Vietnam: The End, 1975
CSC 1985
SUBJECT AREA History
ABSTRACT
Author: Bibby, Thomas M., Major USAF
Title: Vietnam: The End, 1975
Date: 1 April 1985
The purpose of this paper was to examine the reasons for the sudden and
total collapse of the Republic of Vietnam Armed forces (RVNAF) in the early
months of 1975, and determine if the final outcome was inevitable or if Ameri-
can will could have prevailed and insured South Vietnam's survival as a free
and independent nation. Also, through a discussion of "lessons learned", the
paper addresses the significant impact our experiences in Vietnam will have
upon future US actions in foreign affairs.
The paper begins with a brief introduction of the events surrounding the
final collapse and their interpretation by both the North and South Vietnamese.
Virtually everyone concerned considered the crucial turning point in the war
was the signing of the Paris Agreements of 1973: the United States viewed the
agreements as "peace with honor"; the North Vietnamese and Provisional Revolu-
tionary Government (PRG) viewed them as the surrender and defeat of the Ameri-
can "imperialists" and their "lackey puppet regime"; and the South Vietnamese
viewed them as "abandonment" by a strong ally they thought would always be
there.
The first chapter begins with an examination of the Paris Agreements and
describes what each of the parties concerned expected to achieve from the
agreements. Chapter two continues to examine the events which occurred after
the signing of the agreements and discusses the numerous violations of the
agreements, and their overall impact upon the final collapse of South Vietnam.
In chapter three, the policy of Vietnamization is discussed in order to
evaluate the overall capability of the RVNAF to effectively provide for
South Vietnam's defense in 1975. In doing so, both the American and South
Vietnamese assessments of the policy and its effectiveness are presented.
Chapter four examines the collapse of the RVNAF from the viewpoint of
failed leadership and destroyed morale. Although there were many reasons
for South Vietnam's collapse, the major ones centered around low morale, un-
controlled corruption, incompetent leadership, and lack of US military aid
and air support in the period following the Paris Agreements of 1973.
Finally, the paper identifies some lessons of the events surrounding
our experiences in South Vietnam, and how they will affect future US actions
in foreign affairs. They include: the requirement to distinguish between
problems which lend themselves to political solutions and those which re-
quire military solutions; the requirement for the US to have domestic sup-
port for its foreign policy to succeed; and the requirement to understand the
needs of the people we are trying to help. Above all, our political and
military leaders must do a better job in articulating our nation's foreign
policy to the US public and Congress to gain their support, and must care-
fully analyze the public's willingness to support that policy over an ex-
tended period of time, even under adverse conditions. However, despite US
foreign policy failure in South Vietnam, the Vietnam War was for the South
Vietnamese to win and not the Americans. The government of South Vietnam
needed to quickly implement significant political reforms to rally the sup-
port of its own people and soldiers, but simply ran out of time in 1975.
VIETNAM: THE END, 1975
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER 1: PARIS AGREEMENTS OF 1973
1. North Vietnamese and PRG Expectations 13
2. South Vietnamese Expectations 19
3. American Expectations 24
CHAPTER 2: BREAKDOWN OF THE AGREEMENTS
1. The Postwar War: 1973-1975 31
2. Violations 56
CHAPTER 3: VIETNAMIZATION
1. American Assessment 67
2. South Vietnamese Assessment 72
CHAPTER 4: COLLAPSE OF THE REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM
ARMED FORCES (RVNAF)
1. RVNAF Leadership 74
2. RVNAF Morale 81
CONCLUSION 86
CHRONOLOGY OF SIGNIFICANT EVENTS 96
CAST OF PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS 99
ENDNOTES 103
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY 112
INTRODUCTION
The Vietnam War is probably the most analyzed war and,
simultaneously, the least understood war involving the
United States since 1945. Of all U.S. allies, South Vietnam
enjoyed more support from the United States than any other
individual country throughout the free world. With over
$160 billion in aid and the sacrifice of more than 50,000
American lives, it is difficult to believe that South Vietnam
could have had a stronger ally than in the United States.1
Why then did South Vietnam fall? Even more disconcert-
ing, why did it collapse so quickly? Unfortunately, there
are not any easy answers to why the final outcome of this
divisive and costly war for both the United States and the
Republic of South Vietnam came to such a devastating
conclusion.
In this paper, I shall examine the events leading to
the final collapse on April 30, 1975. I shall also try to
determine if, as the Vietnamese would say, the "fates" were
against South Vietnam and the outcome was inevitable; or if
American will could have prevailed and insured South Viet-
nam's survival as a free and independent nation.
In my research, I read numerous accounts of the war on
the events from 1972 to 1975 by North Vietnamese, South
Vietnamese and American sources. Each tended to present
his own opinions with ideological biases; but, on the
whole, a common thread of truth emerged. The Paris
Agreements of 1973 (more formally called the Agreement
on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam) were
viewed by all concerned as the crucial turning point in
the war: The United States viewed the agreements as
"peace with honor"; the North Vietnamese and Provisional
Revolutionary Government (PRG) viewed them as the surren-
der and defeat of the American "imperialists" and their
"lackey puppet regime"; and the South Vietnamese saw them
as "abandonment" by a strong ally they thought would
always be there. It is highly questionable that if the
Paris Agreements were not signed that South Vietnam would
have survived in 1975; however, the conditions agreed to
in Paris by the four signatory parties were not in the
best interest of the government of South Vietnam (GVN).
In his book, Our Great Spring Victory, the North
Vietnamese Army (NVA) chief of staff, General Van Tien
Dung, presented a biased but extremely detailed account
of the final collapse of South Vietnam. During its 21st
plenum in October 1973, the Communist Party Central
Committee decided that "revolutionary violence" was still
the pathway to achieving North Vietnam's goals, despite
the terms of the Paris Agreements.2 The following March,
the Central Military Party Committee concluded, "the
Vietnamese revolution may have to pass through many transi-
tional stages, and can only gain victory through revolu-
tionary violence--carrying out popular uprisings, relying
on our political and military forces, or in the event that
large-scale war returns, carrying out revolutionary warfare
to gain complete victory."3
According to Dung's account, following the March confer-
ence, the military command carefully monitored the battle-
fields in the South; over the summer it reported to the
party that "the fighting ability of our mobile main-force
units was superior to that of the enemy's mobile main-force
units." The balance of forces had changed in Hanoi's favor.
In addition, resupply efforts were expanded and the Ho Chi
Minh Trail was substantially improved by labor battalions
working day and night. Arms, munitions and troops were now
trucked on a 26-foot wide, all-weather road running from
Quang Tri to eastern Nam Bo in the Mekong Delta region of
South Vietnam. General Dung wrote that their supply system
resembled "strong ropes inching gradually, day by day,
around the neck, arms, and legs of a demon, awaiting the
order to jerk tight and bring the creature's life to an
end."4
The North Vietnamese did assess the possibility of
renewed American intervention; they decided after a meeting
of the Central Military Party Committee in October 1974,
that the possibility seemed remote after the Watergate
scandal, Nixon's resignation, the economic difficulties
following the 1973 Arab oil embargo, and the sequence of
Congressional votes against additional U.S. aid to Saigon.
With the cutback of almost $2 billion annually in U.S. aid,
South Vietnam was now forced to fight "a poor man's war,"
which put them at a distinct disadvantage in overcoming the
overwhelming initiative enjoyed by both the North Vietnamese
regular troops and the Vietcong guerrillas. Le Duan, the
North Vietnamese Communist Party's First Secretary, stated:
"Now that the United States has pulled out of the South, it
will be hard for them to jump back in; no matter how they
may intervene, they cannot rescue the Saigon administration
from its disastrous collapse."5 The October 1974 conference
unanimously agreed on five points which favored implementing
their Spring 1975 offensive and would insure success:
First, the Saigon troops were growing weaker
militarily, politically, and economically every
day. Our forces were stronger than the enemy in
the South.
Second, the United States was meeting diffi-
culties at home and abroad, and its ability to give
political or military aid to its proteges was
declining every day. Not only had the United States
had to decrease its aid to Saigon, it also faced
increasing opposition to any effort to "jump back"
into the South. And even if troops did intervene,
they would not be able to rescue the collapsing
Saigon quisling administration.
Third, we had set up strategic positions
linking North and South, had increased our forces
and our stockpiles of materiel, and had completed
the system of strategic and tactical roads.
Fourth, movements calling for peace, improve-
ment of popular welfare, democracy, and national
independence, and demanding that Thieu be toppled,
gained momentum in the towns.
Fifth, our people's just struggle had the
sympathy and the strong support of the world's
people.6
With the fall of Song Be, the provincial capital of
Phuoc Long province, in January 1975, the North Vietnamese
Politburo met again and decided on a strategic plan which
called for large surprise attacks to be launched later in
the year, and "create conditions to carry out a general
offensive and uprising in 1976." The North Vietnamese
leaders planned to conquer all of South Vietnam by 1976;
however, they also stated that "if the opportune moment
presents itself at the beginning or the end of 1975, we
will immediately liberate the South in 1975."7
In his book, The Final Collapse, General Cao Van Vien,
Chairman of the South Vietnamese Joint General Staff,
states his personal belief that it was the cutback in U.S.
military aid and absence of U.S. intervention with air
power (especially B-52s), in response to North Vietnamese
and PRG treaty violations, that made defeat inevitable.
