March 13, 2004

ALWAYS OFFENSE:

Vietnam in Retrospect: Could We Have Won? (Jeffrey Record, Winter 1996-97, Parameters)

Any fruitful discussion of whether the United States could have won the war in Vietnam requires an agreeable definition of winning. What were declared US war aims? The most immediate and enduring was the preservation of a noncommunist South Vietnam. Satisfaction of this objective, policymakers believed, would not only save yet another people from the yoke of communism, but also serve such broader and more abstract war aims as demonstrating resolve and the credibility of US commitments, thwarting the fall of other Asian dominoes to communism, containing Chinese expansionism, and meeting the challenge posed by communist-inspired wars of national liberation.

The Johnson and Nixon administrations sought at the very least to avoid defeat and its perceived attendant humiliation, loss of prestige, and orgy of domestic political recrimination. Indeed, as early as 1966 defeat-avoidance was becoming, for an increasing number of civilian officials, the central US war aim in Vietnam. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara is known to have harbored serious doubts about the war's winnability as early as late 1965. In that same year, his close and trusted aide John McNaughton, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, declared in a memo that "70 percent" of the US purpose in Vietnam was "to avoid a humiliating defeat"; in early 1966 he further concluded that "We . . . have in Vietnam the ingredients of an enormous miscalculation. . . . The reasons we went into Vietnam to the present depth are varied; but largely academic.

In the end, the United States failed either to avert a communist takeover of South Vietnam, or to avoid humiliation, loss of prestige, and domestic recrimination. To be sure, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and southern National Liberation Front (NLF) did not directly evict US forces from Vietnam, nor even inflict upon them a major set-piece battlefield defeat like the Viet Minh did on the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. General William C. Westmoreland proudly notes that fully two years separated the departure of the last US combat troops from Vietnam in 1973 and the fall of South Vietnam in 1975. But if US forces were not defeated, neither did they inflict a strategically decisive defeat on the communist side. Years of bombing North Vietnam and "attriting" communist forces in South Vietnam neither broke Hanoi's will nor crippled its capacity to fight. [...]

The Tet Offensive appeared to be an American defeat not so much because it was inaccurately reported by the press, but rather because it was launched in the wake of an intense official public relations campaign to convince Americans that the communist tide in Vietnam was receding for good and that victory was within reach.

To be sure, in the post-Tet years of the war the communist side's increasing reliance on conventional, territory-oriented military operations as a substitute for population control exposed the NVA directly to US firepower with exactly the kind of disastrous results that befell Hanoi's Easter offensive of 1972. But prospects for a decisive US conventional win depended on the combination of a North Vietnam incapable of learning from its mistakes and a US Congress infinitely patient and generous. Neither materialized. After 1972 Hanoi simply postponed a final reckoning with Saigon until it was certain the United States would not reenter the war under any circumstances...


The problem is obvious just from the definition of our war aims--it was a containment trap. It is likely true that we could not have maintained an independent South Vietnam indefinitely, so long as we left Communist governments in place in North Vietnam, China, and Russia. So it needed to be either a war of aggression, not just defense, on our part--involving at the very least regime change in the North. If we weren't prepared to do that we should have just stayed home.

However, the lessons of Vietnam did eventually win us the Cold War because we realized that the Soviets had the exact same containment-trap problem. By backing guerillas in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Angola, etc., and freedom movements in places like Poland, we demonstrated that the Soviets weren't capable of propping up their satellites either and once the dominoes started tumbling they all came down.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 13, 2004 6:59 AM
Comments

Why aren't we backing a guerilla movement in North Korea?

Posted by: Robert Duquette at March 13, 2004 12:17 PM

Any fruitful discussion of Vietnam must at least begin with the facts, which this article misrepresents.

"The reasons we went into Vietnam to the present depth are varied; but largely academic."

The reasons for the eventual debacle were neither varied nor academic. Lyndon Johnson believed he must appear strong against the communist threat and not back down, but was unwilling (or afraid) to prosecute the war to its full extent. He provoked the incident leading to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving him power to vastly expand the U.S. presence. Then he and his CPA Sec. of Defense, Robert "Strange" McNamara (may his soul burn in hell), tried to micromanage the conduct of the war, down to choosing the allowed bombing targets each day.

"Years of bombing North Vietnam and "attriting" communist forces in South Vietnam neither broke Hanoi's will nor crippled its capacity to fight."

It's funny, having lived thru this period, I remember us bombing Laos and Cambodia (under Nixon), but I do not remember any significant bombing of North Vietnam. I have it on good authority (a friend who was in Naval Intelligence at the time) that the number one request of the Pentagon was to bomb Hanoi and the railroad lines bringing supplies from China and Russia, and to mine Haiphong harbor. This would probably have won the war in short order, but Johnson (and later, Nixon) were afraid of bringing Russia and China directly into the war, possibly creating another Korea.

The lessons of Vietnam were not to fight a war unless you are willing to employ all means necessary to win, and to keep civilians out of the day-to-day conduct of it.

