HIST103: World History (1600–Present)

Gulf of Tonkin and the Westmoreland Expansion

Commandant of the Marine Corps Wallace Greene (l), III MAF commander General Robert Cushman (c), and General Westmoreland (r)

On July 27, 1964, 5,000 additional military advisers were ordered to South Vietnam, bringing the total U.S. troop level to 21,000. Shortly thereafter, an incident occurred off the coast of North Vietnam that was destined to escalate the conflict to new levels and lead to the full Americanization of the war.

On the evening of August 4, 1964, the destroyer USS Maddox, conducting an electronic intelligence gathering mission four miles off the North Vietnamese coast, was attacked by three torpedo boats of the North Vietnamese navy. Maddox was joined by aircraft from the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga. In the ensuing firefight, they damaged two of the Vietnamese boats and disabled another. Joined by the U.S. destroyer, C. Turner Joy, both ships returned to "fly the flag" in what the United States claimed were international waters. Early on the 4th, the Maddox reported the presence of hostile boats and believed that an attack might be imminent. Both ships later claimed to have been attacked that evening by North Vietnamese vessels, although it now appears that no such attack actually took place.^[5]

There was rampant confusion in Washington, but the incident was seen by the administration as the perfect opportunity to present Congress with "a pre-dated declaration of war." Even before "confirmation" of the phantom attack had been received in Washington, President Johnson decided that an attack could not go unanswered. Just before midnight, he appeared on television and announced that retaliatory strikes were underway against North Vietnamese port and oil facilities. Unfortunately, neither Congress nor the American people were going to learn the whole story about the events in the Gulf of Tonkin until the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1969.

It was on the basis of the administration's assertions that the attacks were "unprovoked aggression" on the part of North Vietnam that the U.S. Congress approved the Southeast Asia Resolution (also known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution) on August 7. The law gave the president broad powers to conduct military operations without an actual declaration of war. The resolution passed unanimously in the House of Representatives and was opposed in the Senate by only two members.^[6]

Operation Rolling Thunder, 1965-1968

U.S. F-105 aircraft dropping bombs.

In February 1965, a U.S. air base at Pleiku in the Central Highlands was attacked twice by the NLF, killing more than a dozen U.S. personnel. These guerrilla attacks prompted the administration to order retaliatory air strikes (Operation Flaming Dart) against North Vietnam.

Operation Rolling Thunder was the code name given to a sustained strategic bombing campaign targeted against North Vietnam by aircraft of the U.S. Air Force and Navy that began on March 2, 1965. Its original purpose was to bolster the morale of the South Vietnamese and to serve as a signaling device to Hanoi. U.S. air power would act as a method of "strategic persuasion," deterring the North politically by the fear of continued or increased bombardment.

Rolling Thunder gradually escalated in intensity, with aircraft striking only carefully selected targets. When that did not work, its goals were altered to destroy the will of the North to fight by destroying the nation's industrial base, transportation network, and its (continually increasing) air defenses. After more than a million sorties were flown and three-quarters of a million tons of bombs were dropped, Rolling Thunder ended on November 11, 1968 (Tilford, 1991: 89). Other aerial campaigns (Operation Commando Hunt) were directed to counter the flow of men and supplies down the Hồ Chí Minh Trail.

The Big Build-Up

President Johnson had already appointed General William C. Westmoreland to succeed Paul D. Harkins as Commander of MACV in June 1964. Under Westmoreland, the expansion of American troop strength in Vietnam took place. American forces rose from 16,000 during 1964 to more than 553,000 by 1969. With the U.S. decision to escalate its involvement, ANZUS Pact allies Australia and New Zealand agreed to contribute troops and material to the conflict. They were quickly joined by the Republic of Korea (second only to the Americans in troop strength), Thailand, and the Philippines.

The United States paid for (through aid dollars) and logistically supplied all of the allied forces. Meanwhile, political affairs in Saigon were finally settling down (at least as far as the Americans were concerned}. On February 14, the most recent military junta, the National Leadership Committee, installed Air Vice-Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky as prime minister. In 1966, the junta selected General Nguyen Van Thieu to run for president, with Ky on the ballot as the vice-presidential candidate in the 1967 election. Thieu and Ky were elected. In the presidential election of 1971, Thieu was unopposed. With the installation of the Thieu and Ky government (the Second Republic), the United States finally had a legitimate government in Saigon with which to deal.