After the 1973 Paris Agreements, the Republic of Vietnam
armed forces (RVNAF) suddenly found it difficult to
operate at the greatly reduced level of U.S. appropriations;
they were now in a decidedly underdog position. Since their
superior firepower and mobility were gone, they found it
impossible to maintain tactical balance against an enemy
who held the initiative. The most the RVNAF could hope to
achieve was a delaying action pending restoration of
American military aid to its former level.8 American
military aid to the government of South Vietnam was cut
from over $2.5 billion in fiscal year 1973 to $700 million
in fiscal year 1975.9
General Vien explained how the cutback in aid led to
President Thieu's decision to abandon the Central Highlands
in March 1975. This strategic error on Thieu's part resulted
in disastrous consequences and significantly hastened the
collapse of the RVNAF. General Vien had this to say about
the impact the cutback in U.S. aid had upon the decision to
abandon the Central Highlands:
The big slash in appropriated funds made its
tragic impact felt not only on the battlefield,
but also in the minds of South Vietnamese strate-
gists as well. The ability to hold territory,
they felt, was a direct function of aid level.
With the reduction now in force, perhaps it was
no longer possible to maintain `territorial
integrity.' It might be best, they reasoned, to
tailor our defense effort to the aid appropriated.
Simplistic as it might sound, the idea reflected
the realities of the situation. Whatever the
motives behind it, President Thieu's decision
early in 1975 to redeploy forces was centainly
not taken lightly or without firm grounds. But
it was also this fateful decision that set in
motion a series of setbacks whose cumulative
effect led to the final collapse.10
However, it was the way in which the retreat was con-
ducted that hastened the collapse of South Vietnam.
Strategic withdrawals of the magnitude involved in 1975
require thorough planning with emphasis on its impact upon
the civilian population. General Vien's remarks describe
his feelings about the effect the execution of the retreat
had upon the final outcome of the war:
In the context of the Vietnam War whose political
and military aspects were intimately entwined, such a
retreat was predisposed to doom if no consideration
were given to the Vietnamese civilians who depended
on the troops for protection and for whom the war was
being fought. Our armed forces were not operating on
foreign soil; their role and mission differed from
those of an expeditionary force. Removing them from
an area without taking steps to evacuate the popula-
tion amounted to sheer dereliction. The redeployment
fiasco in Military Regions (MRs) II and I demonstrated
the tragic fact that the population could not be
separated from the troops and that troop movements
could be halted by a rushing mass of refugees. These
are the facts of the case. They explain the rapid
moral and physical disintegration of an army that had
fought well until undercut by events beyond its
control.11
In addition to aid cutbacks and poorly executed retreats
from the Central Highlands, the suddenness of the actual
collapse under the North Vietnamese offensive of 1975 was
due to a number of additional factors. One was the adverse
balance of forces that existed by 1975. In an attempt to
keep the balance of forces at the January 1973 level, the
terms of the Paris Agreements restricted the resupply of all
forces inside South Vietnam (both Communist and non-Communist)
to a one-for-one replacement schedule. In other words, only
similar equipment could be replaced and only after it
became unusable.
However, since the signing of the Paris Agreements,
North Vietnam had greatly strengthened the quantity and
quality of its offensive capabilities in the South through
the dramatic improvement of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Conse-
quently, through its improved logistics network, the North
was able to rapidly concentrate its forces, and attack
South Vietnamese points of weakness almost at will.12
Another factor for the South Vietnamese vulnerability
was the lack of a mobile reserve and strategic mobility due
to shortages of fuel, transport and spares. Their soldiers
had been conditioned by the U.S. to rely on massive air and
artillery support in combat and had "forgotten how to walk"
when military resources became increasingly scarce after
the Paris Agreements and American support decreased.13 The
South Vietnamese Army had too big a logistical "tail," with
too little actual fighters to put "teeth" into its combat
powder. General Tran Van Don, the last South Vietnamese
Minister of Defense, stated that out of 1.1 million men
under arms on paper, only 100,000 could be called "fighters.14
The rest belonged to logistical units. This inability to
field effective mobile reserve divisions proved deadly to
the RVNAF in 1975, for they were essential in order to
counter the massive conventional assault by the North
Vietnamese Army (NVA) that year.
The need to maintain huge numbers of non-combat per-
sonnel to support combat troops is a function of modern
conventional warfare and was not unique to South Vietnam.
Similar ratios hold true for all modern nations, but they
are most apparent in Western forces, particularly those of
the United States. On the other hand, the North Vietnamese
forces were less technologically-oriented, and their army
was more manpower-oriented. Consequently, a greater per-
centage of their soldiers were actually involved in combat.
In fact, of the 160,000 NVA regular troops inside South
Vietnam, there were only 71,000 administrative and logisti-
cal troops supporting them. However, the gross figures of
1.1 million South Vietnamese versus 160,000 NVA troops in
South Vietnam tell little about relative combat power. A
comparison of fighting forces portrays a more accurate
picture of the real balance of forces. At the end of
January 1973, the NVA combat strength in South Vietnam
consisted of 15 infantry divisions and 27 separate infantry
and sapper regiments, whereas the RVNAF consisted of only
13 divisions and 7 Ranger groups. Also, the South Vietnamese
forces were tied to a static defensive role, while the NVA
forces were able to devote their forces in the South almost
entirely to offensive operations, since they enjoyed a
relatively secure rear area in North Vietnam.15
Next among the fatal weaknesses of the RVNAF was the
lack of effective military leadership at the top. Many
senior officers received their appointments for reasons of
political loyalty rather than military competence. On the
civilian side, corruption and inflation adversely affected
both the national will and military morale. It was this
failure of leadership that was responsible for the tragic
and disastrous quick retreats from the Central Highlands,
resulting in one of the most devastating routs in the
course of military history.16
Although there were numerous factors involved in the
collapse of South Vietnam, the role the U.S. played in the
final outcome had a significant impact. Before the Paris
Agreements, the South Vietnamese perceived Washington as a
strong ally who would support them indefinitely. After the
Paris Agreements, however, the American role took the form
of gradual abandonment of South Vietnam when the U.S. with-
drew its combat troops, stopped air support, and cutback
military and economic aid.17 It was this feeling of aban-
donment--no longer being regarded by the United States as
worth saving--that had a devastating impact upon the people
and leaders of South Vietnam in those tragic last months of
1975.
The ability of the North Vietnamese to wage a revolu-
tionary war, which purported to offer the chance for a change
in the political order as it existed, was extremely effec-
tive in mobilizing the population in the South to support
its war effort. By contrast, the South Vietnamese govern-
ment's inability to offer its people a similar change
through the ideals of democracy and economic growth insured
a lack of support for the Thieu government, especially
during the crisis days of early 1975. The people and
soldiers simply had no reason to fight for a government
which failed to meet their needs. It matters little that
the North's government was just as corrupt and more
repressive, as evidenced by the conditions existing in
Vietnam today; it matters only that the North Vietnamese
and PRG were more effective in offering the people a defi-
nite change in the political order as it existed in South
Vietnam in 1975.
Because Thieu could not effectively eliminate corrup-
tion within his regime, the enticing, ideological arguments
offered by the North Vietnamese were able to drive a divi-
sive wedge between the people of South Vietnam and their
government. In summary, I intend to show that the collapse
of the RVNAF had not occurred suddenly in 1975, nor was the
collapse due to any one single factor. Instead, the reasons
were many: low morale, uncontrolled corruption, incompetent
leadership, and the cutoff of U.S. military aid and air
support. However, unless the government of South Vietnam
could solve its own political problems, it was condemned
to, not only losing the support of its own people, but the
support of the American public and Congress as well. The
Vietnam War was for the South Vietnamese to win. However,
the U.S. could only provide aid to buy time for the govern-
ment of South Vietnam to make significant reforms and rally
the support of its own people to win the war against North
Vietnam.
