Brian M Downing
The Vietnam War had many ironies, twists, and convolutions. Villages, it was said, had to be destroyed in order to save them. Leaders saw signs of significant progress shortly before an unexpectedly strong enemy offensive. The values and institutions that governed America were close to collapse as a lightly equipped guerrilla force thwarted the nation that had defeated Germany and Japan.
New ironies, twists, and convolutions followed the US defeat. A war of national liberation, said to have enjoyed overwhelming popular support, culminated in millions fleeing Vietnam and seeking refuge in the US. Some National Liberation Front officials fled, complaining that their broad-based coalition had been controlled all along by the North Vietnamese Politburo. In recent years, the Hanoi government has offered port facilities to the US navy, sponsored an international surfing tournament, and courted American corporations.
Many contentions surrounding the war, including the one that President Nixon protracted and expanded US involvement, might be reconsidered. He did neither. His administration brought coherence to a confused Vietnam policy, and given the political restraints of the day, disengaged the country from the war rather quickly.
No quick exit
It might be argued that any president inaugurated in 1969 could and should have immediately ceased military operations in Southeast Asia, and withdrawn all American troops . This seems an appealing policy, one that would have ended a bloody and divisive war, and done so in a fashion highly popular. After all, support for the war had been faltering for years. Ever since late 1967 more Americans opposed the war than supported it, with an unmistakable trend toward opposition.
There would have been problems for a quick exit. Although there was considerable support for an immediate withdrawal, it had very little support if it entailed a communist victory in the south, as it certainly would have, given the relative strength of opposing armies. One poll in early 1969 showed that only nine percent of Americans would support withdrawal if it meant defeat. (1)
Any president would have faced the dilemma posed by a population that did not want the war, but didn’t want defeat either. Furthermore, an immediate withdrawal would have endangered the dwindling numbers of American troops by leaving them vulnerable to emboldened and numerically superior enemy forces. It would also have caused allies to question American commitments in other parts of the world, at a time when few thought they would live to see the Soviet Union fall.
The domestic consequences of an immediate pull-out would have been painful. Had Eugene McCarthy or Robert Kennedy ordered an immediate withdrawal, the ensuing collapse of South Vietnam would have brought a vicious backlash, much like the one after the communist victory in China which poisoned domestic politics for over a decade. China’s fall had not been accompanied by American battle deaths. By early 1969, however, over thirty-thousand American troops had been killed in Vietnam, with many times that wounded or missing. Defeat would have fueled intense hatreds and paralyzed the president’s agenda. His party would have suffered badly in the next elections; he might have been impeached. America’s harmonious civil-military relations would have deteriorated badly.
A quick exit was politically impossible. Nor could the war be prosecuted as it had. The attrition strategy and bombing campaign had failed – even McNamara, Bundy, and many of the Wise Men admitted that – and by early 1969 popular support for the war had slipped to 35% and opposition had climbed over 50%. This is the dilemma any president would have faced: an electorate wishing neither to pursue the war nor to lose it.
With the bombing halt, and a new administration, a diplomatic solution seemed possible. But hope soon faded as it became clear that, feeling they had the upper hand, communist representatives would accept only a complete and immediate American pull-out.
The Nixon administration developed and implemented a set of policies that sought to disengage from Vietnam, preserve South Vietnamese sovereignty as best as possible, and maintain credibility with allies.
Vietnamization and American troop reductions
The first order of business was shifting the combat load to the ARVN. The Americanization of the war came in 1965 when ARVN was disintegrating. The detection of North Vietnamese troops (NVA) in the Central Highlands, poised to join the Viet Cong in a major thrust, made the collapse of the South seem imminent. In the following years, as the US assumed the brunt of the fighting, ARVN fighting ability failed to improve.
ARVN remained in the relatively secure coastal plain, while American forces engaged main-force Viet Cong and NVA units in the rugged interior. ARVN’s mission of building popular support in the coastal areas led to little; nor did it prepare it to assume its share of the war. As long as American boys were doing the job that Asian boys should have been doing, ARVN had no incentive to reform.
