History
Vietnamisation
Vietnamisation was a policy implemented by the United States during the Vietnam War, aiming to shift the burden of combat to the South Vietnamese forces and reduce American involvement. This strategy involved training and equipping the South Vietnamese military to take on a more active role in the conflict, while gradually withdrawing US troops.
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10 Key excerpts on "Vietnamisation"
eBook - ePubMosquitoes to Wolves
The Evolution of the Forward Air Controller
- Gary Robert Lester(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Barakaldo Books(Publisher)
Chapter 10—Vietnamization and American Withdrawal President Richard M. Nixon brought a new approach to the war: pursuit of victory while withdrawing ground troops. To accomplish this, he continued the dishonest policy of his predecessor, Lyndon B. Johnson. As a result, Nixon generated distrust, drove some elements of the antiwar movement into terrorism, and degraded the nation’s armed forces. Early in 1969, the commitment of American combat troops was reduced and the air war was stepped up by subterfuge. The ploy most commonly used was the “protective reaction strike”: American aircraft loaded with bombs and rockets would fly over North Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos; at the first sign of hostile intent—detecting a radar being switched on, for example—they would unload their ordnance. Much of South Vietnam was heavily bombed, efforts to bomb the Ho Chi Minh trail were increased, and North Vietnam was regularly attacked up to 50 miles north of the demilitarized zone (DMZ). The bomb tonnage dropped on Southeast Asia from 1969-72 surpassed the American bombing effort in both major theaters in World War II. {508} During this period, attention turned to close air support (CAS) missions. {509} The objective of the 1968 Improvement and Modernization Program (Vietnamization) was to stabilize the war. The military rationale implicit in the “Nixon Doctrine” rested on the assumption that US airpower, technical assistance, and economic aid could provide sufficient support for South Vietnamese ground forces to keep the Saigon, Phnom Penh, and Vientiane regimes in power against determined attacks by their enemies. {510} The military forces of Laos and Cambodia showed little substantial strength, however, and even the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) did not demonstrate extended self-sufficiency against the enemy’s best forces. The official American hope was that enough time could be gained to permit these armies to consolidate into effective fighting forces
eBook - PDF- Trinh M. Luu, Tuong Vu, Trinh M. Luu, Tuong Vu(Authors)
- 2023(Publication Date)
- University of Hawaii Press(Publisher)
Thiệu’s efforts bought the Republic seven years and billions in aid. 76 But his Vietnamization strategy failed to account for what was likely an impossible situation: an inability to win hearts and minds, defeat the NVA, and plan for an end to American military and economic assistance. Like so many other prescriptions for crises in Indochina, what looked promising on paper proved elusive. As military historian James Willbanks concluded, “The idea was not in and of itself bad,” though “Vietnamiza- tion, in the final analysis, failed and failed miserably.” 77 A failure that would kill the republican state. NOTES 1. Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, Twenty Years and Twenty Days, 125. On the debate over Vietnamiza- tion in the Vietnamese press in 1969, see Hoang and Vu, chapter 3, this volume. 2. Trần Văn Đôn, Our Endless War, 181, 183. 3. For instance, see Bùi Diễm, Jaws of History, 197–198, 276–277; Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War, 149–150; Anderson, Vietnamization, 33. 4. This chapter draws on research from the Vietnam National Archives Center II (Hồ Chí Minh City, Vietnam), the National Archives of Australia, the Library and Archives of Canada (Ottawa, Canada), the Public Records Office (Kew, England), the Johnson and Nixon presidential libraries, as well as four other American archives. 5. President Thiệu often caused terminological crises over official and journalist use of the terms “withdrawal,” “de-Americanization,” and “Vietnamization.” 6. John Lewis Gaddis defines strategy as “the process by which ends are related to means, intentions to capabilities, objectives to resources. Every maker of policy consciously or unconsciously goes through such a process.” Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, viii.
