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Vietnam Escalation of the War
Hanoi's response to the fall of the Diem regime was a subject
of intense debate at the Ninth Plenum of the VWP Central
Committee held in December 1963. It appeared that the new
administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson (who assumed office
following the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22)
was not planning to withdraw from Vietnam but, rather, to
increase its support for the new Saigon government. The VWP
leadership concluded that only armed struggle would lead to
success and called for an escalation of the war. The critical
issues then became the reactions of the United States and the
Soviet Union. Hanoi clearly hoped that the United States would
opt for a compromise solution, as it had in Korea and Laos, and
the party leaders believed that a quick and forceful escalation
of the war would induce it to do so. Hanoi's decision to escalate
the struggle was made in spite of the risk of damage to its
relations with Moscow, which opposed the decision. The new policy
also became an issue in the developing rift between Beijing and
Moscow because China expressed its full support for the
Vietnamese war of national liberation. As a result, Moscow's aid
began to decrease as Beijing's grew.
Escalation of the war resulted in some immediate success for
the struggle in the South. By 1964 a liberated zone had been
established from the Central Highlands to the edge of the Mekong
Delta, giving the communists control over more than half the
total land area and about half the population of the South. PLAF
forces totaled between 30 and 40 battalions, including 35,000
guerrillas and 80,000 irregulars. Moreover, with the completion
of the so-called
Ho Chi Minh Trail (see Glossary) through Laos,
the number of PAVN troops infiltrated into the South began to
increase. ARVN control was limited mainly to the cities and
surrounding areas, and in 1964 and 1965 Saigon governments fell
repeatedly in a series of military and civilian coups.
The Johnson administration remained hesitant to raise the
American commitment to Vietnam. However, in August 1964,
following the reputed shelling of United States warships in the
Gulf of Tonkin off the North Vietnamese coast, Johnson approved
air strikes against North Vietnamese naval bases. At President
Johnson's urgent request, the United States Congress passed the
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave the president the power "to
take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the
forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression."
This tougher United States stance was matched in Moscow in
October when Leonid Brezhnev and Aleksey Kosygin took over
control of the government following the fall from power of Nikita
Khrushchev. The new Soviet government pledged increased military
support for Hanoi, and the NLF set up a permanent mission in
Moscow.
United States support for South Vietnam, which had begun as
an effort to defend Southeast Asia from the communist threat,
developed into a matter of preserving United States prestige. The
Johnson administration, nevertheless, was reluctant to commit
combat troops to Vietnam, although the number of United States
military advisers including their support and defense units had
reached 16,000 by July 1964. Instead, in February 1965 the United
States began a program of air strikes known as Operation Rolling
Thunder against military targets in North Vietnam. Despite the
bombing of the North, ARVN losses grew steadily, and the
political situation in Saigon became precarious as one unstable
government succeeded another. General William C. Westmoreland,
commander of MACV from June 1964 to March 1968 urged the use of
United States combat troops to stop the Communist advance, which
he predicted, could take over the country within a year. The
first two battalions of U.S. Marines (3,500 men) arrived in
Vietnam in March 1965 to protect the U.S. airbase at Da Nang. The
following month, Westmoreland convinced the administration to
commit sufficient combat troops to secure base areas and mount a
series of
search and destroy missions (see Glossary). By late
1965, the United States expeditionary force in South Vietnam
numbered 180,000, and the military situation had stabilized
somewhat. Infiltration from the north, however, had also
increased, although still chiefly by southerners who had gone
north in 1954 and received military training. PLAF strength was
estimated to be about 220,000, divided almost equally between
guerrillas and main force troops, the latter including units of
PAVN regulars totalling about 13,000 troops.
