research paper on vietnam war

Vietnam War Research Paper Topics

Welcome to iResearchNet’s comprehensive guide on Vietnam War research paper topics . This page is tailored specifically for students studying history who have been tasked with writing a research paper on this pivotal period of global conflict. Here, you will find a wealth of thought-provoking and diverse research topics that will allow you to delve into the complexities and impacts of the Vietnam War.

100 Vietnam War Research Paper Topics

The Vietnam War stands as one of the most significant and contentious conflicts of the 20th century, leaving an indelible mark on global history. For students studying this era, exploring the multitude of Vietnam War research paper topics is a compelling opportunity to gain insights into the complexities of war, diplomacy, society, and culture. In this section, we present an extensive and diverse list of research paper topics, meticulously organized into ten categories. Each category offers ten thought-provoking Vietnam War research paper topics, inviting students to delve into various facets of the conflict and its far-reaching impact. Whether you are interested in the war’s origins, military strategies, social ramifications, or the aftermath, this comprehensive list will inspire and guide you in crafting a well-informed and engaging research paper.

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Causes and Background of the Vietnam War

• French Colonialism in Vietnam: The Seeds of Conflict
• Ho Chi Minh and the Rise of Vietnamese Nationalism
• The Role of the United States in the Early Stages of the Conflict
• The Domino Theory and its Influence on U.S. Foreign Policy
• Assessing the Impact of World War II on the Vietnam War
• Roots of Anti-Communist Sentiments in the U.S. Government
• Examining the Geneva Accords and their Implications for Vietnam’s Future
• The Influence of the Cold War on the Vietnam Conflict
• The Interplay of Economic Interests and Colonial Ambitions in Indochina
• Religious and Ethnic Factors in the Conflict: Buddhism, Catholicism, and Cao Dai.

Military Strategies and Tactics

• Guerrilla Warfare and Its Impact on the Vietnam War
• The Tet Offensive: A Turning Point in the Conflict
• The Role of Media in Shaping Public Perception of the War
• Air Warfare: Operation Rolling Thunder and its Effectiveness
• The Use of Chemical Agents in the War: Agent Orange and Napalm
• The Battle of Ia Drang: Analyzing U.S. Troop Deployments
• The Ho Chi Minh Trail: A Supply Line that Shaped the War
• U.S. Strategic Bombing Campaigns and Their Consequences
• The Vietnamization Policy and Its Effects on the Conflict
• Evaluating the Role of Special Forces in Vietnam: Green Berets and Navy SEALs.

Social and Cultural Aspects of the War

• The Anti-War Movement in the United States: Origins, Key Figures, and Impact
• Media Coverage and Its Influence on Public Opinion
• Music of Protest: Folk, Rock, and the Counter-Culture Movement
• The Role of Women in the Vietnam War: Nurses, Volunteers, and Activists
• The Plight of Prisoners of War (POWs) and Missing in Action (MIAs)
• Protests and Resistance in Vietnam: Voices from the Viet Cong
• The Effects of PTSD on Veterans and Their Reintegration into Society
• Ethnic Minorities in the War: African Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanics
• The Impact of the Draft on American Society and Attitudes toward the War
• Artistic Expressions of the War: Literature, Film, and Photography.

Diplomacy and Peace Negotiations

• Paris Peace Accords: Negotiating an End to the Vietnam War
• The Role of Diplomacy in Resolving the Conflict: Successes and Failures
• Challenges and Obstacles to Peace Talks: Ideological, Political, and Military
• The Influence of Public Opinion on Peace Negotiations
• The Nixon-Kissinger Approach to Diplomacy: Realpolitik and Detente
• Assessing the Role of China and the Soviet Union in the Peace Process
• The Problem of Dual Recognition: North Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government
• Economic Sanctions and their Role in Negotiations
• The Impact of the Anti-War Movement on Diplomatic Efforts
• The Continuing Legacy of the Vietnam War in U.S. Foreign Policy.

Human Rights and War Crimes

• My Lai Massacre: Uncovering the Atrocities and Accountability
• Agent Orange and its Aftermath: Environmental and Human Health Impacts
• The Ethics of Targeted Killings and Assassinations during the War
• The Role of the International Red Cross and Humanitarian Efforts
• The Treatment of POWs in North Vietnamese Camps
• War Crimes Trials and the Pursuit of Justice: The Case of Lieutenant William Calley
• The Impact of the War on Children and Civilians: Orphans and Refugees
• War Crimes and Atrocities Committed by All Sides: A Balanced Perspective
• Examining the Legal and Moral Arguments of Bombing Civilian Targets
• The Ongoing Debate on War Crimes and Historical Reconciliation.

Impact and Aftermath of the Vietnam War

• Veterans’ Experiences and Challenges After the War: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
• The Economic Impact of the War on Vietnam and the United States
• The Reconciliation Process between Vietnam and the United States
• The Legacy of the Vietnam War in U.S. Politics and Presidential Power
• The Vietnam War and Environmental Destruction: Deforestation and Agent Orange
• The Influence of the Vietnam War on Military Strategy and Doctrine
• The Vietnam War and the Emergence of the “Military-Industrial Complex”
• The Impact of the War on Asian-American Communities in the United States
• The Effects of the Vietnam War on American Public Opinion and Trust in Government
• The Emergence of Vietnam War Literature and its Cultural Significance.

The Role of Women in the Vietnam War

• Female Combatants in the Viet Cong: Roles and Contributions
• Nursing and Medical Care during the War: Women on the Frontlines
• Women’s Activism and Participation in the Peace Movement
• The Experience of American Military Nurses in Vietnam
• Women in Intelligence Agencies: Spies and Operatives
• The Impact of the War on Vietnamese Women: Challenges and Resilience
• Women as War Correspondents and Journalists
• Female Representation in the North Vietnamese Government and Army
• The Role of Women in the Anti-War Movement: Voices for Peace
• The Evolution of Gender Roles in Vietnamese Society during the War.

Intelligence and Counterintelligence

• The Role of the CIA and Other Intelligence Agencies in Vietnam
• Codebreaking and Communication Interception: Decrypting Enemy Messages
• Espionage and Double Agents in the Conflict: Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen
• Assessing the Effectiveness of Military Intelligence in Vietnam
• The Tet Offensive and Intelligence Failures: Lessons Learned
• Psychological Warfare and Propaganda: Deception in the Vietnam War
• The Phoenix Program: Intelligence-Led Counterinsurgency Efforts
• The Role of Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) in Shaping the War
• Intelligence Sharing between the United States and its Allies
• Evaluating the Role of Human Intelligence (HUMINT) in Gathering Information

Regional and Global Implications of the Vietnam War

• The Domino Theory and its Impact on U.S. Foreign Policy
• The Vietnam War’s Influence on Cold War Dynamics
• Vietnam as a Case Study in Nation-Building and Intervention
• The Impact of the Vietnam War on Southeast Asia: Regional Stability and Conflicts
• Assessing the Influence of the Vietnam War on Latin American Revolutionary Movements
• The Role of Australia and New Zealand in the Vietnam War: ANZUS Treaty Obligations
• China’s Involvement in the Vietnam War: Motives and Consequences
• The Soviet Union’s Support for North Vietnam: Political and Military Aims
• The Vietnam War and Africa: The Pan-Africanist Movement’s Response
• The Vietnam War and European Allies: NATO’s Dilemmas and Responses

Comparing the Vietnam War to Other Conflicts

• Vietnam War vs. Korean War: A Comparative Analysis of Strategies and Outcomes
• The Vietnam War and the Soviet-Afghan War: Lessons Learned and Repercussions
• Assessing the Similarities and Differences between the Vietnam and Iraq Wars
• Comparing Vietnam and World War II: The Role of Technology and Total War
• The Vietnam War and the Gulf War: Asymmetrical Warfare in Modern Conflicts
• The Vietnam War and the French-Algerian War: Colonial Legacies and Revolutions
• Vietnam War vs. The American Revolutionary War: Fighting for Independence
• The Vietnam War and the Falklands War: Island Conflicts and National Identity
• Comparing the Vietnam War to the Russo-Japanese War: Imperial Ambitions and Defeats
• The Vietnam War and the Spanish Civil War: International Interventions and Ideological Battles

You have now explored a vast array of Vietnam War research paper topics, spanning from the causes and background of the conflict to its far-reaching consequences on the global stage. By delving into these categories, you have the opportunity to uncover the multi-dimensional nature of the Vietnam War, analyze its intricacies, and grasp its profound implications. Whether you are fascinated by military strategies, diplomatic efforts, social aspects, or the aftermath, these topics will serve as a stepping stone to crafting an engaging and insightful research paper. Remember to select a topic that aligns with your interests, access credible sources, and stay objective in your analysis. Embark on your research journey with zeal, and let the knowledge you gain from these Vietnam War research paper topics contribute to a deeper understanding of this transformative period in history.

Vietnam War and Its Range of Research Paper Topics

The Vietnam War, spanning from 1955 to 1975, was a momentous conflict that not only reshaped the geopolitics of Southeast Asia but also left a profound impact on global history. Its intricate tapestry of political, military, social, and cultural dimensions provides a vast array of research paper topics for students studying history. Understanding the scope and significance of this war allows researchers to explore a myriad of intriguing themes that shed light on the complexities of human conflict, diplomacy, and societal transformation.

At the core of Vietnam War research lies the examination of its causes and background. Topics in this category delve into the historical underpinnings of the conflict, including the role of French colonialism in Vietnam, the rise of Vietnamese nationalism under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh, and the interplay of major powers like the United States and the Soviet Union in shaping the conflict’s trajectory. Investigating the roots of the war not only provides insights into the events that led to the outbreak of hostilities but also highlights the significance of broader historical contexts, such as the Cold War and the post-World War II era.

Military strategies and tactics employed during the Vietnam War form another intriguing avenue for research. The war’s unique nature, characterized by guerrilla warfare and asymmetrical tactics, challenges conventional notions of military engagements. Students can explore topics such as the Tet Offensive, which marked a turning point in the conflict, the use of psychological warfare and propaganda, and the effects of chemical agents like Agent Orange and napalm. Additionally, investigating the impact of media coverage and the role of journalists during the war sheds light on how public perception can influence the outcomes of armed conflicts.

The social and cultural aspects of the Vietnam War offer yet another captivating realm of research. The anti-war movement in the United States, with its origins in the counterculture of the 1960s, transformed public opinion and challenged the government’s war policy. Vietnam War research paper topics in this category can delve into the music of protest, analyzing how folk and rock songs became anthems for peace, as well as examining the impact of war on civilians, particularly women, children, and ethnic minorities. The experiences of veterans and the challenges they faced upon returning home, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), also provide fertile ground for exploration.

Diplomacy and peace negotiations during the Vietnam War open doors to study the intricacies of international relations and the complexities of conflict resolution. Vietnam War research paper topics may include an analysis of the Paris Peace Accords and the negotiations that led to a cease-fire, the role of third-party mediators, and the impact of public opinion on diplomatic efforts. Evaluating the challenges and obstacles faced during peace talks can offer valuable lessons on the difficulties of finding common ground in highly contentious and protracted conflicts.

Addressing issues of human rights and war crimes during the Vietnam War allows students to examine the darker aspects of armed conflicts. The My Lai Massacre, in which American soldiers killed unarmed Vietnamese civilians, represents a watershed moment in the war, raising questions about accountability and justice. Research topics in this category can explore the use of chemical agents like Agent Orange and its long-term environmental and health impacts, as well as the treatment of prisoners of war (POWs) and missing in action (MIAs). Analyzing war crimes and atrocities committed by all sides underscores the complexities of moral and legal judgments in times of war.

Beyond the active conflict, exploring the impact and aftermath of the Vietnam War provides a holistic understanding of its enduring legacy. Research topics in this area may focus on the experiences of veterans and the challenges they faced upon returning to civilian life, as well as the economic repercussions on both Vietnam and the United States. Assessing the ongoing reconciliation process between the two nations highlights the significance of post-war diplomacy and healing. The war’s environmental consequences, such as deforestation and the lingering effects of chemical warfare, also demand examination to better comprehend the far-reaching ecological impact of armed conflicts.

The Vietnam War’s influence extended beyond its immediate region, influencing the course of global politics and military strategy. Students can explore topics on the regional and global implications of the war, including its impact on the Cold War dynamics and the emergence of the “domino theory” as a guiding principle for U.S. foreign policy. Investigating the roles of other nations, such as China and the Soviet Union, in the conflict also illuminates the complexity of alliances and geopolitical strategies.

Moreover, comparing the Vietnam War to other historical conflicts enriches historical analysis and provides valuable insights into the dynamics of warfare. Vietnam War research paper topics in this category may explore the similarities and differences between the Vietnam War and the Korean War, the Soviet-Afghan War, the Iraq War, and other conflicts. Such comparative studies offer opportunities to evaluate the effectiveness of different military strategies, the impacts of international involvement, and the lasting legacies of various armed struggles.

In conclusion, the Vietnam War presents an expansive and diverse range of research paper topics that encompass politics, military strategy, social change, human rights, and global implications. As students embark on their research journey, they will uncover the multifaceted nature of this transformative conflict, gaining valuable insights into the complexities of war and its far-reaching consequences. By immersing themselves in the study of these Vietnam War research paper topics, students will not only enrich their understanding of history but also contribute to an ongoing dialogue about the enduring impact of the Vietnam War on the world stage.

How to Choose Vietnam War Research Paper Topics

Selecting a compelling and well-suited research paper topic is a crucial first step in crafting an engaging and insightful academic paper. As you explore the vast landscape of Vietnam War research topics, it is essential to choose a subject that aligns with your interests, expertise, and academic goals. This section offers expert guidance and ten essential tips to assist you in navigating the process of selecting the most suitable Vietnam War research paper topic. By following these recommendations, you will not only discover a topic that captivates your curiosity but also ensures that you have ample resources and relevant materials to support your investigation. Embark on this journey of exploration and analysis, and let your passion for history guide you toward a topic that allows you to make a meaningful contribution to the understanding of this transformative period in global history.

