New insights—from intelligence archives of the United States and North Vietnam—highlight the genesis 50 years ago of a flawed strategy.
Had President Lyndon B. Johnson, advisers and intelligence services not disregarded, rejected, missed or misread the signals emanating from Asia in the early to mid-1960s, they might his policy not have stubbornly adhered to an attrition strategy in Vietnam that failed to take advantage of the offensive strengths of American forces. Instead, the United States wasted lives, treasure and political capital on a prolonged, unsustainable defensive effort. Dissipated throughout South Vietnam, American forces could not exploit an opportunity that could have shortened the conflict: concentrating along South Vietnam’s lightly populated narrow neck to threaten an invasion of North Vietnam and Laos. Such an approach in 1965 might have minimized force requirements and choked off Hanoi’s access to the South.
In 1964, when the strategy that would determine the war’s course was being formulated, worry about China heavily influenced U.S. foreign policy. Because China had intervened when North Korea was invaded in 1950, American policymakers widely assumed China would do the same in Vietnam. Some worried that if the United States bombed the Hanoi-Haiphong area, North Vietnam might ask China for air cover, forcing the United States either to back off or to strike Chinese air bases.
At the time, the United States wanted North Vietnam to stop supporting insurgent activity in South Vietnam and respect the 1962 International Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos. Neither the president nor his advisers had a clear vision of how to achieve those aims.
Three questions heavily influenced U.S. strategy choices: What level of insurgent activity might be manageable for South Vietnam on its own? What U.S. actions might be required to persuade North Vietnam that fighting for Vietnam’s unification was not worth risking its own security? How far could North Vietnam be pushed militarily without provoking a wider conflict with China?
To help address those questions, in May 1964 the National Intelligence Council issued a Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE), “Probable Consequences of Certain U.S. Actions with Respect to Vietnam and Laos.” Although other intelligence reaches the president’s desk daily, SNIEs reflect the collective views of all U.S. intelligence agencies, including dissenting views, giving the documents unique weight and authority. Formulated to provide shared perspectives of the CIA and other intelligence agencies on sensitive national security issues, SNIEs are also seen by independent-minded congressional committees, making it difficult for presidents to ignore them. With a presidential election looming just six months away, President Johnson would likely have read and been influenced by the May 1964 SNIE. Unfortunately, it might have misled him.
That estimate, declassified in 2004, lists the United States’ options in Laos and Vietnam and postulates probable regional responses and the principal factors influencing them.
One of its assertions, that “North Vietnam has pulled back whenever it appeared that its tactics might provoke a major U.S. response,” is especially puzzling. In fact, North Vietnam’s flagrant violation of the 1962 Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos was widely known—from diplomatic traffic, CIA agent reports and even Associated Press reports. The North Vietnamese had not pulled back at all. How could the intelligence community have misread this? Hanoi had instead used the Laos accord to gain greater freedom of action when the U.S. military withdrew from the country. Yet no one in authority seems to have questioned the estimate’s opposite conclusion.
The estimate also assessed that “interdiction of imports and extensive destruction of transportation facilities and industrial plants would cripple North Vietnam’s industry and degrade, though to a lesser extent, its ability to support guerrilla warfare in South Vietnam and Laos.” At that time, North Vietnam had no significant military industries of its own. China and the Soviet Union provided most of its war materiel. Without military-industrial targets, a U.S. air campaign could only make a difference by attacking transportation infrastructure. But the North Vietnamese were undeterred by air attacks and steadily increased the southward flow of troops and supplies.
The estimate was correct at least once, when it suggested that the North “would probably be willing to suffer some damage to the country in a contest of wills with the U.S.,” but “some damage” is a vague premise on which to base a bombing campaign.
The SNIE might have persuaded the president and his advisers that bombing only military transportation targets in nonstrategic places, coupled with assertive “force posturing,” would be sufficient to cause North Vietnam to back off, thus buying time for South Vietnam to solve its political woes and bring the insurgency under control. But, in fact, it would not be sufficient; it only gave Hanoi more time to adapt.
Lack of guidance from other government agencies compounded the problem. There was no accompanying assessment from the State Department regarding how long South Vietnam might take to get its political house in order nor one from the Defense Department on how long or what type of a bombing campaign would have to be sustained before North Vietnam would back down. Threatening an invasion of any part of Laos or North Vietnam does not appear to have been considered at that point.
