the Beach Boys as outdated surfers, leader and songwriter Brian Wilson requested that Taylor establish a new image for the band as fashionable counterculture icons, resulting in Taylor spearheading a media campaign with the tagline "Brian Wilson is a genius".

In October 1966, the group followed up Pet Sounds with "Good Vibrations", a laboriously produced single that achieved major international success. By then, an album titled Smile had been conceived as an extension of that song's recording approach, with Wilson composing music in collaboration with lyricist Van Dyke Parks. Wilson envisioned Smile as an outlet for all of his intellectual occupations, such as his fascination with spirituality and its relationship to humor and laughter. He told Melody Maker: "Our new album will be better than Pet Sounds. It will be as much an improvement over Sounds as that was over [our 1965 album] Summer Days." By the end of the year, NME conducted an annual reader's poll that placed the Beach Boys as the world's top vocal group, ahead of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

Litigation and collapse (February–June 1967)

Business partner David Anderle attempted to form Brother Records, an independent label, with the intention of giving "entirely new concepts to the recording industry, and to give the Beach Boys total creative and promotional control over their product." A February 1967 lawsuit seeking $255,000 (equivalent to $ in ) was launched against Capitol Records over neglected royalty payments. Within the lawsuit, there was also an attempt to terminate the band's contract with Capitol before its November 1969 expiration. In April 1967, Wilson and his wife put their Beverly Hills home up for sale and took residence at a newly purchased mansion in Bel Air. Wilson also set to work on constructing a personal home studio.

Parks permanently withdrew from the project in April, with Anderle following suit weeks later. Between mid-April and early May, Wilson took a four-week break from studio recording. On April 26, Carl Wilson was arrested for refusing his draft into the US Army and later released on bail. On April 28, in an effort to promote the group's upcoming UK tour, EMI issued the single "Then I Kissed Her" to the chagrin of the band, who did not approve the release. On May 6, a week after stating that Smile was to be released "any moment", Taylor announced in Disc & Music Echo that the album had been "scrapped" by Wilson. However, Taylor's assertion of the album's cancellation at that point was likely to be spurious. The Beach Boys were still under pressure and a contractual obligation to deliver an album to Capitol. For most of May, the touring group embarked on a run of shows in Europe while Brian resumed scheduling recording sessions at professional studios, some of which were cancelled on short notice.

Throughout 1967, Wilson's public image was reduced to that of an "eccentric" figure as a multitude of revolutionary rock albums were released to an anxious and maturing youth market. For a time, the Beach Boys had been the Beatles' chief rivals, and Wilson was concerned that if Smile followed in the wake of another critically successful release by the Beatles, then his album would be received with unjust comparisons. His race was effectively lost when the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (May 1967). By June, Wilson declared to his bandmates that most of the material recorded for Smile would be abandoned. In an interview conducted in January 1968, he intimated that he had run out of ideas "in a conventional sense" and had been "about ready to die" before Smiley Smile. He said: "I decided not to try any more, and not try and do such great things."

Modular approach and recording atmosphere
Since the recording of "Good Vibrations" in 1966, Wilson had established a new method of operation. Instead of working on whole songs with clear large-scale syntactical structures, Wilson limited himself to recording short interchangeable fragments (or "modules"). Through the method of tape splicing, each fragment could then be assembled into a linear sequence, allowing any number of larger structures and divergent moods to be produced at a later time. Smiley Smile continued this approach. The album also continued Brian's exploration of "party tracks"—a form of music which includes the sounds of people shouting and making noises, as if at a party. Brian had enacted this approach with Beach Boys' Party! in 1965, thereby mixing that record's style with the modular composition method he devised for "Good Vibrations".

Most of Smiley Smile was recorded at Brian's improvised home studio from June 3 to July 14, 1967. The group had held a few of the early sessions at Hollywood Sound Recorders and Western Studios. All sessions after June 11 were conducted at the home studio. The core instrumentation at these sessions consisted of organ, honky-tonk piano, and electronic bass played by the Beach Boys themselves, rather than the session musicians employed in much of their previous work. Brian became obsessed with a three-tiered Baldwin organ during the album's recording, resulting in a more minimalist approach to the new arrangements. Most of the piano was played by Brian, and most of the bass was played by Carl.

It was the first album for which production was credited to the entire group, instead of Brian alone. Dennis Wilson explained: "He wanted it that way. He said 'It's produced by the Beach Boys. When asked if Brian was "still the producer of Smiley Smile", Carl answered, "Most definitely." He described Smiley Smile as an improvised, low-effort affair that was "more like a 'jam' album."  Brian acknowledged: "We had done about six months work on another thing, but we jumped and ended up doing the entire thing here at the house with an entirely different mood and approach than what we originally started out with." When questioned on why the band took the approach they did, he stated, "We just had a particular atmosphere that we were working in that inspired the particular kind of things that were on the album." He said that he did not "have any paranoia feelings" recording the album: "[W]e had so much fun. The Smiley Smile era was so great, it was unbelievable. Personally, spiritually, everything, it was great."

According to music theorist Daniel Harrison, Smiley Smile is not a work of rock music as the term was understood in 1967, and that portions of the album "can be thought of as a kind of protominimal rock music". In his book about psychedelic music, author Jim DeRogatis referred to Smiley Smile as a work of the "ultimate psychedelic rock library". Conversely, Stylus Magazine's Edwin Faust wrote in 2003 that the album "embraces the listener with a drugged out sincerity; a feat never accomplished by the more pretentious and heavy-handed psychedelia of that era. It is for this reason Smiley Smile flows so well with the more experimental pop of today".

Music journalist Domenic Priore notes that when the Beach Boys were taken out of professional studios, "the discipline of the clock, rates and overtime disappeared". Mike Love, recalling how "She's Goin' Bald" had been written about fellatio, commented: "We were stoned out of our heads. We were laughing our asses off when we recorded that stuff." Dennis remembered the album as "the most fun thing we ever did." Bruce Johnston did not participate in most of these sessions. He later called the work "very spacy" and "weird", but "so subtle and so damn innovative."

Differences from Smile
Carl Wilson famously compared Smiley Smile to "a bunt instead of a grand slam". From the vast sum of material Brian had recorded for Smile, only portions of the backing track for "Heroes and Villains" (recorded October 1966) and the coda for "Vegetables" (recorded April 1967) were used for Smiley Smile. Comparing Brian's original Smile mixes with the Smiley Smile version of "Heroes and Villains", Al Jardine called it "a pale facsimile ... Brian re-invented the song for this record ... He purposefully under-produced the song." "Good Vibrations", which was recorded sporadically from February to September 1966, appears with no differences from the original single. Brian reportedly objected to the placement of "Good Vibrations" on Smiley Smile, but for the first time, he was outvoted by his bandmates, who insisted on its inclusion.

"Wind Chimes", "Wonderful", and most parts of "Vegetables" were completely rerecorded with scaled-down arrangements. "Vegetables" was reworked as a kind of campfire song, while "Wonderful" traded its harpsichord and trumpet for a haphazardly-played organ, high-pitched backing vocals, and a doo-wop sing-along section. The marimbas in "Wind Chimes" were replaced by organ and dissonant noise. Other tracks only extracted minor elements, such as a melody line, from other Smile pieces. "She's Goin' Bald" borrows the verse melody from a Smile fragment known as "He Gives Speeches", "With Me Tonight" is a variation on "Vegetables", and "Fall Breaks and Back to Winter (W. Woodpecker Symphony)" lifts a recurring melodic hook from "Fire". Despite reports that Smile had been shelved for being "too weird", there was no attempt by the band to make the musical content on Smiley Smile appear any less bizarre for their traditional fanbase. David Anderle thought that Brian's intention was "to salvage as much of Smile as he could and at the same time immediately go into his [long-discussed] humor album." According to a contemporary Hullabaloo article, "The title, suggested by [Wilson's cousin] Barry Turnbull, reflects the album's happy concept, it is taken from the Indian aphorism, 'The smile that you send out returns to you.'" The cover artwork featured a new illustration of Frank Holmes' Smile Shoppe, this time located in the middle of an overgrown jungle.

Smiley Smile was produced without any direct involvement from Van Dyke Parks. The only songs that appeared to have no connection to the original Smile album were "Little Pad" and "Gettin' Hungry". In addition, while the Beatles' Paul McCartney was present at an April 1967 session for "Vegetables", the recording where he had reportedly supplied celery crunching sounds was not used on Smiley Smile.

Technical aspects and mixdown
Smiley Smile was recorded with an eight-track tape machine, with all the different musical sections spread out across numerous reels of tape. In other words, intros, verses, choruses, and endings were each allocated their own reel. The Beach Boys recorded using what was predominantly radio broadcasting equipment, which lacked many of the technical elements and effects found in an established studio. The studio set up at Brian's house was, in its mid-1967 incarnation for Smiley Smile, in its infancy. Due to the sporadic nature at which Brian decided to produce the record at his home, there was little time to fully outfit the Bel Air residence as a properly-equipped recording studio.

Tracks were typically constructed around a performance of Wilson playing piano that was usually mixed out of the final recording. This process was equivalent to the use of click tracks a decade before they were common. Some recording accidents were used to their advantage, such as in "With Me Tonight", which contains an informal link between the verse and chorus by way of a voice saying "good", as in "good take", spoken by the band's friend Arny Geller from the control room. Tape manipulation was another prominent feature, with varispeed being applied to a few vocals. On "She's Goin' Bald", a new device called the Eltro Information Rate Changer was used to raise the pitch of the group's vocals without affecting the tempo.

