The Vietnam War and American Military Strategy, 1965–1973

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory A. Daddis
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Power ◽  
Military Strategy ◽  
True Nature ◽  
American Military ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
The Cold War

For nearly a decade, American combat soldiers fought in South Vietnam to help sustain an independent, noncommunist nation in Southeast Asia. After U.S. troops departed in 1973, the collapse of South Vietnam in 1975 prompted a lasting search to explain the United States’ first lost war. Historians of the conflict and participants alike have since critiqued the ways in which civilian policymakers and uniformed leaders applied—some argued misapplied—military power that led to such an undesirable political outcome. While some claimed U.S. politicians failed to commit their nation’s full military might to a limited war, others contended that most officers fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the war they were fighting. Still others argued “winning” was essentially impossible given the true nature of a struggle over Vietnamese national identity in the postcolonial era. On their own, none of these arguments fully satisfy. Contemporary policymakers clearly understood the difficulties of waging a war in Southeast Asia against an enemy committed to national liberation. Yet the faith of these Americans in their power to resolve deep-seated local and regional sociopolitical problems eclipsed the possibility there might be limits to that power. By asking military strategists to simultaneously fight a war and build a nation, senior U.S. policymakers had asked too much of those crafting military strategy to deliver on overly ambitious political objectives. In the end, the Vietnam War exposed the limits of what American military power could achieve in the Cold War era.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Long T. Bui
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Heuristic Device ◽  
Critical Refugee Studies ◽  
The Cold War

The introduction presents the book’s main argument, theoretical framework, and primary research questions. It provides a brief summary of the second Indochinese War or the Vietnam War and how the Republic of Vietnam came into being. It then discusses the Nixon strategy to “Vietnamize” the war in 1969, arguing that the term Vietnamization provides a productive term to interrogate the gendered racial logics of U.S. imperialism during the Cold War in Southeast Asia and its relationship with foreign allies. The chapter first begins with how the twenty-first century offers a generational lapse and new historical occasion to reflect upon the Vietnam War. It then offers a theorization of Vietnamization as a heuristic device to elaborate why cultural memory and discourse surrounding the Vietnam War remain conflicted as tied to the collapse of South Vietnam and its inability to protect and save itself. Vietnamization serves as a critical vocabulary for imagining the “arrested future” or delayed moment of freedom/liberation for American allies, shaping postwar ideas of citizenship, nationalism, and emancipation. As a critical refugee studies project, the book is situated and contextualized within larger debates in Asian American cultural studies and criticism over war. Finally, the introduction provides an elaboration of relevant scholarship under way in this field of history and memory. It explains why it is important to conduct research in the United States, Vietnam, and the Vietnamese American community discussing the geopolitical dimensions of refugee culture and consciousness.

scholarly journals From Geneva to Geneva: A Discourse on Geo-Political Dimension of Conflict in Laos: 1954–1962

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patit Paban Mishra
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
Constant Feature ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
North Vietnam ◽  
Geneva Conference ◽  
External Actors

During the cold war period, the problem of Laos was exacerbated due to strategic location of Laos and national interest of external actors. The present paper would analyze various ramifications of the conflict in Laos. Beginning from First Indochina War (1946-1954), fate of Laos was linked very closely with that of Vietnam. With the escalation of conflict, a solution to problem of Laos was nowhere in sight. The Geneva Conference of 1954 did not solve the problem. The three major strands in Laos; Pathet Lao, neutralists and the rightists became a constant feature of Lao politics. Both the United States and North Vietnam came into conflict, as they were committed to help their respective allies in Laos, and regarded the other’s action in Laos as harmful to their interest in South Vietnam. An agreement on Laos became contingent upon ending the war in Vietnam. The net result of outside intervention was prolongation of conflict in Laos. A solution to Lao conflict was in sight after the Geneva accords of 1962. However, the gradual linkage of the country with the Vietnam War made the solution of dependent upon the outcome of conflict in Vietnam. Laos was going to be embroiled in the Vietnam War and there was no peace in sight unless a solution was there in Vietnam. Laos became a sideshow in Vietnam War.  

Who Lost Vietnam? Soldiers, Civilians, and U.S. Military Strategy

2010 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 95-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
James McAllister
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Strategy ◽  
Strong Constraint ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
Civilian Leaders ◽  
The Vietnam War

Scholars have long argued about why the United States pursued a conventional military strategy during the Vietnam War rather than one based on counterinsurgency principles. A recent article in this journal by Jonathan Caverley presents a bold challenge to the historiography of the Vietnam War. Rejecting the standard historical focus on the organizational culture and strategic perspective of Gen. William Westmoreland and the U.S. Army, Caverley argues that the roots of the United States' strategy in Vietnam can be traced to the direct influence of civilian leaders and the strong constraint of public opinion. Caverley's main arguments are a welcome challenge to the established wisdom, but they are not supported by the historical evidence. Civilian officials in Lyndon Johnson's administration did not instruct the military on how to fight the ground war within the borders of South Vietnam. Westmoreland did not want to change U.S. military strategy to focus on pacification at the expense of search and destroy tactics and the main force war. Both U.S. civilian and military officials were convinced that counterinsurgency was a South Vietnamese responsibility that U.S. ground forces should not assume. Public opinion was a weak, rather than a strong, constraint on the specific decisions of the Johnson administration during the pivotal years of the Vietnam War. Democracies may not be able to win certain counterinsurgency conflicts, but the primary source of this failure is not a civilian aversion to casualties.

