Vietnam War

Template:TOC-right 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.

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.

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/

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.

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.

Without trying to name the wars, the key timeline events in modern history are:

• 1941: Japanese invasion of French Indochina
• 1945: End of World War II and return of Indochina to French authority
• 1954: End of French control and beginning of partition under the Geneva agreement; CIA covert operation started
• 1955: First overt U.S. advisors sent to the South
• 1959: North Vietnamese decision, in May 1959 to create the 559th (honoring the date) Transportation Group and begin infiltration of the South
• 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
• 1972: Withdrawal of last U.S. combat forces as a result of negotiation
• 1975: Overthrow of the Southern government by regular Northern troops, followed by reunification under a Communist government.

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.

French Indochina Background

At the time of the French invasion, there were three parts of what is now Vietnam:

• Cochinchina in the south, including the Mekong Delta and what was variously named Gia Dinh, Saigon, and Ho Chi Minh City
• Annam in the center, but the mountainous Central Highlands, the home of the Montagnard peoples, considered itself autonomous
• Tonkin in the North, including the Red River Delta, Hanoi, and Haiphong.

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.

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.

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.

With Cochinchina secured, French naval and mercantile interests turned to Tonkin (as the French referred to Bac Bo).

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.

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.

Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969) and fellow students founded the Vietnamese Communist Party party in Paris in 1929, but it was of marginal importance until World War II. 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).

World War II

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.

1937

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. 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.

1938

When a new French government formed in August 1938, 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. It reflected French concern with the security of metropolitan France as well as its empire.

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.

1940

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. 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.

On the same day that Nishimura arrived, Vichy dismissed Catroux, for independent foreign contact. He was replaced by 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. 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; 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In February, Ho Chi Minh returned and established his base in a cave at Pac Bo, near the Sino-Vietnamese border.

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 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.

1942

During the Japanese occupation, even during French administration, the Viet Minh exiled to China had an opportuntity to quietly rebuild their infrastructure. 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. Of these areas, the "homeland" of the VM was in the Viet Bac near around Bac Can. (see map

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.

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. official or "white" propaganda. The visa was denied.

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.

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. 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.

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. 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. He quotes Cordell Hull's memoirs, saying that Roosevelt

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 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.

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.

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.

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 launched a guerrilla campaign, using Communist China as a sanctuary when French pursuit became hot.

Ho Chi Minh declared independence in September. In a dramatic speech, he began with

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.

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.

Through the OSS Patti mission, often through emissaries, 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.But while the U.S. took no action on Ho's requests, it was also unwilling to aid the French.

1946

President Franklin D. Roosevelt (in office 1933-45) detested French colonialism, but Harry S. Truman (in office 1945-53) was more interested in helping restore French prestige in Europe, so he helped them to return in 1946. An 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.

• "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:

• 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.

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.

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. At this time, the French still saw Bao Dai as a key part of the solution. 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:

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.

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.

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. 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."

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.

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.

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.

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 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."

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."

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. 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:

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.

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.

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.

They recommended an immediate USD $15,000,000 in aid, with additional funding granted in accordance with still-developing United States policy.

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. "

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.

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.

Fall quotes a Viet Minh officer,

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.

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." 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.

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.

The countryside was to encircle the towns, the mountains were to dominate the rice lands of the plains.

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.

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. 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.

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. 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.

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.

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 mortars, 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."

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. 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..

1953

In April, having completed their tours of duty, Salan and his key staff officers returned to France. 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.

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."

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.

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. 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.

Giap threatened Lai Chau, in Thailand, in December.

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, 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. 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.

Dien Bien Phu fell on May 7; the Geneva Conference began the next day.

GM100 dies

GM 100 had had some success in relieving An Khe in April. On June 24, however, GM100 was ambushed and destroyed. There was a 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

See also: Vietnam, war, and the United States

See also: 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 beginnings of U.S. involvement as well as the continuing effects of North Vietnam sponsoring the Pathet Lao.

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.""

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.

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.

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 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.

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 psychological warfare was constructed and Vietnamese Army personnel were rushed through it.

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

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.

External intelligence analysis

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.

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."

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. 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:

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.

1958

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." 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,

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"

Fall reported that the GVN lost almost 20% of its village chiefs through 1958.