CHAPTER 1
PARIS AGREEMENTS OF 1973
NORTH VIETNAMESE AND PRG EXPECTATIONS
In March of 1972, the North Vietnamese, along with the
Vietcong, launched a powerful conventional offensive. The
Communist leaders hoped it would knock the U.S. out of the
war altogether, or at least might force the Nixon Administra-
tion to make further concessions in the long-stalled peace
talks. North Vietnam's Lieutenant General Tran Van Tra,
deputy commander of the Communist forces in the South,
stated a year after the 1972 "Easter" offensive that "The
aim of the 1972 offensive was to force the U.S. to sign a
peace agreement."1
However, the offensive was a total disaster for the
North Vietnamese and the Communist leaders were far from
pleased with the results. Despite their investment of
120,000 North Vietnamese regular troops and thousands of
Vietcong guerrillas equipped with Soviet artillery, rockets,
and tanks, they failed to smash the South Vietnamese Army.2
Instead of driving the United States out of the war, the
U.S. increased its actions and proceeded to step up the
bombing of North Vietnam. In the end, U.S. air interdic-
tion in the North and airlift and close air support in the
South, especially during the battles of An Loc and Kontum,
gave the South Vietnamese forces a distinct advantage over
the Communist forces in 1972.3
Although the Communist forces made substantial gains
in the rich and populous Mekong Delta, they failed to beat
the U.S. and South Vietnamese forces as they had beaten the
French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Without this type of
psychological knockout, they were in no position to dictate
peace terms.4 However, despite the staggering cost in human
life of nearly 50,000 dead, and at least as many wounded,
the 1972 offensive cracked the optimistic illusion of
Vietnamization. To succeed on the battlefield, the South
Vietnamese had to resort to the enormous reliance on U.S.
air support and advisors. Thus, the 1972 offensive laid
the groundwork for an eventual political deal and an ulti-
mately successful future offensive in l975.5
After the failure of the "Easter" offensive to defeat
the U.S. and South Vietnam, the North Vietnamese decided on
a compromise to break the deadlock in the peace negotiations;
they would also use the 1972 Presidential Election to put
pressure on U.S. negotiators--a period during which they
felt that the pressure would be strongest for the U.S. to
conclude negotiations at any price. In order to achieve a
settlement, the North Vietnamese now considered offering a
major concession: dropping their demand that South Viet-
nam's President Thieu must be removed before the fighting
could stop (a demand that they had been making since the
beginning of peace talks in 1969).6 By making this con-
cession, the North Vietnamese leaders would succeed in getting
the U.S. to leave South Vietnam and allow them to continue
their struggle at a more favorable future date.
However, in typical Communist fashion, North Vietnam
and the PRG, through the Giai Phong (Liberation) Press
Agency, again pressed for his removal after Thieu refused
to sign the accords agreed to in October 1972 by Henry
Kissinger and North Vietnamese Foreign Minister Le Duc Tho.7
The October draft of the accords called for an in-place
cease-fire. Under this "leopard spot" arrangement, the
South Vietnamese and the Vietcong would hold the areas they
controlled at the time of the cease-fire, pending a final
settlement.8 It would also allow the North Vietnamese to
leave an estimated 160,000 regular NVA troops in the South--
a key issue in North Vietnam's future bid for power and
control of South Vietnam.9
However, President Thieu of South Vietnam refused to
sign this agreement which allowed North Vietnamese troops
to remain in the South. He also gave Kissinger a list of
96 proposals to be made before he would sign the agreement.10
When Kissinger proposed these additional changes to Le Duc
Tho, the North Vietnamese interpreted them as a "breach of
faith" and demanded that the October draft be signed in its
original form without changes. A deadlock ensued and talks
between Kissinger and Le Duc Tho stalled in December 1972.
On December 14, 1972, President Nixon sent North Vietnam
an ultimatum to begin talking "seriously" within seventy-two
hours or face the consequences. When the North Vietnamese
failed to respond positively to U.S. demands, President
Nixon gave the order on December 18, 1972 to begin the
Linebacker Two operation. From December 18 - 30, 1972, the
U.S. flew nearly 3,000 B-52 bombers and fighter sorties
over the Hanoi and Hai Phong areas, dropping approximately
forty thousand tons of bombs in the most concentrated air
offensive of the war against North Vietnam.11 Four days
before the bombing ended, the North Vietnamese notified the
U.S. that they were willing to negotiate again, as soon as
the bombing was halted. The bombing ended on December 30,
1972 and on January 8, 1973, Kissinger and Le Duc Tho
resumed their talks and negotiated an agreement. The peace
agreement was formally signed in Paris by representatives
from the United States, the PRG, North Vietnam, and South
Vietnam on January 27, 1973.
In the end, the North Vietnamese achieved their goal
because the agreement signed in Paris differed very little
from the one proposed in October 1972. Hanoi looked upon
the Paris Agreements as a "big victory" because it
succeeded in removing the U.S. troops, thereby enabling
them to continue the war in the South against only the
South Vietnamese troops, at a time of their own choosing,
to "reunite" all of Vietnam. General Dung described the
views of the North Vietnamese leaders when he aptly stated:
The agreement represented a big victory for
our people and a big defeat for the U.S. imperi-
alists and their lackeys, the result of eighteen
years of determined and persistent struggle by
our army and people under the correct leadership
of our party. The Paris Agreement marked an
important step forward in our people's revolu-
tionary struggle, and opened up a new period in
the South Vietnamese revolution: the period for
completing the people's democratic revolution,
and for reuniting the country. That would be
the final phase of the people's democratic
revolution in general, and of revolutionary war
in the South in particular.12
From General Dung's remarks, two conclusions are readily
apparent: the North Vietnamese expectations of the Paris
Agreements were that they would bring an end to the destruc-
tion of their country by U.S. aircraft and they would set
the stage for the eventual reunification of the two Vietnams.
In addition, the promise of the U.S. to pay war reparations
in return for their compliance with the terms of the agree-
ments meant a substantial boost to the North's economy,
which had been devastated by the war in the past year.
However, the U.S. refused to pay war reparations to
North Vietnam because of its blatant treaty violations
following the signing of the Paris Agreements.13 The
agreements also gave legal recognition to the Provisional
Revolutionary Government (PRG) by calling for the creation
of a National Council of Reconciliation and Concord (NCRC),
composed of both Communist and non-Communist members. How-
ever, because President Thieu viewed the NCRC as too much
like a coalition government, the NCRC was never formed.14
Like Hanoi, the PRG regarded the peace agreement as only a
temporary truce which allowed them to retain a foothold in
the South and use the time to build up their military
strength, while they prepared to liberate the South. As
events in South Vietnam after January 1973 later proved,
Saigon also viewed the agreements as only a breather before
the war resumed.
SOUTH VIETNAMESE EXPECTATIONS
While the North Vietnamese and PRG saw the Paris
Agreements as a victory, the South Vietnamese were signi-
ficantly less optimistic. However, they did hopefully
expect that they would allow South Vietnam to survive as
an independent nation. In order to achieve this goal, the
Thieu government wanted to retain an American presence in
South Vietnam as long as possible. Of course, with the
terms of the agreements calling for the withdrawal of all
U.S. combat troops within 60 days after the signing, and
the U.S. Congress' increasing lack of interest in supporting
the war in Indochina, it became evident that eventually the
government of South Vietnam would have to sustain itself
alone.
When Henry Kissinger arrived in Saigon on October 18,
1972 to present the draft peace plan to the South Vietnamese,
President Thieu was extremely offended that he was the last
man consulted. Thieu also felt that he had no real voice
in the outcome since the whole matter appeared to have been
decided between Kissinger and Le Duc Tho during their pre-
vious secret negotiations.15 South Vietnamese General Tran
Van Don mentioned in his book, Our Endless War, that Thieu
would not agree to a peace agreement with the North that did
not meet the four basic conditions of: "no coalition govern-
ment, withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops from the South,
respect of neutrality of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), and
settlement of political differences to be left to the two
Vietnams without foreign meddling."16
Thieu objected to two primary issues in the October
draft: it failed to call for the withdrawal of an esti-
mated 160,000 North Vietnamese troops from the South, and
the formation of a National Council of National Reconcilia-
tion and Concord which he felt was actually a cover for a
coalition government. The withdrawal of North Vietnamese
troops was considered essential before signing the agree-
ments; this can be seen in the following testimony by Bui
Diem, Saigon's Ambassador to Washington from 1967 to 1972:
I still remember the words of President Thieu
when I saw him a few weeks before the signing of
the Paris Agreements and received his instructions
for one of my frequent trips to the U.S. as his
special emissary to watch over the peace nogotia-
tions: "Go to Washington and Paris and try to do
your best. To raise again at this hour the problem
of the North Vietnamese troops on our territory is
perhaps too late, but as long as we still have a
chance to improve the Agreements, we have to try.
If we cannot now obtain the basic requirements for
our survival, things will be very difficult for us
in the long run. And the withdrawal of the North
Vietnamese troops is one of the basic requirements.17
It was becoming all too clear to President Thieu and the
South Vietnamese leadership that U.S. interest in their
country was beginning to wane. South Vietnam's political
problems were minor in comparison to the larger and more
complex political intrigue among the superpowers. During
this period in 1972, the U.S. was pursuing detente with the
Soviet union and rapprochement with the People's Republic
of China. Thieu expressed his concerns to Kissinger in a
meeting between the two on October 22, 1972; he alluded
to the effect the new U.S. world strategy would have upon
South Vietnam:
What does it matter to the United States to
lose a small country like South Vietnam? We're
scarcely more than a dot on the map of the world
to you. If you want to give up the struggle, we
will fight on alone until our resources are gone,
and then we will die. The United States' world
policy dictates that you dance lightly with Moscow
and Peking, that you make different choices to
follow your new strategies. But for us, the
choice is between life and death. For us to put
our signature to an accord which is tantamount to
surrender would be accepting a death sentence,
because life without liberty is death. No, it's
worse than death!18
Kissinger responded that the U.S. would launch opera-
tions north of the DMZ should Hanoi violate the accords.