• Understand Your Interests and Expertise : Begin the process of selecting a research paper topic by reflecting on your personal interests and expertise. Think about the aspects of the Vietnam War that fascinate you the most, whether it be its historical origins, military strategies, cultural impact, or diplomatic efforts. Consider your previous coursework, readings, and discussions in history classes to identify areas that have captivated your attention. By choosing a topic that aligns with your interests and knowledge, you are more likely to stay engaged and motivated throughout the research and writing process.
• Focus on Specific Aspects or Time Periods : The Vietnam War spans two decades and encompasses a wide range of events and themes. To narrow down your research paper topic, consider focusing on specific aspects or time periods within the war. For example, you could explore the causes and consequences of a particular battle, the experiences of soldiers during a specific year, or the impact of a particular policy or strategy. Focusing on a specific aspect allows you to delve deeper into the subject matter and provide a more nuanced analysis of the historical context.
• Consider Relevance and Contemporary Implications : As you explore different research paper topics, consider the relevance of your chosen subject matter to contemporary issues and debates. How does the Vietnam War’s history connect to present-day challenges, such as conflict resolution, foreign policy, or social justice? Understanding the contemporary implications of your research topic not only adds relevance to your paper but also allows you to contribute to ongoing discussions and debates about historical legacies.
• Evaluate the Availability of Sources and Materials : Before finalizing your research paper topic, assess the availability of credible and reliable sources. Check whether there is sufficient literature, primary documents, and scholarly articles related to your chosen topic. A well-supported research paper requires access to a diverse range of sources to strengthen your arguments and provide a comprehensive analysis. Ensure that your topic has enough resources to support your research and avoid topics with limited or outdated information.
• Seek the Guidance of Your Professor or Instructor : Consulting with your professor or instructor can provide valuable insights and suggestions for your research paper topic. They can help you identify areas that need further exploration, recommend reputable sources, and guide you in refining your research questions. Professors often appreciate students who show enthusiasm and initiative in selecting topics related to course content, as it demonstrates a genuine interest in the subject matter.
• Look for Gaps in Existing Research : Research topics that address gaps in existing literature or challenge prevailing interpretations can make a significant contribution to historical scholarship. Investigate areas that have received less attention or have not been thoroughly explored in previous research. By shedding new light on understudied aspects of the Vietnam War, you can offer fresh insights and expand the existing body of knowledge.
• Balance Well-Known and Lesser-Known Topics : Consider balancing well-known topics with lesser-known or overlooked aspects of the Vietnam War. While popular subjects, such as the Tet Offensive or the anti-war movement, offer ample resources and discussions, exploring less familiar topics can yield unique and original research. By delving into lesser-known events, individuals, or policies, you can uncover hidden stories and bring new perspectives to the forefront.
• Analyze the Significance and Impact of the Chosen Topic : Assess the historical significance and broader impact of your chosen topic within the context of the Vietnam War. How did your topic influence the course of the war, the lives of people involved, or the historical narratives that emerged afterward? Understanding the broader implications of your research topic adds depth to your paper and allows you to contextualize its relevance within the larger historical framework.
• Choose Topics that Resonate with Current Events : Exploring research paper topics that resonate with current events and contemporary issues can infuse your study with relevance and broader societal implications. Consider how historical themes related to the Vietnam War connect to modern-day conflicts, international relations, or social movements. By drawing parallels between past and present, you can demonstrate the continued relevance of historical analysis in understanding present challenges.
• Stay Passionate and Motivated Throughout the Research Process : Above all, choose a Vietnam War research paper topic that ignites your passion and curiosity. A topic that genuinely excites you will sustain your motivation and dedication during the research process, even when faced with challenges or complexities. Your enthusiasm for the subject matter will shine through in your writing, making your research paper more engaging and impactful for your readers.

The process of selecting a research paper topic on the Vietnam War demands careful consideration, critical thinking, and a genuine interest in historical exploration. By following these ten essential tips, you can identify a topic that aligns with your interests, is well-supported by resources, and contributes to the existing body of knowledge on this transformative period in global history. Whether you choose to delve into well-known events, unearth lesser-known stories, or investigate the contemporary relevance of historical themes, your research endeavor will enrich your understanding of the Vietnam War and its enduring impact on the world. Embrace the opportunity to contribute to historical scholarship, and embark on a journey of discovery that will leave a lasting legacy in the field of history.

How to Write a Vietnam War Research Paper

Once you have selected a compelling Vietnam War research paper topic, the next step is to embark on the writing process. Writing a research paper on the Vietnam War requires careful planning, thorough research, and a structured approach to effectively present your findings and analysis. This section will provide you with expert guidance and ten essential tips to help you craft a well-organized, insightful, and compelling research paper that showcases your understanding of this significant historical period.

• Develop a Clear Thesis Statement : Craft a concise and focused thesis statement that outlines the main argument or central point of your research paper. Your thesis statement should reflect the specific aspect of the Vietnam War you are exploring and the main conclusions you aim to draw from your research. It provides the backbone of your paper and guides readers on what to expect from your analysis.
• Organize Your Research : Organize your research materials and sources systematically to facilitate efficient writing. Create an outline or structure for your paper, dividing it into sections or chapters based on the main points you want to cover. This organization ensures a logical flow of ideas and helps you avoid redundancy or confusion in your writing.
• Conduct In-Depth Research : Thoroughly investigate primary and secondary sources related to your chosen topic. Use reputable academic journals, books, historical documents, interviews, and other reliable materials to support your arguments. Balance your research between different perspectives and viewpoints to provide a comprehensive and well-rounded analysis.
• Incorporate Strong Evidence : Support your arguments with strong and relevant evidence from your research. Use direct quotes, statistics, and specific examples from primary sources and scholarly literature to validate your claims. Cite your sources accurately using the appropriate citation style (e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago/Turabian) to give credit to the original authors and avoid plagiarism.
• Analyze and Interpret Findings : Analyze the evidence you have gathered and interpret its significance within the context of your research question. Explain how the evidence supports your thesis and the broader implications of your findings. Provide critical insights and thoughtful interpretations to demonstrate your understanding of the Vietnam War and its complexities.
• Develop Well-Structured Paragraphs : Organize your ideas into well-structured paragraphs that each focus on a single topic or argument. Begin each paragraph with a clear topic sentence that introduces the main point, followed by supporting evidence and analysis. Use transitions to connect your paragraphs and maintain a smooth flow of ideas.
• Use Engaging and Clear Language : Write in a clear and concise manner, avoiding jargon or unnecessary complexity. Use engaging language to captivate your readers and maintain their interest throughout your research paper. Avoid long, convoluted sentences and opt for straightforward and coherent writing.
• Provide Historical Context : Offer sufficient historical context to contextualize your research and help readers understand the significance of your findings. Explain the broader historical background, events, and developments that led to the Vietnam War. Providing context enhances the readers’ comprehension of your paper and reinforces the relevance of your research.
• Address Counterarguments : Acknowledge and address counterarguments or alternative viewpoints related to your research topic. Demonstrating an awareness of differing opinions strengthens your paper and showcases your ability to engage in scholarly discourse. Present counterarguments objectively and explain why your research supports your own thesis.
• Conclude with Impact : Craft a strong and impactful conclusion that summarizes your main findings, restates your thesis, and reflects on the broader significance of your research. Avoid introducing new information in the conclusion, and instead, leave readers with a lasting impression of your research and its contributions to the understanding of the Vietnam War.

Writing a research paper on the Vietnam War is a challenging yet rewarding endeavor that allows you to deepen your understanding of this transformative period in history. By following the ten essential tips outlined in this section, you can approach the writing process with confidence and structure, ensuring that your research paper is well-organized, insightful, and compelling. Remember to develop a clear thesis statement, conduct thorough research, and incorporate strong evidence to support your arguments. Analyze and interpret your findings, provide historical context, and address counterarguments to showcase your depth of understanding. With engaging and clear language, present your research in a coherent and impactful manner. As you conclude your paper, leave readers with a lasting impression of your research’s significance and contributions to the field of historical scholarship. Embrace this opportunity to share your knowledge and insights, and let your Vietnam War research paper be a testament to your passion for history and commitment to academic excellence.

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80 Vietnam War Essay Topics & Examples

Looking for Vietnam war essay topics? Being the largest conflict in the US history, Vietnam war is definitely worth analyzing.

• 🔝 Top 10 Essay Topics
• 💡 Essay: How to Write
• 🏆 Best Essay Examples & Topic Ideas
• 💣 Most Interesting Topics
• 🔍 Research Topics & Questions

Why did the US lose the Vietnam war? Who won the war and how did that happen? There are many questions about the conflict that wait to be answered. Other options for your Vietnam war essay are to focus on the US involvement or talk about the lessons of the conflict.

Whether you are planning to write an argumentative essay, research paper, or thesis on the Vietnam war, this article will be helpful. Here we’ve collected top Vietnam war research questions, titles. Essay examples are also added to add to your inspiration.

🔝 Top 10 Vietnam War Essay Topics

• Vietnam war: the causes
• US involvement in the Vietnam war
• Vietnam war: the key participants
• The causes of the conflict in Vietnam
• Gulf of Tonkin incident and its role in the Vietnam war
• Why did the US lose the Vietnam war?
• War crimes in the cause of the conflict in Vietnam
• Vietnam war: the role of women
• Weapons and technology in the Vietnam war
• Vietnam war and its influence on popular culture

💡 Vietnam War Essay: How to Write

Chemical warfare, civilian peace protests, and an overwhelming number of casualties are all central circumstances of a Vietnamese-American 19-year conflict that garnered attention all over the world.

Reflecting all these topics in a Vietnam War essay is essential to writing an excellent paper, as well as other structural and informational points. In the prewriting stages:

• Research your issue. Doing so will not only help you choose among various Vietnam War essay topics but also help you start assembling a list of sources that can be of use. Compiling a bibliography early on will allow you to gauge how well covered your subject is and whether you can approach it from different viewpoints. Use various book and journal titles to give your work academic credibility.
• Write a Vietnam War essay outline. This action will help you distribute the weight of your ideas evenly between sub-themes. In turn, doing so will allow you to create a smooth flowing, interconnected narrative of whichever issue you choose.
• Compose a title for your paper. Vietnam War essay titles should be both reflective of their author’s stance and representative of the chosen methodological approach. Since your title is the first thing a potential reader sees, it should grab their attention in the best way.
• Read available sample essays to see which tools and techniques may work in your own paper. While plagiarism is punishable in the academic world, there are no repercussions for getting inspiration or pretending to grade an essay for yourself. Good examples may be just the thing you need to write an excellent paper yourself!

Now you are ready to begin writing. Layering your paper with the appropriate information is only one aspect of essay writing, as you should also:

• Begin your introduction by placing a Vietnam War essay hook in it. This catch can be a remarkable piece of information, a quote from a famous person, or an opposing viewpoint on the subject. Whichever you choose, placing a hook allows you to interest your readers and secure their interest for the duration of your paper.
• Use appropriate terminology. A war-related paper may call for an in-depth understanding of technology, while an ideology related one requires more event-related knowledge. Choose your words according to the specifics of your issue and use them to write a comprehensive and well-rounded essay.
• Understand the cause and effect war environment. Clearly define the links between events and make sure your audience understands all the intricacies of the issue. A timeline, written by you or found online, should help you trace these connections, creating an interflowing essay.
• Recognize the effect of seemingly background events. The recognition of a soldier’s civil rights and the rise of a movement that called for American citizens to return to their home continent is not battlefield-related but greatly impacted politics regarding the issue. Remember that there may be connections between seemingly unrelated problems, and finding them is your goal as an essayist.
• Stick to your Vietnam War essay prompt and the received instructions. Ignoring the specified word count in favor of drafting a more extensive coverage of the problem is not worth losing a grade on a suburb essay.

Always check the rubric that your instructor provided to receive good grades.

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🏆 Best Vietnam War Essay Examples & Topic Ideas

• Similarities and Differences Between Korean and Vietnam Wars There were also several differences such as the way of development of the conflicts where the Korean War was during three years, and the Vietnam War was the prolonged struggle, the participation of the Chinese […]
• Music as a Weapon During the Vietnam War Music to the soldiers in Vietnam acted as a tool to remind all troops of the responsibility that they had taken by being on the battlefield.
• Why Did the United States Lose the Vietnam War? The Office of the Secretary of Defense had become demoralized due to the events that had taken place; hence, it was unwilling to escalate the war further due to the decline of the army troops […]
• The Vietnam War in the “Child of Two Worlds” Therefore, in the future, he is like to live in the outside world rather than in the inside one. Therefore, Lam wants to start a new life in the US and forgets his roots, which […]
• “The Killing Zone: My Life in the Vietnam War” by Downs At the very outset, it was clear to the soldiers that the war in Indochina was not being conducted in terms of the glory myths on which they had been raised. The second part of […]
• How the Vietnam War Polarized American Society It galvanized the enemy and opponents of the war in both Vietnam and America and led many to question the ethics of the campaigns.
• Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War The Vietnam War caused unintended consequences for the civil rights movements of the 1960s as it awakened the African-Americans’ consciousness on the racism and despotism that they experienced in the United States.
• Causes and Effects of the Vietnamese War To the U.S.the war was a loss, because the reunion of South and North Vietnamese citizens marked the end of the war, hence U.S.’s undivided support for the southern region yielded nothing, apart from numerous […]
• Photos of Vietnam War The role of the media in the Vietnam War also raises issues of what the media ought to censor and report to the public.
• The Use of Agent Orange in the Vietnam War The Association of American Advancement of science prompted the US government to allow investigations into the effects of Agent Orange in Vietnam in 1968.
• Protests and Music of the Vietnam War As the public absorbed the announcement, and the truth behind the war, they were angered by the fact that many American lives had been lost in the war, and the fact that the government was […]
• Vietnam War in the “Platoon” Movie by Oliver Stone In the context of the war, the confrontation between two non-commissioned officers, the cruel-hearted Barnes and the humane Elias, is depicted.
• How Did the Media Shape Americans’ Perceptions of the Vietnam War? At the heart of this war, the media is believed to have shaped the Americans perception about the war. Technology in this moment made it possible for television to film some incidents in the war […]
• Political and Social Forces During and After the Vietnam War The political forces in the aftermath of the Vietnam War centered around balancing between the Cold War and the maintenance of public support.
• Researching and Analysis of the Vietnam War A Chinese leader inspired by the Soviet Union and the Chinese, Ho Chi Minh, formed a union to aid the resistance against the French occupiers in Vietnam and the Japanese.
• The Vietnam War and the Tet Offensive In this presentation, the discussion of the impact of Tet Offensive on the United States and the role of media in military events will be discussed.
• The Artistic Legacy of Maya Lin: A Cultural Response to the Vietnam War Major confrontations as the signs of a shift in cultural perspectives and attitudes have always defined the development of art, the Vietnam War being one of the infamous examples of the phenomenon.
• Vietnam War: History and Facts of War That Began in 1959 The Second Indochina War began in 1959, five years after the division of the country, according to the Geneva Agreement. South Vietnam’s troops failed to substitute American soldiers, and in 1974 the peace agreement was […]
• The Vietnam War: Diplomatic Mechanisms Connected With the USA The onset of the Vietnam War exposed the vagaries in the American political and administrative systems in terms of issues of diplomacy, presidency, and even in cultural and social matters.
• “The Green Berets” Film About the Vietnam War According to the plot, one American journalist named George Beckworth is to cover the topic of the military involvement of the USA in this war.
• Vietnam War: David Halberstam’s “The Making of a Quagmire” In his account, the author of the book The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam during the Kennedy Era, is categorical about the dealings of the Americans in the Vietnamese affair.
• “A Time of War: The United States and Vietnam” by Robert D. Schulzinger These events relate to the activities and interests of the Americans, the French and Vietnamese which preceded the beginning and the aftermath of the war.
• Interview Report: Memories of the Vietnam War Locker about the way he happened to take part in the Vietnam War, he said that he was drafted but, anyway, at that time he thought that it was his destiny as he wanted to […]