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 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.

Traditional ethnic geography of Vietnam

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.

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)"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Communist strategy

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".

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 tanks that broke down the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon were not driven by ragged guerrillas.

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.

1959

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.

Increased activity in Laos

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. . Group 959 also provided secure communications to the Pathet Lao.

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 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."

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.

Escalation and respons in the South

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.

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, cited the key concerns as:

• absence of a national plan for control of the situation
• no rotation of military units in the field
• the need for a central surveillance plan
• the proliferation of Ranger-type counterinsurgency units without central direction and without a civil-military contetx
• inadequate intelligence
• inadequate military communications
• lack of centralized direction of the war effort.

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.

Under the authority of the commander of United States Pacific Command, it was ordered that 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

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.

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).

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.

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.

"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.

"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.

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

• Three corps headquarters and a special military district:
  • I Corps at Da Nang for the northern and central areas; the Central Highlands were separate
  • II Corps at Pleiku for the Central Highlands provinces
  • III Corps at Saigon for the southern part of the country
  • Saigon city special military district.
• Seven divisions of 10,450 men
  • three infantry regiments
  • artillery battalion
  • mortar battalion
  • engineer battalion
  • company-size support elements
• Airborne group of five battalion groups
• four armored cavalry "regiments" (approximately the equivalent of a U.S. Army cavalry squadron)
  • one squadron (U.S. troop) of M24 light tanks
  • two squadrons of M8 self-propelled 75-mm. howitzers
• Eight independent artillery battalions with U.S. 105-mm, and 155-mm. pieces.

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, .

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.

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 "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;

1. incite an ARVN revolt
2. set up a popular front government in the lower Delta
3. 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". 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.

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.. 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.

Even earlier, he issued National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 2, directing the military to prepare counterinsurgency forces, although not yet targeting the North.

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 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. . 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 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.

Building the South Vietnamese Civil Irregular Defense Groups

Under the operational control of the Central Intelligence Agency, initial U.S. Army Special Forces involvement came in October, with the Rhade. The Civilian Irregular Defense Groups (CIDG), were under Central Intelligence Agency operational control until July 1, 1963, when MACV took control. . 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,

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.

It was in mid-November when Kennedy decided to take on operational as well as advisory roles. Under U.S. 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. . 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. 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.

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.

1962

From the U.S. perspective, the Strategic Hamlet Program was the consensus approach to pacifying the countryside. 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:

1. Clearing enemy forces, the responsibility of the regular ARVN, coupled with some level of "holding"
2. Maintaining security, by various civil guard organizations and regional reaction forces
3. 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).

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. 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 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.

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.

At the same time, the U.S. was beginning to explore withdrawing forces.

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. See 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.

1963

South Vietnamese forces, with U.S. advisors, took severe defeats at the Battle of Ap Bac in January, 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 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.

Intelligence support

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:

1. Washington was preoccupied with the Buddhist crisis
2. MACV had no established covert operations force, so even if he approved a plan, there was no one to execute it
3. 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.
4. 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.

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:

1. Clandestine human-source and signals intelligence collection from locations in the north
2. Psychological operations against the north to increase tension and division; Colby had already started such operations
3. Paramilitary operations,such as raids and sabotage against facilities that were significant to the admittedly weak economy, and stronger security, of North Vietnam
4. Encouraging the development of an underground resistance movement
5. 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."

North Vietnam decides on escalation

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. 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.

1964 (before Gulf of Tonkin Incident)

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.

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.

Organizations and personnel

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.

U.S. and GVN covert action planning and preparation

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.

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.

Russell faced problems of organizational doctrine as well as military politics. 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; 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.

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. 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.

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.

North Vietnamese buildup

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.

OPPLAN 34A Operations preceding the Gulf of Tonkin incident

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.

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

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.

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.

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."

Viet Cong guerrillas and regular North Vietnam Army

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.

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 tanks that broke down the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon were not driven by ragged guerrillas.

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.

In December 1963, a decisive meeting of the Communist Party (VWF) Central Committee in Hanoi set basic policy. Le Duan (1907-86) was in full control. Overruling Giap (who wanted to build up the regular army), and Ho (who, like the Soviets, did not want to antagonize the U.S.), Le Duan and the new leadership decided that the government of South Vietnam was on the verge of collapse. They escalated NLF attacks, but did not send regular troops.