eBook - ePub- T. Louise Brown(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
The failure to put such a suggestion into practice was justified on three grounds. Firstly, that if the US dominated the leading positions in the allied command, as was almost inevitable, then it would be accused of outright colonialism (Westmorland 1980:171). Secondly, that the South Vietnamese were reluctant to relinquish control over their armed forces given their political importance (Krepinevich 1986 :195) and, thirdly, it was believed that integration would expose US forces to a greater degree of danger as the RVNAF were, allegedly, riddled with NLF informants. When political considerations in Washington led to a concerted programme of Vietnamization in 1968–9, ARVN, with all its weaknesses, was substituted for the US Army and it reluctantly took on a greater share of the combat burden. Yet without the help of the Americans, large-scale operations frequently ended in near disaster. Thus, while Vietnamization was accomplished in the sense that the RVNAF assumed a level of combat formerly undertaken by US forces, the handover was not a success. The average South Vietnamese soldier and officer and the efficiency of each unit did not bear comparison even with the shoddy standards of US forces during the period. Moreover, where the US had failed, it was hardly likely that South Vietnamese forces could succeed and, despite whatever morale-boosting praise was heaped upon the RVNAF, the reality of Vietnamization was gloomy indeed. The War in the Air In budgetary terms, the Vietnam conflict was an air war. Air operations claimed the largest chunk of the US $150 billion spent on the war. In FY 1969 47 per cent of the budget was absorbed by this arm of the conflict and only 30 per cent by the land war (Thayer 1985 :25). For this massive outlay, allied aircraft flew around 3.4 million combat sorties in the Indochina theatre between 1965 and 1972 (Thayer 1985 :79–80)
- Various, Various Authors(Authors)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Even if a few had reservations about the relevance of such an approach, their doubts were assuaged by implicit faith in the might and invincibility of the US Armed Forces. No great effort had to be made to understand the Vietnamese or the dynamics of the conflict because the belief in the efficacy of technology was so great that ‘technowar’ would prevail regardless (Gibson 1986:98–9). Clearly, it did not. Although the Americans did not assume a major combat role until 1965, they had been directly involved in the fighting for a number of years as they had performed what was ostensibly a training role for the 186 War and aftermath in Vietnam South Vietnamese Armed Forces (RVNAF). In practice, this was interpreted as a licence to engage in limited, defensive combat providing that a South Vietnamese trainee was present in order to be instructed. However, the premium placed upon defensive action was gradually dropped in favour of a more aggressive approach. The shift in emphasis was a reflection of deepening US involvement in the war and was a feature of the general escalation leading to the assumption of an overtly offensive role in 1965. The first American ground combat troops arrived in Vietnam in March 1965 and were given the responsibility of defending US bases and crucial installations within South Vietnam. This was known as the base defence strategy. Soon after it was replaced by the enclave strategy which widened the area of operations for US forces. But both approaches came under fierce criticism from the military because they forced them to assume the defensive. General Westmoreland, COMUSMACV (1965–8), suggested a more dynamic policy and requested, and then received, permission to take the war into the Central Highlands where he believed that he could ‘find, fix, fight and finish’ the enemy. Ultimately, it was his appropriately termed ‘search and destroy’ operations that became the unchallenged strategy for winning the war.
eBook - PDF- Scott Sigmund Gartner(Author)
- 1997(Publication Date)
- Yale University Press(Publisher)
The 127 U.S. GROUND STRATEGY IN VIETNAM American strategic goal was not the destruction of an organized mili-tary machine armed with tanks, planes, helicopters, and war ships, for which the United States had prepared, but the preservation of a fragile regime from the lightly armed attacks of both its own people and the North Vietnamese. The U.S. Army had to apply and adapt its NATO-based strategies, equipment, training, and approach to a fundamentally different type of war, for which it was unprepared. Not only was the foe the United States faced in Vietnam differ-ent, but the multidirectional, nonlinear nature of military operations in Vietnam did not lend itself to traditional military measurement of ground warfare. 36 In a more conventional war, armies organized them-selves with fronts and rears to fight one another to acquire territory. Military actors frequently assess their performance by monitoring the geographical progress made by each side. This was the case in the ground war in World War II. Because each side attempts to control real estate, the acquisition of geographical goals results in the destruction of enemy forces. 37 In a linear type of warfare, armies can set operational goals, like be at that river by day #/' and judge how successful their strategies are by how closely they meet their goals. For example, in World War II, the invasion plan called for Allied forces to be on the line of the Seine River by 120 days after the Normandy landing. 38 In this type of situation, success and failure are easy to observe and measure. In Vietnam, geographical measurements of strategic success did not apply; looking at maps of the war in Vietnam never told anybody what was really happening until the very end. 39 This forced the mili-tary to come up with other measures of progress. Some substitute had to be devised to measure progress in a guerrilla war. 40 In a remarkable consensus, primary and secondary accounts agree that the U.S.
