![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Abstract
This article explores the nature of the American war in Vietnam in an effort to determine whether it was a response to an indigenous uprising or an external effort by the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) to use a wide array of policies and programs to unite North Vietnam and South Vietnam under the party’s leadership. It argues that, although there initially were elements of the South Vietnamese population that rose against the southern leadership, the CPV gained control of their resistance and relegated it to a secondary role in the CPV war effort.
Acknowledgements
This paper is dedicated to Paul L. Miles, soldier, scholar, mentor, and friend, on the occasion of his retirement from Princeton University. Merle Pribbenow, Anne Louise Antonoff, and Ralph P. Mavis made constructive comments on earlier versions.
Notes
1 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton UP 1976), 88.
2 Mao Zedong, ‘On Protracted War’ in Selected Military Writings of Mao Tse-tung (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press 1967), 246.
3 Also known as the Vietnamese Communist Party.
4 The Lao Dong had ruled the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) since they defeated the French and accepted the Geneva Accords of 1954. The DRV has frequently been referred to as ‘North Vietnam’.
5 Geoffrey Best, War and Law Since 1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1994), 333.
6 Department of the Army, FM 3-0 Operations (Washington DC: Department of the Army Citation2001), 4-23.
7 Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press 2013), 65.
8 According to Ho Chi Minh, guerrilla forces conduct eight kinds of tactical operations: ambushes, raids, defenses, pursuits, withdrawals, sabotage, movements to contact, and bivouacs. Ho Chi Minh, ‘Cach Danh Du Kich’ [On Guerrilla Warfare] in Ho Chi Minh, The Collected Works of Ho Chi Minh [Ho Chi Minh Toan Tap] Vol. 3 (Hanoi: The Truth Publishers 1983), passim.
9 Clausewitz, On War, 90.
10 Trinh Vuong Hong and Nguyen Huy Toan (eds), Ho Chi Minh Thought: On the Military (Hanoi: Institute of Military History 2006), 207-8.
11 The People’s Liberation Armed Forces was the military branch of the NLF. It was founded in 1961. Warren Wilkins, Grab Their Belts to Fight Them: The Viet Cong’s Big Unit War Against the US, 1965–1966 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press 2011), 12.
12 Wilkins, Grab Their Belts to Fight Them, passim.
13 Douglas Pike, Viet Cong: The Organization and Techniques of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1966), 109–10.
14 Director of Central Intelligence, ‘Viet Cong Plans to Organize and Surface a “People’s Democratic Peace Front”’, dated 20 Feb. 1970, Confidential regraded Unclassified 7 Oct. 1981, passim.
15 Land, sea, Sihanoukville, intermodal, and financial ‘trails’ of support.
16 Dong Si Nguyen, The Trans-Truong Son Route (Hanoi: The Gioi Publishers 2005), 337.
17 Dang Phong, Five Ho Chi Minh Trails (Hanoi: The Gioi Publishers 2012), 152.
18 Dong Si Nguyen, The Trans-Truong Son Route, 5.
19 Merle L. Pribbenow (translator), Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People’s Army of Vietnam, 1954–1975 (Lawrence: Univ. of Kansas Press 2002), 350.
20 Headquarters, Armed Forces of RVN, Office of Joint General Staff, J-2, and Headquarters, US Military Assistance Command Vietnam, Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, J-2, Order of Battle Summary, Vol. II, 1972, II-3 ‘Retroactive Infiltration’ [Confidential regraded Unclassified 4 June 1986]. Hereafter referred to as ‘Combined Orbat.’