U.S. bombs NLF positions in 1965

With the initiation of Rolling Thunder, American airbases and facilities would have to be constructed and manned for the aerial effort. And the defense of those bases would not be entrusted to the South Vietnamese. So, on March 8, 1965, 3,500 United States Marines came ashore at Da Nang as the first U.S. combat troops in South Vietnam, adding to the 25,000 U.S. military advisers already in place. On May 5, the 173d Airborne Brigade became the first U.S. Army ground unit committed to the conflict in South Vietnam. On August 18, Operation Starlite began as the first major U.S. ground operation, destroying an NLF stronghold in Quảng Ngãi Province. The NLF Cong learned from their defeat and subsequently tried to avoid fighting an American-style ground war by reverting to small-unit guerrilla operations.

In late 1964, the North Vietnamese had sent troops to the South. Some officials in Hanoi favored an immediate invasion of the south, and a plan was developed to use PAVN units to split southern Vietnam in half through the Central Highlands. The two imported adversaries first faced one another during Operation Silver Bayonet, better known as the Battle of the Ia Drang.

During the savage fighting that took place, both sides learned lessons. The North Vietnamese, who had suffered heavy casualties, began to adapt to the overwhelming American superiority in air mobility, supporting arms, and close air support. The Americans learned that the Vietnam People's Army (VPA/PAVN) (which was basically a light infantry force) was not a rag-tag band of guerrillas but was a highly disciplined, well-motivated, proficient force.

Search and Destroy

On November 27, 1965, the Pentagon declared that if the major operations needed to neutralize North Vietnamese and NLF forces were to succeed, U.S. troop levels in South Vietnam would have to be increased from 120,000 to 400,000. In a series of meetings between Westmoreland and the president held in Honolulu in February 1966, Westmoreland argued that the U.S. presence had succeeded in preventing the immediate defeat of the South Vietnamese government but that more troops would be necessary if systematic offensive operations were to be conducted.

Acting on this advice, President Johnson authorized an increase in troop strength to 429,000 by August 1966. The large increase in troops enabled MACV to carry out numerous operations that grew in size and complexity during the next two years.

For U.S. troops participating in these operations (Masher/White Wing, Attleboro, Cedar Falls, Junction City, and dozens of others), the war consisted of hard marching through difficult terrain and weather that alternated between extreme heat and severe cold. Hours and days passed in excruciating repetition and boredom that was punctuated by adrenaline-pumping minutes of terror when contact was made with the enemy.

It was the PAVN/NLF, however, that actually controlled the pace of the war. Fighting only when they believed that they had the upper hand and then disappearing when the Americans and/or ARVN brought their superiority in numbers and firepower to bear. Hanoi, utilizing the Ho Chi Minh and Sihanouk Trails, matched the United States at every point of the escalation, funneling manpower and supplies to the southern battlefields. It was indeed a match between the proverbial elephant and the tiger.

The Ho Chi Minh Trail

North Vietnam received foreign military aid shipments through its ports and rail system. This material (and PAVN manpower) was then shuttled south down what the Americans called the Ho Chi Minh Trail (the Truong Son Strategic Supply Route to the North Vietnamese). At the end of an arduous journey, the men and supplies entered South Vietnam's border areas. Complicating matters, the Trail system ran for most of its length through the neighboring neutral nations of Laos and Cambodia. It was impossible to block the infiltration of men and supplies from the north without bombing or invading those countries. Beginning in December 1964, however, the United States began a covert aerial interdiction campaign in Laos that would continue until the end of the conflict in 1973.

Laos and Cambodia also had their own indigenous communist insurgencies to deal with. In Laos, the North Vietnamese-supported Pathet Lao carried on a see-saw struggle with the Royal Lao armed forces. These regular government forces were supported by the CIA-sponsored Hmong army of General Vang Pao and by the bombs of the U.S. Air Force. In Cambodia, Prince Norodom Sihanouk maintained a delicate political balancing act both domestically and between Eastern and Western powers.