💣 Most Interesting Vietnam War Topics

• Ho Chi Minh’s Influence in the Vietnam War He was the leader of the Vietnam independence movement and established the Democratic Republic of Vietnam which was governed by the communists.
• “Vietnam War Generation Journal” by Aaron Over the years, the American people realized that the lived of the US soldiers were wasted for achieving the ambitious goals of the American leaders.
• How the Vietnam War Influenced the Iraq War? During the Vietnam era, the neo-conservatism movement expanded due to the political polarization occurring in the country between the anti-war, anti-American sentiments of the counterculture and neo-cons who championed blind patriotism.
• Impact of the Vietnam War and Results of the Cold War It galvanized the enemy and opponents of the war in both Vietnam and America and led many to question the ethics of the campaigns.
• The Vietnam War in American History Since early fifties the government of the United States began to pay special attention to Vietnam and political situation in this country, because, it was one of the most important regions in the Southeast Asia.
• How TV Showed the Vietnam War At the dawn of television media emergence, the coverage of the Vietnam War was subjective as the opinion of the public was manipulated by the government to get the desired reaction from the Americans to […]
• Vietnam War on Television Thus, the research paper will be written in accordance with the following working thesis statement: At the dawn of television media emergence, the coverage of the Vietnam War was subjective as the opinion of the […]
• Vietnam War Overview in Media Since the defeat of Saigon in April 1975, two opposing representations, the mirror theory, and the elitist opinion theory have appeared to clarify how the media impacted the results of the war.
• French Involvement in Vietnam War Even though in the overwhelming majority of cases, the author focuses attention on the history of Vietnam since the Involvement of the French troops in the nineteenth century, he also gives background information as to […]
• Vietnam War Perceptions of African American Leaders Externally, the country was embroiled in an unpopular war in Vietnam and internally, rejection of the ‘establishment’ typified by the ‘Counter-culture movement’ and the Black Civil rights movement was gaining momentum.
• Vietnamese Culture and Traditions: The Role in Vietnam War It was this division that left America with little understanding of how the rest of the world lives and how the country can effectively help others even in times of war.
• My Lai Massacre During Vietnam War American soldiers of Company assaulted the hamlet of My Lai part of the village of Son My in Quang Ngai province of South Vietnam on 16 March 1968.
• American Government’s Involvement in the Vietnam War According to John Kerry, although the main idea behind the decision made by the U.S.government at the time seemed legitimate given the rise in the threat of communism taking over democracy, the execution of it […]
• American History During the Vietnam War In the quest to figure out the events that took place in the history of America, I had an opportunity to interview a close family friend who was one of the African American soldiers during […]
• The Vietnam War on the Network Nightly News This evidence refuting the use of attrition by the American troops indicate that the strategy was ineffective and as such, it gave their enemies a leeway to capitalize on it and intensify the combat.
• China-Vietnam Opposition or the Third Vietnam War The Korean War, numerous military operations in the Middle East, and the Vietnam War were preconditioned by the clash of ideologies and parties unwillingness to make a compromise.
• Vietnam War vs. War on Terror in the Middle East The starting point for the War on Terror is considered to be the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and other locations which led to the deaths of thousands.
• The Vietnam War and Its Effects on the Veterans Although numerous books and articles contain memories of those who lived to tell the tale, the best way to learn about the Vietnam War and to understand how war changes people is to talk to […]
• Vietnam War: The Results of Flawed Containment The neo-orthodox perspective on the war in Vietnam consisted of criticism towards United States policies in the sense that civilian and military leaders of the country were unsuccessful in developing achievable and realistic plans with […]
• Vietnam War and American Revolution Comparison Consequently, the presence of these matters explains the linkage of the United States’ war in Vietnam and the American Revolution to Mao’s stages of the insurgency.
• Vietnam War in “A Path to Shine After” by James Post The author uses the contrast between a peaceful life of the veteran and his experience as a soldier to highlight the senselessness and cruelty of war.
• Vietnam War Experiences in David Vancil’s Poems For these reasons, the majority of the works devoted to the given issue tend to demonstrate the horrors of war and factors that impacted people.
• America in Vietnam War: Effects of Involvement However, the involvement of America in the war has made other countries around the world to question its principle of morality.

🔍 Vietnam War Research Topics & Questions

• African American Soldiers During Vietnam War In the 1960s and 70s, African Americans battled racial discrimination at home in the United States but also faced similar if not the same tension as a member of the Armed Forces while fighting in […]
• Contribution of Women in the Vietnam War Special emphasis will be given to nurses because without their contribution, so many soldiers would have lost their lives or suffered from deteriorating conditions in the War Some of the nurses in the Vietnam War […]
• The American Strategic Culture in Vietnam War Spector further emphasizes that the involvement of the United States in both phases of the Vietnam War was due to Harry Truman, the then president of the United States, who did not support communism, but […]
• Hanoi and Washington: The Vietnam War The Vietnam War was a conflict that was military in nature, occurred between the years 1954 and 1975, and was between the communists and the non-communists.
• America’s Failure in Promoting Its Politic in Vietnam Existing literature purports that, part of America’s agenda in Vietnam was to stop the spread of communism and in other literature excerpts, it is reported that, America was persuading North Vietnam to stop supporting the […]
• Vietnam War in the Book “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien The Irony of being at war is that Peace and conflict are both inevitable; it is the way we handle either of the two that determines our opinion of life in general both in the […]
• Anti-War Movement and American Views on the Vietnam War The fact that people started to take part in demonstrations and openly protest any drafting and involvement of the United States in the war, created even more attention towards the Vietnam Conflict.
• The Vietnam War: Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy Leadership Roles On November 1, 1995, Eisenhower’s action to give military training to the government of South Vietnam marked the official start of the U.S.involvement in the Vietnamese conflict.
• The Vietnam War Causes The aftermath of the Second World War had the South Vietnam controlled by the French and the North Vietnam controlled by Viet Minh.
• The Vietnam War: A Clash of Viewpoints With the help of the most realistic descriptions and the vivid pictures of woes that soldiers had to take in the course of the battles, the author makes the people sink into the mind of […]
• China’s Support for North Vietnam in the Vietnam War As of the time of the war, the capital city of South Vietnam was Saigon while that of the North was Hanoi.
• The Role of Women in the Vietnam War For example, women in the Navy Nurse Corps and Army Nurse Corp were sent to take part in the Vietnam War and the Korean War.
• Appy, C. and Bloom, A., Vietnam War Mythology and the Rise of Public Cynicism, 49-73 The first myth is that the intervention of the US in the Vietnam War was devoid of any political interests and colonial based ambition contrary to that of the French.
• Vietnam Women Soldiers in the Vietnam War and Life Change After the War In 1968, the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong forces attacked all the major cities of South Vietnam and even the US embassy followed where the war could not stop but in the year 1973 […]
• Vietnam War: The Battle Where There Could Be No Winners Inflamed by the ideas of the patriotic behavior and the mission of protecting the interests of the native land, the American soldiers were eager to start the battle.
• The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 1964 Is a Turning Point in Vietnam War The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that occurred in August 7, 1964, was one of the major turning points in the United States military involvement into the flow of the Vietnam War.
• The Vietnam War’s and Student’s Unrest Connection An example of such protests were held by the by the University of Washington during the national strikes that took an approximate one week as a reaction to the Kent University shootings and a culmination […]
• Vietnam War: John Kerry’s Role Kerry’s actions during the Vietnam war that eventually led to his acquisition of the Purple Heart is a as a result of his ability to stop the actions of the enemy as evident in their […]
• Views on Vietnamese War in the Revisionism School Though United States did not involve itself into the war in order to break the dominance of Soviet Union, it wanted to gain politically and economically.
• Stories From the Vietnam War In the dissonance of opinions on the Vietnam War, it appears reasonable to turn to the first-hand experiences of the veterans and to draw real-life information from their stories.
• Concepts of the Vietnam War The fear to go to Vietnam and participate in a war that many believed America will inevitably lose, continued to engulf their life even more.
• Analysis of the Vietnam War Timeline 1961-64 In essence, the analysis of JWPs in this war would entail critical exploration of the jus in bello, with the aim of determining the combatants and non-combatants, and this is important in the sense that […]
• Politics in the 1960s: Vietnam War, Bay of Pigs Invasion, Berlin Wall However, in recent years following the collapse of the Soviet Union between1980 1990 and the opening of Vietnam to the outside world in the same period it is possible to understand the motives of both […]
• The Vietnam War Outcomes The Vietnam War was and is still considered the longest deployment of the U. In conclusion, both the U.S.and the Vietnam governments have a lot to ponder regarding the outcome of the Vietnam War.
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2024, March 1). 80 Vietnam War Essay Topics & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/vietnam-war-essay-examples/

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Bibliography

IvyPanda . "80 Vietnam War Essay Topics & Examples." March 1, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/vietnam-war-essay-examples/.

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Studying the Vietnam War

How the scholarship has changed..

Two American soldiers in Pleiku, South Vietnam, home to an American airbase in May 1967.

—Everett Collection / Alamy Stock Photo

These are boom times for historians of the Vietnam War. One reason is resurgent public interest in a topic that had lost some of its salience in American life during the 1990s. At that time, the end of the Cold War and surging confidence about U.S. power seemed to diminish the relevance of long ago controversies and the need to draw lessons from America’s lost war. But then came the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq: grueling conflicts that, in key respects, resembled the war in Southeast Asia three decades earlier. Critics complained that George W. Bush had mired the nation in “another Vietnam,” and military strategists focused anew on the earlier war for clues about fighting insurgents in distant, inhospitable places. For their part, historians seized the opportunity to reinterpret Vietnam for a younger generation and especially to compare and contrast the Vietnam conflict with America’s new embroilments.

Soldiers of The Army of the Republic of Vietnam in 1968.

—Gado Images / Alamy Stock Photo

Marine D. R. Howe treats PFC. D. A. Crum's wounds during the battle for Hue on June 2, 1968.

—US Marines Photo / Alamy Stock Photo

More recently, intense public interest in the war has been sustained by fiftieth anniversaries of the war’s most harrowing years for the United States. Publishers have used these occasions to release high-profile histories, including Mark Bowden’s widely reviewed  Hue 1968 , a sprawling account of the largest battle between U.S. and Communist forces during the 1968 Tet Offensive. The media are taking part as well. During 2017 and early 2018, the  New York Times  is publishing an online series of approximately 130 op-eds focused on the events of 1967. The biggest moment of all is due in late September: the premiere of the much anticipated 18-hour documentary on the war from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, an event certain to inspire new waves of commentary about Vietnam and to rekindle debate in living rooms across the nation.

But there is another, less noticed reason for renewed attention to the Vietnam War: Spectacular new source material has transformed the possibilities for writing about the subject. Some of this new documentation has emerged from U.S. archives as a result of declassification in the last decade or so. Records from the Nixon and Ford presidencies (1969–1977), especially, are making it possible for historians to write with more confidence and in greater detail about the final stages of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, long a relatively neglected era of the war.

Indeed, the last phase of U.S. military operations has recently spawned an especially contentious debate on one of the most fundamental controversies about Vietnam: Could the United States and its South Vietnamese allies have won the war if the American public had not turned against it? Provocative new works by Lewis Sorley and Gregory Daddis lead the way in arguing for and against, respectively, the notion that the U.S. military could have secured overall victory, if not for crumbling political support within the United States.

Meanwhile, writing about every phase of American decision-making has been enhanced by the release of audio recordings that U.S. presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Richard Nixon made of important meetings, telephone conversations, or both. Because these often convey the mood and emotions of senior policymakers, they are invaluable in helping historians gain a richer understanding of the motives that underlay decision-making about the war. It is now possible, for example, to hear Lyndon Johnson’s anguish about escalating the U.S. role in 1964 and 1965. LBJ’s doubts, along with his obvious awareness of the problems that would beset U.S. forces if he escalated the war in Vietnam, have led many historians to scrap the once dominant idea that leaders in Washington, ignorant of Vietnamese politics and blinded by Cold War assumptions about the dangers of communism, walked step-by-step into a “quagmire” that no one had anticipated. The old question—How could Americans have been so ignorant?—has been replaced by a new one: Why did U.S. leaders commit the nation to war despite abundant doubts and accurate knowledge of the obstacles they would confront?

The most impressive new source material, however, has emerged from countries other than the United States. As recently as 30 years ago, historians were limited to U.S. and West European sources, making it impossible to write with authority about Vietnam itself or decision-making by North Vietnam’s allies, China, the Soviet Union, and Eastern European nations. Everything changed with the end of the Cold War. East European nations went furthest in opening their archives to researchers. For its part, the Russian government opened some Soviet-era records, most notably the records of the Communist party. China and Vietnam, where the end of the Cold War did not produce dramatic political change, lagged behind, yet even those governments gradually permitted access to some records from the Cold War years. Most strikingly, the Vietnamese government opened troves of material amassed by the defunct regime in Saigon that ruled below the seventeenth parallel during the heyday of U.S. involvement.

The result has been a large and growing body of new work by ambitious and linguistically skilled scholars eager to explore fresh dimensions of the war. Historians Mark Philip Bradley, Robert K. Brigham, William J. Duiker, Christopher Goscha, David S. Marr, and Sophie Quinn-Judge led the way in examining Vietnam’s experience, drawing on newly available Vietnamese sources to produce pathbreaking studies around the turn of the century. A younger generation of scholars, most of whom wrote dissertations rooted in extensive research in Vietnam, has built on those accomplishments and even, for the first time, begun delving into decision-making by the Communist government in Hanoi. Meanwhile, historians of Soviet and Chinese foreign policy, most notably Ilya Gaiduk, Chen Jian, and Qiang Zhai, have used new documentation to examine the complex relationships between the Vietnamese Communists and their superpower patrons.

Unquestionably, archival openings in Russia and China, just as in Vietnam, remain partial and selective, leaving studies rooted in newly accessible material—stunning as it may be—highly susceptible to debate and revision as more documentation becomes available. Yet, measured against the near impossibility of doing this kind of work just three decades ago, historians have made remarkable progress toward rethinking the Vietnam War as an episode not just in U.S. history but also in Vietnamese and world history. Historians, in short, increasingly appreciate the war for what it was at the time: a multisided conflict involving numerous Vietnamese and international actors and driven by extraordinarily complicated and shifting motives. 

What precisely has this new research in non-U.S. sources revealed thus far? Three examples point to the variety and significance of the new discoveries. First, studies of Chinese foreign policy have revealed details of North Vietnam’s dependence on its mighty neighbor to the north in the years before the Cultural Revolution, which greatly diminished China’s ambitions abroad. Despite historical tensions between Vietnam and China, newly available sources show definitively that Chinese military helped train and advise Vietnamese Communist forces from as early as 1950 and played an especially pivotal role in the 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the Vietnamese victory that ended French colonialism and dealt a major blow to the West in the Cold War.

More strikingly, new documents clarify the vast amounts of equipment and even manpower that China provided to North Vietnam during the later fighting that involved U.S. combat forces. According to historian Qiang Zhai, China sent everything from military gear and weapons to table tennis balls, playing cards, sewing needles, and vegetable seed under a series of agreements with North Vietnam. At the same time, Qiang Zhai asserts, a total of 320,000 Chinese soldiers served in North Vietnam between June 1965 and March 1968, peaking at 170,000 during 1967. To be sure, Chinese forces were not assigned combat roles. But Zhai observes that they enabled North Vietnam to send more of its own forces to southern battlefields by performing valuable functions such as repairing bridges and rail lines, building and relocating factories, and manning antiaircraft guns. Such tasks could, of course, be hazardous, not least because of U.S. bombing of some parts of North Vietnam. According to Zhai’s sources, 1,100 Chinese soldiers died in North Vietnam and another 4,200 were wounded.

President Lyndon B. Johnson visits with U.S. troops on his trip to Vietnam in October 1966.

—LBJ Library

Second, new sources from Vietnam are exposing the complexity of decision-making among Communist leaders in Hanoi. For many years, historians assumed that North Vietnamese leaders marched in lockstep and permitted no dissent. This view was sustained in part by the belief that the regime in Hanoi was totalitarian to its core and utterly subservient to its most powerful leaders, above all Ho Chi Minh. Recent discoveries have, however, called all of this into question. For one thing, historians Lien-Hang Nguyen and Pierre Asselin have revealed that Ho Chi Minh—long assumed to have been the preeminent North Vietnamese leader all the way to his death in 1969—in fact, lost a great deal of influence around 1960.

