The Vietnam War, or what the Vietnamese call the
“American War,” grew out of the Indochina War (1946-1954). The 1954
Geneva Conference, which ended the Indochina War between France and the
nationalist-Communist Viet Minh, provided for the independence of Cambodia,
Laos, and Vietnam. Agreements reached at Geneva temporarily divided Vietnam at
the 17th Parallel, pending national elections in 1956. In the meantime, Viet
Minh military forces were to withdraw north of that line and the French forces
south of it. The war left two competing entities, the northern Democratic
Republic of Vietnam (DRV, North Vietnam) and the southern French-dominated
State of Vietnam (SV), each claiming to be the legitimate government of a
united Vietnam.
In June 1954 SV titular head Emperor Bao Dai appointed as
premier the Roman Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem, whom Bao Dai believed had
Washington’s backing. Diem’s base of support was narrow but would soon be
strengthened by the addition of some 800,000 northern Catholics who would
relocate to southern Vietnam. In a subsequent power struggle between Bao Dai
and Diem, in October 1955 Diem established the Republic of Vietnam (RVN, South
Vietnam), with himself as president. The United States then extended aid to
Diem, most of which went to the South Vietnamese military budget. Only minor
sums went to education and social welfare programs. Thus, the aid seldom
touched the lives of the preponderantly rural populace. As Diem consolidated
his power, U. S. military advisers also reorganized the South Vietnamese armed
forces. Known as the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN, South Vietnamese
Army) and equipped with American weaponry, it was designed to fight a
conventional invasion from North Vietnam rather than deal with countering the
growing insurgency in South Vietnam.
Fearing a loss, Diem refused to hold the scheduled 1956
elections. This jolted veteran Communist North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh.
Ho had not been displeased with Diem’s crushing of his internal opposition but
was now ready to reunite the country under his sway and believed that he would
win the elections. North Vietnam was more populous than South Vietnam, and the
Communists were well organized there. Fortified by the containment policy, the
domino theory, and the belief that the Communists, if they came to power, would
never permit a democratic regime, U. S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower’s
administration backed Diem’s defiance of the Geneva Accords.
Diem’s decision led to a renewal of fighting, which became
the Vietnam War. Fighting resumed in 1957 when Diem moved against the
6,000-7,000 Viet Minh political cadres who had been allowed to remain in South
Vietnam to prepare for the 1956 elections. The former Viet Minh (now called
Viet Cong [VC], for “Vietnamese Communists”) began the armed
insurgency on their own initiative but were subsequently supported by the North
Vietnamese government. In December 1960 the Viet Minh established the National
Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (National Liberation Front [NLF]).
Supposedly independent, the NLF was controlled by Hanoi. The NLF program called
for the overthrow of the Saigon government, its replacement by a “broad
national democratic coalition,” and the “peaceful” reunification
of Vietnam.
In September 1959 North Vietnamese defense minister Vo
Nguyen Giap established Transportation Group 559 to send supplies and men south
along what came to be known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail, much of which ran through
supposedly neutral Laos and Cambodia. The first wave of infiltrators were
native southerners and Viet Minh who had relocated to North Vietnam in 1954. VC
sway expanded, spreading out from safe bases to one village after another. The
insurgency was fed by the weaknesses of the central government, by the use of
terror and assassination, and by Saigon’s appalling ignorance of the movement.
By the end of 1958 the insurgency had become a serious
threat in several provinces. In 1960 the Communists carried out even more
assassinations, and guerrilla units attacked ARVN regulars, overran district and
provincial capitals, and ambushed convoys and reaction forces. By mid-1961, the
Saigon government had lost control over much of rural South Vietnam.
Infiltration was as yet not significant, and most of the insurgents’ weapons
were either captured from ARVN forces or were left over from the war with
France. Diem rejected American calls for meaningful reform until the
establishment of full security. He did not understand that at that time the war
was still primarily a political problem and could be solved only through
political means.
Diem, who practiced the divide-and-rule concept of
leadership, increasingly delegated authority to his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, and
his secret police. Isolated from his people and relying only on trusted family
members and a few other advisers, Diem resisted U. S. demands that he promote
his senior officials and officers on the basis of ability and pursue the war
aggressively.
