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| {{TOC-right}} | | {{Image|Vietnam_War_Memorial_Washington_DC_Maya_Lin.jpg|right|300px|The revered [[Washington, D.C.]] Vietnam Veterans Memorial designed by [[Wikipedia|Maya Lin]]}} |
| While there are background factors that go back to the rebellion, against China, of the Trung Sisters in the first century C.E., limits need to be set on the scope of the '''Vietnam War'''. There are important background details variously dealing with the start of French colonization in Indochina, including the present countries of Vietnam and Laos, the expansion of Japan into Indochina and the U.S. economic embargoes as a result, and both the resistance to Japanese occupation and the Vichy French cooperation in ruling Indochina.
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| [[Image:Vietnam relief 2001.jpg|left|thumb|Vietnam]] | | The '''Vietnam War''' (1955-1975) was an international [[Cold War]] conflict that killed 3.8 million people, in which [[North Vietnam/Definition|North Vietnam]] and its allies fought [[United States of America|U.S.]] forces and eventually took over [[South Vietnam]], forming a single Communist country, [[Vietnam]]. |
| In the West, the term is usually considered to have begun somewhere in the mid-20th century. There were at least two periods of hot war, first the Vietnamese war of independence from the French, including guerilla resistance starting during the [[Second World War]] and ending in a 1954 Geneva treaty that partitioned the country into the Communist North (NVN) ([[Democratic Republic of Vietnam]], DRV) and non-Communist South (SVN) ([[Republic of Vietnam]], RVN). A referendum on reunification had been scheduled for 1956, but never took place.
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| While Communists had long had aims to control Vietnam, the specific decision to conquer the South was made, by the Northern leadership, in May 1959. Fighting gradually escalated from that point, with a considerable amount of covert Western action in Vietnam and Laos. After the [[Gulf of Tonkin incident]], in which U.S. President [[Lyndon Baines Johnson]] claimed North Vietnamese naval vessels had attacked U.S. warships, open U.S. involvement began in 1964, and continued until 1972. After the U.S. withdrawal based on a treaty in Paris, the two halves were to be forcibly united, by DRV conventional invasion, in 1975/
| | ==Impact on American culture== |
| | A significant portion of [[Baby Boom|Baby Boomers]], the U.S. generation who were young during the protracted Vietnam War, grew up seeing continual bloody footage of active combat on television every night. As the war progressed, an avalanche of young people in the U.S. protested against the war, resulting in considerable domestic turmoil. The protests were in part because of the military draft that sent unwilling young men to their likely death or maiming, but also in part because young people did not see the aims of the war as worth the cost. This pitted the young across the nation against the [[World War II]] generation, who viewed encroachments by Communists during the Cold War as an important continuation of the wars fought by the U.S. since 1940. To prevent protests during the [[Iraq War]], the U.S. military stopped allowing TV journalists to film actual combat.<ref>It's worth mentioning that, in addition to banning TV from showing film of combat, the U.S. military also tried to reduce the number of deaths during the Iraq War with improved medical triage. The result was that, though more soldiers survived, many of them returned home with severe disablement, including especially lots of brain injuries which meant they would likely be dependent for life on care by their families.</ref> |
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| This is not to suggest that 1945-1975 was the only conflict seen in the region. A Japanese invasion in 1941 triggered U.S. export embargoes to Japan, which affected the Japanese decision to attack Western countries in December 1941; see [[Vietnam, war, and the United States ]]. Vietnamese nationalism goes back through the first French presence, but there was opposition to Chinese influence dating back to the [[Two Trung Sisters]] in the first century A.D.
| | Because the U.S. lost the Vietnam War, by the 1980's it became unpopular even to refer to it, and the press began avoiding the topic, while surviving veterans went without adequate benefits for post-traumatic treatment and, unable to cope with life, became homeless by the thousands. This phenomenon was the main subject of [[Wikipedia:Sylvester Stallone|Sylvester Stallone]]'s 1982 action film [[Wikipedia:First Blood|First Blood]], which was panned by critics as too violent even though only a single person died (due to his own stupidity). Several subsequent Stallone films about First Blood's main character, Rambo, were indeed mindlessly violent, unlike the original film, which was conceived and written by Stallone (who played Rambo) in protest for public abandonment of Vietnam veterans. This film also depicted the aftermath of U.S. military having sprayed the jungles of Vietnam with [[Agent Orange]], a herbicide containing dioxin which resulted in many exposed soldiers and civilians later getting cancer, the horror of which had barely begun to be recognized by the public in 1982. The only prior major film about the Vietnam War was Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 ''Apocalypse Now'', an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's story “Heart of Darkness” to Vietnam. Coppola's film was indeed violent, a direct and nightmarish depiction of the devastation of war, but critics praised it, and it won multiple awards, in contrast to Stallone's ''First Blood'' which had touched a nerve with its social criticism of American culture. |
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| From the perspective of some Vietnamese, the war was the military effort of the Communist Party of Vietnam under [[Ho Chi Minh]] to defeat France (1946-54), and the same party, now in control of [[North Vietnam]], to overthrow the government of South Vietnam (1958-75) and take control of the whole country, in the face of military intervention by the United States (1964-72). Others discuss the [[Viet Minh]] resistance, in the colonial period, to the French and Japanese, and the successful Communist-backed overthrow of the post-partition southern government, as separate wars. Unfortunately for naming convenience, there is a gap between the end of French rule and the start of partition in 1954, and the Northern decision to commit to controlling the South in 1959.
| | ==Strategic Summary== |
| | The war had four distinct periods characterized by the nature of the conflict and the nationality of the combatants: a period of civil war (1957-1964), the Americanization (1964-1969), the Vietnamization (1969-1973), and the end (1974-1975). |
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| Without trying to name the wars, the key timeline events in modern history are:
| | The Vietnam War originated from the unresolved antagonisms implicit in the Geneva Accords (1954) and French and U.S. [[Cold War]] ambitions, namely to [[Containment policy|"contain" the spread of communism]]. The Geneva Accords promised elections in 1956 to determine a national government for a united [[Vietnam]]. Neither the United States government nor Ngo Dinh Diem's State of Vietnam signed anything at the 1954 Geneva Conference. With respect to the question of reunification, the non-communist Vietnamese delegation objected strenuously to any division of Vietnam, but lost out when the French accepted the proposal of Viet Minh delegate Pham Van Dong,<ref>''The Pentagon Papers'' (1971), Beacon Press, vol. 3, p. 134.</ref> who proposed that Vietnam eventually be united by elections under the supervision of "local commissions".<ref>''The Pentagon Papers'' (1971), Beacon Press, vol. 3, p. 119.</ref> The United States countered with what became known as the "American Plan," with the support of South Vietnam and the United Kingdom.<ref>''The Pentagon Papers'' (1971), Beacon Press, vol. 3, p. 140.</ref> It provided for unification elections under the supervision of the [[United Nations]], but was rejected by the Soviet delegation and North Vietnamese.<ref>''The Pentagon Papers'' (1971), Beacon Press, vol. 3, p. 140.</ref> |
| *1941: Japanese invasion of French Indochina
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| *1945: End of [[World War II]] and return of Indochina to French authority
| | Due to the stalemate, North Vietnam created two organizations. The [[National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam]] (NLF) was a political organization to establish civil government for the South Vietnamese regions controlled by its military arm, the [[Viet Cong]] (VC). The political/military actions of the NLF and VC against the Diem regime in South Vietnam, and Diem's escalation against the NLF/VC, essentially started a civil war. The climatic event of the civil war period was the Buddhist crisis in 1963 ending in the assassination of Ngo by a [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA-backed]] operation authorized by President Kennedy. |
| *1954: End of French control and beginning of partition under the Geneva agreement; CIA covert operation started
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| *1955: First overt U.S. advisors sent to the South
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| *1959: North Vietnamese decision, in May 1959 to create the 559th (honoring the date) Transportation Group and begin infiltration of the South
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| *1964: [[Gulf of Tonkin incident]] and start of U.S. combat involvement; U.S. advisors and support, as well as covert operations, had been in place for several years
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| *1972: Withdrawal of last U.S. combat forces as a result of negotiation
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| *1975: Overthrow of the Southern government by regular Northern troops, followed by reunification under a Communist government.
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| ''Tentative lists of subarticles to spin out (also see talk page)''
| | Americanization of the war began by the [[Lyndon B. Johnson|Johnson Administration]] in 1964 following the [[Gulf of Tonkin Incident]]. The U.S. began sending ground combat troops in 1965, and troop strength continued to escalate through 1968. The climatic event during the Americanization period was the [[Tet Offensive]]. Following a change in presidential administrations in the 1968 election, [[Richard M. Nixon|President Nixon]] followed a strategy of de-escalation and "[[Vietnamization]]" of the conflict, while also escalating the conflict through incursions into Cambodia and Laos, and bombings of North Vietnam. At various times, the U.S. and South Vietnamese forces were joined by [[Republic of Korea|South Korean]], [[Philippines|Filipino]], [[New Zealand]], [[Thailand|Thai]] and [[Australia|Australian]] troops. |
| *[[Vietnam, pre-colonial history]]
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| *[[Vietnam, French colonial period]]
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| *[[Vietnam War, World War II and immediate postwar]]
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| *[[Vietnam War, War of Vietnamese independence]]/[[Vietnam War, First Indochina War]]
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| *[[Vietnam War, Partition and decisions]]
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| *[[Vietnam War, Second Indochina War, buildup]]
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| *[[Vietnam, war, and the United States]] (emphasis on U.S. domestic politics)
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| *[[Vietnam War, Buddhist crisis and military coup of 1963]]
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| *[[Gulf of Tonkin incident]] (in progress)
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| *[[Vietnam War, Second Indochina War, Gulf of Tonkin and aftermath]]
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| ***[[Operation ATTLEBORO]], [[Battle of the Ia Drang]], [[Battle of Bong Son]], representative drafts at detailed level
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| **[[Vietnam War, Second Indochina War, air war in the North]]
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| ***[[Operation Bolo]], [[Operation ROLLING THUNDER]], [[Operation LINEBACKER I]], [[Operation LINEBACKER II]], representative drafts at detailed level
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| *[[Vietnam War, Second Indochina War, U.S. withdrawal and endgame]]
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| To appreciate the complexity it is necessary to start with French colonialism in the 19th century, or, quite possibly, to go to Vietnamese drives for independence in the 1st century, with the Trung Sisters' revolt against the Chinese; the citation here mentions the 1968th anniversary of their actions.<ref name=VNN2008-03-14>{{citation
| | As Vietnamization went into effect, and the [[Paris Peace Talks]] completed in 1972, the U.S. role changed again [[South Vietnam's ground war, 1972-1975|South Vietnam fought its own ground war]], with U.S. ground combat troops withdrawing between 1968 and 1972, with the last air attacks in 1972. After that, the U.S. provided limited replacements of supplies, and maintained a large, diplomatic Defense Attache Office that monitored the RVN until the [[fall of South Vietnam]] in 1975. |
| | title =Ha Noi celebrates Trung sisters 1,968th anniversary | |
| | date = 14 March 2008
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| | url = http://www.vietnamnews.com.vn/showarticle.php?num=02CUL140308
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| | journal = Viet Nam News}}</ref>
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| ==French Indochina Background==
| | After the U.S. withdrawal, [[fall of South Vietnam| South Vietnam collapsed]] after being invaded by the DRV in 1975. Memorable pictures of desperate people clinging to helicopters reflect the evacuation of diplomatic, military, and intelligence personnel, and some Vietnamese allies. Other than for the immediate security of the evacuation, no U.S. combat troops or aircraft had been in South Vietnam since 60 days after the signing of the [[Paris Peace Talks|peace treaty in Paris]]. |
| At the time of the French invasion, during the [[Second French Revolution]] with Louis [[Napoleon III]] as President, there were three parts of what is now Vietnam:
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| *Cochinchina in the south, including the Mekong Delta and what was variously named Gia Dinh, Saigon, and Ho Chi Minh City
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| *Annam in the center, but the mountainous Central Highlands, the home of the Montagnard peoples, considered itself autonomous
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| *Tonkin in the North, including the Red River Delta, Hanoi, and Haiphong.
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| In 1858, France invaded Vietnam, and the ruling Nguyen dynasty accepted protectorate status. Cambodia and Laos also came under French control. [[Danang]], then called Tourane, was captured in late 1858 and Gia Dinh (Saigon and later Ho Chi Minh City) in early 1859. In both cases Vietnamese Christian support for the French, predicted by the missionaries, failed to materialize.
| | The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities. The most detailed demographic study calculated 791,000 to 1,141,000 war-related deaths for all of Vietnam,<ref>Charles Hirschman et al., "Vietnamese Casualties During the American War: A New Estimate," Population and Development Review, December 1995.</ref> while the Vietnamese government claimed that over 3 million Vietnamese died during the conflict.<ref name="afp1995">{{cite news |title=20 Years After Victory, Vietnamese Communists Ponder How to Celebrate |author=Philip Shenon|first=Philip |last=Shenon |url=http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/23/world/20-years-after-victory-vietnamese-communists-ponder-how-to-celebrate.html |date=23 April 1995 |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |accessdate=24 February 2011 }}</ref><ref>Associated Press, 3 April 1995, "Vietnam Says 1.1 Million Died Fighting For North."</ref> 195,000-430,000 South Vietnamese civilians died in the war.<ref name="Lewy">Lewy, Guenter (1978). ''America in Vietnam''. New York: Oxford University Press. Appendix 1, pp.450-453</ref><ref>Thayer, Thomas C (1985). ''War Without Fronts: The American Experience in Vietnam''. Boulder: Westview Press. Ch. 12. </ref> 50,000-65,000 North Vietnamese civilians died in the war.<ref>Wiesner, Louis A. (1988). ''Victims and Survivors Displaced Persons and Other War Victims in Viet-Nam''. New York: Greenwood Press. p.310</ref><ref name="Lewy"/> The Army of the Republic of Vietnam lost between 171,331 and 220,357 men during the war.<ref>Thayer, Thomas C (1985). ''War Without Fronts: The American Experience in Vietnam''. Boulder: Westview Press. p.106.</ref><ref name="Lewy"/> The official US Department of Defense figure was 950,765 communist forces killed in Vietnam from 1965 to 1974. Defense Department officials believed that these body count figures need to be deflated by 30 percent. In addition, Guenter Lewy assumes that one-third of the reported "enemy" killed may have been civilians, concluding that the actual number of deaths of communist military forces was probably closer to 444,000.<ref name="Lewy"/> Some 200,000–300,000 Cambodians,<ref name="Heuveline, Patrick 2001">Heuveline, Patrick (2001). "The Demographic Analysis of Mortality in Cambodia." In Forced Migration and Mortality, eds. Holly E. Reed and Charles B. Keely. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.</ref><ref name="Marek Sliwinski 1995">Marek Sliwinski, Le Génocide Khmer Rouge: Une Analyse Démographique (L'Harmattan, 1995).</ref><ref name="Banister, Judith 1993">Banister, Judith, and Paige Johnson (1993). "After the Nightmare: The Population of Cambodia." In Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia: The Khmer Rouge, the United Nations and the International Community, ed. Ben Kiernan. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies.</ref> 20,000–200,000 Laotians,<ref>Warner, Roger, [[Shooting at the Moon (book)|Shooting at the Moon]], (1996), pp366, estimates 30,000 Hmong.</ref><ref>Obermeyer, "Fifty Years of Violent War Deaths from Vietnam to Bosnia", ''British Medical Journal,'' 2008, estimates 60,000 total.</ref><ref>T. Lomperis, ''From People's War to People's Rule,'' (1996), estimates 35,000 total.</ref><ref>Small, Melvin & Joel David Singer, ''Resort to Arms: International and Civil Wars 1816–1980'', (1982), estimates 20,000 total.</ref><ref>Taylor, Charles Lewis, ''The World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators,'' estimates 20,000 total.</ref><ref>Stuart-Fox, Martin, ''A History of Laos,'' estimates 200,000 by 1973.</ref> and 58,220 U.S. service members also died in the conflict. |
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| Vietnamese resistance and outbreaks of cholera and typhoid forced the French to abandon Tourane in early 1860. They returned in 1861, with 70 ships and 3,500 men to reinforce Gia Dinh and. In June 1862, Emperor [[Tu Duc]], signed the Treaty of Saigon.
| | ==U.S. replaces France== |
| | [[Image:Vietnam relief 2001.jpg|right|thumb|Vietnam as the lightly shaded area.]] |
| | After the [[Geneva accords]] of 1954 split the former [[French Indochina]] into the [[Republic of Vietnam]] (South) and [[Democratic Republic of Vietnam]] (North), France no longer had colonial authority. After certain procedural matters were resolved in early 1955, the United States took up a major role in training and funding what was now the [[Army of the Republic of Vietnam]] in the South. U.S. intelligence collection personnel had been in the area since the latter part of the [[Second World War]]. In 1954, [[Edward Lansdale]], a [[United States Air Force]] officer seconded to the [[Central Intelligence Agency]], came to [[Saigon]] under the cover of Assistant Air Attache leading the Saigon Military Mission, which was a CIA operation whose immediate activities included sending Vietnamese personnel north, to set up stay-behind intelligence collection and covert action teams for future use. |
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| French naval forces under Admiral de la Grandiere, the governor of Cochinchina (as the French renamed Nam Bo), demanded and received a protectorate status for Cambodia, on the grounds that the Treaty of Saigon had made France heir to Vietnamese claims in Cambodia. In June 1867, he seized the last provinces of Cochinchina. The Siamese government, in July, agreed to the Cambodian protectorate in return for receiving the two Cambodian provinces of Angkor and Battambang, to Siam. Siam was never under French control.
| | It has been argued, certainly with some justification, that the U.S. unwisely supported the French before 1954, and still had a pro-French view after 1954. Part of this was due to U.S. diplomatic strategy that saw French cooperation in Europe as essential to NATO and to Western stability, and taking a pro-French position in the former Indochina obtained cooperation from France. The Vietnamese were not seen as important, in Cold War terms, in the 1940s and 1950s, even though, perhaps ironically, it was Japanese expansion into French Indochina that triggered U.S. [[economic warfare]] against Japan, and eventually the [[Japanese decision for war in 1941]]. |
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| With Cochinchina secured, French naval and mercantile interests turned to Tonkin (as the French referred to Bac Bo).
| | Later, the U.S. would support anticommunist Vietnamese, never neutralists. |
| ===Indochina under the Third French Republic===
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| With the collapse of Napoleon III, in 1870, as a result of the [[Franco-Prussian War]], the [[French Third Republic]] formed, and lasted until the Nazi conquest in 1940. Most of the key actions that set the context into which the Empire of Japan moved into the region happened during this period, and in the immediate aftermath under the [[Vichy goverment]].
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| Few Frenchmen permanently settled in Indochina. Below the top layer of imperial control, the civil service comprised French-speaking Catholic Vietnamese; a nominal "Emperor" resided in Hue, the traditional cultural capital in north central Indonesia.
| | ===The strategic balance=== |
| | While Vietnamese Communists had long had aims to control the whole of Vietnam, the specific decision to conquer the South was made, by the Northern leadership, in May 1959.<ref>An enabling Party resolution was passed in January, but this was the date of starting to build infrastructure; combat use of that infrastructure was still two or more years away. See [[Vietnamese Communist grand strategy]]</ref> The Communist side had clearly defined political objectives, and a grand strategy to achieve them; there was a clear relationship between long-term goals and short-term actions, within their strategic theory of [[North Vietnamese cadre|''dau tranh'']]. Some of their actions may seem to be from Maoist and other models, but they have some unique concepts that are not always obvious. |
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| Little industry developed and 80% of the population lived in villages of about 2000 population; they depended on rice growing. Most were nominally Buddhist; about 10% were Catholic. Minorities included the Chinese merchants who controlled most of the commerce, and Montagnard tribesmen in the thinly populated Central Highlands. Vietnam was a relatively peaceful colony; sporadic independence movements were quickly suppressed by the efficient French secret police.
| | Apart from its internal problems, South Vietnam faced difficult military challenges. On the one hand, there was a threat of a conventional, cross-border strike from the North, reminiscent of the [[Korean War]]. In the 1950s, the U.S. advisors focused on building a "mirror image" of the [[U.S. Army]], designed to meet and defeat a conventional invasion. <ref name=PntV1Ch05Sec0314-346>{{citation |
| ===Indochinese Communist Party forms===
| | | title =The Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, Volume 2 |
| [[Ho Chi Minh]] (1890–1969) and fellow students founded the [[Indochinese Communist Party]] in Paris in 1929, but it was of marginal importance until World War II.<ref>By the 1960s, Ho was primarily a symbol rather than an active leader. William J. Duiker, ''Ho Chi Minh: A Life'' (2000) </ref> In 1940 and 1941 the Vichy regime yielded control of Vietnam to the Japanese, and Ho returned to lead an underground independence movement (which received a little assistance from the O.S.S., the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency [[CIA]]).<ref name=Patti>{{cite book
| | | contribution = Chapter 6, "The Advisory Build-Up, 1961-1967," Section 1, pp. 408-457 |
| | title = Why Viet Nam?: Prelude to America's Albatross
| | | url = http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon2/pent11.htm}}</ref> Ironically, while the lack of counterguerrilla forces threatened the South for many years, the last two blows were Korea-style invasions. With U.S. air support, the South were able to largely repel a [[South Vietnam's ground war, 1972-1975|conventional invasion by North Vietnam]]. The 1975 invasion which defeated the South was not opposed by U.S. forces. |
| | author = Patti, Archimedes L. A
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| | publisher = University of California Press
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| | year = 1980
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| | ISBN-10 = 0520041569
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| }}</ref>
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| ==World War II==
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| Indochina, a French colony in the spheres of influence of Japan and China, was destined to be drawn into the [[Second World War]] both through European and Asian events.
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| ===1937===
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| Throughout East and Southeast Asia, tensions had been building between 1937 and 1941, as Japan expanded into China. The [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] regarded this as an infringement on U.S. interests in China.<ref name=Arima2003>{{citation
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| | title = The Way to Pearl Harbor: US vs Japan
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| | first = Yuichi | last = Arima
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| | url = http://www.american.edu/TED/ice/japan-oil.htm
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| | journal = ICE Case Studies, The American University
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| | issue = 118
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| | date = December, 2003}}</ref> The U.S. had already accepted an apology and indemnity for the Japanese bombing of the ''USS Panay'', a gunboat on the Yangtze River in China.
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| ===1938===
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| When a new French government, still under the [[Third French Republic]], formed in August 1938, among its principal concerns were security of metropolitan France as well as its empire.
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| ====French security preparations in Indochina====
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| among its first acts was to name General Georges Catroux governor general of Indochina. He was the first military governor general since French civilian rule had begun in 1879, following the conquest starting in 1858. <ref name=VWAM-WWII>{{citation
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| | url = http://www.vwam.com/vets/history/early2.html
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| | title = World War II - Ocupation and Liberation
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| | author = Vets with a Mission}}</ref>
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| The appointment of Catroux, the first military governor general since civilian rule began in 1879, reflected the single greatest concern of the new government: defense of the homeland, defense of the empire. Catroux's immediate concern was with Japan, who were actively fighting in nearby China.
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| ===1940===
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| After the defeat of France, with an armistice on June 22, 1940, roughly two-thirds of the country was put under direct German military control. The remaining part of southeast France, and the French colonies, were under a nominally independent government, headed by the [[First World War]] hero, Marshal [[Henri Petain]], with its capital at Vichy. Japan, not yet allied with Germany, still asked for German help in stopping French supplies, coming from Indochina, to China.
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| ====Vichy, Indochina, and Japan====
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| Catroux, who had first asked the U.K. for support, had no source of military assistance from outside France, stopped the trade to China to avoid further provoking the Japanese. A Japanese verification group, headed by MG Issaku Nishimura entered Indochina on June 25.
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| On the same day that Nishimura arrived, Vichy dismissed Catroux, for independent foreign contact. He was replaced by
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| Vice Admiral Jean Decoux, who commanded French naval forces in the Far East, and was based in Saigon. Ducoux and Catroux were in general agreement about policy, and considered managing Nakamura the first priority. <ref name=Dommen2001>{{citation
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| | title = The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans
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| | first = Arthur J. | last=Dommen | publisher = Indiana University Press | year = 2001
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| | url = http://books.google.com/books?id=MauWlUjuWNsC&pg=PA48&lpg=PA48&dq=Decoux+Indochina+Catroux&source=web&ots=3QdzxVQM1t&sig=JFrAV-2b6OIjhkjpXh0va_m0EoY&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA47,M1}} pp. 47 </ref> Ducoux had additional worries. The senior British admiral in the area, on the way from Hong Kong to Singapore, visited Ducoux and told him that he might be ordered to sink Ducoux's flagship, with the implicit suggestion that Ducoux could save his ships by taking them to Singapore, which appalled Ducoux. While the British had not yet attacked French ships that would not go to the side of the Allies, that would happen at Mers-el-Kabir in North Africa within two weeks;<ref name=Gilbert>{{citation
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| | first = Martin | last = Gilbert
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| | title = The Second World War | publisher = Stoddart | year = 1989
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| }}, p. 107</ref> it is not known if that was suggested to, or suspected by, Ducoux. Deliberately delaying, Ducoux did not arrive in Hanoi until July 20, while Catroux stalled Nishimura on basing negotiations, also asking for U.S. help. <ref>Dommen, p. 48</ref>
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| Reacting to the initial Japanese presence in Indochina, on July 5, the U.S. Congress passed the Export Control Act, banning the shipment of aircraft parts and key minerals and chemicals to Japan, which was followed three weeks later by restrictions on the shipment of petroleum products and scrap metal as well. <ref>Gilbert, p. 108</ref>
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| Ducoux, on August 30, managed to get an agreement between the French Ambassador in Tokyo and the Japanese Foreign Minister, promising to respect Indochinese integrity in return for cooperation against China. Nishimura, on September 20, gave Ducoux an ultimatum: agree to the basing, or the 5th Division, known to be at the border, would enter.
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| Japan entered Indochina on September 22, 1940. An agreement was signed, and promptly violated, in which Japan promised to station no more than 6,000 troops in Indochina, and never have more than 25,000 transiting the colony. Rights were given for three airfields, with all other Japanese forces forbidden to enter Indochina without Vichy consent. Immediately after the signing, a group of Japanese officers, in a form of insubordination not uncommon in the Japanese military, attacked the border post of Dong Dang, laid siege to Lam Son, which, four days later, surrendered. There had been 40 killed, but 1,096 troops had deserted. <ref>Dommen, p. 50-51</ref>
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| With the signing of the Tripartite Pact on September 27, 1940, creating the Axis of Germany, Japan, and Italy, Ducoux had new grounds for worry: the Germans could pressure the homeland to support their ally, Japan.
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| Japan apologized for the Lam Song incident on October 5. Ducoux relieved the senior commanders he believed should have anticipated the attack, but also gave orders to hunt down the Lam Song deserters, as well as Viet Minh who had entered Indochina while the French seemed preoccupied with Japan.
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| ====Indochina, China, and the U.S. after the German conquest of France====
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| Roosevelt formalized aid to China in 1940 and 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave credits to the Chinese Government for the purchase of war supplies, as it put economic pressure on Japan.<ref name=RTPearl>{{citation
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| | title = Japan, China, the United States and the Road to Pearl Harbor, 1937–41
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| | url = http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/wwii/88734.htm
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| | author = [[United States Department of State]]}}</ref>
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| The United States was the main supplier of the oil, steel, iron, and other commodities needed by the Japanese military as it became bogged down by Chinese resistance but, in January, 1940, Japan abrogated the existing treaty of commerce with the United States. Although this did not lead to an immediate embargo, it meant that the Roosevelt Administration could now restrict the flow of military supplies into Japan and use this as leverage to force Japan to halt its aggression in China. After January 1940, the United States combined a strategy of increasing aid to China through larger credits and the Lend-Lease program with a gradual move towards an embargo on the trade of all militarily useful items with Japan.
