Naval Postgraduate School
Q 19: Did the United States armed forces discover elements of a strategy that, if combined, might have secured American objectives at an acceptable cost?
Nation Building: The Strategy for American Victory in Vietnam
LT James Smith
NW3230 Strategy & War
Dr. Joyce Sampson
Segment 5
30 November 2018
The American War in Vietnam is, by many accounts, one of the most polarizing and perplexing military conflicts that American forces have ever been involved in. How could the most advanced military force ever assembled find itself backed into a corner where even military successes yield a negative return on the war effort? Many would attribute the American failures in Vietnam not to a lack of firepower or capability but to the lack of having a succinct military strategy to accomplish the objective. To determine what a successful strategy would have looked like in Vietnam, one must first determine what strategy is and how it is used to accomplish war objectives. According to Clausewitz, “Strategy is the use of the engagement for the purpose of the war. The strategist must therefore define an aim for the entire operational side of the war that will be in accordance with its purpose ”. Although many different strategies were tried in Vietnam, had America focused on building a strong South Vietnamese government (GVN) instead of destroying the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and Viet Cong (VC) it would have been able to maintain popular support for the war and secure American objectives at an acceptable cost.
From the onset of the engagement, America’s war aim was to retain a free and independent South Vietnam. To achieve this aim, America would have had to be devoutly committed to overseeing the construction of a society that would be politically and economically strong enough to stand on its own . In concert with the actions occurring on the ground in Vietnam, the rhetoric from Washington would have had to echo the same sentiments; a long and protracted engagement built on supporting the South Vietnamese people in their quest for establishing and preserving a free democracy against communist aggressors. Clearly stating these objectives from the beginning of American intervention in Vietnam would have done wonders for public relations with the American population and allowed them to retain faith in the democratic process unfolding in Southeast Asia.
Although public support on the home front was an important part of maintaining morale on the battlefield, one of the largest, if not the largest problem, facing the U.S. military in Vietnam was the internal discord within South Vietnam. Newly free from the French colonial system of government after the French Indochina War, the structure of the new South Vietnam resembled colonial Vietnam with the upper-class Vietnamese replacing the French. The officials and officers of the GVN spoke French and were Catholic whereas the South Vietnamese populace were rural Buddhist . Urban Vietnamese elite, the group from which most GVN military officers and government officials came from, considered Americans to be uncultured boors who had to be tolerated but were best kept at a distance . They also looked down upon the local peasant populace and treated them like dirt. Conversely, many middle class and poor South Vietnamese held the GVN in contempt, were suspicious of the American military and frequently regarded the North Vietnamese with respect and even admiration .
In addition to employing a social system that reinforced systematic classism and maintained the status quo, the government of South Vietnam was filled with corruption and ineptness. The inefficiency of the South Vietnamese government was well known and documented within the U.S. military with many top officials voicing frustrations over delays, mismanagement and outright corruption. A large number of GVN officials and officers were driven by personal motives; viewing government service as an avenue for financial gain and felt that they were the masters of the peasantry rather than servants of the people . Additionally, much of the assistance provided to South Vietnam by America was being diverted to the VC or hoarded by those in power and never made it to those in need . Under such conditions, dissatisfaction with the GVN’s archaic policies led many of the neutral South Vietnamese population to prefer the revolutionary ideas of the PAVN and the VC.
For South Vietnam to remain free and govern itself, it would need to engender within the population a sense of patriotism and unify all of South Vietnam for her collective defense. Noticing the difference in motivation between the VC and the GVN, Assistant Secretary of State Alain Enthoven stated in a 1967 memo addressed to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara that “We must match the nationalism we see in the North with an equally strong and patient one in the south” . Additionally, the South Vietnamese government would have to reassure and incentivize the general population to fight for the GVN’s cause and view it as a better alternative to the VC. Unfortunately, left to its own devices, the aim of the GVN elite was to defeat the revolution without altering the social and political structure of South Vietnam . According to John Vann, a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel who served as the Deputy of Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS) in South Vietnam:
The existing government is oriented toward the exploitation of the rural and lower-class urban population…they are incapable of surmounting a system of which they are both a product and a participant and have a vested interest in perpetuating” .
Understanding the true nature of the war, the desires of the population and the peculiar position that the GVN was in, America would need to be directly involved in the affairs of Vietnam at every level to ensure that American objectives were able to be achieved.
According to Clausewitz, “One must keep the dominant characteristics of both belligerents in mind. Out of these characteristics a certain center of gravity develops, the hub of all power and movement. This is the point against which all our energies should be directed” . This quote by Clausewitz is important because it draws attention to the true center of gravity for the conflict in Vietnam, the South Vietnamese people in the countryside, not the PAVN or the VC in South Vietnam. Winning the “hearts and minds” of the South Vietnamese populace was the most important lynchpin of the Vietnam War. “Victory”, according to “A Program for the Pacification and Long-Term Development of Vietnam (PROVN)” could be achieved only through bringing the individual Vietnamese, typically a rural peasant, to support the GVN willingly . By placing all energies, including U.S Forces, in the countryside to participate in village wars and governance, large scale military intervention may never be required.
The first part of this nation building strategy would provide province chiefs and elders with a government position of real power to officially control their hamlets and minimize the corruption and inefficiency that has curtailed peasant support in the past. This gesture would help to unify the peasant populace with the GVN elite and the American advisors in South Vietnam. It would also help by changing the narrative and portray the VC as the true enemy of the people. With the GVN and the peasant populace unified as a combined protectorate of South Vietnam; the VC, PAVN and their communist supporters would no longer be given safe haven and refuge in South Vietnam. According to study conducted by the CIA, the vast majority of the VC/PAVN supplies and recruitment continued to be generated from within South Vietnam due to VC intimidation and dissatisfaction with the GVN . Simply by unifying and strengthening the resolve of the South Vietnamese people, the grasp of the VC and PAVN in South Vietnam would have been weakened.