The pivotal figure thereafter was Le Duan, a Southern-born revolutionary who remained relatively obscure to Western historians until recent years. Thanks to recent publications, though, it’s clear that Le Duan, a firebrand eager to throw enormous blood and resources into the effort to reunify his country under Communist leadership, dominated decision-making in Hanoi during the peak years of American involvement. Understanding the importance of Le Duan and the hawks who surrounded him helps enormously to appreciate the escalatory pressures that operated on the Vietnamese side, even as Lyndon Johnson and his aides stepped up the American commitment in the mid 1960s. We can now see that leaders on both sides rejected diplomacy and banked on military victory, a tragic convergence of hawkishness that fueled escalation.

The dominance of the hawks in Hanoi does not mean, though, that there were no contrary voices once they were in the driver’s seat. Scholars working with Vietnamese sources have discovered evidence of substantial factionalism within the Hanoi regime throughout the late 1950s and 1960s. Broadly speaking, some high-ranking North Vietnamese leaders, including Ho Chi Minh, prioritized consolidation of Communist rule above the seventeenth parallel and were wary of major expenditures of lives and treasure to bring about reunification. Others, including Le Duan, strongly favored reunification—even at the cost of a major war likely to draw in the United States—over all other North Vietnamese priorities. New studies of the war show that North Vietnamese policy flowed from the interplay of these two points of view. During the late 1950s, the moderate faction held sway, and the result was a period of relative peace in Vietnam. With the triumph of the hawks, however, Hanoi embraced a new war and transformed North Vietnam into a full-fledged police state in order to keep the skeptics at bay.

Third, the new scholarship has shed valuable new light on the nature of the South Vietnamese state that endured from its beginning in 1954 to its collapse in 1975. Was South Vietnam merely a puppet of the United States, an artificial creation doomed to fall apart whenever Washington withdrew its economic and military assistance? Or was it a viable nation with a legitimate government that, absent the onslaught by northern Communists, could have endured as a stable, pro-Western entity into the indefinite future? For many years, the debate was more a matter of polemics than historical inquiry. Opponents of the war argued that the United States hitched itself to a hopeless Potemkin experiment led by venal, authoritarian leaders, while supporters saw South Vietnam as a beleaguered young nation that, for all its faults, was doing its best to resist Communist aggression.

Unsurprisingly, much of the new scholarship rooted in Vietnamese sources has argued for a gray area between these two extremes. Historians such as Edward Miller and Jessica Chapman focus especially on the late 1950s and early 1960s, suggesting that the South Vietnamese government headed by Ngo Dinh Diem possessed a degree of legitimacy and popular support unrecognized by Diem’s critics at the time or since. To be sure, they also point out the government’s inability to expand its base further among the South Vietnamese population. But they show that the South Vietnamese state possessed a remarkable amount of agency that its leaders might have exercised differently. All in all, these historians have helped restore the Vietnamese to the center of their own history.

What do all these revelations mean for how we should understand the Vietnam War in its totality? Clearly, the new work in non-American sources holds implications for primordial questions about the U.S. role in Vietnam. Was the U.S. commitment to Vietnam justified by any genuine security interests in the region? Why did the United States fail to achieve its objectives despite monumental effort? Might different decisions by American leaders have led to a different outcome? Knowing more about the international and Vietnamese contexts makes it far more possible than ever before to form authoritative opinions about questions that cannot logically be answered fully on the basis of U.S. sources alone. But the new work also underscores the possibility of addressing questions that transcend the American experience and viewing the Vietnam War within the context of, for example, decolonization, the international Communist movement, and the Sino-Soviet split. The good news is that, given the range of new and still-to-be-released source material and robust interest in the war four decades after it ended, historians are sure to move forward energetically on both tracks. The boom times may stick around for a while.

Mark Atwood Lawrence teaches at the University of Texas in Austin. He is author of Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam and The Vietnam War: A Concise International History .

Funding information

In addition to a  $1 million production grant  to GWETA for  The Vietnam War , NEH has supported, with a  $300,000 grant , public discussions nationwide of this difficult subject and the epic documentary from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. NEH has also funded numerous projects on the Vietnam War as a subject of ongoing scholarship, including the work of two scholars mentioned in this article: Edward Miller, a professor at Dartmouth who received a  summer stipend  supporting research and writing based on field work conducted in Vietnam, and Lien-Hang Nguyen, who received a  Public Scholar grant  to support work on a book for a general audience about the Tet Offensive of 1968. As major anniversaries of the Vietnam War appear on the calendar, NEH has also supported a number of projects documenting oral histories of the Vietnam War, including a project at the  Catawba County Library  in North Carolina interviewing Hmong immigrants who were refugees from Laos during the Vietnam War and a project with the Maryland Humanities Council working with students who learn to take oral histories from Maryland veterans of the Vietnam War. “LBJ’s War,” a series of podcasts from Public Radio International that has been praised recently in the media, was supported by a  $150,000 grant .

Republication statement

This article is available for unedited republication, free of charge, using the following credit: “Originally published as 'Studying the Vietnam War: How the Scholarship Has Changed' in the Fall 2017 issue of  Humanities  magazine, a publication of the National Endowment for the Humanities.”  Please email us  if you are republishing it or have any questions.

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Article contents

The vietnam war and american military strategy, 1965–1973.

• Gregory A. Daddis Gregory A. Daddis Department of History, United States Military Academy West Point
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.239
• Published online: 02 March 2015

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.

• counterinsurgency
• limited war
• Vietnam War
• Westmoreland

Introduction

By mid-June 1951, the Korean War had settled into an uneasy, yet conspicuous stalemate. Having blunted North Korean and Chinese offensives that killed thousands of soldiers and civilians, the United Nations forces, now under command of General Matthew B. Ridgway, dug in as both sides agreed to open negotiations. Though the enemy had suffered heavily under the weight of allied ground and air power, Washington and its partners had little stomach to press northward. As the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff declared, the objective was to effect “an end to the fighting . . . and a return to the status quo.” 1 Thus, President Harry Truman’s decision in April to relieve General Douglas MacArthur—who in Ridgway’s words “envisaged no less than the global defeat of communism”—suggested that political limitations were now an intrinsic part of developing and implementing strategy in a time of war. Yet what was the purpose of war and strategy if not the complete destruction of enemy forces? In a time when men had “control of machines capable of laying a world to waste,” Ridgway believed escalation without restraint would lead to disaster. Civilian and military authorities had to set attainable goals and work closely in selecting the means to achieve them. 2

Ridgway’s admonitions forecast inherent problems in a Cold War period increasingly dubbed an era of “limited war.” In short, the very definition of wartime victory seemed in flux. An uncertain end to the fighting in Korea implied there were, in fact, substitutes to winning outright on the field of battle. Even if Korea demonstrated the successful application of communist containment, at least one student of strategy lamented that limited war connoted “a deliberate hobbling of tremendous power.” 3 A Manichean view of the Cold War, however, presented knotty problems for those seeking to confront seemingly expansion-minded communists without unintentionally escalating beyond some nuclear threshold. How could one fight a national war for survival against communism yet agree to negotiate an end to a stalemated war? Political scientist Robert Osgood, writing in 1957, judged there were few alternatives to contesting communists who themselves were limiting military force to “minimize the risk of precipitating total war.” For Osgood, the challenge was to think about contemporary war as more than simply a physical contest between opposing armies. “The problem of limited war is not just a problem of military strategy but is, more broadly, the problem of combining military power with diplomacy and with the economic and psychological instruments of power within a coherent national strategy that is capable of supporting the United States’ political objectives abroad.” 4

If Osgood was correct in suggesting that war required more than just an application of military power, then strategy—as a problem to be solved—entailed more than just battlefield expertise. Thus, the post–World War II generation of U.S. Army officers was forced to think about war more broadly. And they did. Far from being slaves to conventional operations, officers ascending the ranks in the 1950s to command in Vietnam understood the rising importance of local insurgency movements. As Andrew Birtle has persuasively argued, by 1965 the army had “succeeded in integrating counterinsurgency and counterguerrilla warfare in substantive ways into its doctrinal, educational, and training systems.” 5 An examination of contemporary professional journals such as Military Review reveals a military establishment wrestling with the problems of local economic and social development, the importance of community politics, and the role played by indigenous security forces. In truth, officers of the day, echoing the recommendations of Harvard professor Henry Kissinger, did not define limited wars in purely military terms. Rather, they perceived strategic problems as those involving changes in technologies, societies, and, perhaps most importantly, political ideas. 6

These same officers labored to devise a coherent strategy for a limited contest in Southeast Asia within the larger construct of the Cold War. In an important sense, the development of strategy for all combatants necessitated attention to multiple layers, all interlaced. As Lyndon Johnson recalled of Vietnam in his 1971 memoir, “It was a political war, an economic war, and a fighting war—all at the same time.” 7 Moreover, American political and military leaders found that Cold War calculations mattered just as much as the fighting inside South Vietnam. Fears of appearing weak against communism compelled the Johnson White House to escalate in 1965 when it looked like Hanoi was making its final bid for Indochinese domination. As Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara told a journalist in April, if the United States withdrew from Vietnam “there would be a complete shift of world power. Asia goes Red, our prestige and integrity damaged, allies everywhere shaken.” Thus, paraphrasing military theorist Basil Liddell Hart, policy imperatives at the level of grand strategy would set the foundations for—and later circumscribe—the application of military strategy on a lower plane. 8

Liddell Hart’s council that strategy involved more than “fighting power” would lead American officers in Vietnam into a near insolvable dilemma. Clearly, the civil war inside Vietnam was more than just a military problem. Yet in the quest to broaden their conception of war, to consider political and social issues as much as military ones, senior leaders developed a strategy that was so wide-ranging as to be unmanageable. Rather than a narrow focus on enemy attrition, sheer comprehensiveness proved to be a crucial factor undermining American strategy in Vietnam. In attempting to both destroy an adversary and build a nation, uniformed leaders overestimated their capacity to manage a conflict that had long preceded American involvement. A near unquestioning faith in the capacity to do everything overshadowed any unease with entanglement in a civil war rooted in competing notions of national liberation and identity. 9 In the end, senior U.S. policymakers had asked too much of those crafting military strategy to deliver on overly ambitious political objectives.

Devising Strategy for a New Kind of War

By June 1965, General William C. Westmoreland had been serving in the Republic of Vietnam for eighteen months. As the newly appointed commander of the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), the former West Point superintendent was heir to a legacy of varied strategic initiatives aimed at sustaining an independent, noncommunist foothold in Southeast Asia. Since the division of Vietnam along the seventeenth parallel in 1954, an American military assistance and advisory group (MAAG) had been training local forces for a threat both externally military and internally political. 10 The image of North Korean forces streaming across an international boundary in 1950 surely weighed heavily on U.S. officers. Yet these same men understood the importance of a steady economy and secure social structure in combating the growing insurgent threat inside South Vietnam. Consequently, the U.S. advisory group focused on more than just advising the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam (ARVN) for conventional operations against the North Vietnam Army (NVA). 11

As advisers, however, the Americans could not dictate strategy to their Vietnamese allies. President Ngo Dinh Diem, struggling to gain popular support for his own social revolution, equally sought ways to secure the population—through programs like agrovilles and strategic hamlets—from a rising communist insurgency. Yet achieving consensus with (and between) Americans proved difficult. Staff officers debated how best to balance economic and political development with population security and the training of South Vietnamese forces. 12 Was the threat more military or political, more external or internal? Were local paramilitary forces or the conventional army better suited to dealing with these threats? All the while, a shadow government competed for influence within the countryside. When MACV was established in February 1962, its chief, Paul D. Harkins, received the mission to “assist and support the Government of South Vietnam in its efforts to provide for its internal security, defeat Communist insurgency, and resist overt aggression.” 13 Here was a tall order. Moreover, as military operations required a solid political footing for ultimate success, an unstable Saigon government further complicated American strategic planning. Following Diem’s overthrow and death in November 1963, the foundations on which the U.S. presence in South Vietnam rested appeared shaky at best. Hanoi’s own escalation in 1964 did little to assuage concern. 14

Though cognizant of the difficulties ahead, American leaders felt they had little choice but to persevere in South Vietnam. By early 1965, with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorizing him to “take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force” to assist South Vietnam, President Johnson believed he had little alternative but to escalate. He was in a difficult position. Hoping to preserve his domestic agenda but stand strong against communist aggression, Johnson initially hesitated on committing ground troops. Instead, he turned to airpower. Operation Rolling Thunder, launched in early March 1965, aimed at eliminating Hanoi’s support of the southern insurgency. Concurrently, Johnson hoped, in Michael Hunt’s words, to “bring a better life to the people of Vietnam—on American terms.” 15 The president would be disappointed on both counts. The punitive bombing of North Vietnam did little to interfere with Hanoi’s support of the insurgents and nothing to resolve the internal political problems of South Vietnam. Moreover, military leaders complained that the president’s gradual response, of limiting the tempo and ferocity of the air campaign, unduly limited American military might. (Few worried as restlessly as Johnson about full-blown Chinese or Soviet intervention.) By the spring, it became clear the president’s policies in South Vietnam were failing. In June, Westmoreland officially requested additional troops “as a stop-gap measure to save the ARVN from defeat.” 16

The decision to escalate in Vietnam persists as one of the most controversial in twentieth-century American foreign policy. Competing interpretations revolve around the question of purpose. Was escalation chosen as a matter of policy, of containing communism abroad? Was it used as a way to test American capacity in nation-building, of expanding democracy overseas? Or did escalation flow from concerns about prestige and credibility, both national and political? Clearly Johnson considered all these matters in the critical months of early 1965, and it is plausible to argue that the president believed he had few alternatives given reports of South Vietnam being on the verge of collapse. Yet ultimately intervention was a matter of choice. 17 Johnson feared the political ramifications and personal consequences of “losing” Vietnam just as Truman had “lost” China. Thus, when Westmoreland sent a cable to the Pentagon in early June requesting 40,000 combat troops immediately and more than 50,000 later, hasty deliberations in the White House led to support for MACV’s appeal. As McNamara later recalled, “South Vietnam seemed to be crumbling, with the only apparent antidote a massive injection of US troops.” 18

The task now fell to Westmoreland to devise an offensive strategy to use these troops. Realizing Hanoi had committed regular army regiments and battalions to South Vietnam, the MACV commander believed he had no choice but to contest this conventional threat. But he also had to provide security “from the guerrilla, the assassin, the terrorist and the informer.” 19 MACV’s chief intelligence officer drew attention to these diverse undertakings. As Phillip B. Davidson recalled, Westmoreland “had not one battle, but three to fight: first, to contain a growing enemy conventional threat; second, to develop the Republic of Vietnam’s Armed Forces (RVNAF); and third, to pacify and protect the peasants in the South Vietnamese countryside. Each was a monumental task.” 20 Far from being wedded to a battle-centric strategy aimed at racking up high body counts, Westmoreland developed a comprehensive campaign plan for employing his forces that factored in more than just killing the enemy.

