The Vietnam War Revisited- Part VII – A War of Attrition

If you read my prior blogs addressing this subject you will understand where I’m going with my discussion of Barbara Tuchman’s analysis of the Vietnam War.

My last blog in the series outlined the background leading up to the Vietnam War. This blog picks up as Kennedy takes office.

Kennedy’s mindset was moving closer to Cold War orthodoxy, seeing Vietnam as the cornerstone of the free world in Southeast Asia- “A test of American responsibility and determination in Asia.” That explains some of his administration’s actions.

Tuchman states it was obvious to JFK and most American observers that to thwart the spread of Communism in SE Asia it was essential to “build strong native non-Communist sentiment.” But this recognition ignored the fact that would require South Vietnam to act “apart from and in defiance of innately nationalistic aims spelling foredoomed failure.”

For an outsider to win the allegiance of the South Vietnamese to their Diem government was not a good gamble. Tuchman makes the cogent point- “What did the U.S. and Diem have to offer an apathetic or alienated population?” We never “won their hearts and minds” of the countryside. Diem did little to foster their loyalty. His treatment of the Buddhists triggered international resentment and anti-war sentiment.

JFK’s administration misread South Vietnamese lack of interest or their disincentive to become “a proving ground for Democracy in Asia.” Their motivation revolved around nationalism, day to day survival for many, not intellectual causes like the Domino Theory or stopping the “Red tide of Communism overflowing into Vietnam” under Ho Chi Minh. It was folly to assume otherwise. What happened?

The prevailing anti-Communist rhetoric of the time led JFK to fall into two traps- Fighting Nikita Khrushchev’s pronouncement of Soviet support for “wars of liberation” in Cuba, Algeria and Vietnam was one. That concept led to America’s Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba. Supporting that failed invasion foreshadowed our involvement in Vietnam, his second trap. Once again, they underestimated the opponent and its motivating force.

Bay of Pigs was not JFK’s original plan, but his inherited responsibility. Tuchman observes the prevailing momentum of accepted Eisenhower policy made the invasion easier to carry through than to call the plan off- a folly. This snafu happened during the first ninety days of JFK’s administration. The “best and the brightest” would soon find out that rather than controlling situations, circumstances would control them.

They subsequently choose to make a stand against Communism in Vietnam. Rectifying the Cuban failure may have been a motivating factor according to Tuchman who astutely observed the JFK administration “suffered from the missionary compulsion to guide the Vietnamese towards U.S. policy objectives, not their own.”

This flaw was “a classic case of seeing the truth and acting without reference to it.” It’s difficult to argue with that observation.

JK Galbraith commented, “Government was rarely more than a choice between ‘the disastrous and the unpalatable.” Kennedy approved a counter-insurgency plan for South Vietnam- the MAAG training program and the MACV program of military advisors in 1961. There was no going back. Decisions were made that adversely influenced the outcome of the war.

Namely, military theory and strategy underwent a major change with the advent of the JFK administration. They introduced the concept of “limited war.” The aim, not conquest, but coercion using graduated, “counter -insurgency” force delivered on a calculated basis to “alter the enemy’s will and capabilities where the advantages of terminating the conflict become greater than continuing it.” In other words, a “managed” war based on McNamara’s strategy of flexible responses short of massive retaliation.

LBJ’s administration magnified the same mistakes following essentially the same flawed strategy and aggravated the chances of victory by imposing self- limiting rules of engagement that doomed the war effort.

To me this strategy represents a war of attrition, the greatest folly of all. It is based on the assumption that the enemy acts with rationality to the coercion. Ho Chi Minh was in it for the long haul, committed to the task regardless of the toll. Our government miscalculated his resiliency, his will to fight to the last man.

I point out the pitfalls and costs in military casualties of pursuing prolonged conflicts with open endpoints and self-imposed restrictions in my historical narrative, RECALL. I make the case that to engage in war there must be an existential threat to the nation.

Was there in Vietnam? Wars should be fought with maximum force to end the conflict quickly as possible to minimize casualties. Vietnam was not. The war lasted from 1961 to 1975, the longest war to that date. What have we learned? How long have we been at war in the Middle East?

If a war is worth fighting, it’s worth winning most expediently. Victory must be defined in terms so clearly that the average man in the street understands it. Wars of attrition have not worked out well for America.

Although Tuchman only obliquely refers to the sentinel concept espoused by Eisenhower, “massive retaliation”, the intimidating threat using the nuclear option always lurked in the background during Vietnam. War with China as in Korea remained a fear. Cold War psyche prevailed in the sixties. Mutual destruction has a way of discouraging aggression, so limited war was chosen. Cold War dogma may have swayed Camelot.

These blogs are intended to be educational. Half our population was not born during Vietnam. We must learn the lessons of history or we are doomed to repeat our mistakes, to paraphrase Santayana.

I hope these blogs will help you understand a complex war that divided our nation politically.

Comments are welcome, if civil.