To bolster the security of the hamlets and drive out VC and PAVN forces embedded in South Vietnam, the second part of the nation building strategy would be to have U.S. ground forces train, equip and conduct joint patrols with the South Vietnamese military. These patrols would have placed a platoon sized cadre of men into each hamlet where they would provide security to the people of the hamlet and be the link between those people and the government of Vietnam . Over time, the need for American support in the hamlet patrol would diminish and American ground forces could then be used to repel large attacks, retake VC occupied areas South Vietnam and augment South Vietnamese troops as required. Feeling no external pressure from China or the Soviet Union to engage in a larger scale war, America could focus on strengthening South Vietnam’s political and economic infrastructure, building relationships and alliances with other democracies around the world.
According to Colonel Harry Summers in his book On Strategy, A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War:
As a sovereign nation, the problem of internal security was the responsibility of [South Vietnam] and the role of U.S. forces was (and is) limited to protecting [South Vietnam] from external attacks.”
Using Summer’s quote for further discussion, one could argue that an effective strategy for U.S. forces in Vietnam would focus not on the internal struggles of South Vietnam but on waging war against the external threat from North Vietnam. By spending lavishly on massive firepower, munitions, materiel and technology, U.S. forces could successfully outgun and wear down the North Vietnamese and their VC allies. By effectively taking the fight to the enemy with hard hitting offensive capabilities, a strategy that had proved successful for U.S. forces in World War I and World War II; U.S. policy makers could convince the VC that this war is one that they cannot win .
While it is true that America had superior munitions and technology in comparison to its North Vietnamese and VC rivals, the primary issue with attempting to fight a conventional “big unit war” in the midst of an insurgency is that large Armies are also, by their inherent virtue, a large target. According to the Army’s Armored Combat Operations in Vietnam (ARCOV) study, more than 88 percent of all engagements were initiated by the enemy in South Vietnam . To put that in layman’s terms, the VC and PAVN controlled the battlefield; they chose the time to wage war, the terrain in which to fight and could either choose to or refuse to fight on their terms, retreating into the populace when advantageous to them. With the PAVN and VC refusing to engage in the “big unit war”, the advantage inherent to possessing superior weapons becomes nullified as U.S. forces take unnecessary and avoidable causalities while responding to “pop up attacks” from the VC and PAVN. According to Sir Robert Thompson, a British military officer and world renown counter-insurgency expert, “Barring a gross error in judgment on the part of the insurgents…annihilation of the VC’s main units would not happen [using this proposed strategy] as the VC only needed to survive to win .
Another shortcoming of this strategy would be that it is attempting to define the war in Vietnam as something that it is not. While prior combat experience is important, it is imperative that one does not view each conflict as a “one size fits all” solution. Success with a large battlefield strategy in World War I and World War II does not guarantee victory with the same strategy in Vietnam. According to a 1940 Marine Corps Manual on small wars:
In regular warfare, the responsible officers simply strive to attain a method of producing the maximum physical effect with the force at their disposal. In small wars, the goal is to gain decisive results with the least application of force and the consequent minimum loss of life. The end aim is the social, economic, and political development of the people subsequent to the military defeat of the enemy insurgent. In small wars, tolerance, sympathy, and kindness should be the keynote of our relationship with the mass of the population.
Large scale battles, although capable of producing an appreciable body count, would be irrelevant to victory and possibly play a negative role in the way of achieving American objectives of retaining a free and independent South Vietnam.
This topic is important for modern officers to study because it forces current military leaders to ask questions and challenge assumptions about how to wage war and the value of the object to the belligerents. Additionally, although it is easy to critique strategy in hindsight, conducting a proper net assessment prior to engaging in a conflict can ensure that the recommended strategy is actually capable of achieving the war aims.
As outlined earlier, American objectives in Vietnam could have been secured at an acceptable cost if U.S. policy makers focused on conducting a war of action, such as nation building and pacification, instead of waging a war of optics including big guns and body counts. According to Sir Robert Thompson “…Victory could be achieved only through a long process involving the denial of enemy access to the people…Sooner or later after being denied access to their primary source of supply, the VC would have to come out in the open and contest the government’s control of the people.” The source of power for the VC in South Vietnam came from peasant population who distrusted both U.S. forces and the GVN. Had the strategy outlined above been employed, the aforementioned source of power would have been evaporated and the VC and PAVN would have been defeated. To further illustrate this point, captured VC documents showed that the North Vietnamese strategy was to draw American Forces away from pacification and engage them in inconclusive battles along the frontiers, inflicting U.S. causalities in the process and sapping U.S. will to continue the war . The survival of South Vietnam depended on internal stability and could not be corrected by military intervention on its behalf; only a strategy designed to fix the inherent flaws of South Vietnam could have accomplished the war aims and produced American objectives at an acceptable cost.
Bibliography
Bergerud, Eric M. The Dynamics of Defeat: The Vietnam War in Hau Nghia Province. Boulder. Westview Press, 1991.
Clausewitz, Carl V. On War. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.
Clodfelter, Mark. The Limits of Air Power: The American Bombing of North Vietnam. Lincoln. University of Nebraska Press, 2006.
Lewy, Guenter. America in Vietnam. Oxford. Oxford University Press, 1978.
Krepinevich Jr., Andrew F. The Army and Vietnam. Baltimore. Johns Hopkins University Press. 1986.
Summers Jr., Harry G. On Strategy, A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War. Presidio. Presidio Press. 1995.