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| Through much of the war, the French colonial government had largely stayed in place, as the Vichy government was on reasonably friendly terms with Japan. Japan had not entered Indochina until 1941, so the conflicts from 1939 to the fall of France had little impact on a colony such as Indochina.
| |
| ===1941===
| |
| A contributing factor to the 1941 escalations by Japan, however, resulted when Japan expanded its position in Indochina.
| |
| ====Beginnings of a new anti-colonial force====
| |
| In February, [[Ho Chi Minh]] returned and established his base in a cave at Pac Bo, near the Sino-Vietnamese border. <ref name=CS-VN-EMH>{{citation | |
| | editor = Cima, Ronald J.
| |
| | contribution = Establishment of the Viet Minh
| |
| | title = Vietnam: A Country Study
| |
| | publisher = Library of Congress | year = 1987
| |
| |url = http://countrystudies.us/vietnam/21.htm}}</ref>
| |
| | |
| The Eighth Plenum of the Indochinese Communist Party convened in May. It decided that independence was its first priority rather than ideology, so established the "League for the Independence of Vietnam" (''Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi'', '''Viet Minh''' for short) was established. All political factions were welcome if they supported action against the Japanese and French; the Communist revolution could occur later.
| |
| ====Vichy agreements with Japan about Indochina====
| |
| Vichy signed the Protocol Concerning Joint Defense and Joint Military Cooperation on July 29. This agreement defined the Franco-Japanese relationship for Indochina, until the Japanese abrogated it in March 1945. It gave the Japanese a total of eight airfields, allowed them to have more troops present, and to use the Indochinese financial system, in return for a fragile French autonomy.
| |
| | |
| In late November, the United States told the Japanese that it must give up all occupied territories in Indochina and China, and withdraw from the Axis. Especially with U.S. [[MAGIC]] [[communications intelligence]] on the Japanese diplomatic correspondents, war seemed imminent. A "warning of a state of war" went to U.S. forces in the Pacific.
| |
| | |
| 24,000 Japanese troops sailed, in December, from Indochina to Malaya.<ref>Gilbert, p. 273</ref>
| |
| | |
| ===1942===
| |
| During the Japanese occupation, even during French administration, the Viet Minh exiled to China had an opportuntity to quietly rebuild their infrastructure.
| |
| ====Anticolonialist organizationbuilding====
| |
| They had been strongest in Tonkin, the northern region, so moving south from China was straightforward. They had a concept of establishing "base areas" (''Chien Khu''), often mountainous jungle.<ref name=LeulliotTiger> {{citation|
| |
| | url = http://members.lycos.co.uk/indochine/vm/tiger.html
| |
| | title = The Tiger and the Elephant: Viet Minh Strategy and Tactics
| |
| | first1 = Nowfel | last1 = Leulliot | first2 = Danny | last2 =O'Hara }}</ref> Of these areas, the "homeland" of the VM was in the Viet Bac near around Bac Can.<ref name=CS-VN-EMH /> (see '''''map''''' <ref>{{citation | url = http://ehistory.osu.edu/vietnam/maps/0019.cfm | title = Viet Bac, Viet Minh base area, 1941-1945 | author = Thomas Hodgkin | title = Vietnam, the Revolutionary Path | year = 1981}}</ref>
| |
| | |
| Additional Chien Khu developed in Yen Bai, Thai N'Guyen (the "traditional" stronghold of the PCI), Quang N'Gai, Pac Bo, Ninh Binh and Dong Trieu. As did many revolutionary movements, part of building their base was providing "shadow government" services. They attacked landlords and moneylenders, as well as providing various useful services. They offered education, which contained substantial amounts of political indoctrination.
| |
| | |
| They collected taxes, often in the form of food supplies, intelligence on enemy movement, and service as laborers rather than in money. They formed local militias, which provided trained individuals, but they were certainly willing to use violence against reluctant villagers. Gradually, they moved this system south, although not obtaining as much local support in Annam, and especially Cochinchina. While later organizations would operate from Cambodia into the regions of South Vietnam that corresponded to Cochinchina, this was well in the future.
| |
| | |
| Some of their most important sympathizers included educated civil servants and soldiers, who provided [[clandestine human-source intelligence]] from their workplaces, as well as providing [[counterintelligence]] on French and Japanese plans.
| |
| | |
| In August, Ho, while meeting with Chinese Communist Party officials, was held, for two years, by the [[Kuomintang]].<ref name=CS-VN-EMH />
| |
| ===1944===
| |
| In 1944, Ho, then in China, had requested a United States visa to go to San Francisco to make Vietnamese language broadcasts of material from the U.S. [[Office of War Information]], the U.S. [[information operations#psychological warfare|official or "white" propaganda]]. The visa was denied. <ref name=Patti1980>{{citation
| |
| | title = Why Viet Nam? Prelude to America's Albatross
| |
| | first = Archimedes L.A. | last = Patti
| |
| | publisher = University of California Press | year = 1980}}, p. 46</ref>
| |
| | |
| By August, Ho convinced the Kuomintang commander to support his return to Vietnam, leading 18 guerillas against the . Accordingly, Ho returned to Vietnam in September with eighteen men trained and armed by the Chinese. Discovering that the ICP had planned a general uprising in the Viet Bac, he disapproved, but encouraged the establishment of "armed propaganda" teams. <ref name=CS-VN-EMH />
| |
| | |
| ===1945===
| |
| The Japanese, on March 9, revoked the French administrative control and took them prisoner. This had the secondary effect of cutting off much Western intelligence about the Japanese in Indochina. <ref>Patti, p. 41</ref> They retained [[Bao Dai]] as a nominal leader.
| |
| | |
| Ho's forces rescued an American pilot in March. Washington ordered Patti to do whatever was necessary to reestablish the intelligence flow, and the OSS mission was authorized to contact Ho. He asked to meet Chennault, the U.S. air commander, and that was agreed, under the condition he did not ask for supplies or active support.
| |
| | |
| The visit was polite but without substance. Ho, however, asked for the minor favor of an autographed picture of Chennault. Later, Ho used that innocent item to indicate, to other Northern groups, that he had U.S. support. <ref>Patti, pp. 57-58</ref>
| |
| | |
| Just after the Japanese surrender, before the Japanese-imprisoned French returned to their desks, Vietnamese guerillas, under Ho Chi Minh, had seized power in Hanoi and shortly thereafter demanded and received the abdication of the apparent French puppet, Emperor Bao Dai.<ref name=PntPapV1Ch1-12-29>{{citation
| |
| | title = The Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, Volume 1
| |
| | contribution = Chapter I, "Background to the Crisis, 1940-50" Section 2, pp. 12-29
| |
| | url = http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon/pent2.htm}}</ref> This would not be the last of Bao Dai.
| |
| ==1945 (after end of WWII)-1954 (French defeat)==
| |
| While hindsight and hypotheticals are always tempting diversion, in looking at the broad picture of Southeast Asia at the end of the [[Second World War]], it cannot be ignored that there were several conflicting movements: generic Western anticommunism that saw the French as protector of the area from Communist expansion, nationalist and anticolonialist movements that wanted independence from the French, and Communists who indeed would like to expand. The lines were not always clear, and some alliances were of convenience.
| |
| | |
| [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] had expressed a strong preference for national self-determination, and was not notably pro-French. <ref>Patti 1980, p. 17</ref> He quotes Cordell Hull's memoirs, saying that Roosevelt <blockquote>entertained strong views on independence for French Indo-China. That French dependency stuck in his mind as having been the springboard for the Japanese attack on the Phillipines, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies. He could not but remember the devious conduct of the [[Vichy France|Vichy Government]] in granting Japan the right to station troops there, without any consultation with us but with an effort to make the world believe we approved.<ref>''The Memoirs of Cordell Hull'', p. 1595</ref></blockquote>
| |
| | |
| After his death, however, the Truman administration, having experienced very real confrontations such as the [[Berlin Blockade]] in 1948-1949, where the French were allies in dealing with the Blockade. French forces also had a key the defense of Western Europe from the Soviet expansion that had already taken much of Eastern Europe. Truman saw the French as necessary allies.
| |
| | |
| The rise of the Chinese Communists in 1949 and the outbreak of the [[Korean War]] in 1950 strengthened the hand of those who saw resistance to Communism in East and Southeast Asia as dominating all other issues there. Ousted Chinese [[Kuomintang]] under [[Chiang Kai-Shek]], exiled to Taiwan, had strong U.S. political allies such as [[Claire Chennault]]. Increasingly, and especially with the rise of [[Joe McCarthy]], there was also, at the public level, a reflexive condemnation of anything with the slightest Communist connection, or even generally leftist. <ref name=Castle1991>{{citation
| |
| | id = Castle 1991, ADA243492
| |
| | title = At War in the Shadow of Vietnam: United States Military Aid to the Royal Lao Government 1955-75 (doctoral thesis)
| |
| | publisher = Air Force Institute of Technology
| |
| | author = Castle, Timothy N.
| |
| | url = http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/ADA243492
| |
| | date = May 1991}}</ref>
| |
| | |
| It should be observed that some of the anticommunists were indeed right: certain nations did become Communist. It is a separate matter whether Communism turned out to be the existential threat that it was believed at the time, but, again, hindsight is a luxury.
| |
| | |
| During this period, France was perceived as more and more strategic to Western interests, and, both to strengthen it vis-a-vis the Soviet Union and Western Union, and against the perceived threat of Ho and the Chinese Communists, the U.S. would support French policy. Vietnamese nationalism or the discouragement of colonialism was really not a matter of consideration.
| |
| | |
| This was a time of intense concern about Communism, not unreasonably just after the [[Berlin Blockade]] and during the [[Korean War]]. Nevertheless, the anticommunism sometimes grew very emotional, and this was exploited by [[Joseph McCarthy]] and others that U.S. politicians did not want to challenge.
| |
| | |
| Laos, also a proto-state in the French Union, became of concern to the U.S. After the Japanese were removed from control of the Laotian parts of Indochina, three Lao princes created a movement to resist the return of French colonial rule. Within a few years, Souvanna Phouma returned and became prime minister of the colony. Souphanouvong, seeing the Viet Minh as his only potential ally against the French, announced, while in the Hanoi area, the formation of the "Land of Laos" organization, or [[Pathet Lao]]. Unquestionably, the Pathet Lao were Communist-affiliated. Nevertheless, they soon became a focus of U.S. concern, which, in the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, was more focused on anticommunism than any nationalist or anticolonialist movement.<ref name=Castle1991 />
| |
|
| |
| ===1945===
| |
| In contrast with other Asian colonies like India, Burma, the Philippines and Korea, Vietnam was not given its independence after the war. As in Indonesia (the Dutch East Indies), an indigenous rebellion demanded independence. While the Netherlands was too weak to resist the Indonesians, the French were strong enough to just barely hold on. As a result Ho and his Viet Minh<ref>Originally a Communist-led anti-Japanese insurgency, such as the Hukbalahap in the Phillipines. Unfortunately, Vietnam had no [[Ramon Magsaysay]] to form a unity government</ref> launched a guerrilla campaign, using Communist China as a sanctuary when French pursuit became hot.
| |
| ====A brief revolution====
| |
| Ho Chi Minh declared independence in September. In a dramatic speech, he began with<blockquote>All men are created equal. The Creator has given us certain inalienable rights: the right to Life, the right to be Free, and the right to achieve Happiness...These immortal words are taken from the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a larger sense, this means that: all the peoples of the world are equal; all the people have the right to live, to be happy, to be free. [turning to the Declaration of the French Revolution in 1791, "It also states Men are born, must be free, and have equal rights. These are undeniable truths.<ref>Patti, pp. 250-253</ref></blockquote>
| |
| Ho's declaration had none but emotional impact; the French soon reestablished their authority after the Japanese surrendered. We have no way to know how much of this Ho believed, but it should be remembered as an example of how he understood the thinking of those who would become his enemy, while [[Lyndon Baines Johnson]] and [[Robert S. McNamara]] never seemed to grasp his beliefs in the willingness to accept protracted war and great losses, in the interest of eventual control.
| |
| ====Return of French control, and underground interactions with outside powers====
| |
| Through the OSS Patti mission, often through emissaries, <ref>Patti, p. 68</ref> from the fall of 1945 to the fall of 1946, the United States received a series of communications from Ho Chi Minh depicting calamitous conditions in Vietnam, invoking the principles proclaimed in the Atlantic Charter and in the Charter of the United Nations, and pleading for U.S. recognition of the independence of the DRV, or--as a last resort--trusteeship for Vietnam under the United Nations.<ref name=PntPapV1Ch1-12-29> Patti's guidance was that the U.S. had essentially given up the idea of a trusteeship, but still, at the U.N. foundation conferences, the U.S. was in favor of gradual independence. <ref>Patti, pp. 266-267</ref>But while the U.S. took no action on Ho's requests, it was also unwilling to aid the French.<ref name=PntPapV1Ch1-12-29>
| |
| | |
| It has been suggested that the Viet Minh accepted a significant number of Japanese troops, estimated by Goscha as at least 5,000, who had no immediate way to get back to Japan, and often had ties to the local culture. Their experience in a conventional military would have been welcome. <ref name=Ford>{{citation
| |
| | title = Japanese soldiers with the Viet Minh
| |
| | first = Dan | last = Ford
| |
| | url = http://www.warbirdforum.com/japviet.htm}}</ref>
| |
| | |
| ===1946===
| |
| | |
| President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] (in office 1933-45) detested French colonialism, but [[Harry S. Truman]] (in office 1945-53) was more interested in the French as an anticommunist ally, so he helped them to return in 1946. The Patti mission of the [[Office of Strategic Services]] (OSS was the predecessor to CIA) observed the situation from Kunming, China, starting in 1942, and then in French Indochina, including direct discussions with [[Ho Chi Minh]].<ref name=Patti />
| |
| | |
| *"Rebel bands are still (wreaking destruction) in the areas south of Saigon. These bands are quite large, some numbering as many as 1,000 men. Concentrations of these bands are to be found . . . in the villages. Some have turned north in an attempt to disrupt (communications) in the Camau Peninsula, northeast of Batri and in the general area south of (Nha Trang). In the area south of Cholon and in the north of the Plaine des Jenes region, several bands have taken refuge...
| |
| *"The following communique was issued by the High Commissioner for Indochina this morning: "Rebel activities have increased in the Bien Hoa area, on both banks of the river Dong Nai. A French convoy has been attacked on the road between Bien Hoa and Tan Uyen where a land mine had been laid by the rebels.
| |
| | |
| *In the (Baclo) area, northwest of Saigon, a number of pirates have been captured in the course of a clean-up raid. Among the captured men are five Japanese deserters. The dead bodies of three Japanese, including an officer, have been found at the point where the operation was carried out.
| |
| | |
| *A French detachment was ambushed at (San Jay), south Annam. The detachment, nevertheless, succeeded in carrying out its mission. Several aggressions by rebel parties are reported along the coastal road."
| |
| | |
| By parachute landing, the French took control of Hoa Binh, capital of the Moang tribe and offering Giap several movement options:<ref name=HN-HoaBinh>{{citation
| |
| | url = http://www.historynet.com/the-hoa-binh-campaign.htm/print
| |
| | title = The Hoa Binh Campaign
| |
| | author = HistoryNet Staff
| |
| | date =6/12/2006}}</ref>
| |
| *from the Tonkin highlands staging area, to the lower Red River delta
| |
| *move against Hanoi from the south.
| |
| *supply northern central Vietnam.
| |
| They abandoned it in October 1950. <ref name=Darragh>{{citation
| |
| | title = The Hoa Binh Campaign (Viet Minh battle French Forces)
| |
| | first = Shaun M. | last = Darragh
| |
| | url = http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?t=15825}}</ref>
| |
| | |
| By December, Ho failed to reach a temporary agreement between the French and the most intensely anti-French elements of the Indochinese Communist Party. As a result, The growing frequency of clashes between French and Vietnamese forces in Haiphong led to a French naval bombardment in November 1946, killing from 6,000 to 20,000. This incident and the arrival of 1,000 troops of the French Foreign Legion in central and northern Vietnam in early December convinced the communists, including Ho, that they should prepare for war.
| |
| | |
| On December 19, the French demanded that the Vietnamese forces in the Hanoi area disarm and transfer responsibility for law and order to French authority. In response, the Viet Minh attacked the city's electric plant and other French installations around the area. Forewarned, the French seized Gia Lam airfield and took control of the central part of Hanoi. <ref name=GS-1Indo>{{citation
| |
| | title = First Indochina War
| |
| | author = Globalsecurity
| |
| | url = http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/vietnam1.htm}}</ref>
| |
| | |
| ===1947===
| |
| By late January, the French had retaken most of the provincial capitals in northern and central Vietnam; the Viet Minh stayed in the countryside rather than confront the French on terms favorable to the French. They continued to control most of the rural areas, concentrating on building up its military strength and setting up guerrilla training programs in "liberated" areas. Seizing the initiative, however, the French marched north to the Chinese border in the autumn of 1947, inflicting heavy casualties on the Viet Minh and retaking much of the Viet Bac region.<ref name=GS-1Indo />
| |
| At this time, the French still saw Bao Dai as a key part of the solution. <ref name=PntPapV1Ch2-53-75>{{citation
| |
| | title = The Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, Volume 1 | |
| | contribution = Chapter 2, ""U.S. Involvement in the Franco-Viet Minh War, 1950-1954" Section 1, pp. 53-75 | |
| | url = http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon/pent5.htm}}</ref> In May, 1947, Minister of War Coste-Floret announced in Paris that: "There is no military problem any longer in Indochina . . . the success of French arms is complete." Within six months, though ambitious armored, amphibious, and airborne drives had plunged into the northern mountains and along the Annam coast, Viet Minh sabotage and raids along lines of communication had mounted steadily, and Paris had come to realize that France had lost the military initiative. In the meantime, the French launched political forays similarly ambitious and equally unproductive.
| |
| | |
| Leon Pignon, political adviser to the French Commander in Indochina, and later High Commissioner, wrote in January, 1947, that:<blockquote>Our objective is clear: to transpose to the field of Vietnamese domestic politics the quarrel we have with the Viet Minh, and to involve ourselves as little as possible in the campaigns and reprisals which ought to be the work of the native adversaries of that party.</blockquote>
| |
| | |
| The Cochinchina (southern) Viet Minh executed Huynh Phu So, leader of the Hoa Hao religious sect, in April. Both the Hoa Hao and Cao Dai sect soon allied with the French. <ref name=GS-1Indo /> | |
| | |
| A French emissary demanded Ho surrender, and they were not able to compel him with force. This left them with little alternative but Bao Dai.<ref name=PntPapV1Ch2-75-107>{{citation
| |
| | title = The Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, Volume 1
| |
| | contribution = Chapter 2, "U.S. Involvement in the Franco-Viet Minh War, 1950-1954" Section 1, pp. 75-107
| |
| | url = http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon/pent6.htm}}</ref> By the fall of 1947, however, they tried military measures. Ho responded, "There is no place in the French Union for cowards. I would be one were I to accept." <ref name=Harrison>{{citation | |
| | id = Harrison
| |
| | title = The Endless War
| |
| | first = James P. | last = Harrison
| |
| | publisher = originally Free Press, Columbia University reissue | year = 1982
| |
| | url = }}, p. 121</ref>
| |
| | |
| Operation "Lea", launched in October, started with a parachute assault that found Ho's mail still on his desk, but the French never same so close again. The rest of the operation varied in success; the Viet Minh might cut off a French force, but if they could not force a quick defeat, they would not do well against an organized relief force unless they specifically had prepared to ambush it. They also found it unwise to meet mobile French units in the open. As the Viet Minh, even in regimental strength, learned how to fade away when conditions did not favor them, they would fight again another day. The French ended the operation in about a month. A month later, a similar French campaign certainly hurt the Viet Minh, but could not defeat them. The Viet Minh, by falling back, often put the French in the position of holding terrain they could not adeuately garrison. In 1947, French forces had the wisdom not to try to hold weakly, as opposed to their later actions at Dien Bien Phu. <ref>Fall, pp. 28-30</ref>
| |
| ===1948===
| |
| Bao Dai participated in discussions about a provisional government, in which he might be an acceptable, if not ideal, head of state. The new government, established with Bao Dai as chief of state, was viewed critically by nationalists as well as communists. Most prominent nationalists, including Ngo Dinh Diem, refused positions in the government. Many went into voluntary exile. <ref name=GS-1Indo />
| |
| ===1949===
| |
| Under French sponsorship in July, Bao Dai was named to head a provisional government, creating Vietnam from the Indochinese regions of Tonkin (north), Annam (central) and Cochinchina (south). Bao Dai said of it, "it is not a Bao Dai solution...but just a French solution." Among the many problems were that the non-Communist groups had too many conflicting ties, such as the VNQDD with the Chinese Kuomintang; the Constitutionalists, Cao Dai, Hoa Hao, and Binh Xuyen with France; the Dai Viet with Japan. Given this factionalism, the Viet Minh, accurately or not, enjoyed support as an uniquely Vietnamese faction.<ref>Harrison, p. 120</ref>
| |
| ===1950===
| |
| A January 5, 1950 memorandum from the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs described the U.S. policy assumption that <ref name=FRUS>{{citation
| |
| | author = United States Department of State
| |
| | volume = Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950
| |
| | title = East Asia and the Pacific Volume VI
| |
| | id = FRUS 1950 Vol. VI
| |
| | url = http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/FRUS.FRUS1950v06}}, pp. 690-691</ref> saw Vietnam as an autonomous state within the French Union, with [[Bao Dai]], the former Emperor of Annam, as [[chief of state]]; U.S. policy was to strengthen him. The document said that Ho had been getting supplies from the Chinese Communists, but the extent was not known. A January 17 telegram from the Secretary of State said "Ho Chi Minh is not a patriotic nationalist but a Commie Party member with all the sinister implications in the relationship."<ref>FRUS 1950 Vol. VI, p. 697</ref>
| |
| | |
| U.S. diplomatic traffic in January speaks of unpopularity of Bao Dai, and how he could be strengthened. The designated charge d'affaires of the presumed U.S. mission to Vietnam recommended ''de jure'' recognition of Bao Dai, "''de facto'' recognition of Bao Dai, in the popular meaning of the term, would mean that Bao Dai was in control of certain areas, and we recognized him to that extent only. The question would certainly arise, and not only in Communist propaganda, as to whether, in fact, Ho Chi Minh was in control of a larger area and a larger number of souls."<ref>FRUS 1950 Vol. VI, p. 701</ref> | |
| | |
| France, on 29 January 1950, designated Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia as autonomous "Associated States" within the French Union. Voting in the lower house of Parliament was (396-193) with 181 of the opposing votes coming from French parliamentarians.<ref>FRUS 1950 Vol. VI, p. 716</ref> This was another example of the strength of the French Communist Party, which was a part of the U.S. geopolitical desire to support the Western-oriented parts of the French government. Shortly afterwards, the U.S. recognized them, which allowed direct military and economic assistance. The [[People's Republic of China]] responded by recognizing Ho's [[Democratic Republic of Vietnam]], followed by Soviet recognition. Mao's revolutionary theory was praised in the Viet Minh press.
| |
| | |
| On 27 February the National Security Council issued memorandum 64 which dealt exclusively with United States policy toward Indochina. Its text included:
| |
| <blockquote>The neighboring countries of Thailand and Burma
| |
| could be expected to fall under Communist domination if Indochina were controlled by a Communist-dominated government. The balance of Southeast Asia would then be in grave hazard. Accordingly, the Departments of State and Defense should prepare as a matter of priority - [a] program of all practicable measures designed to protect U.S. interests in
| |
| Indochina. <ref name=TruNSC64>{{citation
| |
| | title = Report by the National Security Council on the Position of the United States with Respect to Indochina, 27 February 1950
| |
| | url = http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon/doc1.htm}}</ref></blockquote> | |
| | |
| While the Joint Chiefs of Staff supported aid, they were conservative, saying "United States military aid not be granted unconditionally; rather, that it be carefully controlled and that the aid program be integrated with political and economic programs". Nevertheless, they saw little choice, assessing that Bao Dai's government could not survive without the 140,000 French soldiers in the field. <blockquote>If the United States were now to insist upon independence for Vietnam and a phased French withdrawal from that country, this might improve the political situation. The French could be expected to interpose objections to, and certainly delays in, such a program. Conditions in Indochina, however, are unstable and the situation is apparently deteriorating rapidly so that the urgent need for at least an initial increment of military and economic aid is psychologically overriding. </blockquote> They recommended an immediate USD $15,000,000 in aid, with additional funding granted in accordance with still-developing United States policy. <ref name=CJCS1950-04-10>{{citation
| |
| | first =Omar | last = Bradley
| |
| | title = Memorandum...to the Secretary of Defense on the Strategic Assessment of Southeast Asia
| |
| | date = 10 April 1950
| |
| | url = http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon/doc3.htm}}</ref>
| |
| | |
| President Truman, apparently without consulting any Members of Congress, approved the position on 24 April 1950 and the United States was officially committed to the Indochina war. "<ref>Castle, p. 11</ref>
| |
| | |
| The [[Korean War]] began in June.
| |
| | |
| As another example of the pattern of the start of an offensive in late fall or winter, in October 1950, the Viet Minh started a campaign against French forts along the Chinese border. Large Viet Minh forces, in divisional strength, defeated isolated forts one by one, until the main base at Lang Son evacuated prematurely. French losses included 6,000 men and huge quantities of supplies. <ref>Fall, p. 32-33</ref>
| |
| | |
| ===1951===
| |
| While the Indochinese Communist Party had gone underground, officially dissolved in 1945 to obsecure the Viet Minh's communist base, it resurfaced as the Vietnam Workers' Party in February, at a meeting called the Second National Party Congress of the ICP. Ho was elected chairman and Truong Chinh as general secretary.
| |
| | |
| Given that the French had fallen back to a line north of Hanoi, the Viet Minh focused on Tonkin and consigned Cochinchina to a lower priority. Giap wanted to free the northern areas to allow easy logistics from China, and launched a major offensive, with newly formed units of divisional strength. Their goal was to be in Hanoi by Tet in mid-February.
| |
| | |
| Giap did not fully appreciate, while he had tactical initiative, that the French had fallen back to a defensible line, behind which they had significant mobility, as opposed to their situation at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. A new French commander, Marshal Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, had taken over the Indochina command in December 1950.
| |
| ====Battle of Vinh Yen====
| |
| The first Viet Minh attacks, on January 13, went well. On the 14th, however, de Lattre took personal command, called for the airlift into his area of troops 1000 kilometers away, and gathered every aircraft — combat or trainer — that could carry [[napalm]]. At the [[Battle of Vinh Yen]], Viet Minh forces, in the open and without [[anti-aircraft artillery]], came under the heaviest air attacks that the French ever delivered. It cost them over 6,000 men. <ref>Fall, pp. 36-37</ref>
| |
| | |
| Fall quotes a Viet Minh officer,
| |
| <blockquote>However, all of a sudden, hell opens in front of my eyes. Hell comes in the form of large, egg-shaped containers dropping from the first plane, followed by other eggs from the second and third planes. Immense sheets of flmes, extending over hundreds of meters, it seems, strike terror into the ranks of my soldiers. This is napalm, the fire which falls from the skies.</blockquote>
| |
| As the oficer fell back, he urged a platoon commander to hold the French as long as possible while he reformed his troops. The junior officer's eyes were wide with terror "What is this? The atomic bomb?"
| |
| | |
| "No, it is napalm."<ref>Fall, p. 39-40</ref>
| |
| urging one of his platoon commanders to hold the advancing French infantry, while under air attack.
| |
| | |
| On 23 March, Giap tried again, striking at the Hanoi area from the east, across the Day River, towards Haiphong. This time, the French did not meet his open forces with air power, but with the fire from naval forces from the river. <ref name=Currey>{{citation
| |
| | title = Victory at Any Cost: The Genius of Viet Nam's Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap
| |
| | first = Cecil B. | last = Currey
| |
| | id = Currey
| |
| | publisher = Brassey's | year = 2005
| |
| | url = http://books.google.com/books?id=ERi3BNd9qN0C&pg=PA172&lpg=PA172&dq=%22Vinh+Yen%22+%22United+States%22&source=web&ots=jvio06fNsc&sig=XrXOyMH4JT70ApNUX3gMMMLlry4&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=8&ct=result#PPA173,M1}}, pp. 172-174</ref>
| |
| ====North Vietnamese political and organizational changes====
| |
| These defeats caused low morale and desertions. Giap's political opponent in the Viet Minh, Truong Chinh, attempted to have him relieved, and Giap survived with humiliation. Giap had learned a valuable lesson.<blockquote>The countryside was to encircle the towns, the mountains were to dominate the rice lands of the plains. <ref>Currey, p. 175</ref>
| |
| </blockquote> He changed to leading the French on futile but costly chases. He encouraged them to defend static positions while he kept mobile, until, in 1954, he could fight a set-piece battle on his terms: Dien Bien Phu.
| |
| | |
| There were other political changes. While the military force continued, informally, to be called Viet Minh, the Viet Minh was formally absorbed into the "National Union of Viet Nam", or Lam Viet.<ref>Patti, p. 425</ref>
| |
| | |
| De Lattre ordered an offensive to take Hoa Binh, with a first phase, Operation Tulipe, on November 10, 1951. General Salan had tactical control of the operation. By November 19, the force had taken Hoa Binh.
| |
| | |
| Giap did not stop his plans for an upcoming attack in the Red River delta, but counterattacked toward Hoa Binh, with the focus on Tu Vu. He took Tu Vu with heavy casualties on both sides.<ref name=HN-HoaBinh /> Using it as a base, he began to reduce French pockets along the Black River, leading to Hoa Binh. The French fell back to the river, with uncomfortable similarities to the site-by-site movement against the norther fort line in October 1950. He also was able to block French river convoys moving to Hoa Binh.<ref>Fall, pp. 53-55</ref>
| |
| | |
| ===1952===
| |
| On February 5, Salan decided to make a fighting withdrawal from Hoa Binh, on the grounds that the troops were needed in the defense of the Red River delta; the retreat was over by the 23rd.<ref>Fall, pp. 59-60</ref> There are suggestions he considered that a strong Delta defense had the chance of producing another [[Battle of Vinh Yen]], where the French were able to mass air power on attacking troops in the open.
| |
| | |
| In April, Salan was named de Lattries' replacement.
| |
| ====Fall and Winter 1952====
| |
| On October 17, 1952, the Communist forces opened a fall offensive with a three-division attack in the T'ai hill country of the North, centering on Nghia-Lo, which anchored the French static defense line in the area.
| |
| | |
| Senior French commanders, remembering the disastrous results to their border forts in 1950, decided to pull back, having one paratroop battalion jump in as a sacrificial rear guard. There had changes on the French side. Salan had held Na San, in October, trying to repeat the Vinh Yen victory with a strongpoint there, but the wiser Communists bypassed it. They took Nghia Loa in October and Dien Bien Phu in November; Dien Bien Phu had earlier been abandoned by the French. <ref name=Chapuis>{{citation
| |
| | id = Chapuis
| |
| | title = The Last Emperors of Vietnam
| |
| | first = Oscar | last = Chapuis
| |
| | publisher = Greenwood Press | year = 2000
| |
| | url = http://books.google.com/books?id=9RorGHF0fGIC&pg=PA166&lpg=PA166&dq=Navarre+1952+OR+1953+Vietnam+OR+Indochina&source=web&ots=U7dDnztiPm&sig=jc3NQt6GiXdbhFxYWruZiC4mtyg&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result#PPA167,M1
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| }} pp. 166</ref>
| |
| | |
| The paratroops held, taking heavy casualties, especially at Tu-Le Pass. The paratroops, in turn, asked a company of irregulars, at Muong-Chen, to hold while they escaped. 16 out of 84 of that unit survived. <ref>Fall, pp. 64-76</ref>
| |
| | |
| A deep counterattack, called Operation Lorraine, was prepared, using the largest French force in any one mission, approximately 30,000 men. Airborne and riverine units again surprised the enemy with their speed, as in Operation Lea in 1947.
| |
| | |
| After another parachute landing and link-up with tanks, in early November, French forces found, at Phu Duan, by no means a major depot new Soviet-built equipment. This included trucks, light through heavy [[mortar]]s, and up-to-date individual weapons. Colonel Dodelier, commanding the operation, pointed out the strength of this secondary depot even after the Viet Minh had impressed local labor to remove all that cound be removed. He reflected "...how large the Viet Minh main depots in Ŷen Bay and Thai Nguyên must be. This certainly sheds a new light on the enemy's future offensive intentions."<ref>Fall, pp. 92-95</ref>
| |
| | |
| Giap had refused battle and continued to hold his Black River postions, and it was realized that Operation Lorraine had taken a position that was of no value. Salan ordered the Lorraine troops to begin a retreat, which began successfully but ran into major ambushes on the 17th. On November 23, Giap counterattacked against Na San, taking two outposts, but 308 Division was repulsed at Na San, with heavy losses. <ref name=Nowfel-Lorraine>{{citation
| |
| | url = http://indochine54.free.fr/ops/lorraine.html
| |
| | title = Op Lorraine, 29th October-8 November : Salan strikes at Giap's supply lines
| |
| | first1 = Nowfel | last1 = Leulliot | first2= Danny | last2 = O'Hara}}</ref> By December 1, the French had destroyed Black River bridges and fallen back, with casualties equalling the strength of a battalion, yet not establishing — Na San was not it — the strongpoint against which the Communists would smash themselves, as they did at the [[Battle of Vinh Yen]]. They were to try once again to establish such a strongpoint, at a place called Dien Bien Phu.<ref>Fall, pp. 103-106</ref>.
| |
| | |
| ===1953===
| |
| In April, having completed their tours of duty, Salan and his key staff officers returned to France.<ref> Chapuis, p. 166</ref> Henri Navarre, a protege of the senior solder of France, Marshal Alphonse Juin, replaced the mortally ill de Lattre on May 28. He had no Asian experience, and there were questions about his choices of staff and subordinates. <ref> Chapuis, pp. 166-167</ref>
| |
| ====Politics====
| |
| The French established [[Bao Dai]], who had called for, in the absence of a legislature, for major political leaders to join in a "National Congress" in Saigon. He thought it might strengthen his hand when he negotiated with the French. Bernard Fall, who attended, wrote: "That National Congress ... became a monumental free-for-all in which nationalists of all hues and shades concentrated on settling long-standing scores and in outbidding each other in extreme demands on the French and on the Vietnamese Government."<ref name=Sorley>{{citation | |
| | title =Courage and Blood: South Vietnam's Repulse of the 1972 Easter Invasion
| |
| | first = Lewis | last = Sorley
| |
| | url = http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/99summer/sorley.htm
| |
| | journal = Parameters
| |
| | date = Summer 1999 }}, p. 15</ref>
| |
| ====French form a "fire brigade"====
| |
| After the end of the [[Korean War]], the French transferred their force to Indochina, the ''Bataillion de Corée'', which had distinguished itself, to Indochina. On November 15, 1953, an reaction force, Groupe Mobile 100 (GM100), was created, with a core of the Korean veterans. <ref>Fall, pp. 185-186</ref>
| |
| ====The Dien Bien Phu strongpoint====
| |
| Navarre, apparently in response to Thai pressure under the Franco-Thai treaty, decided to reoccupy Dien Bien Phu as a step to pacifying the Thai region of Indochina. Paratroopers jumped into Dien Bien Phu on November 20. Navarre also saw it as defending northern Laos, although General Catroux, the head of the subsequent French investigation into the disaster there, said it was quite limited in the area it could dominate.<ref>Fall, p. 315-316</ref> It was harder to understand why the French thought it was a valid strongpoint. Navarre, and Pierre Koenig, a distinguished WWII commander, said that a group of U.S. experts had inspected the location and assured the French that plausible Russian [[anti-aircraft artillery]] could not interfere with its resupply by air, and that French artillery could defeat any Communist artillery in the surrounding hills. Catroux's investigation put special blame on the northern theater commander, Cogny, for not seriously testing the optimistic assumptions. <ref>Fall, p. 318</ref>
| |
| | |
| Giap threatened Lai Chau, in Thailand, in December.<ref> Chapuis, p. 166</ref>
| |
| | |
| ===1954===
| |
| The North Vietnamese began their attack on Dien Bien Phu on March 12, with a force of 50,000 regular troops, 55,000 support troops, and 100,000 transport workers, versus 15,000 French. They had managed, quite beyond French expectation, to put well-protected artillery and air defenses into the surrounding high ground, making air resupply almost impossible. Brigadier General de Castries, commanding Dien Bien Phu, was a paratroop leader, skilled in the offensive but not an expert in dogged defense.
| |
| | |
| By March 15, the French realized that it could not be held, and appealed for U.S. intervention. Admiral [[Arthur Radford]], [[Chairman of the Joint Staff]], [[Military Assistance Command, Vietnam#MAAG-Indochina|recommended]], on five occasions, that the U.S. do so, but neither the other JCS members nor President Eisenhower supported him.
| |
| | |
| When Colonel Piroth, the fortress artillery commander, realized the situation in which his weapons were outclassed, he committed suicide on the night of March 16. When the French Defense Minister and Chief of Staff inspected on February 9, he had refused more equipment, saying he had more than he needed; the French had no idea how much the Vietnamese had emplaced. <ref> Chapuis, p. 166</ref> While Chinese aid, literally carried 350 kilometers, reached 1,500 tons per month, the Viet Minh artillery closed the Dien Bien Phu airfield, the sole source of spply, on March 27.
