Vietnam War

V

Deepening US Involvement

Unlike conventional wars, the war in Vietnam had no defined front lines. Much of it consisted of hit-and-run attacks, with the guerrillas striking at government outposts and retreating into the jungle. In the early 1960s some North Vietnamese troops, however, began to infiltrate into South Vietnam to help the Vietcong, and supplies sent to Hanoi from the USSR and China were sent south down the so-called Ho Chi Minh Trail. The war began to escalate in the first week of August 1964, when North Vietnamese torpedo boats were reported to have attacked two US destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. Acting on the resolution passed on August 7 by the US Senate (the so-called Tonkin Gulf Resolution), authorizing increased military involvement, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered jets to South Vietnam and the retaliatory bombing of military targets in North Vietnam. From 1964 to 1968 General William C. Westmoreland was commander of US forces in South Vietnam; he was replaced in 1968 by General Creighton Abrams.

In February 1965, US planes began regular bombing raids over North Vietnam. A halt was ordered in May in the hope of initiating peace talks, but when North Vietnam rejected all negotiations, the bombings were resumed. In the meantime, the United States continued to build up its troop strength in South Vietnam. On March 6, 1965, a brigade of American marines landed at Đa Nãng, south of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that had originally been set up at the time of partition. The marines, the first US combat ground-force units to serve in the country, brought the number in the US military forces in Vietnam to some 27,000. By the end of the year American combat strength was nearly 200,000.

While continuing the military build-up in Vietnam, the United States made another attempt to end the war. In December 1965, President Johnson again halted the bombing of North Vietnam in an effort to achieve a peaceful settlement. Again he was unsuccessful, and the raids were resumed. In June 1966, US planes began bombing major installations near Hanoi and the neighbouring port of Haiphong, both of which had hitherto been spared.

In October 1966, government representatives from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, South Korea, and the Philippines—all of which had contributed troops to South Vietnam—met in Manila and pledged their withdrawal within six months after North Vietnam abandoned the war. The offer was rejected by North Vietnam. In June 1967, President Johnson met with Soviet Premier Aleksey N. Kosygin and sought his help in bringing Hanoi to the peace table. The war, however, dragged on.

Two months after the meeting, President Johnson announced that US forces in Vietnam would be further increased to 525,000 by 1968. At the same time, US planes extended their bombings of North Vietnam to within 16 km (10 mi) of the Chinese border. Shortly thereafter, President Johnson again offered to stop the bombardment of North Vietnam provided peace talks would follow. As in the past, Hanoi rejected the offer.

The war continued, and casualty figures rose. In November 1967, the Pentagon announced that total US casualties in Vietnam since the beginning of 1961 had reached 15,058 killed and 109,527 wounded. The mounting toll was accompanied by a growing call within the United States for an end to the war, the cost of which, apart from the loss of life, was estimated by the president at $25 billion per year.

VI

The Tet Offensive

From February 1965 to the end of all-out US involvement in 1973, South Vietnamese forces mainly fought against the Vietcong guerrillas, while US and allied troops fought the North Vietnamese in a war of attrition marked by battles in such places as the Ia Dang Valley, Dak To, Loc Ninh, and Khe Sanh—all victories for the non-Communist forces. During his 1967-68 campaign, the North Vietnamese strategist, General Vo Nguyen Giap, launched the famous Tet Offensive (from the name of the Vietnamese lunar new year in mid-February), a coordinated series of fierce attacks on more than 100 urban targets. Despite its devastating psychological effect, the campaign, which Giap hoped would be decisive, failed, and Vietcong forces were ultimately driven back from most of the positions they had gained. In the fighting, North Vietnam lost 85,000 of its best troops.

In spite of this US victory, however, by the early spring of 1968 much of the American public had concluded that the war was unwinnable. On March 31 President Johnson announced a halt in US bombings over North Vietnam. (He simultaneously announced that he would not be seeking re-election as president.) The announcement, intended as a new peace gesture, evoked a positive response from Hanoi, and in May peace talks between the United States and North Vietnam opened in Paris. Later in the year, the talks were expanded to include South Vietnam and the Vietcong NLF. The talks, however, made no progress despite the fact that US raids on North Vietnam were completely halted in November.