21 Pribbenow, Victory in Vietnam, 350 and 431.
22 Author email exchange with Merle L. Pribbenow, 10 May 2013.
23 Tran Buoi, ‘The Great Rear Area, North Vietnam during the Victorious Final Phase of the War against the Americans to Save the Nation’ [Hau Phuong Lon Mien Bac Trong Giai Doan Ket Thuc Thang Loi Cuoc Khang Chong My Cuu Nuoc] in Tranh Hanh and Hoang Dung (eds), The Historical Decisive Battle of Spring 1975 [Tran Quyet Chien Lich Su Xuan 1975] (Hanoi: Ministry of Defense Press 1990), 156 and 162. Translation by Merle L. Pribbenow.
24 Bui Tin, From Enemies to Friends (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press 2002), 128.
25 Phong, Five Ho Chi Minh Trails, 153.
26 Pribbenow, Victory in Vietnam, 350.
27 Phong, Five Ho Chi Minh Trails, 315.
28 Combined Orbat, p, I-21.
29 Ibid.
30 Center for the Military Encyclopedia [Ministry of National Defense], Tu Dien Bach Khoa Quan Su Viet Nam [Military Encyclopedia of Vietnam] (Hanoi: People’s Army of Vietnam Press 1996), 702-3.
31 Tran The Long et al, Su Doan Chien Thang: Ky Su, Tap 2 [The Victory Division: A Report, Vol.2] translated by Merle L. Pribbenow (Hanoi: People’s Army Publishing House 1980), 27.
32 Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, ‘Problems of Viet Cong Recruitment and Morale’, Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE) 14.3-1-67, 3 Aug. 1967, 3.
33 Robert W. Komer, letter to Lyndon B. Johnson, 4 Oct. 1967, cited in Frank Leith Jones, Blowtorch: Robert Komer, Vietnam, and American Cold War Strategy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press 2013), 157.
34 Pribbenow, Victory in Vietnam, 137.
35 Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War, 73.
36 The 271st and 272nd Regiments became elements of the 9th ‘VC’ Division as the 1st and 2nd Regiments when the division was formed in Sept. 1965.
37 Pribbenow, Victory in Vietnam, 140-1.
38 Pribbenow, Victory in Vietnam, 141–2 and 144–7.
39 Ibid., 147.
40 The first US combat troops landed in Vietnam in March 1965.
41 Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War, 87–105, provides an excellent description of the Politburo debates that led to the Tet Offensive.
42 Harry G. Summers Jr., Historical Atlas of the Vietnam War (New York: Houghton Mifflin 1995), 130.
43 Credit to the brilliance of North Vietnamese strategists for ‘drawing’ US and ARVN divisions to War Zone C, the Central Highlands, and northern Quang Tri province is overdone. It is very likely that these allied forces would have been pushing to the border to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail regardless of the ‘brilliance’ of North Vietnamese wiles and stratagems.
44 David W.P. Elliot, The Vietnamese War: Revolution and Social Change in the Mekong Delta, 1930–1975, Vol. 2 (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe 2003), 1093–7.
45 Ibid., 1097.
46 Ibid., 1116.
47 Pribbenow, Victory in Vietnam, 283.
48 Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War, 232-3
49 Pribbenow, Victory in Vietnam, 283–4.
50 Ibid., 289.
51 Summers, Historical Atlas of the Vietnam War, 178.
52 Pribbenow, Victory in Vietnam, 344–5.
53 Cao Van Vien, The Final Collapse (Washington DC: Center of Military History 1985), 34. Vien’s figures are for 1973. He estimates that another 200,000 North Vietnamese moved down the trail between January 1973 and April 1975.
54 Elliot, The Vietnamese War, 1377.
55 Benjamin L. Harrison, Hell on a Hill Top: America’s Last Major Battle in Vietnam (New York: iUniverse 2004), passim.
56 Robert K. Brigham, Guerrilla Diplomacy: The NLF’s Foreign Relations and the Viet Nam War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1999), 127.
57 Ibid., 127-8.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Edward C. O’Dowd
Edward C. O’Dowd is a retired US Army officer with extensive experience dealing with Chinese, Vietnamese, and North Korean affairs. During recent years he served in a variety of faculty positions at the Marine Corps University.