Posted by: jd watson at March 13, 2004 12:43 PM

Robert, I doubt North Korea could support such a movement. It's hard to have guerillas running around a totalitarian state that's near starvation.

JD, there certainly was lots of bombng of North Vietnam, and having just read an American Heritage article on the Gulf of Tonkin incident, I don't think it was "provoked" by us, unless sailing warships in international waters near North Vietnam counts as provocation.

Posted by: PapayaSF at March 13, 2004 2:49 PM

JD,

The Linebacker II B-52 strikes in December of 1972 bombed Hanoi back to the stone age, so I'd say that counts as a "significant bombing of North Vietnam". I realize I'll lose any hope of Kerry-like nuance by saying this, but it's only too bad it took so long for such a concentrated strike to occur. Had such actions happened sooner, it could have very well ended the war, and saved literally millions of lives.

Had Johnson and MacNamara fought in Vietnam to win, instead of using their carrot and stick tactics, the world's history might have turned out very differently.

Ed

Posted by: Ed Driscoll at March 13, 2004 3:57 PM

As Ed notes, Nixon finally did break the logjam at the end of 1972 by ordering Linebacker II, and also he did order Haiphong harbor mined. This was naturally much criticized at the time but shook the resolve of the North Vietnamese sufficiently that they knuckled under and signed the Paris accords. The subtext was that the U.S. would enforce the treaty with its airpower should North Vietnam attempt another invasion of the South. That's where the real tragedy of 1975 lies; Congress, by preemptively forbidding the U.S. to use bombing to stop the NVA, rendered the Paris accords unenforceable and undid the achievements of Linebacker II. I don't think we would necessarily even have had to bomb Hanoi itself; plastering the Ho Chi Minh Trail would have cut off the NVA main supply route and rendered them vulnerable to ARVN counterattack - and let's not forget that even in the catastrophe, many ARVN units did resist fiercely and skillfully. With the backing of American airpower it's entirely likely that the 1975 offensive would have been thrown back, just as the 1972 offensive was.

Posted by: Joe at March 13, 2004 4:45 PM

It was never clear how we were supposed to win a war of attrition in Vietnam. We should have blockaded Haiphong and cut the HCM trail in 1965-66. Instead we let the NVA keep coming, molested only by air stirkes, and let them maintain their sanctuaries in Cambodia until 1970. There finally was an attempt to cut the trail in early 1971, but this effort, which used only ARVN ground forces, failed miserably.

Alas McNamara is still around and has been trying to achieve some measure of rehabilitation through his writings and via interviews. I have refused to see the new Errol Morris film, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara, as I couldn't bear listening to him for 100 minutes.

Posted by: George at March 13, 2004 4:51 PM

Vietnam certainly didn't provide a lot of useful PR for Communism; From the day the North and South were united, to today, it's been one of the poorest nations on Earth.

Posted by: Michael Herdegen at March 13, 2004 5:12 PM

The US Army was fighting the wrong war against a guerilla army. They employed the same old US Grant doctrine of chucking as much firepower they could against the enemy but they'd have been better off taking the advice of the US Marines Corps who'd been fighting insurgency and guerilla warfare for decades.

Blaming LBJ for what happened isn't particularly fair since the brass simply adopted the wrong plan and persisted with it for far too long.

Posted by: M Ali Choudhury at March 13, 2004 5:16 PM

Finally somebody sort of gets it. Yes, Tet drove a stake through the heart of any anticommunist government in the South.

Orrin has a cept (half a concept) in thinking that an independent S. Vietnam could not have maintained. It not only could not have been maintained, it could not have been started.

There was no real demand for an independent, self-governing state based in Saigon. Still isn't, as far as I can tell.

As an experiment in nation-building, S. Vietnam ought to provide a few lessons for the 21st century, but it won't until the reason for the failure are understood.

It wasn't about airplanes.

Posted by: Harry Eagar at March 13, 2004 6:02 PM

Yet they lasted several years and fought fairly well even after we betrayed them.

Posted by: oj at March 13, 2004 7:32 PM

Another interpretation would be that the North had sense enough and patience enough to wait to be sure the Americans would not rush back into the burning building.

I am not aware that the S. Vietnamese ever put up a meaningful fight, but go ahead, enlighten me about their victories.

Anyhow, they never did govern themselves.

Posted by: Harry Eagar at March 14, 2004 2:54 AM

Here's just one example:

http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/99summer/sorley.htm

Who was governing them after we left?

Posted by: oj at March 14, 2004 8:05 AM

A clique of turf aficionados.

Posted by: Harry Eagar at March 14, 2004 8:24 PM

'ARVN . . . stood and fought as never before.'

Like I said.

Posted by: Harry Eagar at March 14, 2004 8:31 PM

"I am not aware that the S. Vietnamese ever put up a meaningful fight"

Funny, but we no sooner started withdrawing than they proved themselves decent fighters.

Posted by: oj at March 14, 2004 8:57 PM

Actually, that's not what your reference says.