However, Kissinger's response did little to persuade Thieu
that the accords were in Saigon's best interests.19
Obviously, Thieu did not stay on until the bitter end and
die in the struggle; however, his words reflect much of the
hopelessness and desperation expressed by most of South
Vietnam's leadership at the time concerning the unfavorable
terms in the Paris Agreements.
Since the agreements signed in January 1973 did not
significantly differ much from those proposed to Thieu in
October 1972, why then did South Vietnam sign the Paris
Agreements of 1973? The answer lies in President Nixon's
threat to cutoff U.S. support and his secret assurance that
the U.S. would "respond with full force should the settle-
ment be violated by North Vietnam."20 Several South Viet-
namese leaders have noted that it was the increased pressure
put on Thieu by the Nixon Administration to sign the agree-
ments and "close ranks" with the U.S. that persuaded Thieu
to accept the Paris Agreements. On January 16, 1973,
President Nixon sent General Alexander Haig to Saigon to
convince Thieu to sign the agreements and tell him that the
United States would not hesitate to sign its own peace
treaty with Hanoi if the situation demanded it.21 Bui Diem
depicts the pressure to sign the agreements in the following
excerpt:
The final decision by Saigon to sign the
Agreements came after a rather painful exchange
of messages between Presidents Nixon and Thieu--
almost every day during the week prior to signing--
with some of the messages from President Nixon
couched in the toughest language that diplomatic
practice has ever seen: 'I am firmly convinced
that the alternative to signing the present agree-
ment is a total cutoff of funds to assist your
country....' 'If you refuse to join us, the
responsibility for the consequences rests on the
government of South Vietnam....' 'If you cannot
give me a positive answer by 1200 Washington time,
January 21, 1973, I shall authorize Dr. Kissinger
to initial the agreement even without the concur-
rence of your government.22
After resisting the pressure to sign the agreements
since October 1972, President Thieu finally concurred,
realizing that to continue to fight without American
support would result in disaster as long as the North
Vietnamese were still being backed by the Soviet Union
and China. In addition, President Nixon's guarantee of
continued assistance and use of full force should North
Vietnam violate the agreements, coupled with the memory
of the Christmas bombings of North Vietnam, lessened his
resistance to signing the Paris Agreements of 1973. How-
ever, by doing so, the government of South Vietnam had
accepted the presence of North Vietnamese troops in the
South and gave defacto legal recognition to the Provi-
sional Revolutionary Government (PRG) in South Vietnam,
through the creation of a National Council of National
Reconciliation and Concord (NCRC) to settle "the internal
matters of South Vietnam." The theoretical purpose of
the NCRC was to insure a peaceful, political solution
for these internal matters; however, the North Vietnamese
troops ultimately threatened to impose a military solution.
AMERICAN EXPECTATIONS
What the United States expected, and what it finally
achieved, in signing the Paris Agreements of 1973 is an
extremely debatable issue. The Nixon Administration
approached the peace talks with a firm commitment to
achieve "peace with honor." However, given the fact that
thee cease-fire ended almost immediately after it went into
effect, the "undignified" departure of the U.S. from Saigon,
and the abandonment of a former ally by the U.S. public and
Congress, the period after the signing the peace treaty
could hardly be called peaceful or our actions honorable.
Ultimately, it seems that the U.S. was looking for a grace-
ful way out of the war which would leave the government of
South Vietnam a reasonable chance of survival.23
The accounts given by President Nixon and Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger reveal that they negotiated with the
North Vietnamese in good faith; they genuinely felt that
the agreements would achieve the desired peace and allow
the United States to concentrate on more global concerns,
such as detente with the Soviet Union and normalization of
relations with the People's Republic of China. The follow-
ing remarks by Henry Kissinger reflect the general hope
within the United States in 1973 about the possible achieve-
ments that the Paris Agreements could foster:
I believed then, and I believe now, that the
agreement could have worked. It reflected a true
equilibrium of forces on the ground. If the
equilibrium were maintained, the agreement could
have been maintained. We believed that Saigon
was strong enough to deal with guerrilla war and
low-level violations. The implicit threat of our
retaliation would be likely to deter massive vio-
lations. We hoped that with the program of assist-
ance for all of Indochina, including North Vietnam,
promised by two Presidents of both parties, we
might possibly even turn Hanoi's attention (and
manpower) to tasks of construction if the new
realities took hold for a sufficient period of
time. Hanoi was indeed instructing its cadres in
the South to prepare for a long period of political
competition. We would use our new relationships
with Moscow and Peking to foster restraint.24
Although the Nixon Administration believed that the
1973 settlement would work, there is further evidence in
President Nixon's memoirs to show that the United States
had become "war-weary" and that an agreement on the war
had to be reached during the final series of negotiations
in January 1973. On January 6, 1973, before he left for
Paris, Kissinger met with President Nixon at Camp David
to discuss the negotiating strategy. There were basically
two options from which to choose. Under Option One, the
U.S. would agree to an immediate settlement on the best
terms it could negotiate. Under Option Two, the U.S.
would break with South Vietnamese President Thieu and
continue the bombing until the North Vietnamese agreed to
return the POWs in exchange for a complete withdrawal by
the U.S. Evidence that the U.S. was ready to settle with
the North Vietnamese immediately can be drawn from the
following remarks President Nixon made in his diary after
his meeting with Kissinger:
Adding it all up I put it to Henry quite
directly that even if we could go back to the
October 8 agreement, that we should take it,
having in mind the fact that there will be a
lot of details that will have to be ironed out
so that we can claim some improvement over the
agreement. I told him that a poor settlement
on Option One was better for us than Option
Two at its best would be.
He has finally come around to that point of
view, although he believes that both from the
standpoint of South Vietnam and perhaps our own
standpoint in the long term, we might be better
off with Option Two. I think he overlooks the
fact that as far as our situation here is con-
cerned, the war-weariness has reached the point
that Option Two is just too much for us to carry
on.
The war continues to take too much of our
attention from other international issues, such
as the Mideast, and it also has a detrimental
effect on our international relations, not only
with the Soviets and the Chinese but even with
our allies.25
Although the agreement reached in Paris was not the
best one possible, it did achieve two important objectives
for the United States: the safe withdrawal of U.S. troops
and the return of all American POWs. The agreement,
however, was not a peace agreement, for it allowed only
for a cease-fire. American power in theory would ensure
the peace through the firm assurance given to President
Thieu by President Nixon that the United States would
respond with full force if the North Vietnamese violated
the terms of the agreement. Nixon discusses this in his
diary when he alludes to the notion that the agreement
signed in Paris was not intended to be a peace agreement.
The President wrote:
Another plus item is that the South Viet-
namese seem to be coming more into line. Our
intelligence indicates that Thieu is telling
visitors that it is not a peace agreement that
he is going to get, but a commitment from the
United States to continue to protect South
Vietnam in the even such an agreement is broken.
This, of course, is exactly the line I gave him
in my letter which Haig delivered to him.26
The letter referred to by President Nixon was the one
delivered by Alexander Haig on January 16, 1973 which gave
President Thieu an ultimatum: either sign the Paris agree-
ments or the U.S. would negotiate a treaty with North Viet-
nam without South Vietnam's participation. This letter had
the desired effect and Thieu was encouraged to sign.
If, as the United States believed, the South Vietnamese
were capable of dealing with the Vietcong and regular NVA
troops located in the South at the time of the signing,
why then did the Paris Agreements fail? Was the reason for
failure, as some writers such as Frank Snepp claim, due to
the fact that the United States was only negotiating to allow
for a "decent interval" to transpire before the final collapse
and allow the U.S. to gracefully bow out of Southeast Asia?
In the end, this is what basically occurred. However, it is
doubtful that the final tragic outcome in South Vietnam was
ever consciously considered by the men involved in the
negotiations at the time.
A key point to consider in answering these complicated
questions is that the equilibrium of forces present in
January 1973 did not remain stationary in the following
years leading to April 30, 1975. In the period 1973 to 1975,
when Soviet military aid to North Vietnam quadrupled, Ameri-
can military aid to South Vietnam was cut from over $2.5
billion in fiscal year 1973 to $700 million is fiscal year
1975.27 This tremendous cutback in aid to South Vietnam
after the signing of the Paris Agreements, while infiltra-
tion of troops and supplies by North Vietnam into the South
increased, seriously affected the equilibrium of forces that
had been achieved in 1973; it definitely shifted the balance
of power to the North Vietnamese by 1975. Led by Senator
J. William Fulbright, the U.S. Congress passed, in June
1973, a bill to cutoff funds for combat activities in South
east Asia. It set August 15, 1973 as the date for termina-
tion of U.S. bombing in Cambodia, and required Congressional
approval for funding of U.S. military action in any part of
Indochina. This action by Congress had such an impact on
President Nixon at the time that he wrote to House Speaker
Carl Albert and U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield
to voice his grave concern about the serious consequences
that would result:
The abandonment of a friend will have a pro-
found impact in other countries, such as Thailand,
which have relied on the constancy and determina-
tion of the United States, and I want the Congress
to be fully aware of the consequences of its
action....