At this time, the Soviet Union and China were bitterly contesting control of the Communist movement worldwide. Hanoi's decision marked a decisive break with the Soviets, who had recommended that instead of overthrowing the South and risking a major war with the U.S., it was better to concentrate on rapid development of the poverty-striken economy of North Vietnam.

From 1959 to the end of 1963, more than 40,000 PAVN troops, primarily soldiers born in South Vietnam who had gone north, were sent back to South Vietnam. Included were 2,000 senior and midlevel officers (field grade and above) and technical personnel. As of 1963, they constituted, half the full-time soldiers and 80% of the officers and technical cadres in command and leadership organizations of the Communist army in South Vietnam. Those that had gone north often still had family and village ties. Unwilling villagers, however, were impressed into the Communist forces.

To provide logistic support from 1961 through 1963, 559th Transportation Group (the Ho Chi Minh Trail command] transported to the South 165,600 weapons of all types, including artillery, mortars, and anti-aircraft machine guns. In addition in 1962-63, 759th Sea Infiltration Group, using transport vessels camouflaged as fishing junks, delivered 25 shiploads totaling 1,430 tons of weapons and ammunition to covert docks and landing sites in the Mekong Delta and in the coastal provinces east of Saigon.

Fear of China, 1960-1964

In 1960, Eisenhower had 900 American advisors in SVN to bring its army up to what were perceived as basic standards, against the sort of conventional invasion launched by North Korea in 1950. That same year Hanoi's ruling Politburo established the NLF as its political arm in the South, and the Viet Cong as the military arm.

The rank and file were southerners, the leadership was northern, but it is incorrect to say that the NLF was solely led by northerners. North Vietnamese certainly dominated it, but they were politically astute enough to have visible southern opponents of the RVN, who were not Communist-identified. Like many insurgencies, the NLF acted as a shadow government in contested areas, both providing services, but also demanding taxes and draftees.

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. 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." 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.

Rusk worried that a Communist victory in Vietnam would cause neighboring countries to fall like dominoes to pro-Chinese Communists. The threat was greatest in Indonesia, an island nation with a large population, significant oil wealth, and an active Communist movement. Rusk 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:

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.

In 1965, however, the anti-communist army seized power and totally destroyed the Communist movement in Indonesia with wholesale arrests and executions. This was a surprise to the U.S., which was giving covert aid to some anti-communist factions, but the Army action followed Communist killing of several generals.

Escalation by Viet Cong

In the early 1960s the Viet Cong escalated its attacks; the Diem regime lost ground every month. In 1961 the Viet Cong had 25,000 regular soldiers and 17,000 underground operatives. The NLF controlled villages containing about a fifth of the rural population of ten million (six million people lived in SVN's cities and towns, where the NLF remained weak.) American observers reported that the Saigon regime lacked legitimacy in the villages. The GVN never generated spontaneous support or a sense of patriotism because it was too much like the French system: too autocratic, too urban, Catholic, aloof, corrupt, arrogant, inefficient, self-indulgent and predatory. The challenge was not to restore legitimacy but get it in the first place.

In January 1963, an apparently overwhelming ARVN force, with armored vehicles, artillery and air support, and U.S. advisors including John Paul Vann went confidently against an inferior force at the Battle of Ap Bac, and were routed. . This has been considered the triggered for an increasingly skeptical, although small, American press corps in Vietnam.

By October, 1963, Kennedy had sent 16,000 advisors who were working feverishly to shape up the ARVN; 100 had already been killed. The U.S. Air Force began training pilots; the Army sent in helicopter transports. The choppers terrorized the Viet Cong, until they figured out how to ambush them when they landed. After 9,000 combat sorties, 21 airplanes and 13 helicopters had been shot down. Viet Cong influence had been pushed back, but the NLF still controlled a tenth of the rural villages.