The home set-up was moved between different areas as the sessions progressed. This led to unconventional ways of achieving particular sounds at the home, such as a replacement for what would be achieved by an echo chamber. The album's engineer Jim Lockert recalled how "Brian's swimming pool had a leak in it and was empty, so we put a microphone in the bottom of this damn near Olympic-size pool and the guys laid down inside the pool and sang so the sound would go down the wall of the concrete pool into the microphone – and that was part of the vocals on one of those songs." Some vocals were also tracked in the shower.

Lockert detailed a unique and labor-intensive process for the final mixing session of the album that began at five o'clock one evening and concluded the following morning at Wally Heider's Studio 3 in Hollywood. The mixing strategy involved sequentially mixing the introduction and first verse of each song directly to a two-track tape. Rather than creating copies for assembly, the team would then erase the vocals from the mixed segment, record the harmony and lead parts for the subsequent verse, and mix it down to the same tape. This meticulous approach was repeated for each section of the song, ensuring that by the end of the session, the album was fully mixed and edited. Lockert recalled, "One of the guys from Wally Heider was my second engineer and he said, 'Well, I never believed in miracles but I saw one tonight.' That’s the way they did it. It wasn't my idea. They mixed it chorus and verse, chorus and verse and intro, and all the levels had to match."

Release
The Beach Boys were initially involved in the conception of the Monterey Pop Festival, which was held in June 1967. At the last minute, the band announced that they could not appear at the festival for reasons pertaining to Carl's military draft and their commitments to finish "Heroes and Villains" for Capitol. Derek Taylor, who had terminated his employment with the group to focus on the festival's organization, remembered that dropping out of the program "undoubtedly set the band in a very bad light. They were certainly heavily criticized at the time for it. It seemed rather like an admission of defeat." Biographer David Leaf explained: "Monterey was a gathering place for the 'far out' sounds of the 'new' rock ... and it is thought that this non-appearance was what really turned the 'underground' tide against them." Detractors referred to the band as the "Bleach Boys" and "the California Hypes" as the media focus shifted from Los Angeles to the happenings in San Francisco.

The Capitol lawsuit was eventually settled out of court, with the Beach Boys receiving the royalties owed in exchange for Brother Records to distribute through Capitol Records, along with a guarantee that the band produce at least one million dollars profit. An official announcement of the resolution was made on July 18. Capitol A&R director Karl Engemann began circulating a memo, dated July 25, in which Smiley Smile was referred to as a stopgap for Smile. The memo also discussed conversations between him and Wilson pertaining to the release of a 10-track Smile album, which would not have included the songs "Heroes and Villains" or "Vegetables". In July, two singles were issued on the Brother imprint: "Heroes and Villains" and "Gettin' Hungry". The former peaked at number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100. The latter was not credited to the Beach Boys, but instead to Brian Wilson and Mike Love.

Smile was never delivered; instead, the group played two shows at an auditorium in Honolulu, which were filmed and recorded with the intention of releasing a live album, Lei'd in Hawaii. On stage, the band performed "Heroes and Villains" and "Gettin' Hungry", and rearranged their past hits in the style of Smiley Smile. Priore writes that the engagement was effectively the band's "attempt to make up" for cancelling their gig at Monterey. Bruce Johnston, who was absent for most of the Smiley Smile recording sessions, did not accompany the group, although Brian did. In early August, Johnston told the British press that he had heard Smiley Smile, and when asked about Smile, said that the album would be released "within the next two months."

On September 18, 1967, Smiley Smile was released in the US. The LP peaked at number 41 on the Billboard charts, making it their worst-selling album to that date. It spent most of its 21-week chart time bubbling under 100 and 197. When released in the UK in November, it performed better, reaching number 9 of the UK Albums Chart. During their annual Thanksgiving tour of the US, the band did not perform any of the tracks on Smiley Smile except "Good Vibrations". In a December interview, Mike Love acknowledged that Smiley Smile had "baffled and mystified" the public and that the band "had this feeling that we were going too far, losing touch I guess." He promised that their next album, then slated to be Wild Honey, would bring the group "back more into reality".

Initial reviews
In the description of journalist Nick Kent, Smiley Smile "appeared like the single most underwhelming musical statement of the sixties". It was a "major disappointment" for fans, many of whom had expected a work similar to Pet Sounds and the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper. According to writer Scott Schinder, the LP was released to "general incomprehension. While Smile may have divided the Beach Boys' fans had it been released, Smiley Smile merely baffled them." Anderle said that whatever new fans the group had brought with Pet Sounds were "immediately lost with the release of 'Heroes of Villains,' then with the album [Smiley Smile]." Biographer Keith Badman writes that the music press responded by "effectively blacklisting the band, refusing to review their latest records, or reviewing them long after they have been released."

"Undoubtedly the worst album ever released by The Beach Boys", Melody Maker wrote. "Prestige has been seriously damaged." A review in Hit Parader praised the album for "probably [having] more a cappella harmony than on any album since the fall of the singing-group era in the late 1950s", but reserved that they "still like Pet Sounds better". NME wrote, "By the standards which this group has set itself, it's more than a grade disappointing." Hi Fidelity said: "... they are making the psychedelic route ... perhaps in the unforgettable city of Fresno. Until they reach the San Francisco Bay Bridge or return to the shores of Malibu ... their work can only receive partial approval."

More favorably, Record Mirror's Wesley Laine predicted that Smiley Smile would "probably go to the top of the LP charts". He felt that it contained better songs "on the whole" than Pet Sounds, as well as "extremely clever and insiduous ... production and arrangements [that] fall into the current psychedelic bag without being blatantly acidy." The Milwaukee Sentinel praised the LP as "probably the most valuable contribution to rock since the Beatles Revolver" and for being unlike anything the Beatles had done. Cheetah gave the album a rave review, observing that "the mood is rather childlike (not childish)—the kind of innocence that shows on the album cover, with its Rousseau-like animals and forest, and the smoke from the cabin chimney spelling out the title. ... The expression that emerges from this music is very strange: it's a very personal mood." New York Times journalist Richard Goldstein rued that "the album is a memorable, if disjointed experience, and a truly religious one as well. One must decide for oneself what the sermon is worth listening for." In his May 1968 column in Esquire, Robert Christgau praised the minimalism of Smiley Smile, characterizing the record as "slight" and calling the deliberately uncommercial sound of the album "unique and almost perfect".

Controversy involving whether the band was to be taken as a serious rock group followed them into the next year. On December 14, 1967, Rolling Stone editor and co-founder Jann Wenner printed an influential article that denounced Wilson's "genius" label, which he called a "promotional shuck", and the Beach Boys themselves, which he called "one prominent example of a group that has gotten hung up on trying to catch The Beatles". He wrote that "for some reason, [Smiley Smile] just doesn't make it ... [the songs] just don't move you. Other than displaying Brian Wilson's virtuosity for production, they are pointless." In February 1968, a Rolling Stone reviewer referred to the album as a "disaster" and an "abortive attempt to match the talents of Lennon and McCartney."

Aftermath and archival releases

Smiley Smile became the first in a three-part series of lo-fi Beach Boys albums (preceding Wild Honey and Friends) and the first in a seven-year string of under-performing Beach Boys albums (ending with the 1974 compilation Endless Summer). The Smile era is generally viewed as the ending of the Beach Boys' most artistically creative period, and the point after which Brian began gradually relinquishing his hold as the group's creative leader.

Commenting on Smiley Smile in retrospect, Bruce Johnston said it was "a thousand times better than the [original Smile] ... It's just the most underrated album in the whole catalog for me." Dennis Wilson said, "It was not as ambitious as Pet Sounds was. But ... I listened to it in a jungle in Africa and it sounded great." Conversely, Al Jardine felt that "there are some pretty cool songs on that album but I didn't like rehashing some of the Smile songs. That didn't work for me." Mike Love wrote, "Some of the songs we recorded could barely be called songs. They were chants, spacey fragments, weird sound effects. Every group produces at least one bad album ... I don't think Brian wanted to be associated with it either."

Much of the group's subsequent recordings from 1967 to 1970 followed similar experimental traditions as Smiley Smile – namely, through sparse instrumentation, a more relaxed ensemble, and a seeming inattention to production quality. Numerous session musicians have reported that the Beach Boys had not been a distraction to Brian's workflow when recording at established studios, but once the group made the home studio their primary base of operations, his bandmates became more integrated in the band's creative decisions. Carl took Brian's place as the most musically dominant member, and Brian would not be credited as producer for another Beach Boys album until 1976's 15 Big Ones.

Smile material continued to trickle out in later releases, often as filler songs to offset Brian's unwillingness to contribute. "Cool, Cool Water", an outtake from Smiley Smile and Wild Honey sessions, was partially rerecorded and issued as the closing track for Sunflower (1970). When The Smile Sessions box set was released in 2011, co-producer Mark Linett acknowledged that "there's things that some people think – should Smiley Smile sessions be there – [with tracks such as] 'Can't Wait Too Long', we get into a very fuzzy area". In 2017, additional session highlights from the album were released on the rarities compilation 1967 – Sunshine Tomorrow. The compilation was followed several months later with two more digital-exclusive releases: 1967 – Sunshine Tomorrow 2: The Studio Sessions and 1967 – Live Sunshine.

Reappraisal
Smiley Smile has since become a cult and critical favorite in the Beach Boys' catalog. In biographer Peter Ames Carlin's estimation, "the album's reputation improved with hindsight", particularly after the release of "stripped-down warts-and-all albums" by other artists, including Bob Dylan (John Wesley Harding, 1967) and the Beatles (The White Album, 1968). Writing in 1971, Melody Maker's Richard Williams referred to Smiley Smile as "The Great Undiscovered Pop Album", one that had been "either ignored or dismissed by the reviewers." The album's prevailing negative response mellowed after the record was reissued in 1974 – the same year that the staff of NME ranked it as the 62nd greatest album of all time.