The United States decision to escalate the war was a surprise
and a blow to party strategists in Hanoi. At the Twelfth Plenum
of the Central Committee in December 1965, the decision was made
to continue the struggle for liberation of the South despite the
escalated American commitment. The party leadership concluded
that a period of protracted struggle lay ahead in which it would
be necessary to exert constant military pressure on the Saigon
government and its ally in order to make the war sufficiently
unpopular in Washington. Efforts were to be concentrated on the
ARVN troops, which had suffered 113,000 desertions in 1965 and
were thought to be on the verge of disintegration. In early 1965,
Hanoi had been encouraged by Moscow's decision to increase its
economic and military assistance substantially. The resulting
several hundred million dollars in Soviet aid, including surface-
to-air missiles, had probably been tied to a promise by Hanoi to
attend an international conference on Indochina that had been
proposed by Soviet premier Kosygin in February. As preconditions
for these negotiations Hanoi and Washington, however, had each
presented demands that were unacceptable to the other side. The
DRV had called for an immediate and unconditional halt to the
bombing of the north, and the United States had demanded the
removal of PAVN troops from the South. Although both Hanoi and
Washington had been interested in a negotiated settlement, each
had preferred to postpone negotiations until it had achieved a
position of strength on the battlefield.
By mid-1966 United States forces, now numbering 350,000, had
gained the initiative in several key areas, pushing the
communists out of the heavily populated zones of the south into
the more remote mountainous regions and into areas along the
Cambodian border. Revolutionary forces in the South, under the
command of General Nguyen Chi Thanh, responded by launching an
aggressive campaign of harassment operations and full-scale
attacks by regiment-sized units. This approach proved costly,
however, in terms of manpower and resources, and by late 1966
about 5,000 troops, including main force PAVN units, were being
infiltrated from the North each month to help implement this
strategy. At the same time, North Vietnam placed its economy on a
war footing, temporarily shelving non-war-related construction
efforts. As a consequence of the heavy United States bombing of
the North, industries were dismantled and moved to remote areas.
Young men were conscripted into the army and their places in
fields and factories were filled by women, who also served in
home defense and antiaircraft units. Such measures were very
effective in countering the impact od the bombing on the North's
war effort. The Johnson administration, however, showed no sign
of willingness to change its bombing strategy or to lessen its
war effort
(see
fig. 8;
fig. 9).
During this difficult period, the communists returned to
protracted guerrilla warfare and political struggle. The party
leadership called for increased efforts to infiltrate moderate
political parties and religious organizations. The underground
communist leadership in Saigon was instructed to prepare for a
general uprising by recruiting youths into guerrilla units and
training women to agitate against the city's poor living
conditions and the injustices of the Saigon government. Total
victory, according to the party leadership, would probably occur
when military victories in rural areas were combined with general
uprisings in the cities.
In mid-1967, with United States troop levels close to the
half million mark, Westmoreland requested 80,000 additional
troops for immediate needs and indicated that further requests
were being contemplated. United States forces in Tay Ninh, Binh
Dinh, Quang Ngai, and Dinh Tuong provinces had initiated major
offensives in late 1966 and in early 1967, and more troops were
needed to support these and other planned operations. As a result
of these deployments, United States forces were scattered from
the DMZ to the Mekong Delta by mid-1967. Opposition to the war,
meanwhile, was mounting in the United States; and among the
Vietnamese facing one another in the South, the rising cost of
men and resources was beginning to take its toll on both sides.
The level of PLAF volunteers declined to less than 50 percent in
1967 and desertions rose, resulting in an even greater increase
in northern troop participation. Morale declined among communist
sympathizers and Saigon government supporters alike. In elections
held in South Vietnam in September 1967, former generals Nguyen
Van Thieu and Nguyen Cao Ky were elected president and vice
president, respectively. A number of popular candidates,
including Buddhists and peace candidates, were barred from
running, and newspapers were largely suppressed during the
campaign. Even so, the military candidates received less than 35
percent of the vote, although the election took place only in
areas under the Saigon government's control. When proof of
widespread election fraud was produced by the defeated
candidates, students and Buddhists demonstrated and demanded that
the elections be annulled.
Data as of December 1987
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