Believing that the triumph of communism in Vietnam was inevitable, he made a deal with the Chinese in 1965 that allowed North Vietnamese forces to establish permanent bases in his country and to use the port of Sihanoukville for delivery of military supplies in exchange for payments and a proportion of the arms. In the meantime, the Hồ Chí Minh Trail was steadily improved and expanded and became the logistical jugular vein for communist forces fighting in the south.

The Tet Offensive

Late in 1967, Westmoreland said that it was conceivable that in two years or less, U.S. forces could be phased out of the war, turning over more and more of the fighting to the ARVN^[7]

On January 30, 1968, PAVN and NLF forces broke the truce that accompanied the annual Lunar New Year (Tet) holiday and mounted their largest offensive up to that point in the conflict in hopes of sparking a "General Uprising" among the South Vietnamese. These forces, ranging in size from small groups to entire regiments, attacked nearly every city and major military installation in South Vietnam.

The Americans and South Vietnamese, initially surprised by the scope and scale of the offensive, quickly responded and inflicted severe casualties on their enemy (the NLF was essentially eliminated as a fighting force, the places of the dead within its ranks were increasingly filled by North Vietnamese). Although the Communist forces suffered a major setback as a result of this effort, the American media portrayed this as a U.S. defeat.

The psychological impact of the Tet Offensive effectively ended the political career of Lyndon Johnson. Shortly thereafter, Senator Robert Kennedy announced his intention to seek the Democratic nomination for the 1968 presidential election. On March 31, in a speech that took America and the world by surprise, Johnson announced that "I shall not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president" and pledged himself to devote the rest of his term in office to the search for peace in Vietnam.

Johnson announced that he was limiting bombing of North Vietnam to just north of the DMZ and that U.S. representatives were prepared to meet with North Vietnamese counterparts in any suitable place "to discuss the means to bring this ugly war to an end." A few days later, much to Johnson's surprise, Hanoi agreed to contacts between the two sides. On May 13, the Paris peace talks began.^[8]

Paris Peace Talks

On October 12, 1967, Secretary of State Dean Rusk declared that proposals in the U.S. Congress for peace initiatives with Hanoi were futile due to the DRV's repeated refusals to negotiate. The position of Hanoi was simply that the United States should evacuate South Vietnam and leave Vietnamese affairs to the Vietnamese. In the wake of the Tet Offensive, Lyndon finally seemed to realize the predicament that his policies had led to. Neither the strategic "carrot and stick" approach of Rolling Thunder nor the attritional stalemate in the ground war had solved the problem in Vietnam. His chief concern then became getting Hanoi to participate in serious negotiations.

U.S. and DRV negotiators met in Paris on May 10, 1968, for the opening session of the peace talks. The DRV delegation was headed by Xuan Thuy, while his American counterpart was U.S. ambassador-at-large Averell Harriman. For five months, however, the negotiations stalled as neither Hanoi nor Washington was willing to make concessions that would allow full negotiations to begin; Hanoi insisted on a total cessation of the bombing of North Vietnam, while Washington demanded a reciprocal de-escalation of North Vietnamese military activities in South Vietnam. Matters were further complicated by the fact that delegations from the NLF and South Vietnamese government would also be participating.

Neither gave way until late in October when Johnson issued preliminary orders to halt the bombing of North Vietnam (which ended on November 11). Johnson's vice-president and the Democratic Party's nominee in the U.S. presidential election, Hubert H. Humphrey, had managed to close a large lead held by the Republican candidate, Richard M. Nixon, partly by breaking with Johnson in September and calling for an end to the bombing of North Vietnam. Humphrey was further boosted by the apparent breakthrough in Paris.

Nixon feared that this lead would be sufficient to give electoral victory to Humphrey. Using an intermediary, Nixon encouraged South Vietnamese President Thieu to stay away from the talks by promising that Saigon would get a better deal under a Nixon presidency. Thieu obliged, and Nixon went on to win the election by a narrow margin. By the time President Johnson left office, about all that had been agreed upon in Paris was the shape of the negotiating table.