Since the mid-1970s, the album has developed a following that appreciates the distinct qualities of its low-fidelity production, positioning it as an essential entry in Wilson's oeuvre. It is considered a masterwork among fans of lo-fi art. Reviewing the album for AllMusic, Richie Unterberger called it a "rather nifty, if rather slight, effort that's plenty weird". Spencer Owen of Pitchfork deemed it "a near-masterpiece. Without any awareness of Smile's existence, this album could have been a contemporary classic ... and although the album isn't anywhere close to the sonic revolution that Sgt. Pepper had already brought, Wilson's innovative production and arrangements still bring out the best in every single track." Blender's Douglas Wolk called it "the Boys' psychedelic album — joltingly spare, druggy and funny, with the most gorgeous harmonies of their career."

Less favorably, Kent maintained that the album "undersold the worth" of Smile with "dumb pot-head skits, so-called healing chants and even some weird 'loony tunes' items straight out of a cut-rate Walt Disney soundtrack". The Guardian's Geoffrey Cannon viewed Parks' lyrics as "pretentious", believing that Parks "messed Brian up" during Smiley Smile. Paste's Bryan Rolli ranked it at number 2 in a list of the "10 Most Disappointing Follow-Up Albums", calling it a "disjointed collection of minimalist recordings and a capella bits that are not so much songs as fragments of a shattered psyche". In the 2004 edition of The Rolling Stone Album Guide, the reviewer described Smiley Smile as "inconsistent" and said that, given the context of its release in September 1967, "the album was like a strange throwback – it highlighted how out of touch these suburban California surfers had become with the psychedelic times." In his 2007 book The Act You've Known for All These Years: The Life, and Afterlife, of Sgt. Pepper, Clinton Heylin writes that the album "sounded like a [throwaway] contractual obligation" and, together with its commercial failure, confirmed "one of the most spectacular falls from grace of any sixties band".

In the 2000s, Smiley Smile began to be included in lists of "must-hear" albums compiled by various publications. In 2000, it was ranked number 415 in Colin Larkin's book of the All Time Top 1000 Albums. In a 2007 issue of Rolling Stone, Robert Christgau and David Fricke named it one of the 40 essential albums of 1967; Christgau declared: "Towering it's not; some kind of hit it is." In 2017, it was ranked number 118 on Pitchfork's list of greatest albums of the 1960s, where it was described as having "developed a small cult of its own, attracting those drawn to its stripped-down, highly spontaneous, and deeply stoned vibe."

Impact and legacy
In later years, Smiley Smile became celebrated as one of the finest chill-out albums, and one that is suited for listening during an LSD comedown. At least one drug treatment center adopted the LP as a tool for comforting patients. Carl Wilson mentioned this clinic, located in Fort Worth, Texas, to the NME in 1970, saying, "They don't use any traditional medical treatment whatsoever. All they do is play the patient our Smiley Smile album and apparently this acts as a soothing remedy which relaxes them and helps them to recover completely from their trip."

Music theorist Daniel Harrison writes that Smiley Smile may be regarded as a piece akin to art music within the Western classical tradition, highlighting its pioneering contributions to the rock genre as comparable to the introduction of unconventional techniques, such as atonality, in classical music. Writing in 1971, Richard Williams felt that the album's disjointed and fragmentary approach had "all the epigrammatic, enigmatic power of Japanese haiku", containing 'passages written in the conditional tense (i.e. the songs move easily between reality and fantasy), a technique evolved by Godard in the cinema and which only Wilson, as far as I know, has picked up in pop."

Smiley Smile was one of 100 albums featured in the 2000 book The Ambient Century as a chapter in the development of ambient music. Pitchfork contributor Mark Richardson wrote that the record "basically invented the kind of lo-fi bedroom pop that would later propel Sebadoh, Animal Collective, and other characters." The New York Observer's Ron Hart wrote that Smiley Smile had effectively presaged the work of Harry Nilsson, Elvis Costello, Stereolab, the High Llamas, the Olivia Tremor Control, and Father John Misty. Dedicated tribute albums include Smiling Pets (1998) and Portland Sings The Beach Boys "Smiley Smile" (2013).

Other admirers of the album have included Pete Townshend of the Who and Robbie Robertson of the Band. XTC's Andy Partridge considered it one of "the most influential records for me" and it was a direct inspiration for his song "Season Cycle" (Skylarking, 1986). In an interview with Time, Steven Tyler of Aerosmith stated that his "island" music picks include Smiley Smile, "Just for the melodic fuck all." Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu Tanaka, composers for the Japanese role-playing video game series Mother, cited Smiley Smile among influences on the games' soundtracks. Comedian Trevor Moore stated that the theme song for his troupe's television show, The Whitest Kids U' Know, was based on "Little Pad", which itself had been used as the opening theme for their live shows.

Track listing
Lead vocals per 1990 CD liner notes by David Leaf. On its original release, Van Dyke Parks was not credited for "Wonderful".

Personnel
Per David Leaf, as well as from band sessionographer Craig Slowinski, including full credits for "Good Vibrations" and "Heroes and Villains" and partial credits for "Vegetables." The credits for "Good Vibrations" are adapted from Slowinski's liner notes from The Smile Sessions box set, as well as the website Bellagio 10452, maintained by music historian Andrew G. Doe.

The Beach Boys
 * Al Jardine - lead vocals, harmony and backing vocals, water bottle sound effects
 * Mike Love - lead vocals, harmony and backing vocals
 * Brian Wilson - lead vocals, harmony and backing vocals, tack piano, Baldwin organ, harpsichord, electric harpsichord, tambourine, electric bass
 * Carl Wilson - lead vocals, harmony and backing vocals, guitar, shaker
 * Dennis Wilson - harmony and backing vocals, Hammond organ
 * Bruce Johnston - backing vocals on "Good Vibrations"
 * Additional musicians and production staff

 * Billy Hinsche - harmony and backing vocals on "Heroes and Villains"
 * Van Dyke Parks – tack piano
 * Hal Blaine – drums, timpani, shaker
 * Jimmy Bond – double bass
 * Frank Capp – bongos with sticks
 * Al Casey – electric rhythm guitar
 * Jerry Cole – electric rhythm guitar
 * Gary Coleman – sleigh bells
 * Steve Douglas – tenor flute
 * Jesse Ehrlich – cello
 * Gene Estes – slide whistle
 * Jim Gordon – drums
 * Bill Green – contra-clarinet, bass saxophone
 * Jim Horn – piccolo
 * George Hyde – French horn
 * Larry Knechtel – Hammond organ
 * Plas Johnson – piccolo, flutes
 * Al De Lory – tack piano
 * Mike Melvoin – upright piano
 * Jay Migliori – flutes
 * Tommy Morgan – bass harmonica, overdubbed jaw harp, harmonica
 * Bill Pitman – Danelectro six-string bass
 * Ray Pohlman – Fender bass
 * Don Randi – electric harpsichord
 * Lyle Ritz – double bass, Fender bass
 * Billy Strange – 12-string electric rhythm guitar
 * Paul Tanner – Electro-Theremin on "Good Vibrations"
 * Terry (surname unknown, possibly Terry Melcher) – tambourine
 * Arthur Wright – Fender bass
 * unknown (possibly Hal Blaine) – tambourine

Technical staff
 * Chuck Britz – engineer
 * Cal Harris – engineer
 * Jim Lockert – engineer
 * The Beach Boys – producers
 * Brian Wilson - producer ("Good Vibrations")

title: Smiley Smile


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Sino-Vietnamese War

The Sino-Vietnamese War (also known by other names) was a brief conflict that occurred in early 1979 between China and Vietnam. China launched an offensive ostensibly in response to Vietnam's invasion and occupation of Cambodia in 1978, which ended the rule of the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge. The conflict lasted for about a month, with China withdrawing its troops in March 1979.

In February 1979, Chinese forces launched a surprise invasion of northern Vietnam and quickly captured several cities near the border. On 6March of that year, China declared that its punitive mission had been accomplished. Chinese troops then withdrew from Vietnam. However, Vietnam continued to occupy Cambodia until 1989, which means that China did not achieve its goal of dissuading Vietnam from involvement in Cambodia. However, China's operation at least successfully forced Vietnam to withdraw some units, namely the 2nd Corps, from the invasion forces of Cambodia to reinforce the defense of Hanoi. The conflict had a lasting impact on the relationship between China and Vietnam, and diplomatic relations between the two countries were not fully restored until 1991. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Sino-Vietnamese border was finalized. Although unable to deter Vietnam from ousting Pol Pot from Cambodia, China demonstrated that the Soviet Union, its Cold War communist adversary, was unable to protect its Vietnamese ally.

Names
The Sino-Vietnamese War is known by various names in Chinese and Vietnamese. The neutral names for the war are 中越战争 (Sino-Vietnamese war) in Chinese and Chiến tranh biên giới Việt-Trung (Vietnamese-Chinese border war) in Vietnamese. The Chinese government refers to the war as the "Self-defensive war against Vietnam" (对越自卫反击战) or the "Self-defensive counterattack against Vietnam" (对越自卫还击保卫边疆作战). The Vietnamese government calls it the "War against Chinese expansionism" (Chiến tranh chống bành trướng Trung Hoa).

The Sino-Vietnamese War is also known as the Third Indochina War in Western historiography.

Background
Just as the First Indochina War—which emerged from the complex situation following World War II—and the Vietnam War both arose from the indecisive aftermath of political relations, the Third Indochina War again followed the unresolved problems of the earlier wars.