North Vietnamese perspectives of the war are just emerging through the translated writings of senior participants, shedding light on what the 1964 SNIE got right and wrong. Andrew Wiest’s 2013 Rolling Thunder in a Gentle Land features many such translations that refute the 1964 estimate’s conclusions and point out the missed opportunity of threatening a limited-objective invasion in 1965.
General Vo Nguyen Giap, the architect of North Vietnam’s victory over France, exhorted his subordinates to press American troops hard but to avoid provoking them into “launching a ground war in North Vietnam, no matter how limited.” Giap knew that North Vietnam would not subordinate itself or its armed forces to China and would therefore have to fight alone—and likely lose the gains it made in the South should the formidable United States invade.
General Dong Sy Nguyen, responsible for building, maintaining and operating the Ho Chi Minh Trail, especially feared an American invasion of southern Laos: “Transportation would have been interrupted and we have no idea what we would have done to recover. This would have enormously impacted the battlefield in the South.” He could deal with bombing but not an invasion.
General Le Trong Tan, North Vietnam’s chief of the General Staff, echoes that fear: “The Americans needed to deploy no more than a division of troops into the Dong Hoi panhandle [a short distance north of the DMZ]….This strategy would have been lethal, because China would have sat idly by, while our troops were pinned down….The impetus of the fighting in the South would have reversed itself.” Those were risks Hanoi would have had to take seriously if U.S. forces had postured for an attack northward.
From Dong Hoi, Cape Ron is only 28 miles farther north and the Mu Gia Pass is 40 miles distant. Loss of that territory with its higher ground would have left North Vietnam even more exposed. Had the Americans and South Vietnamese credibly threatened to seize and hold Indochina’s sparsely populated narrow waist, they would not have had to dissipate their troops trying to defend everything at once in the South, sparing much of the country’s destruction and the terrible loss of life it suffered over the next decade.
With regard to China, suggests that strikes in the Hanoi-Haiphong area, killing Chinese air defense personnel or sinking the May 1964 estimate Chinese ships, could trigger China’s entry into the ground war. But it sent a mixed message by also stating that “China almost certainly would not wish to become involved in hostilities with U.S. forces…though it would make various threatening gestures.”
In mid-1964, China unilaterally canceled its military agreement with North Vietnam, which steadfastly declined to allow observers from China or the Soviet Union into its councils of war. It would neither subordinate its forces to a Chinese commander nor allow China to influence its strategy. And China was unwilling to risk placing its forces under the command of a small, former vassal state pleading for help.
In a well-publicized January 1965 interview with Edgar Snow, an American journalist who had written extensively on China since the 1930s, Chinese leader Mao Zedong said that China’s armies would not fight outside its borders and that Vietnam must cope with its own situation. To meet its fraternal obligations, China instead sent road builders, hospital staffs, air defenders and various technicians to North Vietnam, freeing tens of thousands of North Vietnamese to go south to fight. Mao would do no more, even after hundreds of his troops were later killed by U.S. airstrikes. No SNIE ever corrected the 1964 estimate’s misreading of Chinese perspectives.
An internal factor likely influencing Mao was fear of elevating the public profile of his chief political threat, Marshal Peng Dehuai. Like any dictator, Mao was always watchful for signs of another leader emerging to possibly displace him. Peng was China’s most respected warrior as a result of his role in reversing the tide of the Korean War in 1950. If China again went to war, Peng’s visibility would surely rise, making his potential influence in political matters hard to stifle.
The full range of considerations driving Mao’s restraint may never be known, but some were visible to intelligence agencies and the media alike. Prolonged economic stagnation had steadily worsened China’s standard of living, stirring social unrest and encouraging challenges to Mao’s authority. To suppress dissent, Mao set the Great Cultural Revolution into motion in 1966, transforming all of Chinese society into spies against one another. While the time might have seemed ripe to divert internal unrest by going to war, that strategy was not in China’s—or Mao’s—best interest. A war with the United States would have sapped China’s meager finances, consumed the best of its forces, risked an American nuclear attack and left China dangerously exposed to its other enemies. After all, President Dwight Eisenhower had threatened China with nuclear attack to force an end to the Korean War in 1953 and did so again during the Quemoy and Matsu crisis of 1958. How could Mao be certain that Johnson would not do the same?
China’s military was also stretched thin and its weapons were decades older than those of the Soviet Union and India, whose growing partnership threatened China from the north and south. An inconclusive war with India in 1962 and ongoing border skirmishes compelled China to keep substantial forces tied to the Sino-Indian frontier. More were tethered to China’s coast for fear that Taiwan, aided by the United States, might try to exploit China’s internal unrest. Another large force was deployed along the borders of Mongolia and the Soviet Union, where Soviet forces sat poised like a dagger pointing at China’s heart.
