Vietnamization
Vietnamization | |||||||
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Part of Vietnam War | |||||||
President Richard Nixon shaking hands with armed forces in South Vietnam, July 30, 1969 | |||||||
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Vietnamization was a policy of the
At a January 28, 1969, meeting of the National Security Council, General Andrew Goodpaster, deputy to General Creighton Abrams and commander of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, stated that the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) had been steadily improving, and the point at which the war could be "de-Americanized" was close. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird agreed with the point, but not with the language: "What we need is a term like 'Vietnamizing' to put the emphasis on the right issues." Nixon immediately liked Laird's word.[2]
Vietnamization fit into the broader
Nixon said Vietnamization had two components. The first was "strengthening the armed force of the South Vietnamese in numbers, equipment, leadership and combat skills", while the second was "the extension of the pacification program [i.e. military aid to civilians] in South Vietnam". To achieve the first goal, U.S. helicopters would fly in support; however, helicopter operations were too much part of ground operations to involve U.S. personnel.[clarification needed] Thus, ARVN candidates were enrolled in U.S. helicopter schools to take over the operations. As observed by Lieutenant General Dave Palmer, to qualify an ARVN candidate for U.S. helicopter school, he first needed to learn English; this, in addition to the months-long training and practice in the field, made adding new capabilities to the ARVN take at least two years.[4] Palmer did not disagree that the first component, given time and resources, was achievable. However: "Pacification, the second component, presented the real challenge ... it was benevolent government action in areas where the government should always have been benevolently active ... doing both was necessary if Vietnamization were to work."
The policy of Vietnamization, despite its successful execution, was ultimately a failure as the improved ARVN forces and the reduced American and allied component were unable to prevent the fall of Saigon and the subsequent merger of the north and south, to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
Precedent: French jaunissement in Indochina War
From 1950, after several years of the First Indochina War, French commanders adopted a policy they called "yellowing" (jaunissement), expressly to minimize white casualties. This change, at the time, was mostly due to a deficit of troops in the FTEO, the Far-East segment of the French army. Vietnamese soldiers were progressively integrated in battalions.[5] U.S. critics of the war compared Vietnamization to jaunissement.[6]
Preparation under Johnson
After discussing the matter with Assistant Secretary of State William Bundy and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, a message was sent. Ho said he would be willing to negotiate if the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam under Operation Rolling Thunder ceased. Mai Van Bo, Hanoi's diplomatic representative in Paris, was named a point of contact. Since Hanoi would not communicate with an American official without a bombing halt, Kissinger served as an intermediary. Johnson made a speech in San Antonio on September 29, offering the possibility of talks. They were rejected, although brought up again in 1967.[7]
End of Americanization
The departure of
Nixon Administration analysis of options
Under the
According to a record, prepared by Soviet Ambassador to the United States
- discussion of military issues between the U.S. and the DRV
- resolution of political issues by placing them, "for all practical purposes, entirely in the hands of Saigon, which does not want to resolve them and is unable to do so, since it is unable to soberly assess the situation and the alignment of forces in South Vietnam".[11]
Dobrynin, however, misunderstood the extent to which the U.S. was willing to apply military force not involving ground troops, culminating in Operation Linebacker II.[3]
The domestic aspect
The process of Vietnamization was partly influenced by Nixon’s delicate political position on a domestic level. He had been elected with 43.4% of the votes, and Laird was concerned with his support at home. Indeed, he could sense the impatience of the American public regarding the war.[10] Nixon himself believed American casualties reduced the support for the war. For members of his administration, a campaign of attrition was useless against an Asian power, because they were able to tolerate a greater number of casualties compared to a Western power.[12]
On the left, Senator Fulbright, chairman of the Foreign Relations committee, feared Vietnamization would not be enough to reduce the numbers of casualties:
My fear is that the current policy will keep the US bogged down in Vietnam – with the killing and cost continuing indefinitely.[13]
Nixon policy direction
Nixon directed the Joint Chiefs of Staff to prepare a six-step withdrawal plan. The Commandant of the Marine Corps General Leonard F. Chapman Jr. remembered, "I felt, and I think that most Marines felt, that the time had come to get out of Vietnam." Leading the ground force withdrawals, Marine redeployments started in mid-1969, and by the end of the year the entire 3rd Marine Division had departed.[14]
In the aftermath of the Tet Offensive, ARVN units were able to take control of areas held by the
We suffered large sacrifices and losses with regard to manpower and materiel, especially cadres at the various echelons, which clearly weakened us. Afterwards, we were not only unable to retain the gains we had made but had to overcome a myriad of difficulties in 1969 and 1970.[15]
Some ARVN units, especially that had been operating closely with U.S. troops or using facilities, could quickly move into a dominant role in their areas.