eBook - PDF- John Dumbrell(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Red Globe Press(Publisher)
1 2 Rethinking the Vietnam War American veterans returning to Vietnam were sometimes surprised to find the conflict described there as ‘the American War’, an episode – important, but not uniquely so – in the story of the gain-ing of Vietnamese independence. Possibly between 1.5 and 2 million Vietnamese, northern and southern, were killed in the war, compared with just over 58,000 Americans. Significant fatalities occurred among forces, including those from South Korea and Australia, which assisted the United States. The neighbouring countries of Laos and Cambodia were inextricably bound up in the conflict and sustained huge losses in the era of the war. Some facts about the conflict still have the power to shock. For example, during 1973, the year which began with the exit of US forces from the country, the South Vietnamese army suffered over 25,000 battle deaths. The Vietnam War (or, more correctly, the Second Indochina War) repre-sented a qualitative shift in Asian anti-colonialism. It shaped the history of the global Cold War in complex ways. Rethinking the Vietnam War : Purpose and Structure Scholarship on the war has not collapsed into anything approaching a consensus. Understandings of the war – especially regarding the purpose and moral defensibility of American involvement – have developed in tandem with the unfolding preoccupations of interna-tional politics: through the years of superpower détente, reinvigo-rated Cold War in the early 1980s, the ending of the Cold War, the US military interventions of the 1990s, and the era of the War on Terror. Some basic questions about the Vietnam War remain unan-swered.
eBook - PDFCommunist Revolutionary Warfare
From the Vietminh to the Viet Cong
- George K. Tanham(Author)
- 2006(Publication Date)
- Praeger(Publisher)
In the South, American troops and airpower have gradually expanded their role. Their initial role as camp guards was soon forgotten as U.S. troops pushed their defense perimeters out miles from the bases and began to launch spoiling attacks against the Viet Cong who were themselves pre- paring for attacks. Some American forces have been and still are engaged in trying to halt the infiltration, especially the Marines at the demilitarized zone and the Special Forces along the Laotian and Cambodian borders. However, more and more, the U.S. forces have assumed the mission of defeating the National Liberation Army and North Vietnamese regular units operating in the South. The 1967 plan calls for a conversion of most of ARVN to the primary security force necessary for pacification or revolu- tionary development, and for the U.S. forces to assume almost complete responsibility for the fight against the regular Communist forces, including those in the Mekong Delta. American military strategy has been and still is to destroy the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese units through aggressive search and destroy opera- tions combining air and ground units. The main argument supporting the strategy is that these larger and tougher units must be crushed or broken up before any serious pacification can be undertaken. There are just not enough troops, it is stated, to provide security all over the country at one time. The Marines and the Korean troops, however, seem to have adopted a different strategy: to clear and hold, that is, to take an area and hold it AMERICAN MILITARY PARTICIPATION AND THE VIET CONG 99 until the Viet Cong infrastructure has been wiped out and the local people have been adequately trained to protect themselves. This strategy assumes that providing security, gaining control of the people, and building a sound base are the first and foremost tasks of the defenders, and that accomplish- ing these tasks will hurt the Viet Cong most.
