Tag: ARVN

Military Failure in Vietnam – Edward Luttwak

Synopsis:

According to Edward Luttwak, top-down institutional dispersion of the ways as well as means of warfighting among the service branches tended to increase fog and friction for American forces during the Vietnam War. Further, the dispersion advanced competing operational assumptions and ends vis-à-vis American strategy – which decreased overall cohesion. Finally, Luttwak blames top-down bureaucratic so-called ‘self-indulgence’ for eroding American strategic dexterity via continuous expansion.

Excerpts:

“By 1968 there were 110 generals and admirals actually in Vietnam, 64 of them for the Army alone; a small number were actually in command of forces in the field, but most were in Saigon, along with hundreds and hundreds of colonels.

“In practice, however, there was no single and coherent strategy that would select the appropriate force for each time and place. Instead there was only the unified command system, which parceled out the territory and the targets ‘equitably’ and then allowed each element to carry out its own standard operations, appropriate or not.

“But when there are many strategies, there is no strategy – in Vietnam then, as in the making of peacetime military policy in Washington till now. So it was that institutional self-indulgence deprived the United States of any true chance of success. Indochina was full of trees and brave men, and mere force unguided by strategy could not prevail.

“The country gave its men to be soldiers, but the system turned them into clerks and valets, mechanics and storekeepers, in huge and disproportionate numbers.

“But American lives were in danger, because a war was being fought; the best way of ending the casualties was to win the war, and that could be done only by successful tactics that would implement successful operational schemes derived from a successful strategy.

*All excerpts have been taken from The Pentagon and the Art of War, Simon and Schuster, Inc.

American Strategy in Vietnam – Bruce Palmer Jr.

Synopsis:

As a member of the American high command in Vietnam, Bruce Palmer Jr. offers his analysis on the shortcomings of American strategy in the war. According to Palmer, influence from initial assumptive errors menaced the efficacy of ways/means vis-à-vis American ends. By comparison, North Vietnamese strategic assumptions cohesively synthesized with desired ends.

Excerpts:

“The United States was overconfident in believing that superior U.S. technology, Yankee ingenuity, industrial and military might, modern military organization, tactics, and techniques, and a tradition of crisis solving in peace and war would surely bring success in Vietnam where the French had failed.

“The limitation of the war zone meant that there was no practical way to stop the infiltration of men and materiel into South Vietnam. Air interdiction throughout North Vietnam and in the panhandle of Laos could inflict personnel and materiel losses, but predictably could not stop the flow. South Vietnam was virtually impossible to seal off.

“President Johnson beginning in 1965 let it be known to North Vietnamese leaders that the United States did not intend to invade North Vietnam or otherwise try to bring down the Hanoi government. Thereafter U.S. actions without exception reaffirmed that impression of U.S. intent. This practically sealed South Vietnam’s doom, for it allowed Hanoi complete freedom to employ all its forces in the South.

“Perhaps most serious was that, engrossed in U.S. operations, we paid insufficient attention to our number one military job, which was to develop South Vietnamese armed forces that could successfully pacify and defend their own country… By the time the United States changed direction and gave South Vietnamese forces top priority, it was too late. American popular support had been frittered away.

“The question for Hanoi was whether to continue to seek a quick collapse before the Americans could turn the South Vietnamese around, or to settle down for a more protracted struggle. Hanoi’s answer appears to have been to plan and prepare for a long war but at the same time to be ready to exploit any possibility of early success. At the heart of the subversion in the South was a healthy political structure, the shadow government of the Viet Cong, operating at every level.

*All excerpts have been taken from The 25 Year War: America’s Military Role in Vietnam, Da Capo Press.

The Confusion Between Tactics and Strategy in Vietnam – Harry G. Summers Jr.

Synopsis:

The American affection for the operational art vis-à-vis warfighting became obvious during the Vietnam War. Without the strategic character of the conflict rightly defined, military planners – as well as policy makers – tended to confuse the strategic dimensions of ways, means, and ends. In his book on the conflict, Harry G. Summers Jr. analyzes the initial assumptive error, as well as the corresponding strategic confusion which followed.

Excerpts:

“Instead of orienting on North Vietnam – the source of war – we turned our attention to the symptom – the guerrilla war in the south. Our new ‘strategy’ of counterinsurgency blinded us to the fact that the guerrilla war was tactical and not strategic.

“Basic to the success of a strategic defensive in pursuit of the negative aim, therefore, is the assumption that time is on your side. But the longer the war progressed the more obvious it became that time was not on our side.

“Because it did not focus on the political aim to be achieved – containment of North Vietnamese expansion – our so-called strategy was never a strategy at all. At best it could be called a kind of grand tactics.

“Since the insurgency itself was a tactical screen masking North Vietnam’s real objectives (the conquest of South Vietnam), our counterinsurgency operations could only be tactical, no matter what we called them.

“Our failure as military professionals to judge the true nature of the Vietnam war had a profound effect. It resulted in confusion throughout the national security establishment over tactics, grand tactics and strategy, a confusion that continues to this day.

*All excerpts have been taken from On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War, Presidio Press.