Turning to military actions in Vietnam in 1964, the Gulf of Tonkin incident on Aug. 4 elevated Vietnam’s prominence in American political discourse. President Johnson addressed Congress on August 10, offering assurances that the United States sought “no wider war” but was “united in its determination to bring about the end of Communist subversion and aggression in the area.” Congress approved and supported the president, as commander in chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attacks against U.S. forces and to prevent further aggression.
On Feb. 6, 1965, air base near Pleiku in South Vietnam’s Central Highlands. At the same time, Soviet Premier Alexei the Viet Cong attacked a U.S. Kosygin was in Hanoi to discuss a possible military alliance, and U.S. National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy was in Saigon to assess South Vietnamese capabilities. While there had been other Viet Cong attacks on U.S. installations, the timing of this one gave it unique political significance. That day, Johnson approved Operation Flaming Dart to bomb selected North Vietnamese targets just north of the DMZ, followed by Operation Rolling Thunder, which commenced on March 2, striking North Vietnam’s heartland and the Ho Chi Minh Trail. On March 8, the U.S. ground campaign in Vietnam was changed from “Advisory” to “Defense.”
Disturbed by the trajectory of events in Vietnam less than a week after the bombing campaign began, Johnson decided to again raise the stakes by dispatching 3,500 U.S. Marines to protect U.S. air bases in Vietnam. Two more Marine battalions were sent in early April. Soon they were patrolling the countryside, engaging the Viet Cong and North Vietnam Army (NVA) regulars.
South Vietnamese control in Saigon and the Central Highlands was shaky in the summer and fall of 1965, prompting General William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam from 1964 to 1968, to deploy U.S. troops to trouble spots. Generals Nguyen Cao Ky and Ngo Van Thieu had come to power in Saigon, somewhat stabilizing the government, but the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) had just suffered two major defeats at the hands of the Viet Cong in open, conventional warfare. With increasing Viet Cong activity around Saigon, riots in the northern coastal cities and a revolt by Montagnard tribesmen against their Vietnamese commanders in the Central Highlands, morale dropped and desertions increased in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam.
Hoping to turn the tide, General Westmoreland made a watershed recommendation: U.S. forces would assume primary responsibility for combat operations against the Viet Cong. They would engage guerrilla forces, wearing them down and driving them from populated areas. If necessary, a second phase would destroy the enemy in remote areas as well. President Johnson approved the strategy. On July 28, 1965, he committed a further 50,000 U.S. troops to the conflict. By the end of 1965, 180,000 U.S. troops had been sent, as well as one Republic of Korea (ROK) division and an Australian-New Zealand (ANZ) task force. In 1966, the number of U.S. troops doubled.
Johnson’s advisers believed it necessary to help Saigon buy time but failed to appreciate that U.S. forces could only do so by putting North Vietnam under unbearable pressure and that such pressure could not be generated if ground operations were limited to South Vietnam. American political capital, public patience and eventually the Johnson administration itself were among the casualties of those flawed assumptions.
Tying highly mobile U.S. units to specific areas of South Vietnam ceded initiative to the enemy and increased the number of U.S. troops needed to make a difference. American force dissipation gave the Communists—with intimate knowledge of the terrain—opportunities to attack where and when they perceived an advantage. Additionally, U.S. forces were necessarily organized, trained and equipped for a multitude of missions around the globe, unable to concentrate solely on counterguerrilla warfare.
Spreading American and allied forces throughout South Vietnam in a defensive role squandered their strategic potential. If all three U.S. divisions (two Army and one Marine) sent to Vietnam in 1965 had been sent to South Vietnam’s northernmost provinces, they would have unhinged North Vietnam’s strategy. The effect would have been even greater if U.S. and ARVN marines had begun training together for a possible amphibious end run on North Vietnam’s long, exposed coastline. Combining the two deployed U.S. airborne brigades with their ARVN counterpart as a strategic reserve would also have raised North Vietnam’s concerns about possible airborne assaults on its territory. Joint invasion planning with the South Vietnamese, certain to leak, would have heightened Hanoi’s worries. To counter the threat of invasion, North Vietnam would have had to reinforce defenses all along its coast, along the DMZ and around the main passes into Laos, straining its resources. Given the mixed readiness of North Vietnamese divisions in 1965, the threat of invasion could also have induced Hanoi to recall its units from the South. The Central Highlands and Laos would have mattered less to North Vietnam if its own territory seemed at risk.