The major allied victors of World War II, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union, all agreed that the area belonged to the French. As the French did not have the means to immediately retake Indochina, the major powers agreed that the British would take control and troops would occupy the south while Nationalist Chinese forces would move in from the north. Nationalist Chinese troops entered the country to disarm Japanese troops north of the 16th parallel on 14 September 1945. The parallel divided Indochina into Chinese and British controlled zones (see Timeline of World War II (1945)). The British landed in the south and rearmed the small body of interned French forces as well as parts of the surrendered Japanese forces to aid in retaking southern Vietnam, as there were not enough British troops immediately available.

On the urging of the Soviet Union, Ho Chi Minh initially attempted to negotiate with the French, who were slowly reestablishing their control across the area, although still under British control until hostilities had ceased. Once hostilities had ended, the British handed over the territory to the French. In January 1946, the Viet Minh won elections across central and northern Vietnam. On 6 March 1946, Ho signed an agreement allowing French forces to replace Nationalist Chinese forces, in exchange for French recognition of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam as a "free" republic within the French Union, with the specifics of such recognition to be determined by future negotiation. British forces departed on 26 March 1946, leaving Vietnam in the control of the French. The French landed in Hanoi by March 1946 and in November of that year they ousted the Viet Minh from the city. Soon thereafter, the Viet Minh began a guerrilla war against the French Union forces, beginning the first Indochina War.

French colonialism and the First Indochina War
Vietnam first became a French colony when France invaded in 1858. By the 1880s, the French had expanded their sphere of influence in Southeast Asia to include all of Vietnam, and by 1893 both Laos and Cambodia had become French colonies as well. Rebellions against French colonial power were common up to World War I. The European war heightened revolutionary sentiment in Southeast Asia, and the independence-minded population rallied around revolutionaries such as Hồ Chí Minh and others, including royalists.

Prior to their attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese occupied French Indochina, but left civil administration to the Vichy French administration. On 9 March 1945, fearing that the Vichy French were about to switch sides to support the Allies, the Japanese overthrew the Vichy administration and forces taking control of Indochina and establishing their own puppet administration, the Empire of Vietnam. The Japanese surrender in August 1945 created a power vacuum in Indochina, as the various political factions scrambled for control.

The events leading to the First Indochina War are subject to historical dispute. When the Việt Minh hastily sought to establish the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the remaining French acquiesced while waiting for the return of French forces to the region. The Kuomintang supported French restoration, but Viet Minh efforts towards independence were helped by Chinese communists under the Soviet Union's influence. The Soviet Union at first indirectly supported Vietnamese communists, but later directly supported Hồ Chí Minh. The Soviets nonetheless remained less supportive than China until after the Sino-Soviet split, during the time of Leonid Brezhnev when the Soviet Union became communist Vietnam's key ally.

The war itself involved numerous events that had major impacts throughout Indochina. Two major conferences were held to bring about a resolution. Finally, on 20 July 1954, the Geneva Conference resulted in a political settlement to reunite the country, signed with support from China, the Soviet Union, and Western European powers. While the Soviet Union played a constructive role in the agreement, it again was not as involved as China. The U.S. did not sign the agreement and swiftly moved to back South Vietnam.

Sino-Soviet split
The Chinese Communist Party and the Viet Minh had a long history. During the initial stages of the First Indochina War with France, the recently founded communist People's Republic of China continued the Soviet mission to expand communism. Therefore, they aided the Viet Minh and became the connector between Soviets and the Viet Minh.

After the death of Joseph Stalin in March 1953, relations between the Soviet Union and China began to deteriorate. Mao Zedong believed the new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had made a serious error in his Secret Speech denouncing Stalin in February 1956, and criticized the Soviet Union's interpretation of Marxism–Leninism, in particular Khrushchev's support for peaceful co-existence and its interpretation. This led to increasingly hostile relations, and eventually the Sino-Soviet split. From here, Chinese communists played a decreasing role in helping their former allies because the Viet Minh did not support China against the Soviets.

Following worsening relations between the Soviet Union and China as a result of the Sino-Soviet split of 1956–1966, as many as 1.5 million Chinese troops were stationed along the Sino-Soviet border in preparation for a full-scale war against the Soviets.

Vietnam antagonized China by increasing its alignment with the Soviet Union by joining the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) (and signing the Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation with the Soviet Union, which had the Soviet Union pledge to aid Vietnam if attacked.

Following the death of Mao in September 1976, the overthrow of the Gang of Four and the ascent of Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese leadership revised its own positions to become compatible with market aspects, denounced the Cultural Revolution, and collaborated with the US against the Soviet Union.

Vietnam War
As France withdrew from a provisionally divided Vietnam in late 1954, the United States increasingly stepped in to support the South Vietnamese leaders due to the Domino theory, which theorized that if one nation would turn to communism, the surrounding nations were likely to fall like dominoes and become communist as well. The Soviet Union and North Vietnam became important allies together due to the fact that if South Vietnam was successfully taken over by North Vietnam, then communism in East Asia would find its strategic position bolstered. In the eyes of the People's Republic of China, the growing Soviet-Vietnamese relationship was a disturbing development; they feared an encirclement by the less-than-hospitable Soviet sphere of influence.

The United States and the Soviet Union could not agree on a plan for a proposed 1956 election meant to unify the partitioned Vietnam. Instead, the South held a separate election that was widely considered fraudulent, leading to continued internal conflict with communist factions led by the Viet Cong that intensified through the late 1950s. With supplies and support from the Soviet Union, North Vietnamese forces became directly involved in the ongoing guerrilla war by 1959 and openly invaded the South in 1964.

The United States played an ever-increasing role in supporting South Vietnam through the period. The U.S. had supported French forces in the First Indochina War, sent supplies and military advisers to South Vietnam throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, and eventually took over most of the fighting against both North Vietnam and the Viet Cong by the mid-1960s. By 1968, over 500,000 American troops were involved in the Vietnam War. Due to a lack of clear military success and facing increasingly strident opposition to the war in the U.S., American forces began a slow withdrawal in 1969 while attempting to bolster South Vietnam's military so that they could take over the fighting. In accordance with the Paris Peace Accords by 29 March 1973 all U.S. combat forces had left South Vietnam, however North Vietnamese combat forces were allowed to remain in place. North Vietnam attacked South Vietnam in early 1975 and South Vietnam fell on 30 April 1975.

The People's Republic of China started talks with the United States in the early 1970s, culminating in high level meetings with Henry Kissinger and later Richard Nixon. These meetings contributed to a re-orientation of Chinese foreign policy toward the United States.

Cambodia
Although the Vietnamese Communists and the Khmer Rouge had previously cooperated, the relationship deteriorated when Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot came to power and established Democratic Kampuchea on 17 April 1975. The People's Republic of China, on the other hand, also supported the Maoist Khmer Rouge against Lon Nol's regime during the Cambodian Civil War and its subsequent take-over of Cambodia. China provided extensive political, logistical and military support for the Khmer Rouge during its rule. After numerous clashes along the border between Vietnam and Cambodia, and with encouragement from Khmer Rouge defectors fleeing purges of the Eastern Zone, Vietnam invaded Cambodia on 25 December 1978. By 7 January 1979 Vietnamese forces had entered Phnom Penh and the Khmer Rouge leadership had fled to western Cambodia. The offensive took the Chinese by surprise, and its Phnom Penh embassy fled to the jungle with the Khmer Rouge where it remained for 15 days.

However, the fall of the Khmer Rouge was not a surprise, but from China's perspective, Vietnam's occupation of Cambodia threatened China's interests on the Indochina peninsula and its position among non-communist Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) states of Southeast Asia. Members of ASEAN saw Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia as a blatant violation of international borders and an act of aggression.

Ethnic minorities
China supported the ethnic minority United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races against Vietnam during the FULRO insurgency against Vietnam.

The Vietnamese executed collaborators who worked for the Chinese, regardless of ethnicity.

The Chinese received a significant number of defectors from the Thu Lao ethnic minority in Vietnam during the war. During the war China received as migrants the entire A Lù based population of the Phù Lá ethnic minority. China received so many defectors from the ethnic minorities in Vietnam that it raised shock among Vietnam which had to launch a new effort to re-assert dominance over the ethnic minorities and classify them. Post Vietnam War, an insurgency against Vietnam lasted among the indigenous Mon-Khmer and Malayo-Polynesians of the Central Highlands. Assistance was sought from China by the Hmong ethnic minority. The border was frequently crossed by Chinese, Lao, Kinh, Hmong, Yao, Nung, and Tai. The Laotian Hmong and FULRO were both supported against Vietnam by China and Thailand.

China attacks Vietnam
China, now under Deng Xiaoping, was starting the Chinese economic reform and opening trade with the West, in turn, growing increasingly defiant of the Soviet Union. China grew concerned about the strong Soviet influence in Vietnam, fearing that Vietnam could become a pseudo-protectorate of the Soviet Union. Vietnam's claim to be the world's third largest military power following its victory in the Vietnam War also increased Chinese apprehensions. In the Chinese view, Vietnam was pursuing a regional hegemonic policy in an attempt to control Indochina. In July 1978, the Chinese Politburo discussed possible military action against Vietnam in order to disrupt Soviet deployments and, two months later, PLA General Staff recommended punitive actions against Vietnam.

