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";s:4:"text";s:29050:"To recap, the dominant physical geographic features of Indochina are the Annamite mountains, the Red River and the Mekong River. It was fought between the United States and its ally South Vietnam, and communist North Vietnam and its guerrilla forces, the Viet Cong. Robert E. Osgood, Limited War: The Challenge to American Security (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 5, 7. 26. this ran through See also Larry Berman, No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger, and Betrayal in Vietnam (New York: Free Press, 2001), 50. The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited. Privacy Notice |  Next the whisper of the end of the war. The Chieu Hoi (“Open Arms”) program, begun in 1963, aimed to “rally” Vietcong defectors to the GVN side as part of a larger national reconciliation effort. A large proportion of the U.S. troops consisted of African American men from the inner cities, the sons of … The Spanish-American War of 1898 ended Spain’s colonial empire in the Western Hemisphere and secured the position of the United States as a Pacific power. On Westmoreland’s approach to pacification, see Gregory A. Daddis, Westmoreland’s War: Reassessing American Strategy in Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), chapter 5. B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy, 2d rev. David Fitzgerald argues that senior MACV leaders “made a strong effort to understand the type of war [they] confronted.” Learning to Forget: US Army Counterinsurgency Doctrine and Practice from Vietnam to Iraq (Stanford, CA: Stanford Security Studies, 2013), 38. How do events takes place in history as pointed out by georg wilchicm friedrich hegel by Alvin scaff? In December, he wrote the 1st Infantry Division’s commander detailing how the buildup of forces should allow for an increased emphasis on pacification: “I am inviting this matter to your personal attention since I feel that an effective rural construction program is essential to the success of our mission.”28 Unfortunately, these early pacification efforts seemed to be making little progress as Hanoi continued infiltrating troops into South Vietnam and desertions from the South Vietnamese armed forces rose sharply.29 Accordingly, Westmoreland requested an additional 41,500 troops. pment to assist the people of South Vietnam in their efforts to prevent a Communist takeover. (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1954), 335–336. As Phillip B. Davidson recalled, Westmoreland “had not one battle, but three to fight: first, to contain a growing enemy conventional threat; second, to develop the Republic of Vietnam’s Armed Forces (RVNAF); and third, to pacify and protect the peasants in the South Vietnamese countryside. In 1945, more than 150 years after the U.S. 51. Of note, political reform in Saigon, largely a task for Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, accompanied the military side of Vietnamization. Andrew Birtle’s argument on the change being “more in emphasis than in substance” seems most compelling. 58. Viet Cong forces took the fighting into the dense Jungles where they could confuse the Americans I. Found insideExploring the anguish of immigration and the lasting effects that displacement has on a child and her family, Bui documents the story of her family’s daring escape after the fall of South Vietnam in the 1970s, and the difficulties they ... “As MACV admitted in 1970, ‘the basic concept and objectives of pacification, to defeat the VC/NVA and to provide the people with economic and social benefits, have changed little since the first comprehensive GVN plan was published in 1964.’” In U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine, 367. As the newly appointed commander of the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), the former West Point superintendent was heir to a legacy of varied strategic initiatives aimed at sustaining an independent, noncommunist foothold in Southeast Asia. 74. As many as 30,000 other Hmong crowded into Long Cheng, hoping for escape. Thus, expanding the war into Cambodia offered an opportunity to give the GVN the breathing space it needed. Copy this link, or click below to email it to a friend. Was it used as a way to test American capacity in nation-building, of expanding democracy overseas? The best-selling author of Balkan Ghosts presents a timely and provocative response to The World Is Flat that draws on the insights of leading geographers and geopolitical thinkers to present a holistic interpretation of the next cycle of ... Yet in the quest to broaden their conception of war, to consider political and social issues as much as military ones, senior leaders developed a strategy that was so wide-ranging as to be unmanageable. It would also be effective as the support from peasants meant that they were able to hide themselves in peasant villages. 73, “Defeat of VC Infrastructure,” November 20, 1968, MACV Lessons Learned, Box 1, RG 472, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland. Michael Lind argues that Nixon had to withdraw “in a manner that preserved domestic support for the Cold War in other theaters.” Vietnam: The Necessary War (New York: Free Press, 1999), 106. The North was supported by communist countries such as the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union. For a journalist’s account, see Don Oberdorfer, Tet! While the Cambodian operation had denied Hanoi the use of the Sihanoukville port, the Ho Chi Minh Trail continued to serve as a major infiltration route into South Vietnam. Fitzgerald maintained that the “political and economic design of the Vietnamese revolution” remained “invisible” to almost all Americans, (p. 143). By December, the president had reached his limits and ordered a massive air campaign against North Vietnam to break the deadlock. Political instability in Saigon continued to worry U.S. embassy officials. If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer. “The colonel wants to make contact with the enemy and so do I,” reported the young captain, “but the men flat don’t.”64 Few draftees wanted to be fighting in Vietnam in the first place and even fewer wanted to risk being killed in a war clearly that was winding down. 69. 