VII

Vietnamization of the War (1969-1971)

In 1969, within a few months after taking office, Johnson's successor, President Richard M. Nixon, announced that 25,000 US troops would be withdrawn from Vietnam by August 1969. Another withdrawal of 65,000 troops was ordered by the end of the year. The programme, known as Vietnamization of the war, came into effect, as President Nixon emphasized additional responsibilities of the South Vietnamese. Neither the US troop reduction, however, nor the death of North Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh, on September 3, 1969, served to break the stalemate in Paris; the North Vietnamese delegates continued to insist upon complete US withdrawal as a condition for peace.

In April 1970, US combat troops entered Cambodia following the political coup there. Within three months, the US campaign in Cambodia ended, but air attacks on North Vietnam were renewed.

By 1971 South Vietnamese forces were playing an increasing role in the war, fighting in both Cambodia and Laos as well as in South Vietnam. At this point, however, the Paris talks and the war itself were overshadowed by the presidential election in South Vietnam. The chief contestants were Nguyen Van Thieu, who was running for re-election, Vice-President Nguyen Cao Ky, and General Duong Van Minh. Both Ky and Minh, after charging that the election had been rigged, withdrew, and Thieu won another 4-year term.

Through the later months of 1971, American withdrawal continued. It coincided, however, with a new military build-up in North Vietnam, thought to be in preparation for a major drive down the Ho Chi Minh Trail into Laos and Cambodia. Heavy US air attacks followed throughout the Indochina war sector. On the ground, meanwhile, Vietnamese Communist forces had launched massive effective attacks against government forces in South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. It was feared also that Hanoi might launch a major offensive in South Vietnam's central highlands, timing the operation for the Tet observance.

Casualty figures in 1971 reflected the intensification of South Vietnam's own fighting efforts against the Communists. While US deaths in Vietnam declined dramatically to 1,380, compared to 4,221 in 1970, the Saigon forces, on the other hand, suffered about 21,500 dead, some in Cambodia and Laos but the majority in South Vietnam. The South Vietnamese claimed the enemy death toll to be 97,000.

VIII

Controversy in the United States

Before troop withdrawal, US military strength in South Vietnam had peaked at over 541,000 in 1969. In the United States itself, as military involvement increased, the war issue had increasingly became highly controversial. A peace movement developed and gathered momentum, organizing marches and moratoriums against the war in major US cities. Accelerating this movement was the issue of atrocities committed by US troops in Vietnam. One widely publicized case was the massacre of unarmed civilians at the village of My Lai in 1968. Lieutenant William L. Calley, charged with responsibility for their deaths, was found guilty by a military jury in 1971.

A major reinterpretation of US involvement in the Vietnam War was spurred by the controversial publication in 1971 in the New York Times and other newspapers of the so-called Pentagon Papers—a collection of classified US government documents concerning the Vietnamese situation. The papers cast a new, and to many, a dismaying, light on the US handling of the war and of the peace negotiations through the 1960s.

IX

Negotiation Impasses

On January 25, 1972, President Nixon publicly recounted the many proposals that the administration had secretly put before the North Vietnamese during the last two-and-a-half years. At the same time, he unveiled a new eight-point plan for peace in Vietnam, including a new presidential election to be held in South Vietnam.

The Nixon plan was followed by a revised version of a peace plan submitted by the Vietcong in July 1971. The new version called for the immediate resignation of President Thieu, to be followed by negotiations with the Saigon administration once it had abandoned what the Vietcong described as its policies of waging war and repression. The same insistence on the immediate resignation of the South Vietnamese president was voiced by Hanoi through the North Vietnamese delegation in Paris, which announced that US prisoners of war would be released only when the United States had withdrawn its support from the Thieu administration and the war was brought to an end.

South Vietnamese forces, meanwhile, conducted three drives into Cambodia during February 1972. The United States announced that it would no longer disclose the number of planes involved in raids over North Vietnam. Peace talks were broken off on March 23.