- Major James M. Kimbrough IV(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Tannenberg Publishing(Publisher)
In addition to supplies, the North Vietnamese provided the Viet Cong advisory assistance and training. This especially applies to propaganda and political activities. As their influence operations expertise grew, the Viet Cong exploited Saigon’s political unrest and gained popular influence without physical fighting. As the insurgency developed, ideas rivaled bullets in importance.Considering North Vietnam’s involvement, American analysts concluded the insurgents would strictly obey any orders from Hanoi. Increasingly, the distinction between Viet Cong and North Vietnam disappeared in the formulation of American strategy.{166}American Goals for Troop Commitment
In 1956, the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, Walter F. Robertson, articulated several American objectives for Vietnam. “To support a friendly non-Communist government in Viet-Nam and to help it diminish and eventually eradicate Communist subversion and influence. To help the Government of Viet-Nam establish forces necessary for internal security. To encourage support for Free Viet-Nam by the non-Communist world. To aid in the rehabilitation and reconstruction of a country and people ravaged by 8 ruinous years of civil and international war.”{167}Under President Kennedy, the national goal changed very little. A National Security Council directive dated 11 May 1961 established the prevention of communist domination of South Vietnam as an American national objective. In addition to the military assistance, Kennedy sought to employ nation-building techniques to neutralize the communist threat. The overall strategy was to create a viable and increasingly democratic society through military, political, economic, psychological, and covert actions.{168}The Commander of Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV), General Westmoreland, stated that his mission was “to assist the Government of Vietnam and its armed forces to defeat externally directed and supported communist subversion and aggression and attain an independent South Vietnam functioning in a secure environment. Although the objective’s exact wording might change from time to time, it remained essentially the same throughout American involvement.”{169}
eBook - PDFAmerica in the World
A History in Documents since 1898, Revised and Updated
- Jeffrey A. Engel, Mark Atwood Lawrence, Andrew Preston, Jeffrey A. Engel, Mark Atwood Lawrence, Andrew Preston, Mark Lawrence, Jeffrey A. Engel, Andrew Preston(Authors)
- 2023(Publication Date)
- Princeton University Press(Publisher)
11 The Vietnam War America’s long, painful involvement in Southeast Asia began in the late 1940s, when U.S. officials decided that, despite its small size and apparent insignificance, Vietnam represented a key battleground in the global crusade against communism. After World War II, U.S. officials had pressured France to relinquish control of its colonies in Indochina (Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam). But when it seemed that the alternative to French colonialism was Soviet- and Chinese-sponsored commu- nism under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh, the administration of President Harry S. Truman reluctantly backed France. However, in 1954, after a grisly eight-year war, France faced total defeat. The last straw was the fall of the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu, a frontier outpost surrounded by the remote jungle highlands of north- ern Vietnam, in May 1954. Meeting shortly afterward in Geneva, the great powers agreed to settle the Franco-Vietnamese war by partitioning Vietnam into two zones at the seventeenth parallel; the terms of reunification would be decided by a national referendum two years later. The communist-led Viet Minh ruled North Vietnam, officially known as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, while a noncommunist regime under the American-backed Ngo Dinh Diem governed South Vietnam. Fearing a communist victory and confident of his own authority by 1956, Diem cancelled the referendum and mounted a campaign to rid South Vietnam of communists. Just as the Cold War had divided Germany and Korea, by the end of the 1950s the two Vietnams appeared to be two separate countries without a common destiny. In response, North Vietnam, prompted by southern communist insurgents reel- ing from Diem’s anticommunist campaign, decided to resume the drive to reunify all of Vietnam.
eBook - PDFRolling Back Revolution
The Emergence of Low Intensity Conflict
- Ivan Molloy(Author)
- 2001(Publication Date)
- Pluto Press(Publisher)
According to former CIA Director William Colby, the programme was successful, resulting in the assassination of over 20,000 Viet Cong. 13 Success, as such, in the pacification approach was perceived differently to the way it is normally understood in conventional war. The latter meant military victory, the former meant victory not only militarily, but also economically, politically and psychologically. Second, it was concluded that the language, culture and sensibilities of the people, their worldview and historic particularities had to be taken into account. 14 The counter-revolution needed to be fully immersed in the local human environment. Only in this way could locally acceptable and relevant alternatives to the revolution be validated. Moreover, a convincing government, free from corruption and able to offer a secure and appealing way of life, had to be created. In other words, a process of nation building had to be undertaken. This meant a far greater emphasis on gathering and analysing local intelligence. Third, both US forces and their local allies had to believe in the objective for which they were fighting. Otherwise victory would be difficult to achieve. As Zindar noted, in Vietnam: The North Viets and the VC had a cause. They believed and the South Viets never did! That was clearly the ultimate mistake. We always assumed what they wanted was what we wanted for them. When we left, the South Viets had something like the fifth From Approach to Strategy 59 largest army in the world ... But it didn’t mean a damn thing if these guys didn’t want to fight for it. That’s really the big thing! ... The grunts have to believe. 15 Implicit in these comments was the asymmetrical nature of the Vietnam War. While the United States and its South Vietnamese allies were fighting a ‘limited war’, their opponents were absorbed in a ‘total’ conflict.
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