Long Distance Casualty Transportation and Treatment in the Vietnam War

1985 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-57
Author(s):  
Arthur B. Tarrow
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Field Hospital ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Combat Aircraft ◽  
The Vietnam War

At the beginning of many of its armed conflicts, the United States has found itself unprepared for large numbers of casualties. The Vietnam War was no exception. In August 1965, Marines landed at Chu Lai, just south of Danang in South Vietnam, for their first major unit combat effort. They suffered more casualties than anticipated. They were cared for by Navy physicians and corpsmen in the combat area and then flown by helicopter to the Danang airbase. There, they were further triaged in a small field hospital, which quickly became saturated with those casualties which could not be moved. Those less seriously wounded and those who could be made transportable were flown directly to Clark Airforce Base in the Philippines by C130 combat aircraft, a flight of approximately 3 hours. They arrived unwashed, in their combat gear, with weapons on the litters. A C130 aircraft carries 72 litter casualties when fully loaded. At Clark AFB, after word had been received of the combat action, all patients, who could be discharged, were sent out. All personnel at the base, including wives and dependents, were mobilized to help at the hospital. They washed and moved the casualties as they arrived.

Returns of War

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Long T. Bui
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Military Policy ◽  
The South ◽  
American Military ◽  
Richard Nixon ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
Political Environments ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
The Military ◽  
Social Landscapes

Returns of War: South Vietnam and the Price of Refugee Memory reassesses the legacy of the Vietnam War through the figure of South Vietnam. More specifically, it offers a reinterpretation of the military policy of Vietnamization. In 1969, Richard Nixon pledged to “Vietnamize” the regional armed conflict in Indochina, placing all responsibility for winning the war onto the South Vietnamese—a “transfer” of power that ended in the swift collapse of the south to northern communist forces in 1975. It recognizes that Vietnamization and the end of South Vietnam signals not just an example of flawed American military strategy but an allegory of power, providing subterfuge for U.S. imperial losses while denoting the inability of the Vietnamese and others to become free, modern liberal subjects on their own. The main thesis of this book is that the collapse of South Vietnam under Vietnamization complicates the already difficult memory of the Vietnam War, pushing more for a better critical understanding of South Vietnamese agency and self-determination beyond their status as the war’s ultimate “losers.” The denial of a viable independent future for South Vietnam produces a compensatory demand for increased South Vietnamese representation, knowledge production, and memory-making. Through a multi-method examination of different case studies, from refugees returning to the homeland to refugee anti-communist politics to refugee participation in the U.S. War on Terror, the book pushes scholars to consider not simply the ways refugees are Vietnamese but how they are Vietnamizing their social landscapes and political environments.

Origins of the Vietnam War

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica M. Chapman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Road ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Vietnam War

The origins of the Vietnam War can be traced to France’s colonization of Indochina in the late 1880s. The Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh, emerged as the dominant anti-colonial movement by the end of World War II, though Viet Minh leaders encountered difficulties as they tried to consolidate their power on the eve of the First Indochina War against France. While that war was, initially, a war of decolonization, it became a central battleground of the Cold War by 1950. The lines of future conflict were drawn that year when the Peoples Republic of China and the Soviet Union recognized and provided aid to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in Hanoi, followed almost immediately by Washington’s recognition of the State of Vietnam in Saigon. From that point on, American involvement in Vietnam was most often explained in terms of the Domino Theory, articulated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on the eve of the Geneva Conference of 1954. The Franco-Viet Minh ceasefire reached at Geneva divided Vietnam in two at the 17th parallel, with countrywide reunification elections slated for the summer of 1956. However, the United States and its client, Ngo Dinh Diem, refused to participate in talks preparatory to those elections, preferring instead to build South Vietnam as a non-communist bastion. While the Vietnamese communist party, known as the Vietnam Worker’s Party in Hanoi, initially hoped to reunify the country by peaceful means, it reached the conclusion by 1959 that violent revolution would be necessary to bring down the “American imperialists and their lackeys.” In 1960, the party formed the National Liberation Front for Vietnam and, following Diem’s assassination in 1963, passed a resolution to wage all-out war in the south in an effort to claim victory before the United States committed combat troops. After President John F. Kennedy took office in 1961, he responded to deteriorating conditions in South Vietnam by militarizing the American commitment, though he stopped short of introducing dedicated ground troops. After Diem and Kennedy were assassinated in quick succession in November 1963, Lyndon Baines Johnson took office determined to avoid defeat in Vietnam, but hoping to prevent the issue from interfering with his domestic political agenda. As the situation in South Vietnam became more dire, LBJ found himself unable to maintain the middle-of-the-road approach that Kennedy had pursued. Forced to choose between escalation and withdrawal, he chose the former in March 1965 by launching a sustained campaign of aerial bombardment, coupled with the introduction of the first officially designated U.S. combat forces to Vietnam.