The major breakdown in the Chinese view of Vietnam occurred in November 1978. Vietnam joined the CMEA and, on 3 November, the Soviet Union and Vietnam signed a 25-year mutual defense treaty, which made Vietnam the "linchpin" in the Soviet Union's "drive to contain China". (However, the Soviet Union had shifted from open animosity towards more normalized relations with China soon after.) Vietnam called for a special relationship between the three Indochinese countries, but the Khmer Rouge regime of Democratic Kampuchea rejected the idea. On 25 December 1978, Vietnam invaded Democratic Kampuchea, overrunning most of the country, deposing the Khmer Rouge, and installing Heng Samrin as the head of the new Cambodian government. The move antagonized China, which now viewed the Soviet Union as capable of encircling its southern border.

On 29 January 1979, Chinese Vice-premier Deng Xiaoping visited the United States for the first time and told U.S. President Jimmy Carter: "The child is getting naughty, it is time he got spanked" (小朋友不听话，该打打屁股了). Deng sought an endorsement from the United States in order to deter the Soviet Union from intervening when China launched a punitive attack against Vietnam. He informed Carter that China could not accept Vietnam's "wild ambitions" and was prepared to teach it a lesson. According to United States National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter reserved judgment, an action which Chinese diplomats interpreted as tacit approval.

Deng returned to China on 8 February 1979, and on 9 February, made the final decision to invade Vietnam. On 15 February, the first day that China could have officially announced the termination of the 1950 Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance, Deng Xiaoping declared that China planned to conduct a limited attack on Vietnam. Thus, he further developed China's burgeoning cooperation with the United States against the Soviet Union and would take a similar stance later regarding Afghanistan. According to academic Suisheng Zhao, "The proximity in the timing of the military thrust against Vietnam, was to take advantage of the normalization to bluff the Soviets with a nonexistent US endorsement."

The reason cited for the attack was to support China's ally, the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia, in addition to the mistreatment of Vietnam's ethnic Chinese minority and the Vietnamese occupation of the Spratly Islands which were claimed by China. To prevent Soviet intervention on Vietnam's behalf, Deng warned Moscow the next day that China was prepared for a full-scale war against the Soviet Union; in preparation for this conflict, China put all of its troops along the Sino-Soviet border on an emergency war alert, set up a new military command in Xinjiang, and even evacuated an estimated 300,000 civilians from the Sino-Soviet border. In addition, the bulk of China's active forces (as many as one-and-a-half million troops) were stationed along China's border with the Soviet Union.

Chinese forces
Although the People's Liberation Army vastly outnumbered the Vietnamese forces, the Soviet-Vietnamese alliance compelled the Chinese to deploy the majority of their forces along China's northern frontier with the Soviet Union (as well as, to a lesser extent, Soviet-allied Mongolia) as a deterrent to Soviet intervention.

The Chinese force that engaged the Vietnamese consisted of units from the Kunming Military Region, Chengdu Military Region, Wuhan Military Region and Guangzhou Military Region, but commanded by the headquarters of Kunming Military Region on the western front and Guangzhou Military Region in the eastern front.
 * Guangxi Direction (East Front) commanded by the Front Headquarter of Guangzhou Military Region in Nanning. Commander-Xu Shiyou, Political Commissar-Xiang Zhonghua, Chief of Staff-Zhou Deli
 * North Group: Commander-Ou Zhifu (Deputy Commander of Guangzhou Military Region)
 * 41st Army Commander-Zhang Xudeng, Political Commissar-Liu Zhanrong
 * 121st Infantry Division Commander-Zheng Wenshui
 * 122nd Infantry Division Commander-Li Xinliang
 * 123rd Infantry Division Commander-Li Peijiang
 * South Group: Commander-Wu Zhong (Deputy Commander of Guangzhou Military Region)
 * 42nd Army Commander-Wei Huajie, Political Commissar-Xun Li
 * 124th Infantry Division Commander-Gu Hui
 * 125th Infantry Division
 * 126th Infantry Division
 * East Group: Commander-Jiang Xieyuan (Deputy Commander of Guangzhou Military Region)
 * 55th Army Commander-Zhu Yuehua, Temporary Political Commissar-Guo Changzeng
 * 163rd Infantry Division Commander-Bian Guixiang, Political Commissar-Wu Enqing, Chief of Staff-Xing Shizhong
 * 164th Infantry Division Commander-Xiao Xuchu (also Deputy Commander of 55th Corps)
 * 165th Infantry Division
 * 1st Artillery Division
 * Reserve Group (came from Wuhan Military Region except 50th Corps from Chengdu Military Region), Deputy Commander-Han Huaizhi (Commander of 54th Corps)
 * 43rd Army Commander-Zhu Chuanyu, Temporary Political Commissar-Zhao Shengchang
 * 127th Infantry Division Commander-Zhang Wannian (also as the Deputy Commander of 43rd Corps)
 * 128th Infantry Division
 * 129th Infantry Division
 * 54th Army Commander-Han Huaizhi (pluralism), Political Commissar-Zhu Zhiwei
 * 160th Infantry Division (commanded by 41st Corp in this war) Commander-Zhang Zhixin, Political Commissar-Li Zhaogui
 * 161st Infantry Division
 * 162nd Infantry Division Commander-Li Jiulong
 * 50th Army Temporary Commander-Liu Guangtong, Political Commissar-Gao Xingyao
 * 148th Infantry Division
 * 150th Infantry Division
 * 20th Army (only dispatched the 58th Division into the war)
 * 58th Infantry Division (commanded by the 50th Corps during the war)
 * Guangxi Military Region (as a provincial military region) Commander-Zhao Xinran Chief of Staff-Yin Xi
 * 1st Regiment of Frontier Defense in Youyiguan Pass
 * 2nd Regiment of Frontier Defense in Baise District
 * 3rd Regiment of Frontier Defense in Fangcheng County
 * The Independent Infantry Division of Guangxi Military Region
 * Air Force of Guangzhou Military Region (armed patrol in the sky of Guangxi, did not see combat)
 * 7th Air Force Corps
 * 13th Air Force Division (aerotransport unit came from Hubei province)
 * 70th Antiaircraft Artillery Division
 * The 217 Fleet of South Sea Fleet
 * 8th Navy Aviation Division
 * The Independent Tank Regiment of Guangzhou Military Region
 * 83rd Bateau Boat Regiment
 * 84th Bateau Boat Regiment
 * Yunnan Direction (the West Front) commanded by the Front Headquarter of Kunming Military Region in Kaiyuan. Commander-Yang Dezhi, Political Commissar-Liu Zhijian, Chief of Staff-Sun Ganqing
 * 11th Army (consisted of two divisions) Commander-Chen Jiagui, Political Commissar-Zhang Qi
 * 31st Infantry Division
 * 32nd Infantry Division
 * 13th Army(camed from Chengdu Military Region) Commander-Yan Shouqing, Political Commissar-Qiao Xueting
 * 37th Infantry Division
 * 38th Infantry Division
 * 39th Infantry Division
 * 14th Army Commander-Zhang Jinghua, Political Commissar-Fan Xinyou
 * 40th Infantry Division
 * 41st Infantry Division
 * 42nd Infantry Division
 * 149th Infantry Division (from Chengdu Military Region, belonged to 50th Corps, assigned to Yunnan Direction during the war)
 * Yunnan Military Region (as a provincial military region)
 * 11th Regiment of Frontier Defence in Maguan County
 * 12th Regiment of Frontier Defence in Malipo County
 * 13th Regiment of Frontier Defence in
 * 14th Regiment of Frontier Defence in
 * 1st Garrison Division of Chengdu Military Region commanded by 11th Army in the war
 * 65th Antiaircraft Artillery Division
 * 4th Artillery Division
 * Independent Tank Regiment of Kunming Military Region
 * 86th Bateau Boat Regiment
 * 23rd Logistic Branch (consisted of five army service stations, six hospitals, eleven medical establishments)
 * 17th Automobile Regiment commanded by 13th Corps during the war
 * 22nd Automobile Regiment
 * 5th Air Force Corps
 * 44th Air Force Division (fighter unit)
 * Independent unit of 27th Air Force Division
 * 15th Air Force Antiaircraft Artillery Division

Vietnamese forces
The Vietnamese government claimed they only had a force of about 60,000 including several army regular divisions in its northern area.

1st Military Region: commanded by Major General Đàm Quang Trung, responsible for the defense at Northeast region.
 * Main forces:
 * 3rd Infantry Division (Golden Star Division), consisted of 2nd Infantry Regiment, 12th Infantry Regiment, 141st Infantry Regiment and 68th Artillery Regiment. All were located at Dong Dang, Van Dang, Cao Loc and Lạng Sơn town of Lạng Sơn Province
 * 338th Infantry Division, consisted of 460th Infantry Regiment, 461st Infantry Regiment, 462nd Infantry Regiment and 208th Artillery Regiment. All were located at Loc Binh and Dinh Lap of Lạng Sơn Province
 * 346th Infantry Division (Lam Son Division), consisted of 246th Infantry Regiment, 677th Infantry Regiment, 851st Infantry Regiment and 188th Artillery Regiment. All were located at Tra Linh, Ha Quang and Hoa An of Cao Bằng Province
 * 325th-B Infantry Division, consisted of 8th Infantry Regiment, 41st Infantry Regiment, 288th Infantry Regiment and 189th Artillery Regiment. All were located at Tien Yen and Binh Lieu of Quảng Ninh Province
 * 242nd Infantry Brigade, located at coastlines and islands of Quảng Ninh Province
 * Local forces:
 * At Cao Bằng Province: 567th Infantry Regiment, 1 artillery battalion, 1 battalion of air defense artillery and 7 infantry battalions
 * At Lạng Sơn Province: 123rd Infantry Regiment, 199th Infantry Regiment and 7 infantry battalions
 * At Quảng Ninh Province: 43rd Infantry Regiment, 244th Infantry Regiment, 1 artillery battalion, 4 battalions of air defense artillery and 5 infantry battalions
 * Armed police forces (Border guard): 12th Mobile Regiment at Lang Son, 4 battalions at Cao Bang and Quang Ninh, some companies and 24 border posts

2nd Military Region: commanded by Major General Vũ Lập, responsible for the defense at Northwest region.

