Vietnam War

Introduction

Psychologically, the Vietnam War was almost as traumatic as the Civil War. It is still a painful memory and the subject of ill-tempered debates regarding victory and defeat, imperialism and Communism, good intentions and limited resources, deceit and patriotism. Misinformation abounds on the topic--students often have the idea that the United States Army was defeated in combat by a Viet-Cong guerrilla force--something that definitely did not happen. This article takes primarily the perspective of the U.S. to explore what was the American military's mission, how was it carried it out, and what were the effects.

While the United States lost none of the battles, somehow it lost the war. From 1964 to 1972 debate raged between "doves" (who wanted the US to cut its losses and get out) and "hawks" (who wanted to win.) Many soldiers believe victory was thrown away because, as General Hamilton H. Howze said when Saigon finally fell to the Communists in 1975, "America itself lost much of its will to fight and the politicians and the press began their program of vilification." Howze's rhetoric says more about the military's role in society and its own battered self image than it does about Vietnam. Much of the intensity of the debate during the 1960s sprang not from what was happening in Asia, but what was happening on the home front. A social revolution saw many people (especially blacks, students and feminists) in revolt against tight restrictive rules and roles that confined individuals into boxes of race, gender, age and class. Favorite targets of the revolt included all traditional sources of order, discipline and hierarchy, such as the police, the military, and the government itself. The social revolt of the 1960s was by no means limited to the US--parallel upheavals took place in Europe, Japan, and even China. The Vietnam War inevitably became the target of opportunity. The history of the small war is unusually complicated because it lasted so long, involved so many twists and turns of policy and strategy. The turnover of Americans was unusually high (2.5 million were stationed there), so that the many veterans each have a different story to tell. To appreciate the complexity it is necessary to start with the French imperialists of the 19th century.

Origins

French "Indochina" Background

In the late 19th century the French expanded their global empire to southeast Asia, by acquiring control of Vietnam, and the neighboring countries of Cambodia and Laos. The Chinese war lords who had been in charge were expelled, replaced by a French governor supported by rotating units of the French army and several thousand French civil servants. 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. Paris had hoped to make a profit from its empire, but instead the expenses of building roads, railroads, ports, utilities, schools and other infrastructure, not to mention the military and civil service salaries, far outpaced the modest profits from rice and rubber exports. 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 Communist 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). President Franklin D. Roosevelt detested French colonialism, but Truman was more interested in helping restore French prestige in Europe, so he helped them to return in 1946. 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. When the Korean War erupted in 1950, Washington saw Vietnam as another target of Communist expansion, and began to fund about three-fourths of the French military efforts. However, the goals of Washington and Paris were incompatible. Washington wanted a democratic Vietnam independent of both France and Communism, while Paris was more interested in restoring its old empire than in fighting Communism. In 1950 the U.S. officially recognized the theoretical independence of the "State of Vietnam," even though Paris kept control of its foreign and military policy.

Dien Bien Phu and the Geneva Accords, 1954

To cut Viet Minh supply lines from China, the French built a fort at remote Dien Bien Phu. In 1954, 12,000 defenders were surrounded and battered by General Vo Nguyen Giap, who unexpectedly had artillery supplied by Communist China. Paris begged Washington for air strikes. The US Navy wanted to send its carriers into action but the US Army demurred, arguing it would be "a dangerous strategic diversion of limited U.S. military capabilities... [to] a non-decisive theatre." For the Army, containment meant holding back the Russian divisions in central Europe, not chasing guerrillas in Asian jungles. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the man who led the war against Germany in 1944-45 and who commanded NATO in 1950, agreed with the Army. With the Korean stalemate resolved only a few months earlier, he rejected the advice of hawkish aides (including Vice President Richard Nixon) and refused to fight another land war in Asia.

Dien Bien Phu surrendered, the French government collapsed, and a Socialist government with Communist support came to power in Paris, pledged to get out of Vietnam in 30 days. The American policy of bankrolling the French had failed. At the 1954 Geneva Conference, the French signed agreements with the Viet Minh that amounted to a surrender; the French did not consult the government in Saigon. Because of American pressure, however, Paris did not give Ho Chi Minh all he demanded (he demanded all of Vietnam). A permanent cease fire was promised, and the country was split along the 17th parallel, with the north turned over to Ho's Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). The French promised to leave the southern half, which for the time being would continue as the independent State of Vietnam with the Emperor as head of state and a Catholic anti-communist as premier. The Geneva Accords called for "free general elections by secret ballot" in 1956 to unify the country. Washington and Saigon both rejected the Geneva Accords: they were both determined to build an independent, anti-Communist South Vietnam. Some observers thought Ho was so popular for having driven the French out that he might have won a free election in the South in 1956. Antiwar critics years later said that the South Vietnam regime was inherently illegitimate because it did not abide by the election clause in the Accords. These critics said that since Ho Chi Minh “might” have won a hypothetical free election, therefore he represented true democracy. What the critics missed was that these hypothetical free elections were quite impossible in 1954, or 1956 or any other time, because the Communists would never permit free campaigning against Communism. Ho's DRV was totally controlled by Communist cadres which systematically tracked down and imprisoned or executed all its critics, village by village, street by street. In 1956 instead of holding an election in the North, Ho used his army to suppress peasants who protested "land reform"; thousands were shot. Allowing genuine opposition parties to solicit votes--and then yielding power to them if they won a majority--was totally incompatible with its precepts. The DRV never intended to hold free elections in 1956, and never before or since has held any.