NLF as shadow government

By contrast, peasants at first found the NLF appeared to be honest, caring and basically like themselves. It had considerable support--it especially appealed to idealistic youth, and in any case was always feared by the villagers who knew the assassination squads would eliminate any dissent. From 1957 through 1972, the Viet Cong Security Service carried out 37,000 assassinations of government officials, religious and civic leaders, teachers, informers, landowners, and moneylenders.

The role of landowners was critical to the dissatisfaction of villagers with the government. 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. Gibson quotes a landlord interviewed by Samson:

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.

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.

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.

Changes in U.S. commitment following Johnson's election

Equally important to Johnson than what happened in Asia was what was happening at home, especially in the minds of the voters. To Johnson, Vietnam was a "political war" only in the sense of U.S. domestic politics, not a political settlement for the Vietnamese.

Johnson's plan to settle war

Johnson believed that all disputes arose out of mutual misunderstandings, and could be resolved through negotiation. His strategy was to offer Hanoi billions of dollars in foreign aid if they would play along, or else bomb them into negotiations, from which a permanent peace would result that allowed South Vietnam to continue as an independent nation.

Johnson did not reject the possibility that the Communists could become part of some sort of coalition government. He apparently was unaware that Vietnamese history was against him, as when the VNQDD was purged from the "broad front" Viet Minh by the Communists.

The military, which saw its mission in terms of winning wars, not facilitators for negotiations, never agreed with Johnson, or, perhaps more to the point, with McNamara. In the 1950s, when Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Arthur Radford recommended major U.S. intervention at Dien Bien Phu, possibly including nuclear weapons, Eisenhower was quite confident in refusing Radford. The other members of the JCS had not supported Radford.

By the time Johnson took office, there was already a significant U.S. involvement in Vietnam, although large-scale combat forces had not been committed. McNamara, who had been appointed by Kennedy, continued to push an economic and signaling grand strategy to Johnson. 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 compellance theory than by Johnson's liberalism or Senate-style deal-making, but they agreed in broad policy.

Ironically, after Johnson said he would not run for re-election in 1968, Creighton Abrams, who took over MACV from William Westmoreland, was far more oriented toward a holistic approach to nation building than Westmoreland's attritional strategy.

Johnson, committed to containment, refused to withdraw, but also refused to take decisive action. Since South Vietnamese were unable to defeat the threat with American advice and supply; Johnson made the fateful decision to supplement them US combat troops. He planned to first rescue GVN (Government of South Vietnam) from imminent collapse by guerrilla attacks, then negotiate a settlement with Hanoi that would allow it to survive. He vetoed two other options: US command and control of the ARVN (unwise because GVN would never learn to defend itself) and invasion of North Vietnam to strike the threat at its source.

In mid-1964, LBJ assembled a new team:

• Maxwell Taylor, from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Ambassador to the Republic of Vietnam, continuing the Kennedy policy that the Chief of Mission had authority over all U.S. organizations in a country
• Harold Johnson to Chief of Staff of the Army
• General Earle Wheeler (1908-75) replaced Taylor at Chairman of the JCS; his mission was to keep the senior commanders loyal to the White House.
• General William Westmoreland (1914-2005) became head of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), with authority over US Army and Marine ground operations, and some naval and tactical air operations.
• Admiral Ulysses S. Grant Sharp (1906-2001) at Pearl Harbor, became head of all US forces in the Pacific. He had charge of the naval blockade that kept Hanoi from running supplies by sea, and most importantly, of strategic bombing operations over North Vietnam (which were launched from Sharp's four aircraft carriers or from Air Force B-52 bases in Thailand and Guam).

Nominally Westmoreland reported to Taylor for policy guidance and Sharp for theater-level military command; in practice he dealt directly with McNamara or LBJ. Westmoreland could always be counted upon for a public statement exuding optimism; he reassured LBJ that the war would be won in time for the 1968 elections. The intricate division of responsibility was set up so that there would be no powerful theater commander like MacArthur; it also guaranteed a steady flow of disputes that could only be resolved by McNamara or the president. The military thus never had control of the war it was called upon to fight, or of the tactics to use.

Gulf of Tonkin incident: 1964

In early August 1964 Johnson seized on an ambiguous incident in which North Vietnamese PT boats reportedly fired on a US destroyer; this became known as the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The public message was that the destroyer was on general patrol.