... I can only hope that the North Vietnamese
will not draw the erroneous conclusion from this
Congressional action that they are free to launch
a military offensive in other areas of Indochina.
North Vietnam would be making a very dangerous
error if it mistook the cessation of bombing in
Cambodia for an invitation to fresh aggression or
further violations of the Paris agreements. The
American people would respond to such aggression
with appropriate action.28
In his memoirs, President Nixon later confessed that
Congress had removed the possibility of military action and
he only had words with which to threaten North Vietnam.
Unfortunately, the North Vietnamese knew this. The Nixon
Administration was well aware of North Vietnam's intentions,
but the President's power to act in order to carry out the
promises made to South Vietnam was seriously hampered by an
increasingly hostile Congress and the final unraveling of
Presidential authority by the events surrounding Watergate.
Henry Kissinger eloquently expresses his thoughts on the
goal the United States attempted to achieve in Paris and a
reason for failure:
We had no illusions about Hanoi's long-term
goals. Nor did we go through the agony of four
years of war and searing negotiations simply to
achieve a "decent interval" for our withdrawal.
We were determined to do our utmost to enable
Saigon to grow in security and prosperity so
that it could prevail in any political struggle.
We sought not an interval before collapse, but
lasting peace with honor. But for the collapse
of executive authority as a result of Watergate,
I believe we would have succeeded.29
So, it was that an agreement negotiated in good faith
by the executive branch of our government was undone by
the Congress and public that had grown weary of their
commitment to a burdensome ally and wanted out of Vietnam
completely. While it is certainly true that the South
Vietnamese leadership must bear the ultimate responsibility
for the final tragic outcome of the war, the United States
must also bear some responsibility for refusing to fulfill
its obligations to South Vietnam during the two year period
following the signing of the Paris agreements.
CHAPTER 2
BREAKDOWN OF THE AGREEMENTS
THE POSTWAR WAR: 1973 - 1975
The signing of the Paris Agreements, or more formally
called the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring the
Peace in Vietnam, created the false impression that the
cease-fire had ended the war. However, the agreements of
January 1973 did not terminate the conflict in Vietnam. In
fact, the "postwar war" began almost the moment peace was
proclaimed.
Anticipating success in the January negotiations, the
North Vietnamese planned to launch general attacks through-
out most of South Vietnam immediately before the expected
date of the cease-fire. These attacks had one primary
objective: to gain land and control of the surrounding
population, and thus add legitimacy to the Communists' claim
that the areas belonged to them when the agreements were
signed. This offensive, known as LANDGRAB 73, occurred in
late January and early February 1973. The operations
followed the patterns established in October 1972, when the
possibility of a cease-fire existed; except this time, the
North Vietnamese and Vietcong waited until much closer to
the expected date of the cease-fire to start their campaign.
The objectives and techniques were virtually the same as
had been used in the past: the main force units would
generally defends the territory under their control and
attack to fix ARVN regular forces in their bases, while
local NVA and Vietcong units entered the hamlets.1
However, LANDGRAB 73 was a dismal failure for the
North Vietnamese and Vietcong. When the campaign ended on
February 9, 1973, ARVN forces had killed over 5,000
Communists and only 23 of the more than 400 hamlets
attacked were still reported by the South Vietnamese as
contestable.2
Colonel William E. Le Gro, a senior staff officer with
the U.S. Defense Attache Office in Saigon stated that the
North Vietnamese and PRG erred in delaying their precease-
fire operations in the expectation that the South Viet-
namese armed forces would be deterred in counterattacking
by the presence of International Commission of Control and
Supervision (ICCS) teams. The ICCS was created by the
Paris Agreements and was supposed to detect and investigate
violations, control entry into South Vietnam, and later,
help supervise the national elections.
The ARVN, local regional forces (RF) and popular forces
(PF) proved much stronger than the Communists anticipated;
they were able to deter the Communists' plans to capture
populated areas, show the flag and then await the arrival
of ICCS teams to declare and guarantee legitimacy to the
Communists in the newly won areas. Colonel Le Gro also
commented that the Communists committed an important
strategic mistake by dividing their local forces into
small units and attacking so many places, thereby reducing
the staying power of any local unit. By dividing into
smaller units, the South Vietnamese forces were able to
eliminate the Communist forces in piecemeal fashion, one
by one.3 Colonel Le Gro notes that the local Communist
forces were decimated after this campaign and never quite
recovered. In fact, numerous articles written by both
North and South Vietnamese leaders described the fighting
before the final collapse as entirely conventional in
nature, giving credence to the opinion that the Vietcong
were unable to operate as an effective fighting force in
1975.4 The conquest of South Vietnam, thus became a
completely North Vietnamese Army conventional operation.
LANDGRAB 73 demonstrated that the South Vietnamese
forces could hold their own against the North; it gave a
clear indication to South Vietnamese leaders that the mili-
tary balance of power was as much in their favor at the
moment of the cease-fire as it would ever be. Although the
ARVN forces were successful in decimating the enemy local
forces in the South, there still remained the considerable
threat of approximately 160,000 NVA regular troops still
Click here to view image
remaining in the South after the signing of the Paris
agreements. This is why South Vietnamese President Thieu,
despite considerable pressure from the United States to
sign the agreements, vehemently opposed two key provisions
of the 1973 accords: one which allowed these NVA regular
troops to remain the South, and the other one specifying
the withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops within 60 days
after the signing.
Since Thieu felt that the military balance would never
be more in his favor than it was in early February 1973
(especially after the failed Communist LANDGRAB 73 campaign),
and American forces had not completely withdrawn, he decided
to launch a series of military operations to seize areas
still occupied by the Communists in the Mekong Delta and
along the Cambodian border.5 Although these operations
proved to be successful initially in establishing and main-
taining control over formerly contested areas, they even-
tually taxed the government of South Vietnam's resourcecs in
both materiel and manpower.6 The last South Vietnamese
Minister of Defense, General Tran Van Don, described the
results of this disastrous policy in the following excerpt
in his book:
On our side, we did not adopt the correct
military strategy to deal with the inexorable
Communist steamroller. We spread our forces too
thin, trying to maintain a presence in and defend
each province town, an ambition clearly beyond
our capability. Although by this time we had an
armed force of over one million men, such a method
of defense did not have a chance for success.7
The North Vietnamese leadership also took note of the
landgrab operations being conducted by ARVN forces during
this period. Although he stops short in stating that
Thieu's pacification operations were a success initially,
North Vietnamese General Dung mentioned them in his book,
Our Great Spring Victory; his remarks indicate that they
were causing the North Vietnamese a considerable degree of
difficulty in 1973:
... With this foundation the enemy threw their
strength into carrying out their pacification and
encroachment plans, with the intention of wiping
out our lower level forces, destroying the scat-
tered bases which we held in their zone of control,
imposing an economic blockade on the border zones,
and encroaching on the zones that had been liber-
ated before the Paris Agreement was signed. Their
scheme was to eliminate the existing situation, in
which there were two zones of control, two armies,
and two governments, and turn the South into a
single zone entirely under their control. During
the eleven months from the signing of the Paris
Agreement until the end of 1973, the enemy used
60 percent of their main forces and all of their
regional forces to begin more than 360,000 block-
ade and encroachment operations and security
sweeps, and brought together large forces for
major operations against our liberated zones....
...They pushed into almost all the zones we
had liberated in our January 1973 campaign, and
seized a number of the liberated areas scattered
in their zone of control....8
However, the North Vietnamese were well aware that
these pacification operations by the South would even-
tually put the ARVN troops in the untenable position of
being spread too thin in order to maintain control of the
newly seized areas. General Dung later mentioned that the
South Vietnamese government made a mistake in deploying its
troops in this manner which eventually played a role in the
defeat of the RVNAF. He commented about this ill-fated
strategy:
The enemy's position had weakened, and they
had made big mistakes in strategy and in evalu-
ating us, which had led to incorrect troop deploy-
ment plans and mistaken operating premises, and
signaled the great defeat which was coming to
them.9
After their disastrous defeat in the ill-timed LANDGRAB
73 operation, the North Vietnamese used the period after
signing the Paris Agreements to regroup their forces and
also try to repair the damage to their economy caused by
the devastating warfare during 1972. The North Vietnamese
were especially concerned about the ability of the United
States to send troops back into South Vietnam. As a result,
the question of American reentry into the war was heatedly
discussed during politburo meetings.10 Until the American
withdrawal was complete, the North Vietnamese chose to
avoid any provocative moves that might provoke the U.S.
into reentering the war. The PRG, which had suffered
heavy losses in the years prior to the cease-fire, spent
the first year after the cease-fire trying to consolidate
the territory under its control and undermine the Saigon
government through political agitation. The Communist
Party Central Committee put forth the following guidance
in 1973: "Coordinate the political and military struggle
with diplomacy... the problems of gaining people, gaining
administrative control, and developing the real strength
of the revolution are the urgent and basic demands in the
new phase...."