 * Main forces:
 * 316th Infantry Division (Bong Lau Division), consisted of 98th Infantry Regiment, 148th Infantry Regiment, 147th Infantry Regiment and 187th Artillery Regiment. All were located at Binh Lu and Phong Tho of Lai Châu Province
 * 345th Infantry Division, consisted of 118th Infantry Regiment, 121st Infantry Regiment, 124th Infantry Regiment and 190th Artillery Regiment. All were located at Bao Thang of Hoang Lien Son province
 * 326th Infantry Division, consisted of 19th Infantry Regiment, 46th Infantry Regiment, 541st Infantry Regiment and 200th Artillery Regiment. All were located at Tuan Giao and Dien Bien of Lai Châu Province
 * Local forces:
 * At Ha Tuyen: 122nd Infantry Regiment, 191st Infantry Regiment, 1 artillery battalion and 8 infantry battalions
 * At Hoang Lien Son: 191st Infantry Regiment, 254th Infantry Regiment, 1 artillery battalion and 8 infantry battalions
 * At Lai Châu: 193rd Infantry Regiment, 741st Infantry Regiment, 1 artillery battalion and 5 infantry battalions
 * Armed police forces (Border guard): 16th Mobile Regiment at Hoang Lien Son, some companies and 39 border posts

In addition, Vietnamese forces were supported by about 50,000 militia at each Military Region

Air force
 * 372nd Air Division
 * 1 air flight of ten F-5s (captured after Vietnam War)
 * 1 air flight of ten A-37s (captured after Vietnam War)
 * 1 air flight of seven UH-1s and three UH-7s (captured after Vietnam War)
 * 919th Air Transport Regiment responsible for transporting troops
 * Several C-130, C-119 and C-47 (captured after Vietnam War)
 * 371st Air Division
 * 916th Helicopter Regiment
 * Several Mi-6 and Mi-8
 * 918th Air Transport Regiment
 * 923rd Fighter Regiment
 * Several MiG-17s and MiG-21

The Vietnam People's Air Force did not participate in the combat directly, instead they provided support to the ground troops, transported troops from Cambodia to northern Vietnam as well as performed reconnaissance missions.

Air Defence
 * Northern and Northwestern regions:
 * 267th Air Defence Regiment
 * 276th Air Defence Regiment
 * 285th Air Defence Regiment
 * 255th Air Defence Regiment
 * 257th Air Defence Regiment
 * Northeastern region:
 * 274th Air Defence Regiment

History
On 17 February 1979, a People's Liberation Army (PLA) force of about 200,000 troops supported by 200 Type 59, Type 62, and Type 63 tanks entered northern Vietnam in the PLA's first major combat operation since the end of the Korean War in 1953.

The PLA invasion was conducted in two directions: western and eastern
 * Eastern direction, commanded by Xu Shiyou, aimed to attack Cao Bằng, Lạng Sơn and Quảng Ninh Provinces:
 * Western direction, commanded by Yang Dezhi, aimed to attack Ha Tuyen, Hoang Lien Son and Lai Châu Provinces

Vietnam quickly mobilized all its main forces in Cambodia, southern Vietnam and central Vietnam to the northern border. From 18 to 25 February, the 327th Infantry Division of Military District 3 and the 337th Infantry Division of Military District 4 were deployed to join Military District 1 for the defense of northwestern region. From 6 to 11 March the Second Corp (Huong Giang Corp) stationed in Cambodia was deployed back to Hanoi.

The 372nd Air Division in central Vietnam as well as the 917th, 935th and 937th Air Regiments in southern Vietnam were quickly deployed to the north.

The PLA quickly advanced about 15–20 kilometres into Vietnam, with fighting mainly occurring in the provinces of Cao Bằng, Lào Cai and Lạng Sơn. The Vietnamese avoided mobilizing their regular divisions, and held back some 300,000 troops for the defence of Hanoi. The People's Army of Vietnam (VPA) tried to avoid direct combat and often used guerrilla tactics.

The initial PLA attack soon lost its momentum and a new attack wave was sent in with eight PLA divisions joining the battle. After capturing the northern heights above Lạng Sơn, the PLA surrounded and paused in front of the city in order to lure the VPA into reinforcing it with units from Cambodia. This was the main strategic ploy in the Chinese war plan as Deng did not want to risk escalating tensions with the Soviet Union. After three days of bloody house-to-house fighting, Lạng Sơn fell on 6 March. The PLA then took the southern heights above Lạng Sơn and occupied Sa Pa. The PLA claimed to have crushed several of the VPA regular units. Supporting attacks were also conducted by the PLA at Quảng Ninh Province in the Battle of Mong Cai and Battle of Cao Ba Lanh but were unsuccessful. However, Bangkok analysts gave a completely different count, heavy Vietnamese resistance near Lao Cai in the west and Cao Bang in the middle of the front also resulted in Vietnamese defeats. The Chinese also captured the far northeastern provincial capital, Mong Cai, analysts said. According to Vietnam, since January 1979 Chinese forces performed numerous reconnaissance activities across the border and made 230 violations into Vietnamese land. To prepare for a possible Chinese invasion, the Central Military Committee of the Communist Party ordered all armed forces across the border to be on stand-by mode.

On 6 March, China declared that the gate to Hanoi was open and that their punitive mission had been achieved. Coincidentally, the Vietnamese government called, on the same day, for a nationwide general mobilization for the war. Some analysts said that the belligerent Vietnamese language could indicate a desire to counterattack, or simply an attempt to mount a propaganda campaign that would end in a declaration of Vietnamese victory as the Chinese leave the country. During the withdrawal, the PLA used a scorched-earth policy, destroying local infrastructure and looting useful equipment and resources (including livestock), this severely weakened the economy of Vietnam's northernmost provinces. The PLA crossed the border back into China on 16 March. Both sides declared victory with China claiming to have crushed the Vietnamese resistance and Vietnam claiming to have repelled the invasion using mostly border militias. Henry J. Kenny, a research scientist for US Center for Naval Analyses, noted most Western writers agree that while Vietnam outperformed the PLA on the battlefield, the PLA's seizure of Lang Son did allow the Chinese the option of moving into the Red River Delta and thence into Hanoi. However, Kenny also mentions that Lang Son is farther from Hanoi than it is from the Chinese border, and at least 5 PAVN divisions in the delta remained ready for a counterattack and thirty thousand additional PAVN troops from Cambodia along with several regiments from Laos were moving to their support. Thus, had the PLA decided to attack Hanoi, the PLA would have suffered huge losses.

Contrary to the views above, it was reported by the New York Times that Western intelligence analysts believed that even though the border war was coming to an end, and that the provincial Vietnamese troops, who took the brunt of the fighting that started on February 17, suffered such high casualties and became so disorganized as a result of the invasion, they had to be replaced with regular troops. Vietnam sent one regular division, as well as armor and artillery support units, into the fight at the height of the fighting for Lang Son, which was captured by Chinese forces, but the regular division failed to take the town. The Chinese made their withdrawal announcement following their victory at Lang Son, which Hanoi refused to recognize. Analysts interpreted this as a warning to Vietnam that any military objective there may be taken by China. Analysts claimed that regardless of the outcome of the combat, China had managed to permanently divert Vietnamese troops, supplies, attention, and energy to the border region. This was due to Vietnam's intensive resupply and remanning of the border zone.

Despite using a force that did not see major combat since the early 1950s and whose weaponry was inferior to the Vietnamese weaponry, the PLA was considered to have fought well. Most of the weaponry and military vehicles used by the PLA were either obsolete or unfit for combat. In contrast, the Vietnamese forces had a combat-seasoned force and modern weaponry from America and the Soviet Union. The PLA pushed Vietnamese forces 25 mi from the border and succeeded in severely damaging the area they occupied.

Soviet support to Vietnam
The Soviet Union, although it did not take direct military action, provided intelligence and equipment support for Vietnam. A large airlift was established by the Soviet Union to move Vietnamese troops from Cambodia to Northern Vietnam. Moscow also provided a total of 400 tanks and armored personnel carriers (APCs), 500 mortar artillery and air defense artillery, 50 BM-21 rocket launchers, 400 portable surface-to-air missiles, 800 anti-tank missiles and 20 jet fighters. About 5,000 to 8,000 Soviet military advisers were present in Vietnam in 1979 to train Vietnamese soldiers.

During the Sino-Vietnamese War, the Soviet Union deployed troops at the Sino-Soviet border and Mongolian-Chinese border as an act of showing support to Vietnam, as well as tying up Chinese troops. However, the Soviets refused to take any direct action to defend their ally.

The Soviet Pacific Fleet also deployed 15 ships to the Vietnamese coast to relay Chinese battlefield communications to Vietnamese forces.

Soviet inaction
While the Soviet Union deployed naval vessels and supplied materiel to Vietnam, they felt that there was simply no way that they could directly support Vietnam against China; the distances were too great to be an effective ally, and any sort of reinforcements would have to cross territory controlled by China or U.S. allies. The only realistic option would be to restart the unresolved border conflict with China. Vietnam was important to Soviet policy but not enough for the Soviets to go to war over. When Moscow did not intervene, Beijing publicly proclaimed that the Soviet Union had broken its numerous promises to assist Vietnam.