Stabilization and security of South Vietnam formed the bedrock of Westmoreland’s “three-phase sustained campaign.” Phase I visualized the commitment of U.S. and allied forces “necessary to halt the losing trend by 1965.” Tasks included securing allied military bases, defending major political and population centers, and strengthening the RVNAF. In Phase II, Westmoreland sought to resume the offensive to “destroy enemy forces” and reinstitute “rural construction activities.” In this phase, aimed to begin in 1966, American forces would “participate in clearing, securing, reserve reaction and offensive operations as required to support and sustain the resumption of pacification.” Finally, in Phase III, MACV would oversee the “defeat and destruction of the remaining enemy forces and base areas.” It is important to note that Westmoreland’s plan included the term “sustained campaign.” 21 The general was under no illusions that U.S. forces were engaged in a war of annihilation aimed at the rapid destruction of the enemy. Attrition suggested that a stable South Vietnam, capable of resisting the military and political pressures of both internal and external aggressors, would not arise in a matter of months or even a few years.

Hanoi’s political and military leaders equally debated the strategic concerns of time, resources, and capabilities. Johnson’s decision to commit U.S. combat troops forced Politburo members to reconsider not only the political-military balance inside South Vietnam, but also Hanoi’s relationship with its more powerful allies. To be sure, national communists like Vo Nguyen Giap had discussed the role of a “long-term revolutionary war” strategy and the importance of political education in military training. 22 By 1965, however, the massive American buildup complicated strategic deliberations. In December, Hanoi’s leadership, increasingly under the sway of First Secretary Le Duan, promulgated Lao Dong Party Resolution 12, which outlined a basic strategy to defeat the Americans “under any circumstances.” The resolution placed greater emphasis on the military struggle as domestic priorities in the North receded into the background. As a result, Le Duan battled with senior military officials like Giap over the pace of military operations and the building of forces for a general offensive against the southern “puppets.” Escalation proved challenging for both sides. 23

The strategic decision making leading to American intervention in Vietnam illustrates the difficulties of developing and implementing strategy for a postcolonial conflict in the nuclear era. Even from Hanoi’s perspective, strategy was not a straightforward process. A sense of contingency, of choices, and of action and reaction permeate the critical years leading to 1965. Why Johnson chose war, and the restrictions he imposed on the conduct of that war, remain contentious questions. So too do inquiries into the nature of the threat that both Americans and their South Vietnamese allies faced. Finally, the relationship between political objectives and the strategy devised to accomplish those objectives offers valuable instruction to those researching the faith in, and limitations of, American power abroad during the Cold War. 24

From Escalation to Stalemate

In March 1965, the first contingent of U.S. Marines landed at Da Nang in Quang Nam province. Their mission, to defend American airbases supporting the bombing campaign against North Vietnam, called for setting up three defensive “enclaves” at Phu Bai, Da Nang, and Chu Lai. As the summer progressed and additional army units arrived in country, Westmoreland sought authorization to expand beyond his airfield security mission. If South Vietnam was to survive, the general needed to have “a substantial and hard-hitting offensive capability . . . with troops that could be maneuvered freely.” 25 With the growing recognition that Rolling Thunder was not achieving desired results, the Pentagon gave Westmoreland the green light. The MACV commander’s desires stemmed largely from his perception of the enemy. To the general, the greatest threat to South Vietnam came not from the National Liberation Front (NLF) insurgency but rather from main force units, both NLF and NVA. Westmoreland appreciated the long-term threat insurgents posed to Saigon, but he worried that since the enemy had committed larger combat units to battle, he ignored them at his peril. 26

The Americans thus undertook offensive operations to provide a shield for the population, one behind which ARVN could promote pacification in the countryside. By early October, the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division had expanded its operations into the Central Highlands, hoping to defeat the enemy and reestablish governmental control in the NLF-dominated countryside. Hanoi, however, had continued its own buildup and three North Vietnam Army regiments had joined local forces in Pleiku province near the Cambodian border. In mid-November, the cavalry’s lead battalion, using new techniques of helicopter insertion onto the battlefield, collided with the NVA. For two days the battle raged. Only the employment of B-52 strategic bombers, called in for close air support, staved off defeat. The battle of Ia Drang clearly demonstrated the necessity of conventional operations—Westmoreland could not risk NVA regiments controlling the critical Highway 19 and thus cutting South Vietnam in two. But the clash raised important questions as well. Was Ia Drang an American victory? Would such battles truly impact Hanoi’s will? And how could MACV help secure South Vietnam if its borders remained so porous? 27

Despite the attention Ia Drang drew—Westmoreland publicly called it an “unprecedented victory”—revolutionary development and nonmilitary programs never strayed far from MACV’s sights. Westmoreland continued to stress psychological operations and civic action, even in the aftermath of Ia Drang. In December, he wrote the 1st Infantry Division’s commander detailing how the buildup of forces should allow for an increased emphasis on pacification: “I am inviting this matter to your personal attention since I feel that an effective rural construction program is essential to the success of our mission.” 28 Unfortunately, these early pacification efforts seemed to be making little progress as Hanoi continued infiltrating troops into South Vietnam and desertions from the South Vietnamese armed forces rose sharply. 29 Accordingly, Westmoreland requested an additional 41,500 troops. Further deployments might be necessary. The request staggered the secretary of defense, who now realized there would be no rapid conclusion to the war. “The U.S. presence rested on a bowl of jelly,” McNamara recalled. His doubts, however, were not forceful enough to derail the president’s commitment to a secure, stable, and noncommunist South Vietnam. 30

When American and South Vietnamese leaders met at Honolulu in early February 1966, Johnson publicly reaffirmed that commitment. While Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky and Chief of State Nguyen Van Thieu pledged a “social revolution” in Vietnam, Johnson urged an expansion of the “other war,” a term increasingly used to describe allied pacification efforts. 31 Concurrently, McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk defined Westmoreland’s goals for the coming year. MACV would increase the South Vietnamese population living in secure areas by 10 percent, multiply critical roads and railroads by 20 percent, and increase the destruction of NLF and NVA base areas by 30 percent. To make sure the president’s directives were not ignored, Westmoreland was to augment the pacified population by 235,000 and ensure the defense of political and population centers under government control. The final goal directed MACV to “attrite, by year’s end, VC/PAVN forces at a rate as high as their capability to put men in the field.” 32

The Honolulu conference is a critical episode for understanding American military strategy in Vietnam. The comprehensive list of strategic objectives presented by Rusk and McNamara forced American commanders to consider the war as an effort in both construction and destruction. The conference also reinforced the necessity of thinking about strategy in broader terms than simply battle. Attrition of enemy forces was only part of a much larger whole. In one sense, pacification of the countryside was a process of trying to create political space so the government of South Vietnam (GVN) could stabilize. (The New York Times reported in April that a “crisis in Saigon” was snagging U.S. efforts.) Yet MACV’s own definition of pacification—“the military, political, economic, and social process of establishing or re-establishing local government responsive to and involving the participation of the people”—seemed problematic. 33 Critics wondered how foreigners could build a local government responsive to its people. Furthermore, the expansive nature of pacification meant U.S. troops would be asked to fight an elusive enemy while implementing a whole host of nonmilitary programs. Thus, while Westmoreland and senior commanders emphasized the importance of winning both control over and support of the Vietnamese people, American soldiers wrestled with building a political community in a land long ravaged by war. That they themselves too often brought devastation to the countryside hardly furthered the goals of pacification. 34

In important ways, waging battle—a necessity given Le Duan’s commitment to a general offensive in South Vietnam—undermined U.S. nation-building efforts in 1966 and underscored the difficulties of coordinating so many strategic actors. This management problem long had been a concern of counterinsurgency theorists. British adviser Sir Robert Thompson, a veteran of the Malayan campaign, articulated the need to find a “proper balance between the military and the civil effort, with complete coordination in all fields. Otherwise a situation will arise in which military operations produce no lasting results because they are unsupported by civil follow-up action.” 35 The reality of South Vietnam bore out Thompson’s claims. Worried about Saigon’s political collapse, American war managers too often focused on short-term, military results. The decentralized nature of strategic implementation equally made it difficult to weave provincial franchises into a larger national effort. 36

This lack of coordination led to pressures for a “single-manager” to coordinate the increasingly vast American enterprise in South Vietnam. (By the end of 1966, more than 385,000 U.S. military personnel alone were serving in country.) In May, Westmoreland incorporated a new directorate into his headquarters—Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support. While ostensibly a South Vietnamese program, CORDS redefined the allied pacification mission. 37 The directorate’s head, Ambassador Robert W. Komer, threw himself into the management problem and assigned each senior U.S. military adviser a civilian deputy for revolutionary development. MACV now provided oversight for all of the allied pacification-related programs: “territorial security forces, the whole RD effort, care and resettlement of refugees, the Chieu Hoi (“Open Arms,” or amnesty) program to bring VC [Vietcong] to the GVN side, the police program, the attempts to stimulate rural economic revival, hamlet schools, and so on.” 38 In short, CORDS assumed full responsibility for pacification.

If CORDS could be viewed as a microcosm of Westmoreland’s comprehensive strategy, it also underscored the difficulties of implementing so many programs at once. Physically controlling the population did not guarantee allied forces were making inroads against the insurgency’s political infrastructure. Improved security conditions did not necessarily win civilian “hearts and minds.” Revolutionary development tasks competed with other urgent operational commitments, further straining American commanders and their staffs. More importantly, pacification required a deeper appreciation of Vietnamese culture than most Americans possessed. 39 Senior officers labored to balance the competing requirements of attacking enemy units and performing civic action in the hamlets and villages. On the ground, many American soldiers made few distinctions between friend and foe when operating in the countryside. The army’s personnel rotation policy, under which individual soldiers served for twelve months before returning home, only exacerbated these problems. With some units experiencing a 90 percent personnel turnover within a three-month period, the pacification process was erratic at best. 40

As 1967 wore on, American journalists increasingly used words like “stalemate” and “quagmire” to describe the war in Vietnam. Early-year operations like Cedar Falls and Junction City, though inflicting heavy damage on the enemy, failed to break Hanoi’s will. At most, pacification was yielding modest results. Political instability in Saigon continued to worry U.S. embassy officials. Both the White House and MACV thus found it ever more difficult to convince Americans at home that their sacrifices were generating results. 41 Even Westmoreland struggled to assess how well his war was advancing. Body counts told only a fraction of the story. A lack of fighting in a certain district could either mean the area was pacified or the enemy was in such control that battle was unnecessary. Two years into the war, American soldiers remained unsure of their progress. (MACV and the CIA even debated the number of soldiers within the enemy’s ranks.) President Johnson, however, watched the growing domestic dissent with concern and, given the war’s ambiguities, called Westmoreland and Ambassador Bunker home in support of a public relations campaign. In three appearances in 1967 MACV’s commander reported to national audiences his views on the ongoing war. Though guarded in his commentary, Westmoreland’s tone nonetheless was optimistic given the president’s desires to disprove claims of a stalemated war. 42

Hanoi’s political and military leaders similarly deliberated their own progress in 1967. Because of the American imperialists’ “aggressive nature,” the Politburo acknowledged the southern insurgency campaign had stalemated in the countryside. Still, to Le Duan in particular, an opportunity existed. A strategic offensive might break the impasse by instigating a popular uprising in the South, thus weakening the South Vietnamese–American alliance and forcing the enemy to the negotiating table. A southern uprising might well convince the international community that the United States was unjustly fighting against an internally led popular revolution. More importantly, a military defeat of the Americans, real or perceived, might change the political context of the entire conflict. 43

During the plan’s first phase, to be executed in late 1967, NVA units would conduct conventional operations along South Vietnam’s borders to draw American forces away from urban areas and to facilitate NLF infiltration into the cities. Le Duan planned the second phase for early 1968, a coordinated offensive by insurgent and regular forces to attack allied troops and support popular uprisings in the cities and surrounding areas. Additional NVA units would reinforce the uprising in the plan’s final phase by assaulting American forces and wearing down U.S. military strength in South Vietnam. 44

Though Le Duan’s desired popular uprising failed to materialize, the general offensive launched in late January 1968 shocked most Americans, especially those watching the war at home. Commencing during the Tet holiday, communist forces attacked more than 200 cities, towns, and villages across South Vietnam. Though not completely surprised, Westmoreland had not anticipated the ability of Hanoi to coordinate an offensive of such size and scope. The allies, however, reacted quickly and the communists suffered mightily under the weight of American and South Vietnamese firepower. Yet the damage to the U.S. position in Vietnam, some argued irreparable, had been done. Even in the offensive’s first hours, senior CIA analyst George Carver predicted that “the degree of success already achieved in Saigon and around the country will adversely affect the image of the GVN (and its powerful American allies as well) in the eyes of the people.” 45 Indeed, Tet had taken a heavy psychological toll on the population. After years of U.S. assistance, the Saigon government appeared incapable of securing the country against a large-scale enemy attack. Any claims of progress seemed artificial at best, intentionally deceitful at worst.

News reports about Westmoreland’s late-February request for an additional 206,000 men, followed soon after by the president’s decision not to run for reelection, only reinforced perceptions of stalemate. Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, who replaced McNamara in early March, wondered aloud how MACV was winning the war yet needed more troops. Public opinion mirrored growing doubts within Johnson’s inner circle. A 10 March Gallup poll found only 33 percent of Americans believed the United States was making progress in the war. Thus, Johnson approved only 10,500 additional troops for Westmoreland and in late March suspended all air attacks over North Vietnam in hopes of opening talks with Hanoi. If the 1968 Tet offensive was not an outright turning point of the war—many historians still consider it to be—Hanoi’s assault and Washington’s response brought about a shift in American policy and strategic goals. Westmoreland, hoping for a change in strategy that would expand operations into the Cambodian and Laotian sanctuaries and thus shorten the war, instead received word in late spring that he would be leaving Vietnam to become the Chief of Staff of the Army. The best the general had been able to achieve was a long and bloody stalemate. 46

Historians have seized upon the Tet offensive and mid-1968 impasse as proof of a misguided military strategy crafted by a narrow-minded general who cared only for piling up high body counts. Such arguments should be considered with care. Far from being focused only on military operations against enemy main force units, Westmoreland instead crafted a strategy that took into account the issues of pacification, civic action, land reform, and the training of South Vietnamese units. If Tet illustrated anything, it was that battlefield successes—both military and nonmilitary—did not translate automatically into larger political outcomes. Despite the wealth of manpower and resources Americans brought to South Vietnam, they could not solve Saigon’s underlying political, economic, and social problems. Moreover, Westmoreland’s military strategy could not answer the basic questions over which the war was fought. In a contest over Vietnamese national identity in the postcolonial era, the U.S. mission in South Vietnam could only keep Saigon from falling to the communists. It could not convince the people a better future lay with an ally, rather than an enemy, of the United States.