8. 5. Moreover, the impending American departure did little to settle unresolved questions over the most pressing threat to South Vietnam. David L. Di Leo offers a treatment of a key dissenter inside the Johnson White House in George Ball, Vietnam, and the Rethinking of Containment (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991). Or did escalation flow from concerns about prestige and credibility, both national and political? The new president hoped to concentrate on his larger aim of improving relations with China and the Soviet Union. Le Duan planned the second phase for early 1968, a coordinated offensive by insurgent and regular forces to attack allied troops and support popular uprisings in the cities and surrounding areas. 23. There were many countries involved in the war between the. Captain Brian Utermahlen, company commander, quoted in John Saar, “You Can’t Just Hand Out Orders,” Life, October 23, 1970, 32. United States involvement in Vietnam in the 1950s and early 1960s consisted of sending military advisers to help the South Vietnamese in their struggle against Communists in the North. The United States got involved in the Vietnam conflict to keep communism from spreading throughout Southeast Asia. Michael H. Hunt, Lyndon Johnson’s War: America’s Cold War Crusade in Vietnam, 1945–1968 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1996), 94. More importantly, a military defeat of the Americans, real or perceived, might change the political context of the entire conflict.43, During the plan’s first phase, to be executed in late 1967, NVA units would conduct conventional operations along South Vietnam’s borders to draw American forces away from urban areas and to facilitate NLF infiltration into the cities. An arc of fictional episodes, taking place in the childhoods of its characters, in the jungles of Vietnam, and back home in America two decades later. After Ohio National Guardsmen fired into a demonstration at Kent State University on May 4, leaving four students dead, a wave of antiwar rallies swept the nation, closing nearly 450 colleges and universities. MACV now provided oversight for all of the allied pacification-related programs: “territorial security forces, the whole RD effort, care and resettlement of refugees, the Chieu Hoi (“Open Arms,” or amnesty) program to bring VC [Vietcong] to the GVN side, the police program, the attempts to stimulate rural economic revival, hamlet schools, and so on.”38 In short, CORDS assumed full responsibility for pacification. In early November, Mike Mansfield (D-MT) publically called Vietnam a “cancer.” “It’s a tragedy,” argued the Montana senator. Moreover, military leaders complained that the president’s gradual response, of limiting the tempo and ferocity of the air campaign, unduly limited American military might. Those seeking insights into the U.S. Army will find excellent resources at the U.S. Army Military History Institute in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, and the U.S. Army Center of Military History at Fort McNair, Washington, DC. On military operations early in 1967, see Bernard W. Rogers, Cedar Falls–Junction City: A Turning Point (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974, 2004). Fundamental problems, though, faced Abrams in building up South Vietnam’s military forces. 73. 39. Their mission, to defend American airbases supporting the bombing campaign against North Vietnam, called for setting up three defensive “enclaves” at Phu Bai, Da Nang, and Chu Lai. © 1996 - 2021 National Geographic Society. 'World Development Report 2009: Reshaping Economic Geography' concludes that these spatial transformations are essential, and should be encouraged. The conclusion is not without controversy. The War's Effect on the Vietnamese Land and People. About 58,000 American soldiers were killed during the Vietnam War, and another 304,000 were wounded. Without a doubt, the war took a terrible toll on the United States. Dates: November 1, 1955 - April 30, 1975. Graham A. Cosmas, MACV: The Joint Command in the Years of Escalation, 1962–1967 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 2006), 35. Finally, an often overlooked yet important work on senior military leaders is Robert Buzzanco, Masters of War: Military Dissent and Politics in the Vietnam Era (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996). You cannot download interactives. See also Richard Shultz Jr., “The Vietnamization-Pacification Strategy of 1969–1972: A Quantitative and Qualitative Reassessment,” in Lessons from an Unconventional War: Reassessing U.S. Strategies for Future Conflicts, ed. See also Dale Andradé, Ashes to Ashes: The Phoenix Program and the Vietnam War (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1990); and Mark Moyar, Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism in Vietnam (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, 2007). Moreover, Westmoreland’s military strategy could not answer the basic questions over which the war was fought. North Vietnamese units still found refuge in sanctuaries along the Cambodian and Laotian borders. Thus, the post–World War II generation of U.S. Army officers was forced to think about war more broadly. Officers like Westmoreland and Abrams found that nation-building in a time of war was one of the most difficult tasks to ask of a military force. In December 1965, Ho Chi Minh and the North Vietnamese leadership ordered a … Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, who replaced McNamara in early March, wondered aloud how MACV was winning the war yet needed more troops. Thousands of books have been written on the issue of the American involvement