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|
| |
|
| Dien Bien Phu fell on May 7; the Geneva Conference began the next day.
| | ===Early U.S. noncombat advisory and support roles=== |
| ====GM100 dies====
| |
| GM 100 had had some success in relieving An Khe in April. On June 24, however, GM100 was ambushed and destroyed.<ref>Fall, pp. 209-219</ref> There was a [[#VC campaign in II Corps, 1965|different outcome]] at almost the same spot, in 1965.
| |
| ====War's end====
| |
| Officially, the war ended on July 20. Prisoner exchanges showed an unexpectedly high number of the French captives of the North Vietnamese had died in the prison camps, and that there had been, as in the [[Korean War]], systematic pressure for conversion to the Communist cause.
| |
| ==1954 (post-French)-1956== | |
| {{seealso|Vietnam, war, and the United States }}
| |
| {{seealso|Vietnam War, Buddhist crisis and military coup of 1963}}
| |
| This period was begun by the military defeat of the French, with a Geneva meeting that partitioned Vietnam into North and South. Two provisions of the agreement never took place: a referendum on unification in 1956, and also banned foreign military support and intervention.
| |
|
| |
|
| Also, after the end of French rule, Laos became independent, but with a struggle there among political factions, with neutralists heading the government and a strong Pathet Lao insurgency. Laos, also not to have had foreign military involvement according to the Geneva agreement, quickly had the [[CIA activities in Asia-Pacific#Politics of Laos and the CIA|beginnings of U.S. involvement]] as well as the continuing effects of North Vietnam sponsoring the Pathet Lao.
| | [[Harry S. Truman]], as soon as the [[Second World War]] ended, was under great pressure to return the country to normal civilian conditions, and he demobilised rapidly to release funds for domestic spending. There were no such pressures to demobilize, however, on [[Josef Stalin]] and [[Mao Zedong]]. Truman has been blamed for "losing" Eastern Europe and China, but it is less clear what could have been done to stop it. The decision to cut military commitment came home to roost in the [[Korean War]], when Truman had few forces to dispatch. |
|
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|
| In a section titled "The Viet Minh Residue", the ''Pentagon Papers'' cited a study of 23 Viet Minh who had, according to U.S. analysts, gave consistent stories of being given stay-behind roles by the Viet Minh leadership going north. Some were given political roles, while others were told to await orders. "It is quite clear that even the activists were not instructed to organize units for guerrilla war, but rather to agitate politically for the promised Geneva elections, and the normalization of relations with the North. They drew much reassurance from the presence of the ICC, and up until mid-1956, most held on to the belief that the elections would take place. They were disappointed in two respects: not only were the promised elections not held, but the amnesty which had been assured by the Geneva Settlement was denied them, and they were hounded by the Anti-Communist campaign. After 1956, for the most part, they went "underground.""<ref name=PntV1Ch05Sec0314-346>{{citation
| | From 1955, the U.S. took over the role of training and significantly funding the Southern [[Army of the Republic of Viet Nam]] (ARVN). In 1959, the first U.S. advisers to go into combat in the area were in Laos, not Vietnam. With a negotiated settlement to the Laotian civil war in 1962, U.S. attention shifted to South Vietnam. Communications intercepts in 1959, for example, confirmed the start of the Ho Chi Minh trail and other preparation for large-scale fighting. This information may not have been fully shared with the South Vietnamese, due to security concerns over the intelligence methods used to get the information. |
| | title =The Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, Volume 1
| |
| | contribution = Volume 1, Chapter 4, "U.S. and France in Indochina, 1950-56", Section 3, pp. 314-346
| |
| | url = http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon/pent14.htm}}</ref>
| |
| ===1954===
| |
| [[Ngo Dinh Diem]] arrived in Saigon from France on 25 June 1954. and, with U.S. and French support, was named Premier of the State of Vietnam by Emperor Bao Dai, who had just won French assent to "treaties of independence and association" on 4 June.
| |
|
| |
| The Saigon regime's major campaign that summer for inducing hundreds of thousands of Northerners to migrate to the South reflected a major political problem facing Diem-that of creating a popular base in the South. He was an Annamite, from Central Vietnam (although not the Central Highlands) in the South upon taking power. In seeking political support from Southerners, Diem was severely handicapped by the French postponement until after World War II of active preparations for Vietnamese self-government.
| |
|
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|
| A major task was to create a viable alternative to the Vietminh in areas controlled by the French Army, especially the cities and towns, but also in pockets of the rural areas inhabited by people of the regional or "folk" religions, such as the Cao Dai. The base of this political alternative would be the small Vietnamese upper class which had been raised up by French colonial institutions. The French had already found, however, that this foundation was shaky; it lacked the coherence and strength of a well-established ruling class, and it was engaged in constant squabbling. <ref>Sorley, pp. 14-15</ref>
| | ==Interactions of South Vietnamese & U.S. politics== |
| ====Initial covert operations====
| |
| The initial CIA team in Saigon was the Saigon Military Mission, headed by [[United States Air Force]] Colonel [[Edward Lansdale]], who arrived on 1 June 1954. His [[Clandestine HUMINT operational techniques#Station under Diplomatic Cover| diplomatic cover job]] was Assistant Air Attache. The broad mission for the team was to undertake paramilitary operations against the enemy and to wage political-psychological warfare. <ref name=PPv1D95>{{citation
| |
| | title = Document 95, Lansdale Team's Report on Covert Saigon Mission in 1954 and 1955,
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| | work = The Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, Volume 1
| |
| | pages = 573-83
| |
| | url = http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon/doc95.htm
| |
| }}</ref>
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|
| |
|
| Working in close cooperation with the [[United States Information Agency]] (USIA), a new psychological warfare campaign was devised for the Vietnamese Army and for the government in Hanoi. Shortly after, a refresher course in combat [[information operations|psychological warfare]] was constructed and Vietnamese Army personnel were rushed through it.
| | After the French colonial authority ended, Vietnam was ruled by a nominally civilian government, led by first [[Bao Dai]] and then, from 1954, by [[Ngo Dinh Diem]]; neither were elected. Communist statements frequently spoke of it as a U.S. "puppet" government, although the Northern government had not been elected and had little more claim to democratic legitimacy. Both governments were clients of the different major sides in the [[Cold War]]. |
|
| |
|
| The second SMM member, MAJ [[Lucien Conein]], arrived on July 1. A paramilitary specialist, well-known to the French for his help with French-operated maquis in Tonkin against the Japanese in 1945, he was the one American guerrilla fighter who had not been a member of the Patti Mission. Conein was to have a continuing role, especially in the coup that overthrew Diem in November 1963. In August, Conein was sent to Hanoi, to begin forming a guerilla organization
| | Diem was strongly anti-communist, but authoritarian, and there were increasing protests against his rule. He was a Catholic in a Buddhist-majority country, but gave preference to Catholics. While personally ascetic, he tolerated a serious level of corruption in the government. |
|
| |
|
| A second paramilitary team for the south was formed, with Army LT Edward Williams doing double duty as the only experienced counter-espionage officer, working with revolutionary political groups.
| | ===Effect on military efficiency=== |
|
| |
|
| ====External intelligence analysis====
| | Not only under Diem, appointing officers to the command of military units, and also to posts in the separate hierarchy of district and province chiefs, often were made as political loyalty as the first criterion, possibly bribes or favors at the next, and military proficiency sometimes as a last consideration. Officers were shifted from post to post, in the interest of breaking up potential coup plots. |
| In August, a National Intelligence Estimate, produced by the CIA, predicted that the Communists, legitimized by the Geneva agreement, would take quick control of the North, and plan to take over all of Vietnam. The estimate went on that Diem's government was opposed both by Communist and non-Communist elements. Pro-French factions were seen as preparing to overthrow it, while [[Viet Minh]] would take a longer view. Under command of the north, Viet Minh individuals and small units will stay in the south and create an underground, discredit the government, and undermine French-Vietnamese relations.
| |
| <ref name=NIE 63-5-54>{{citation
| |
| | url = http://www.dni.gov/nic/PDF_GIF_declass_support/vietnam/NIE_63-5-54.pdf
| |
| | title = National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) 63-5-54: Post-Geneva Outlook in Indochina
| |
| | date = 3 August 1954
| |
| | author = Central Intelligence Agency}}</ref>
| |
|
| |
|
| US personnel dealing with the Government of Vietnam had difficulty in understanding the politics. The diplomats were not getting clear information in 1954 and early 1955, but the CIA station "had and has no mandate or mission to perform systematic intelligence and espionage in friendly countries, and so lacks the resources to gather and evaluate the large amounts of information required on political forces, corruption, connections, and so on."
| | In practice, the most powerful military positions were the commanders of the four Corps tactical zones (CTZ), also known as military regions. Even though a CTZ was geographic, and province and district chiefs were usually military officers, the province/district reporting went through the Ministry of the Interior rather than the military Joint General Staff. |
| <ref name=PPv1D95 />
| |
| ===1955===
| |
| By 31 January 1955, a paramilitary group had cached its supplies in Haiphong, having had them shipped by [[Civil Air Transport]], a CIA proprietary airline belonging to the Directorate of Support
| |
| ==1956-1959 (up to North Vietnamese decision to invade)==
| |
| As mentioned above, Viet Minh went underground in 1956, but there was no major decision until 1959. A 1964 interrogation report said "The period from the Armistice of 1954 until 1958 was the darkest time for the VC in South Vietnam. The political agitation policy proposed by the Communist Party could not be carried out due to the arrest of a number of party members by RVN authorities...In 1959 the party combined its political agitation with its military operations, and by the end of 1959 the combined operations were progressing smoothly." Note that this prisoner did not deny there were guerilla operations, but the document does not identify specific acts until 1957.
| |
|
| |
|
| Under the French, the Montagnard tribes of the Central Highlands had had autonomy from the lowland colonial government. In 1956, these areas were absorbed into the Republic of Vietnam, and Diêm moved ethnic Vietnamese, as well as refugees from the North, into "land development centers" in the Central Highlands. Diem intended to assimilate the unwilling tribes, a point of ethnic resentment that was to become one of the many resentments against Diem.<ref name=HRW-RoM-Ch03>{{citation
| | Especially powerful units might, in the interest of interfering with coups, be shifted from one chain of command for another. At the [[Battle of Ap Bac]], for example, the potent [[armored personnel carrier]]s (APC) had been shifted from the operational control of the military commander to that of the province chief. Before the unit commander would commit his resources to battle, at the urging of a U.S. adviser to the [[division (military)|division]] commander, the commanding officer of the APC company had to obtain province chief as well as military approval, significantly increasing the time before this unit could intervene in battle. |
| | title = Repression of Montagnards: Conflicts over Land and Religion in Vietnam's Central Highlands
| |
| | author = Human Rights Watch
| |
| | contribution = III. A History of Resistance to Central Government Control
| |
| | date = April 2002
| |
| | url = http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/vietnam/viet0402-03.htm#TopOfPage}}</ref> These resentments both cost internal support, and certainly were exploited by the Communists.
| |
| ===1957===
| |
| Guerilla attacks reported in 1957 included the killing of a group, not further identified, of 17 people in Chau-Doc in July, 1957. A District chief and his family were killed in September. In October, the clandestine radio of the "National Salvation Movement" began to broadcast support for armed opposition to Diem. Operations appeared to solidify in October, beyond what might have been small group actions:
| |
| <blockquote>In Washington, U.S. intelligence indicated that the "Viet Minh underground" had been directed to conduct additional attacks on U.S. personnel "whenever conditions are favorable." U.S. intelligence also noted a total of 30 armed "terrorist incidents initiated by Communist guerillas" in the last quarter of 1957, as well as a "large number" of incidents carried out by "Communist-lead [sic] Hoa Hao and Cao Dai dissident elements," and reported "at least" 75 civilians or civil officials assassinated or kidnapped in the same period.<ref name=PntV1Ch05Sec01>{{citation
| |
| | title = The Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, Volume 1
| |
| | contribution = Volume 1, Chapter 5, "Origins of the Insurgency in South Vietnam, 1954-1960 Section 1, pp. 242-69
| |
| | url = http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon/pent11.htm}}</ref></blockquote>
| |
|
| |
|
| ===1958=== | | ===Conflicting goals=== |
| Beginning with a plantation raid in January and a truck ambush in Febrary, there was steady guerilla ambushes and raids became more regular in 1958, and of serious concern to the GVN. This intensity level was consistent with Mao's Phase I, "the period of the enemy's strategic offensive and our strategic defensive." <ref name=MaoProtracted>{{citation
| | Vietnamese and U.S. goals were also not always in complete agreement. Until 1969, the U.S.A. was generally anything opposed to any policy, nationalist or not, which might lead to the South Vietnamese becoming neutralist rather than anticommunist. There is evidence that the U.S. supported attempts to replace governments that were considering forming a neutralist coalition that might include the [[National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam]], a communist-dominated opposition. The Cold War [[containment policy]] was in force through the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Administrations, while the Nixon administration supported a more multipolar model of [[detente]]. |
| | url = http://www.marx2mao.com/Mao/PW38.html
| |
| | author = Mao Tse-tung
| |
| | title = On Protracted War
| |
| | work = Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung
| |
| | publisher = Foreign Languages Press
| |
| | year = 1967
| |
| }}, pp. 136-137</ref> Mao's use of "strategic defensive" refers to the guerilla force making its presence known and building its organization, but not attempting to engage military units. George Carver, the principal CIA analyst on Vietnam, said in a ''Foreign Affairs'' article, <blockquote>A pattern of politically motivated terror began to emerge, directed against the representatives of the Saigon government and concentrated on the very bad and the very good. The former were liquidated to win favor with the peasantry; the latter because their effectiveness was a bar to the achievement of Communist objectives. The terror was directed not only against officials but against all whose operations were essential to the functioning of organized political society, school teachers, health workers, agricultural officials, etc. The scale and scope of this terrorist and insurrectionary activity mounted slowly and steadily. By the end of 1958 the participants in this incipient insurgency, whom Saigon quite accurately termed the "Viet Cong," constituted a serious threat to South Viet Nam's political stability"</blockquote>Fall reported that the GVN lost almost 20% of its village chiefs through 1958.<ref name=PntV1Ch05Sec01 />
| |
| ==1959-1964 (up to Gulf of Tonkin incident)==
| |
| To put the situation in a strategic perspective, remember that North and South Vietnam were artificial constructs of the 1954 Geneva agreements. While there had been several regions of Vietnam, when roughly a million northerners, of different religion and ethnicity than in the south, migrated into a population of four to five million, there were identity conflicts. Communism has been called a secular religion, and the North Vietnamese government officials responsible for [[information operations#psychological warfare|psychological warfare]] and prisoner-of-war indoctrination were Military Proselytizing cadre. Communism, for its converts, was an organizing belief system that had no equivalent in the South. At best, the southern leadership intended to have a prosperous nation, although leaders were all too often focused on personal prosperity. Their Communist counterparts, however, had a mission of conversion by the sword — or the [[AK-47]] assault rifle.
| |
|
| |
|
| [[Image:South vietnam ethnic 1972.jpg|thumb|left|Traditional ethnic geography of Vietnam]]
| | While there were still power struggles and internal corruption, there was much more stability between 1967 and 1975. Still, the South Vietnamese government did not enjoy either widespread popular support, or even an enforced social model of a Communist state. It is much easier to disrupt a state without common popular or decision maker goals. |
|
| |
|
| Between the 1954 Geneva accords and 1956, the two countries were still forming; the influence of major powers, especially France and the United States, and to a lesser extent China and the Soviet Union, were as much an influence as any internal matters. There is little question that in 1957-1958, there was a definite early guerilla movement against the Diem government, involving individual assassinations, expropriations, recruiting, shadow government, and other things characteristic of Mao's Phase I. The actual insurgents, however, were primarily native to the south or had been there for some time. While there was clearly communications and perhaps arms supply from the north, there is little evidence of any Northern units in the South, although organizers may well have infiltrated.
| | ===Instability=== |
| | The association of the U.S. with the RVN government, however, was sufficiently strong that instability there both reflected adversely on the U.S. role, and seen as interfering with the fight against Communism. While Diem ruled between 1954 and 1963; there followed a period of frequent changes of government, some lasting only weeks, between 1964 and 1967, until moderate stability came in 1967. |
|
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|
| It is now confirmed that North Vietnam made a firm commitment, May 1959, to war in the South. Diem, well before that point, had constantly pushed a generic anticommunism, but how much of this was considered a real threat, and how much a nucleus around which he justified his controls, is less clear. Those controls, and the shutdown of most indigenous opposition by 1959, was clearly alienating the Diem government from significant parts of the Southern population, was massively mismanaging rural reforms and overemphasizing the power base in the cities, and might have had an independent rebellion. North Vietnam, however, clearly began to exploit that alienation. The U.S., however, did not recognize a significant threat, even with such information as intelligence on the formation of the logistics structure for infiltration. The presentation of hard evidence — [[communications intelligence]] about the organization building the Ho Chi Minh trail — Hanoi's involvement in the developing strife became evident. Not until 1960, however, did the U.S. recognize both Diem was in danger, that the Diem structure was inadequate to deal with the problems, and present the first "Counterinsurgency Plan for Vietnam (CIP)"
| | Protests generally called the [[Buddhist crisis of 1963]], which also involved other Vietnamese sects, such as the [[Cao Dai]] and [[Hoa Hao]], were a major disruption by June. These protests were seen by the U.S. as strengthening the Communist insurgency, and, after rejecting earlier initiatives for a military coup, agreed that Diem had to go. |
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| It can be established that there was endemic insurgency in South Vietnam throughout the period 1954-1960. It can also be established-but less surely- that the Diem regime alienated itself from one after another of those elements within Vietnam which might have offered it political support, and was grievously at fault in its rural programs. That these conditions engendered animosity toward the GVN seems almost certain, and they could have underwritten a major resistance movement even without North Vietnamese help.
| | In November 1963, Diem was overthrown and killed in a military coup. The United States was aware of the coup preparations and, through CIA officer [[Lucien Conein]], had given limited financial support to the generals involved. There is no evidence that the U.S. expected Diem, and his brother and closest political adviser, [[Ngo Dinh Nhu]] to be killed; U.S. Ambassador [[Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.]] had offered him physical protection. |
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| There is little doubt that there was some kind of Viet Minh-derived "stay behind" organization betweeen 1954 and 1960, but it is unclear that they were directed to take over action until 1957 or later. Before that, they were unquestionably recruiting and building infrastructure, a basic first step in a Maoist protracted war mode.
| | The leaders of the November coup were replaced by a nominal civilian government really under military control, which was overthrown by yet another military coup (involving some of the same generals) in January 1964. |
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|
| While the visible guerilla incidents increased gradually, the key policy decisions by the North were made in 1959. Early in this period, there was a greater degree of conflict in Laos than in South Vietnam. U.S. combat involvement was, at first, greater in Laos, but the activity of advisors, and increasingly U.S. direct support to South Vietnamese soldiers, increased, under U.S. military authority, in late 1959 and early 1960. Communications intercepts in 1959, for example, confirmed the start of the Ho Chi Minh trail and other preparation for large-scale fighting.
| | Between 1964 and 1967 there was a constant struggle for power in South Vietnam, and not just from within the military. Several Buddhist and other factions often derived from religious sects, which became involved in the jockeying for political power, such as the [[Cao Dai]] and [[Hoa Hao]]. Even the [[Vietnamese Buddhism|Vietnamese Buddhists]] were not monolithic, and had their own internal struggles. At varying times, sects, organized crime syndicates such as the [[Binh Xuyen]], and individual provincial leaders had paramilitary groups that affected the political process; while the [[Montagnard]] ethnic groups wanted autonomy for their region. [[William Colby]] (then chief of the [[Central Intelligence Agency]]'s , Far Eastern Division in the operational directorate) observed that civilian politicians "divided and sub-divided into a tangle of contesting ambitions and claims and claims to power and participation in the government." <ref>William Colby, ''Lost Victory'', 1989, p. 173, quoted in McMaster, p. 165</ref> Some of these factions sought political power or wealth, while others sought to avoid domination by other groups (Catholic vs Buddhist in the Diem Coup). |
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| Guerilla attacks increased in the early 1960s, at the same time as the new [[John F. Kennedy]] administration made Presidential decisions to increase its influence. Diem, as other powers were deciding their policies, was clearly facing disorganized attacks and internal political dissent. There were unquestioned conflicts between the government, dominated by minority Northern Catholics, and both the majority Buddhists and minorities such as the Montagnards, Cao Dai, and Hoa Hao. These conflicts were exploited, initially at the level of propaganda and recruiting, by stay-behind Viet Minh receiving orders from the North.
| | After a period of overt military government, there was a gradual transition to at least the appearance of democratic government, but South Vietnam neither developed a true popular government, nor rooted out the corruption that caused a lack of support. |
| ===Republic of Vietnam strategy===
| |
| Quite separate from its internal problems, South Vietnam faced an unusual military challenge. On the one hand, there was a threat of a conventional, cross-border strike from the North, reminiscent of the [[Korean War]]. In the fifties, the U.S. advisors focused on building a "mirror image" of the [[U.S. Army]], designed to meet and defeat a conventional invasion. <ref name=PntV1Ch05Sec0314-346>{{citation
| |
| | title =The Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, Volume 2
| |
| | contribution = Chapter 6, "The Advisory Build-Up, 1961-1967," Section 1, pp. 408-457
| |
| | url = http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon2/pent11.htm}}</ref>
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| Diem (and his successors) were primarily interested in using the ARVN as a device to secure power, rather than as a tool to unify the nation and defeat its enemies. Province and District Chiefs in the rural areas were usually military officers, but reported to political leadership in Saigon rather than the military operational chain of command. The 1960 "Counterinsurgency Plan for Vietnam (CIP)" from the U.S. MAAG was a proposal to change this dysfunctional structure. <ref name=PntV1Ch05Sec0314-346 />
| | ==Covert operations== |
| | Well before the Gulf of Tonkin and overt operations, there were a number of covert operations, some ostensibly with U.S. advisers to South Vietnamese crews, and some, especially in Laos, of which no public announcement was made. Certain of these operations became public in postwar historical analyses, official announcements at the time, or press reporting that eventually was confirmed. |
| | ===US activity before independence=== |
| | Still, there was U.S. activity in [[Southeast Asia]], which grew out of covert operations directed more at China. In August 1950, the CIA bought the assets of [[Civil Air Transport]] (CAT), an airline founded after the [[Second World War]] by Gen. Claire L. Chennault and Whiting Willauer. While CAT continued commercial operations, it acted as a CIA "proprietary", or covert support organization under commercial cover. CAT aircraft, for example, dropped personnel and supplies over mainland China during the [[Korean War]].<ref name=Leary>{{citation |
| | | title = CIA Air Operations in Laos, 1955-1974, Supporting the "Secret War" |
| | | author = William M. Leary |
| | | journal = Studies in Intelligence |
| | | url = https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/winter99-00/art7.html |
| | | date = Winter 1999-2000 |
| | | publisher = [[Central Intelligence Agency]]}}</ref> CAT later became part of [[Air America]]. |
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| ===Communist strategy===
| | When [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]] succeeded Truman as President in 1952, after a campaign that had attacked Truman's "weaknesses" against communism and in Korea, he formulated a strong policy of containing Communism. There was much sensitivity over "softness" exemplified by the excesses of Senator [[Joe McCarthy]]. While the Eisenhower Administration avoided becoming too enmeshed in the French problem of the [[Indochinese revolution]], airlift was provided by CAT pilots. [[United States Air Force]] [[C-119 Flying Boxcar]] transports, repainted with French insignia. CAT trained the crews at Clark Air Force base in the Philippines, and then flew the aircraft to [[Gia Lam Airport]] in [[Hanoi]]. They made airdrops to French forces in Laos between May and July. Eventually, CAT flew logistics missions to [[Dien Bien Phu]], in March to May 1954; one aircraft was shot down and others damaged. |
| The North had clearly defined political objectives, and a grand strategy, involving military, diplomatic, covert action and psychological operations to achieve those objectives. Whether or not one agreed with those objectives, there was a clear relationship between long-term goals and short-term actions. Its military first focused on guerilla and raid warfare in the south (i.e., Mao's "Phase I"), simultaneously improving the air defensives of the north. By the mid-sixties, they were operating in [[battalion]] and larger military formation that would remain in contact as long as the correlation of forces was to their advantage, and then retreat &mdash Mao's "Phase II".
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| Eventually, following the Maoist doctrine of protracted war, the final "Phase III" offensive was by conventional forces, the sort that the U.S. had tried to build a defense against when the threat was from guerrillas. [[T-54]] [[tank (military)|tank]]s that broke down the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon were not driven by ragged guerrillas.
| | ===Laos=== |
| | After France left the region, the Royal Lao Government (RLG) quietly asked the United States to replace the former French funding of the Lao military, and to add military technical aid from the increasingly active Communist insurgency, the Pathet Lao. This assistance started in January 1955, directed by a new part of the Embassy, with the nondescript name Program Evaluation Office (PEO). At first, the PEO simply dispensed funds, but took on a much larger role in 1959. |
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|
| In the Viet Cong, and in the North Vietnam regular army ([[PAVN]]), every unit had political officers, or Proselytizing Cadre. The Viet Cong had many unwilling draftees of its own; tens of thousands deserted to the government, which promised them protection. The Viet Cong executed deserters if it could, and threatened their families, all the while closely monitoring the ranks for any sign of defeatism or deviation from the party line.<ref> Pike, ''PAVN'' (1986)</ref>
| | When the first direct military assistance began in July 1959, the PEO was operated by the U.S. [[Central Intelligence Agency]] using military personnel acting as civilians. <ref name=Haas>{{cite web |
| ===1959===
| | | url = http://aupress.au.af.mil/Books/Haas/Haas.pdf |
| Diem,in early 1959, felt under attack and broadly reacted against all forms of opposition, which was presented as a "Communist Denunciation Campaign", as well as some significant and unwelcome rural resettlement, the latter to be distinguished from land reform.
| | | title = Apollo’s Warriors: US Air Force Special Operations during the Cold War |
| ====Increased activity in Laos====
| | | author = Haas, Michael E. |
| In May, the North Vietnamese made the commitment to an armed overthrow of the South, creating the 559th Transportation Group, named after the creation date, to operate the land route that became known as the [[Ho Chi Minh Trail]]. Additional transportation groups were created for maritime supply to the South: Group 759 ran sea-based operations, while Group 959 supplied the Pathet Lao by land routes. <ref name=Goscha2002>{{citation
| | | publisher = Air University Press |
| | first1 = Christopher E. | last1 = Goscha
| | | year = 1997 |
| | title = The Maritime Nature of the Wars for Vietnam (1945-75)
| | }}, p. 165</ref> CIA sent a unit from [[United States Army Special Forces]], who arrived on the CIA proprietary airline [[Air America]], wearing civilian clothes and having no obvious US connection. These soldiers led [[Meo]] and [[Hmong people#The "Secret War"|Hmong]] tribesmen against Communist forces. The covert program was called [[Operation Hotfoot]]. At the US Embassy, BG John Heintges was designated the head of the PEO. <ref name=>{{cite web |
| | url = http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/vietnamcenter/events/2002_Symposium/2002Papers_files/goscha.htm | |
| | date = April 2002
| |
| | conference = 4th Triennial Vietnam Symposium, Texas Tech University Vietnam Center}}</ref>. Group 959 also provided secure communications to the Pathet Lao. <ref name=NSAVN-3>{{citation
| |
| | chapter = Chapter 3 - "To Die in the South": SIGINT, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and the Infiltration Problem, [Deleted] 1968
| |
| | title = Spartans in Darkness: American SIGINT and the Indochina War, 1945-1975 | |
| | first1 = Robert J. | last1 =Hanyok | |
| | publisher = Center for Cryptologic History, National Security Agency | |
| | year = 2002 | |
| | url = http://www.fas.org/irp/nsa/spartans/chapter3.pdf }}</ref>
| |
| | |
| The Pathet Lao both were operating against the Laotian government, but also working with NVA Group 959 to supply the southern insurgency; much of the original Trail was in Laos, first supplying the Pathet Lao. Nevertheless. the Laotian government did not want it known that it was being assisted by the US in the [[Laotian Civil War]] against the [[Pathet Lao]]. U.S. military assistance could also be considered a violation of the Geneva agreement, although North Vietnam, and its suppliers, were equally in violation.
| |
| | |
| In July, CIA sent a unit from [[United States Army Special Forces]], who arrived on CIA proprietary airline [[Air America]], wearing civilian clothes and having no obvious US connection. These soldiers led [[Meo]] and [[Hmong people#The "Secret War"|Hmong]] tribesmen against Communist forces. The covert program was called [[Operation Hotfoot]]. At the US Embassy, BG John Heintges was called the head of the "Program Evaluation Office."<ref name=>{{cite web
| |
| | url = http://cgsc.cdmhost.com/cgi-bin/showfile.exe?CISOROOT=/p4013coll2&CISOPTR=979&filename=980.pdf | | | url = http://cgsc.cdmhost.com/cgi-bin/showfile.exe?CISOROOT=/p4013coll2&CISOPTR=979&filename=980.pdf |
| | title=Seminole Negro Indians, Macabebes, and Civilian Irregulars: Models for the Future Employment of Indigenous Forces | | | title=Seminole Negro Indians, Macabebes, and Civilian Irregulars: Models for the Future Employment of Indigenous Forces |
Line 507: |
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| }}</ref> | | }}</ref> |
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| CIA directed Air America, in August 1959, to train two helicopter pilots. Originally, this was believed to be a short-term requirement, but "this would be the beginning of a major rotary-wing operation in Laos.
| | In April 1961, [[Chief of Staff of the Air Force]] [[Curtis LeMay]]’s began to approve certain covert operations, such as JUNGLE JIM. He denied them to the press. They were, however, a response to President Kennedy's challenge for the military to develop a force capable of fighting the “Communist |
| ====Escalation and respons in the South====
| | revolutionary warfare”, regarded as proxy wars for the U.S. and Soviet Union. One of the first to |
| Cause and effect are unclear, but it is also accurate that the individual and small group actions, by the latter part of 1959, included raids by irregulars in battalion strength.
| | respond to the call for combat control volunteers<ref>Haas, pp. 212-214, 221-224</ref> |
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|
| Vietnam was a significant part of the agenda of the U.S. Pacific commanders' conference in April. Lieutenant General Samuel T. Williams, chief of the U.S. Militiary Assistance Advisory Group, Vietnam,<ref name=Collins1974-Ch01>{{citation
| | ===CIA, MACV-SOG and OPPLAN34A=== |
| | contribution = Chapter I: The Formative Years, 1950-1959
| | John F. Kennedy approved, on May 11, 1961, a [[Central Intelligence Agency]] plan for covert operations against North Vietnam. These included ground, air, and naval operations. Eventually, the operations were transferred to officially military control, in a unit, [[MACV-SOG]], principally reporting to MACV but with an approval chain that often ran to the White House. |
| | title = Vietnam Studies: The Development and Training of the South Vietnamese Army, 1950-1972
| |
| | first = James Lawton, Jr. | last = Collins
| |
| | url = http://www.history.army.mil/books/Vietnam/devtrainrvn/ch1.htm}}, p. 16</ref> cited the key concerns as:
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| *absence of a national plan for control of the situation
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| *no rotation of military units in the field
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| *the need for a central surveillance plan
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| *the proliferation of Ranger-type counterinsurgency units without central direction and without a civil-military contetx
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| *inadequate intelligence
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| *inadequate military communications
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| *lack of centralized direction of the war effort.