By now, U. S. president John F. Kennedy’s administration was
forced to reevaluate its position toward the war, but increased U. S.
involvement was inevitable, given Washington’s commitment to resist Communist
expansion and the belief that all of Southeast Asia would become Communist if
South Vietnam fell. Domestic political considerations also influenced the
decision.
In May 1961 Kennedy sent several fact-finding missions to
Vietnam. These led to the creation of the Strategic Hamlet Program as part of a
general strategy emphasizing local militia defense and to the commitment of
additional U. S. manpower. By the end of 1961, U. S. strength in Vietnam had
grown to around 3,200 men, most in helicopter units or serving as advisers. In
February 1962 the United States also established a military headquarters in
Saigon, when the Military Assistance and Advisory Group (MAAG) was replaced by
the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), to direct the enlarged
American commitment. The infusion of U. S. helicopters and additional support
for the ARVN probably prevented a VC military victory in 1962. The VC soon learned
to cope with the helicopters, however, and with the increased flow of
infiltrators and weapons from North Vietnam, the tide of battle turned again.
Meanwhile, Nhu’s crackdown on the Buddhists in the spring
and summer of 1963 led to increased opposition to Diem’s rule. South Vietnamese
generals now planned a coup, and after Diem rejected reforms, the United States
gave the plotters tacit support. On November 1, 1963, the generals overthrew
Diem, murdering both him and Nhu. Three weeks later Kennedy was also dead,
succeeded by Lyndon B. Johnson.
The United States seemed unable to win the war either with
or without Diem. A military junta now took power, but none of the South
Vietnamese leaders who followed Diem had his prestige. Coups and countercoups
occurred, and much of South Vietnam remained in turmoil. Not until General
Nguyen Van Thieu became president in 1967 was there a degree of political
stability.
Both sides steadily increased the stakes, apparently without
foreseeing that the other might do the same. In 1964 Hanoi made two important
decisions. The first was to send to South Vietnam units of its regular army,
the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN, North Vietnamese Army). The second was to
rearm its forces in South Vietnam with modern Communist-bloc weapons, giving
them a firepower advantage over the ARVN, which was still equipped largely with
World War II-era U. S. infantry weapons (up until this time, because the Hanoi
leadership was trying to conceal its involvement in the insurgency in South
Vietnam, most of the weapons being sent down from North Vietnam had been older
weapons of Western manufacture).
On August 2, 1964, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident occurred when
North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked the U. S. destroyer Maddox in
international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. A second attack on the Maddox and
another U. S. destroyer, the Turner Joy, that was reported two days later
probably never occurred, but Washington believed that it had, and this led the
Johnson administration to order retaliatory air strikes against North
Vietnamese naval bases and fuel depots. It also led to a near-unanimous vote in
Congress for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorizing the president to use
whatever force he deemed necessary to protect U. S. interests in Southeast Asia.
Johnson would not break off U. S. involvement in Vietnam,
evidently fearing possible impeachment if he did so. At the same time, he
refused to make the tough decision of fully mobilizing the country and
committing the resources necessary to win, concerned that this would destroy
his cherished Great Society social programs. He also feared a widened war,
possibly involving the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
By 1965 Ho and his generals expected to win the war. Taking
their cue from Johnson’s own pronouncements to the American people, they
mistakenly believed that Washington would not commit ground troops to the
fight. Yet Johnson did just that. Faced with Hanoi’s escalation, in March 1965
U. S. marines arrived to protect the large American air base at Da Nang. A
direct attack on U. S. advisers at Pleiku in February 1965 also led to a U. S.
air campaign against North Vietnam.
Ultimately more than 2.5 million Americans served in
Vietnam, and nearly 58,000 of them died there. At the height of the Vietnam
War, Washington was spending $30 billion per year on the war. Although the
conflict was the best-covered war in American history (it became known as the
first television war), it was conversely the least understood by the American
people.
Johnson hoped to win the war on the cheap, relying heavily
on airpower to inflict pain on North Vietnam and frighten the Communist leaders
in Hanoi into halting their support for the war in South Vietnam. Johnson’s
goal was to hold down American casualties but also to secure the support of the
Republican Party for his domestic Great Society program. Under the code name
Operation ROLLING THUNDER, the bombing of North Vietnam, which was paralleled
by Operation BARREL ROLL, the secret bombing of Laos (which became the most
heavily bombed country in the history of warfare), the air campaign would be
pursued in varying degrees of intensity over the next three and a half years.