Other ARVN units faced more of a challenge. For example, the ARVN 5th Division was directed to move from its existing base camp, Phu Cuong, to that of the U.S.
Joint operations against Cambodia
This section needs additional citations for verification. (November 2013) |
In 1969, Nixon ordered
Cambodian change of government
Much of North Vietnamese infiltration went through Cambodia. Nixon authorized unacknowledged bombing in Cambodia while U.S. ground troops were in South Vietnam. General Lon Nol had overthrown Prince Norodom Sihanouk in March 1970, who had presented himself as a neutralist while aware of the PAVN use of his country.
In June 1969, the Viet Cong and its allied organizations formed the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam (PRG), recognized by Hanoi as the legal government of South Vietnam. At that time, communist losses dating from the Tet Offensive numbered 75,000, and morale was faltering, even among the party leadership.
Joint ground operations
On April 30, 1970, responding to a Communist attempt to take Cambodia, Nixon announced a large scale U.S.–ARVN
The campaign began on May 1. The U.S. Task Force Shoemaker, of the
The incursion prevented the immediate takeover of Cambodia by Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge, and cost the PAVN the supply line from the port of Sihanoukville. The Khmer Rouge broke with its North Vietnamese sponsors, and aligned with China. This made American involvement visible to the U.S. population, and there were intense protests, including deaths in a confrontation between rock-throwing protesters and National Guardsmen at Kent State University.
Intelligence and security
The U.S. intelligence collection systems, a significant amount of which (especially the techniques) were not shared with the ARVN, and, while not fully declassified, examples have been mentioned earlier in this article. The Communist side's intelligence operations, beyond the spies that were discovered, are much less known.
While there had been many assumptions that the South Vietnamese government was penetrated by many spies, and there indeed were many, a December 1969 capture of a Viet Cong
Some of the material from Touchdown also gave insight into the North Vietnamese intelligence system. For example, the NVA equivalent of the Defense Intelligence Agency was the Central Research Directorate (CRD) in Hanoi. COSVN intelligence staff, however, disseminated the tactically useful material.[24] Their espionage was under the control of the Military Intelligence Sections (MIS), which were directed by the Strategic Intelligence Section (SIS) of CRD.
U.S. direct discussions with North Vietnam
Henry Kissinger began secret talks with the North Vietnamese official, Lê Đức Thọ, in February 1970. However, this is credible.[25]
1971
Subsequent congressional action banned further U.S. ground intervention outside the boundaries of South Vietnam, so the next major drive, Operation Lam Son 719, would have to be based on ARVN ground forces, U.S. air and artillery support, and U.S. advisory and logistical assistance.
The Vietnamization policy achieved limited rollback of Communist gains inside South Vietnam only, and was primarily aimed at providing the arms, training and funding for the South to fight and win its own war, if it had the courage and commitment to do so. By 1971, the Communists lost control of most, but not all, of the areas they had controlled in the South in 1967. The Communists still controlled many remote jungle and mountain districts, especially areas that protected the
Commanded by
Thieu relieved the operational commander, head of
The 25,000-man ARVN force, which U.S. planners had considered half the necessary size,[27] took admitted 25% casualties, which some estimates put as high as 50%.[28]
1972
By the beginning of 1972, over 400,000 U.S. personnel had been withdrawn, most of whom were combat troops. Politically, this allowed Nixon to negotiate with China and the Soviet Union without suggesting that he was compromising U.S. soldiers in the field.[29]
North Vietnam made a
1973 and ceasefire
The Armed Forces of the Republic of Vietnam had some excellent ground combat units, but still had very serious problems of command, control, and communications at division level and above.
Many units had become overdependent on American air support, and, while the RVN Air Force had not developed large-scale interdiction capability, they were also of varied quality for close air support. Beyond the issue that the Air Force was always fragmented to the corps commanders, they also did not receive various expected equipment upgrades. Photoreconnaissance was extremely limited.[30]
Armored units had developed the greatest confidence in their ability to fight without U.S. air support. Ground commanders also learned that armored units were not for infantry support and static defenses, but needed to be used as mobile reserves.[31] Neither North nor South Vietnam, however, had really mastered large-scale combined arms methods, compared to a NATO or Warsaw Pact level of proficiency.
In a postwar interview with the RAND Corporation, Nguyễn Bá Cẩn said: "Vietnamese officials called Vietnamization the U.S. Dollar and Vietnam Blood Sharing Plan."[32]
See also
- Afghanization - Similar program to equip and train the Afghan Armed Forces.