The North Vietnamese Army, on the other hand, concen-
trated on building up their forces and improving their
logistics system in order to prepare for what eventually
became their final offensive to conquer South Vietnam.
The North Vietnamese Politburo and Central Military
Committee then met in October 1973; it decided that if
they were to defeat the South on a large scale, "it would
no longer be appropriate to use only independent and
coordinated divisions." Instead, they "would need mobile
commands and specialized branches combined on a larger
scale, to deliver a powerful punch, which could be used
at the most opportune moments, could go into action along
the principal thrusts, and could take on the primary
responsibility for destroying large enemy main-force units."12
Evidence that the North Vietnamese used this period follow-
ing the signing of the Paris Agreements to prepare for
their final offensive on the South is clear from following
excerpt from General Dung's account of the events:
From October 1973 onward, these corps were
established one by one, brought together for
combat training as combined units, and deployed
in the best positions for strategic mobility.
The development of high-level mobile commands
allowed us to carry out campaigns with large-
scale combined units, including many corps and
divisions, which were strong enough to mount
large assaults, had both high mobility and the
strength for sustained combat, and could operate
successfully in strategic campaigns. Along with
the reorganization of our forces, an urgent task
was to replace the equipment of our army with
better and more modern material. Massive amounts
of tanks, armored cars, rockets, long-range
artillery, and antiaircraft guns, which the
Americans tried unsuccessfully to destroy in
their twelve-day B-52 bombing blitz against the
North in December 1972, were now sent to the
front one after another. And for the first time
self-propelled long-range artillery and some of
our good tanks got all the way to the rubber
forests of the Nam Bo plains. This was a big
step toward maturity for our army, and at the
same time was a most positive preparation of our
forces for the coming offensive.13
For years during the peace negotiations, the North Viet-
namese consistently denied the presence of their troops in
the South. Now, after their conquest of South Vietnam was
complete, General Dung arrogantly boasts about the massive
infiltration of troops and equipment into the South, while
all along accusing the United States of intervening in the
internal affairs of South Vietnam and not respecting the
right of the South Vietnamese people to self-determination.
His comments illustrate the fact that the Communists viewed
this conflict as a political, ideological war; lies and
truth were weapons to be used to their advantage in the
struggle.
Realizing that the military balance in the South favored
the RVNAF, the North Vietnamese decided to attack only when
they were clearly superior to South Vietnamese troops. By
consistently following this plan of attack, North Vietnam's
chief strategist, General Vo Nguyen Giap, felt it would
eventually tilt the military balance in Hanoi's favor. To
prepare for the final offensive, the North Vietnamese
designed and implemented a major engineering program to
improve the Ho Chi Minh Trail. By the beginning of 1975,
they built an all-weather highway from Quang Tri province
on the central coast of Vietnam down into the Mekong Delta
and also constructed an oil pipeline approximately 3,000
miles long stretching from Quang Tri to the town of Loc
Ninh, 75 miles northwest of Saigon. They also laid tele-
communications lines down to Loc Ninh, making it possible
for the North Vietnamese leaders to speak from Hanoi
directly to their commanders on the battlefields in the
South. As General Dung stated, they "had transformed the
battlefield situation to our advantage and mobilized the
might of the entire country to support the front lines."14
The Paris Agreements called for the creation of a Joint
Military Commission (JMC) to administer cease-fire proce-
dures and foster national reconciliation. However, this
was only window dressing, since the JMC could never achieve
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national reconciliation when the political, economic, and
social issues between Hanoi and Saigon were ideological
opposites. Initially, the commission's members were the
four signers of the agreements: the PRG, North Vietnam,
South Vietnam, and the United States. After 60 days, the
four-party commission would be superseded by a new body
consisting of just the two members from South Vietnam and
the PRG. The delegates' theoretical responsibilities were
numerous. Primarily, they were to investigate reported
violations and issue instructions to prevent recurrence.
Their most important responsibility was to "determine the
areas controlled by each party and the modalities of
stationing" since its enforcement was the most crucial
task for maintaining the cease-fire.15
However, this was primarily a political and not a
military matter. General Frederick C. Weyand, the U.S.
commander in Vietnam, warned in 1972 that if the negoti-
ators in Paris could not agree on which side controlled
which territory, military delegates in Saigon could hardly
be expected to do so.16 He then predicted that handing
this crucial political question to the truce commission
would only jeopardize its ability to achieve the more
limited aim of stopping the fighting.17 His prediction
proved to be correct, for throughout 1973 until the end
in 1975, the Two-Party Joint Military Commission continued
to meet at Camp Davis in Saigon, while the fighting con-
tinued in the South over who would eventually rule South
Vietnam--a key problem which the negotiations in Paris
failed to solve, but was to eventually be solved by North
Vietnamese on the battlefields in South Vietnam. With the
Joint Military Commission unable to decide the question of
which side controlled what territory, the future of the
government of South Vietnam came to rest more on its success
on the battlefield and less at the negotiating table.
By the end of 1973, President Nixon was virtually
powerless to act on South Vietnam's behalf, and Congress
had taken decisive steps to curtail American involvement
in the war. In November 1973, Congress passed the War
Powers Act over President Nixon's veto and the outlook for
American military intervention to aid Saigon looked bleak.
Also, in late 1973, President Thieu formally proclaimed the
start of the "Third Indochina War."18 He then stepped up
ground and air attacks on Communist bases and launched a
series of land-grabbing operations in PRG held areas along
the eastern seaboard, in the Iron Triangle and in the Mekong
Delta.19 Unlike earlier successful operations, this time
the North Vietnamese and Vietcong counterattacked and
repulsed the ARVN units. The result proved disastrous for
Thieu. The North Vietnamese and Vietcong retook much of
the territory they lost in early 1973 during LANDGRAB 73
and seized additional territory formerly under the control
of the government of South Vietnam.
With the North Vietnamese extensive upgrading of the Ho
Chi Minh Trail,by the fall of l974,the military balance had
definitely shifted in their favor.20 During this period,
South Vietnam's economic problems were steadily increasing
due to the U.S. troop withdrawal, reduction in military aid,
and the sharp rise in worldwide inflation caused by the Arab
oil embargo in 1973. In addition, the economic crisis com-
pounded Thieu's political problems and provided his opposi-
tion in both the United States and Saigon with valuable
ammunition to assault his regime and spread a spirit of
defeatism among the general population in South Vietnam.
By the end of 1974, this fear of abandonment by the U.S.
began to spread throughout the South. The U.S. Congress,
faced with rising inflation and budgetary problems at home,
continued to question and criticize the policy of continu-
ing aid to the government of South Vietnam. Critics in
America voiced their concern over the corruption and human
rights violations within the Thieu regime; they also
believed that if military aid was cut, it would encourage
Thieu to seek a political settlement to end the war.21 The
U.S. Congress had now tired of the war in Southeast Asia;
Senator Edward Kennedy spoke for many in the Congress when
he insisted that it was time to terminate America's
"endless support for an endless war." By the end of 1974,
Congress only approved an aid program of $700 million, half
of which comprised shipping costs.22
In early 1975, Hanoi concluded that no United States
intervention could occur in an expanded war; the opportune
time to "launch a general offensive and uprising to liber-
ate the South completely" had arrived.23 The test would be
the province of Phuoc Long, northwest of Saigon. On
January 6, 1975, the North Vietnamese succeeded in cap-
turing the provincial capital of Phuoc Long. The ease of
their victory indicated that the RVNAF had weakened since
January 1973. As General Dung wrote, Thieu was now forced
to fight a "poor man's war" and the military balance of
power rested with the North Vietnamese.24 Also, the fail-
ure of the U.S. to respond in any meaningful way to the
fall of Phuoc Long province confirmed the belief among the
North Vietnamese leadership that the United States would
not "jump back in"; they perceived Washington as in no
position to rescue the government of South Vietnam.25
The final collapse began on March 10, 1975 when General
Dung's forces attacked Ban Me Thuot in the Central Highlands.
After taking the city in two days, Dung moved north to
attack Pleiku and Kontum. Realizing that his forces were
spread too thin to be effective against the massive assault
by the North Vietnamese, President Thieu ordered his forces
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in the north to withdraw and consolidate a defense in the
South around Saigon.26 In addition to military necessity,
some senior ARVN officers suggested another reason behind
Thieu's decision to redeploy the Airborne Division in I
Corps:to guard agianst a possible coup.27 In any event,
no plans had been prepared to execute a strategic retreat
of this magnitude and the North Vietnamese succeeded in
cutting the major roads leading south. The withdrawal
turned into a rout when hundreds of thousands of civilian
refugees tried to flee with the departing soldiers and
clogged the avenues of escape. As a result, much of the
South Vietnamese army was captured and destroyed, and
thousands of civilians died from enemy gunfire and starva-
tion.28 Subsequently, Pleiku and Kontum fell within a week.