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|
| LTG Williams pointed to the dual chain of command of the ARVN, as distinct from the Civil Guard. The latter was commanded by the Department of the Interior, and controlled by province and district chiefs. This structure let the U.S. Operations Mission (USOM, the contemporary term for non-military foreign aid from the [[Agency for International Development]] financially aid the Guard, they were so dispersed that there could be no systematic advice, much less to the combination of Guard and Army. <ref name=Collins1974-Ch02>{{citation
| | CIA naval operations, under Tucker Gougelmann, in 1961,<ref name=Shultz>{{citation| |
| | contribution = Chapter II: The Crucial Years, 1960-1964
| |
| | title = Vietnam Studies: The Development and Training of the South Vietnamese Army, 1950-1972
| |
| | first = James Lawton, Jr. | last = Collins
| |
| | url = http://www.history.army.mil/books/Vietnam/devtrainrvn/ch2.htm}}, pp. 17-18</ref>
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| | |
| Under the authority of the commander of [[United States Pacific Command]], it was ordered that [[Military Assistance Advisory Group|Military Assistance Advisory Group, Vietnam (MAAG-V)]] assign advisors to the infantry regiment and special troops regiment level, who were not to participate directly in combat. advisers be provided down to infantry regiment and to artillery, armored, and separate Marine battalion level. This move would enable advisers to give on-the-spot advice and effectively assess the end result of the advisory effort. He also requested [[United States Army Special Forces]] (SF) mobile training teams (MTT) to assist in training ARVN units in [[counterinsurgency]].
| |
| | |
| ====Structural barriers to effectiveness of RVN forces====
| |
| When the MAAG was instructed to improve the effectiveness of the RVN, the most fundamental problem was that the Diem government had organized the military and paramilitary forces not for effectiveness, but for political control and patronage. The most obvious manifestation of Diem's goal was that there were two parallel organizations, the regular military under the Department of National Defense and the local defense forces under the Ministry of the Interior. Diem was the only person who could give orders to both.
| |
| =====Command and control=====
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| President Diem appointed the Secretary of State for National Defense and the Minister of the Interior. The Defense Secretary directed of General Staff chief and several special sub-departments. The General staff chief, in turn, commanded the Joint General Staff (JGS), which was both the top-level staff and the top of the military chain of command.
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| There were problems with the military structure, even before considering the paramilitary forces under the Interior Ministry. The JGS itself had conflicting components with no clear authority. For example, support for the Air Force came both from a Director of Air Technical Service and a Deputy Chief of Air Staff for Matériel. The Director was, in principle, under the Chief of Staff., but actually reported to the Director General of Administration, Budget, and Comptroller for fiscal matters).
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| Combat units also had conflicting chains of command. A division commander might receive orders both from the corps-level tactical commander who actually carried out the [[operational art]] role of [[corps]] commanders in most militaries, but also from the regional commander of the home base of the division — even if the division was operating in another area. The chiefs of branches of service (e.g., [[infantry]], [[artillery]]), who in most armies were responsible only for preparation and training of personnel of their branch, and orders only before they were deployed, would give direct operational orders to units in the field.
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| | |
| Diem himself, who had no significant military background, could be the worst micromanager of all, getting on a radio in the garden of the Presidential Palace, and issuing orders to regiments, bypassing the Department of National Defense, Joint General Staff, operational commanders, and division commanders. In fairness to Diem, [[Lyndon Johnson]] and his political advisors would do detailed air operations planning for attacks in the North, with no input from experienced air officers. [[Henry Kissinger]], in the ''Mayaguez'' incident, got onto the tactical radio net and confused the local commanders with German-accented and obscure commands. Of course, Johnson and Kissinger had more military experience than Diem; Johnson had briefly worn a Navy uniform on an inspection trip before returning to Congress, and Kissinger lectured on politics at the end of WWII and the start of the Occupation, with a high status but an actual rank of Private, United States Army.
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| "The Department of National Defense and most of the central organizations and the ministerial services were located in downtown Saigon, while the General Staff (less air and navy elements) was inefficiently located in a series of company-size troop barracks on the edge of the city. The chief of the General Staff was thus removed several miles from the Department of National Defense. The navy and air staffs were also separately located in downtown Saigon. With such a physical layout, staff action and decision-making unduly delayed on even the simplest of matters.
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| "The over-all ministerial structure described above was originally set up by the French and slightly modified by presidential decree on 3 October 1957. Military Assistance Advisory Group, Vietnam, had proposed a different command structure which would have placed the ministry and the "general staff" in closer proximity both physically and in command relationship. But the proposal was not accepted by President Diem, perhaps because he wished to continue to maintain a division of power and prevent any one individual--other than himself--from having too much authority. Thus, during the period in question, the existing system was accepted by the advisory group which, in turn, served as lubrication for its more delicate components.
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| | |
| The chain of command of both the Civil Guard and Self-Defense Corps, went from the Ministry of the Interior to the province chiefs, district chiefs, and village councils. Even though the province chiefs and district chiefs were often military officers, ARVN units operating in a province or district could not give orders to these units. Instead, they had to pass a request through military channels to the Ministry of Defense in Saigon. If the officials there agreed, they would convey the request to their counterparts in the Ministry of the Interior, who would then send orders down its chain of command to the local units.
| |
| =====Regular military=====
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| *Three corps headquarters and a special military district:<ref>Collins, pp. 9-10</ref>
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| **I Corps at [[Da Nang]] for the northern and central areas; the Central Highlands were separate
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| **II Corps at [[Pleiku]] for the Central Highlands provinces
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| **III Corps at [[Ho Chi Minh City|Saigon]] for the southern part of the country
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| **Saigon city special military district.
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| *Seven divisions of 10,450 men
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| **three infantry regiments
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| **artillery battalion
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| **mortar battalion
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| **engineer battalion
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| **company-size support elements
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| *Airborne group of five battalion groups
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| *four armored cavalry "regiments" (approximately the equivalent of a U.S. Army cavalry squadron)
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| **one squadron (U.S. troop) of M24 light tanks
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| **two squadrons of M8 self-propelled 75-mm. howitzers
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| *Eight independent artillery battalions with U.S. 105-mm, and 155-mm. pieces.
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| =====Local defense forces=====
| |
| Created by presidential decree in April 1955, and originally under the direct control of President Diem, with control passed to the Ministry of the Interior in September 1958, the Civil Guard was made up of wartime paramilitary veterans. Its major duty was to relieve the ARVN of static security missions, freeing it for mobile operations, with additional responsibility for local intelligence collection and [[counterintelligence]]. in 1956, had 68,000 men organized into rganized into companies and platoons, the Civil Guard was represented by two to eight companies in each province. It had a centrally controlled reserve of eight mobile battalions of 500 men each, .
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| | |
| Operating on a local basis since 1955 and formally created in 1956, the Self-Defense corps was a village-level police organization, for protection against intimidation and subversion. It put units of 4-10 men into villages of 1,000 or more residents. In 1956, it had 48,000 non-uniformed troops armed with French weapons. The Self-Defense Corps, like the Civil Guard, was established to free regular forces from internal security duties by providing a police organization at village level to protect the population from subversion and intimidation. Units of four to ten men each were organized in villages of 1,000 or more inhabitants.
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| | |
| The Civil Guard and the Self-Defense Corps were poorly trained and ill-equipped to perform their missions, and by 1959 their numbers had declined to about 46,000 and 40,000, respectively.
| |
| ===1960===
| |
| As mentioned in the introduction to this section, the U.S. was urging the RVN to revise its parallel province/district command and military operations command structure; the Counterinsurgency Plan (CIP) was the first of several such proposals.
| |
| ====Laotian operations====
| |
| After the 180 day assignment of the Special Forces personnel in Laos, the name changed to Operation White Star, under COL [[Arthur Simons|Arthur "Bull" Simons]].
| |
| ====Beginning of Phase II raids====
| |
| On 25 January 1960, a Communist force of 300 to 500 men escalated with a direct raid on an ARVN base at Tay Ninh, killing 23 soldiers and taking large quantities of munitions. Four days later, a guerilla group seized a town for several hours, and stole cash from a French citizen. These were still in the first Maoist stage, as raids rather than hit-and-run battles. Still, larger guerilla forces broke lines of communications within areas of South Vietnam.
| |
| | |
| There was uncertainty, expressed by Bernard Fall and in a March U.S. intelligence assessment, that there were distinct plans to conduct larger-scale operations "under the flag of the People's Liberation Movement," which was identified as "red, with a blue star." It was uncertain if their intent was to continue to build bases in the Mekong Delta, or to isolate Saigon. The ''Pentagon Papers'' stated the guerillas were establishing three options, of which they could exercise one or more;
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| # incite an ARVN revolt
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| #set up a popular front government in the lower Delta
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| #force the GVN into such repressive countermeasures that popular uprisings will follow.
| |
| ====Formation of the NLF====
| |
| In December, the [[National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam]] (NLF) formally declared its existence, although it did not hold its first full congress until 1962.
| |
| | |
| The NLF platform recognized some of the internal stresses under the Diem government, and put language in its platform to create autonomous regions in minority areas and for the abolition of the "U.S.-Diêm clique's present policy of ill-treatment and forced assimilation of the minority nationalities". <ref name=HRW-RoM-Ch03 /> Such zones, with a sense of identity although certainly not political autonomy, did exist in the North. In the early 60s, NLF political organizers went to the Montagnard ares in the Central Highlands, and worked both to increase alienation from the GVN and directly recruit supporters.
| |
| ===1961===
| |
| Not surprisingly, with a change in U.S. administration, there were changes in policy, and also continuations of some existing activities. There were changes in outlook. Kennedy was unquestionably anti-Communist, but his administration did not treat it as the existential crusade that Eisenhower's [[secretary of state]], [[John Foster Dulles]], had waged.
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| | |
| Defense Secretary [[Robert S. McNamara]] (in office 1961-68) told President [[John F. Kennedy]] (in office 1961-63) in 1961 it was "absurd to think that a nation of 20 million people can be subverted by 15-20 thousand active guerrillas if the government and the people of that country do not wish to be subverted."<ref> Rusk/McNamara memorandum.Nov. 11, 1961, [http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon2/pent3.htm online at ''Pentagon Papers'']</ref> McNamara, a manufacturing executive and expert in statistical management, had no background in [[guerilla warfare]] or other than Western culture, and rejected advice from area specialists and military officers. He preferred to consult with his personal team, often called the "Whiz Kids"; his key foreign policy advisor was a law professor, John McNaughton, while economist Alain Enthoven was perhaps his closest colleague.
| |
| | |
| Still trying to resolve the problems of GVN conflicting command, a new reorganizational proposal, the "Geographically Phased Plan". The goal was to have a coherent national plan, which was, in 1962, to be expressed as the Strategic Hamlet Program.
| |
| ====Kennedy pushes for covert operations against the North====
| |
| On January 28, 1961, shortly after his inauguration, John F. Kennedy told a [[National Security Council]] meeting that he wanted covert operations launched against North Vietnam, in retaliation for their equivalent actions in the South.<ref name=Shultz>{{citation|
| |
| title = the Secret War against Hanoi: the untold story of spies, saboteurs, and covert warriors in North Vietnam | | title = the Secret War against Hanoi: the untold story of spies, saboteurs, and covert warriors in North Vietnam |
| | first = Richard H., Jr. | last = Shultz | | | first = Richard H., Jr. | last = Shultz |
| | publisher = Harper Collins Perennial | year = 2000}}, p. 3</ref>. This is not argue that this was an inappropriate decision, but the existence of covert operations against the North, has to be understood in analyzing later events, especially the [[Gulf of Tonkin incident]]. | | | publisher = Harper Collins Perennial | year = 2000}}, p. 18</ref> starting with motorized junks. The first [[fast attack craft|motor torpedo boats]] were transferred to CIA in October 1962. At the end of 1962, raids began. |
|
| |
|
| Even earlier, he issued National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 2, directing the military to prepare counterinsurgency forces, although not yet targeting the North. <ref name=Whitcomb2005>{{citation
| | They received their improved Norwegian Nasty-class boats in 1963.<ref>Shultz, p. 176</ref> These more sophisticated craft were crewed by Norwegian and German mercenaries as well as South Vietnamese; U.S. Navy SEALs conducted the training in Danang. |
| | date = December 2005
| | |
| | volume = 88
| | MACV-SOG was formed in January 1964, and took over the "modest" CIA maritime operation, based in [[Danang]], now given the cover name Naval Advisory Detachment, actually branch OP37 of MACV-SOG. The attacks, under the command of MACV-SOG, were actually carried out by the Coastal Security Service of the RVN [[Strategic Technical Directorate]]. |
| | issue = 12
| |
| | title=Farm Gate: In 1961, the Air Force took its first step into a very long war.
| |
| | first = Darrel | last = Whitcomb | journal = Air Force Magazine
| |
| | url = http://www.afa.org/magazine/Dec2005/1205farmgate.html}}</ref>
| |
| | |
| Kennedy discovered that little had progressed by mid-March, and issued National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 28, ordering the CIA respond to his desire to launch guerilla operations against the North. Herb Weisshart, deputy chief of the Saigon CIA station, observed the actual CIA action plan was "very modest". Given the Presidential priority, Weisshart said it was modest because [[Director of Central Intelligence#William Colby|William Colby]], then Saigon station chief, said it would consume too many resources needed in the South. He further directed, in April, a presidential task force to draft a "Program of Action for Vietnam".
| |
| | |
| In April, the [[Bay of Pigs]] invasion of Cuba, under the CIA, had failed, and Kennedy lost confidence in the CIA's paramilitary opeations. Kennedy himself had some responsibility for largely cutting the [[Joint Chiefs of Staff]] out of operational planning. The JCS believed the operation was ill-advised, but, if it was to be done, American air support was absolutely essential. Kennedy, however, had made a number of changes to create [[plausible deniability]], only allowing limited air strikes by CIA-sponsored pilots acting as Cuban dissidents. After it was learned that the main strike had left behind a few jet aircraft, he refused a followup strike; those aircraft savaged the poorly organized amphibious ships and their propeller-driven air support.
| |
| | |
| The [[U.S. Air Force]], however, responded to NSAM 2 by creating, on April 14, 1961, the 4400th Combat Crew Training Squadron (CCTS), code named “Jungle Jim.” The unit, of about 350 men, had 16 [[C-47]] transports, eight [[B-26]] bombers, and eight [[T-28]] trainers (equipped for ground attack), wih an official of training indigenous air forces in counterinsurgency and conduct air operations. A volunteer unit, they would deploy in October, to begin FARM GATE missions.
| |
| | |
| The task force reported back in May, with a glum assessment of the situation in the South, and a wide-ranging but general plan of action, which becam NSAM 52. In June, Kennedy issued a set of NSAMs transferring paramilitary operations to the Department of Defense. <ref>Shultz 2000, pp. 17-23</ref>. These transfers of responsibility should be considered not only in respect to the specific operations against the North, but in the level of covert military operation in the South in the upcoming months. This transfer also cut the experienced MG [[Edward Lansdale]] out of the process, as while he was an [[U.S. Air Force]] officer, the military saw him as belonging to CIA.
| |
| ====Intelligence support====
| |
| Also in May, the first U.S. [[signals intelligence]] unit, from the Army Security Agency under [[National Security Agency]] control, the unit, operating under the cover name of the 3rd Radio Research Unit. Organizationally, it provided support to MAAG-V, and trained ARVN personnel, the latter within security constraints. The general policy, throughout the war, was that ARVN intelligence personnel were not given access above the [[compartmented security system|Collateral information#collateral SECRET]] (i.e., with no access to material with the additional restrictions of "[[communications intelligence]] channels only (CCO or SI)".
| |
| | |
| Their principal initial responsibility was [[direction finding]] of Viet Cong [[radio]] transmitters, which they started doing from vehicles equipped with sensors. On December 22, 1961, an Army Security Agency soldier, SP4 James T. Davis, was killed in an ambush, the first American soldier to die in Vietnam.
| |
| ====Covert U.S. air support enters the South====
| |
| More U.S. personnel, officially designated as advisors, arrived in the South and took an increasingly active, although covert, role. In October, a [[U.S. Air Force]] special operations squadron,, part of the 4400th CCTS deployed to SVN, officially in a role of advising and training. The aircraft were painted in South Vietnamese colors, and the aircrew wore uniforms without insignia and without U.S. ID. Sending military forces to South Vietnam was a violation of the Geneva Accords of 1954, and the U.S. wanted [[plausible deniability]].
| |
| | |
| The deployment package consisted of 155 airmen, eight T-28s, and four modified and redesignated SC-47s and subsequently received B-26s. U.S. personnel flew combat as long as a VNAF person was aboard. FARMGATE stayed covert until after the [[Gulf of Tonkin incident]].<ref name=Whitcomb2005 />
| |
| ====Building the South Vietnamese Civil Irregular Defense Groups====
| |
| Under the operational control of the [[Central Intelligence Agency]],<ref name=McClintock2002Ch09>{{citation
| |
| | title = Instruments of Statecraft: U.S. Guerilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency, and Counterterrorism, 1940-1990
| |
| | contribution = Chapter 9, The Heart of Doctrine
| |
| | url = http://www.statecraft.org/chapter9.html
| |
| | year = 2002
| |
| | first = Michael | last = McClintock
| |
| | publisher = Pantheon Books, Division of Random House
| |
| }}</ref> initial [[U.S. Army Special Forces]] involvement came in October, with the Rhade. <ref name=Kelly1973>{{citation
| |
| | title = Vietnam Studies: U.S. Army Special Forces 1961-1971
| |
| | id = CMH Publication 90-23
| |
| | publisher = Center for Military History, Department of the Army
| |
| | year = 1973
| |
| | url = http://www.history.army.mil/books/Vietnam/90-23/90-23C.htm
| |
| | first = Francis John | last = Kelly}}, p. 4</ref> The Civilian Irregular Defense Groups (CIDG), were under [[Central Intelligence Agency]] operational control until July 1, 1963, when MACV took control. <ref>Collins 1974, p. 70</ref>. Army documents refer to control by "CAS Saigon", a cover name for the CIA station. According to Kelly, the SF and CIA rationale for establishing the CIDG program with the Montagnards was that minority participation would broaden the GVN counterinsurgency program, but, more critically,
| |
| <blockquote>the Montagnards and other minority groups were prime targets for Communist propaganda, partly because of their dissatisfaction with the Vietnamese government, and it was important to prevent the Viet Cong from recruiting them and taking complete control of their large and strategic land holdings.<ref>Kelly 1974, p. 19</ref></blockquote>
| |
| | |
| It was in mid-November when Kennedy decided to take on operational as well as advisory roles. Under U.S. [[U.S. foreign military assistance organizations#doctrine for assisting other countries|a Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG)]], such as the senior U.S. military organization in Vietnam, is a support and advisory organization. A Military Assistance Command (MAC) is designed to carry out MAAG duties, but also to command combat troops. <ref name=Eckhardt>{{citation
| |
| | title = Vietnam Studies: Command and Control 1950-1969
| |
| | first = George S. | last = Eckhardt
| |
| | publisher = Center for Military History, U.S. Department of the Army | year = 1991
| |
| | url = http://www.history.army.mil/books/Vietnam/Comm-Control/index.htm#contents}}, p. 25</ref>. There was considerable discussion about the reporting structure of this of the organization: a separate theater reporting to the [[National Command Authority]] or part of [[United States Pacific Command]].
| |
| ====First Honolulu Conference====
| |
| After meetings in Vietnam by GEN Taylor, the Secretaries of State and Defense issued a set of recommendations, on November 11. <ref name=RuskMac>{{citation
| |
| | title = United States National Interests in South Viet-Nam; report to the President
| |
| | first1 = Dean | last1 = Rusk |first2 = Robert | last2 = McNamara
| |
| | date = November 11, 1961
| |
| | url = http://vietnam.vassar.edu/doc7.html}}</ref> Kenbnedy accepted all except the use of large U.S. combat forces.
| |
| | |
| McNamara held the first Honolulu Conference, at [[United States Pacific Command]] headquarters, with the Vietnam commanders present. He addressed short-term possibilities, urging concentration on stabilizing one province: "I'll guarantee it (the money and equipment) provided you have a plan based on one province. Take one place, sweep it and hold it in a plan." Or, put another way, let us demonstrate that in some place, in some way, we can achieve demonstrable gains. <ref name=PntV1Ch05Sec0314-346>{{citation
| |
| | title =The Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, Volume 2 | |
| | contribution = Chapter 2, "The Strategic Hamlet Program, 1961-1963," pp. 128-159
| |
| | url = http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon2/pent4.htm}}</ref>
| |
| ====First U.S. direct support to an ARVN combat operation====
| |
| On 11 December 1961 the United States aircraft carrier ''USNS Card'' docked in downtown Saigon with 82 U. S. Army H-21 helicopters and 400 men. organized into two Transportation Companies (Light Helicopter); [[Army aviation]] had not yet become a separate branch.
| |
| | |
| Twelve days later these helicopters were committed into the first airmobile combat action in Vietnam, Operation CHOPPER. It was the first time U.S. forces directly and overtly supported ARVN units in combat, although the American forces did not directly attack the guerillas.Approximately 1,000 Vietnamese paratroopers were airlifted into a suspected Viet Cong headquarters complex about ten miles west of the Vietnamese capital, achieving tactical surprise and capturing a radio station. <ref name=Tolson1974>{{citation
| |
| | id = Tolson 1974
| |
| | title = Vietnam Studies: Airmobility 1961-1971
| |
| | first = John J. | last = Tolson
| |
| | date = 1974 | publisher = Center for Military History, Department of the Army
| |
| | url =}}, p. 4 </ref>
| |
| | |
| ===1962===
| |
| From the U.S. perspective, the Strategic Hamlet Program was the consensus approach to pacifying the countryside.<ref name=PntV1Ch05Sec0314-346 /> There was a sense, however, that this was simply not a high priority for Diem, who considered his power base to be in the cities. The Communists, willing to fill a vacuum, became more and more active in rural areas where the GVN was invisible, irrelevant, or actively a hindrance.
| |
| | |
| Unfortunately, the Strategic Hamlet Program meant different things to various South Vietnamese and American groups. It was not simply building the hamlet that would carry out a strategy, but the context in which they were built. There was a good deal of agreement that it had to be phased:
| |
| #Clearing enemy forces, the responsibility of the regular ARVN, coupled with some level of "holding"
| |
| #Maintaining security, by various civil guard organizations and regional reaction forces
| |
| #Hamlet self-defense capability, enabling economic development and strengthened local government
| |
| | |
| The U.S. political leadership focused on the latter part of the program. The U.S. military somewhat regretfully focused on the first, with concern that the ARVN would bog down in "holding", when the ARVN was needed to take the initiative away from the enemy, so the VC were defending, not attacking. Both, however, did not see long-term success without reforms in the Diem government. Diem, however, was more concerned with preserving than reforming his government. American appeals to form a "partnership" may not have been seriously considered. See [[Operation SUNRISE]] for a representative early attempt to create a hamlet (March 1962).
| |
| | |
| Absentee landlords formed a significant part of Diem's power base, in a quasi-feudal system that contained resentments the NLF could exploit. Much of Vietnamese rural culture was tied to the ancestral lands where they were located, yet the villagers did not own their fields and homes.<ref name=Gibson>{{citation
| |
| | title = The Perfect War: Technolwar in Vietnam
| |
| | first = James William | last = Gibbs
| |
| | publisher = Atlantic Monthly Press | year = 1986
| |
| }}pp. 70-71</ref> Gibson quotes a landlord interviewed by Samson: <blockquote>In the past, the relationship between the landlord and his tenants was paternalistic. The landlord considered the tenant as an inferior member of his extended family. When the tenant's father dieed, it was the duty of the landlord to give money to the tenant for the funeral; if his wife was pregnamt, the landlord gave mone for the birth; if he was in financial ruin, the landlord gave assistance; therefore, the tenant had to behave as an inferior member of the extended family. The landlord enjoyed great prestige vis-a-vis the tenant. <ref name=Samson>{{citation
| |
| | first = Robert L. | last = Samson
| |
| | title = The Economics of Insurgency in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam
| |
| | publisher = MIT Press | year = 1970}} p. 29</ref></blockquote>
| |
| | |
| During this period of paternalism, the landlord also received 40 to 60 percent of the tenants' crops as rent. When the Viet Minh fought the French, they also fought an economic war, and drove large landowners into the cities, or variously lowered or ended rent payments. According to Gibson, when Diem's ARVN forces established security, they put landlords back in control, often demanding back rent. <ref>Gibson, pp. 71-72</ref>
| |
| | |
| Separarately from the land reform and economic issues, the Government of Vietnam were unable to provide security for the villages. The Diem government response was to create defensible "strategic hamlets" and forcibly move the villagers to them. The strategic hamlet might have government-appointed or military leaders; the villagers' locally chosen leadership was destroyed. The tombs of ancestors was abandoned, in a culture where it was proper to show ancestral respect.
| |
| ====Special Forces operations====
| |
| In 1962, the U.S. Military Command–Vietnam (MACV) established Army Special Forces camps near villages. The Americans wanted a military presence there to block the infiltration of enemy forces from Laos, to provide a base for launching patrols into Laos to monitor the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and to serve as a western anchor for defense along the DMZ.<ref name=HN-KS>{{citation
| |
| | title = Battle of Khe Sanh: Recounting the Battle’s Casualties
| |
| | first = Peter | last = Brush
| |
| | url = http://www.historynet.com/battle-of-khe-sanh-recounting-the-battlescasualties.htm}}</ref> These defended villages were not part of the Strategic Hamlet Program, but did provide examples that were relevant.
| |
| ====U.S. ground command structure established====
| |
| U.S. command structures continued to emerge. On February 8, [[Paul Harkins|Paul D. Harkins]], then Deputy Commanding General, U.S. Army Pacific, under Pacific Command, was promoted to [[general]] and assigned to command the new Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MAC-V).
| |
|
| |
|
| Military Assistance Command-Thailand was created on May 15, 1962, but reported to Harkins at MAC-V. In a departure from usual practice, the MAAG was retained as an organization subordinate to MAC-V, rather than being absorbed into it. The MAAG continued to command U.S. advisors and direct support to the ARVN. At first, MAC-V delegated control of U.S. combat units to the MAAG. While it was not an immediate concern, MAC-V never controlled all the Air Force and Navy units that would operate in Vietnam, but from outside its borders. These remained under the control of Pacific Command, or, in some cases, the [[Strategic Air Command]].
| | So, at least a year before the Gulf of Tonkin, there had been some raids against North Vietnam. Independent of MACV-SOG, the U.S. Navy began to conduct signals intelligence patrols for the [[National Security Agency]], close to North Vietnam but in international waters. These were called the DESOTO patrols, and used overt U.S. Navy [[destroyer]]s, with a van packed with electronics and technicians mounted on their decks. |
|
| |
|
| No regular ARVN units were under the command of U.S. military commanders, although there were exceptions for irregular units under Special Forces. Indeed, there could be situations where, in a joint operation, U.S. combat troops were under a U.S. commander, while the ARVN units were under an ARVN officer with a U.S. advisor. Relationships in particular operations often were more a matter of personalities and politics rather than ideal command. U.S troops also did not report to ARVN officers; while many RVN officers had their post through political connections, others would have been outstanding commanders in any army.
| | On the night of July 30, 1964, four MACV-SOG boats shelled North Vietnamese shore installations, after a series of earlier maritime operations. The North Vietnamese went on high naval alert. |
|
| |
|
| At the same time, the U.S. was beginning to explore withdrawing forces. <ref name=PntPapV4Ch2-160-200>{{citation
| | On July 31, 1964, there was a DESOTO patrol.<ref name=McMaster>{{citation |
| | title = The Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, Volume 2 | | | author = [[H. R. McMaster]] |
| | contribution = Chapter 3, "Phased Withdrawal of U.S. Forces, 1962-1964," pp. 160-200.
| | | title = Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam |
| | url = http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon2/pent5.htm}}</ref>
| | | publisher = Harpercollins | year = 1997}}, pp. 120-134</ref> The timing after the MACV-SOG operation may have been coincidental, although there have been suggestions that the increased North Vietnamese activity was a rich environment for SIGINT collection. There is no strong indication that the DESOTO patrols were trying to provoke North Vietnamese response; they carefully stayed in international waters and were fully identifiable as U.S. ships. |
| ====Intelligence support refines====
| |
| The USMC 1st Composite Radio Company deployed, on January 2, 1962, to Pleiku, South Vietnam as Detachment One. After Davis' death in December, it became obvious to the Army Security Agency that thick jungle made tactical ground collection exceptionally dangerous, and direction-finding moved principally to aircraft platforms.<REF name=Knight>{{citation
| |
| | last = Knight
| |
| | first = Judson
| |
| | title = Army Security Agency
| |
| | url = http://www.espionageinfo.com/An-Ba/Army-Security-Agency.html
| |
| }}</ref> See [[Signals intelligence from 1954 to 1979#First-generation Army tactical SIGINT aircraft|first-generation Army tactical SIGINT]].
| |
| ====Additional allied support====
| |
| In addition to the U.S. advisers, in August 1962, 30 Australian Army advisers was sent to Vietnam to operate within the United States military advisory system. As with most American advisors, their initial orders were to train, but not go on operations.<ref name=AusInVN>{{citation
| |
| | title = Impressions: Australians in Vietnam. Overview of Australian military involvement in the Vietnam War, 1962 - 1975 | |
| | author = Australian War Memorial
| |
| | url = http://www.awm.gov.au/events/travelling/impressions/overview.asp}}</ref>
| |
| ===1963===
| |
| South Vietnamese forces, with U.S. advisors, took severe defeats at the [[Battle of Ap Bac]] in January,<ref name=Sheehan>{{citation
| |
| | first = Neil | last = Sheehan
| |
| | title = A Bright and Shining Lie
| |
| | publisher = Vintage | year = 1989}}</ref>. This has been considered the trigger for an increasingly skeptical, although small, American press corps in Vietnam. and the [[Battle of Go Cong]] in September. Ap Bac was of particular political sensitivity, as [[John Paul Vann]], a highly visible American officer, was the advisor, and the U.S. press took note of what he considered to be ARVN shortcomings. | |
|
| |
|
| While the [[Vietnam War, Buddhist crisis and military coup of 1963| Buddhist crisis and military coup]] that ended with the killing of Diem was an obvious major event, it was by no means the only event of the year. In keeping with the President's expressed desires, covert operations against the North were escalated. Of course, the assassination of Kennedy himself brought [[Lyndon Baines Johnson]], with a different philosophy toward the war. Kennedy was an activist, but had a sense of unconventional warfare and geopolitics, and, as is seen in the documentary record, discussed policy development with a wide range of advisors, specifically including military leaders. Johnson tended to view the situation from the standpoint of U.S. domestic policy, and, probably from his immensely successful experience as a deal-maker in the U.S. Senate, believed that everything was negotiable. When the North Vietnamese did not respond as Johnson wanted, he took it personally, and may have made some judgments based on his emotional responses to Ho. He also spoke with a much smaller advisory circle than Kennedy, and excluded active military officers. <ref name=McMaster>{{citation
| | ==U.S. buildup and overt combat involvement== |
| | first = H. R. | last = McMaster | | This section focuses on the period when U.S. forces became involved in large-scale, direct combat. Wherever possible, the national-level decisions that went into a change of military action will be presented, but, in a number of situations, an action may have been the result of a perceived need to "do something" rather than having a direct effect on the enemy. Such decision-making style is not unique to this period. George Kennan, considered a consummate diplomat and diplomatic theorist, observed that American leaders, starting with the 1899-1900 [[Open Door Policy|"Open Door" policy]] to China, have a <blockquote>neurotic self-consciousness and introversion, the tendency to make statements and take actions with regard not to their effect on the international scene but rather to their effect on those echelons of American opinion, congressional opinion first and foremost, to which the respect statesmen are anxious to appeal. The question became not: How effective is what I am doing in terms of the impact it makes on our world environment? but rather: how do I look, in the mirror of American domestic opinion, as I do it?<ref name=Kennan>{{citation |
| | title = Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam | | | first = George F. | last = Kennan |
| | publisher = Harpercollins | year = 1997}}</ref> | | | title = Memoirs 1925-1950 |
| ====Intelligence support====
| | | publisher = Little, Brown | year = 1967}}, pp. 53-54</ref></blockquote> |
| On September 17, 1963, Detachment One, 1st Composite Radio Company, U.S. Marines, was redesignated as 1st Radio Company, Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, but still put detachments into Vietnam.
