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1969 - Vietnamization

By imposing a limit on American participation in the war the effect of the decisions made following the Tet offensive of early 1968 -- the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson began modifying the partnership between the United States and South Vietnam. The ultimate objective remained a free and independent South Vietnam, but the United States no longer pursued that goal by means of a bombing campaign in the North and by a war of attrition in the South fought largely by American troops. Instead, the United States began to train and equip the South Vietnamese to take over the war, while at the same time engaging in negotiations with the enemy to end the fighting and acknowledge the right of South Vietnam to exist.

North Vietnam proved willing enough to talk; in May 1968, after Rolling Thunder diminished in scale, the Hanoi government entered into preliminary discussions at Paris that involved the United States, South Vietnam, and, after much haggling, the political leaders of the Viet Cong. Not until January 1969, after Rolling Thunder had ended and when Richard M. Nixon, a Republican, was about to take the oath of office as President, did the preliminaries end so that the negotiators could begin addressing issues of substance. The discussions soon revealed that North Vietnam, although willing to participate, would make no major concessions that might jeopardize the ultimate conquest of the South; fight and talk becarne the national policy, which persisted after the death of Ho Chi Minh in September 1969.

The Nixon administration took over the basic strategy adopted by President Johnson and named it Vietnamization, a label proposed by Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird. The original choice, de-Americanization, had seemed not only less euphonious but also hurtful to South Vietnamese pride since its use acknowledged that the United States had indeed taken over the war. Ideally, as Vietnamization progressed, freshly equipped and newly trained South Vietnamese would in an orderly fashion assume full responsibility for fighting thc> war.

The Americans in the ground forces, which contained the greatest share of draftees and suffered the most casualties, would be the first to depart as the South Vietnamese took over. In this way, the toll of Americans killed and wounded would decline sharply; aind this benefit of Vietnamization would affect a large segment of the nation's populace, the families of the draftees, thus encouraging widespread support, if not of the war itself, at least of the manner in which it was being liquidated. However, the reduction of American casualties, and the resulting political effects, soon took precedence over the difficult job of fitting out and trainiing the armed forces of South Vietnam.

Henry A. Kissinger, the national security adviser to President Nixon (and after August 1973 the Secretary of State), warned early in the process of Vietnamization that troop withdrawals would become "salted peanuts" for the American people, with each one whetting the public's appetite for another. Kissinger was correct. He acknowledged years afterward that by late summer of 1969, "We were clearly on the way out of Vietnam by negotiation if possible, by unilateral withdrawal if necessary."

The emphasis on bringing the men home represented an attempt to placate the antiwar movement in the United States, which since 1965 had mounted several large public demonstrations against American policy in Southeast Asia. The motives of the demonstrators varied from a sincere belief that the war was morally wrong to a fear of being drafted and possibly serving in South Vietnam. By embarking on a well-publicized course of disengagement and withdrawal (and later by easing the impact of the draft preparatory to abolishing it altogether), the Nixon administration bought time for negotiation but at the same time relaxed the pressure on North Vietnam to respond.

The United States clearly was leaving South Vietnam, but North Vietnam had no intention of doing so. The American withdrawals thus represented a concession by the Nixon administration to the antiwar faction rather than a reaction to concessions by the communist side in the peace negotiations. Not even a series of secret discussions between Kissinger and representatives of North Vietnam could persuade the communists to accept a program of mutual troop withdrawals.

LAM SON 719, the 1971 incursion into Laos, was a test of Vietnamization less ambiguous than the Cambodian incursion. The South Vietnamese Army did not perform well in Laos. Reflecting on the operation, Lt. Gen. Ngo Quang Truong, a former commander of the 1st Division who took command of I Corps in 1972, noted the South Vietnamese Army's chronic weakness in planning for and coordinating combat support. He also observed that from the battalion to the division level the army had become dependent on U.S. advisers. At the highest levels of command, he added, "the need for advisers was more acutely felt in two specific areas: planning and leadership. The basic weakness of [South Vietnamese] units at regimental and sometimes division level in those areas," he continued, "seriously affected the performance of subordinate units."

Vietnamization stood a chance of succeeding only if the pace of US withdrawals matched South Vietnamese progress toward self-sufficiency. LAM SON 719 destroyed any chance of keeping the two in tandem. President Nixon believed that the vital point lay in how the American public perceived LAM SON 719's outcome. Success might have persuaded Congress and the public to tolerate a somewhat longer US military involvement. Instead, widespread perceptions of a South Vietnamese defeat fuelled antiwar feeling. The argument that Vietnamization was making progress and only needed enough time and perseverance no longer rang true.