North Vietnamese forces continued their advance toward
the coastal city of Hue. Thieu reversed his earlier deci-
sion to withdraw and ordered that Hue be held to the last
man.29 However, the population of Hue began to panic, many
remembering the Communist massacres during Tet in 1968.
By late March more than a million refugees were making
their way towards Da Nang.30 On March 25, 1975, Hue fell
and NVA forces marched on to Da Nang. The defending ARVN
forces and civilian refugees, many of whom were families
of the ARVN soldiers, tried to flee by both air and sea to
escape the North Vietnamese Army. Rumors of a "deal" to
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partition South Vietnam in half spread through the troops in
I Corps and the civilian population. Now a retreat ensued
on an even larger and more tragic scale than the one from
the Central Highlands.31 On March 30, 1975, Da Nang fell
and with its fall, both Military Regions 1 and 2 came under
the permanent control of the NVA--splitting South Vietnam
in two.
The North Vietnamese Politburo then ordered General
Dung to begin the general offensive on Saigon at the very
latest by the final week of April 1975, before the end of
the "dry season." In a tribute to their deceased leader,
the Politburo renamed the Saigon campaign calling it the
"Ho Chi Minh Campaign."32
The momentum was now with the North Vietnamese and they
were determined to take Saigon before the dry season ended.
However, the 18th ARVN Division put up the most valiant
defense of the campaign around the town of Xuan Loc, north-
east of Saigon. Outnumbered against a force of more than
three NVA divisions, the 18th ARVN Division resisted
fiercely from April 9 until finally being overwhelmed and
forced to withdraw on April 20, l975.33 The delay allowed
the United States to successfully evacuate more than 130,000
American and South Vietnamese citizens from Saigon.34 The
battle at Xuan Loc was the final decisive battle of the
Vietnam War. When it ended, there were 16 NVA divisions in
Click here to view image
Military Region 3 ready to begin their final assault on
Saigon.35
On April 21, 1975, the day after Xuan Loc fell, the
U.S. Congress rejected President Ford's request for aid to
South Vietnam for the last time and President Thieu resigned
and fled to Taiwan; he blamed the entire collapse on the
United States.36 He was replaced by Vice President Tran
Van Huong, who attempted to negotiate a settlement based
on the 1973 agreements. However, North Vietnam's leaders
insisted that they would not negotiate with Huong and said
they would be willing to talk only with General Duong Van
"Big" Minh. Huong finally stepped down in favor of "Big
Minh" on April 27, 1975, but the politburo had already
unanimously decided against a negotiated settlement, regard-
less of any political changes in Saigon.37 There was
nothing left to negotiate; the government of South Vietnam
no longer had control of anything in the South.
On April 29, 1975, helicopter evacuations began and the
U.S. Ambassador, Graham Martin, departed Saigon. On
April 30,1975, the last U.S. Marine helicopter departed
from the roof of the United States Embassy in Saigon and
NVA forces entered the grounds of the Presidential Palace.38
South Vietnam's last president, "Big Minh" surrendered
unconditionally to the North Vietnamese and the Vietnam War
finally ended. However, the conflict in Southeast Asia
Click here to view image
did not stop; the fighting still continues today in Cambodia,
ten years later.
Click here to view image
VIOLATIONS
As far as treaty violations are concerned, all the
signatory parties to the Paris Agreements must share the
blame in committing violations--some more than others,
however. To be sure, the organizations established by the
Paris Agreements to investigate and deter violations lacked
both the authority and manpower to carry out their obliga-
tions. However, the parties themselves were the only ones
capable of keeping the peace.
Before reviewing some of the more serious violations
committed during the period following the signing of the
agreements, an examination of the organizations created to
insure the implementation of the cease-fire is necessary.
The responsibility for enforcing the Paris Agreements was
given to the Joint Military Commission (JMC). Initially
comprised of four parties (North Vietnam, South Vietnam,
the PRG, and the United States) and called the Four-Party
JMC, the commission was to become known as the Two-Party
JMC (South Vietnam and the PRG) 60 days after the signing
of the cease-fire agreements, when the U.S. had withdrawn
all its combat troops from South Vietnam and Hanoi had
returned all American POWs.
The JMC had the responsibility under the agreements to
deter and detect violations, to deal with the violations,
and to settle conflicts and matters of contention between
the parties relating to the cease-fire. It was then
supposed to send joint teams to investigate alleged viola-
tions of the agreements and assist the parties in finding
measures to prevent recurrence of similar cases. However,
the JMC could only implement its responsibilities with a
unanimous decision by all members of the JMC; therefore,
it could operate only to the extent that each of the
parties desired.39
The responsibility for controlling and supervising the
implementation of the Paris Agreements was given to the
International Commission of Control and Supervision (ICCS).
A successor to the International Control Commission that
had existed since 1954, the ICCS was composed of representa-
tives of four countries: Canada, Hungary, Indonesia, and
Poland. When it became apparent that the two Vietnamese
sides would not adhere to the agreements, Canada on July 31,
1973, withdrew out of sheer frustration, and was replaced by
Iran several months later. Throughout its short lifetime,
the ICCS was composed of two Communist and two non-Commu-
nist members.40
The ICCS had four missions: to observe the truce,
investigate and report on violations, monitor the prisoner
exchanges and supply shipments, and, later, to help super-
vise the national elections.41 However, like the Joint
Military Commission, it had a major weakness: the require-
ment to operate on the principle of unanimity. Soon after
the signing of the Paris Agreements, it became readily
apparent that the Polish and Hungarian delegations were
there not to foster conciliation, but rather to protect
the interests of the Vietnamese Communists in every way
possible. The two Communist delegations normally refused
to even authorize investigations of reported Vietcong or
North Vietnamese violations. Since a unanimous decision
by all four members was required to take any action, the
non-Communist members were only able to make their own
unilateral observations without any official standing
under the agreements.
However, even if the ICCS wasn't deadlocked at the poli-
tical level, it still could not have controlled the situa-
tion for it lacked any real power to do so (i.e., military
troops). A truly neutral, international peacekeeping
force, which had the power to enforce its will, was needed
to deter violations. The warring parties alone had the
responsibility and the power to enforce the agreements.
Since they never really tried to make the cease-fire work,
the ICCS really never had a chance to succeed.42
Of all the violations committed during the period
following the signing of the Paris Agreements, the land-
grabbing incidents had the most serious consequences. For
the North Vietnamese and PRG, they made good sense; but
for the government of South Vietnam, they were suicidal.43
The land-grabbing forced the RVNAF to disperse its forces
to maintain control, which ultimately weakened its position
tactically vis-a-vis the North Vietnamese and Vietcong
forces. In addition, since the Polish and Hungarian dele-
gates to the ICCS were far from impartial, they consis-
tently used the unanimity rule to block investigations of
violations committed by the Communist forces. For the
South, not only did it not enjoy the same preferential
treatment from the ICCS as the Communists received, the
government of South Vietnam was also fully open to public
scrutiny of its every action through the hostile voices of
television and newspaper reporters ready to report the
slightest infraction. These biased reporters and critics
were quick to find fault with the South Vietnamese govern-
ment, and agreed with North Vietnamese propaganda that it
was the South Vietnamese forces who were the aggressors
and were blatantly violating the cease-fire. Arnold Isaacs
refutes these false accusations in his book, Without Honor:
Yet, though they may have been technically
violating the cease-fire, by any but the most
narrowly legalistic standard the South Viet-
namese were justified, and the Communists had
to bear a heavy responsibility for much of the
continued fighting. In sending squads of men
to raise their flag just before the cease-fire
in hundreds of places to which they had no
historic claim, they may have acted within the
letter of the peace agreement. But they grossly
violated its spirit.44
The most serious violations of the agreements, however,
had to do with North Vietnam's disrespect for the neutrality
of Laos and Cambodia, and its infiltration of troops and
supplies into South Vietnam after the cease-fire. The U.S.