Less well known, however, were that simultaneous covert attacks on the North Vietnamese coast, coordinated by MACV-SOG operating under Operations Plan (OPPLAN) 34A, and the North Vietnamese were on high alert. The destroyer was actually collecting signals intelligence under a program called the DESOTO patrol, and tecently declassified National Security Agency signals intelligence reports indicate that the U.S. commanders knew that the North Vietnamese were uncertain if the destroyers were part of the same attacks as 34A. There has never been clear-cut sonar or SIGINT information that the North Vietnamese initiated an attack on the destroyer patrol, although one of the destroyers may have fired warning shots.

Although there was no immediate and continuing threat to U.S. forces, Johnson ordered retaliatory airstrikes on the North. His television address to the U.S. public, explaining he had ordered it under his authority as commander-in-chief, was delivered while the strikes were still inbound and the North Vietnamese air defenses not yet alerted. According to McMaster, Johnson insisted on an early announcement so that he would be sure to make the late evening news, as well as the deadline for morning newspapers.

He pressed for the "Gulf of Tonkin Resolution" through Congress, saying it would deter Hanoi. The Resolution was itself vague, endorsing the Commander-in-Chief's right to "take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack...and to prevent further aggression." Not only did the Resolution give Johnson a boost during his heated 1964 reelection campaign, it also provided just enough legality for him to avoid going back to Congress; see War Powers Resolution and the Total Force concept developed by Creighton Abrams (the last commander of U.S. combat forces) as future checkpoints on Presidential adventurism. The role of the President and Congress in initiating combat, however, remains intensely controversial. See Vietnam, war, and the United States.

At the time of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, North Vietnamese air defense was fairly unsophisticated, but steadily improved. As opposed to the North Koreans in the Korean War, they established an integrated air defense system (IADS), and seemed more intent on training their own people rather than rely on Russian, Chinese or Korean pilots. In many cases, they got quite good performance out of obsolescent weapons, such as the MiG-17 fighter, of which they had more than the first-line MiG-21.

Escalation 1965

The NLF was on the verge of announcing a provisional government in the northernmost six provinces; three elite regiments from the North Vietnamese Main Force moved into South Vietnam. Hanoi thought it could win quickly. It was a tragic miscalculation that would bring endless misery to the Vietnamese.

After his reelection, Johnson sent in the first American combat troops in March, 1965, to protect the air bases.

Rejecting the Air Force's strategy of strategic bombing against 94 critical targets 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

To reverse the downhill slide in the villages, Westmoreland called for 24 more maneuver battalions (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:

"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."

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.

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.

Rolling Thunder: The Failure of Strategic Bombing

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".

Johnson and McNamara adopted a three-tier strategy to save SVN.

1. Protect US bases and repel enemy ground attacks with U.S. ground troops
2. Attack the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos.
3. Initiate Operation ROLLING THUNDER bombing over North Vietnam.

The air campaign had a triple purpose:

• boost Saigon's morale
• weaken Hanoi's war-making capabilities
• force the North to the bargaining table.

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.

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.

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.

A classic error, which generations of professional intelligence analysts have been taught to avoid, is mirror-imaging. The Johnson Administration treated the North Vietnamese as mirror images of themselves, rather than people with a radically different mindset.

Historians (on all sides) are unanimous that Rolling Thunder was a total failure. 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.

Air war in the south

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.

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.

It cost the US a billion dollars a year to destroy $100 million in PAVN supplies--but Washington had the tens of billions and Hanoi did not have the tens of millions. It did have friends, however, and Moscow and Peking doubled their shipments of munitions. 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:

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.

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.

McNamara and other civilians, who had placed blind trust in the invincibility of air power, developed a growing sense of frustration and defeatism. McNamara himself concluded the bombing was a failure, and that therefore the whole war was doomed.

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. .

Westmoreland's Attrition Strategy

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.

Westmoreland's first challenge was figuring out a strategy to defeat the Viet Cong.

• Phase I: stabilize the situation (by the end of 1965)
• Phase II: (scheduled for 1966-67) would push the enemy back in key areas
• Phase III: total victory (1968).

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.

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 systematically eliminated Viet Cong soldiers and guerrilla forces, and sought to weed out NLF cadres from the villages.

