Vietnam War

==== Laos and Cambodia ====
By 1975, the North Vietnamese had lost influence over the Khmer Rouge.<ref name=Hastings/>{{Rp|708}} [[Phnom Penh]], the capital of Cambodia, fell to the Khmer Rouge on 17 April 1975. Under the leadership of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge would eventually [[Cambodian genocide|kill 1–3 million Cambodians]] out of a population of around 8&nbsp;million, in one of the [[List of genocides by death toll|bloodiest genocides in history]].<ref name=Heuveline/>{{Rp|}}<ref>{{Cite web |last=Sharp |first=Bruce |date=1 April 2005 |title=Counting Hell: The Death Toll of the Khmer Rouge Regime in Cambodia |url=http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/deaths.htm |access-date=15 July 2016 |quote=The range based on the figures above extends from a minimum of 1.747 million, to a maximum of 2.495 million.}}</ref><ref>The [[Documentation Center of Cambodia]] has mapped some 23,745 mass graves containing approximately 1.3 million suspected victims of execution; execution is believed to account for roughly 60% of the full death toll. See: {{Cite book |last1=Seybolt |first1=Taylor B. |title=Counting Civilian Casualties: An Introduction to Recording and Estimating Nonmilitary Deaths in Conflict |last2=Aronson |first2=Jay D. |last3=Fischoff |first3=Baruch |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=2013 |isbn=978-0-19-997731-4 |page=238}}</ref><ref>[[Ben Kiernan]] cites a range of 1.671 to 1.871 million excess deaths under the Khmer Rouge. See {{Cite journal |last=Kiernan |first=Ben |author-link=Ben Kiernan |date=December 2003 |title=The Demography of Genocide in Southeast Asia: The Death Tolls in Cambodia, 1975–79, and East Timor, 1975–80 |journal=Critical Asian Studies |volume=35 |issue=4 |pages=585–597 |doi=10.1080/1467271032000147041 |s2cid=143971159}}</ref>

The relationship between Vietnam and [[Democratic Kampuchea]] (Cambodia) escalated right after the end of the war. In response to the Khmer Rouge taking over [[Phu Quoc]] on 17 April and [[Tho Chu]] on 4 May 1975 and the belief that they were responsible for the disappearance of 500 Vietnamese natives on Tho Chu, Vietnam launched a counterattack to take back these islands.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Farrell |first=Epsey Cooke |title=The Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the law of the sea: an analysis of Vietnamese behavior within the emerging international oceans regime |publisher=Martinus Nijhoff Publishers |year=1998 |isbn=90-411-0473-9}}</ref> After several failed attempts to negotiate by both sides, Vietnam invaded Democratic Kampuchea in 1978 and ousted the Khmer Rouge, who were being supported by China, in the Cambodian–Vietnamese War. In response, China invaded Vietnam in 1979. The two countries fought a brief border war, known as the Sino-Vietnamese War. From 1978 to 1979, some 450,000 ethnic [[Hoa people|Chinese]] left Vietnam by boat as refugees or were deported.

The Pathet Lao overthrew the monarchy of Laos in December 1975, establishing the [[Lao People's Democratic Republic]] under the leadership of a member of the royal family, [[Souphanouvong]]. The change in regime was "quite peaceful, a sort of Asiatic '[[velvet revolution]]'"—although 30,000 former officials were sent to reeducation camps, often enduring harsh conditions for several years. The conflict between Hmong rebels and the Pathet Lao [[Insurgency in Laos|continued]] in isolated pockets.<ref name=Courtois/>{{Rp|575–576}}