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Losing Vietnam: How America Abandoned Southeast Asia

by Ira A. Hunt Jr., University Press of Kentucky, 2013

Almost 40 years after the April 1975 fall of Saigon the debate continues. On one side the prevailing argument says the struggle in Southeast Asia was a lost cause right from the start: the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. And whatever chance there was to defeat the Communists was thrown away by the South Vietnamese and the Cambodians themselves, the result of their corrupt institutions and failure to make the necessary strategic corrections after the withdrawal of American ground forces. According to the minority argument, supported by some historians and military professionals and many veterans, South Vietnam could have survived with the levels of American logistics and air support it had been promised. The failure of North Vietnam’s 1972 Easter Offensive seems to support this thesis. But by 1975 a fickle and dishonorable U.S. Congress had pulled the plug on the Republic of Vietnam.

The latest contribution to this debate is Losing Vietnam: How America Abandoned Southeast Asia, by retired Maj. Gen. Ira A. Hunt Jr. Hunt’s book is a forceful refutation of the argument that there was nothing America could have done to save South Vietnam. He writes from a position of authority and personal experience. As a colonel in 1968 and 1969, he was a brigade commander and chief of staff of the 9th Infantry Division. From 1973 to 1975 Hunt was the deputy commanding general of the U.S. Support Activity Group (USSAG) in Nakhon Phanom, Thailand, the headquarters overseeing U.S. support for the wars in Cambodia and South Vietnam. During his time in uniform, Hunt was one of the military’s leading proponents of using the mathematical tools of operations research and systems analysis to evaluate military effectiveness and provide the basis for decisions on future operations.

As deputy commander of USSAG, he saw the operational reports, intelligence summaries and signals intercepts in Southeast Asia. He also conferred regularly with the senior military leaders of South Vietnam and Cambodia. He thus had a direct and unparalleled personal knowledge of what was really happening in the wars in Southeast Asia.

Initially the U.S. government honored its support commitments to South Vietnam and Cambodia, but within only a few years funding decreased drastically. Meanwhile, South Vietnam and Cambodia continued to face exceptionally well-supplied enemies on the battlefield. In late 1973 Hunt concluded, based on the data, that as long as South Vietnam, and especially the Republic of Vietnam Air Force (RVNAF), remained on the offensive against Communist forces operating in their country, they were generally effective. But that changed in July 1974 when Congress severely cut funding for support of South Vietnam. The RVNAF was forced to reduce flying hours to conserve fuel and ammunition and eventually fell back on the defensive. Communist forces then went on the offensive again, much as they had in 1972, but this time they defeated South Vietnam in less than a year.

This book is a trove of never before published charts, tables, maps and hard data, collected from the battlefields. All of that information supports Hunt’s concluding argument: “The lesson to be learned concerning the defeats of South Vietnam and Cambodia is that U.S. military aid to embattled nations must be matched by our country’s political strength and popular support to ensure a positive outcome. Lacking this resolve, military assistance will inevitably be withdrawn, thus abandoning the embattled nations to their fates.”

Carl von Clausewitz wrote much the same thing almost 200 years ago, and Hunt’s assessment has great resonance for what most probably will be the fates of Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

Originally published in the June 2014 issue of Vietnam. To subscribe, click here.