Southeast Asia Seen From Japan

Worldview ◽  
1977 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 34-39
Author(s):  
Torn Yano
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
History Of ◽  
Entire History ◽  
The Vietnam War

If there was a single development that stbod out among everything that transpired in Asia in 1975 it was the capitulation of South Vietnam to a pro-Communist regime. The "fall" of Vietnam holds implications that extend far beyond contemporary Southeast Asia;it was an event that perfectly symbolized the play-out in Asia of the entire history of postwar politics. Regardless of how one may judge the war in Vietnam itself, or the whole issue of Indochina, for that matter, to overlook the wider significance of what culminated in 1975 is to lose one's grip on any real understanding of what the Vietnam war meant.

Accidental Allies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phuong Tran Nguyen
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Korean War ◽  
The United States ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Henry Luce ◽  
Failure To Protect ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Good And Evil

Most accounts of the Vietnam War describe it as a war of choice, but this chapter argues that it was, in many ways, a war of necessity. Attempts to implement a purely pragmatic, minimalist Cold War strategy in Asia were doomed when the Korean War drew the United States into an unplanned but then-vital nation-building campaign with accidental allies in South Korea, Taiwan, and eventually South Vietnam. This chapter traces the origins of this moralistic component of Cold War policy and politics, particularly the Christian missionaries and their heirs, like publisher Henry Luce, who formed the China Lobby and Asia First bloc. By helping to frame the Cold War and America’s commitment to Asia as an epic struggle between good and evil, they set the stage for Indochinese refugee admissions based on moral, rather than legal, grounds, and as the very least America could do to atone for its failure to protect stalwart anti-communist allies.

The Vietnam War in Film

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvia Shin Huey Chong
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Military Bases ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
Film Genre ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
War Film

As a war that was not supposed to be a war—the United States never formally declared it as such—and yet was already the second in a series of wars—the first being the anticolonial war against the French that won Vietnam its independence—the Vietnam War is just as hard to pin down cinematically as it is historically. Although it is now recognized as a major film genre in US cinema, the category of the Vietnam War film can also include representations of Southeast Asia during French colonialism, the brief decades of independence before the entrance of US troops, and the long legacy of the war in terms of refugee crisis, political unrest, genocide, PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder), and protest. Not only Vietnamese but all of the peoples formerly grouped under the banner of French Indochina—including Cambodians and Laotians—were dragged into the war as willing or unwitting participants, and their experiences of combat and its aftermath are as integral to the Vietnam War film as those of the American soldiers that typically dominate the genre. The region of Southeast Asia beyond French Indochina—Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Hong Kong—is also significant, both to the history of the war (as political allies, or hosts of military bases or refugee camps) and to the history of the film genre (as locations for filming, or sources for extras or actors or technical support). Outside of Southeast Asia, other nations such as the former USSR, Canada, Australia, France, and South Korea also played a part in the war, sending soldiers to the war or taking in Vietnamese, Cambodian, or Laotian refugees after the war, and these links also yielded further contributions to the Vietnam War film genre from these national cinema industries. The Vietnam War fueled many protest movements and forms of activism, becoming part of a larger, global post-1968 debate about imperialism, racism, capitalism, and militarism in many countries, and so the vigorous protests against the war also became a visible part of the film genre, especially in documentary filmmaking. As the direct survivors of the Vietnam War era begin to be supplanted by a second and even third generation for whom the war is a historical footnote, the legacy of the Vietnam War genre becomes dispersed into the larger genealogies of national cinemas and cultural memory industries, as the children of war veterans and refugees and protestors return to Southeast Asia armed with cameras and capital. Their attention is directed not only backward in time—excavating family or national histories—but also forward, forging new Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, French, Australian, and American cinemas that are indelibly marked by the Vietnam War but no longer obsessed with representing it as such.

Nation Building and the Vietnam War

2005 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 441-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPHER T. FISHER
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The United States ◽  
Modernization Theory ◽  
The South ◽  
Quiet Revolution ◽  
The Vietnam War

The literature on U.S. participation in the Vietnam War has recently undergone a quiet revolution due to use of the concept of nation building. Since the early 1950s nation building has been the subtext, if not the excuse, for U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia, but in the last ten years it has also become useful as a method of inquiry. This article contends that new insights regarding the signi�cance of ideologies and paradigms, particularly modernization theory, enabled the transformation. Understanding modernization theory as an ideology broke with the tradition among diplomatic historians that minimized the role of ideas in policy decisions. It also settled longstanding questions about the nature of paci�cation as either development or counterinsurgency: Counterinsurgency and development were simply different expressions of the same impulse for the United States and the South Vietnamese.

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