What it says is that a conventional assault without air cover was vulnerable to disruption by tactical air -- which we knew already, from the Battle of Mortain in July-August 1944 and Korea in summer 1950.

Like I said, the N. Viets were patient enough to let the US leave for long enough not to be ready to interfere again and then they waltzed in.

Posted by: Harry Eagar at March 15, 2004 10:05 PM

Now you're just lying:

"In Military Region 1 the first five days of heavy assaults on the northern crescent of fire bases resulted in enemy advances as far south as the Dong Hai River, but there resistance by the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) stiffened and the enemy paused to regroup and resupply. A later history of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN, aka the North Vietnamese Army) acknowledged the effective fight put up by ARVN defenders. "Relying on defensive fortifications already in place and on their reinforced troop strength," it recalled,


the enemy organized a defensive system consisting of three centers--Dong Ha, Ai Tu, and La Vang-Quang Tri. Hundreds of tanks and armored personnel carriers formed a barrier of steel surrounding these bases. Artillery fire bases and tank guns fired scores of thousands of rounds into our positions. All types of tactical aircraft and B-52 strategic bombers dropped hundreds of tons of bombs. Because the enemy had increased his troop strength and his fire support, and because he had changed his defensive plan, the wave of assaults made by our troops on 9 April was not successful.[16]


Sir Robert Thompson noted that the enemy had moved only 18 miles in three weeks, "not exactly an electric advance."[17] When the assault resumed, however, Quang Tri City was captured on 1 May and evacuation of Fire Support Base Nancy was forced two days later. The proximate cause of these reverses was withdrawal of the 20th Armored Squadron, ordered by 1st Armored Brigade commander Colonel Nguyen Trong Luat without notifying either higher headquarters or adjacent units. This move spooked other friendly forces into displacing prematurely and opened a convenient hole through which the attacking NVA drove deep into friendly lines.[18]

At the end of the third week, Abrams brought his field commanders in to review the situation and gain a little perspective. "There's been some poor performances," he acknowledged, then continued:


But there always have been poor performances--in war or anything else. And I think that there always will be. You've got a few guys do great, a few guys who are sort of satisfactory most of the time, and then you've got a few guys that are just miserable. But in this thing now, until this is over, there's no point--you've just got to accept the fact that there're going to be some poor performances. The trouble is that you're doing it with human beings. If you didn't have them, you wouldn't run into that. Some poor performances are not going to lose it. It's the good performances that are going to win it.


"I doubt the fabric of this thing could have been held together without US air," Abrams told his commanders,


but the thing that had to happen before that is the Vietnamese, some numbers of them, had to stand and fight. If they didn't do that, ten times the air we've got wouldn't have stopped them. So--with all the screwups that have occurred, and with all the bad performances that have occurred . . . we wouldn't be where we are this morning if some numbers of the Vietnamese hadn't decided to stand and fight.


On 24 April, Abrams cabled Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird his personal assessment of the situation. "The North Vietnamese have launched from their sanctuary in [North Vietnam] an all-out effort against the Republic of Vietnam," he began. "They are holding nothing back. Their last reserve division has been moved south near the DMZ and can enter the battle within two to four days after receiving orders." Four divisions and an independent regiment had already been brought down from North Vietnam, joining the seven divisions, 22 independent regiments, and seven artillery regiments already in South Vietnam. "It has been a conventional warfare battle employing the most sophisticated weapons."

"Overall," Abrams reported, "the South Vietnamese have fought well under extremely difficult circumstances. There has been a mixture of effective and ineffective performance, as in any combat situation, but on the whole the effective far outweighs the ineffective. Thus far the South Vietnamese have prevented the enemy from achieving his major objectives." One significant improvement from the battles of Lam Son 719 the previous year was the integration of air, armor, artillery, and infantry into a coherent whole. "This has been outstanding," said Abrams. "They have made great progress in this area during the past year in particular."
"

Posted by: oj at March 15, 2004 10:40 PM

That's an almost fact-free report, but we can bring some outside information to bear.

120 battalions (apparently not all mobile). Piddling, compared with over 200 U.S. at our peak involvement.

18 mile penetration. Pretty deep. In other words, they broke the defense line.

The penetration, we can suppose, was stopped not by doughty ARVN resistance, though there may have been some of that, but by disruption of formations by tactical area behind the forward edge of the battle area.

only one unit threw down its weapons and ran. An improvement, after 10 years go trying to form a disciplined military force.

Abrams may have been a wildhaired tanker in 1944, but by 1972 he was a political general, and the U.S. policy was to declare S.Vietnam ready to take over for itself, whether it was or not. Under the circummstances, his praise is pretty tepid.

Last, of course, three years later, when ARVN had had the benefit of that much more training and preparation, it collapsed like a pricked balloon.

I'm not blaming them. I didn't want to die for Madame Thieu's race horses, either.

Posted by: Harry Eagar at March 16, 2004 2:05 PM

You actually said one thing there that's true and matters: "three years later"

Posted by: oj at March 16, 2004 2:09 PM
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