State Department delivered an official protest on January 11
1975 to the ICCS, mostly in response to the North Vietnamese
over-running of the provincial capital of Song Be in Phuoc
Long province; however, this protest listed numerous viola-
tions committed by the Communists since the cease-fire on
January 27, 1973. Among the violations, it accused the
North Vietnamese of illegally infiltrating over 160,000
troops into the South, tripling the strength of their armor,
increasing their artillery and antiaircraft weaponry and
improving their military logistics system (i.e., the Ho Chi
Minh Trail) running through Laos, Cambodia, the DMZ and
South Vietnam itself.45 The comments made by General Dung
about the North's preparations for the final offensive on
South Vietnam confirm the veracity of the State Department's
accusations of Communist treaty violations:
A key problem was to develop a system of
roads for good mobility. The project to build
a strategic road east of the Truong Son moun-
tain range began in 1973 and was completed by
the first part of 1975.... Day and night they
enthusiastically carried hundreds of thousands
of tons of supplies of every description down
to the stockpiles for the various battlefields,
to ensure the success of our large-scale
attacks.46
Without a doubt, this post-cease-fire violation by
North Vietnam was the most blatant one committed during
the two year period following the signing of the Paris
Agreements in 1973. Weakened by losses from the 1972
"Easter" offensive and LANDGRAB 73 operations, Hanoi
needed a complete build-up in order to restore a military
threat to South Vietnam. The terms of the Paris Agree-
ments restricted resupply to both Communist and South
Vietnamese forces in the South to a one-for-one replace-
ment schedule. However, by pouring in troops and equip-
ment into South Vietnam well in excess of the one-for-one
replacement schedule allowed by the agreements, North
Vietnam drastically shifted the military balance of power
in its favor. Finally, because the U.S. Congress allowed
this infiltration to go on unchecked by prohibiting U.S.
bombing missions in Indochina, the North Vietnamese were
able to recover sooner than they would have in previous
years when the U.S. was activeiy involved in the war.
From the Communists viewpoints, there were several
actions taken by both the United States and South Vietnam,
aside from Thieu's later land-grabbing operations, that
they considered violations of the agreements. The
eleventh hour shipments of arms and equipment as a part of
the Enhance and Enhance Plus programs in late 1972 were
considered by the North Vietnamese as technically vio-
lating the terms of the cease-fire agreements. Projects
Enhance and Enhance Plus were undertaken in 1972 to
accelerate the delivery of military equipment and improve
the combat capabilities of the South Vietnam's armed
forces before the cease-fire. Enhance was designed to
provide guns, tanks and artillery to the Vietnamese Army
(ARVN), while Enhance Plus was a program to augment and
modernize the Vietnamese Air Force (VNAF) by providing
additional aircraft such as helicopters, F-5 fighters,
C-130 transports and AC-119 gunships. In the minds of the
North Vietnamese, these programs justified their build-up
of men and supplies after the truce, since their build-up
restored what they considered to be the intended battle-
field equilibrium when the agreements were signed.47
During the same time period, Hanoi received military
aid from the Soviet Union and China. However, the Commu-
nists' criticism of U.S. shipments to South Vietnam was
perfectly consistent with their ideological beliefs and
methods of conducting a political war. In addition, while
replacement of equipment for South Vietnam was restricted
on a one-for-one basis by the terms of the agreements,
there was no such similar restriction for supplies brought
into North Vietnam. As far as the infiltration of troops
and supplies into the South through the Ho Chi Minh Trail,
Hanoi simply chose to ignore the terms of the agreements.
The North Vietnamese also charged that they had been
misled by the United States into thinking that all U.S.
military installations in South Vietnam would be dismantled
within 60 days of the signing of the Paris Agreements.48
Instead, the United States transferred title of its materiel
and bases to South Vietnamese control before it signed the
Paris Agreements.49 Hanoi considered this action to be a
violation of the terms of the agreements and used it for
public propaganda to justify its continuation of the
fighting in the South. General Dung's comments attest to
this charge:
Our people could not sit quietly by and
watch the United States and their puppets cyni-
cally violate the Paris Agreement.... If the
enemy do not implement the agreement, and con-
tinue the policy of Vietnamization, which is
essentially a neocolonial war aiming to take
over the whole of the South, then there is no
other course for us but to conduct revolutionary
warfare destroy the enemy, and liberate the
South.50
The final major violation the PRG and North Vietnam
accused the government of South Vietnam of committing
dealt with the provisions in the Paris Agreements calling
for establishing a National Council of National Reconcilia-
tion and Concord and the holding of general elections.
Shortly after the agreements were signed, Thieu sought to
hold elections before the PRG could consolidate its terri-
torial control. However, fearing that it would lose the
elections, the PRG refused to participate until Article 11
of the agreements dealing with democratic liberties of the
people was fully implemented by the government of South
Vietnam.51 The article basically called for: personal
freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom
of meeting, freedom of organization, freedom of political
activities, freedom of belief, freedom of movement, freedom
of residence, freedom of work, right to property ownership,
and the right to free enterprise. President Thieu rightly
refused to form a National Council of National Reconcilia-
tion and Concord to implement Article 11 until all North
Vietnamese troops inside South Vietnam were withdrawn.
However, he was continually badgered on this point by
several narrow-minded antiwar representatives of Congres-
sional delegations visiting South Vietnam during this period.52
Even in the United States during World War II, when its
national survival was at stake, the U.S. severely restricted
several of the freedoms called for in Article 11; in addi-
tion, the U.S. did not have to contend with over 160,000
enemy troops stationed inside its borders.
Consequently, with the PRG's refusal to participate in
any elections until Article 11 was fully implemented and
Thieu's demand that all NVA troops withdraw first, the
negotiations between PRG and the government of South Viet-
nam broke down on April 16, 1974.53 By this time the
military balance had shifted to Communists and they had
obtained all they needed from the negotiations--time to
rebuild! In October 1974, the Communists returned to their
familiar stance by refusing to negotiate further on any
issue with Saigon until the Thieu government resigned.54
In essence, the Paris Agreements were clearly unenforce-
able by the mechanisms created to deter serious violations.
Both the ICCS and JMC lacked the real power to insure all
parties complied with the terms of the agreements. This
arrangement proved much more disadvantageous to South
Vietnam than for North Vietnam and the PRG. While the ICCS
proved grossly ineffective in insuring either side violated
the Paris Agreements, Senator J. William Fulbright and the
Foreign Relations Committee of the United States Senate
saw to it that the terms of the agreements were strictly
enforced upon the government of South Vietnam.55
CHAPTER 3
VIETNAMIZATION
AMERICAN ASSESSMENT
Vietnamization had one primary purpose: to allow the
United States to withdraw its combat troops from South
Vietnam and transfer the responsibility for conducting the
war to the South Vietnamese. The Nixon Administration felt
that with continued U.S. aid, the South Vietnamese could be
equipped and trained to defend themselves.
In addition to teaching the South Vietnamese how to
conduct the war in the field, a study by the BDM Corpora-
tion, on strategic lessons learned in Vietnam, points out
that Vietnamization also included U.S. assistance in
developing and expanding South Vietnam's military schools
and institutions of advanced military learning. Astonish-
ingly, the curriculum for junior officers at the Military
Academy at Dalat was expanded to four years. The study
comments on the adverse impact this action had on the
military leadership of the South Vietnamese armed forces.
An excerpt from that study follows:
In the first case, the prime needs of the
RVNAF, then engaged in the struggle for the
national survival, required quickly trained
commanders and leaders at all echelons to
replace war losses and at the same time pro-
vide for its rapid expansion. Four years of
commitment to this type of institution,
though of important military and academic
value and highly beneficial for military
career attainments, was a luxury that could
be ill-afforded given the impelling course
of the war for the RVNAF.1
Despite this gross mismanagement of South Vietnam's
most capable young military leaders, the U.S. leadership
was unaware of the serious consequences of their efforts
to design and train the South Vietnamese armed forces in
its own image. As the BDM study concludes, the excessively
long military career training forced the South Vietnamese
armed forces to fight without its most capable leaders
just at the time when it needed them most on the battle-
field. Throughout the entire Vietnamization period, the
United States felt the program was working well. In fact,
U.S. military and political leaders alike used the RVNAF
defeat of the North Vietnamese army during the 1972
"Easter" offensive as positive proof that the Vietnamiza-
tion program was a tremendous success.
In the early stages of the North Vietnamese "Easter"
offensive launched at the end of March 1972, President
Nixon viewed the invasion as a sign of weakness on the part
of the North Vietnamese; he clearly believed that Vietnami-
zation was working. The President stated that if Vietnami-
zation wasn't working, the North Vietnamese would have
waited and let the process fail on its own.2 Despite his
outward optimism, President Nixon still expressed personal
doubts about South Vietnamese durability and their willing-
ness to fight. The following entry in Nixon's diary
reflects his doubts:
Of course, the weak link in our whole chain
is the question as to whether the South Vietnam-
ese have the will to fight.... The real problem
is that the enemy is willing to sacrifice in
order to win, while the South Vietnamese simply
aren't willing to pay that much of a price in
order to avoid losing. And, as Haig points out,
all the air power in the world and strikes on
Hanoi-Haiphong aren't going to save South Viet-
nam if the South Vietnamese aren't able to hold
on the ground.3
With the massive support of U.S. airpower, especially
B-52 and F-111 bombing missions, the South Vietnamese armed
forces did hold the ground and soundly defeated the massive
North Vietnamese army conventional attack in 1972. The
following comments by U.S. Army General William Westmoreland
concerning the results of the 1972 operations support the
conclusion that as far as the United States was concerned,