in the Vietnam War. The best monograph on the Ia Drang battles remains Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once . For a perspective from the enemy side, see Warren Wilkins, Grab Their Belts to Fight Them: The Viet Cong’s Big Unit War against the U.S., 1965–1966 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2011), especially chapter 6. In this April 29, 1975, file photo the helicopter zone at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, Vietnam, showing last minute evacuation of authorized personnel … In December, Hanoi’s leadership, increasingly under the sway of First Secretary Le Duan, promulgated Lao Dong Party Resolution 12, which outlined a basic strategy to defeat the Americans “under any circumstances.” The resolution placed greater emphasis on the military struggle as domestic priorities in the North receded into the background. See also U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, vol. 75. Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959), 311. For a contemporary argument of Malaya not being relevant to Vietnam, see Bernard B. The conference also reinforced the necessity of thinking about strategy in broader terms than simply battle. A sense of contingency, of choices, and of action and reaction permeate the critical years leading to 1965. In one sense, pacification of the countryside was a process of trying to create political space so the government of South Vietnam (GVN) could stabilize. By that time the communists and South Vietnamese were already engaged in what journalists labeled the “postwar war.” Both sides alleged, more or less accurately, that the other side was continuously violating the terms of the peace agreements. If Tet illustrated anything, it was that battlefield successes—both military and nonmilitary—did not translate automatically into larger political outcomes. Found inside – Page 344North Vietnam responded to the US military escalation by fielding regular army ... North Vietnam, although American air strikes there were devastating, ... Lyndon Baines Johnson, The Vantage Point: Perspectives on the Presidency, 1963–1969 (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971), 241. Did American presidents have good reasons to fight a war in Vietnam? Following Diem’s overthrow and death in November 1963, the foundations on which the U.S. presence in South Vietnam rested appeared shaky at best. Vietnam - Vietnam - World War II and independence: For five years during World War II, Indochina was a French-administered possession of Japan. Abrams responded by throwing B-52 bombers into the battle as Nixon ordered resumption of bombing in the North and the mining of Haiphong harbor. Mark Clodfelter takes on the air war in The Limits of Airpower: The American Bombing of North Vietnam (New York: Free Press, 1989). Civilian and military authorities had to set attainable goals and work closely in selecting the means to achieve them.2, Ridgway’s admonitions forecast inherent problems in a Cold War period increasingly dubbed an era of “limited war.” In short, the very definition of wartime victory seemed in flux. The terrain and jungles certainly did make it difficult in Vietnam, but the real difference was that in WW2 the allies were fighting on small islands for the most part. The Battle of Hue began early on January 31, 1968 and lasted until the first days of March, when US troops retook the city. On peace replacing military victory, see Daniel C. Hallin, The “Uncensored War”: The Media and Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 178. The final goal directed MACV to “attrite, by year’s end, VC/PAVN forces at a rate as high as their capability to put men in the field.”32, The Honolulu conference is a critical episode for understanding American military strategy in Vietnam. (New York: Doubleday, 1971); and Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (New York: Random House, 1988). Westmoreland took to heart the importance of rural construction. All the while, a shadow government competed for influence within the countryside. The comprehensive list of strategic objectives presented by Rusk and McNamara forced American commanders to consider the war as an effort in both construction and destruction. Memorandum to President Lyndon B. Johnson from Robert S. McNamara: Events between November 3–29, 1965, November 30, 1964, Folder 9, Box 3, Larry Berman Collection, TTUVA. Westmoreland quoted in Larry Berman, Planning a Tragedy: The Americanization of the War in Vietnam (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), 71. The period from the Tet offensive of early 1968 to the Moratorium demonstration of May 1970 was the turning point in the most important battlefield of the Vietnam War—the battle for American public opinion. 4, 296. Found inside – Page 385Geographical circumstances affect supply, maintenance, transportation; medical, ... Bruce Palmer, Jr., The 25-Year War: American's Military Role in Vietnam ... Martin G. Clemis, “Competing and Incompatible Visions: Revolution, Pacification, and the Political Organization of Space during the Second Indochina War,” paper presented at the 81st Annual Meeting of the Society for Military History, April 2014, Kansas City, MO. From the book The Making of America, published by National Geographic Society © 2002. Ford, Tet 1968, 93. From this point forward, the war’s outcome would increasingly rest on the actions of the Vietnamese, both North and South. On McNamara being “shaken” by the meeting, see Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (New York: Random House, 1988), 579–580. This lack of coordination led to pressures for a “single-manager” to coordinate the increasingly vast American enterprise in South Vietnam. The capacity of Americans to reshape new political and social communities may not, in fact, be limitless. The USA were unable to defeat the Vietcong and were met with growing opposition to the war back home. 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