Reassessing the Marine Corps’ Approach to Strategy in the Vietnam War, 1965–1968

2014 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-52
Author(s):  
Nicholas J. Schlosser
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Marine Corps ◽  
Successful Outcome ◽  
Johnson Administration ◽  
Strategic Options ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
North Vietnam ◽  
Hearts And Minds ◽  
Search And Destroy

Scholars of the Vietnam War contend that the U.S. had two distinct strategic options for fighting the war: attrition and pacification. While the overall American commander, General William Westmoreland, embraced attrition through search-and-destroy, the Marine Corps favored pacification. Critics of Westmoreland have contended that pacification, which entailed protecting the South Vietnamese and winning over their hearts-and-minds, was a better approach that could have brought about a successful outcome to the war. The recent declassification of Marine Corps records requires us to reappraise what pacification actually involved however. These records demonstrate that the Marine Corps believed a successful pacification strategy in Vietnam demanded a substantial expansion of the war into North Vietnam and bordering states and a multi-decade commitment of U.S. forces to Southeast Asia. Ultimately, the Marine Corps approach did not differ substantially from Westmoreland’s and was no more likely a means of achieving victory within the limitations stipulated by the Johnson Administration.

A Testament to a Dying Vision of America

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 285-295
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Musiał
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
History Of ◽  
National League ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
North Vietnam ◽  
The U.S

This article is a review of The League of Wives: The Untold Story of the Women Who Took on the U.S. Government to Bring Their Husbands Home (2019) by Heath Hardage Lee. The book presents a popular history of the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia, an organisation that advocated for the rights of American prisoners of war captured by North Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

The Vietnam War, 1965–1973

2019 ◽  
pp. 17-63
Author(s):  
James H. Lebovic
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Johnson Administration ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
Henry Kissinger ◽  
Air War ◽  
Richard Nixon ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
North Vietnam

The Vietnam War followed a biased decisional pattern. The Johnson administration, with Robert McNamara as secretary of defense, committed early to a military solution. It extended the US mission to include a full-blown air war (Rolling Thunder) that was true to neither a political nor a military strategy, and the administration fought a full-blown ground war without concern for the war’s critical political dimension. Then, when reaching its limit, the administration sought mainly to manage the US mission’s costs, despite the apparent success of a pacification strategy. Finally, when victory proved elusive, Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, escalated the war by invading Cambodia, supporting the invasion of Laos, and initiating the Linebacker bombing campaigns over North Vietnam. They nonetheless prioritized an exit from the conflict, as registered in the terms of the 1973 Paris Peace Accord.

scholarly journals ‘Only Religions Count in Vietnam’: Thich Tri Quang and the Vietnam War

2008 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 751-782 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES McALLISTER
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Religious Leader ◽  
Johnson Administration ◽  
American Military ◽  
Military Regimes ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
The Right ◽  
North Vietnam ◽  
The Military

AbstractThich Tri Quang has long been one of the most controversial actors in the history of the Vietnam War. Scholars on the right have argued that Tri Quang was in all likelihood a communist agent operating at the behest of Hanoi. Scholars on the left have argued that Tri Quang was a peaceful religious leader devoted to democracy and a rapid end to the war. This article argues that neither of these interpretations is persuasive. As American officials rightly concluded throughout the war, there was no compelling evidence to suggest that Tri Quang was a communist agent or in any way sympathetic to the goals of Hanoi or the NLF. Drawing on the extensive archival evidence of Tri Quang's conversations with American officials, it is apparent that Tri Quang was in fact strongly anti-communist and quite receptive to the use of American military power against North Vietnam and China. The main factor that led to conflict between the Buddhist movement and the Johnson administration was Tri Quang's insistence that the military regimes that followed Ngo Dinh Diem were hostile to Buddhism and incapable of leading the struggle against Communism to a successful conclusion.

scholarly journals Overburdening: Two books on the British politics towards Southeast Asia from 1943 to 1965

2012 ◽  
Vol 168 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-117
Author(s):  
Jaap Anten
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
British Politics ◽  
British Policy ◽  
The Vietnam War

Review of: Peter Lowe, Contending with nationalism and communism; British policy towards Southeast Asia, 1945-65. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, xii + 312 pp. [Global conflict and security since 1945.] ISBN 9780230524873. Price: GBP 60.00 (hardback). T.O. Smith, Britain and the origin of the Vietnam War; UK policy in Indo-China, 1943-50. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, xiii + 229 pp. [Global contlict and security since 1945.] ISBN 9780230507050. Price: GBP 60.00 (hardback)