From Stalemate to Withdrawal

In June 1968, Creighton W. Abrams, a West Point classmate of Westmoreland, assumed command of MACV. Only a month before, the enemy launched a series of new attacks in South Vietnam. Dubbed “mini-Tet,” the offensive sputtered out quickly but produced 125,000 new refugees inside a society already heavily dislocated by years of fighting. Reporters were quick to highlight the differences between the outgoing and incoming commanders. But Abrams, in Andrew Birtle’s words, differed from Westmoreland “more in emphasis than in substance.” Stressing a “one war” concept that viewed the enemy as a political-military whole, the new commander confronted familiar problems. As one officer recalled, “By the time Abrams arrived on the scene, there were few options left for changing the character of the war.” 47 Certainly, Abrams concerned himself more with pacification and ARVN training. These programs rose in importance, though, not because of some new strategic concept, but rather because the American phase of the war had largely run its course. From this point forward, the war’s outcome would increasingly rest on the actions of the Vietnamese, both North and South. While U.S. officials remained committed to an independent, noncommunist Vietnam, peace had replaced military victory as Americans’ principal national objective. 48

The inauguration of Richard M. Nixon in January 1969 underscored the diminishing role of South Vietnam in American foreign policy. The new president hoped to concentrate on his larger aim of improving relations with China and the Soviet Union. Such foreign policy designs hinged on reversing the “Americanization” of the war in Southeast Asia while fortifying South Vietnam to withstand future communist aggression. As Nixon’s national security advisor Henry Kissinger recalled, the challenge was to withdraw American forces “as an expression of policy and not as a collapse.” 49 Of course, Nixon, still the Cold War warrior, remained committed to opposing the expansion of communism. Withdrawal from Vietnam thus required maintaining an image of strength during peace negotiations if the United States was to retain credibility as a world power and a deterrent to communist expansion. Nixon’s goal of “peace with honor” thus would hold crucial implications for military strategists inside Vietnam. 50

In truth, Nixon’s larger policy goals complicated the process of de-Americanizing the war, soon dubbed “Vietnamization” by Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird. In shifting more of the war’s burden to the South Vietnamese, the president was quietly redefining success. Realizing, in Nixon’s words, that “total military victory was no longer possible,” the new administration sought a “fair negotiated settlement that would preserve the independence of South Vietnam.” 51 (Both Nixon and Laird believed flagging domestic support was limiting their options, long a concern of senior policymakers.) Abrams would preside over an American war effort increasingly concerned with reducing casualties while arranging for U.S. troop withdrawals. Moreover, the impending American departure did little to settle unresolved questions over the most pressing threat to South Vietnam. In preparing to hand over the war, should Americans be training the ARVN to defeat conventional North Vietnamese forces or a battered yet resilient insurgency? 52

After a detailed examination of the war led by Kissinger, Nixon formulated a five-point strategy “to end the war and win the peace.” The new policy depended first on pacification, redefined as “meaningful continuing security for the Vietnamese people.” Nixon also sought diplomatic isolation of North Vietnam and placed increasing weight on negotiations in Paris. Gradual withdrawal of U.S. forces was the fourth aspect of Nixon’s strategy. As the president recalled, “Americans needed tangible evidence that we were winding down the war, and the South Vietnamese needed to be given more responsibility for their defense.” (Some ARVN officers balked at the insinuation that they hadn’t been responsible for their nation’s security.) The final element, Vietnamization, aimed at training and equipping South Vietnam’s armed forces so they could defend the country on their own. Of note, political reform in Saigon, largely a task for Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, accompanied the military side of Vietnamization. “Our whole strategy,” Nixon declared, “depended on whether this program succeeded.” 53

For Abrams, the problem now became one of synchronizing all facets of his “one war” approach. Back in August 1968, MACV had to fend off another enemy offensive, the third of the year. Without retreating from the conventional threat, Abrams turned increasing attention to pacification. Under the influence of the new CORDS chief William Colby, the GVN initiated an Accelerated Pacification Campaign at year’s end. The campaign endeavored to upgrade 1,000 contested hamlets to relatively secure ratings by the end of January 1969. To provide political space for the Saigon government, U.S. military operations increased dramatically to keep the enemy off balance, further depopulating the countryside and creating more refugees. 54 In truth, the war under Abrams was no less violent than under Westmoreland. Still, the new MACV chief hoped to cut into the NLF infrastructure by boosting the number of those who would rally to Saigon’s side under the Chieu Hoi amnesty program, reinvigorating local defense forces, and neutralizing the insurgency’s political cadre. 55 This last goal fell largely to “Phoenix,” an intelligence coordination program that targeted the NLF political organization for destruction by police and local militia forces. MACV believed the defeat of the enemy infrastructure “essential to preclude re-establishment of an operational or support base to which the VC can return.” 56

While media attention often focused on battles like the costly engagement at “Hamburger Hill” in May 1969, conventional combat operations overshadowed MACV’s larger efforts to improve and modernize South Vietnam’s armed forces. For Abrams, any successful American withdrawal was predicated on improvements in this key area of Vietnamization. In the field, U.S. advisers trained their counterparts on small-unit patrolling and coordinating artillery support with infantry and armor operations. In garrison, the Americans concentrated on improving the ARVN promotion system and building an effective maintenance program. Moreover, ARVN leadership and morale needed attention to help reduce desertion rates. So too did intelligence, logistic, and operational planning programs. Abrams also had to propose an optimal force structure and help develop an operational approach best suited to ARVN capabilities. 57

Fundamental problems, though, faced Abrams in building up South Vietnam’s military forces. After Nguyen Van Thieu, South Vietnam’s president since the September 1967 election, announced a national mobilization in mid-1968, the size of the regular army and popular and regional forces increased substantially. In two years, the total armed forces grew by 40 percent. Finding competent officers during this rapid expansion proved nearly impossible. Additionally, capable ARVN leaders, of which there were many, too often found themselves and their units still relegated to secondary roles during allied maneuvers. 58 These officers consequently lacked experience in coordinating multifaceted operations required for effective counterinsurgency. Problems within the enlisted ranks rivaled those among ARVN’s leadership. Newsweek offered a harsh appraisal of the typical South Vietnamese trooper who was “often dragooned into an army where he is poorly trained, badly paid, insufficiently indoctrinated about why he is fighting—and, for the most part, led by incompetent officers.” 59 Simply increasing the number of soldiers and supplying them with better weapons would not achieve the larger goals of Vietnamization.

Moreover, the ultimate success of Vietnamization depended on resolving perennial problems. Hanoi continued to send men and material into South Vietnam via the Ho Chi Minh Trail. North Vietnamese units still found refuge in sanctuaries along the Cambodian and Laotian borders. Thus, expanding the war into Cambodia offered an opportunity to give the GVN the breathing space it needed. From his first day in office, Nixon sought to “quarantine” Cambodia. (Hanoi had taken advantage of the nominally neutral country by building base areas from which NVA units could infiltrate into South Vietnam.) To Nixon and Kissinger, improvements in ARVN readiness and pacification mattered only if South Vietnam’s borders were secure. On April 30, 1970, the president announced that U.S. troops were fighting in Cambodia. By expanding the war, Nixon was hoping to shorten it. While officials in Saigon and Washington heralded the operation’s accomplishments—Nixon stated that the “performance of the ARVN had demonstrated that Vietnamization was working”—the incursion into Cambodia left a mixed record. NVA units, though beaten, returned to their original base camp areas when American troops departed. By early June, the allies had searched only 5 percent of the 7,000 square miles of borderland despite having aimed to disrupt the enemy’s logistical bases. Additionally, the ARVN’s reliance on American firepower did not augur well for a future without U.S. air and artillery backing. 60

Worse, the Cambodian incursion set off a firestorm of political protest at home. After Ohio National Guardsmen fired into a demonstration at Kent State University on May 4, leaving four students dead, a wave of antiwar rallies swept the nation, closing nearly 450 colleges and universities. Less than four months earlier, the New York Times reported on the My Lai massacre. In March 1968, with the Tet offensive still raging, American soldiers on a search and destroy mission had summarily executed more than 300 unarmed civilians. Claims of civilian casualties prompted an informal inquiry, but army investigators covered up the story for nearly eighteen months. 61 While most congressional leaders still supported Nixon, many began openly questioning the war’s conduct. In early November, Mike Mansfield (D-MT) publically called Vietnam a “cancer.” “It’s a tragedy,” argued the Montana senator. “It’s eating out the heart of America. It’s doing us no good.” Senator George McGovern (D-SD) joined the chorus of dissenters, imploring Nixon to “stop our participation in the horrible destruction of this tiny country and its people.” The loss of support incensed the president. Nixon insisted that the pace of Vietnamization, not the level of dissent, determine U.S. troop withdrawals. Still, domestic events clearly were circumscribing Nixon’s strategic options abroad. 62

The discord at home seemed matched by discontent within the ranks of U.S. troops remaining in South Vietnam. Though contemporary views of a disintegrating army now appear overblown, clearly the strategic withdrawal was taking its toll on American soldiers. By early 1970, with the first units already departed Vietnam and more scheduled to leave, officers worried how the withdrawal was affecting their soldiers’ capacity to fight. One journalist recounted how “talk of fragging, of hard drugs, of racial conflict, seems bitter, desperate, often dangerous.” 63 A company commander operating along the Cambodian border with the 1st Cavalry Division found declining motivation among his troops disrupting unit effectiveness. “The colonel wants to make contact with the enemy and so do I,” reported the young captain, “but the men flat don’t.” 64 Few draftees wanted to be fighting in Vietnam in the first place and even fewer wanted to risk being killed in a war clearly that was winding down. In addition, Abrams increasingly had to concern himself with racial polarization inside his army. Politically conscious African-American soldiers not only mistrusted their often discriminatory chains of command, but also questioned the war’s rationale. Many blacks denounced the ideal of bringing democracy to South Vietnam when they were denied many freedoms at home. In short, the U.S. Army in Vietnam seemed to be unraveling. 65

By the end of 1970, U.S. strength dropped to some 254,800 soldiers remaining in country. Kissinger warned that unilateral withdrawals were weakening the bargaining position of the United States in Paris, but Nixon continued with the redeployments to prove Vietnamization was on track. 66 With the new year, however, came the realization that NVA logistical bases remained intact. While the Cambodian operation had denied Hanoi the use of the Sihanoukville port, the Ho Chi Minh Trail continued to serve as a major infiltration route into South Vietnam. “An invasion of the Laos Panhandle,” one ARVN officer recalled, thus “became an attractive idea.” Such an operation would “retain the initiative for the RVNAF, disrupt the flow of enemy personnel and supplies to South Vietnam, and greatly reduce the enemy’s capability to launch an offensive in 1971.” 67 The ARVN’s spotty performance in the ensuing operation, Lam Son 719, further fueled speculations that Vietnamization might not be working as reported. Though Nixon declared the campaign had “assured” the next round of U.S. troop withdrawals, Kissinger worried that Lam Son had exposed “lingering deficiencies” that raised questions over South Vietnam’s ability to bear the full burden of the ongoing war. 68

If Kissinger agonized over the need to balance negotiations with troop withdrawals and offensive operations to keep the enemy off balance, he was not alone. Inside Hanoi’s Politburo, Le Duan equally pondered strategic alternatives in the aftermath of Lam Son 719. Though only sixteen U.S. maneuver battalions remained in South Vietnam by early 1972, on all fronts the war appeared deadlocked. Le Duan hoped a new invasion would “defeat the American ‘Vietnamization’ policy, gain a decisive victory in 1972, and force the U.S. imperialists to negotiate an end to the war from a position of defeat.” 69 Abrams remained unclear regarding enemy intentions. Was a large-scale invasion an act of desperation, as Nixon believed, or a way to gain leverage in negotiations by controlling South Vietnamese territory? North Vietnamese strategists certainly were taking risks but not out of desperation. The 1972 Nguyen-Hue campaign aimed for a collapse of South Vietnam’s armed forces, Thieu’s ouster, and the formation of a coalition government. Failing these ambitious goals, Le Duan envisioned the struggle continuing against a weakened ARVN. In either case, the Politburo believed its “actions would totally change the character of the war in South Vietnam.” 70

The subsequent “Easter Offensive,” begun on March 30, 1972, unleashed three separate NVA thrusts into South Vietnam. In some areas, the ARVN fought bravely; in others, soldiers broke and ran. Abrams responded by throwing B-52 bombers into the battle as Nixon ordered resumption of bombing in the North and the mining of Haiphong harbor. Gradually, yet perceptibly, the offensive’s momentum began to slow. Although North Vietnam’s spring offensive had ended with no dramatic battlefield victory, it had met its goal of changing the character of the war. 71 U.S. officials proclaimed Vietnamization a final success given that the ARVN had successfully blunted the enemy’s assault. Overwhelming U.S. air support, however, quite literally saved many units from being overrun and, more intangibly, helped sustain morale during hard months of fighting. Equally important, North Vietnamese leaders made several errors during the campaign. The separate offensives into South Vietnam dissipated combat strength while placing overwhelming strain on logistical support capabilities. Moreover, tactical commanders lacked experience in employing tanks and squandered infantry units in suicidal assaults. 72

By the end of June, only 49,000 U.S. troops remained in South Vietnam. Like his predecessor, Abrams was pulled to become the army’s chief of staff before the guns had fallen silent. Throughout the summer and fall, stalemated discussions in Paris mirrored the military standoff inside South Vietnam. In October, Kissinger reported to Nixon a breakthrough with the North Vietnamese delegation and announced an impending cease-fire. President Thieu fumed that Kissinger had conceded too much, allowing NVA units to remain in South Vietnam and refused to sign any agreement. The resulting diplomatic impasse, fueled by Thieu’s defiance and Hanoi’s intransigence, infuriated Nixon. By December, the president had reached his limits and ordered a massive air campaign against North Vietnam to break the deadlock. Nixon intended the bombing assault, codenamed Linebacker II, to induce both Hanoi and Saigon to return to the negotiating table. On December 26, the Politburo agreed to resume talks while Nixon pressed Thieu to support the armistice. The final settlement changed little from the principles outlined in October. One month later, on January 27, 1973, the United States, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and the Provisional Revolutionary Government signed the Paris Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam. 73

Conclusions

In large sense, Nixon’s use of B-52 bombers during Linebacker II illustrated the limits of American military power in Vietnam. The press reacted strongly, referring to the bombing of urban targets in North Vietnam as “war by tantrum” and an act of “senseless terror.” 74 But by late 1972, B-52s were the only tools left in Nixon’s arsenal. Despite years of effort and sacrifice, the best the Americans could achieve was a stalemate only temporarily broken by strategic bombing. Many senior military officers, perhaps unsurprisingly, would point to Linebacker II as proof of a mismanaged war. They argued that if only civilian policymakers had been less restrictive in setting unnecessary boundaries, those in uniform could have won much earlier and at much less cost. Such arguments, however, tended to discount the larger political concerns of presidents and their advisers hoping to limit a war that had become the centerpiece of American foreign policy and one that had divided the nation. 75

Others advanced a different “if only” argument regarding U.S. military strategy for Vietnam. They posited that upon taking command of MACV, Abrams, deviating almost immediately from Westmoreland’s conventional methods, had changed the American approach to, and thus nature of, the war. This “better war” thesis found acceptance among many officers in whom a conviction endured that a better application of strategy could have yielded better political results. Yet senior American commanders, even before Westmoreland’s tenure at MACV, tended to see the war as a comprehensive whole and devised their strategy accordingly. Despite frequent heavy-handedness in applying military power inside South Vietnam, almost all officers recognized that the war ultimately was a contest for political power.

Comprehending the complexities of strategy and effectively implementing it, however, were not one and the same. Officers serving in Vietnam quickly found that strategy included much more than simply drafting a plan of political-military action. The complexity of the threat, both political and military, confounded U.S. analysts and staff officers. Westmoreland understood the important role played by southern insurgent forces but argued he could not stamp out these irregular “termites” without substantially eliminating the enemy’s main force units. Even ascertaining enemy motives proved difficult. Not long after Abrams took command, MACV still faced a “real problem, following the Tet offensive, trying to figure out” the enemy’s overall military strategy. 76

Perhaps most importantly, senior U.S. policymakers were asking too much of their military strategists. In the end, the war was a struggle between and among Vietnamese. For the United States, the foundation on which American forces waged a struggle—one that involved both construction of an effective host government and destruction of a committed communist-nationalist enemy—proved too fragile. Officers like Westmoreland and Abrams found that nation-building in a time of war was one of the most difficult tasks to ask of a military force. Yet American faith in the power to reconstruct, if not create, a South Vietnamese political community led to policies that did not address a fundamental issue—the internal contest to define and come to a consensus on Vietnamese nationalism and identity in the modern age.