| |
| ====May 1963 Honolulu conference; covert warfare a major issue====
| |
| At the May 6 Honolulu conference, the decision was made to increase, as the President had been pushing, covert operations against the North. A detailed plan for covert operations, Pacific Command Operations Plan 34A (OPPLAN 34A) went to GEN Taylor, now [[Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff]], did not approve it until September 9. Shultz suggests the delay had three aspects:
| |
| #Washington was preoccupied with the Buddhist crisis
| |
| #MACV had no established covert operations force, so even if he approved a plan, there was no one to execute it
| |
| #Taylor, although a distinguished Airborne (paratroopers once being believed special operators) officer, disagreed with Kennedy's emphasis on covert operations, did not have the appropriate resources in the Department of Defense, and he did not believe it was a proper job for soldiers.
| |
| #Diem, fighting for survival, was not interested
| |
|
| |
|
| It is unclear if Taylor did not believe covert operations should not be attempted at all, or if he regarded it as a CIA mission. If the latter, Kennedy would have been unlikely to support him, given the President's loss of confidence after the [[Bay of Pigs]] fiasco. <ref> Shultz, pp. 32-33</ref>
| | Even when leaders' goals are sincere, the need to be seen as doing the popular thing can become counterproductive. There were many times, in the seemingly inexorable advance of decades of American involvement in Southeast Asia, where reflection might have led to caution. Instead, the need to be seen as active, as well as the clashes of strong egos, separate the needs of policy from the dictates of politics. The personalities of different Presidents and key advisers all had an effect. Many, but by no means all, of the key political decisions were under Johnson, but Presidents from Truman through Ford all had roles. |
|
| |
|
| ====After two assassinations====
| | Although Americans died in supporting South Vietnamese involvement beginning in 1962, the greatest U.S. involvement was from mid-1964 through 1972. U.S ground troops began reducing in 1968 and much more sharply in 1969. So, much of the detailed U.S. political action with other countries will be in [[Joint warfare in South Vietnam 1964-1968]], [[Vietnamization]], and [[air operations against North Vietnam]]. |
| Kennedy and Diem both died in November 1963. Since Diem was killed by a military junta, there was no immediate successor, but [[Lyndon Johnson]] became the new President of the United States. Johnson was far more focused on domestic politics than the international activist, Kennedy. Some of the Kennedy team left quickly, while others, sometimes surprisingly given extremely different personalities, stayed on; the formal and logical [[Robert McNamara]] quickly bonded with the emotional and deal-making Johnson.
| |
| The NLF kept a low profile in the cities, in part because its intelligence services had deply penetrated the GVN; the leadership of the Johnson Administration was baffled why it did so well in the country side.
| |
|
| |
|
| ====Johnson approval of covert operations====
| | Vietnam's climate has a major effect on warfare, especially involving vehicles and aircraft. |
| | Major operations usually took place in the dry season. While the most southern parts tend to have a generally tropical climate, there are two major climactic periods: |
| | *Monsoon season of heat, rain, and mud, with limited mobility (May to September) |
| | *Warm and dry conditions (October to March) |
|
| |
|
| OPPLAN 34A was finalized around December 20, under joint MACV-CIA leadership; the subsequent [[MACV-SOG]] organization had not yet been created. There were five broad categories, to be planned in three periods of 4 months each,over a year:<ref> Shultz, pp. 38-39</ref>
| | ===Combat support advisory phase=== |
| | [[John F. Kennedy]] and his key staff, came from a different elite than that which had spawned the Cold Warriors of the Eisenhower Administration. While the form was different, a militant anti-Communism was underneath many of the Kennedy Administration policies. <ref name=Halberstam>{{citation |
| | | first = David | last = Halberstam |
| | | title = The Best and the Brightest |
| | | publisher = Random House | year = 1972}}, pp. 121-122</ref> Its rougher operatives had a different style than [[Joe McCarthy]], but it is sometimes forgotten that Robert Kennedy (RFK) had been on McCarthy's staff. <ref>{{citation |
| | | journal = Washington Monthly |
| | | date = October 2000 |
| | | title = Bobby: Good, Bad, And In Between - Robert F. Kennedy |
| | | first = Evan | last = Thomas |
| | |url = http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_10_32/ai_66495287/print?tag=artBody;col1}}</ref> |
|
| |
|
| #[[Clandestine human-source intelligence|Clandestine human-source]] and [[signals intelligence]] collection from locations in the north
| | Where Republicans during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations blamed Democrats who had "lost China", the Kennedy Administration was not out to lose anything. The first covert operations in the region began in the Eisenhower Administration, but Kennedy increased both operations in Laos and Vietnam. |
| #Psychological operations against the north to increase tension and division; Colby had already started such operations
| |
| #Paramilitary operations,such as raids and sabotage against facilities that were significant to the admittedly weak economy, and stronger security, of North Vietnam
| |
| #Encouraging the development of an underground resistance movement
| |
| #Selected raids as well as reconnaissance to direct air strikes, with more of a tactical goal than the economic and security actions of category 3
| |
|
| |
|
| Lyndon Johnson agreed with the idea, but was cautious. He created an interdepartmental review committee, under MG [[Victor Krulak]], on December 21, to select the least risky operations on December 21, which delivered a report on January 2, 1964, for the first operational phase to begin on February 1. It was hardly an expression of the motto of David Stirling, founder of Britain's legendary [[Special Air Service]]: "Who dares, wins."
| | ===Intensification=== |
| | Guerrilla attacks increased in the early 1960s, at the same time as the new [[John F. Kennedy]] administration made Presidential decisions to increase its influence. Diem, as other powers were deciding their policies, was facing disorganized attacks and internal political dissent. There were conflicts between the government, dominated by minority Northern Catholics, and both the majority [[Vietnamese Buddhism|Buddhists]] and minorities such as the [[Montagnard]]s, [[Cao Dai]], and [[Hoa Hao]]. These conflicts were exploited, initially at the level of propaganda and recruiting, by stay-behind Viet Minh receiving orders from the North. |
|
| |
|
| ====North Vietnam decides on escalation====
| | U.S. personnel went into the field with ARVN personnel starting in 1962. The term "adviser" was popular but not always accurate. While many U.S. personnel indeed did advise their counterparts, and U.S. forces did not take a direct combat role, a substantial part of field activity was devoted to tactical airlift of ARVN troops, and a wide range of technical support. The first American soldier to die in combat was not with ARVN infantry, but part of a signals intelligence team, doing direction finding on Viet Cong radio transmitters in the field, whose team was ambushed. |
| In December 1963, a decisive meeting of the Communist Party Central Committee in Hanoi set basic policy. Le Duan (1907-86) was in full control; Ho Chi Minh had become a figurehead. <ref> William J. Duiker, ''Ho Chi Minh: A Life'' (2001), [http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/078688701X/ref=sib_dp_bod_toc?ie=UTF8&p=S009# pp 534-37 online]; Ilya Gaiduk, ''Confronting Vietnam: Soviet Policy toward the Indochina Conflict, F1954-1963''
| |
| (2003) [http://books.google.com/books?id=TAfATu5SF-cC&pg=PA203&dq=%22central+committee%22+%22le+duan%22+plenum+1963&sig=ACfU3U29FH06x6M65aOmfA6HfKSv0p8fsQ online pp 203-4]</ref> COL Bui Tin led a reconnaissance mission of specialists reporting directly to the Politburo, who said, in an 1981 interview with Stanley Karnow, that he saw the only choice was escalation including the use of conventional troops, capitalizing on the unrest and inefficiency from the series of coups in the South. The Politburo ordered infrastructure improvements to start in 1964.<ref> Shultz, pp. 45-46</ref>
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| ===1964 (before [[Gulf of Tonkin Incident]])===
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| Low-level guerilla warfare has been called the "war of the flea", but enough flea bites can weaken a strong body that loses too much blood. Until the major escalations of midyear, the war was still of swarms of fleas, with, perhaps an occasional action by stronger predators. As yet, there were no pursuits by packs of killers; either the prey would hide, or the pursuers would not have the strength or ability to continue long contact — or avoid becoming a target.
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| There were numerous ARVN and VC raids, of battalion size, for which only RVN losses or body count is available. They took place roughly monthly. In the great casualty lists of a war, 100-300 casualties may not seem an immense number, but these have to be considered as happening at least once a month, with a population of perhaps 5 million. It was a grinding war of attrition, with no decision, as death and destruction ground along.<ref name=MACV-Chron64>{{citation
| | Th [[Battle of Ap Bac]], fought on January 2, 1963, did involve both U.S. advisers to ARVN commanders, as well as U.S. aviation support. John Paul Vann was the senior tactical adviser, and his outrage about ARVN performance both stimulated aggressive investigative journalism, as well as infuriating the U.S. command. |
| | title = Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Command History Chronology - 1964
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| | url = http://www.carrscompendiums.com/ccSEA/Chronology/MACV_1964.html}}</ref>
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| ====Organizations and personnel==== | | ===Deterioration and reassessment=== |
| Organizations and commands would change with time. In January, for example, Major General Don became Commander-in-Chief of the RVN armed forces, GEN [[William Westmoreland]] was named deputy to GEN [[Paul Harkins]] to replace him later. In a structural reorganization, the ARVN made the Saigon Special Region part of the III Corps.<ref name=MACV-Chron64 />
| | By November 1963, after Diem was killed, there was mixed feelings among the JCS if covert operations alone could have a significant effect. <ref name=PntV3Ch01Sec1pp1-56>{{citation |
| ====U.S. and GVN covert action planning and preparation==== | | | title =The Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, Volume 3 |
| {{main|MACV-SOG}}
| | | contribution = Chapter 1, "U.S. Programs in South Vietnam, Nov. 1963-Apr. 1965," Section 1, pp. 1-56 |
| Before the operations scheduled by the Krulak committee could be attempted, there had to be an organization to carry them out. An obscure group called [[MACV-SOG]] appeared on the organization charts. Its overt name was "MACV Studies and Operations Group". In reality, it was the Special Operations Group, with CIA agent programs for the North gradually moving under MACV control — although SOG almost always had a CIA deputy commander. The U.S. had a shortage of covert operators, with Asian experience. in general. ironically, Assistant Secretary of State Roger Hilsman, who had been a guerilla in Asia during the Second World War, was forced out of office on February 24.<ref name=MACV-Chron64 />
| | | url = http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon3/pent1.htm}}</ref> [[Chief of Staff of the Air Force]] GEN [[Curtis LeMay]] pushed his JCS colleagues for "more resolute, overt military actions." He was joined by Commandant of the Marine Corps GEN [[David Shoup]], and gained stronger support from the Army and Navy chiefs, GEN [[Earle Wheeler]] and ADM [[David McDonald]]. ADM [[Harry Felt]], commander of U.S. Pacific Command, also believed covert actions alone would not be decisive. LeMay said "we in the military felt we were not in the decision-making process at all [Chairman of the JCS Maxwell] Taylor might have been but we didn't agree with Taylor in most cases."<ref>McMaster, pp. 59-60</ref> |
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| The first chief of MACV-SOG was [[COL]] Clyde Russell, who had been a WWII paratroop oficer who transferred to Special Forces at a rather high rank, and without experience of covert action against targets in enemy areas. Paratroopers do jump behind enemy lines, but assembling into regular units as soon as possible, fighting intensely and overtly, but expecting conventional forces to link up with them within a few days. The first commander of the airborne operations section was a Special Forces lieutenant colonel named Edward Partain, whose experience had been planning guerilla, not intelligence, networks, behind Soviet lines. <ref> Shultz, pp. 41-44</ref> | | To senior civilian officials, with the Joint Chiefs receiving it via Secretary of Defense McNamara, Johnson stated his policy decision in classified National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 273, of November 26, 1963. The key point was the U.S. goal was to strengthen South Vietnam to win its own contest; the U.S. expected to begin to withdraw troops. "It remains the central object of the United States in South Vietnam to assist the people and Government of that country to win their contest against the externally directed and supported Communist conspiracy. The test of all U.S. decisions and actions in this area should be the effectiveness of their contribution to this purpose. |
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| Russell faced problems of organizational doctrine as well as military politics. [[Unconventional warfare (United States doctrine)|U.S. doctrine for offensive guerilla operations]], then as now but far less developed at the time, called for the formation of a Joint Unconventional Warfare Task Force (JUWTF), with components from each of the services. The argument for keeping distinct service identities was better integration with the regular military. Jack Singlaub, to become the third commander of SOG, argued that special operators needed to form their own identity;<ref> Shultz, pp. 46-48</ref> while today's [[United States Special Operations Command]] has components from all the services, there is a regional Special Operations Component, alongside Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Components, in every geographic [[Unified Combatant Command]]. Today, officers from the special operations community have risen to four-star rank, including [[Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff]], but special operators were regarded as outcasts, unlikely to rise high in rank, during the Vietnam War.
| | He made pacification of the Mekong Delta the highest priority, but also ordered planning for increased yet deniable activity against North Vietnam. "With respect to Laos, a plan should be developed and submitted for approval by higher authority for military operations up to a line up to 50 kilometers inside Laos, together with political plans for minimizing the international hazards of such an enterprise." These operations would change from CIA to MACV control. A "favorable influence", but no operations in, Cambodia was desired. |
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| Another challenge was working with the South Vietnamese counterpart of SOG, called the Strategic Technical Directorate (SD). Originally, SOG was to advise STD in conducting its own operations. In practice, MACV ran its own operations, sometimes with Vietnamese under its direct command, an exception to the relationships between U.S. and Vietnamese forces. There was considerable, sometimes justifiable, concern that STD may have been penetrated by Communist agents.<ref> Shultz, p. 49</ref> Details of STD, some from unofficial sources such as the son of its Vice Director, Colonel Ngo The Linh, are only beginning to become available and the situation is being reassessed. <ref name=Ngo>{{Citation|
| | A high priority was producing "as strong and persuasive a case as possible to demonstrate to the world the degree to which the Viet Cong is controlled, sustained and supplied from Hanoi, through Laos and other channels."<ref name=NSAM>{{citation |
| | title=A Life for Freedom and Democracy :Special Branch - Northern Service (So Bac) and the Secret War against Hanoi | | | author = [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] |
| | author = Ngo Xuan Hung | | | title = National Security Action Memorandum 273: South Vietnam |
| | url = http://ngothelinh.tripod.com/Tribute.htm}}</ref> | | | date = November 26, 1963 |
| | | url = http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/Johnson/archives.hom/NSAMs/nsam273.asp}}</ref> |
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| On July 4, the DRV announced that RVN guerrillas attacked in Laos on 27 June and the DRV coast on 30 June. General [[Nguyen Cao Ky]], on July 22, confirms there were raids.<ref name=MACV-Chron64 />
| | The JCS responded to NSAM 273 with a January 22, 1964 memorandum to McNamara. Significant differences with the Presidential decision, which emphasized assisting South Vietnam, was a JCS goal of "victory" as the goal of U.S. military operations. |
| ====North Vietnamese buildup====
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| COL Don Si Nguyen brought in battalions of engineers to improve the Trail, principally in Laos, with up-to-date Soviet and Chinese construction equipment, with a goal, over several years, of building a supply route that could pass 10 to 20,000 soldiers per monthAt this time, the U.S. had little intelligence collection capability to detect the start of this project. Specifically, MACV-SOG, under Russell, was prohibited from any operations in Laos.<ref> Shultz, pp. 45-46</ref>
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| ====OPPLAN 34A Operations preceding the Gulf of Tonkin incident====
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| To understand factors that contributed to the heightened readiness in the Gulf, it must be understood that OPPLAN 34A naval operations had been striking the coast in the days immediately before the incident, and at least some North Vietnamese naval patrols were deployed against these.
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| Possible consequences of such actions, although not explicitly addressing the OPPLAN34A operations, were assessed by the [[United States intelligence community in late May, on the assumption <blockquote>The actions to be taken, primarily air and naval, with the GVN (US-assisted) operations against the DRV and Communist-held Laos, and might subsequently include overt US military actions. They would be on a graduated scale of intensity, ranging from reconnaissance, threats, cross-border operations, and limited strikes on logistical targets supporting DRV operations against South Vietnam and Laos, to strikes (if necessary) on a growing number of DRV military and economic targets. In the absence of all-out strikes by the DRV or Communist China, the measures foreseen would not include attacks on population centers or the use of nuclear weapons.<ref name=NSAEBB132-snie>{{citation
| | ===Gulf of Tonkin Incident=== |
| | url = http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/snie.pdf
| | [[Image:NH 96349.jpg|thumb|right|300px|{{NH 96349.jpg/credit}}<br />Track chart of USS ''Maddox'' (DD-731) and three North Vietnamese motor torpedo boats, during their action on 2 August 1964. Attacks by aircraft from [[USS Ticonderoga (CV-14)|USS ''Ticonderoga'' (CVA-14)]] are also shown.]] |
| | contribution = Special National Intelligence Estimate 50-2-64: Probable Consequences with Respect to Certain U.S. Actions toward Vietnam and Laos
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| | author = Director of Central Intelligence for the U.S. Intelligence Board
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| | date = May 25, 1964
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| | title = The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, 40 Years Later: Flawed Intelligence and the Decision for War in Vietnam
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| | editor = Prados, John}} </ref></blockquote>
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| Further assumptions is that the U.S. would inform the DRV, China, and the Soviet Union that these attacks were of limited purpose, but show serious intent by additional measures including sending a new 5,000 troops and air elements to Thailand; deploying strong air, naval, and ground strike forces to the Western Pacific and South China Sea; and providing substantial reinforcement to the South. The U.S. would avoid further Geneva talks until it was established that they would not improve the Communist position.
| | On August 2, 1964, a DESOTO Patrol destroyer (USS ''Maddox'', DD-731) was believed to have been approached, and possibly fired upon, by the North Vietnamese. After much declassification and study, the incident largely remains shrouded in what German military theorist [[Carl von Clausewitz]] has called the "fog of war," but questions have been raised about whether the North Vietnamese believed they were under attack, about who fired the first shots, and, indeed, if there was a true attack. There has not been a clear indication from the North Vietnamese if they thought the DESOTO and 34A operations were part of the same programs, and, if so, if destroyer-sized vessels represented an escalation. Later on the 2nd, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, [[Maxwell Taylor]], ordered that DESOTO patrols should not be made at the same time as 34A operations. |
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| It was estimated that while there would be a strong diplomatic and propaganda response, the DRV and its allies would "refrain from dramatic new attacks, and refrain from raising the level of insurrection for the moment."
| | There is some question as to whether the second patrol (increased to two ships with air cover) was actually attacked, or if there were merely North Vietnamese warships in their area. Declassified NSA intercepts of North Vietnamese communications, on the 4th, show considerable confusion on the DRV side. Operating under Presidential authority, Johnson launched Operation PIERCE ARROW (air strikes against North Vietnamese naval facilities and the oil refinery at Vinh) on the evening of the 4th (Washington time), and gave a speech regarding the same approximately 90 minutes before the Navy aircraft reached their targets.<ref name=McMaster>{{citation |
| ==Gulf of Tonkin incident==
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| See [[Gulf of Tonkin incident]]
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| ==Viet Cong guerrillas and regular North Vietnam Army==
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| The North had clearly defined political objectives, and a grand strategy, involving military, diplomatic, covert action and psychological operations to achieve those objectives. Whether or not one agreed with those objectives, there was a clear relationship between long-term goals and short-term actions. Its military first focused on guerilla and raid warfare in the south, simultaneously improving the air defensives of the north.
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| Eventually, following the Maoist doctrine of protracted war, the final "Phase III" offensive was by conventional forces, the sort that the U.S. had tried to build a defense against when the threat was from guerrillas. [[T-54]] [[tank (military)|tank]]s that broke down the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon were not driven by ragged guerrillas.
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| In the Viet Cong, and in the North Vietnam regular army ([[PAVN]]), every unit down to the company level had a cadre of political officers who monitored ideological correctness on a daily basis. The Viet Cong had many unwilling draftees of its own; tens of thousands deserted to the government, which promised them protection. The Viet Cong executed deserters if it could, and threatened their families, all the while closely monitoring the ranks for any sign of defeatism or deviation from the party line.<ref> Pike, ''PAVN'' (1986)</ref>
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| ==Changes in U.S. commitment following Johnson's election==
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| {{main|Vietnam, war, and the United States}}
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| More important to Johnson than what happened in Asia was what was happening at home, especially in the minds of the voters.<ref name=McMaster>{{citation
| |
| | title = Dereliction of Duty : Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam | | | title = Dereliction of Duty : Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam |
| | first = H.R. | last = McMaster | | | first = H.R. | last = McMaster |
| | publisher = HarperCollins | | | publisher = HarperCollins |
| | year = 1997 | isbn=0060187956 | | | year = 1997 | isbn=0060187956 |
| }}</ref> To Johnson, Vietnam was a "political war" only in the sense of U.S. domestic politics, not a political settlement for the Vietnamese. | | }}</ref> |
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| He was concerned about what was called the "falling domino" effect; he thought the fall of neighboring states would be rapid, but others looked for great damage in slow motion, as in a a 1964 CIA estimate: <blockquote>We do not believe that the loss of South Vietnam and Laos would be followed by the rapid, successive communization of other states of Southeast Asia. Instead of a shock wave passing from one to the next, there would be a simultaneous, direct effect on all Far Eastern countries. With the possible exception of Cambodia, it is likely that no nation of the area would quickly succumb to communism as a result of the fall of Laos and South Vietnam. Further, a spread of communism in the area would not be inexorable, and any spread that would happen would take time — time in which the situation might change in any of a number of ways unfavorable to the Communist cause....The loss of South Vietnam and Laos to the Communists would be profoundly damaging to the US position in the Far East, most especially because the US has committed itself persistently, emphatically, and publicly to preventing Communist takeover of the two countries.<ref name=Kent1964-06-09>{{citation
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| | title = Memo 6-9-64 (for the Director of Central Intelligence): Would the Loss of South Vietnam and Laos precipitate a "Domino Effect"
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| | author = Sherman Kent for the Board of National Estimates
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| | url = http://cryptome.org/cia-domino/cia-domino.htm}}</ref></blockquote>
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| ===Escalation 1965===
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| After his reelection, Johnson sent in the first American combat troops in March, 1965, to protect the air bases.
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| Rejecting the Air Force's strategy of strategic bombing against 94 critical targets<ref>The document listing these targets, 7 Sep 1964 JCS Talking Paper for CJCS, "Next Courses of Action for RVN" [ indeed starts with 1 and ends with 94, but it only contains 93 distinct targets</ref> in the North, Johnson and McNamara instead launched an alternative air power strategy called "Rolling Thunder." It entailed retaliatory bombing anytime Communists struck at American forces, together with a gradual buildup of 22 bombing attacks against small military targets in the North, in complete opposition to the JCS recommendations that if there were to be air strikes
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| To reverse the downhill slide in the villages, Westmoreland called for 24 more maneuver [[battalion]]s (of approximately 800-1000 men each) added to the 20 he had, plus more artillery, aviation (helicopters), and support units; McNamara rounded the total to 175,000 troops, with 27 more maneuver battalions to come in 1966. Westmoreland's "ultimate aim" was:
| | President Johnson asked for, and received, Congressional authority to use military force in Vietnam after the [[Gulf of Tonkin Incident]], which was described as a North Vietnamese attack on U.S. warships. Congress did not "declare war," which is its responsibility under the Constitution; nevertheless, it launched what effectively was at the time the longest war in U.S. history, and even longer if the covert actions before the August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin situation are included. The [[Gulf of Tonkin Resolution]], although later revoked, was considered by Lyndon Johnson as his basic authority to conduct military operations in Southeast Asia. It serves as an example of how outright declarations of war have become extremely rare since the [[Second World War]]. |
| <blockquote>"To pacify the Republic of [South] Vietnam by destroying the VC—his forces, organization, terrorists, agents, and propagandists—while at the same time reestablishing the government apparatus, strengthening GVN military forces, rebuilding the administrative machinery, and re-instituting the services of the Government. During this process security must be provided to all of the people on a progressive basis."<ref> John M. Carland, "Winning the Vietnam War: Westmoreland's Approach in Two Documents." ''Journal of Military History" 2004 68(2): 553-574. Issn: 0899-3718 in [[Project Muse]], with full text of "Directive 525-4 (MACJ3) 17 September 1965: Tactics and Techniques for Employment of US Forces in the Republic of Vietnam." </ref> </blockquote>
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| Westmoreland complained that, "we are not engaging the VC with sufficient frequency or effectiveness to win the war in Vietnam." He said that American troops had shown themselves to be superb soldiers, adept at carrying out attacks against base areas and mounting sustained operations in populated areas. Yet, the operational initiative— decisions to engage and disengage—continued to be with the enemy.
| | ===Beginning of air operations=== |
| | [[Image:Boeing B-52 bombing run.jpg|thumb|right|300px|{{Boeing B-52 bombing run.jpg/credit}}<br />A U.S. Air Force [[B-52 Superfortress|Boeing B-52F-70-BW ''Stratofortress'']] drops Mk 117 750 lb (340 kg) bombs over Vietnam, ''circa'' 1965-1966.]] |
| | Immediately after the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, there was a period of retaliation for specific attacks, [[Operation FLAMING DART]], and then a steady but incremental pressure under [[Operation Rolling Thunder]] operations against North Vietnam. There was also extensive air support overtly inside South Vietnam, and, at different times, in Laos and Cambodia; some of these are discussed above in the section on covert activity. |
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| Simple search and destroy approach that consisted of attacking and blocking forces would not work in Vietnam's jungles because the VC demonstrated the ability to "slip out from between the hammer and the anvil." Thus, the Americans needed to cover all likely escape routes. Westmoreland rejected the Marine Corps alternative program of building up a close rapport with the peasant and defending their villages.
| | From a current doctrinal standpoint, these campaigns should be evaluated according to an examination of air operations relying on a planning model at the level of [[operational art]]. This model distinguishes ''effectiveness'', or the results of the campaign, from the tactical aspects of weapons ''effects''. Several factors need to be considered to determine effectiveness. The campaigns in Laos and Cambodia were far more effective than [[Operation Rolling Thunder]], as they were not executed as a subtle means of "signaling", but had clear objectives measurable in military terms. The objectives here, as well as in [[Operation Linebacker I]], were military. [[Operation Linebacker II]] also was effective, but it had well-defined objectives at the level of grand strategy: [[compellence]] to return to negotiations. <ref name=JP5-0>{{citation |
| | |title = Department of Defense Joint Publication 5-0: Joint Operation Planning |
| | |author = [[Joint Chiefs of Staff]] |
| | | date = 13 February 2008 |
| | |url = http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/new_pubs/jp5_0.pdf}}</ref> |
| | #What conditions are required to achieve the objectives? |
| | #What sequence of actions is most likely to create those conditions? |
| | #What resources are required to accomplish that sequence of actions? |
| | #What is the likely cost or risk in performing that sequence of actions? |
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| ===Rolling Thunder: The Failure of Strategic Bombing=== | | ===Major ground combat phase=== |
| Johnson did not see the North Vietnamese as having a significant degree of independence, although, with Sino-Soviet tensions, the Administration was not always clear as to who did direct them. In spite of two millenia of Sino-Vietnamese conflict, there seemed a special fear of Chinese control, although the more significant weaponry came from the Soviets, and the North Vietnamese leadership was more Stalinist than Maoist. He defined Vietnam as a proxy for containing worldwide Communist action, and generally ignored both the nationalist sentiments in both Vietnams, and the problems of popular support for the Southern government. This is not to say that the North was not a police state, but it had both exerted more efficient control than had the South, and also could portray the U.S. as a common "enemy of the people".
| | {{seealso|Vietnam War military technology}} |
| | Secretary of Defense [[Robert McNamara]], who had been appointed by Kennedy, became Johnson's principal adviser, and continued to push an economic and signaling grand strategy. Johnson and McNamara, although it would be hard to find two men of more different personality, formed a quick bond. McNamara appeared more impressed by economics and Schelling's [[compellence]] theory <ref name=Carlson2005>{{citation |
| | | title = The Failure of Coercive Diplomacy: Strategy Assessment for the 21st Century |
| | | first = Justin | last = Carlson |
| | | journal = Hemispheres: Tufts Journal of International Affairs |
| | | url = http://ase.tufts.edu/hemispheres/2005/Carlson.doc}}</ref> than by Johnson's liberalism or Senate-style deal-making, but they agreed in broad policy. |
| | <ref name=>{{citation |
| | | title = Deterrence Now |
| | | first = Patrick M. | last = Morgan |
| | | year = 2003 |
| | | publisher = Cambridge University Press |
| | | url =http://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/22572/sample/9780521822572ws.pdf}}</ref> |
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| Johnson and McNamara adopted a three-tier strategy to save SVN.
| | They directed a [[Joint warfare in South Vietnam 1964-1968|plan for South Vietnam]] that they believed would end the war quickly. Note that the initiative was coming from Washington; the unstable [[Government of the Republic of Vietnam|South Vietnamese government]] was not part of defining their national destiny. The plan selected was from GEN [[William Westmoreland]], the field commander in Vietnam. |
| #Protect US bases and repel enemy ground attacks with U.S. ground troops
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| #Attack the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos.
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| #Initiate [[Operation ROLLING THUNDER]] bombing over North Vietnam.
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| The air campaign had a triple purpose: | | This model regarded the enemy forces in the field as the opposing [[centers of gravity (military)|center of gravity]], as opposed to the local security and development of [[pacification]]. The enemy, however, had a different idea of centers of gravity; see [[Vietnamese Communist grand strategy]]. |
| *boost Saigon's morale
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| *weaken Hanoi's war-making capabilities
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| *force the North to the bargaining table.