Promoting the Diem Regime, 1954-63

The United States rejected the Geneva Accords as a violation of the principles of self determination and containment. It worked to build up the new, independent nation of South Vietnam (SVN), by funding local and national economic and administrative infrastructures. In July 1954 Ngo Dinh Diem became premier in Saigon. Diem and his powerful brothers were outstanding nationalists who were both anti-French and anticommunist. As leaders of the well educated Catholic minority, they won considerable sympathy and support in the Catholic anticommunist circles in the US, notably from Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York and the Kennedy family. As soon as the Communists came to power in the North, some 800,000 refugees (mostly Catholic) fled to South Vietnam. They provided most of the leadership and support for its government (GVN) and its army (ARVN). American financial aid and military advisors replaced the French, and SVN under Diem took its place among the world's newly independent nations. North and South Vietnam had approximately equal populations of about 16-18 million in the 1960s; the US had 200 million.

The Eisenhower Administration, eager to formalize the containment system by treaty, in 1954 set up the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). The US promised to aid SEATO signatories that were attacked by a Communist power. The French (still committed to the Geneva Accords) vetoed membership for SVN. To get around this French veto, Washington had inserted in the Treaty a vague protocol that seemed to give Saigon some sort of guarantee, even though it was not allowed to sign the Treaty or become part of SEATO. Furthermore, Eisenhower decided not to sign a mutual defense treaty with SVN in order to avoid over-commitment. Instead the US relied on the highly ambiguous SEATO Treaty, which was ratified by the Senate with little discussion of Vietnam. By default it became the chief legal base for US involvement in Vietnam.

In 1960, Eisenhower had 900 American advisors in SVN to bring its army up to world standards. That same year Hanoi's ruling Politburo established the "National Liberation Front" (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. The Viet Cong tactics were based on guerrilla strikes that would assassinate local officials and village leaders favorable to Saigon, occasionally attack an isolated ARVN detachment, and when needed seize ("tax") village food stocks or kidnap ("draft") young men. The Communist goal was "liberation" of the South from capitalism and westernism. The NLF had a few shadow formations in the cities, where it did poorly; Washington was baffled why it did so well in the countryside. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara told President John Kennedy 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."

Washington always insisted that aggression was organized and directed by Hanoi; it rejected arguments by antiwar doves that Hanoi was innocent--that the conflict was merely a civil war entirely operated from indigenous southern rebels. The doves argued since it was really only a civil war, therefore global Communist expansion was “not” happening in Vietnam; hence containment policy did not apply. Most Doves were fatalists--they felt the U.S. was trying to resist profound social forces that made a NLF victory inevitable. Note that the Tet Offensive in 1968 drastically weakened the NLF, and vigorous SVN attacks had reduced it to a hollow shell by 1970. The conflict after Tet was between Hanoi and Saigon. After the North captured Saigon in 1975, Hanoi's leaders had no further use for their puppets. The NLF and Viet Cong immediately vanished, and Hanoi took full direct control.

Weaknesses of South Vietnam

Just as Diem's government (GVN) was factionalized and inefficient, its army, the ARVN, was a typical third world operation based on patronage, favoritism, and corruption. Commands and promotions went to political insiders, regardless of their competence or (more often) incompetence. Food, uniforms, munitions and information were sold for cash. Intrigue was the game, and the generals usually spent most of their time on politics rather than command. Few senior officers had any real military training. Draftees did not want to fight any more than their officers did. Although hardware was abundant and of good quality, training was mediocre, food and pay were unattractive, and morale was poor. Desertion rates were high (home was nearby); this hardly upset the officers because they kept the absent soldiers on the rolls and pocketed their paychecks. 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. Despite monumental American efforts from 1960 through 1972, the situation never decisively improved. Saigon would ultimately lose the war because its large and very well equipped army lacked spirit, motivation and patriotism. The enemy on the other hand, fine tuned its military forces into a powerful political instrument.

Viet Cong guerrillas and regular North Vietnam Army

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. Insubordination was impossible. 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.

