Vietnam: Lessons Learned
AUTHOR Major Clarence Mariney,USMC
CSC 1989
SUBJECT AREA - History
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Title VIETNAM: LESSONS LEARNED
Thesis. The U.S. civilian and military leadership failed to
heed the lessons of the past during the Vietnam war. They
underestimated the enemy and the nature of the war.
Issue. The collective U.S. leadership failed to consider
the historical context or the Vietnam war. Adequate
consideration was not given to the previous conflicts in
Vietnam. Over the centuries, the Chinese, the Japanese, and
the French have attempted to exert control over Indochina
unsuccessfully. Out of this experience, the Vietnamese have
forged a strong collective identity. Its leadership has
demostrated a strong national resolve and resistance to
foreign domination as was evidenced by the defeat of the
French at Dien Bien Phu. The conflict with the U.S. was
seen as just a continuation of 2000 years of foreign
oppression. The North Vietnamese were prepared to accept
limitless causalties in its conflict with the United States.
In formulating a strategy to defeat the North Vietnamese,
the U.S. military leaders did not completely understand the
nature of the war. The U.S. civilian leadership fail to
invoke the national will with a declaration of war. This
produced a strategic vulnerability that our enemy was able
to exploit. In this regard, the lessons from the Korean war
were overlooked.
Conclusion. In retrospect, one can only wonder if the U.S.
civilian and military leadership had understood the
historical context and will of the enemy, would a different
strategy have been employed more successfully? We did not
take the time to examine the lessons learned from the French
involvement in Indochina. We failed to understand that the
enemy's goals were as political as they were military. In
the future our leaders should be aware of and take advantage
of past experience. They must also carefully consider,
define, and communicate to the American people what are U.S.
vital interests and which interests are we willing to die
for.
VIETNAM: LESSONS LEARNED
OUTLINE
Thesis Statement. The U.S. civilian and military leadership
failed to heed the lessons of the past during the Vietnam
war. They understimated the enemy and the nature of the
war.
I. Vietnamese history
A. Affect on American foreign policy
B. Vietnamese resolve
C. Foreign domination
D. Vietnamese identity
II. U.S. involvement in Vietnam
A. Imposition of U.S. values
B. Vietnamese attrition strategy
C. U.S. bombing campaign
D. Vietnamese determination
E. Kissinger's annihilation strategy
III. U.S. Policy
A. Counterinsurgency strategy
B. U.S. decision not to declare war
c. U.S. vital interests
VIETNAM: LESSONS LEARNED
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to
repeat it." Whether one agrees with Santayana or not, the
only proven method of learning from past mistakes is either
through ones' own experience or that of others. While this
does not guarantee success, or that events will occur under
the same circumstances, it provides a frame of reference for
making decisions. We often repeat the same mistakes either
because we refuse to heed past lessons learned or because we
are simply ignorant of them. For the civilian leader, it
could mean the security of the country. For the military
leader, it could mean both the death of him and his men and
the security of his nation. The U.S. civilian and military
leadership failed to heed the lessons of the past during the
Vietnam war.
Henry Kissinger stated the following: "Vietnam is
still with us. It has created doubts about American
judgement, about American credibility, about American
power--not only at home but U.S. involvement throughout the
world. It has poisoned our domestic debate. So we paid an
exorbitant price for the decision that we made in good
faith."(1:436). Although U.S. involvement in Vietnam ended
in 1973, debate still continues as to whether or not the war
was for a just cause and as to the reasons why the United
States did not accomplish its objectives. Many argue that
the U.S. won the war on the tactical level but lost on the
only level that matters--the strategic, political level. In
some cases the military leadership has been criticized for
employing an inadequate military strategy to defeat a
communist insurgent movement, for misleading the civilian
leadership and the American people by providing overly
optimistic assessments that the war was being won, and for
being more concerned about their careers than winning the
war. Similarly, it has been maintained that the civilian
leadership placed so many political constraints upon the
military leaders responsible for conducting the war that
made it impossible to win. Whatever the merits of the
various reasons for our failure in Vietnam, the war should
be a lesson that will help us to learn from our past
mistakes.
First, the U.S. civilian and military leadership
underestimated the will, determination, and capabilities of
its enemy, the North Vietnamese. "You can kill ten of my
men for every one I kill of yours. But even at those odds,
you will lose and I will win."(1:169). The preceding
statement by Ho Chi Minh reveals the determination and
resolve of the North Vietnamese to do whatever necessary to
resist foreign occupation which over the centuries has
included the Chinese, the Japanese, the French, and the
United States.
Vietnam's history is a litany of resistance to foreign
domination. Formed in the Red River Delta, Vietnam fell
1287, and successfully resisted another Chinese occupation
from 1407 to 1427. Direct colonial rule began in 1858 with
a series of French military thursts. By 1883, the whole of
Vietnam was under French control and administered as part of
French Indochina. French colonial rule continued until May
7, 1954, when the French were defeated at Dien Bein Phu, at
which time the United States entered the conflict.(4:2-4)
Out of this experience the Vietnamese forged a strong
collective identity. In addition to a single language, a
shared tradition, and a united territory was an image of
heroic resistance to foreign rule. Leaders who fulfilled
this image could attract intense loyalty and enormous
sacrifice from the population. But those leaders who
succumbed to foreign pressure, or accommodated foreigners
for personal gain could not count on public support, except
from a small percentage of the population--that portion
that had benefited from foreign exploitation.
If the French adventure in Indochina was the
"grasshopper" against the "elephant", then, the U.S.
involvement was a microbe against a leviathan. The essential
reality of the struggle was that the North Vietnamese imbued
with an almost fanatical sense of dedication to a reunified
Vietnam, saw the war against the United States as the
continuation of two thousand years of resistance to Chinese
and later French rule. They were prepared to accept
limitless casualties to attain their objective. General Vo
Nguyen Giap, the Communist commander, discounted the life of
thousands of human beings. He spoke of fighting ten,
fifteen, twenty, fifty years, regardless of cost, until
"final victory."(1:18).
American strategist applied their own values to the
Vietnamese. General Westmoreland believed that by
"bleeding" them, he would awaken their leaders to the
realization that they were draining their population "to the
point of national disaster for generations," and then compel
them to sue for peace. Even after the war, Westmoreland
stated, "An American commander who took the same losses as
General Giap would have been sacked overnight."(1:18). The
enemy's perseverance was confirmed by American civilians and
soldiers who served in Vietnam. Patrick J. McGarvey, a CIA
analyst, noted in 1969 that no price was too high for Giap
as long as he could deplete American forces, since he
measured the situation not by his casualties, but by "the
traffic in homebound American coffins."(1:18). Konrad
Kellen, a RAND Corporation expert stated, "Short of being
physically destroyed, collapse, surrender, or disintegration
was--too put it bizarrely--simply not within their
capabilities. "(1:18).
The ability to accept the casualties which the U.S. war
of attrition imposed was central to the success of North
Vietnamese strategy. Their attacks were designed to have
maximum psychological effect. They were able to choose the
time and place of most of their attacks that were most
advantageous to them. Therefore, with the exception of the
TET offensive, they were able to control their casualties by
avoiding contact with opposing forces when desired . In
effect this attrition strategy was a test of wills which the
United States could not endure. (2:65).
Neither could intensive bombing of the North Vietnamese
break their resolve. The United States dropped 7.8 million
tons of bombs during this war, an amount greater than the
total dropped by all aircraft in all of World War II.(4:89).
Since the North Vietnamese, unlike Germany in World War II,
did not possess munitions plants or industries vital to its
war effort, targets such as roads, bridges, and
transportation complexes were targeted. Such targets could
be quickly repaired, moved, or circumvented and therefore
had to be bomb again and again. Nor could intensive bombing
curtail the flow of men and supplies over the Ho Chi Minh
trail. Evidence suggests that the heavy bombing only
increased the resolve of the North Vietnamese resistance.
Strategic targets in major population centers could not be
bombed due to political considerations. General Curtis
Lemay, U.S. Air Force advised "bombing them into the stone
age."(4:91). Yet in 1972 after the most intensive bombing
of the North had destroyed virtually all industrial,
transportation, and communications facilities built since
1954, flattened three major cities and twenty-nine province
capitals, the North's party leaders replied that they had
defeated the U.S. "air war of destruction".(4:97) Short of
nuclear destruction, or an all out invasion of North
Vietnam, as some advocates suggested, the air war alone
could not force the North Vietnamese to succumb to
pressures that the British and Germans had survived during
World War II.
Only much later did American officials begin to
perceive the determination of the North Vietnamese. Dean
Rusk, secretary of state under Kennedy and Johnson, finally
admitted in 1971 that he had personally underestimated the
ability of the North Vietnamese to resist. General Maxwell
Taylor, who had contributed to Kennedy's decisions on
Vietnam and served as Johnson's ambassador in Saigon, stated
the following: "First, we didn't know ourselves. We
thought we were going into another Korean war, but this was
a different country. Secondly, we didn't know our South
Vietnamese allies. We never understood them, and that was
another surprise. And we knew even less about North
Vietnam. Who was Ho Chi Minh? Nobody really knew. So,
until we know the enemy and know our allies and know
ourselves, we'd better keep out of this dirty kind of
business. Its very dangerous. (1:19).
Kissinger, like his predecessors, never found the
breaking point of the North Vietnamese. He had concluded
that they would compromise only if menaced with total
annihilation. The North Vietnamese agreed to a cease fire
in October 1972 only after he had handed them major
concessions that were to jeopardize the future of the South
Vietnamese government. (1:19)
Harry Summers , in his book, On Strategy, concluded
that the U.S. military leadership failed to perceive the
true nature of the Vietnam war. He states that there are
still those who would attempt to fit it into the
revolutionary war mold and who blame our defeat on our
failure to implement counterinsurgency doctrine. This point
of view requires an acceptance of the North Vietnamese
contention that the war was a civil war, and that the North
Vietnamese regular forces were an extension of the guerrilla
effort, a point of view which is not supported by the facts.
Summers suggest that the North Vietnamese insurgency was a
tactical screen masking their real objective, the conquest
of South Vietnam through conventional means.(3:83-90)
Summers further states that the failure to invoke the
national will was one of the major strategic failures of the
Vietnam war. It produced a strategic vulnerability that our
enemy was able to exploit. If the Constitutional
requirement for a congressional declaration of war had been
accomplished, it would have insured public support, and
through the legal sanctions against dealing with the enemy,
impeded public dissent.(3:17-19).
This act of committing American forces in a remote part
of the world without a formal declaration of war leads to a
more fundamental consideration of exactly what are U.S.
vital interests? This was the same question during the
Korean war, the U.S.'s first undeclared war. The U.S. was
directly threatened during WW I and WW 11( the bombing of
Pearl Harbor and the sinking of U.S. ships). North Vietnam
posed no direct threat to the U.S. The reason for U.S.
involvement in Vietnam was to contain communist expansion.
However, even this policy of containment was not intended to
be applied on the Asian continent.(1:7O1). Based on the
history of the American people and their relationship with
its army, a prolong war cannot be supported unless U.S.
interests are directly threatened. The U.S. does not have
the resources to commit forces to every corner of the globe
that is threatened by external, oppressive regimes.
In retrospect, one can only wonder if the U.S. civilian
and military leadership had understood the motivations, the
historical context and perspective of the enemy , would a
different strategy have been employed more successfully?
General Westmoreland , in his retrospective analysis of the
war, stated that the inability to understand the enemy was
"the basic error" in the conduct of the war in Vietnam. We
failed to understand that the enemy's goals were as
political as they were military.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam: A History. New York: Viking
Press, 1983.
2. Kinard, Douglas. War Managers. New Hampshire:
University Press 1977.
3. Summers, Harry. On Strategy. California: Persidio Press
1982.
4. Turley, William. The Second Indochina War. New York:
Westview Press, 1986.
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