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| To the civilian decisionmakers of the Johnson Administration, who prepared detailed bombing plans at Tuesday luncheons from which anyone with military bombing experience was excluded, bombing seemed a cheap solution: the Air Force and Navy had plenty of air power to spare, and the raids would cause few American casualties. The extremely detailed bombing orders, down to the number and type of bombs and the direction of approach, rarely considered how to attack targets while minimizing the effectiveness of enemy air defense.
| | Over time, the U.S. developed tactics increasingly appropriate to the environment and foe, given the Westmoreland's assumption that the center of gravity was the enemy main force. Some of the early operations included: |
| | {{r|Operation ATTLEBORO}} |
| | {{r|Operation Starlight}} |
| | {{r|Operation CEDAR FALLS}} |
| | {{r|Operation JUNCTION CITY}} |
| | There were many such operations, variously by U.S. only, U.S. and ARVN, and ARVN forces. The term "search and destroy" was often used to describe ground operations against [[Viet Cong]] and [[People's Army of Viet Nam]] troops. |
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| The targets were primarily transportation lines, bridges, railway yards, storage dumps, and oil tanks; civilian areas were to be avoided. In line with a "signaling" model proposed by Harvard economist Thomas Schelling, LBJ refused to allow the most valuable installations, those around Hanoi and Haiphong, to be attacked. The idea was that damage future was more harrowing than damage present. In practice, the slow escalation gave Hanoi time to camouflage and decentralize its installations, and thus minimize the damage.The raids were closely controlled by the White House, which saw them as "signals" in a negotiating process with Hanoi. There is no indication, however, that Hanoi even perceived that signals were sent. | | The [[UH-1]] "Huey", as well as other types of [[helicopter]]s, are iconic of the Vietnam War. The full capabilities of units with integrated helicopter support were shown by the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) at the [[Battle of the Ia Drang]] and the [[Battle of Bong Son]]. |
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| Raids were calibrated so that each month they became more punitive, at least in the American value system. This theory, centered in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, was that sooner or later Hanoi's pain threshold would be crossed and they would agree to negotiate a plan that would allow SVN to survive.
| | These operations continued, some joint with ARVN troops and some by U.S. and third country forces alone. [[Australia|Australian]] units, integrated into large U.S. forces, were highly regarded. Less mobile but potent [[division (military)|divisions]] came from [[South Korea]] and [[Thailand]]. |
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| A classic error, which generations of professional intelligence analysts have been taught to avoid, is [[cognitive traps for intelligence analysis#The Other Side is Different|'''mirror-imaging''']]. The Johnson Administration treated the North Vietnamese as mirror images of themselves, rather than people with a radically different mindset.
| | Immense fire support, from ground and air platforms, supported these operations. Close air support both from [[fighter aircraft|fighter-bombers]] and early [[armed helicopter]]s was common, but new techniques came into wide use. [[ARC LIGHT]] was the general code name for operations using [[B-52]] heavy bombers against targets in South Vietnam. The term grew to encompass B-52 operations against targets in Cambodia and Laos, principally against the [[Ho Chi Minh trail]]. B-52 use in the major [[Operation Linebacker I]] and [[Operation Linebacker II]] operations against North Vietnam are generally not considered ARC LIGHT missions; see the respective operations. |
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| Historians (on all sides) are unanimous that Rolling Thunder was a total failure.<ref> Col. Dennis Drew, ''Rolling Thunder 1965: Anatomy of a Failure'' (1986); Merle L., Pribbenow, II, "Rolling Thunder and Linebacker Campaigns: the North Vietnamese View." ''Journal of American-East Asian Relations'' 2001 10(3-4): 197-210. Issn: 1058-3947 </ref> North Vietnam was a very poor agricultural country with few likely targets in the first place. Unlike Germany and Japan in World War Two, it did not manufacture its own munitions, but imported them from China and Russia. LBJ vetoed plans to mine Haiphong harbor and cut the railroad lines at the Chinese border. Johnson, who had been a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee in 1950, vividly remembered the Chinese intervention in Korea that year, and refused to permit any military action that might somehow trigger another intervention. In striking contrast to the attacks on Berlin, Tokyo and a hundred other World War Two targets, the vast majority of bombs landed on empty jungle.
| | There were also technical measures to clear jungle, both mechanical and chemical. See [[Vietnam War ground technology]]. |
| ===Air war in the south===
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| Vietnamese jungle caused much military difficulty. In the 1964 election, [[Barry Goldwater]] never recovered from speculation about possibility of using low-yield nuclear weapons to defoliate infiltration routes in Vietnam, he never actually advocated the use of nuclear weapons against the North Vietnamese. Nevertheless, the Democrats easily painted Goldwater as a warmonger who would drop atomic bombs on Hanoi.<ref name=ThisDay>{{citation
| |
| | date = September 22, 1964
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| | title = Goldwater attacks Johnson's Vietnam policy
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| | author = The History Channel
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| | url = http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=1373
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| }}</ref>
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| Under [[Operation RANCH HAND]], the U.S. military sprayed large areas with a defoliant called [[Agent Orange]]. While Agent Orange itself was considered nontoxic to humans, and was primarily composed of conventional herbicides 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T, many batches had an exceptionally toxic byproduct of the manufacturing process, which caused caused significant contamination, and long-term health consequences, including defects, on both Vietnamese and Americans. This was also used by Canadian Forces in Canada, who documented the later-understood health effects. <ref name=CForange>{{citation
| | Unquestionably, Westmoreland's approach inflicted immense casualties on the enemy forces. Even so, the North Vietnamese seemed willing to accept them. During the second half of 1967, the North Vietnamese intensified operations in the border regions of South Vietnam, in at least regimental strength. Unlike the usual hit-and-run tactics used by communist forces, these were sustained and bloody affairs. Beginning at [[Battle of Khe Sanh#Battle of Con Thien|Con Thien]] and [[Battle of Khe Sanh#Battle of Song Be|Song Be]] in October 1967, then at [[Battle of Khe Sanh#Battle of Dak To|Dak To]] |
| | author = Defence Canada
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| | title = The Use of Herbicides at CFB Gagetown from 1952 to Present Day
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| | url = http://www.dnd.ca/site/reports/defoliant/index_e.asp
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| }}</ref>
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| Moscow sent in sophisticated air defense systems; 922 planes went down. Rolling Thunder dropped 640,000 tons of bombs, but pilots protested angrily that political restrictions radically reduced their effectiveness. As one Navy flier growled in his diary:
| | There had long been fighting in the [[Battle of Khe Sanh|Khe Sanh]] area, but the North Vietnamese greatly intensified their attacks in early January 1968, before the [[Tet Offensive]]. They continued operations there until April. |
| <blockquote>We fly a limited aircraft, drop limited ordnance, on rare targets in a severely limited amount of time. Worst of all we do this in a limited and highly unpopular war....What I've got is personal pride pushing against a tangled web of frustration.<ref> Quoted in Clodfelter, p. 134</ref></blockquote>
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| Rolling Thunder did reduce the southward flow of arms somewhat, and definitely forced Hanoi to divert more and more of its resources to logistics, air defense and rebuilding. More than half of the North's electric power, oil storage, bridges and railroad yards had to be rebuilt. Supplies were hidden in small caches or buried underground, which further attenuated Hanoi's logistics capability. The suffering of its people held a lower priority for the Politburo than its quest for victory, and its actions were consistent with its goals, especially considered in Mao's concept of protracted war.
| | ===Tet Offensive=== |
| | By 1968, and perhaps in 1967, Johnson's chief adviser on the war, McNamara, had increasingly less faith in the Johnson-Westmoreland model. McNamara quotes GEN [[William DuPuy]], Westmoreland's chief planner, as recognizing that as long as the enemy could fight from the sanctuaries of Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam, it was impossible to bring adequate destruction on the enemy, and the model was inherently flawed.<ref name>Gen. William E Dupuy, August 1, 1988 interview, quoted by McNamara, pages 212 and 371.</ref> |
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| After Nixon replaced Johnson, the new national security team reviewed the situation. [[Henry Kissinger]] asked the [[Rand Corporation]] to provide a list of policy options, prepared by [[Daniel Ellsberg]]. On receiving the report, Kissinger and Schelling asked Ellsberg about the apparent absence of a victory option; Ellsberg said "I don't believe there is a win option in Vietnam." While Ellsberg eventually did send a withdrawal option, Kissinger would not circulate something that could be perceived as defeat. <ref>Gibson, p. 170</ref>.
| | Opposition against him peaked in 1968; see [[Tet Offensive]]. On March 31, 1968, Johnson said on national television, <blockquote>"I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president"</blockquote> |
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| ===Westmoreland's Attrition Strategy===
| | In March, Johnson had also announced a bombing halt, in the interests of starting talks. The first discussions were limited to starting broader talks, as a ''quid-pro-quo'' for a bombing halt.:<ref name=Kissinger>{{citation |
| Despite some shortages, the US Army had never been in nearly as good shape at the start of a war. At peak Westmoreland had 100 infantry battalions, the main maneuver and fighting unit of the war. Routinely it received 500 hours a month of helicopter support from corps' command. Above the battalion were brigades and divisions; in this war they handled paperwork, letting the battalions do the fighting. Overall, 20% of the soldiers were in "teeth" (combat) roles; the rest were "tail," assigned to advisory missions, logistics, maintenance, construction, medicine and administration.
| | | author = [[Henry Kissinger]] |
| | | title = Ending the Vietnam War: A history of America's Involvement in and Extrication from the Vietnam War|publisher=Simon & Schuster|year =1973}}, p. 50</ref> |
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| Westmoreland's first challenge was figuring out a strategy to defeat the Viet Cong.
| | ===Vietnamization phase=== |
| *Phase I: stabilize the situation (by the end of 1965)
| | During the Presidential campaign, a random wire service story headlined that Nixon had a "secret plan for ending the war, but, in reality, Nixon was only considering alternatives at this point. He remembered how Eisenhower had deliberately leaked, to the Communist side in the [[Korean War]], that he might be considering using nuclear weapons to break the deadlock. Nixon adapted this into what he termed the "Madman Strategy".<ref>Karnow, p. 582</ref> |
| *Phase II: (scheduled for 1966-67) would push the enemy back in key areas
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| *Phase III: total victory (1968).
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| ====Marine plan==== | |
| The Marines, with responsibility for "I Corps," the northern third of the country, had a plan for Phase I. It reflected their historic experience in pacification programs in Haiti and Nicaragua early in the century. <ref name=USMC-SW>{{citation
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| | title = Small Wars Manual (Reprint of 1940 Edition)
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| | author = United States Marine Corps
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| | url = http://www.smallwars.quantico.usmc.mil/sw_manual.asp}}</ref>
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| Noting that 80% of the population lived in 10% of the land, they proposed to separate the Viet Cong from the populace. It was a major challenge, since the NLF controlled the great majority of villages in I Corps. Working outward from Da Nang and two other enclaves, 25,000 Marines of the III Marine Amphibious Force<ref>The normal Marine term is "[[Marine Air-Ground Task Force#Marine Expeditionary Force|Marine Expeditionary Force]]", but "Expeditionary" had unfortunate colonialist connotations in Vietnam. Current USMC terminology is MEF.</ref> systematically eliminated Viet Cong soldiers and guerrilla forces, and sought to weed out NLF cadres from the villages.
| | He told [[H. R. Haldeman]], one of his closest aides, <blockquote>"I call it the madman theory, Bob.I want the North Vietnamese to believe that I've reached the point that I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can't restrain him when he's angry, and he has his hand on the nuclear button, and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace."<ref name=Madman>{{citation |
| | | title = Nixon's madman strategy | first = James | last = Carroll | date = June 14, 2005 | journal = Boston Globe | url = http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/06/14/nixons_madman_strategy/}}</ref></blockquote> |
| | ====Nixon decisionmaking structure==== |
| | After the election of [[Richard M. Nixon]], a review of U.S. policy in Vietnam was the first item on the national security agenda. [[Henry Kissinger]], the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, asked all relevant agencies to respond with their assessment, which they did on March 14, 1969.<ref>Kissinger, p. 50</ref> |
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| The main device was the [[Foreign internal defense|Combined Action Platoon]], with a 15-man rifle squad and 34 local militia. Rather than having separate "advisory" units, the bulk of the CAP members served alongside the local militia, building personal relationships. It would "capture and hold" hamlets and villages. The Marines put heavy stress on honesty in local government, land reform (giving more to the peasants) and MEDCAP patrols that offered immediate medical assistance to villagers. In some respects, the CAP volunteers had assignments similar to the much more highly trained [[United States Army Special Forces]], but they would make use of whatever skills they had. One young Marine, for example, was a graduate of a high school in an agricultural area in the U.S., came from a family hog farm that went back several generations, and won competitions for teenagers who raised prized hogs. While he was no military expert, he was recognized as helping enormously with the critical pork production in villages.
| | "Controlling the policy were a small group of men, President Richard M. Nixon, and which included the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs, Henry A. Kissinger; the President’s Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs, Major General Alexander M. Haig; and a few National Security Council officials trusted by Kissinger."<ref name=FRUS-VIII>{{citation |
| | | title = Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976 |
| | | volume = Volume VIII, Vietnam |
| | | date = January–October 1972 |
| | | url = http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v08/media/pdf/frus1969-76v08.pdf |
| | | publisher = Office of the Historian, [[U.S. Department of State]]}}</ref> Admiral [[Thomas Moorer]], [[Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff]]; [[Director of Central Intelligence]] [[Richard Helms]], and Ambassador [[Ellsworth Bunker]] also were involved, but [[Secretary of Defense]] [[Melvin Laird]] and [[Secretary of State]] [[William Rogers]] were rarely part of the inner discussions. |
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| Marines in CAP had the highest proportion of volunteering for successive Vietnam tours of any branch of the Marine Corps. Many villages considered the CAP personnel part of their extended family. Westmoreland distrusted the Marine village-oriented policy as too defensive for Phase II--only offense can win a war, he insisted. The official slogan about "winning hearts and minds" gave way to the Army's "Get the people by the balls, and their hearts and minds will follow." Ambassador Taylor welcomed the Marine strategy as the best solution for a basically political problem; it would also minimize American casualties.<ref>David M. Berman, "Civic Action," in Spencer Tucker, ed. ''Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War'' [http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0195135253/ref=sib_dp_bod_ex?ie=UTF8&p=S00M#reader-link p. 73-74] </ref>
| | ====Policy toward SVN==== |
| | U.S. policy changed to one of turning ground combat over to South Vietnam, a process called [[Vietnamization]], a term coined in January 1969. Nixon, in contrast, saw resolution not just in Indochina, in a wider scope. He sought Soviet support, saying that if the Soviet Union helped bring the war to an honorable conclusion, the U.S. would "do something dramatic" to improve U.S.-Soviet relations. <ref name=Kissinger>{{citation |
| | | author = [[Henry Kissinger]] |
| | | title = Ending the Vietnam War: A history of America's Involvement in and Extrication from the Vietnam War|publisher=Simon & Schuster|year =1973}}, p. 103</ref> In worldwide terms, Vietnamization replaced the earlier [[containment policy]]<ref>Kissinger, pp. 27-28</ref> with [[detente]].<ref>Kissinger, pp. 249-250</ref> Also in 1969, both overt and covert [[Paris Peace Talks]] began. |
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| While the Army and Marines had their approaches to the village, yet another came from a joint project of the CIA and [[United States Army Special Forces]]. The CIDG (Civilian Irregular Defense Groups) program was created for the Montagnard peoples in the sparsely populated mountanous areas of the Central Highlands. The Montagnards disliked all Vietnamese, and had supported first the French, then the Americans. About 45,000 were enrolled in militias whose main role was defending their villages from the Communists. In 1970 the CIDG became part of the ARVN Rangers.<ref>Tucker, ed., [http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0195135253/ref=sib_dp_srch_pop?v=search-inside&keywords=mentagnard&go.x=0&go.y=0&go=Go!# ''Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War (2000) pp 74-75, 276-77 ]</ref> Indeed, the tensions were high between the Army (which was in charge) and the Marines. | | While Nixon hesitated to authorize a military request to bomb Cambodian sanctuaries, which civilian analysts considered less important than Laos, he authorized, in March, bombing of Cambodia as a signal to the North Vietnamese. While direct attack against North Vietnam, as was later done in [[Operation Linebacker I]], might be more effective, he authorized the [[Operation MENU]] bombing of Cambodia, starting on March 17. These bombings were kept secret from the U.S. leadership and electorate; the North Vietnamese clearly knew they were being bombed. It first leaked to the press in May, and Nixon ordered warrantless surveillance of key staff. <ref>Karnow, p. 591-592</ref> |
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| ====Westmoreland vs. Taylor====
| | Nixon also directed [[Cyrus Vance]] to go to Moscow in March, to encourage the Soviets to put pressure on the North Vietnamese to open negotiations with the U.S. <ref>Kissinger, pp. 75-78</ref> The Soviets, however, either did not want to get in the middle, or had insufficient leverage on the North Vietnamese. |
| Taylor's strategy was to use superior American mobility and firepower to locate, attack and destroy the Viet Cong main forces. Once they were destroyed, he reasoned, the villages would be easy to pacify. Westmoreland proposed instead a "search and destroy" strategy that would win the war by attrition. The idea was to track down and fight the larger Viet Cong units, hoping to grind them down faster than they could be replaced. The measure of success in a war of attrition was not battles won or territory held or villages pacified, it was the body count of dead enemy soldiers. The body counts often were demanded by the chain of command, under pressure from Washington, even though the numbers were guesses and had little to do with realistic [[battle damage assessment]]. A number of field commanders and CIA analysts found that a much better predictor was the number of weapons recovered from a battlefield.
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| Westmoreland promised his three phase strategy could get the job done--whereas the defensive enclaves would prolong the conflict indefinitely into the future. Johnson could not wait forever, so he bought Westmoreland's plan and removed Taylor.
| | ===Final air support phase=== |
| | In the transition to full "[[Vietnamization]]," U.S. and third country ground troops turned ground combat responsibility to the [[Army of the Republic of Vietnam]]. Air and naval combat, combat support, and combat service support from the U.S. continued. While the ARVN improved in local security and small operations, [[Operation Lam Son 719]], in February 1971, the first large operation with only ARVN ground forces, they took casualties that the South Vietnamese leadership considered unacceptable, and withdrew. This operation still had U.S. helicopters lifting the crews, and U.S. intelligence and artillery support. |
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| While there have been exceptions, especially in recent wars, Marines and Army troops do not always mix well, as they have some very different doctrinal assumptions. Army troops have much heavier artillery, and will wait for it to suppress the enemy before attacking on the ground, while Marines rely both on fast movement, and their own air support substituting for heavy artillery (i.e.,[[Marine Air-Ground Task Force]]s, which put land and air elements under a common commander). In 1968, Westmoreland sent his deputy [[Creighton Abrams]] to take command of I Corps, and gave his Air Force commander control of Marine aviation. The Marines protested vehemently but were rebuffed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
| | They did much better against the 1972 Eastertide invasion, but this still involved extensive U.S. air support. To stop the logistical support of the Eastertide invasion, Nixon launched [[Operation Linebacker I]], with the [[operational art|operational goal]] of disabling the infrastructure of infiltration. One of the problems of the Republic of Vietnam's Air Force is that it never operated under central control, even for a specific maximum-effort air offensive. South Vietnamese aircraft always were controlled by regional corps commanders, so never developed skills in deep [[battlefield air interdiction]]. |
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| The flow rose from 3,000 a month in 1965 to 8,000 a month throughout 1966 and 1967, and then 10,000 in 1968. By November 1965 the enemy had 110 battalions in the field, with 64,000 combat troops, 17,000 in combat support, and 54,000 part- time militia.
| | When the North refused to return to negotiations in late 1972, Nixon, in mid-December, ordered bombing at an unprecedented level of intensity, [[Operation Linebacker II]]. This was at the [[military strategy|strategic]] and [[grand strategy|grand strategic]] levels, attacking not so much the infiltration infrastructure, but North Vietnam's ability to import supplies, its internal transportation and logistics, command and control, and [[integrated air defense system]]. Within a month of the start of the operation, a peace agreement was signed. |
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| ===First Airmobile Battles: Ia Drang and Bong Son===
| | Peace accords were finally signed on 27 January 1973, in Paris. U.S combat troops immediately began withdrawal, and [[prisoner of war|prisoners of war]] were repatriated. U.S. supplies and limited advise could continue. In theory, North Vietnam would not reinforce its troops in the south. In practice, the North did not remove its large forces from the south, and eventually committed additional large forces in a conventional invasion. |
| Giap's new plan was to use three regiments, but with a new controlling divisional headquarters, across the neck of SVN, cutting the country in two. The division threatened the Plei Me special forces camp with one regiment, but put a second regiment across the road over which South Vietnamese forces, without helicopters, would have to drive to Plei Me from the larger base in Pleiku. Intelligence identified the presence, but at first not the position, of a third regiment, which could attack Pleiku if the reserve based there went to the assistance of Plei Me.
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| The South Vietnamese recognized they were stretched too thin, and asked for U.S. help. The U.S. Field Force (corps equivalent) commander for the area, MG Stanley Larsen, told GEN Westmoreland that he thought the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) was ready, and got permission for it to use its mobility to bypass the road ambushes. Since the PAVN along the road had planned to ambush trucks, there was not an issue of not being able to find the relieving troops. Helicopters could be heard, but their landing zones were unpredictable until they actually landed — fake landings were not uncommon. In the [[Battle of the Ia Drang]], the first true airmobile force met PAVN regulars.
| | ==Fall of South Vietnam== |
| | While Ford, Nixon's final vice-president, succeeded Nixon, most major policies had been set by the time he took office. He was under a firm Congressional and public mandate to withdraw. |
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| It should be noted that the PAVN's practice of listening for helicopters was realized by Harold Moore, promoted to brigade command after leading a battalion in the Ia Drang. In the larger [[Battle of Bong Son]] approximately a month later, Moore used obvious helicopters to cause the PAVN to retreat onto very reasonable paths to break away from the Americans -- but different Americans had silently set ambushes, earlier, across those escape routes.
| | The North, badly damaged by the bombings of 1972, recovered quickly and remained committed to the destruction of its rival. There was little U.S. popular support for new combat involvement, and no Congressional authorizations to expend funds to do so. North Vietnam launched a new conventional invasion in 1975 and seized Saigon on April 30.<ref>Military History Institute of Vietnam, ''Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People's Army of Vietnam, 1954-1975'' (2002), Hanoi's official history[http://www.amazon.com/Victory-Vietnam-Official-History-Peoples/dp/0700611754/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215223166&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search]</ref> |
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| The PAVN preferred hit-and-run [[ambush]]es, or what they called "catch and grab." When their retreat was blocked, their next tactic was called
| | No American combat units were present until the final days, when [[Operation FREQUENT WIND]] was launched to evacuate Americans and 5600 senior Vietnamese government and military officials, and employees of the U.S. The 9th Marine Amphibious Brigade, under the tactical command of [[Alfred M. Gray, Jr.]], would enter Saigon to evacuate the last Americans from the American Embassy to ships of the Seventh Fleet. Ambassador [[Graham Martin]] was among the last civilians to leave. <ref name=III-MAF>{{citation |
| "hugging the belt" <ref name=Moore>{{citation
| | | contribution = The Marine War: III MAF in Vietnam, 1965-1971 |
| | first1 = Harold | last1 = Moore | first2=Joseph | last2 = Galloway
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| | title = We were soldiers once, and young: Ia Drang--The Battle That Changed The War In Vietnam
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| | publisher = Random House| year = 1992}}</ref> the Americans would not dare calling in artillery and gunships because of the risk of friendly fire casualties. The surprise attack would give a short window of opportunity before superior American mobility could be brought to bear.
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| Heavy doses of tactical air power, including [[B-52# Vietnam|area, then radar-controlled]] saturation bombing from B-52s, overwhelmed the PAVN. The invasion was stopped; the survivors fled back into their Cambodian sanctuaries. Giap excused his failure by saying he only wanted to discover the American's tactics; he convinced the Politburo that it was necessary to return to low-level guerrilla tactics because he could not beat the Americans in battle. The 101st Airborne Division converted to an airmobile formation, but the true airmobile structure was not used by other units. Nevertheless, helicopter augmentation became far more common.
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| ===Number and causes of casualties===
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| Of two million small unit operations, 99% never encountered the enemy. What are now called [[improvised explosive devices]], "booby traps" at the time, and [[land mines]] together caused a third of American deaths. The war was fought out in the other one percent, and most of the time combat was initiated by "Charlie" (the Viet Cong). The "hot landing zone" (enemy attacking choppers as they landed) accounted for 13% of the fights. American platoons on patrol were hit by ambush in 23% of the engagements, and their camps were hit by rocket or grenade attacks in 30%. In 27% of the battles the Americans took the initiative, including 9% ambushes, 5% planned attacks on known positions, and 13% attacks on unsuspected enemy positions. In 7% of the engagements both sides were surprised as they stumbled upon each other in the jungle.
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| By the end of the war, 30,600 soldiers and 12,900 Marines had been killed in combat, together with 1,400 sailors and Navy pilots, and 1,000 Air Force fliers. As is classic guerilla doctrine, when units with heavier power arrived, the weaker force dispersed. By American standards, they could not win, they could scarcely replace their losses, yet they kept trudging down the Ho Chi Minh Trail day after day. Given the current government of Vietnam, the American standards were incorrect.
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| ==Ground war 1966-68==
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| {{seealso|Vietnam War Ground Technology}}
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| With more aggressive pursuit, including airmobile operations, Westmoreland's tactics worked in terms of defeating the threat of larger enemy units (i.e., [[battalion]] or larger) to South Vietnam. With the US increasing the pace of search and destroy (and the ARVN avoiding combat), the NLF was systematically pushed back. "Search and Destroy" gave way after 1968 to "clear and hold", when [[Creighton Abrams]] replaced Westmoreland.
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| The Viet Cong was forced to disperse into smaller and smaller units, and so too did the US forces, until they were running platoon and even squad operations that blanketed far more of the countryside, chasing the fragmented enemy back into remote, uninhabited areas or out of the South altogether. Not only low-level NLF sympathizers but even Viet Cong officers and NLF political cadres started to surrender, accepting the resettlement terms offered by the GVN. At the end of 1964, the Pentagon estimated that only 42% of the South Vietnamese people lived in cities or villages that were securely under GVN control. (20% were in villages controlled by the NLF, and 37% were in contested zones.) At the end of 1967, 67% of the population was "secure," and only a few remote villages with less than 2% of the population were still ruled by the NLF.
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| General [[Nguyen Van Thieu]] (1923-2001), a competent, fiercely anti-Communist Catholic, became president (in office 1967-75). The NLF failed to disrupt the national legislative election of 1966, or the presidential elections of 1967, which consolidated Thieu-ARVN control over GVN. Thieu, however, failed to eliminate the systematic politicization, corruption, time-serving and favoritism in the ARVN.
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| ===Pacification/Revolutionary Development===
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| Westmoreland was principally interested only in overt military operations, while Abrams looked at a broader picture. MACV advisors did work closely with 900,000 local GVN officials in a well-organized pacification program called CORDS (Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development.) It stressed technical aid, local self government, and land distribution to peasant farmers. A majority of tenant farmers received title to their own land in one of the most successful transfer projects in any nation. On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of peasants entered squalid refugee camps when CORDS moved them out of villages that could not be protected.<ref> Thomas W. Scoville, ''Reorganizing for pacification support'' (1982) [http://www.history.army.mil/books/pacification_spt/index.htm online edition]</ref> In the [[Phoenix Program]] (part of CORDS with a strong CIA component) GVN police identified and arrested (and sometimes killed) the NLF secret police agents engaged in assassination.
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| ===Psychological tension and breakdown of discipline===
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| The more the American soldiers worked in the hamlets, the more they came to despise the corruption, inefficiency and even cowardice of GVN and ARVN. The basic problem was that despite the decline of the NLF, the GVN still failed to pick up popular support. Most peasants, refugees and city people remained alienated and skeptical. The superior motivation of the enemy troubled the Americans (especially in contrast with South Koreans, who fought fiercely for their independence.) "Why can't our Vietnamese do as well as Ho's?" Soldiers resented the peasants (ridiculing them as "gooks") who seemed sullen, unappreciative, unpatriotic and untrustworthy. The Viet Cong resorted more and more to booby-traps that (during the whole war) killed about 4,000 Americans and injured perhaps 30,000 (and killed or injured many thousands of peasants.)
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| It became more and more likely that after an ambush or boobytrap angry GIs would take out their frustrations against the nearest Vietnamese they perceived as potential enemies. MACV did not appreciate the danger that atrocities might be committed by Americans. In March 1968, just after the Tet offensive, one Army company massacred several hundred women and children at the hamlet of [[Quang Ngai#My Lai|My Lai]]. High ranking American officers wre not charged, but the company captain was tried and acquitted. Platoon commander Lt. William Calley was sentenced to life imprisonment by a 1971 court martial. His sentence was reduced and he was released in 1975. The case became a focus of national guilt and self-doubt, with antiwar leaders alleging there were many atrocities that had been successfully covered up.<ref> Michal R. Belknap, ''The Vietnam War on Trial: The My Lai Massacre and the Court-Martial of Lieutenant Calley'' (2002). [http://www.amazon.com/Vietnam-War-Trial-Court-Martial-Lieutenant/dp/0700612122/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215301180&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]; [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mylai/mylai.htm "Famous American Trials: The My Lai Courts-Martial 1970" online] </ref>
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| Other factors contributed to reduced U.S. discipline and efficiency. Recreational drugs were readily available; this may not have been critical in rear areas, but a combat patrol cannot afford any reduction of its situational awareness. General social changes, including racial tension, also challenged authority. The practice of "fragging" involved U.S. soldiers killing their own leaders with a fragmentation grenade or other weapon. Fragging sometimes was a response to a crackdown on rebellion, but, in some cases, it was a way to remove a thoroughly incompetent leader that could get his men killed.
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| ===1968===
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| By mid-January 1968, III MAF was the size of a U.S. [[corps]] or [[field army]], consisting of what amounted to two Army divisions, two reinforced Marine Divisions, a Marine aircraft wing, and supporting forces, numbering well over 100,000. GEN Westmoreland believed that Marine [[LTG]] Robert E. Cushman, Jr., who had relieved General Walt, was "unduly complacent."{{citation
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| | title = A Soldier Reports
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| | first = William last = Westmoreland}}</ref> worried about what he perceived as the Marine command's ``lack of followup in supervision,'' its employment of helicopters, and its generalship. <ref name=III-MAF>{{citation
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| | title = The Marine War: III MAF in Vietnam, 1965-1971 | |
| | first = Jack | last = Shulimson | | | first = Jack | last = Shulimson |
| | publisher = U.S. Marine Corps Historical Center | | | title = 1996 Vietnam Symposium: "After the Cold War: Reassessing Vietnam" 18-20 April 1996 |
| | url = http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/vietnamcenter/events/1996_Symposium/96papers/marwar.htm}}</ref>Westmoreland sent his deputy [[Creighton Abrams]] to take command of I Corps, and gave his Air Force commander control of Marine aviation. The Marines protested vehemently but were rebuffed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.<ref>William C. Westmoreland, ''A Soldier Reports'' (1976), pp 164-66. Marine General Victor Krulak devotes ch 13 of his memoirs, ''First to Fight: An Inside View of the U.S. Marine Corps'' (1984) to the dispute. [http://books.google.com/books?id=3WegnB4hNP8C&pg=PA195&dq=marines+army+westmoreland+krulak&sig=ACfU3U3DCjpctKg9qwPJmkM8TtQ7wOSEgw#PPA195,M1 ''First to Fight'' pp 195-204 online]; see also Douglas Kinnard, ''The War Managers American Generals Reflect on Vietnam'' (1991) [http://books.google.com/books?id=D6BvIfyvxmMC&pg=PA60&dq=marines+army+westmoreland&sig=ACfU3U04bmb_yaYQ5192TCC4NyTjf6bm6Q discusses the tension on p 60-1, online]</ref> | | | publisher = Vietnam Center and Archive at Texas Tech University |
| === Khe Sanh===
| | | url = http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/vietnamcenter/events/1996_Symposium/96papers/marwar.htm}}</ref> In parallel, [[Operation Eagle Pull]] evacuated U.S. and friendly personnel from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on April 12, 1975, under the protection of the 31st Marine Amphibious Unit, part of III MAF. |
| As a diversion, PAVN sent a corps-strength unit to start the [[Battle of Khe Sanh]], at what had been an isolated U.S. Marine location. Johnson personally took control of the defense. When the media back home warned darkly of another disaster like [[Dien Bien Phu]], LBJ made his generals swear they would never surrender Khe Sanh. They committed 5% of their ground strength to the outpost (about 6,000 men) and held another 15-20% in reserve just in case. The enemy was blasted with 22,000 airstrikes and massive artillery bombardments. When the siege was lifted, the Marines had lost 205 killed, the PAVN probably 10,000.<ref> John Prados and Ray W. Stubbe, ''Valley of Decision: The Siege of Khe Sanh'' (2004) </ref>
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| === Tet Offensive, 1968===
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| Hoping that Khe Sanh had tied down Westmoreland, the PAVN and Viet Cong struck on January 31, throwing 100,000 regular and militia troops against 36 of 44 provincial capitals and 5 of 6 major cities. They avoided American strongholds and targeted GVN government offices and ARVN installations, other than "media opportunities" such as attempting to a fight, by a small but determined squad, of the U.S. Embassy.
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| The harshest fighting came in the old imperial capital of Hue. The city fell to the PAVN, which immediately set out to identify and execute thousands of government supporters among the civilian population. The allies fought back with all the firepower at their command. House to house fighting recaptured Hue on February 24. In Hue, Five thousand enemy bodies were recovered, with 216 U.S. dead, and 384 ARVN fatalities. A number of civilians had been executed while the PAVN held the city.
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| Nationwide, the enemy lost tens of thousands killed, and many more who were wounded or totally demoralized. US lost 1,100 dead, ARVN 2,300. The people of South Vietnam did not rise up. However, the pacification program temporarily collapsed in half the country, and a half million more people became refugees. Despite the enormous damage done to the GVN at all levels, the NLF was in even worse shape, and it never recovered.