Another reason why Moscow did not intervene was because Beijing had promised both Moscow and Washington that the invasion was only a limited war, and that Chinese forces would withdraw after a short incursion. After moderation by the U.S., Moscow decided to adopt a "wait and see" approach to see if Beijing would actually limit their offense. Because Vietnam's anti-air capabilities were among the best in the world at the time and in order to reassure Moscow it was conducting a limited war, Deng Xiaoping ordered the Chinese navy and air force to remain out of the war; only limited support was provided by the air force. When Beijing kept its promise, Moscow did not retaliate.

Aftermath

China and Vietnam each lost thousands of troops, and China lost 3.45 billion yuan in overhead, which delayed completion of their 1979–80 economic plan. Following the war, the Vietnamese leadership took various repressive measures to deal with the problem of real or potential collaboration. In the spring of 1979, the authorities expelled approximately 8,000 Hoa people from Hanoi to the southern "New Economic Zones", and partially resettled the Hmong tribes and other ethnic minorities from the northernmost provinces. In response to the defection of Hoàng Văn Hoan, the Communist Party of Vietnam removed from its ranks pro-Chinese elements and persons who had surrendered to the advancing Chinese troops during the war. In 1979, a total of 20,468 members were expelled from the party.

After the invasion, Vietnam created a puppet government in Cambodia led by Heng Samrin. Samrin was obligated to consult with the Vietnamese on major decisions. Although Vietnam continued to occupy Cambodia, China successfully mobilized international opposition to the occupation, rallying such leaders as Cambodia's deposed king Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodian anticommunist leader Son Sann, and high-ranking members of the Khmer Rouge to deny the pro-Vietnamese Cambodian People's Party in Cambodia diplomatic recognition beyond the Soviet bloc.

The majority of diplomats and analysts concluded that China's long-term strategy was to stretch Vietnamese resources by having the Vietnamese divert their resources from other problems to the border conflict. Problems include Vietnam's difficulties integrating South Vietnam with the North, the burden of administrating Laos and occupying Cambodia, and economic problems caused by two years of disastrous weather.

After the war, border skirmishes at the Chinese-Vietnamese border continued, and the Vietnamese were not deterred from maintaining their occupation of Cambodia, increasing its control over Laos and threatening the security of Thailand, which turned Vietnam into a greater threat to ASEAN than before. Also, the Vietnamese government intensified its persecution of overseas Chinese living in Vietnam. Vietnamese authorities confiscated property owned in Vietnam by overseas Chinese, and expelled many Chinese from Vietnam to a number of provinces in southern China.

However, China caused Vietnam to suffer from serious economic and military hardship by threatening to launch a second invasion, and by supporting Pol Pot guerrillas in Cambodia. The Vietnamese government had to spend money on maintaining a military presence at the Chinese-Vietnamese border, and on supporting its puppet government in Cambodia. Vietnam's scarce resources were drained, and economic conditions were bad throughout Vietnam.

Assessments of the strategic consequences of the war vary considerably. Journalist Howard W. French quoted some historians of the opinion that "the war was started by Mr. Deng (China's then paramount leader Deng Xiaoping) to keep the army preoccupied while he consolidated power..." However, China strengthened its relations with ASEAN countries – particularly Thailand and Singapore – due to their fear of Vietnamese aggression. Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew wrote in 2000: "The Western press wrote off the Chinese punitive action as a failure. I believe it changed the history of East Asia." In contrast, Vietnam's decreasing prestige in the region led it to be more dependent on the Soviet Union, to which it leased a naval base at Cam Ranh Bay. Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote that "China succeeded in exposing the limits of...[Soviet] strategic reach" and speculated that the desire to "compensate for their ineffectuality" contributed to the Soviets' decision to intervene in Afghanistan a year later.

Chinese casualties
The number of casualties during the war is disputed. Shortly after China had announced the withdrawal of its troops from Vietnam, the state-run Vietnam News Agency claimed that the PLA had suffered over 44,000 casualties, a figure which Western analysts at the time considered to be greatly inflated. Other Vietnamese sources claimed the PLA had suffered 62,500 total casualties, including 550 military vehicles and 115 artillery pieces destroyed. Leaks from Chinese military sources indicate that China suffered 6,954 dead.

Deputy chief of the General Staff Wu Xiuquan revealed in a meeting with a French military delegation that Vietnam suffered 50,000 casualties, whereas China had suffered 20,000 casualties. Regardless of the accuracy of the Vietnamese casualties, it can be concluded that the Chinese losses were severe, according to Daniel Tretiak.

Vietnamese casualties
Like their Chinese counterparts, the Vietnamese government has never officially announced any information on its actual military casualties. China estimated that Vietnam lost 57,000 soldiers and 70,000 militia members during the war. The Vietnamese state newspaper Nhân Dân claimed that Vietnam suffered more than 10,000 civilian deaths during the Chinese invasion and earlier on 17 May 1979, reported statistics on heavy losses of industry and agricultural properties.

Prisoners

The Chinese held 1,636 Vietnamese prisoners and the Vietnamese held 238 Chinese prisoners; they were exchanged in May–June 1979.

PLA reforms
Deng subsequently used the PLA's poor performance to overcome resistance from PLA leadership to further military reforms.

Sino-Vietnamese relations after the war
Border skirmishes continued throughout the 1980s, including a significant skirmish in April 1984 and a naval battle over the Spratly Islands in 1988 known as the Johnson South Reef Skirmish. Armed conflict only ended in 1989 after the Vietnamese agreed to fully withdraw from Cambodia. Both nations planned the normalization of their relations in a secret summit in Chengdu in September 1990, and officially normalized ties in November 1991.

In 1999, after many years of negotiations, China and Vietnam signed a border pact. There was an adjustment of the land border, resulting in Vietnam giving China part of its land which was lost during the battle, including the Ai Nam Quan Gate which served as the traditional border marker and entry point between Vietnam and China, which caused widespread frustration within Vietnamese communities.

The December 2007 announcement of a plan to build a Hanoi–Kunming highway was a landmark in Sino-Vietnamese relations. The road will traverse the border that once served as a battleground. It is predicted to contribute to demilitarizing the border region, as well as facilitating trade and industrial cooperation between the nations.

Chinese media
There are a number of Chinese songs, movies and TV programs depicting and discussing this conflict from the Chinese viewpoint. These vary from the patriotic song "Bloodstained Glory" originally written to laud the sacrifice and service of the Chinese military, to the 1986 film The Big Parade which carried veiled criticism of the war. The 1984 Xie Jin film Wreaths at the Foot of the Mountain was the earliest mainland China film to depict the war, although its narrative was that the Chinese were on the defensive after Vietnamese attacked the Chinese border first with the objective of Nanning. The male protagonist of the television series Candle in the Tomb was a veteran of conflict. The 2017 Chinese movie Youth covers the period of the Sino-Vietnamese conflict from the perspective of the larger cultural changes taking place in China during that period of time.

Vietnamese media
The war was mentioned in the film Đất mẹ (Motherland) directed by Hải Ninh in 1980 and Thị xã trong tầm tay (Town at the Fingertips) directed by Đặng Nhật Minh in 1982. Besides in 1982, a documentary film called Hoa đưa hương nơi đất anh nằm (Flowers over Your Grave) was directed by Truong Thanh, the film told a story of a Japanese journalist who died during the war. During the war, there were numerous patriotic songs produced to boost the nationalism of Vietnamese people, including "Chiến đấu vì độc lập tự do" ("Fight for Independence and Freedom") composed by Phạm Tuyên, "Lời tạm biệt lúc lên đường" ("Farewell When Leaving") by Vu Trong Hoi, "40 thế kỷ cùng ra trận" ("40 Centuries We Fought Side By Side") by Hong Dang, "Những đôi mắt mang hình viên đạn" ("The Eyes Shaped Like Bullets") by Tran Tien and "Hát về anh" (Sing for you) by The Hien. The Sino-Vietnamese War also appeared in some novels such as: Đêm tháng Hai (Night of February) written by Chu Lai in 1979 and Chân dung người hàng xóm (Portrait of My Neighbors ) written by Duong Thu Huong in 1979.

Books

 * Liegl, Markus B. China's use of military force in foreign affairs: The dragon strikes (Taylor & Francis, 2017). excerpt
 * Zhang, Xiaoming. Deng Xiaoping's Long War: The Military Conflict Between China and Vietnam, 1979–1991 (U of North Carolina Press 2015) excerpt
 * Zhang, Xiaoming. Deng Xiaoping's Long War: The Military Conflict Between China and Vietnam, 1979–1991 (U of North Carolina Press 2015) excerpt
 * Zhang, Xiaoming. Deng Xiaoping's Long War: The Military Conflict Between China and Vietnam, 1979–1991 (U of North Carolina Press 2015) excerpt
 * Zhang, Xiaoming. Deng Xiaoping's Long War: The Military Conflict Between China and Vietnam, 1979–1991 (U of North Carolina Press 2015) excerpt
 * Zhang, Xiaoming. Deng Xiaoping's Long War: The Military Conflict Between China and Vietnam, 1979–1991 (U of North Carolina Press 2015) excerpt

Journal articles

 * Path, Kosal. "China's Economic Sanctions against Vietnam, 1975–1978." China Quarterly (2012) Vol. 212, pp 1040–1058.
 * Path, Kosal. "The economic factor in the Sino-Vietnamese split, 1972–75: an analysis of Vietnamese archival sources." Cold War History 11.4 (2011): 519–555.
 * Path, Kosal. "The Sino-Vietnamese Dispute over Territorial Claims, 1974–1978: Vietnamese Nationalism and its Consequences." International Journal of Asian Studies 8.2 (2011): 189–220. online
 * Zhang, Xiaoming. "Deng Xiaoping and China's Decision to go to War with Vietnam." Journal of Cold War Studies 12.3 (2010): 3–29 online
 * Zhang, Xiaoming. "China's 1979 war with Vietnam: a reassessment." China Quarterly (2005): 851–874. online
 * Zhang, Xiaoming. "Deng Xiaoping and China's Decision to go to War with Vietnam." Journal of Cold War Studies 12.3 (2010): 3–29 online
 * Zhang, Xiaoming. "China's 1979 war with Vietnam: a reassessment." China Quarterly (2005): 851–874. online

Other

 * Kurlantzick, Joshua. China-Vietnam Military Clash (Washington: Council on Foreign Relations, 2015). online

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Sino-Vietnamese War


text:
Third Indochina War

The Third Indochina War was a series of interconnected armed conflicts, mainly among the various communist factions over strategic influence in Indochina after Communist victory in South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in 1975. The conflict primarily started due to continued raids and incursions by the Khmer Rouge into Vietnamese territory that they sought to retake. These incursions would result in the Cambodian–Vietnamese War in which the newly unified Vietnam overthrew the Pol Pot regime and the Khmer Rouge, in turn ending the Cambodian genocide. Vietnam had installed a government led by many opponents of Pol Pot, most notably Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge commander. This led to Vietnam's occupation of Cambodia for over a decade. The Vietnamese push to completely destroy the Khmer Rouge led to them conducting border raids in Thailand against those who had provided sanctuary.