Kennedy's Containment Policy

The Kennedy Administration came to power in 1961 committed to containing Communist expansion (whether Russian, Chinese, Cuban or Vietnamese), to demonstrating the will of America to be number one in the world, to upgrading the mission of the Army, to defeating Communist-led wars of liberation, and to helping South Vietnam survive. It was opposed to rollback because war with Moscow would be catastrophic. As a senator, Kennedy had empathized with the fate of his fellow Catholics in Vietnam. As President, however, he showed less empathy with the sufferings in Vietnam and more concern with containment of Moscow and Peking. Kennedy was impatient with Eisenhower's cutbacks in the defense budget, his many legalistic treaties, and his threats of massive nuclear retaliation in case Russia took the initiative in going to war. Kennedy lived in a constant swirl of activity and sought proactive foreign policy. Kennedy agreed with General Maxwell Taylor, an outspoken critic of massive retaliation, that the Army could be used as a precision instrument of foreign policy. They both believed that a "flexible response" could win guerrilla wars (sometimes called "low intensity conflict"). The challenge to containment was not so much a full-scale Soviet invasion of western Europe, but a slice-by-slice subversion of small countries. Kennedy (and other liberals) believed poverty caused people to accept Communism. The antidote was American money, technology and advice to promote economic modernization and nation-building, coupled with military protection during the vital early stages. Trumpeting the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 as a personal triumph, and armed with a new military doctrine that seemed well-tailored to the situation, Kennedy moved confidently into Southeast Asia. Dean Rusk, the Secretary of State under Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, meanwhile was reliving the Korean war (when he had been in charge of the East Asian desk); he repeatedly warned of the specter of Red China conquering the rest of Asia. Rusk considered Hanoi to be Peking's puppet, despite the long- standing animosity between the Vietnamese and the Chinese. He paid little attention to the "Cultural Revolution" which from 1966 to 1971 ripped China apart and paralyzed its military capability. Although China eventually sent 50,000 air defense soldiers to help protect Hanoi, it lacked the military capability and the unified leadership necessary to counter an American invasion of North Vietnam. 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. In 1965, however, the anti-communist army seized power and totally destroyed the Communist movement in Indonesia with wholesale arrests and executions. (The US and the CIA was not significantly involved in this.) 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 infamous "Ho Chi Minh Trail."

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. 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 only effective government response was to hunt the guerrillas down, or target their leaders, but that was too dangerous for the dispirited ARVN. Instead Diem's defensive strategy was the "strategic hamlet" program. Millions of villagers were relocated into new hamlets that the ARVN and local militia forces could defend. The villagers resented the dislocation and the central government's replacement of local leaders. 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.

The biggest problem was the Diem regime itself-- militarily ineffective and politically unpopular. It tried to suppress the non-Communist opposition by large-scale arrests. Its downfall came when it bungled the demands of organized Buddhist monks for a larger voice in political affairs. The multiple interest groups and centers of power in the nation had become alienated from Diem, and gave him no support as he raided the pagodas and arrested demonstrators. Furthermore, he increasingly rejected American demands for political and economic reforms. Washington sadly concluded that Diem had outlived his usefulness, so it stood silent during a military coup on November 1, 1963, that assassinated Diem and installed the first of a long series of unstable governments. Kennedy himself was assassinated three weeks later, and Lyndon Johnson took charge. Diem's death led to chaos; the strategic hamlet program collapsed, and the Viet Cong recouped their losses and pressed forward across the countryside. ARVN battalions one after another crumbled under intense local attacks. The CIA gave GVN only an "even chance" of surviving.

Bibliography

• Anderson, David L. Columbia Guide to the Vietnam War (2004).
• Berman, Larry. Lyndon Johnson's War: The Road to Stalemate (1991). online edition
• Blackwell, Amy et al. A Companion to the Vietnam War (2002) excerpt and text search
• Freedman, Lawrence. Kennedy's Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam (2000) excerpt and text search
• Herring, George C. America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975 (4th ed 2001), most widely used short history.
• Hillstrom, Kevin, and Laurie Collier Hillstrom. The Vietnam Experience: A Concise Encyclopedia of American Literature, Songs, and Films (1998) excerpt and text search
• Kahin, George McTurnan. Intervention: how America became involved in Vietnam (1986) online at ACLS e-books
• Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam: A History (1983), popular history by journalist; strong on Saigon's plans. excerpt and text search
• Kutler, Stanley ed. Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War (1996). essays by experts
• Lewy, Guenter. America in Vietnam (1978), defends U.S. actions.
• McMahon, Robert J. Major Problems in the History of the Vietnam War: Documents and Essays (1995) textbook.
• Schulzinger, Robert D. Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941-1975. (1997) online edition
• Tucker, Spencer. ed. Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War (1998) 3 vol. reference set; also one-volume abridgement (2001).
• Tucker, Spencer. Vietnam. (1999) 226pp. online edition
• Wiest, Andrew. The Vietnam War, 1956-1975 Routledge. 2003. 95pp online edition

Primary sources

• The Pentagon Papers (Gravel ed. 5 vol 1971); combination of narrative and secret documents compiled by Pentagon. excerpts

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