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| In February 1968, during the truce usually observed during the "Tet" holiday season, Hanoi attempted to destroy the government of South Vietnam an incite a popular uprising. It was decisively defeated by U.S. standards, as it had been apparently defeated again and again.<ref name=Adams /> However, the Tet Offensive had a devastating impact on Johnson's political position in the U.S., and in that sense was a strategic victory for the Communists.<ref> Don Oberdorfer, ''Tet!: The Turning Point in the Vietnam War'' (2001) [http://www.amazon.com/Tet-Turning-Point-Vietnam-War/dp/0801867037/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215302133&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]; James H. Willbanks, ''The Tet Offensive: A Concise History'' (2006) [http://www.amazon.com/Tet-Offensive-Concise-History/dp/0231128401/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215302299&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search] </ref>
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| [[Image:Viet-Tet-map.jpg|thumb|Tet Offensive Map]]
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| ==Nixon and Vietnamization==
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| The "falling domino" threat was greatest in Laos, where a low-intensity civil war gave the Communist Pathet Lao control of much of that remote land. Hanoi made systematic use of Laotian and Cambodian jungle trails as supply routes to the Viet Cong--the "[[Ho Chi Minh Trail]]." Cambodia's leader Prince [[Norodom Sihanouk]] repeatedly denied the existence of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and denounced pursuit of Viet Cong across his border. In fact, the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese created an elaborate infrastructure in his supposedly neutral country.
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| ===1968: Vietnamization===
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| Worldwide opposition to the war built up inexorably after 1968. The media emphasized the lack of progress; hawks were frustrated by Nixon's abandonment of victory as a goal. Democrats who kept their peace while Johnson, a fellow Democrat, was in the White House now tried to weaken a Republican president. Nixon and his chief adviser [[Henry Kissinger]] were basically "realists" in world affairs, interested in the broader constellation of forces, and the biggest powers. H [[Melvin Laird]], Nixon's Secretary of Defense, was a career politician keenly aware that Americans had soured on the war. His solution was to make troop withdrawal announcements a measure of the administration's progress. Laird worried that further involvement would postpone modernization of the military and hasten the deterioration of morale. Nixon's challenge was to maintain the national honor, keep SVN alive, and withdraw American troops. His plan to end the war was to make it irrelevant by moving the basic American strategy from containment to detente.
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| Instead of perpetual cold war, Nixon and Kissinger believed the time had come to narrow foreign policy to a realistic and limited view of the nation's own interests. It was necessary to maintain a strategic nuclear deterrent, and, since Western Europe was considered critical to U.S. interests, NATO would continue as a safeguard against Warsaw Pact attack. However, the US would seek detente, even friendship, with both the Soviet Union and China, would try to stop the arms race, and would tell countries threatened by subversion to defend themselves.
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| ===1969===
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| By 1969 Saigon forces were able to sustain the pressure on the NLF and Viet Cong and dramatically expand their control over both population and territory.<ref> [http://books.google.com/books?id=KclCL2yZVRAC&pg=RA1-PA1128&dq=1969+year+after+tet&lr=&sig=ACfU3U2g9FZHWI96arMwJo0ivGraQadbxQ Elliott, ''The Vietnamese War:'' (2002) p. 1128]</ref> Indeed, for the first time GVN found itself in control of more than 90% of the population. The Tet objectives were beyond our strength, concluded General Tran Van Tra, the commander of Vietcong forces in the South:
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| <blockquote>We suffered large sacrifices and losses with regard to manpower and materiel, especially cadres at the various echelons, which clearly weakened us. Afterwards, we were not only unable to retain the gains we had made but had to overcome a myriad of difficulties in 1969 and 1970.<ref>Quoted in Robert D. Schulzinger, ''Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941-1975'' (1997) [http://books.google.com/books?id=8vNseCJ3D0sC&pg=PA261&lpg=PA261&dq=our+losses+were+large,+in+material+and+manpower&source=web&ots=JpCT1WiKV4&sig=FUz4duVkVKaG9pM--AIrvvfslzQ&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result p. 261 online]</ref> <ref>[http://facultystaff.richmond.edu/~ebolt/history398/TranVanTrasCommentsOnTet68.html Tran Van Tra, ''Vietnam: History of the Bulwark B2 Theatre, Vol. 5: Concluding the 30-Years War'' (1982), pp. 35-36.] </ref></blockquote>
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| ====Air attacks on Cambodia====
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| In 1969, Nixon ordered B-52 strikes against PAVN supply routes in Cambodia. The orders for U.S. bombing of Cambodia were classified, and thus kept from the U.S. media and Congress. In a given strike, each B-52 normally dropped 42,000 pounds of bombs, and the strike consistedflying in groups of 3 or 6. Surviving personnel in the target area were apt to know they had been bombed, and, since the U.S. had the only aircraft capable of that volume, would know the U.S. had done it.
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| The "secrecy" may have been meant to be face-saving for Sihanouk, but there is substantial reason to believe that the secrecy, in U.S. military channels, was to keep knowledge of the bombing from the U.S. Congress and public. Actually, a reasonable case could be made that the bombing fell under the "hot pursuit" doctrine of international law, where if a neutral (Sihanouk) could not stop one country from attacking another from the neutral sanctuary, the attacked country(ies) had every right to counterattack.
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| ===1970===
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| The Communists making a direct bid to seize Cambodia. Nixon in April 1970 authorized a large scale (but temporary) US-ARVN incursion into Cambodia to directly hit the PAVN headquarters and supply dumps. The forewarned PAVN had evacuated most of their soldiers, but they lost a third of its arms stockpile, as well as a critical supply line from the Cambodian port of Sihanoukville. The incursion prevented the takeover by Pol Pot and his "Khymer Rouge" (Cambodian Communists). Pot broke with his original North Vietnamese sponsors, and aligned with China.
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| The incursion into Cambodia in 1970 made the southern parts of SVN somewhat safer, but antiwar groups opposed it. Nixon ignored the protests and continued to Vietnamize the war. When he ordered a joint US-Vietnamese ground invasion of Cambodia in 1970, many of these events first became known in the U.S., and there were intense protests, including deaths in a confrontation between rock-throwing protesters and poorly-trained National Guardsmen at Kent State University.
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| Nixon's larger strategy was to convince Moscow and Bejing they could curry American favor by reducing or ending their military support of Hanoi. He assumed that would drastically reduce Hanoi's threat. Second, "Vietnamization" would replace attrition. Let the Vietnamese fight and die for their own freedom. Vietnamization meant heavily arming the ARVN and turning all military operations over to it; all American troops would go home. By giving SVN with the capability of holding its own, Nixon believed, America could depart with honor. To the amazement of the world Nixon's plan seemed to work. The "era of confrontation" had passed, he announced, replaced by an "era of negotiation."
| | Vietnam was unified under Communist rule. Lê Duẩn's government purged South Vietnamese who had fought against the North, imprisoning over one million people and setting off a mass exodus and humanitarian disaster.<ref>Desbarats, Jacqueline. "Repression in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Executions and Population Relocation", from ''The Vietnam Debate'' (1990) by John Morton Moore. "We know now from a 1985 statement by Nguyen Co Tach that two and a half million, rather than one million, people went through reeducation....in fact, possibly more than 100,000 Vietnamese people were victims of extrajudicial executions in the last ten years....it is likely that, overall, at least one million Vietnamese were the victims of forced population transfers."</ref><ref>Anh Do and Hieu Tran Phan, [http://dartcenter.org/content/camp-z30-d-survivors Camp Z30-D: The Survivors], ''Orange County Register'', 29 April 2001.</ref><ref>''Associated Press'', June 23, 1979, ''San Diego Union'', July 20, 1986 reported that 200,000 to 400,000 "boat people" died at sea.</ref><ref name="Rummel">Rummel, Rudolph, [http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP6.HTM Statistics of Vietnamese Democide], in his ''Statistics of Democide'', 1997.</ref><ref>Nghia M. Vo, ''The Bamboo Gulag: Political Imprisonment in Communist Vietnam'' (McFarland, 2004).</ref> Large numbers of South Vietnamese became refugees, many as desperate "boat people." |
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| The two dissenters to Nixon's plan were Saigon and Hanoi. President Thieu was, reasonably, concerned his fragile nation would not survive American withdrawal. Hanoi intended to conquer the South, with or without its Soviet and Chinese allies. It did start negotiations believing the sooner the Americans left the better.
| | Under the leadership of [[Pol Pot]], the Khmer Rouge murdered over 2 million Cambodians in [[the killing fields]], out of a population of around 8 million.<ref name="Heuveline, Patrick 2001">Heuveline, Patrick (2001). "The Demographic Analysis of Mortality in Cambodia." In Forced Migration and Mortality, eds. Holly E. Reed and Charles B. Keely. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.</ref><ref name="Bruce Sharp">{{cite web |
| | | last = Sharp |
| | | first = Bruce |
| | | title = Counting Hell: The Death Toll of the Khmer Rouge Regime in Cambodia |
| | |date= 1 April 2005 |
| | | url = http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/deaths.htm |
| | | accessdate =6 March 2013 }}</ref> The Pathet Lao slaughtered tens of thousands of Hmong tribesmen.<ref>Jane Hamilton-Merritt, ''Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos'', 1942–1992 (Indiana University Press, 1999), pp337-460.</ref><ref>''Forced Back and Forgotten'' (Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights, 1989), p8.</ref> |
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| With the Viet Cong forces depleted, Hanoi sent in its own PAVN troops, and had to supply them over the Ho Chi Minh Trail despite systematic bombing raids by the B-52s. American pressure forced Hanoi to reduce its level of activity in the South. In 1970 there were only 2 battles of any size. Nixon started withdrawing American troops in 1969, and by 1970 the remaining soldiers did very little fighting.
| | Southeast Asia did not become a monolithic Communist bloc. It took over a decade for the U.S. military to recover from some of its internal turmoil and breakdown in discipline. |
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| ===1971===
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| During the quiet year 1971, Hanoi was building up forces for conventional invasion, while Nixon sent massive quantities of hardware to the ARVN, and gave Thieu a personal pledge to send air power if Hanoi invaded. In 1971 all remaining American combat ground troops left, though air attacks continued.
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| The NLF and Viet Cong had largely disappeared. They controlled a few remote villages, and contested a few more, but the Pentagon estimated that 93% of the South's population now lived under secure GVN control.
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| The Vietnamization policy achieved limited rollback of Communist gains inside South Vietnam only, and was primarily aimed at providing the arms, training and funding for the South to fight and win its own war, if it had the courage and commitment to do so. By 1971 the Communists lost control of most, but not all, of the areas they had controlled in the South in 1967. The Communists still controlled many remote jungle and mountain districts, especially areas that protected the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Saigon's effort to strike against one of these strongholds, [[Operation Lam Son 719]], was a humiliating failure in 1971. The SVN forces, with some U.S. air support, were unable to defeat PAVN regulars.
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| ===1972===
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| In March, 1972 Hanoi invaded at three points from north and west with 120,000 PAVN regulars spearheaded by tanks. This was conventional warfare, reminiscent of North Korea's invasion in 1950. They expected the peasants to rise up and overthrow the government; they did not. They expected the South's army to collapse; instead the ARVN fought very well indeed. Saigon had started to exert itself; new draft laws produced over one million well-armed regular soldiers, and another four million in part-time, lightly armed self-defense militia.
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| Nixon ordered [[Operation LINEBACKER I]], with 42,000 bombing sorties over North Vietnam. Hanoi was evacuated. Nixon also ordered the mining of North Vietnam's harbors, a stroke LBJ had always vetoed for fear of Soviet or Chinese involvement, But thanks to detente the Societs and Chinese held quiet. The ARVN, its morale stiffened by massive tactical air support from the US, held the line. As in Tet, the peasants refused to rise up against the GVN. "By God, the South Vietnamese can hack it!" exclaimed a pleasantly surprised General Abrams.
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| Since the PAVN's conventional forces required continuous resupply, the air campaign broke the momentum of the invasion and the PAVN forces retreated north. However they did did retain control of a slice of territory south of the DMZ. There the NLF, renamed the "Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam" (PRG) was established; it welcomed diplomats from the Communist world, including [[Fidel Castro]], and served as one of the launch points of the 1975 invasion.<ref>Dale Andradé, ''Trial by Fire: The 1972 Easter Offensive, America's Last Vietnam Battle'' (1995) 600pp.</ref> <ref>For firsthand accounts by a ARVN general see Lam Quang Thi, ''The Twenty-Five Year Century: A South Vietnamese General Remembers the Indochina War to the Fall of Saigon'' (2002), [http://www.amazon.com/Twenty-Five-Year-Century-Vietnamese-Remembers/dp/1574411438/ref=si3_rdr_bb_product online edition].</ref>
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| ===1972, South loses initiative===
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| After the failed Easter Offensive the Thieu government made a fatal strategic mistake. Overconfident of its military prowess, it adopted a policy of static defense that made its units vulnerable; worse, it failed to use the breathing space to correct its faulty command structure. The departure of American forces and American money lowered morale in both military and civilian South Vietnam. Desertions rose as military performance indicators sank, and no longer was the US looking over the shoulder demanding improvement. Politics, not military need, still ruled the South Vietnamese Army.
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| On other side, the PAVN had been badly mauled--the difference was that it knew it and it was determined to rebuild. Discarding guerrilla tactics, Giap three years to rebuild his forces into a strong conventional army. Without constant American bombing it was possible to solve the logistics problem by modernizing the Ho Chi Minh trail with 12,000 more miles or raods. Brazenly, he even constructed a pipeline along the Trail to bring in gasoline for the next invasion.<ref>Bruce Palmer, ''25 Year War'' 122; Clodfelter 173; Davidson ch 24 and p. 738-59.</ref>
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| ===Major 1972 airstrikes to force negotiations===
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| Late in 1972 election peace negotiations bogged down; Thieu demanded concrete evidence of 's promises to Saignon. Nixon thereupon unleashed the full fury of air power to force Hanoi to come to terms. Operation [[Operation LINEBACKER II]], in 12 days smashed many targets in North Vietnam cities that had always been sacrosanct. 59 key targets were attacked, often using new weapons. In particular, [[precision guided munition]]s destroyed bridges previously resistant to attack. US policy was to try to avoid residential areas; the Politburo had already evacuated civilians not engaged in essential war work.
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| The Soviets had sold Hanoi 1,200 [[S-75 Dvina]]/NATO: [[SA-2 GUIDELINE]] [[surface-to-air missile]]s (SAM) that proved effective against the B-52s for the first three days. In a remarkable display of flexibility, the Air Force changed its bomber tactics overnight--and Hanoi ran out of SAMs. An American negotiator in Paris observed that, "Prior to LINEBACKER II, the North Vietnamese were intransigent... After LINEBACKER II, they were shaken, demoralized, and anxious to talk about anything." Beijing and Moscow advised Hanoi to agree to the peace accords;they did so on January, 23, 1973.
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| The Air Force interpreted the quick settlement as proof that unrestricted bombing of the sort they had wanted to do for eight years had finally broken Hanoi's will to fight; other analysts said Hanoi had not changed at all.<ref> Karl J. Eschmann, ''Linebacker: The Untold Story of the Air Raids over North Vietnam'' (1989)</ref><ref> Henry Kissinger, ''White House Years'' 1:1454</ref><ref>Clodfelter, ''Limits of Air Power" ch 6 </ref>
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| ==Peace accords and invasion, 1973-75==
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| Peace accords were finally signed on 27 January 1973, in Paris. There would be an immediate in-place permanent cease-fire. The U.S. agreed to withdraw all its troops in 60 days (but could continue to send military supplies); North Vietnam was allowed to keep its 200,000 troops in the South but was not allowed to send new ones. Prisoners were exchanged. South Vietnam and the PRG was to start negotiations on free elections. Although a low-intensity war continued, the world rejoiced. In February 591 surviving POWs (mostly pilots) came home to a joyous welcome.
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| After Nixon resigned in 1974, the US was legally unable and psychologically unwilling to fight in Indochina. The 1973 Peace Agreement, instead of ending a war made continuation inevitable, for it allowed North Vietnam to keep troops in the South. The North, badly damaged by the bombings of 1972, recovered quickly and remained committed to the destruction of its rival. The main reason for the fall of South Vietnam in 1973 was the continued failure of the Saigon government to run an effective administration. Its weaknesses were compounded by exaggerated confidence that the U.S. would return if and when needed.<ref>William P. Bundy, ''A Tangled Web: Making of Foreign Policy in the Nixon Presidency'' (1998) pp 497-500 </ref>Although it had plenty of weapons available--its 2100 modern aircraft comprised the fourth largest air force in the world--the ARVN had never mastered high tech and lost confidence in its capabilities when US advisers departed. Saigon felt betrayed.
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| ===Invasion and the fall of the south, 1975===
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| [[Image:Viet-1975map.jpg|thumb|left|North invades South, 1975, using bases in Cambodia and Laos, and across DMZ]]
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| After probing action showed surprising weakness in ARVN forces, Hanoi decided to make a major attack they expected would succeed in a year or so. It took four weeks. Starting in March, 1975, Hanoi sent 18 divisions, with 300,000 of its 700,000, soldiers to invade the South again, in conventional fashion with marching armies spearheaded by 600 Russian-built tanks and 400 pieces of artillery. Instead of crawling along jungle trails they used 12,000 miles of roads they had built (and even a pipeline) since the truce. The U.S had provided South Vietnam with $4.9 billion in military supplies since the truce, giving it a powerful army and the world's fourth strongest air force.
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| The air force, however, performed poorly, and often abandoned its bases. For the time, the PAVN had competent mobile [[anti-aircraft artillery]]. <ref>Ray L. Bowers, "Air Power in Southeast Asia" in Alfred F. Hurley and Ehrhart, eds. ''Air Power & Warfare: The Proceedings of the 8th Military History Symposium: United States Air Force Academy: 18-20 October 1978'' (1978) pp 309-29 esp p. 323-4 [http://books.google.com/books?id=4ymGjOGdeQUC&dq=air+force+vietnam+%22air+university%22&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0 full text online]</ref><ref name=ADA439993-Monograph4>{{citation
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| | first = William W. | last = Momyer
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| | title=The Vietnamese Air Force, 1951 - 1975: An Analysis of Its Role in Combat
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| | year = 1985
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| | url = http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/ADA439993 }} </ref>
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| The ARVN, with 1.1 million soldiers, still had a 2-1 advantage in combat soldiers and 3-1 in artillery, but it misused its resources badly. The South's doctrine was called "light at the top, heavy at the bottom", meaning that it would resist lightly in the northern party of the country (I Corps), but stiffen resistance as the North extended. That was an attritional strategy, and the DRV had not broken under the much heavier attrition imposed by U.S. troops.
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| Some ARVN units fought well; most collapsed under the 16-division onslaught. The North Vietnamese regular army, the PAVN, began a full-scale offensive by seizing Phuoc Long Province in January, 1975. In March, 1975, they continued their offensive campaigns by conducting diversionary attacks in the north threatening Pleiku and then attacking the lightly defended South Vietnamese rear area.
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| The PAVN captured the Central Highlands and moved to the sea to divide the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN). The PAVN blocked the South Vietnamese attempt to retreat from the Central Highlands and destroyed the ARVN II corps. Of the 314 M-41 and M-48 ARVN tanks assigned to the Highlands, only three made it through to the coast.<ref> William J. Duiker, ''The Communist Road to Power,'' (2nd ed. 1996) 335, 338-42</ref>
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| ARVN resistance was sometimes heroic, but it kept losing battles and territories. In three weeks lost half its main force units, and more than half its aircraft. Hundreds of thousands of refugees clogged the roads making retreat nearly impossible. Many ARVN units disintegrated as soldiers deserted to care for their families.
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| President Thieu released written assurances dated April 1973 from President Nixon that the U.S. would "react vigorously" if North Vietnam violated the truce agreement. But Nixon had resigned in August 1974 and his personal assurances were meaningless; After Nixon made the promises, Congress had prohibited the use of American forces in any combat role in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam without prior congressional approval. This was well known to the Saigon government. <ref>{{citation
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| | title = Seeking the Last Exit from Viet Nam
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| | url = http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,917315-4,00.html
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| | journal = Time Magazine
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| | date = April 21, 1975}}</ref> President [[Gerald R. Ford]] tried to get new money for the South, but refused to consider any military action whatever.
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| About 140,000 refugees managed to flee the country, chiefly by boat. The PAVN then concentrated its combat power to attack the six ARVN divisions isolated in the north. After destroying these divisions, the PAVN launched its "Ho Chi Minh Campaign" that with little fighting seized Saigon on April 30, ending the war.<ref> Duiker, ''The Communist Road to Power,'' 341-49; David Butler, ''Fall of Saigon,'' (1986); Military History Institute of Vietnam, ''Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People's Army of Vietnam, 1954-1975'' (2002), Hanoi's official history[http://www.amazon.com/Victory-Vietnam-Official-History-Peoples/dp/0700611754/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215223166&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search]</ref>
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| No American military units had been involved until the final days, when [[Operation FREQUENT WIND]] was launched to evacuate Americans and 5600 senior Vietnamese government and military officials, and employees of the U.S. Vietnam was unified under Communist rule, as nearly a million refugees escaped by boat. Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City. The new rulers sent thousands of political opponents to detention camps,.
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| ==References== | | ==References== |
| {{reflist|2}} | | {{reflist|2}} |
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| | [[Category:Flagged for Review]] |
The Vietnam War (1955-1975) was an international Cold War conflict that killed 3.8 million people, in which North Vietnam and its allies fought U.S. forces and eventually took over South Vietnam, forming a single Communist country, Vietnam.
Impact on American culture
A significant portion of Baby Boomers, the U.S. generation who were young during the protracted Vietnam War, grew up seeing continual bloody footage of active combat on television every night. As the war progressed, an avalanche of young people in the U.S. protested against the war, resulting in considerable domestic turmoil. The protests were in part because of the military draft that sent unwilling young men to their likely death or maiming, but also in part because young people did not see the aims of the war as worth the cost. This pitted the young across the nation against the World War II generation, who viewed encroachments by Communists during the Cold War as an important continuation of the wars fought by the U.S. since 1940. To prevent protests during the Iraq War, the U.S. military stopped allowing TV journalists to film actual combat.[1]
Because the U.S. lost the Vietnam War, by the 1980's it became unpopular even to refer to it, and the press began avoiding the topic, while surviving veterans went without adequate benefits for post-traumatic treatment and, unable to cope with life, became homeless by the thousands. This phenomenon was the main subject of Sylvester Stallone's 1982 action film First Blood, which was panned by critics as too violent even though only a single person died (due to his own stupidity). Several subsequent Stallone films about First Blood's main character, Rambo, were indeed mindlessly violent, unlike the original film, which was conceived and written by Stallone (who played Rambo) in protest for public abandonment of Vietnam veterans. This film also depicted the aftermath of U.S. military having sprayed the jungles of Vietnam with Agent Orange, a herbicide containing dioxin which resulted in many exposed soldiers and civilians later getting cancer, the horror of which had barely begun to be recognized by the public in 1982. The only prior major film about the Vietnam War was Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 Apocalypse Now, an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's story “Heart of Darkness” to Vietnam. Coppola's film was indeed violent, a direct and nightmarish depiction of the devastation of war, but critics praised it, and it won multiple awards, in contrast to Stallone's First Blood which had touched a nerve with its social criticism of American culture.
Strategic Summary
The war had four distinct periods characterized by the nature of the conflict and the nationality of the combatants: a period of civil war (1957-1964), the Americanization (1964-1969), the Vietnamization (1969-1973), and the end (1974-1975).
The Vietnam War originated from the unresolved antagonisms implicit in the Geneva Accords (1954) and French and U.S. Cold War ambitions, namely to "contain" the spread of communism. The Geneva Accords promised elections in 1956 to determine a national government for a united Vietnam. Neither the United States government nor Ngo Dinh Diem's State of Vietnam signed anything at the 1954 Geneva Conference. With respect to the question of reunification, the non-communist Vietnamese delegation objected strenuously to any division of Vietnam, but lost out when the French accepted the proposal of Viet Minh delegate Pham Van Dong,[2] who proposed that Vietnam eventually be united by elections under the supervision of "local commissions".[3] The United States countered with what became known as the "American Plan," with the support of South Vietnam and the United Kingdom.[4] It provided for unification elections under the supervision of the United Nations, but was rejected by the Soviet delegation and North Vietnamese.[5]
Due to the stalemate, North Vietnam created two organizations. The National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF) was a political organization to establish civil government for the South Vietnamese regions controlled by its military arm, the Viet Cong (VC). The political/military actions of the NLF and VC against the Diem regime in South Vietnam, and Diem's escalation against the NLF/VC, essentially started a civil war. The climatic event of the civil war period was the Buddhist crisis in 1963 ending in the assassination of Ngo by a CIA-backed operation authorized by President Kennedy.
Americanization of the war began by the Johnson Administration in 1964 following the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. The U.S. began sending ground combat troops in 1965, and troop strength continued to escalate through 1968. The climatic event during the Americanization period was the Tet Offensive. Following a change in presidential administrations in the 1968 election, President Nixon followed a strategy of de-escalation and "Vietnamization" of the conflict, while also escalating the conflict through incursions into Cambodia and Laos, and bombings of North Vietnam. At various times, the U.S. and South Vietnamese forces were joined by South Korean, Filipino, New Zealand, Thai and Australian troops.
As Vietnamization went into effect, and the Paris Peace Talks completed in 1972, the U.S. role changed again South Vietnam fought its own ground war, with U.S. ground combat troops withdrawing between 1968 and 1972, with the last air attacks in 1972. After that, the U.S. provided limited replacements of supplies, and maintained a large, diplomatic Defense Attache Office that monitored the RVN until the fall of South Vietnam in 1975.
After the U.S. withdrawal, South Vietnam collapsed after being invaded by the DRV in 1975. Memorable pictures of desperate people clinging to helicopters reflect the evacuation of diplomatic, military, and intelligence personnel, and some Vietnamese allies. Other than for the immediate security of the evacuation, no U.S. combat troops or aircraft had been in South Vietnam since 60 days after the signing of the peace treaty in Paris.
The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities. The most detailed demographic study calculated 791,000 to 1,141,000 war-related deaths for all of Vietnam,[6] while the Vietnamese government claimed that over 3 million Vietnamese died during the conflict.[7][8] 195,000-430,000 South Vietnamese civilians died in the war.[9][10] 50,000-65,000 North Vietnamese civilians died in the war.[11][9] The Army of the Republic of Vietnam lost between 171,331 and 220,357 men during the war.[12][9] The official US Department of Defense figure was 950,765 communist forces killed in Vietnam from 1965 to 1974. Defense Department officials believed that these body count figures need to be deflated by 30 percent. In addition, Guenter Lewy assumes that one-third of the reported "enemy" killed may have been civilians, concluding that the actual number of deaths of communist military forces was probably closer to 444,000.[9] Some 200,000–300,000 Cambodians,[13][14][15] 20,000–200,000 Laotians,[16][17][18][19][20][21] and 58,220 U.S. service members also died in the conflict.
U.S. replaces France
Vietnam as the lightly shaded area.
After the Geneva accords of 1954 split the former French Indochina into the Republic of Vietnam (South) and Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North), France no longer had colonial authority. After certain procedural matters were resolved in early 1955, the United States took up a major role in training and funding what was now the Army of the Republic of Vietnam in the South. U.S. intelligence collection personnel had been in the area since the latter part of the Second World War. In 1954, Edward Lansdale, a United States Air Force officer seconded to the Central Intelligence Agency, came to Saigon under the cover of Assistant Air Attache leading the Saigon Military Mission, which was a CIA operation whose immediate activities included sending Vietnamese personnel north, to set up stay-behind intelligence collection and covert action teams for future use.
It has been argued, certainly with some justification, that the U.S. unwisely supported the French before 1954, and still had a pro-French view after 1954. Part of this was due to U.S. diplomatic strategy that saw French cooperation in Europe as essential to NATO and to Western stability, and taking a pro-French position in the former Indochina obtained cooperation from France. The Vietnamese were not seen as important, in Cold War terms, in the 1940s and 1950s, even though, perhaps ironically, it was Japanese expansion into French Indochina that triggered U.S. economic warfare against Japan, and eventually the Japanese decision for war in 1941.
Later, the U.S. would support anticommunist Vietnamese, never neutralists.
The strategic balance
While Vietnamese Communists had long had aims to control the whole of Vietnam, the specific decision to conquer the South was made, by the Northern leadership, in May 1959.[22] The Communist side had clearly defined political objectives, and a grand strategy to achieve them; there was a clear relationship between long-term goals and short-term actions, within their strategic theory of dau tranh. Some of their actions may seem to be from Maoist and other models, but they have some unique concepts that are not always obvious.
Apart from its internal problems, South Vietnam faced difficult military challenges. On the one hand, there was a threat of a conventional, cross-border strike from the North, reminiscent of the Korean War. In the 1950s, the U.S. advisors focused on building a "mirror image" of the U.S. Army, designed to meet and defeat a conventional invasion. [23] Ironically, while the lack of counterguerrilla forces threatened the South for many years, the last two blows were Korea-style invasions. With U.S. air support, the South were able to largely repel a conventional invasion by North Vietnam. The 1975 invasion which defeated the South was not opposed by U.S. forces.
Early U.S. noncombat advisory and support roles
Harry S. Truman, as soon as the Second World War ended, was under great pressure to return the country to normal civilian conditions, and he demobilised rapidly to release funds for domestic spending. There were no such pressures to demobilize, however, on Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong. Truman has been blamed for "losing" Eastern Europe and China, but it is less clear what could have been done to stop it. The decision to cut military commitment came home to roost in the Korean War, when Truman had few forces to dispatch.
From 1955, the U.S. took over the role of training and significantly funding the Southern Army of the Republic of Viet Nam (ARVN). In 1959, the first U.S. advisers to go into combat in the area were in Laos, not Vietnam. With a negotiated settlement to the Laotian civil war in 1962, U.S. attention shifted to South Vietnam. Communications intercepts in 1959, for example, confirmed the start of the Ho Chi Minh trail and other preparation for large-scale fighting. This information may not have been fully shared with the South Vietnamese, due to security concerns over the intelligence methods used to get the information.
Interactions of South Vietnamese & U.S. politics
After the French colonial authority ended, Vietnam was ruled by a nominally civilian government, led by first Bao Dai and then, from 1954, by Ngo Dinh Diem; neither were elected. Communist statements frequently spoke of it as a U.S. "puppet" government, although the Northern government had not been elected and had little more claim to democratic legitimacy. Both governments were clients of the different major sides in the Cold War.
Diem was strongly anti-communist, but authoritarian, and there were increasing protests against his rule. He was a Catholic in a Buddhist-majority country, but gave preference to Catholics. While personally ascetic, he tolerated a serious level of corruption in the government.
Effect on military efficiency
Not only under Diem, appointing officers to the command of military units, and also to posts in the separate hierarchy of district and province chiefs, often were made as political loyalty as the first criterion, possibly bribes or favors at the next, and military proficiency sometimes as a last consideration. Officers were shifted from post to post, in the interest of breaking up potential coup plots.
In practice, the most powerful military positions were the commanders of the four Corps tactical zones (CTZ), also known as military regions. Even though a CTZ was geographic, and province and district chiefs were usually military officers, the province/district reporting went through the Ministry of the Interior rather than the military Joint General Staff.
Especially powerful units might, in the interest of interfering with coups, be shifted from one chain of command for another. At the Battle of Ap Bac, for example, the potent armored personnel carriers (APC) had been shifted from the operational control of the military commander to that of the province chief. Before the unit commander would commit his resources to battle, at the urging of a U.S. adviser to the division commander, the commanding officer of the APC company had to obtain province chief as well as military approval, significantly increasing the time before this unit could intervene in battle.
Conflicting goals
Vietnamese and U.S. goals were also not always in complete agreement. Until 1969, the U.S.A. was generally anything opposed to any policy, nationalist or not, which might lead to the South Vietnamese becoming neutralist rather than anticommunist. There is evidence that the U.S. supported attempts to replace governments that were considering forming a neutralist coalition that might include the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, a communist-dominated opposition. The Cold War containment policy was in force through the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Administrations, while the Nixon administration supported a more multipolar model of detente.