10. The Vietnam War

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W. Young ◽  
John Kent
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Basic Principle ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
North Vietnam ◽  
Tet Offensive

This chapter focuses on the United States’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Lyndon B. Johnson inherited the Vietnam conflict in difficult circumstances. He had not been elected president in his own right and so, perhaps, believed that he should carry on with John F. Kennedy’s policies. It was unclear what exactly Kennedy would have done in Vietnam, but Johnson retained his predecessor’s foreign policy team and did not question the basic principle of America’s foreign policy, which called for communism to be resisted. The chapter first considers the escalation of US involvement in Vietnam during the period 1963–1965 before discussing the conflict between the US and North Vietnam in the succeeding years, along with the Tet offensive and its implications. It concludes with an assessment of Richard Nixon’s decision to restart large-scale US bombing of North Vietnam.

Breaker of Armies: Air Power in the Easter Offensive and the Myth of Linebacker I and II in the Vietnam War

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 139-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phil Haun ◽  
Colin Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Control System ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Air Power ◽  
The North ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
North Vietnam ◽  
Air Control

Most traditional accounts identify the Linebacker I and Linebacker II campaigns as the most effective and consequential uses of U.S. air power in the Vietnam War. They argue that deep interdiction in North Vietnam played a central role in the defeat of the Easter Offensive and that subsequent strategic attacks on Hanoi forced the North Vietnamese to accept the Paris accords. These conclusions are false. The Linebacker campaigns were rather ineffective in either stopping the Communist offensive or compelling concessions. The most effective and consequential use of U.S. air power came in the form of close air support and battlefield air interdiction directly attacking the North Vietnamese Army in South Vietnam. The success of these air strikes hinged on the presence of a U.S.-operated tactical air control system that incorporated small numbers of ground advisers, air liaison officers, and forward air controllers. This system, combined with abundant U.S. aircraft and a reasonably effective allied army, was the key to breaking the Easter Offensive and compelling Hanoi to agree to the Paris accords. The effectiveness of close air support and battlefield air interdiction and the failure of deep interdiction and strategic attack in the Vietnam War have important implications for the use of air power and advisers in contemporary conflicts in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.

The Vietnam War and American Military Strategy, 1965–1973

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory A. Daddis
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Power ◽  
Military Strategy ◽  
True Nature ◽  
American Military ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
The Cold War

For nearly a decade, American combat soldiers fought in South Vietnam to help sustain an independent, noncommunist nation in Southeast Asia. After U.S. troops departed in 1973, the collapse of South Vietnam in 1975 prompted a lasting search to explain the United States’ first lost war. Historians of the conflict and participants alike have since critiqued the ways in which civilian policymakers and uniformed leaders applied—some argued misapplied—military power that led to such an undesirable political outcome. While some claimed U.S. politicians failed to commit their nation’s full military might to a limited war, others contended that most officers fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the war they were fighting. Still others argued “winning” was essentially impossible given the true nature of a struggle over Vietnamese national identity in the postcolonial era. On their own, none of these arguments fully satisfy. Contemporary policymakers clearly understood the difficulties of waging a war in Southeast Asia against an enemy committed to national liberation. Yet the faith of these Americans in their power to resolve deep-seated local and regional sociopolitical problems eclipsed the possibility there might be limits to that power. By asking military strategists to simultaneously fight a war and build a nation, senior U.S. policymakers had asked too much of those crafting military strategy to deliver on overly ambitious political objectives. In the end, the Vietnam War exposed the limits of what American military power could achieve in the Cold War era.

scholarly journals LBJ, LBJ, How Many Kids Did You Ignore Today?

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-143
Author(s):  
Rory Fidler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Military ◽  
Johnson Administration ◽  
American System ◽  
Actual Effectiveness ◽  
The Government ◽  
North Vietnam

The actual effectiveness of the American anti-war movement from 1964-68 and its attempts to sway the policy of President Johnson's administration on the topic of the Vietnam War is debatable. While popular myth has exaggerated the role of protestors in stopping the war, the movement failed to alter state policy on the war in any serious fashion. The anti-war movement could not develop a universal policy of their aims, differing from a gradual exit from Vietnam to a complete anarchist overthrow of the American system, and as such were unable to lobby the government effectively. Within the war itself, however, the Johnson administration and the United States Military encountered a stronger stimulus to reconsider their involvement: the inability to adapt to a guerilla war, the immense man power and resources required to ensure victory, and ultimately the communist Tet offensive of 1968 pushing American forces back. When President Johnson did seek to negotiate with North Vietnam at the end of his term, it was because America had simply failed to beat the Vietcong.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document