- Chechenization
Notes
- ^ United States Department of Defense, "Melvin R. Laird", Secretaries of Defense
- ^ Kissinger 2003, pp. 81–82.
- ^ a b Burr, William, ed. (November 2, 2007), Kissinger conspired with Soviet Ambassador to keep Secretary of State in the Dark, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book, vol. 233, George Washington University
- ISBN 9780891410416
- – via Cairn.
- ^ Eugene McCarthy, "The Failure of Vietnamization by Any Name", The New York Times, 1 August 1970. Retrieved on 24 August 2019.
- ^ Kissinger 2003, pp. 41–42.
- ^ Lyndon B. Johnson (March 31, 1968), President Lyndon B. Johnson's Address to the Nation Announcing Steps To Limit the War in Vietnam and Reporting His Decision Not To Seek Reelection, archived from the original on June 16, 2002
- ISBN 9780871130631
- ^ S2CID 145416692.
- ^ Burr, William, ed. (November 2, 2007), "Document 8: Their First "One-on-One": Dobrynin's record of meeting with Kissinger, 21 February 1969, pp. 20-25 of Soviet-American Relations: the Détente Years, 1969-1972", Kissinger conspired with Soviet Ambassador to keep Secretary of State in the Dark, vol. George Washington University National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 233
- S2CID 144319457.
- ProQuest 185382883. Retrieved 9 May 2023.
- ^ Shumlimson, Jack, "The Marine War: III MAF in Vietnam, 1965-1971", 1996 Vietnam Symposium: "After the Cold War: Reassessing Vietnam" 18–20 April 1996, Vietnam Center and Archive at Texas Tech University, archived from the original on August 21, 2006
- Tran Van Tra (2 February 1983), Vietnam: History of the Bulwark B2 Theater (PDF), FBIS Southeast Asia Report, vol. 5: Concluding the 30 Years of War, Joint Publications Research Service, Foreign Broadcast Information Service, online by U.S. Army Combat Studies Institute
- ^ Nguyen Van Tin (April 12, 2002), "Why Did Vietnamization of The Vietnam War Fail?", Fourth Triennial Symposium, Vietnam Center, Texas Tech University, archived from the original on July 1, 2004, retrieved April 7, 2010
- ^ Smith, Russell H. (September–October 1971), "The Presidential Decision on the Cambodian Operation: A Case Study in Crisis Management", Air University Review
- ^ Nixon, Richard M. (April 30, 1970), Address to the Nation on the Situation in Southeast Asia
- ^ Tolson 1973, Chapter XI: The Changing War and Cambodia, 1969–1970.
- ^ a b "The Death of a Fighting General", Time, March 8, 1971
- ^ Fulghum, David; Mailand, Terrence, "Two Fighting Generals: Generals Do Cao Tri and Nguyen Viet Thanh", South Vietnam on Trial – The Vietnam Experience, Boston Publishing Company, archived from the original on 2013-07-03, retrieved 2010-04-07
- ^ Fiedler, David (Spring 2003), "Project touchdown: how we paid the price for lack of communications security in Vietnam - A costly lesson", Army Communicator
- ^ Center for Cryptologic History 1993.
- ^ Center for Cryptologic History 1993, p. 64.
- ISBN 9780275956608, pp. 120-124
- ^ Karnow 1983, p. 630.
- ^ Karnow 1983, p. 628.
- ^ "The Invasion Ends", Time, April 5, 1971, archived from the original on January 5, 2013
- ^ Karnow 1983, p. 636.
- ^ Smith, Homer D. (30 May 1975), End of Tour Report (PDF)[permanent dead link], pp. 3-4, 8-11
- ^ Tolson 1973, pp. 218–219.
- ^ Hosmer, Stephen; Kellen, Konrad; Jenkins, Brian (1978). The Fall of South Vietnam: Statements by Vietnamese military and civilian leaders. RAND Corporation. p. 42.
References
- Center for Cryptologic History, National Security Agency (1993), PURPLE DRAGON: The Origin and Development of the United States OPSEC Program (PDF), vol. United States Cryptologic History, Series VI, The NSA Period, Volume 2[permanent dead link]
- Karnow, Stanley (1983), Vietnam: A History, Viking Press, ISBN 9780670746040
- ISBN 9780743215329
- Tolson, John J. (1973), Vietnam Studies: Airmobility 1961–1971 (PDF), LCCN 72-600371, archived from the original(PDF) on 2016-03-03, retrieved 2013-11-23