The main device was the 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.

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.

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. Indeed, the tensions were high between the Army (which was in charge) and the Marines.

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."A Soldier Reports</ref> worried about what he perceived as the Marine command's ``lack of followup in supervision, its employment of helicopters, and its generalship. 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.

Westmoreland vs. Taylor

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.

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.

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 Forces, 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.

General Vo Nguyen Giap, head of the PAVN since 1946, reinforced the forces in the South, to counter the U.S. reinforcement. While Giap was not a devotee of Mao's concepts of government, he did agree with Mao's concept of protracted war, as well as the Marxist theory that the enemy would eventually defeat himself. His goal was to outlast the enemy.

The enemy will pass slowly from the offensive to the defensive. The blitzkrieg will transform itself into a war of long duration. Thus, the enemy will be caught in a dilemma: he has to drag out the war in order to win it and does not possess, on the other hand, the psychological and political means to fight a long drawn-out war

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.

First Airmobile Battles: Ia Drang and Bong Son

See also: Battle of the Ia Drang

See also: Battle of Bong Son

At Ia Drang (river Drang) in late 1965 the first major confrontation shaped up between Giap and Westmoreland. Giap wanted to continue his successful guerrilla war, but was overruled by the Politburo; they demanded victory in a hurry. The new plan was for Giap 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.

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. While the heliborne U.S. troopers could be heard miles away, their actual attack zones could not be determined until they swooped to a landing.

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.

Giap's troops infiltrated the area of operations, carrying their supplies, hiding from reconnaissance during the day. They contested the helicopter landing zones, but never tried to hold ground; pitched battles were avoided, unless they could not break contact. If there was no exit, they did try to kill as many Americans as possible, with seemingly little concern about their own losses.

The PAVN preferred hit-and-run ambushes, or what they called "catch and grab." When their retreat was blocked, their next tactic was called "hugging the belt" 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.

Giap was surprised that the U.S. and RVN knew the positions of two of his three regiments, and had an approximate location for the third. PAVN launched a series of violent attacks against the Americans, who clustered around their landing zones. Only four choppers were shot down. Heavy doses of tactical air power, including 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.

Westmoreland selects new tactics

The tide had turned, and Westmoreland called for more troops and helicopters to enlarge the search and destroy operation across the country. McNamara and LBJ agreed, doubling the number of infantry maneuver battalions from 35 in October 1965 (22 Army, 13 Marines) to 70 a year later (50 and 20). The number of artillery battalions also doubled to 79. By the end of 1966 the US Army had 244,000 personnel in Vietnam, the Marines 69,000, Air Force 57,000 and Navy 25,000, a total of 395,000. They faced 100,000 enemy riflemen in 152 combat battalions and two hundred separate companies. The doubling of combat forces, Washington realized, would entail a doubling of US losses from 400 deaths a month to 800.

Infantry Patrol in a Clearing, U.S. Army combat painting by Roger Blum, 1966

Most of the fighting in Vietnam was done by companies that deliberately went in harms way for a couple days at a time-- into the jungles of the Central Highlands, or the rice paddies of the heavily populated lowlands. As Marine Lt. Philip Caputo observed, "There was no pattern to these patrols and operations. Without a front, flanks or rear, we fought a formless war against a formless enemy who evaporated like the morning jungle mists, only to materialize in some unexpected place."

Number and causes of casualties

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.

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.

Communist concept of attrition and American understanding of it

The enemy, however, was willing to accept those casualties. McNamara was insistent that the enemy would comply with his concepts of cost-effectiveness, of which Ho and Giap were unaware. They were, however, quite familiar with attritional strategies. While they were not politically Maoist, they were also well versed in Mao's concepts of protracted war (see insurgency).

Ground war 1966-68

See also: Vietnam War Ground Technology

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.

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.

Hanoi seemed to believe that the rugged Central Highlands region (South Vietnamese Military Region II, also known as RVN II Corps), which contained a third of the area but only 7% of SVN's people, would make a good base for guerrilla warfare. United States Army Special Forces ("Green Berets") armed and led the Montagnard tribesmen against the Communists.

In 1967, the Saigon political scene stabilized, as the Buddhist and student protesters ran out of steam and 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 failed to eliminate the systematic politicization, corruption, time-serving and favoritism in the ARVN.

