Westmoreland’s extremely strong belief that North Vietnam intended to seize parts of I Corps is well-documented. His longtime intelligence chief, Lt. Gen. Phillip Davidson, commented in his postwar book Vietnam at War that the fear that the VC/NVA would take over a part of South Vietnam and establish a government was a long-standing obsession of General Westmoreland’s. After observing the enemy’s situation in early 1966, Westmoreland concluded that the North Vietnamese intended to open a new front in northern I Corps and hoped to seize and hold the northern areas as a base for a so-called ‘liberation regime’ that could be parlayed into a winning compromise in future talks. Westmoreland guessed correctly. During the Tet Offensive at Hue in 1968, the Communists formed a revolutionary government called the New Alliance for National Democratic and Peace Forces. In a postwar interview, retired Brig. Gen. Richard S. Sweet confirmed the Communists’ intent in I Corps. He said that during Tet his unit, the 2nd Battalion, 12th Cavalry, captured a large group outside Hue that turned out to be the provisional government supposed to govern that area of Vietnam once it was captured by the Communists.

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In February 1966, still leery of enemy intent, Westmoreland said to President Johnson at the Honolulu conference, ‘If I were Giap I would take Hue.’ When the A Shau Valley Special Forces camp was captured in March, it appeared that perhaps his prediction would come true. Westmoreland believed that the capture of the Special Forces camp was a clue to the enemy’s future plans. The general always viewed enemy actions in light of how they aided the Communist goal of seizing the northern provinces. To forestall an invasion, MACV launched Operation Hastings south of the DMZ in July 1966. By the end of 1966, the Communists had increased their maneuver battalions (infantry, armor and artillery) in I Corps from 26 to 45, most of which were NVA units. To defend I Corps, Westmoreland shifted more units into the area. By mid-1967, the allied forces outnumbered the NVA/VC units 86 to 54. But only two of these maneuver battalions were stationed at Khe Sanh, since it was just one of the strongpoints south of the DMZ.

While Westmoreland was pondering the invasion of Laos in early 1966, the Hanoi leadership determined that its strategy of protracted warfare using mostly irregular units had been stalemated on the battlefield. This led to a fundamental strategy change. As Don Oberdorfer says in Tet!: The Turning Point in the Vietnam War, dur-ing the First Indochina War the Lao Dong Party had brilliantly coordinated military and diplomatic strategy to convince the French it would be madness to continue their struggle. The North Vietnamese leaders in 1966 believed it was necessary to move into a similar phase of simultaneous negotiating and fighting.

In April 1966 NVA General Nguyen Van Vinh explained to members of the Central Office of South Vietnam (COSVN) at a secret meeting that the situation had changed. The first stage of the war, the fighting stage, during which the Americans had the advantage, was in progress. Then, he said, during the fighting-while-negotiating stage and ‘the stage where negotiations are made and treaties are signed,’ the Communists would have the advantage over the Americans, who were unskilled at diplomatic and political warfare. The operation was called the ‘General Offensive/General Uprising’ and included plans to launch an offensive against South Vietnamese cities and then get the citizens to join the Northern Communists in an uprising.

The general explained: ‘Fighting continues until the emergence of a situation where both sides are fighting indecisively. Then a situation where fighting and negotiations are conducted simultaneously may emerge.’ The Communist leaders in Hanoi officially determined that the next phase would begin. This decision was passed on to the National Liberation Front.

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