Its goals were to force Hanoi to negotiate peace and to halt infiltration into
South Vietnam. During the war, the United States dropped more bombs on
Indochina than it had on the Axis powers in all of World War II, but the
campaign failed in both its objectives.
In the air war, Johnson decided on graduated response rather
than the massive strikes advocated by the military. Gradualism became the grand
strategy employed by the United States in Vietnam. Haunted by the Chinese
intervention in the Korean War, at no time would Johnson consider an invasion
of North Vietnam, fearful of provoking a Chinese reaction.
By May and June 1965, with PAVN forces regularly destroying
ARVN units, MACV commander General William Westmoreland appealed for U. S.
ground units, which Johnson committed. PAVN regiments appeared ready to launch
an offensive in the rugged Central Highlands and then drive to the sea,
splitting South Vietnam in two. Westmoreland mounted a spoiling attack, with
the recently arrived 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) formed around some 450
helicopters.
During October-November 1965 the 1st Cavalry Division won
one of the war’s rare clear-cut victories in the Battle of Ia Drang and may
have derailed Hanoi’s plan of winning a decisive victory before full American
might could be deployed. Hanoi, however, took encouragement from the heavy
casualties that the 1st Cavalry Division had suffered during this battle (230
U. S. troops were killed during the four-day battle, with 155 Americans killed
during a single afternoon). To Hanoi, these casualty figures meant that in
spite of tremendous U. S. superiority in firepower and mobility, Communist
troops were capable of inflicting sufficient casualties on U. S. forces to
weaken America’s resolve and ultimately force the United States to give up the
effort in South Vietnam. Heavy personnel losses on the battlefield, while
regrettable, were entirely acceptable to the North Vietnamese leadership. Ho
remarked at one point that North Vietnam could absorb an unfavorable loss ratio
of 10 to 1 and still win the war. Washington never understood this and
continued to view the war through its own lens of what would be unacceptable in
terms of casualties.
From 1966 on the Vietnam War was an escalating strategic
stalemate, as Westmoreland requested increasing numbers of men from Washington.
By the end of 1966 U. S. troop strength in Vietnam had reached 385,000. In 1968
U. S. strength was more than 500,000 men. Johnson also secured some 60,000
troops from other nations-most of them from the Republic of Korea (ROK, South
Korea) and Thailand-surpassing the 39,000-man international coalition of the Korean
War.
Terrain was not judged important. The goals were to protect
the population and kill the enemy, with success measured in terms of body
counts that, in turn, led to abuses. During 1966 MACV mounted 18 major
operations, each resulting in more than 500 PAVN or VC troops supposedly
verified dead. Fifty thousand enemy combatants were supposedly killed in 1966.
By the beginning of 1967, the PAVN and VC had 300,000 men versus 625,000 ARVN
and 400,000 Americans.
Hanoi, meanwhile, had reached a point of decision, with
casualties exceeding available replacements. Instead of scaling back, North
Vietnam prepared a major offensive that would employ all available troops to
secure a quick victory. Hanoi believed that a major military defeat for the
United States would end its political will to continue.
Hanoi now prepared a series of peripheral attacks at Con
Thien, Song Be, Dak To, and Loc Ninh, followed in January 1968 by the start of
a modified siege of some 6,000 U. S. marines at Khe Sanh near the demilitarized
zone (DMZ). With U. S. attention riveted on Khe Sanh, Hanoi planned a massive
offensive to occur during Tet, the lunar new year holiday, called the General
Offensive-General Uprising. The North Vietnamese government believed that this
massive offensive would lead people in South Vietnam to rise up and overthrow
the South Vietnamese government, bringing an American withdrawal. The attacks
were mounted against the cities and key military installations. In a major
intelligence failure, U. S. and South Vietnamese officials misread both the
timing and the strength of the attack, finding it inconceivable that the attack
would come during the sacred Tet holiday because this would mean that the
Communists were sacrificing the goodwill of the South Vietnamese public. Both
the Americans and the South Vietnamese had forgotten that there was a precedent
in Vietnamese history for such an attack; one of Vietnam’s most renowned
emperors had won a decisive victory over an invading Chinese army with a
surprise attack during the Tet holiday in 1798.