Following the high casualties of early 1968 (the Tet offensives and the siege of Khe Sanh) VC and NVA combat operations declined for the next year and a half. The Nixon administration seized upon this to build up ARVN strength, increase its role in combat operations, and begin to withdraw American troops. ARVN forces were issued the most modern equipment; 1950s weapons were exchanged for M-16A1s. Local and regional militias (RFs/PFs) were built up. ARVN forces replaced GIs in most contested areas two years after Nixon came to office.
With Americans exiting, and in increasingly large numbers as we shall see, the prospect of assuming the brunt of the fighting made revitalization paramount. Reforms were forced through in more and more units. By 1971, ARVN operations were three times as numerous as in previous years, resulting in their suffering a greater proportion of the allied casualties, and inflicting a greater number of casualties.(2)
Asian boys were starting to do the job . Though not as precipitous as other candidates suggested in their campaigns, and not as rapid as many wanted, in a less heated atmosphere it’s clear that changes were strikingly swift.
Less than three years after coming to office, the Nixon administration reduced the number of combat battalions from well over a hundred to only seven, and limited their operations to relatively secure regions. Few thinking back to the end of 1970, the heated year of the Cambodian incursion and the Kent State deaths, remember that the number of American troops in Vietnam had declined almost 40% since Nixon took office, or that battle deaths had dropped to less than one-third the levels of 1968.
Though it allowed for rapid American troop reductions, Vietnamization was not without its problems, and it could not by itself preserve an independent South. ARVN still suffered from numerous incompetent commanders and a chasm between it an much of the population. Other aspects of the Nixon administration’s Vietnam policy sought to purchase time for continued reform.
Reform and popular support
The Tet Offensive of early 1968 was a turning point in the war, though not only in the manner one might readily think. There is considerable evidence that communist support suffered in the following years. Though this did not necessarily mean that loss in VC support entailed a more support for the Thieu regime. Discomfort with both sides was common. Nixon pressured Saigon to build domestic support.
Though a psychological victory for the Viet Cong, Tet was a decided military defeat, perhaps even a catastrophic one. Thirty-thousand of its best troops and hundreds of its political cadre in the villages died in a reckless offensive. Far from spurring a general uprising from the population, as was hoped, Viet Cong attacks killed over 12000 civilians (including 3000 massacred in Hue) and wounded another 25000.
The devastation in almost every city created over a million refugees. American and ARVN troops systematically won back every town and village, inflicting egregious losses, and shattering the myth of Viet Cong invincibility that had built up. In the following years, hundreds of thousands of peasants and villagers asked for and were issued arms for protection from the increasingly unpopular and coercive Viet Cong. Though hardly a match for NVA units, these local militias (PSDFs) helped to secure hundreds of previously contested hamlets.
Viet Cong recruitment suffered. Whereas in the mid-60s they had been able to recruit between as many as 7,000 per month, the numbers dwindled to only a thousand per month by 1970, with an increasing portion of them under the age of seventeen. Defections went from 18000 in 1968 to 47000 the next year. Viet Cong units had to be replenished with North Vietnamese soldiers. Some nominally VC units became over 70% Northerners, thereby making the war less an indigenous rebellion than an invasion from the North. North Vietnamese also replaced many VC political cadre killed during Tet. Lacking the local knowledge and sensitivities of their predecessors, and harboring Tonkinese condescension for Southerners, their ability to mobilize popular support declined. The Viet Cong insurgency came to rely increasingly on force and terror to raise recruits, supplies, and taxes. (4)
The Nixon administration pressed the Thieu government, as no previous American administration had, to adopt substantive reforms. Despite its importance in popular support for the communists, land reform had been largely ignored by previous administrations, which saw such reforms as ancillary at best, and also ill-advised, since landlords constituted one of the few pillars of the Saigon government.
Land reform prior to 1969 was weak and insignificant, averaging only 20000 hectares per year. Most of it was of poor quality, chosen by local landlords, who administered reforms they saw fit. Thieu embarked on a sweeping reform policy, which in the next few years tripled then quadrupled the amount of land distributed to landless peasants. Bypassing old landlord elites, the new land reform program worked in conjunction with traditional village government, thereby building some rapport with Saigon.(5)
Coupled with land reform were renewed and systematic programs of education, agricultural improvement, road repair, and the like. Such reforms had been pursued as early as the 1950s, and even experimented with by American ground troops, but they were plagued by corruption and a lack of institutional support and steadfastness.