Pacification/Revolutionary Development

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. 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.

Psychological tension and breakdown of discipline

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.)

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 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.

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.

Tet Offensive, 1968

The climactic moment of the war came in February 1968 during the truce usually observed during the "Tet" holiday season. Hanoi used its NLF and Viet Cong forces 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. 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.

The "tail" of the PAVN had grown as its teeth receded, for the bombing had made resupply extraordinarily difficult. The solution was the "Tet offensive," an all-out effort, aimed especially at a new target, the GVN bureaus and ARVN complexes in the cities. The Politburo theorized that the GVN was a hollow shell held together only by American firepower. They truly believed the proletariat would, given the opportunity, fight Marxist class warfare and throw off their exploiters. Yhe very legitimacy of their enterprise hinged on the premise that the people of South Vietnam hated their government and really wanted Communist control.

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.

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.

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.

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.

ABout 40,000 Communist soldiers in the South--probably about half--were killed in 1968; many others deserted to the GVN. By sending its main force into the cities during Tet, the NLF left a vacuum in the countryside that GVN and US pacification agents could fill.

By the end of 1968 the Saigon had pulled itself together and restored GVN authority in every province. 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. 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:

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.

Nixon and Vietnamization

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.

1968: Vietnamization

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.

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. Nixon rejected "a purely military victory on the battlefield," and also an immediate pullout that would cost the nation its honor. Like Johnson he rejected the "rollback" strategy favored by most hawks (and favored by his most important GOP rival, California governor Ronald Reagan).

1969-1971, Attacks on sanctuaries in Cambodia

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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. In 1970 Cambodia erupted into a battle ground, with the Communists making a direct bid to seize that nation. 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.

The incursion into Cambodia in 1970 made the southern parts of SVN somewhat safer, but antiwar groups felt it proved Nixon's Vietnamization policy was all a deceit. At Kent State University a confrontation with the National Guard left seven protesters dead, and touched off a firestorm that shut down numerous academic institutions. Nixon ignored the protests and continued to Vietnamize the war. In 1971 all remaining American combat ground troops left, though air attacks continued.

1971-72, buildups and back-and-forth combat

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. 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. The year 1971 was quiet, with no large campaigns, apart for the ARVN defeat in Laos, Operation Lam Son 719.

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.

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.

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.

1972, South loses initiative

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.

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.

Major 1972 airstrikes to force negotiations

Late in 1972 election peace negotiations bogged down; Thieu demanded concrete evidence of Nixon'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 munitions 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.

The Soviets had sold Hanoi 1,200 S-75 Dvina/NATO: SA-2 GUIDELINE surface-to-air missiles (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.

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.

Peace accords and invasion, 1973-75

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.

For many years there were dark rumors and suspicions that some American POWs were left behind. Nixon accepted Hanoi's assurances there were no more POWs; no missing POW has ever been located or identified by name.

All American military now departed Vietnam, including advisors to ARVN. The war seemed to be over--with vague guarantees by Hanoi not to attack the South, and Nixon's personal assurance that if peace held the US would eventually give Hanoi billions of dollars for rebuilding. Hanoi kept large forces in the unpopulated SVN's Central Highlands. The NLF and Viet Cong were ciphers by this time, and nearly all the population in the South was under GVN control. With Nixon wounded by Watergate, Congress forbad American military activity anywhere in Indochina.  

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.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.

Invasion and the fall of the south, 1975

North invades South, 1975, using bases in Cambodia and Laos, and across DMZ

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.

The air force, however, performed poorly, and often abandoned its bases. For the time, the PAVN had competent mobile anti-aircraft artillery.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. President Gerald R. Ford tried to get new money for the South, but refused to consider any military action whatever.

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.

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,.

Regional effects after 1975

After Congress cut off aid to Cambodia, the Khymer Rouge came to power in 1975. What followed was one of the most horrific massacres of the century, as Pol Pot systematically executed hundreds of thousands of Cambodians, including anyone with a trace of western contacts. The two Communist neighbors went to war in 1978-79, when Vietnam invaded and conquered Cambodia and forced the Khymer Rouge back into the jungles.