More than any other conflict during the Cold War era, Vietnam exposed the limits of American military power overseas. It was a reality that many U.S. citizens found, and continue to find, discomforting. Yet if a perspective is to be gained from the long American experience in Southeast Asia, it lies here. Not all problems can be solved by military force, even when that force is combined with political, economic, and social efforts. The capacity of Americans to reshape new political and social communities may not, in fact, be limitless. Writing of his own experiences in the Korean War, Matthew Ridgway offered an important conclusion while the war in Vietnam was still raging. In setting foreign policy objectives, the general advised that policymakers look “to define them with care and to make sure they lie within the range of our vital national interests and that their accomplishment is within our capabilities.” 77 For those seeking to understand the disappointments of American military strategy during the Vietnam War, Ridgway’s counsel seems a useful starting point.

Discussion of the Literature

The historiography on the American experience in Vietnam remains a contentious topic. For a starting point, the best surveys are George Herring’s America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950– 1975, 4th edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002) , which is more a diplomatic and political history, and Mark Atwood Lawrence’s The Vietnam War: A Concise International History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008) , which places the war in an international perspective. A solid textbook is George Moss , Vietnam: An American Ordeal , 6th edition (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2009). An excellent collection of essays can be found in both David Anderson’s The Columbia History of the Vietnam War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011 ) and Jayne Werner and Luu Doan Huhnh , The Vietnam War: Vietnamese and American Perspectives (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997).

The escalation of the war under Johnson is well covered. Among the most important works are Fredrik Logevall , Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999 ), and Lloyd C. Gardner , Pay Any Price: Lyndon Johnson and the Wars for Vietnam (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1995) . Larry Berman has two very good works on LBJ: Planning a Tragedy: The Americanization of the War in Vietnam (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982 ), and Larry Berman , Lyndon Johnson’s War: The Road to Stalemate in Vietnam (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989). Brian VanDeMark’s Into the Quagmire: Lyndon Johnson and the Escalation of the Vietnam War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) is also useful. Robert Dallek , Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) , provides a balanced overview of the president’s struggles with the war.

The topic of U.S. military strategy is hotly debated. Gregory A. Daddis , Westmoreland’s War: Reassessing American Strategy in the Vietnam War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014) , offers a reinterpretation of those works in suggesting Americans were blind to the realities of the war. Samples of these latter works include: Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr. , The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986) ; Harry G. Summers Jr. , On Strategy: A Critical Appraisal of the Vietnam War (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1982) ; and Jeffrey Record , The Wrong War: Why We Lost in Vietnam (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1998). More persuasive is Andrew J. Birtle , U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine, 1942–1976 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 2006). Though Abrams left behind no written work on the war, Lewis Sorley , a staunch admirer of the general, provides insights in Vietnam Chronicles: The Abrams Tapes, 1968–1972 (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2004) . Mark Clodfelter takes on the air war in The Limits of Airpower: The American Bombing of North Vietnam (New York: Free Press, 1989). Thomas L. Ahern Jr. looks at the CIA in Vietnam Declassified: The CIA and Counterinsurgency (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010). Finally, an often overlooked yet important work on senior military leaders is Robert Buzzanco , Masters of War: Military Dissent and Politics in the Vietnam Era (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

On the war’s final years, see Jeffrey Kimball , Nixon’s Vietnam War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998) ; Ronald H. Spector , After Tet: The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam (New York: Free Press, 1993) ; and James H. Willbanks , Abandoning Vietnam: How America Left and South Vietnam Lost Its War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004) . Lewis Sorley’s A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999) takes an overly sympathetic view of the Abrams’s years.

For memoirs from senior leaders, students should consult William Colby with James McCargar , Lost Victory: A Firsthand Account of America’s Sixteen-Year Involvement in Vietnam (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1989) ; Lyndon Baines Johnson , The Vantage Point: Perspectives on the Presidency, 1963–1969 (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971) ; Henry Kissinger , Ending the Vietnam War: A History of America’s Involvement in and Extrication from the Vietnam War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003) ; Robert W Komer , Bureaucracy at War: U.S. Performance in the Vietnam Conflict (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1986) ; Robert S. McNamara , In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Times Books, 1995) ; Richard Nixon , RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978) ; Bruce, Palmer Jr. , The 25-Year War: America’s Military Role in Vietnam (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984) ; and William C. Westmoreland , A Soldier Reports (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976). Among the best memoirs from junior officers and soldiers are: Philip Caputo , A Rumor of War (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1977) ; David Donovan , Once a Warrior King (New York: Ballantine, 1986) ; Stuart A. Herrington , Stalking the Vietcong: Inside Operation Phoenix: A Personal Account (Navato, CA: Presidio, 2004) ; and Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway . We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young (New York: HarperCollins, 1993). Less a memoir than an excellent collective biography of the enlisted soldier serving in Vietnam is Christian G. Appy , Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993)

Journalists’ accounts were important in covering the American experience and in setting a foundation for how the war has been outlined in popular memory. Among the most indispensable of this genre are David Halberstam , The Best and the Brightest (New York: Random House, 1969) ; David Halberstam , The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam during the Kennedy Era (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964, 1988) ; Michael Herr , Dispatches (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968) ; Don Oberdorfer , Tet! (New York: Doubleday, 1971) ; and Neil Sheehan , A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (New York: Random House, 1988). Also useful is Peter Braestrup , Big Story: How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1977).

The South Vietnamese perspective often gets lost in American-centric works on the war but should not be disregarded. Mark P. Bradley’s Vietnam at War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009) is an excellent one-volume history of the war written from the Vietnamese viewpoint. Both Andrew Wiest , Vietnam’s Forgotten Army Vietnam’s Forgotten Army: Heroism and Betrayal in the ARVN (New York: New York University Press, 2008 ) and Robert K. Brigham , ARVN: Life and Death in the South Vietnamese Army (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006) , make an important contribution for understanding the U.S. Army’s most important allies. Three provincial studies also delve into the war inside South Vietnam’s villages: Eric M. Bergerud , The Dynamics of Defeat: The Vietnam War in Hau Nghia Province (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1991) ; Jeffrey Race , War Comes to Long An: Revolutionary Conflict in a Vietnamese Province (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972) ; and James Walker Trullinger Jr. , Village at War: An Account of Revolution in Vietnam (New York: Longman, 1980). For an argument on the cultural divide between allies, see Frances FitzGerald , Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972).

If the South Vietnamese perspective often is overlooked, the North Vietnamese also tends to get short shrift in American works. Relying on new research, the best among this group are Pierre Asselin , Hanoi’s’ Road to the Vietnam War, 1954–1965 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013) ; Lien-Hang T. Nguyen , Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012) ; Ang Cheng Guan , The Vietnam War from the Other Side: The Vietnamese Communists’ Perspective (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002 ) and Ending the Vietnam War: The Vietnamese Communists’ Perspective (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004); Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People’s Army of Vietnam, 1954–1975 , translated by Merle L. Pribbenow (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002) ; William J. Duiker , The Communist Road to Power , 2d ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996) ; and Warren Wilkins , Grab Their Belts to Fight Them: The Viet Cong’s Big Unit War against the U.S., 1965–1966 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2011).

Finally, students should not overlook the value of novels in understanding the war from the soldiers’ viewpoint. Among the best are Bao Ninh , The Sorrow of War: A Novel of North Vietnam (New York: Riverhead, 1996) ; Josiah Bunting , The Lionheads (New York: George Braziller, 1972) ; Karl Marlantes , Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War (New York: Atlantic Monthly, 2010) ; Tim O’Brien , The Things They Carried (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990) ; and Robert Roth , Sand in the Wind (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973).

Primary Sources

Among the best documentary collections are Michael H. Hunt , A Vietnam War Reader: A Documentary History from American and Vietnamese Perspectives (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010 ), and Mark Atwood Lawrence , The Vietnam War: An International History in Documents (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). Also useful is Robert McMahon and Thomas Paterson , Major Problems in the History of the Vietnam War: Documents and Essays (Boston: Wadsworth, 2007). For encyclopedias on the war, see Spencer C. Tucker , ed., The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social & Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001 ), and Stanley I. Kutler , Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War , 2d ed. (New York: Scribner, 2005).

Researchers should also consult two still useful collections of documents: The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of United States Decision making on Vietnam, ed. Mike Gravel , 5 vols. (Boston: Beacon, 1971–1972), and William Conrad Gibbons , The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and Legislative Roles and Relationships , 4 vols. (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1986–1995). The U.S. Department of State has collected a wonderful array of documents in the Foreign Relations of the United States ( FRUS ) series. These resources can be found online at http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments .

For researchers delving into primary sources, the best place to begin is the Virtual Vietnam Archive run by Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. This online archive houses more than four million pages of materials and is located at http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/virtualarchive/ . The physical archive has much more additional material for researchers. For higher level strategic insights, the presidential libraries in Boston, Massachusetts (Kennedy), Austin, Texas (Johnson), and Yorba Linda, California (Nixon) have important archival holdings. Those seeking insights into the U.S. Army will find excellent resources at the U.S. Army Military History Institute in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, and the U.S. Army Center of Military History at Fort McNair, Washington, DC. The National Archives in College Park, Maryland, offers a vast amount of resources as well. Finally, for those wishing to focus on cultural issues within the region, researchers may wish to consult the John M. Echols Collection on Southeast Asia at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Researcher information can be found at http://asia.library.cornell.edu/ac/Echols/index .

Further Reading

• Anderson, David L. , ed. The Columbia History of the Vietnam War . New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.
• Cosmas, Graham A. MACV: The Joint Command in the Years of Escalation, 1962–1967. Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 2006.
• Cosmas, Graham A. MACV: The Joint Command in the Years of Withdrawal, 1968–1973 . Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 2007.
• Daddis, Gregory A. Westmoreland’s War: Reassessing American Strategy in the Vietnam War . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
• Elliott, David W. P. The Vietnamese War: Revolution and Social Change in the Mekong Delta, 1930–1975. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2002.
• Herring, George C. America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975 . 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002.
• Hess, Gary R. Vietnam: Explaining America’s Lost War . Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008.
• Hunt, Richard A . Pacification: The American Struggle for Vietnam’s Hearts and Minds . Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995.
• Kimball, Jeffrey . Nixon’s Vietnam War . Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998.
• Lawrence, Mark Atwood. The Vietnam War: A Concise International History . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
• Nguyen, Lien-Hang T. Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam . Durham: University of North Carolina Press, 2012.

1. JCS quoted in Max Hastings , The Korean War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), 229. Hastings argued that the “Korean War occupies a unique place in history, as the first superpower essay of the nuclear age in the employment of limited force to achieve limited objectives,” p. 338. On the relationship of Korea to Europe, see Stanley Sandler , The Korean War: No Victors, No Vanquished (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 144.

2. Matthew B. Ridgway , The Korean War (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967 ; reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1986), 145, 232.

3. Bernard Brodie , Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959), 311 . For a broader context of this period, see Jonathan M. House , A Military History of the Cold War, 1944–1962 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012) .

4. Robert E. Osgood , Limited War: The Challenge to American Security (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 5, 7 .

5. Andrew J. Birtle , U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine, 1942–1976 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 2006), 278. See also Douglas Porch , Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2103), 217 . For a counterargument on how U.S. Army officers shunned learning and thus lost the war in Vietnam, see John Nagl , Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).

6. Henry A. Kissinger , Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), 139 . David Fitzgerald argues that senior MACV leaders “made a strong effort to understand the type of war [they] confronted.” Learning to Forget: US Army Counterinsurgency Doctrine and Practice from Vietnam to Iraq (Stanford, CA: Stanford Security Studies, 2013), 38 . On multiple dimensions of strategy, see Colin S. Gray , “Why strategy is difficult,” in Strategic Studies: A Reader , 2d ed., ed. Thomas G. Mahnken and Joseph A. Maiolo (New York: Routledge, 2014), 43.

7. Lyndon Baines Johnson , The Vantage Point: Perspectives on the Presidency, 1963–1969 (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971), 241 . On larger Cold War issues, see John Lewis Gaddis , Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 240 .

8. McNamara quoted in Gerard J. DeGroot , A Noble Cause? America and the Vietnam War (Harlow, UK: Longman, 2000), 135 . On enemy escalation and its impact, see David Kaiser , American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000), 346 . B. H. Liddell Hart , Strategy , 2d rev. ed. (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1954), 335–336.

9. Neil L. Jamieson argues that “Vietnamese clung to and fought over their own competing and incompatible visions of what Vietnam was and what it might and should become.” In Neil L. Jamieson , Understanding Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), x .

10. Ronald H. Spector , Advice and Support: The Early Years, 1941–1960 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1983), 336 . While early MAAG commanders realized the importance of economic development as part of an overall approach to strategy, Lieutenant General Lionel McGarr, who took over MAAG in August 1960, elevated the importance of counterinsurgency training within the ARVN ranks. Spector, Advice and Support , 365. See also Alexander S. Cochran Jr. , “American Planning for Ground Combat in Vietnam: 1952–1965,” Parameters 14.2 (Summer 1984): 65 .

11. Robert Buzzanco , Masters of War: Military Dissent and Politics in the Vietnam Era (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 65, 72–73 . While sympathetic to Ngo Dinh Diem , Mark Moyar covers the American participation during the advisory years in Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006) .

12. Agrovilles were supposedly secure communities to which rural civilians were relocated in hopes of separating them from NLF insurgents. On Diem, development, and engineering a social revolution, see Edward Miller , Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013) . For a competing interpretation, see James M. Carter , Inventing Vietnam: The United States and State Building, 1954–1968 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). On training of South Vietnam forces, James Lawton Collins Jr. , The Development and Training of the South Vietnamese Army, 1950–1972 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975) .

13. Graham A. Cosmas , MACV: The Joint Command in the Years of Escalation, 1962–1967 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 2006), 35 .

14. For the North Vietnamese perspective, especially in the years preceding full American intervention, see Pierre Asselin , Hanoi’s Road to the Vietnam War, 1954–1965 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013) , and William J. Duiker , The Communist Road to Power , 2d ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview , 1996) . For a perspective of Diem somewhat at odds with Miller, and especially Moyar, see Seth Jacobs , Cold War Mandarin: Ngo Dinh Diem and the Origins of America’s War in Vietnam, 1950–1963 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006) .

15. Michael H. Hunt , Lyndon Johnson’s War: America’s Cold War Crusade in Vietnam, 1945–1968 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1996), 94 . On the air campaign, see Mark Clodfelter , The Limits of Airpower: The American Bombing of North Vietnam (New York: Free Press, 1989) , and Lloyd C. Gardner , “Lyndon Johnson and the Bombing of Vietnam: Politics and Military Choices,” in The Columbia History of the Vietnam War , ed. David L. Anderson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011).

16. Westmoreland quoted in Larry Berman , Planning a Tragedy: The Americanization of the War in Vietnam (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), 71 . For an example of senior officers blaming civilians for limiting military means to achieve political ends, see U.S. Grant Sharp , Strategy for Defeat: Vietnam in Retrospect (San Rafael, CA: Presidio, 1978) .

