The Vietnam War, reconsidered

Forty-one years after the Vietnam War ended, we are still troubled by what some call the only U.S. military defeat in history in a war described as “unwinnable.” Since then, suggestions of U.S. military intervention anywhere have evoked cries of “no more Vietnams.” 

Unfortunately, we have failed to view this war from a historical perspective, which has clouded our perception of what actually resulted from it. In the 1930s, we somewhat tolerated Japan’s rampaging all though China. However, when Japan invaded what is now Vietnam (then part of French Indochina) in 1940, we correctly saw this as a threat to Southeast Asia, especially to the resource-rich Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), and took the strong measure of promoting a boycott of critical oil, scrap iron and rubber deliveries to Japan. Realizing a now-hostile United States would probably attempt to block its planned invasion of Southeast Asia, Japan sought to disable our fleet at Pearl Harbor as a preventive measure. It then used its newfound base to conquer most of Southeast Asia. 

President Dwight D. Eisenhower must surely have had this in mind when he was asked at a 1954 press conference about the strategic importance of Indochina (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia) for the free world. He described the “falling domino” principle, whereby the start of disintegration there could lead to “the loss of Indochina, of Burma, of Thailand, of the (Malay) Peninsula and Indonesia.” He added that Japan, Formosa (Taiwan), the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand “would also be threatened.” 

Eisenhower’s domino theory was pooh-poohed by a number of people at home, but given the perilous, unstable conditions in Southeast Asia, it was taken seriously by leaders there as well as in Australia and India – and by leaders in Hanoi and (then) Peking. China’s famed Marshal Lin Piao said in September 1965 that the defeat of “U.S. imperialism” in Vietnam would show the people of the world “that what the Vietnamese people can do, they can do, too.”  

Our introduction of two U.S. Marine battalions in March 1965 had a bracing effect in Southeast Asia. Later, Indonesian leaders Suharto and Adam Malik – not great friends of the United States – told U.S. officials that bringing combat troops into Vietnam emboldened them to resist the Oct. 1, 1965, communist coup supported by China, which came close to succeeding. (The two later told columnist Robert Novak the same thing.) Had the coup succeeded, the Philippines would have soon been threatened, which could well have triggered our intervention under a 1954 treaty. Then we would have faced a far more threatening adversary than in Vietnam. 

This bracing effect also encouraged the British defense of Malaysia against a communist invasion from Indonesia. By the end of the Vietnam War, the victorious communist side – with over 2 million dead – was too weakened to pose a threat to any country save nearby Laos and Cambodia. The war also bought precious time to enable the countries of Southeast Asia to strengthen their positions.  

What is generally overlooked is that we basically got into Vietnam to prevent the toppling of dominoes in Southeast Asia – and we succeeded. One could say this was a strategic victory while the loss in Vietnam was a tactical defeat. But just as misunderstood is how the war was lost – indeed, unnecessarily lost.

Critics of the Vietnam War had long insisted that the war was, in any case, unwinnable and should never have been fought. After “Vietnamization” removed all U.S. combat troops from Vietnam, Hanoi launched its Easter Offensive on March 30, 1972. This was the largest conventional attack of the war, with the equivalent of 23 divisions equipped with hundreds of Soviet tanks, long-range artillery, rockets and surface-to-air missiles. The brunt of the fighting fell on the South Vietnamese ground forces with massive U.S. air support as well as naval and logistical support. The only U.S. ground forces left were advisers and forward air controllers. South Vietnamese forces eventually moved from the defensive to counter-offensives and by mid-September were clearly winning. 

On Sept. 15, 1972, South Vietnamese marines retook Quang Tri, the only provincial capital captured during the offensive. Only 20 miles from North Vietnam, it was the strongest position of the communist forces. If they couldn’t hold Quang Tri, they couldn’t hold anything else, and they were losing. The communist forces had already lost about 100,000 in action, nearly twice as many as U.S. losses in the entire war. 

Sometime after Hanoi’s final victory in 1975, Gen. Tran Van Tra, a former top commander in the South, stated in the Communist Party organ Nhan Dan that, by late 1972, his troops were on the verge of defeat. Had the war continued some months further, the South with continued U.S. support could have emerged victorious by evicting all enemy forces from Vietnam. Indeed, in his 1984 book “Lost Victory,” former CIA Director William Colby claims that on the ground in South Vietnam “the war had been won.”

Faced with certain defeat, Hanoi saved the day by offering substantial concessions sought by Henry Kissinger in previous negotiations. With the best of intentions, Kissinger – who was devoted to negotiations – took this bait. The resulting process brought South Vietnamese military operations to a halt, thus snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. We then dragooned our Vietnamese allies into accepting the ill-conceived 1973 Paris Peace Accords, of which one of the most pernicious features was a “cease-fire in place” that left substantial communist troops in South Vietnam. John Negroponte, director of the National Security Council’s Indochina staff and a midlevel Foreign Service officer, courageously went mano a mano with Kissinger over this, but to no avail. (I raised my objections in memos to Kissinger. Negroponte left, going on to a brilliant career.) 

By the time the peace accords were signed on Jan. 27, 1973, I had become director of the National Security Council’s Indochina staff – the most senior U.S. official who dealt exclusively with Vietnam (and Laos and Cambodia). The accords were soon massively violated by the communist side and somewhat by our Vietnamese allies. For example, the primitive Ho Chi Minh Trail supporting communist forces in the South was converted to a superhighway. 

Once our troops and released prisoners of war had left the country, Washington largely lost interest in Vietnam. I had a very difficult time getting military equipment and supplies for our Vietnamese allies. Then Congress reduced military aid from $2.8 billion in fiscal 1973 to $700 million for fiscal 1975. 

Post-victory, North Vietnamese Chief of Staff Gen. Van Tien Dung wrote, “The decrease in American aid made it impossible for Saigon troops to carry out their combat and force development plans ... Enemy firepower had been reduced by nearly 60 percent ... its mobility was reduced by half.” 

The blow that sealed South Vietnam’s fate was the Case-Church Amendment, approved by Congress in June 1973. In effect, the legislation banned all U.S. military operations in Indochina. The South Vietnamese then, inter alia, permanently lost the U.S. air support upon which it had depended in combat. And we lost the ability to enforce the peace accords through military action. 

Finally, after three years of recovering from its losses and well supported by its loyal allies the Soviet Union and China, Hanoi launched the campaign that resulted in victory on April 30, 1975. 

William Stearman is a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer and the author of “An American Adventure: From Early Aviation Through Three Wars to the White House.” He served on the White House National Security Council staff under four presidents, and served in Vietnam from December 1965 to September 1967.