Hanoi could still have gambled by attacking the Central Highlands from eastern Cambodia to deflect U.S. forces from the DMZ, but its prospects for success seem small. Three South Vietnamese divisions (including a new one formed with battalions drawn from around the country), a ROK division, the ANZ task force and the combined airborne strategic reserve, backed by U.S. aviation, would have blocked North Vietnam’s path. Given the small NVA force in Cambodia at the time (around 17,000 men), the distance and rough terrain they would have had to cover from staging areas across the border, the difficulty of protecting themselves from air attacks as they encountered allied units and the likelihood of meeting ARVN and allied forces on the ground of their choosing would have dimmed the offensive’s prospects. An NVA defeat at the hands of a predominantly South Vietnamese force would have done more to bolster ARVN morale in 1965 than sending a U.S. division to the highlands.
An attack on Saigon like the 1968 Tet Offensive was also unlikely that early in the war. Although the VC were superb guerrilla fighters, they were not yet organized, trained or equipped for a general offensive in which closely coordinated, corps-scale conventional operations would have been necessary. At the time, no NVA combat units were that far south, and North Vietnam could not have sent any units there if U.S. forces had been concentrated near the DMZ, poised to attack northward.
Forced to deal with the possibility of an invasion, North Vietnam could have done little more than curse its predicament. If the United States had then focused on strengthening South Vietnam’s government and armed forces, rather than sending more American combat troops to Vietnam in 1966, it would certainly have shored up South Vietnam’s self-confidence. That approach might have saved many lives and much treasure.
General Creighton Abrams, Westmoreland’s successor, disagreed with Westmoreland’s strategy of fighting the war throughout the South. He believed the United States hurt the ARVN by carrying too much of the war effort. According to Wiest’s Rolling Thunder in a Gentle Land, General Hoang Minh Thao, who commanded North Vietnamese troops in the Central Highlands, agrees: “Concentrating a few U.S. divisions near the DMZ and equipping ARVN with new American weapons would have been a more effective use of U.S. resources.” South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu expected the United States would adopt such a strategy, but his views were not solicited in Washington.
How a campaign of “injecting new life into the ARVN” might have worked is worthy of discussion because it has bearing on the war’s course. In 1965 plans were under way to expand the ARVN airborne and marine brigades to divisions. They were South Vietnam’s best and, if supplied with new American radios, lighter weapons, and the then-new M102 howitzers, each could have stood toe-to-toe with an NVA division, as they later did.
Similarly, it would have made sense to reorganize and strengthen South Vietnamese armored and ranger forces, which were spread across the country. If consolidated, they could have formed two well-equipped light armored divisions, an airmobile ranger division and an airmobile ranger brigade in each corps. Then, paired with U.S. counterparts, the ARVN might more readily have seen itself as a partner in threatening the North and waging counterguerrilla operations in South Vietnam. Had that succeeded, it would have been unnecessary to send another eight U.S. division equivalents between 1966 and 1968. The rotation base in the United States could then have remained sufficiently robust to sustain the flow of qualified advisers to ARVN units.
And while American and South Vietnamese forces instead tried in vain to defend everything everywhere, the North’s units exploited opportunities to fight on their terms. Their consequent resilience made every battle inconclusive. By the time their sanctuaries were invaded in Cambodia 1970 and Laos in 1971, it was too late. American troops were already beginning to withdraw and there was no political capital left to spend.
By misreading the signals emanating from Asia in 1964, the Johnson administration missed the opportunity to apply pressure on North Vietnam that it could not handle—the threat of an invasion of its own territory or southern Laos. Instead, a course was set that would have no such effect, enabling North Vietnam to continue raising the cost in U.S. lives, treasure and patience. A plate bearing the adage “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” belongs on the desk of every member of the national security establishment.
Karl Lowe served two tours in Vietnam as an infantry officer and later served as chief of the Joint Staff’s Strategy Division and special assistant for strategy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. This article was inspired by a conference on hybrid warfare at Ohio State University’s Mershon Center of International Security Studies. Portions are included in Hybrid Warfare (Cambridge University Press, 2012) edited by Dr. Williamson Murray, professor emeritus, The Ohio State University, and Dr. Peter Mansoor, director of the Mershon Center.
Originally published in the April 2014 issue of Vietnam. To subscribe, click here.