While there were still power struggles and internal corruption, there was much more stability between 1967 and 1975. Still, the South Vietnamese government did not enjoy either widespread popular support, or even an enforced social model of a Communist state. It is much easier to disrupt a state without common popular or decision maker goals.
Instability
The association of the U.S. with the RVN government, however, was sufficiently strong that instability there both reflected adversely on the U.S. role, and seen as interfering with the fight against Communism. While Diem ruled between 1954 and 1963; there followed a period of frequent changes of government, some lasting only weeks, between 1964 and 1967, until moderate stability came in 1967.
Protests generally called the Buddhist crisis of 1963, which also involved other Vietnamese sects, such as the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao, were a major disruption by June. These protests were seen by the U.S. as strengthening the Communist insurgency, and, after rejecting earlier initiatives for a military coup, agreed that Diem had to go.
In November 1963, Diem was overthrown and killed in a military coup. The United States was aware of the coup preparations and, through CIA officer Lucien Conein, had given limited financial support to the generals involved. There is no evidence that the U.S. expected Diem, and his brother and closest political adviser, Ngo Dinh Nhu to be killed; U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. had offered him physical protection.
The leaders of the November coup were replaced by a nominal civilian government really under military control, which was overthrown by yet another military coup (involving some of the same generals) in January 1964.
Between 1964 and 1967 there was a constant struggle for power in South Vietnam, and not just from within the military. Several Buddhist and other factions often derived from religious sects, which became involved in the jockeying for political power, such as the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao. Even the Vietnamese Buddhists were not monolithic, and had their own internal struggles. At varying times, sects, organized crime syndicates such as the Binh Xuyen, and individual provincial leaders had paramilitary groups that affected the political process; while the Montagnard ethnic groups wanted autonomy for their region. William Colby (then chief of the Central Intelligence Agency's , Far Eastern Division in the operational directorate) observed that civilian politicians "divided and sub-divided into a tangle of contesting ambitions and claims and claims to power and participation in the government." [24] Some of these factions sought political power or wealth, while others sought to avoid domination by other groups (Catholic vs Buddhist in the Diem Coup).
After a period of overt military government, there was a gradual transition to at least the appearance of democratic government, but South Vietnam neither developed a true popular government, nor rooted out the corruption that caused a lack of support.
Covert operations
Well before the Gulf of Tonkin and overt operations, there were a number of covert operations, some ostensibly with U.S. advisers to South Vietnamese crews, and some, especially in Laos, of which no public announcement was made. Certain of these operations became public in postwar historical analyses, official announcements at the time, or press reporting that eventually was confirmed.
US activity before independence
Still, there was U.S. activity in Southeast Asia, which grew out of covert operations directed more at China. In August 1950, the CIA bought the assets of Civil Air Transport (CAT), an airline founded after the Second World War by Gen. Claire L. Chennault and Whiting Willauer. While CAT continued commercial operations, it acted as a CIA "proprietary", or covert support organization under commercial cover. CAT aircraft, for example, dropped personnel and supplies over mainland China during the Korean War.[25] CAT later became part of Air America.
When Dwight D. Eisenhower succeeded Truman as President in 1952, after a campaign that had attacked Truman's "weaknesses" against communism and in Korea, he formulated a strong policy of containing Communism. There was much sensitivity over "softness" exemplified by the excesses of Senator Joe McCarthy. While the Eisenhower Administration avoided becoming too enmeshed in the French problem of the Indochinese revolution, airlift was provided by CAT pilots. United States Air Force C-119 Flying Boxcar transports, repainted with French insignia. CAT trained the crews at Clark Air Force base in the Philippines, and then flew the aircraft to Gia Lam Airport in Hanoi. They made airdrops to French forces in Laos between May and July. Eventually, CAT flew logistics missions to Dien Bien Phu, in March to May 1954; one aircraft was shot down and others damaged.
Laos
After France left the region, the Royal Lao Government (RLG) quietly asked the United States to replace the former French funding of the Lao military, and to add military technical aid from the increasingly active Communist insurgency, the Pathet Lao. This assistance started in January 1955, directed by a new part of the Embassy, with the nondescript name Program Evaluation Office (PEO). At first, the PEO simply dispensed funds, but took on a much larger role in 1959.
When the first direct military assistance began in July 1959, the PEO was operated by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency using military personnel acting as civilians. [26] CIA sent a unit from United States Army Special Forces, who arrived on the CIA proprietary airline Air America, wearing civilian clothes and having no obvious US connection. These soldiers led Meo and Hmong tribesmen against Communist forces. The covert program was called Operation Hotfoot. At the US Embassy, BG John Heintges was designated the head of the PEO. [27]
In April 1961, Chief of Staff of the Air Force Curtis LeMay’s began to approve certain covert operations, such as JUNGLE JIM. He denied them to the press. They were, however, a response to President Kennedy's challenge for the military to develop a force capable of fighting the “Communist
revolutionary warfare”, regarded as proxy wars for the U.S. and Soviet Union. One of the first to
respond to the call for combat control volunteers[28]
CIA, MACV-SOG and OPPLAN34A
John F. Kennedy approved, on May 11, 1961, a Central Intelligence Agency plan for covert operations against North Vietnam. These included ground, air, and naval operations. Eventually, the operations were transferred to officially military control, in a unit, MACV-SOG, principally reporting to MACV but with an approval chain that often ran to the White House.
CIA naval operations, under Tucker Gougelmann, in 1961,[29] starting with motorized junks. The first motor torpedo boats were transferred to CIA in October 1962. At the end of 1962, raids began.
They received their improved Norwegian Nasty-class boats in 1963.[30] These more sophisticated craft were crewed by Norwegian and German mercenaries as well as South Vietnamese; U.S. Navy SEALs conducted the training in Danang.
MACV-SOG was formed in January 1964, and took over the "modest" CIA maritime operation, based in Danang, now given the cover name Naval Advisory Detachment, actually branch OP37 of MACV-SOG. The attacks, under the command of MACV-SOG, were actually carried out by the Coastal Security Service of the RVN Strategic Technical Directorate.
So, at least a year before the Gulf of Tonkin, there had been some raids against North Vietnam. Independent of MACV-SOG, the U.S. Navy began to conduct signals intelligence patrols for the National Security Agency, close to North Vietnam but in international waters. These were called the DESOTO patrols, and used overt U.S. Navy destroyers, with a van packed with electronics and technicians mounted on their decks.
On the night of July 30, 1964, four MACV-SOG boats shelled North Vietnamese shore installations, after a series of earlier maritime operations. The North Vietnamese went on high naval alert.
On July 31, 1964, there was a DESOTO patrol.[31] The timing after the MACV-SOG operation may have been coincidental, although there have been suggestions that the increased North Vietnamese activity was a rich environment for SIGINT collection. There is no strong indication that the DESOTO patrols were trying to provoke North Vietnamese response; they carefully stayed in international waters and were fully identifiable as U.S. ships.
U.S. buildup and overt combat involvement
This section focuses on the period when U.S. forces became involved in large-scale, direct combat. Wherever possible, the national-level decisions that went into a change of military action will be presented, but, in a number of situations, an action may have been the result of a perceived need to "do something" rather than having a direct effect on the enemy. Such decision-making style is not unique to this period. George Kennan, considered a consummate diplomat and diplomatic theorist, observed that American leaders, starting with the 1899-1900 "Open Door" policy to China, have a
neurotic self-consciousness and introversion, the tendency to make statements and take actions with regard not to their effect on the international scene but rather to their effect on those echelons of American opinion, congressional opinion first and foremost, to which the respect statesmen are anxious to appeal. The question became not: How effective is what I am doing in terms of the impact it makes on our world environment? but rather: how do I look, in the mirror of American domestic opinion, as I do it?[32]
Even when leaders' goals are sincere, the need to be seen as doing the popular thing can become counterproductive. There were many times, in the seemingly inexorable advance of decades of American involvement in Southeast Asia, where reflection might have led to caution. Instead, the need to be seen as active, as well as the clashes of strong egos, separate the needs of policy from the dictates of politics. The personalities of different Presidents and key advisers all had an effect. Many, but by no means all, of the key political decisions were under Johnson, but Presidents from Truman through Ford all had roles.
Although Americans died in supporting South Vietnamese involvement beginning in 1962, the greatest U.S. involvement was from mid-1964 through 1972. U.S ground troops began reducing in 1968 and much more sharply in 1969. So, much of the detailed U.S. political action with other countries will be in Joint warfare in South Vietnam 1964-1968, Vietnamization, and air operations against North Vietnam.
Vietnam's climate has a major effect on warfare, especially involving vehicles and aircraft.
Major operations usually took place in the dry season. While the most southern parts tend to have a generally tropical climate, there are two major climactic periods:
- Monsoon season of heat, rain, and mud, with limited mobility (May to September)
- Warm and dry conditions (October to March)
Combat support advisory phase
John F. Kennedy and his key staff, came from a different elite than that which had spawned the Cold Warriors of the Eisenhower Administration. While the form was different, a militant anti-Communism was underneath many of the Kennedy Administration policies. [33] Its rougher operatives had a different style than Joe McCarthy, but it is sometimes forgotten that Robert Kennedy (RFK) had been on McCarthy's staff. [34]
Where Republicans during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations blamed Democrats who had "lost China", the Kennedy Administration was not out to lose anything. The first covert operations in the region began in the Eisenhower Administration, but Kennedy increased both operations in Laos and Vietnam.
Intensification
Guerrilla attacks increased in the early 1960s, at the same time as the new John F. Kennedy administration made Presidential decisions to increase its influence. Diem, as other powers were deciding their policies, was facing disorganized attacks and internal political dissent. There were conflicts between the government, dominated by minority Northern Catholics, and both the majority Buddhists and minorities such as the Montagnards, Cao Dai, and Hoa Hao. These conflicts were exploited, initially at the level of propaganda and recruiting, by stay-behind Viet Minh receiving orders from the North.
U.S. personnel went into the field with ARVN personnel starting in 1962. The term "adviser" was popular but not always accurate. While many U.S. personnel indeed did advise their counterparts, and U.S. forces did not take a direct combat role, a substantial part of field activity was devoted to tactical airlift of ARVN troops, and a wide range of technical support. The first American soldier to die in combat was not with ARVN infantry, but part of a signals intelligence team, doing direction finding on Viet Cong radio transmitters in the field, whose team was ambushed.
Th Battle of Ap Bac, fought on January 2, 1963, did involve both U.S. advisers to ARVN commanders, as well as U.S. aviation support. John Paul Vann was the senior tactical adviser, and his outrage about ARVN performance both stimulated aggressive investigative journalism, as well as infuriating the U.S. command.
Deterioration and reassessment
By November 1963, after Diem was killed, there was mixed feelings among the JCS if covert operations alone could have a significant effect. [35] Chief of Staff of the Air Force GEN Curtis LeMay pushed his JCS colleagues for "more resolute, overt military actions." He was joined by Commandant of the Marine Corps GEN David Shoup, and gained stronger support from the Army and Navy chiefs, GEN Earle Wheeler and ADM David McDonald. ADM Harry Felt, commander of U.S. Pacific Command, also believed covert actions alone would not be decisive. LeMay said "we in the military felt we were not in the decision-making process at all [Chairman of the JCS Maxwell] Taylor might have been but we didn't agree with Taylor in most cases."[36]
To senior civilian officials, with the Joint Chiefs receiving it via Secretary of Defense McNamara, Johnson stated his policy decision in classified National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 273, of November 26, 1963. The key point was the U.S. goal was to strengthen South Vietnam to win its own contest; the U.S. expected to begin to withdraw troops. "It remains the central object of the United States in South Vietnam to assist the people and Government of that country to win their contest against the externally directed and supported Communist conspiracy. The test of all U.S. decisions and actions in this area should be the effectiveness of their contribution to this purpose.
He made pacification of the Mekong Delta the highest priority, but also ordered planning for increased yet deniable activity against North Vietnam. "With respect to Laos, a plan should be developed and submitted for approval by higher authority for military operations up to a line up to 50 kilometers inside Laos, together with political plans for minimizing the international hazards of such an enterprise." These operations would change from CIA to MACV control. A "favorable influence", but no operations in, Cambodia was desired.
A high priority was producing "as strong and persuasive a case as possible to demonstrate to the world the degree to which the Viet Cong is controlled, sustained and supplied from Hanoi, through Laos and other channels."[37]
The JCS responded to NSAM 273 with a January 22, 1964 memorandum to McNamara. Significant differences with the Presidential decision, which emphasized assisting South Vietnam, was a JCS goal of "victory" as the goal of U.S. military operations.
Gulf of Tonkin Incident
(PD) Diagram: U.S. Naval History & Heritage CommandTrack chart of USS
Maddox (DD-731) and three North Vietnamese motor torpedo boats, during their action on 2 August 1964. Attacks by aircraft from
USS Ticonderoga (CVA-14) are also shown.
On August 2, 1964, a DESOTO Patrol destroyer (USS Maddox, DD-731) was believed to have been approached, and possibly fired upon, by the North Vietnamese. After much declassification and study, the incident largely remains shrouded in what German military theorist Carl von Clausewitz has called the "fog of war," but questions have been raised about whether the North Vietnamese believed they were under attack, about who fired the first shots, and, indeed, if there was a true attack. There has not been a clear indication from the North Vietnamese if they thought the DESOTO and 34A operations were part of the same programs, and, if so, if destroyer-sized vessels represented an escalation. Later on the 2nd, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Maxwell Taylor, ordered that DESOTO patrols should not be made at the same time as 34A operations.
There is some question as to whether the second patrol (increased to two ships with air cover) was actually attacked, or if there were merely North Vietnamese warships in their area. Declassified NSA intercepts of North Vietnamese communications, on the 4th, show considerable confusion on the DRV side. Operating under Presidential authority, Johnson launched Operation PIERCE ARROW (air strikes against North Vietnamese naval facilities and the oil refinery at Vinh) on the evening of the 4th (Washington time), and gave a speech regarding the same approximately 90 minutes before the Navy aircraft reached their targets.[31]
President Johnson asked for, and received, Congressional authority to use military force in Vietnam after the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, which was described as a North Vietnamese attack on U.S. warships. Congress did not "declare war," which is its responsibility under the Constitution; nevertheless, it launched what effectively was at the time the longest war in U.S. history, and even longer if the covert actions before the August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin situation are included. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, although later revoked, was considered by Lyndon Johnson as his basic authority to conduct military operations in Southeast Asia. It serves as an example of how outright declarations of war have become extremely rare since the Second World War.
Beginning of air operations
Immediately after the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, there was a period of retaliation for specific attacks, Operation FLAMING DART, and then a steady but incremental pressure under Operation Rolling Thunder operations against North Vietnam. There was also extensive air support overtly inside South Vietnam, and, at different times, in Laos and Cambodia; some of these are discussed above in the section on covert activity.
From a current doctrinal standpoint, these campaigns should be evaluated according to an examination of air operations relying on a planning model at the level of operational art. This model distinguishes effectiveness, or the results of the campaign, from the tactical aspects of weapons effects. Several factors need to be considered to determine effectiveness. The campaigns in Laos and Cambodia were far more effective than Operation Rolling Thunder, as they were not executed as a subtle means of "signaling", but had clear objectives measurable in military terms. The objectives here, as well as in Operation Linebacker I, were military. Operation Linebacker II also was effective, but it had well-defined objectives at the level of grand strategy: compellence to return to negotiations. [38]
- What conditions are required to achieve the objectives?
- What sequence of actions is most likely to create those conditions?
- What resources are required to accomplish that sequence of actions?
- What is the likely cost or risk in performing that sequence of actions?
Major ground combat phase
- See also: Vietnam War military technology
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who had been appointed by Kennedy, became Johnson's principal adviser, and continued to push an economic and signaling grand strategy. Johnson and McNamara, although it would be hard to find two men of more different personality, formed a quick bond. McNamara appeared more impressed by economics and Schelling's compellence theory [39] than by Johnson's liberalism or Senate-style deal-making, but they agreed in broad policy.
[40]
They directed a plan for South Vietnam that they believed would end the war quickly. Note that the initiative was coming from Washington; the unstable South Vietnamese government was not part of defining their national destiny. The plan selected was from GEN William Westmoreland, the field commander in Vietnam.
This model regarded the enemy forces in the field as the opposing center of gravity, as opposed to the local security and development of pacification. The enemy, however, had a different idea of centers of gravity; see Vietnamese Communist grand strategy.
Over time, the U.S. developed tactics increasingly appropriate to the environment and foe, given the Westmoreland's assumption that the center of gravity was the enemy main force. Some of the early operations included:
There were many such operations, variously by U.S. only, U.S. and ARVN, and ARVN forces. The term "search and destroy" was often used to describe ground operations against Viet Cong and People's Army of Viet Nam troops.
The UH-1 "Huey", as well as other types of helicopters, are iconic of the Vietnam War. The full capabilities of units with integrated helicopter support were shown by the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) at the Battle of the Ia Drang and the Battle of Bong Son.
These operations continued, some joint with ARVN troops and some by U.S. and third country forces alone. Australian units, integrated into large U.S. forces, were highly regarded. Less mobile but potent divisions came from South Korea and Thailand.
Immense fire support, from ground and air platforms, supported these operations. Close air support both from fighter-bombers and early armed helicopters was common, but new techniques came into wide use. ARC LIGHT was the general code name for operations using B-52 heavy bombers against targets in South Vietnam. The term grew to encompass B-52 operations against targets in Cambodia and Laos, principally against the Ho Chi Minh trail. B-52 use in the major Operation Linebacker I and Operation Linebacker II operations against North Vietnam are generally not considered ARC LIGHT missions; see the respective operations.
There were also technical measures to clear jungle, both mechanical and chemical. See Vietnam War ground technology.
Unquestionably, Westmoreland's approach inflicted immense casualties on the enemy forces. Even so, the North Vietnamese seemed willing to accept them. During the second half of 1967, the North Vietnamese intensified operations in the border regions of South Vietnam, in at least regimental strength. Unlike the usual hit-and-run tactics used by communist forces, these were sustained and bloody affairs. Beginning at Con Thien and Song Be in October 1967, then at Dak To
There had long been fighting in the Khe Sanh area, but the North Vietnamese greatly intensified their attacks in early January 1968, before the Tet Offensive. They continued operations there until April.
Tet Offensive
By 1968, and perhaps in 1967, Johnson's chief adviser on the war, McNamara, had increasingly less faith in the Johnson-Westmoreland model. McNamara quotes GEN William DuPuy, Westmoreland's chief planner, as recognizing that as long as the enemy could fight from the sanctuaries of Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam, it was impossible to bring adequate destruction on the enemy, and the model was inherently flawed.[41]
Opposition against him peaked in 1968; see Tet Offensive. On March 31, 1968, Johnson said on national television,
"I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president"
In March, Johnson had also announced a bombing halt, in the interests of starting talks. The first discussions were limited to starting broader talks, as a quid-pro-quo for a bombing halt.:[42]
Vietnamization phase
During the Presidential campaign, a random wire service story headlined that Nixon had a "secret plan for ending the war, but, in reality, Nixon was only considering alternatives at this point. He remembered how Eisenhower had deliberately leaked, to the Communist side in the Korean War, that he might be considering using nuclear weapons to break the deadlock. Nixon adapted this into what he termed the "Madman Strategy".[43]
He told H. R. Haldeman, one of his closest aides,
"I call it the madman theory, Bob.I want the North Vietnamese to believe that I've reached the point that I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can't restrain him when he's angry, and he has his hand on the nuclear button, and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace."[44]
Nixon decisionmaking structure
After the election of Richard M. Nixon, a review of U.S. policy in Vietnam was the first item on the national security agenda. Henry Kissinger, the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, asked all relevant agencies to respond with their assessment, which they did on March 14, 1969.[45]
"Controlling the policy were a small group of men, President Richard M. Nixon, and which included the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs, Henry A. Kissinger; the President’s Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs, Major General Alexander M. Haig; and a few National Security Council officials trusted by Kissinger."[46] Admiral Thomas Moorer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms, and Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker also were involved, but Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and Secretary of State William Rogers were rarely part of the inner discussions.
Policy toward SVN
U.S. policy changed to one of turning ground combat over to South Vietnam, a process called Vietnamization, a term coined in January 1969. Nixon, in contrast, saw resolution not just in Indochina, in a wider scope. He sought Soviet support, saying that if the Soviet Union helped bring the war to an honorable conclusion, the U.S. would "do something dramatic" to improve U.S.-Soviet relations. [42] In worldwide terms, Vietnamization replaced the earlier containment policy[47] with detente.[48] Also in 1969, both overt and covert Paris Peace Talks began.
While Nixon hesitated to authorize a military request to bomb Cambodian sanctuaries, which civilian analysts considered less important than Laos, he authorized, in March, bombing of Cambodia as a signal to the North Vietnamese. While direct attack against North Vietnam, as was later done in Operation Linebacker I, might be more effective, he authorized the Operation MENU bombing of Cambodia, starting on March 17. These bombings were kept secret from the U.S. leadership and electorate; the North Vietnamese clearly knew they were being bombed. It first leaked to the press in May, and Nixon ordered warrantless surveillance of key staff. [49]
Nixon also directed Cyrus Vance to go to Moscow in March, to encourage the Soviets to put pressure on the North Vietnamese to open negotiations with the U.S. [50] The Soviets, however, either did not want to get in the middle, or had insufficient leverage on the North Vietnamese.
Final air support phase
In the transition to full "Vietnamization," U.S. and third country ground troops turned ground combat responsibility to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. Air and naval combat, combat support, and combat service support from the U.S. continued. While the ARVN improved in local security and small operations, Operation Lam Son 719, in February 1971, the first large operation with only ARVN ground forces, they took casualties that the South Vietnamese leadership considered unacceptable, and withdrew. This operation still had U.S. helicopters lifting the crews, and U.S. intelligence and artillery support.
They did much better against the 1972 Eastertide invasion, but this still involved extensive U.S. air support. To stop the logistical support of the Eastertide invasion, Nixon launched Operation Linebacker I, with the operational goal of disabling the infrastructure of infiltration. One of the problems of the Republic of Vietnam's Air Force is that it never operated under central control, even for a specific maximum-effort air offensive. South Vietnamese aircraft always were controlled by regional corps commanders, so never developed skills in deep battlefield air interdiction.
When the North refused to return to negotiations in late 1972, Nixon, in mid-December, ordered bombing at an unprecedented level of intensity, Operation Linebacker II. This was at the strategic and grand strategic levels, attacking not so much the infiltration infrastructure, but North Vietnam's ability to import supplies, its internal transportation and logistics, command and control, and integrated air defense system. Within a month of the start of the operation, a peace agreement was signed.
Peace accords were finally signed on 27 January 1973, in Paris. U.S combat troops immediately began withdrawal, and prisoners of war were repatriated. U.S. supplies and limited advise could continue. In theory, North Vietnam would not reinforce its troops in the south. In practice, the North did not remove its large forces from the south, and eventually committed additional large forces in a conventional invasion.
Fall of South Vietnam
While Ford, Nixon's final vice-president, succeeded Nixon, most major policies had been set by the time he took office. He was under a firm Congressional and public mandate to withdraw.
The North, badly damaged by the bombings of 1972, recovered quickly and remained committed to the destruction of its rival. There was little U.S. popular support for new combat involvement, and no Congressional authorizations to expend funds to do so. North Vietnam launched a new conventional invasion in 1975 and seized Saigon on April 30.[51]
No American combat units were present until the final days, when Operation FREQUENT WIND was launched to evacuate Americans and 5600 senior Vietnamese government and military officials, and employees of the U.S. The 9th Marine Amphibious Brigade, under the tactical command of Alfred M. Gray, Jr., would enter Saigon to evacuate the last Americans from the American Embassy to ships of the Seventh Fleet. Ambassador Graham Martin was among the last civilians to leave. [52] In parallel, Operation Eagle Pull evacuated U.S. and friendly personnel from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on April 12, 1975, under the protection of the 31st Marine Amphibious Unit, part of III MAF.
Vietnam was unified under Communist rule. Lê Duẩn's government purged South Vietnamese who had fought against the North, imprisoning over one million people and setting off a mass exodus and humanitarian disaster.[53][54][55][56][57] Large numbers of South Vietnamese became refugees, many as desperate "boat people."
Under the leadership of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge murdered over 2 million Cambodians in the killing fields, out of a population of around 8 million.[13][58] The Pathet Lao slaughtered tens of thousands of Hmong tribesmen.[59][60]
Southeast Asia did not become a monolithic Communist bloc. It took over a decade for the U.S. military to recover from some of its internal turmoil and breakdown in discipline.
References
- ↑ It's worth mentioning that, in addition to banning TV from showing film of combat, the U.S. military also tried to reduce the number of deaths during the Iraq War with improved medical triage. The result was that, though more soldiers survived, many of them returned home with severe disablement, including especially lots of brain injuries which meant they would likely be dependent for life on care by their families.
- ↑ The Pentagon Papers (1971), Beacon Press, vol. 3, p. 134.
- ↑ The Pentagon Papers (1971), Beacon Press, vol. 3, p. 119.
- ↑ The Pentagon Papers (1971), Beacon Press, vol. 3, p. 140.
- ↑ The Pentagon Papers (1971), Beacon Press, vol. 3, p. 140.
- ↑ Charles Hirschman et al., "Vietnamese Casualties During the American War: A New Estimate," Population and Development Review, December 1995.
- ↑ Shenon, Philip. 20 Years After Victory, Vietnamese Communists Ponder How to Celebrate, 23 April 1995. Retrieved on 24 February 2011.
- ↑ Associated Press, 3 April 1995, "Vietnam Says 1.1 Million Died Fighting For North."
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Lewy, Guenter (1978). America in Vietnam. New York: Oxford University Press. Appendix 1, pp.450-453
- ↑ Thayer, Thomas C (1985). War Without Fronts: The American Experience in Vietnam. Boulder: Westview Press. Ch. 12.
- ↑ Wiesner, Louis A. (1988). Victims and Survivors Displaced Persons and Other War Victims in Viet-Nam. New York: Greenwood Press. p.310
- ↑ Thayer, Thomas C (1985). War Without Fronts: The American Experience in Vietnam. Boulder: Westview Press. p.106.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 Heuveline, Patrick (2001). "The Demographic Analysis of Mortality in Cambodia." In Forced Migration and Mortality, eds. Holly E. Reed and Charles B. Keely. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
- ↑ Marek Sliwinski, Le Génocide Khmer Rouge: Une Analyse Démographique (L'Harmattan, 1995).
- ↑ Banister, Judith, and Paige Johnson (1993). "After the Nightmare: The Population of Cambodia." In Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia: The Khmer Rouge, the United Nations and the International Community, ed. Ben Kiernan. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies.
- ↑ Warner, Roger, Shooting at the Moon, (1996), pp366, estimates 30,000 Hmong.
- ↑ Obermeyer, "Fifty Years of Violent War Deaths from Vietnam to Bosnia", British Medical Journal, 2008, estimates 60,000 total.
- ↑ T. Lomperis, From People's War to People's Rule, (1996), estimates 35,000 total.
- ↑ Small, Melvin & Joel David Singer, Resort to Arms: International and Civil Wars 1816–1980, (1982), estimates 20,000 total.
- ↑ Taylor, Charles Lewis, The World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators, estimates 20,000 total.
- ↑ Stuart-Fox, Martin, A History of Laos, estimates 200,000 by 1973.
- ↑ An enabling Party resolution was passed in January, but this was the date of starting to build infrastructure; combat use of that infrastructure was still two or more years away. See Vietnamese Communist grand strategy
- ↑ , Chapter 6, "The Advisory Build-Up, 1961-1967," Section 1, pp. 408-457, The Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, Volume 2
- ↑ William Colby, Lost Victory, 1989, p. 173, quoted in McMaster, p. 165
- ↑ William M. Leary (Winter 1999-2000), "CIA Air Operations in Laos, 1955-1974, Supporting the "Secret War"", Studies in Intelligence
- ↑ Haas, Michael E. (1997). Apollo’s Warriors: US Air Force Special Operations during the Cold War. Air University Press., p. 165
- ↑ Holman, Victor (1995). Seminole Negro Indians, Macabebes, and Civilian Irregulars: Models for the Future Employment of Indigenous Forces.
- ↑ Haas, pp. 212-214, 221-224
- ↑ Shultz, Richard H., Jr. (2000), the Secret War against Hanoi: the untold story of spies, saboteurs, and covert warriors in North Vietnam, Harper Collins Perennial, p. 18
- ↑ Shultz, p. 176
- ↑ 31.0 31.1 H. R. McMaster (1997), Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam, Harpercollins, pp. 120-134 Cite error: Invalid
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- ↑ Kennan, George F. (1967), Memoirs 1925-1950, Little, Brown, pp. 53-54
- ↑ Halberstam, David (1972), The Best and the Brightest, Random House, pp. 121-122
- ↑ Thomas, Evan (October 2000), "Bobby: Good, Bad, And In Between - Robert F. Kennedy", Washington Monthly
- ↑ , Chapter 1, "U.S. Programs in South Vietnam, Nov. 1963-Apr. 1965," Section 1, pp. 1-56, The Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, Volume 3
- ↑ McMaster, pp. 59-60
- ↑ Lyndon B. Johnson (November 26, 1963), National Security Action Memorandum 273: South Vietnam
- ↑ Joint Chiefs of Staff (13 February 2008), Department of Defense Joint Publication 5-0: Joint Operation Planning
- ↑ Carlson, Justin, "The Failure of Coercive Diplomacy: Strategy Assessment for the 21st Century", Hemispheres: Tufts Journal of International Affairs
- ↑ Morgan, Patrick M. (2003), Deterrence Now, Cambridge University Press
- ↑ Gen. William E Dupuy, August 1, 1988 interview, quoted by McNamara, pages 212 and 371.
- ↑ 42.0 42.1 Henry Kissinger (1973), Ending the Vietnam War: A history of America's Involvement in and Extrication from the Vietnam War, Simon & Schuster, p. 50 Cite error: Invalid
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- ↑ Karnow, p. 582
- ↑ Carroll, James (June 14, 2005), "Nixon's madman strategy", Boston Globe
- ↑ Kissinger, p. 50
- ↑ Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, vol. Volume VIII, Vietnam, Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State, January–October 1972
- ↑ Kissinger, pp. 27-28
- ↑ Kissinger, pp. 249-250
- ↑ Karnow, p. 591-592
- ↑ Kissinger, pp. 75-78
- ↑ Military History Institute of Vietnam, Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People's Army of Vietnam, 1954-1975 (2002), Hanoi's official historyexcerpt and text search
- ↑ Shulimson, Jack, The Marine War: III MAF in Vietnam, 1965-1971, 1996 Vietnam Symposium: "After the Cold War: Reassessing Vietnam" 18-20 April 1996, Vietnam Center and Archive at Texas Tech University
- ↑ Desbarats, Jacqueline. "Repression in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Executions and Population Relocation", from The Vietnam Debate (1990) by John Morton Moore. "We know now from a 1985 statement by Nguyen Co Tach that two and a half million, rather than one million, people went through reeducation....in fact, possibly more than 100,000 Vietnamese people were victims of extrajudicial executions in the last ten years....it is likely that, overall, at least one million Vietnamese were the victims of forced population transfers."
- ↑ Anh Do and Hieu Tran Phan, Camp Z30-D: The Survivors, Orange County Register, 29 April 2001.
- ↑ Associated Press, June 23, 1979, San Diego Union, July 20, 1986 reported that 200,000 to 400,000 "boat people" died at sea.
- ↑ Rummel, Rudolph, Statistics of Vietnamese Democide, in his Statistics of Democide, 1997.
- ↑ Nghia M. Vo, The Bamboo Gulag: Political Imprisonment in Communist Vietnam (McFarland, 2004).
- ↑ Sharp, Bruce (1 April 2005). Counting Hell: The Death Toll of the Khmer Rouge Regime in Cambodia. Retrieved on 6 March 2013.
- ↑ Jane Hamilton-Merritt, Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942–1992 (Indiana University Press, 1999), pp337-460.
- ↑ Forced Back and Forgotten (Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights, 1989), p8.