China strongly objected to the invasion of Cambodia. Chinese armed forces launched a punitive operation (Sino-Vietnamese War) in February 1979 and attacked Vietnam's northern provinces, determined to contain Soviet/Vietnamese influence and prevent territorial gains in the region.

In order to acquire full control over Cambodia the People's Army of Vietnam needed to dislodge the remaining Khmer Rouge leaders and units, which had retreated to the remote areas along the Thai-Cambodian border. After the Paris Peace Conference in 1989, the PAVN withdrew from Cambodian territory. Finally regular troop engagements in the region ended after the conclusion of the 1991 Paris Peace Accords.

In Laos, an insurgency is still ongoing, though to a lesser extent since 2007, with the government being supported by both China and Vietnam.

Soviet-Chinese discord
After Joseph Stalin's death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev became leader of the Soviet Union. His denouncement of Stalin and his purges, the introduction of more moderate communist policies and foreign policy of peaceful coexistence with the West angered China's leadership. Mao Zedong had been following a strict Stalinistic course, that insisted on the cult of personality as a unifying force of the nation. Disagreements over technical assistance for developing China's nuclear weapons and basic economic policies further alienated the Soviets and the Chinese as opposing forces of communist influence across the globe. As decolonization movements began to pick up speed in the 1960s and many such countries descended into violence, both of the communist powers competed for political control of the various nations or competing factions in ongoing civil war fights. Ever more diverging Chinese and Soviet strategic and political doctrines had increased the Sino-Soviet split of the mid-1950s.

Political developments during the Vietnam War
<!-- EDITORIAL NOTE: Meanwhile in Indochina, since 1952 American Forces had been fighting against the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam, which was secured in the North of the country, while it supported the anti-communist Republic of Vietnam. This fighting often spilt over into Vietnam's neighbours, especially as the John F. Kennedy's administration began U.S. involvement in the war proper, and as the Richard Nixon's administration tried to escalate the war in its later stages. This escalation led to the destabilisation of Vietnamese neighbours. As the Vietnam War progressed, American involvement lessened, and by 1975 American troops had completely left the country. This allowed the communist Vietnamese to enter Saigon largely unopposed and declared themselves the sole government of Vietnam. While at first closer to the Chinese, due to assistance during the war and general closeness, the government soon drifted apart, due to ideological differences, and pressures from Russia. === Cambodia ===

After the 1954 Geneva Conference, Cambodia restored its monarchy under the authoritarian and isolationist regime of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who sought to be neutral as the region descended into violence. Cambodia, however, descended into political violence further in 1968 after a group of Maoist-influenced rebels rose up in the nation and began an insurgency against the royalist forces, led by Pol Pot and calling themselves the Khmer Rouge. During this time, Vietnamese forces, under attack by U.S. troops, fled into Cambodia, expanding the Ho Chi Minh Trail into the nation, and established camps to continue the war on a front with South Vietnam. Sihanouk saw these forces as equal threats against his rule and began a brutal campaign against all communist forces in the country, especially in the northeast.

The U.S. meanwhile began to view Sihanouk as more and more of a threat to the ongoing war efforts in the region. This is because during the opening stages of the Khmer Rouge insurgency Sihanouk had cut off diplomatic relations with America, and his movement into the northeast had caused ARVN advisors to begin fearing of a Cambodian invasion. As a result, America began a bombing campaign into Cambodia. The bombing, and the subsequent invasion by the U.S. military and destabilised the nation. In 1970, a U.S. backed coup ousted Sihanouk and established the Khmer Republic. Though initially liked by the elite of Cambodia, the republic became more and more dictatorial as the war against the Khmer Rouge continued.

During this time, America continued its bombing campaign against Cambodia, leading to huge amounts of civilian deaths. The Khmer Rouge used the campaign as recruiting material for the largely ignored and angry peasantry of Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge also started to centralise around Pol Pot, who took power in 1962. Pot took the opportunity to purge the party, and the party became increasingly focused around the worship of Pol Pot. The Khmer Republic fell in April 1975, when the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh, and ousted the Republican government, officially declaring allegiance to Pol Pot.--> The Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), which had chosen to ally with the USSR, justified incursions into neighbouring Laos and Cambodia during the Second Indochinese War by reference to the international nature of communist revolution, where "Indochina is a single strategic unit, a single battlefield" and the Vietnam People's Army's pivotal role in bringing this about. However, this internationalism was obstructed by complicated regional historical realities, such as the "timeless oppositions between the Chinese and the Vietnamese on the one hand and the Vietnamese and the Khmers on the other". North Vietnam intervened in the civil war between the Royal Lao Army and the communist Pathet Lao until the establishment of the Lao People's Democratic Republic and the "Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation" signed in July 1977. Permanently stationed North Vietnamese troops secured and maintained vital supply routes and strategic staging sites (Ho Chi Minh trail). From 1958 on, Northern and Southern Vietnamese combat troops also began to infiltrate the remote jungles of eastern Cambodia where they continued the Ho Chi Minh trail. The Cambodian communist insurgents had joined these sanctuaries during the late 1960s. Although co-operation took place, the Khmer communists did not adopt modern socialist doctrines and eventually allied with China.

The complete American withdrawal instantaneously eliminated the principal and common adversary of all the communist powers. The communist regimes of Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos pledged allegiance with one of these two opposing factions.

Cambodian-Vietnamese war

After the Fall of Saigon and Phnom Penh in April and May 1975 and the subsequent communist takeover in Laos five months later, Indochina was dominated by communist regimes. Armed border clashes between Cambodia and Vietnam soon flared up and escalated as Khmer Rouge forces advanced deep into Vietnamese territory and raided villages, killing hundreds of civilians. Vietnam counterattacked and in December 1978, NVA troops invaded Cambodia, reaching Phnom Penh in January 1979 and arriving at the Thai border in spring 1979.

However, as China, the U.S. and the majority of the international community opposed the Vietnamese campaign, the remaining Khmer Rouge managed to permanently settle in the Thai-Cambodian border region. In a United Nations Security Council meeting, seven non-aligned members drafted a resolution for a ceasefire and Vietnamese withdrawal which failed due to opposition from the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. Thailand tolerated the presence of the Khmer Rouge on its soil as they helped to contain the Vietnamese and Thai domestic guerillas. Over the course of the following decade, the Khmer Rouge received considerable support from Vietnam's enemies and served as a bargaining tool in the Realpolitik of Thailand, China, the ASEAN and the U.S.

Vietnamese-Thailand conflict
Khmer Rouge forces operated from inside Thai territory attacking the pro-Hanoi People's Republic of Kampuchea's government. Similarly Vietnamese forces frequently attacked the Khmer Rouge bases inside Thailand. Eventually Thai and Vietnamese regular troops clashed on several occasions during the following decade. The situation escalated as Thailand's territorial sovereignty was violated on numerous occasions. Heavy fighting with many casualties resulted from direct confrontations between Vietnamese and Thai troops. Thailand increased troop strength, purchased new equipment and built a diplomatic front against Vietnam.

Sino-Vietnamese conflicts
China attacked Vietnam in response to Vietnam's occupation of Cambodia, entered northern Vietnam and captured several cities near the border. On March 6, 1979, China declared that their punitive mission had been successful and withdrew from Vietnam. However, both China and Vietnam claimed victory. The fact that Vietnamese forces continued to stay in Cambodia for another decade implies that China's campaign was a strategic failure. On the other hand, the conflict had proven that China had succeeded in preventing effective Soviet support for its Vietnamese ally.

As forces remained mobilized, the Vietnamese Army and the Chinese People's Liberation Army engaged in another decade-long series of border disputes and naval clashes that lasted until 1990. These mostly local engagements usually wore out in prolonged stand-offs, as neither side achieved any long-term military gains. By the late 1980s the Vietnamese Communist Party's (VCP) began to adopt its Doi Moi (renovation) policy and reconsider its China policy in particular. Prolonged hostile relations with China had been recognized as to be detrimental to economic reforms, national security and the regime's survival. A number of political concessions opened the way for the normalization process of 1991.

Regional conflicts

 * The Insurgency in Laos
 * The Communist insurgency in Thailand
 * The Thai–Laotian Border War
 * The Johnson South Reef Skirmish
 * The FULRO insurgency against Vietnam

title: Third Indochina War