Buying time: bombing campaigns and border incursions
Military and political reform could not be accomplished overnight or even within a year or so. The US aimed to destroy communist supply, command, and troop centers, preventing a large-scale offensive that might have gravely weakened ARVN and slowed American troop reductions.
The bombing campaign in Cambodia began in 1969. Known only to the Cambodian government and sympathetic members of Congress, the campaign targeted enemy caches and sanctuaries. Periodic bombing of supply and staging areas in the southern provinces of North Vietnam followed.
In the spring of 1970, ARVN and American forces drove into Cambodia, which, except for occasional hot pursuits and reconnaissance patrols, had been off limits. A year later, ARVN troops went into Laos. Neither incursion widened the war. Both areas had long been used by VC and NVA troops.
In the spring of 1972, with only two American infantry brigades (about ten-thousand troops) left in-country, the North Vietnamese army launched a three-prong attack from positions in Cambodia and across the DMZ. This offensive differed from predecessors in that it was a departure from mobile guerrilla attacks and the beginning of a conventional war, complete with dense troop concentrations, complicated logistical systems, and reliance on oil products for armor and other vehicles.
Initial communist successes made a dramatic response necessary and the conventional nature of the war now made communist forces highly vulnerable to air power. US planes devastated heavily-concentrated enemy forces in the South. Such troop concentrations had only rarely been seen before, and the formidable B-52 strikes inflicted horrific casualties, breaking the ’72 Spring Offensive, most notably at An Loc and Kontum.
LBJ had halted the strategic bombing of North Vietnam just before the ’68 elections. Nixon renewed it. Hanoi and Haiphong were bombed more heavily than in previous years. Owing to the new smart bombs, the strikes were far more accurate. The main port of Haiphong was mined, effectively severing North Vietnam from Soviet shipping for the first time.
Badly damaged, the North Vietnamese sought a meaningful dialogue with the US. The stalemated Paris conference was supplemented by secret meetings between Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, who, by October of ’72, were close to a negotiated settlement. However, when the South expressed reservations, the North raised new concerns, and the agreement, which had seemed to be at hand, fell through. Once again, American air power went north. The Christmas bombing had no military objectives. Instead it had the political goals of getting both Hanoi and Saigon back to the table: Hanoi was shown the cost of delay, Saigon the president’s resolve to defend an ally and punish the North for any future aggression. The Paris Peace Agreement was signed a few weeks later and the last American soldiers left Tan Son Nhut in March of 1973.
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Nixon disengaged the US rapidly, but not rashly, from a disastrous war, though subsequent events led to Vietnam’s defeat in 1975. The long-standing policy of opposing Soviet expansion was maintained until the Soviet Union collapsed and the anti-western nationalism that formed the basis of most communist movements subsided.
1 John M. Mueller, Wars, Presidents, and Public Opinion. (New York: John Wiley, 1973), pp. 42-65.
2 Ronald Spector, After Tet: The BloodiestYear in Vietnam. (New York: The Free Press, 1993), p. 315.
3 Peter Braestrup, ed. Vietnam as History: Ten Years after the Paris Peace Accords. (Washington D. C.: University Press of America, 1984), pp. 163-69.
4 See Robert Komer’s article in W. Scott Thompson and Donaldson D. Frizell, eds. The Lessons of Vietnam. (New York: Crane, Russack, 1977).
5 Prosterman and Riedinger, Land Reform and Democratic Development, pp. 139-46; Charles Stuart Callison. Land-to-the Tiller in the Mekong Delta: Economic, Social and Political Effects of Land Reform in Four Villages of South Vietnam. (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1983); James R. Bullington and James D. Rosenthal, “The South Vietnamese Countryside: Non-Communist Political Perceptions.” Asian Survey 10 (1970): 651-61.
Copyright 1995 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who has written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs.