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.