17. On the contentious topic of escalation, see Fredrik Logevall , Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999) , and Lloyd C. Gardner , Pay Any Price: Lyndon Johnson and the Wars for Vietnam (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1995). David L. Di Leo offers a treatment of a key dissenter inside the Johnson White House in George Ball, Vietnam, and the Rethinking of Containment (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991).

18. Robert S. McNamara , In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Times Books, 1995), 188.

19. Westmoreland’s assessment in The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of United States Decisionmaking in Vietnam, vol. 4, ed. Mike Gravel . (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971–1972), 606. See also chapter 7, “Evolution of Strategy,” in William C. Westmoreland , A Soldier Reports (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976) .

20. Phillip B. Davidson , Vietnam at War: The History: 1946–1975 (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1988), 354 . On MACV guidance in implementing this broad strategy, see John M. Carland , “Winning the Vietnam War: Westmoreland’s Approach in Two Documents,” Journal of Military History 68.2 (April 2004): 553–574 .

21. U. S. Grant Sharp and William C. Westmoreland , Report on the War in Vietnam (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969), 100 . The Pentagon Papers , Vol. 4, 296.

22. Vo Nguyen Giap , People’s War, People’s Army: The Viet Công Insurrection Manual for Underdeveloped Countries (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1962), 46, 61 . On the evolution of Hanoi’s strategic thinking, see David W. P. Elliott , “Hanoi’s Strategy in the Second Indochina War,” in The Vietnam War: Vietnamese and American Perspectives , ed. Jayne S. Werner and Luu Doan Huynh (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1993) .

23. The strategic debate is best outlined in Lien-Hang T. Nguyen , Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 71 . See also Nguyen Vu Tung , “Coping with the United States: Hanoi’s Search for an Effective Strategy,” in The Vietnam War , ed. Peter Lowe (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 46–48 ; and Hanoi Assessment of Guerrilla War in South, November 1966, Folder 17, Box 06, Douglas Pike Collection: Unit 01-Assessment and Strategy, The Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas (hereafter cited as TTUVA). Resolution 12 in Communist Strategy as Reflected in Lao Dong Party and COSVN Resolutions, Folder 26, Box 07, Douglas Pike Collection: Unit 06-Democratic Republic of Vietnam, TTUVA, p. 3.

24. For a useful historiographical sketch on the debates over intervention and American strategy, see Gary R. Hess , Vietnam: Explaining America’s Lost War (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2009) , chapters 3 and 4.

25. Westmoreland quoted in Davidson, Vietnam at War , 313. On early U.S. Army actions in Vietnam, see John M. Carland , Stemming the Tide: May 1965 to October 1966 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 2000) , and Shelby L. Stanton , The Rise and Fall of an American Army: U.S. Ground Forces in Vietnam, 1965–1973 (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1985) .

26. Westmoreland explained his rationale for focusing on main force units in A Soldier Reports , 180. For a counterargument against this approach, see Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr. , The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986) .

27. The best monograph on the Ia Drang battles remains Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway , We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young (New York: HarperCollins, 1993) . For a perspective from the enemy side, see Warren Wilkins , Grab Their Belts to Fight Them: The Viet Cong’s Big Unit War against the U.S., 1965–1966 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2011) , especially chapter 6.

28. COMUSMACV memorandum, “Increased Emphasis on Rural Construction,” 8 December 1965, Correspondence, 1965–1966, Box 35, Jonathan O. Seaman Papers, U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania (hereafter cited as MHI).

29. Westmoreland highlighted Hanoi’s continuing infiltration of forces into South Vietnam at the end of 1965. An evaluation of U.S. operations in early December underscored his concerns that “our attrition of their forces in South Vietnam is insufficient to offset this buildup.” In Carland, “Winning the Vietnam War,” 570. On the media’s take on these early battles, see “G.I.’s Found Rising to Vietnam Test,” New York Times , December 26, 1965.

30. Memorandum to President Lyndon B. Johnson from Robert S. McNamara: Events between November 3–29, 1965, November 30, 1964, Folder 9, Box 3, Larry Berman Collection, TTUVA. On McNamara being “shaken” by the meeting, see Neil Sheehan , A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (New York: Random House, 1988), 579–580 . McNamara, In Retrospect , 221–222.

31. “Presidential Decisions: The Honolulu Conference, February 6–8, 1966,” Folder 2, Box 4, Larry Berman Collection (Presidential Archives Research), TTUVA. John T. Wheeler , “Only a Fourth of South Viet Nam Is Under Control of Saigon Regime,” Washington Star , January 25, 1966.

32. “1966 Program to Increase the Effectiveness of Military Operations and Anticipated Results Thereof,” February 8, 1966, in The War in Vietnam: The Papers of William C. Westmoreland , ed. Robert E. Lester (Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America, 1993) , Incl. 6, Folder 4, Reel 6. See also U.S. Department of State , Foreign Relations of the United States , vol. 5, Vietnam, 1967 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2002), 216–219 (hereafter cited as FRUS ). Westmoreland took to heart the importance of rural construction. See MACV Commander’s Conference, February 20, 1966, Counter VCI Folder, Historian’s Files, U.S. Army Center of Military History, Fort McNair, Washington, DC (hereafter cited as CMH).

33. Pacification defined in “Handbook for Military Support of Pacification,” February 1968, Folder 14, Box 5, United States Armed Forces Manual Collection, TTUVA. Seymour Topping , “Crisis in Saigon Snags U.S. Effort,” New York Times , April 5, 1966 . Martin G. Clemis , “Competing and Incompatible Visions: Revolution, Pacification, and the Political Organization of Space during the Second Indochina War,” paper presented at the 81st Annual Meeting of the Society for Military History, April 2014, Kansas City, MO.

34. On Westmoreland’s approach to pacification, see Gregory A. Daddis , Westmoreland’s War: Reassessing American Strategy in Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014) , chapter 5. For a counterargument that dismisses allied pacification efforts, see Nick Turse , Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2013).

35. Sir Robert Thompson , Defeating Communist Insurgency: The Lessons of Malaya and Vietnam (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1966), 55 . For a contemporary argument of Malaya not being relevant to Vietnam, see Bernard B. Fall , Viet-Nam Witness: 1953–66 (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1966), 272 .

36. Thomas L. Ahern Jr. , Vietnam Declassified: The CIA and Counterinsurgency (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010), 171–175 .

37. The best monograph on pacification remains Richard A. Hunt , Pacification: The American Struggle for Vietnam’s Hearts and Minds (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995) . For a balanced treatment of Komer, see Frank L. Jones , Blowtorch: Robert Komer, Vietnam, and American Cold War Strategy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2013) . See also Robert W. Komer , Bureaucracy at War: U.S. Performance in the Vietnam Conflict (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1986) . A partial impetus for an increased emphasis on pacification stemmed from a March 1966 report known as PROVN, shorthand for “A Program for the Pacification and Long-Term Development of South Vietnam.” PROVN stressed nonmilitary means and argued that “victory” could be achieved only by “bringing the individual Vietnamese, typically a rural peasant, to support willingly the Government of South Vietnam (GVN).” Deputy Chief of Staff for Military Operations, “A Program for the Pacification and Long-Term Development of South Vietnam (Department of the Army, March 1966), 1, 3. The best review of this still hotly debated document is Andrew J. Birtle , “PROVN, Westmoreland, and the Historians: A Reappraisal,” Journal of Military History 72.4 (October 2008): 1213–1247 .

38. Robert W. Komer , “Clear, Hold and Rebuild,” Army 20.5 5 (May 1970): 19 . On CORDS establishment, see National Security Action Memorandum No. 362, FRUS , 1964–1968, vol. 5, 398–399. Though revolutionary development remained, at least nominally, a South Vietnamese program, many observers believed the inability of the ARVN to take over pacification in the countryside helped spur the establishment of CORDS. Robert Shaplen , The Road from War: Vietnam, 1965–1970 (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 122 . As of March 31, 1967, 53 ARVN infantry battalions were performing missions in direct support of pacification. MACV Monthly Evaluation Report, March 1967, MHI, 13.

39. For a contemporary discussion on the cultural divide between Americans and Vietnamese and how this impacted both military operations and the pacification program, see Frances FitzGerald , Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972). Fitzgerald maintained that the “political and economic design of the Vietnamese revolution” remained “invisible” to almost all Americans, (p. 143).

40. For competing tasks within CORDS, see Chester L. Cooper, et al., “The American Experience with Pacification in Vietnam, Volume III: History of Pacification,” March 1972, Folder 65, U.S. Marine Corps History Division, Vietnam War Documents Collection, TTUVA, 271. Journalist Ward Just reported that the real yardsticks of pacification’s progress were “the Vietnamese view of events, the Vietnamese mood, the Vietnamese will and the Vietnamese capability.” See “Another Measure of Vietnam’s War,” Washington Post , October 15, 1967. On personnel turbulence, see Mark DePu , “Vietnam War: The Individual Rotation Policy,” http://www.historynet.com/vietnam-war-the-individual-rotation-policy.htm .

41. As a sampling of contemporary journalist critiques of the war in 1967, see: Joseph Kraft , “The True Failure in Saigon—South Vietnam’s Fighting Force,” Los Angeles Times , May 3, 1967 ; Ward Just , “This War May Be Unwinnable,” Washington Post, June 4, 1967 ; and R. W. Apple , “Vietnam: The Signs of Stalemate,” New York Times , August 7, 1967. On the war in 1967 being perceived as a stalemate, see Sir Robert Thompson , No Exit from Vietnam (New York: David McKay, 1969), 67 ; and Anthony James Joes , The War for South Viet Nam, 1954–1975, rev. ed. (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001), 96 . On military operations early in 1967, see Bernard W. Rogers , Cedar Falls–Junction City: A Turning Point (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974, 2004) .

42. On Johnson’s salesmanship campaign, see Larry Berman , Lyndon Johnson’s War: The Road to Stalemate in Vietnam (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989) , especially chapters 5–7. On the MACV-CIA debate, see James J. Wirtz , “Intelligence to Please? The Order of Battle Controversy during the Vietnam War,” Political Science Quarterly 106.2 (Summer 1991): 239–263 .

43. On Hanoi’s views and its policy for a decisive victory, see Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People’s Army of Vietnam, 1954–1975 , trans. Merle L. Pribbenow (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 206–207 . On overriding political goals of Tet, see: Ang Cheng Guan , The Vietnam War from the Other Side: The Vietnamese Communists’ Perspective (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002),116–126 ; James J. Wirtz , The Tet Offensive: Intelligence Failure in War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 10, 20–21 ; Ronnie E. Ford , Tet 1968: Understanding the Surprise (London: Frank Cass, 1995), 70–71 ; and Gabriel Kolko , Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the United States, and the Modern Historical Experience (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 303 .

44. If successful, Hanoi’s leaders also would be in a more advantageous position if forced into a “fighting while negotiating” phase of the war. Ford, Tet 1968 , 93. See also Merle L. Pribbenow II , “General Võ Nguyên Giáp and the Mysterious Evolution of the Plan for the 1968 Tết Offensive,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 3 (Summer 2008): 1–33 .

45. Carver quoted in Robert J. McMahon, “Turning Point: The Vietnam War’s Pivotal Year, November 1967–November 1968,” in Anderson, The Columbia History of the Vietnam War , 198. For a journalist’s account, see Don Oberdorfer , Tet! (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971) . For an accessible reference book, see William T. Allison , The Tet Offensive: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Routledge, 2008) .

46. Gallup poll results in the aftermath of Tet in Berman, Lyndon Johnson’s War , 185. Background on LBJ’s March 31 speech in Robert Mann , A Grand Delusion: America’s Descent into Vietnam (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 600–602 ; A. J. Langguth , Our Vietnam: The War, 1954–1975 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 492–493 ; and Kolko, Anatomy of a War , 320–321. Decision on troop levels in Mann, A Grand Delusion , 576.

47. Zeb B. Bradford , “With Creighton Abrams during Tet,” Vietnam (February 1998): 45 . Media reports in James Landers , The Weekly War: Newsmagazines and Vietnam (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004), 145–146 . As examples arguing for a change in strategy, see A. J. Langguth , “General Abrams Listens to a Different Drum,” New York Times , May 5, 1968 , and “A ‘Different’ War Now, With Abrams in Command,” U.S. News & World Report , August 26, 1968, 12. On Abrams’s “one-war” concept, see Lewis Sorley , A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999), 18 . The Westmoreland-Abrams strategy debate remains contentious. In his admiration of Abrams, Lewis Sorley is most vocal in supporting a change in strategic concept. See as an example, Vietnam Chronicles: The Abrams Tapes, 1968–1972 (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2004), xix . Others are less certain. Phillip Davidson served under both commanders, as did Robert W. Komer—neither subscribed to a change in strategy under Abrams. Davidson, Vietnam at War , 512, and Komer in The Lessons of Vietnam, ed. W. Scott Thompson and Donaldson D. Frizzell (New York: Crane, Russak, 1977), 79 . Andrew Birtle’s argument on the change being “more in emphasis than in substance” seems most compelling. “As MACV admitted in 1970, ‘the basic concept and objectives of pacification, to defeat the VC/NVA and to provide the people with economic and social benefits, have changed little since the first comprehensive GVN plan was published in 1964.’” In U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine , 367.

48. Andrew J. Goodpaster, Senior Officers Debriefing Program, May 1976, MHI, p. 40. On peace replacing military victory, see Daniel C. Hallin , The “Uncensored War”: The Media and Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 178 .

49. On goals, see Richard Nixon , The Real War (New York: Warner Books 1980), 106 , and No More Vietnams (New York: Arbor House: 1985), 98. Henry Kissinger , The White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), 298 . See also Larry Berman , No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger, and Betrayal in Vietnam (New York: Free Press, 2001), 50 . Jeffrey Kimball argues that de-Americanization “was a course made politically necessary by the American public’s desire to wind down the war and doubts among key segments of the foreign-policy establishment about the possibility of winning the war.” The Vietnam War Files: Uncovering the Secret History of Nixon-Era Strategy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 12.

50. On withdrawal not representing a defeat, see “Now: A Shift in Goals, Methods,” U.S. News & World Report , January 6, 1969, 16. On global perspective, see Jeffrey Kimball , Nixon’s Vietnam War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 62 . Michael Lind argues that Nixon had to withdraw “in a manner that preserved domestic support for the Cold War in other theaters.” Vietnam: The Necessary War (New York: Free Press, 1999), 106 .

51. Richard Nixon , RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), 349 . On realizing limits to U.S. power, see Lawrence W. Serewicz , America at the Brink of Empire: Rusk, Kissinger, and the Vietnam War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007), 10 . On containing communism, see U.S. Embassy Statement , “Objectives and Courses of Action of the United States in South Viet-Nam,” FRUS , 1964–1968, vol. 7, 719 . See also Lloyd Gardner , “The Last Casualty? Richard Nixon and the End of the Vietnam War, 1969–75,” in A Companion to the Vietnam War , ed. Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buzzanco (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002), 230 .

52. On problems of different types of threats, see Viet-Nam Info Series 20: “The Armed Forces of the Republic of Viet Nam,” from Vietnam Bulletin, 1969, Folder 09, Box 13, Douglas Pike Collection: Unit 02-Military Operations, TTUVA, ps. 8, 25. See also Richard Shultz Jr. , “The Vietnamization-Pacification Strategy of 1969–1972: A Quantitative and Qualitative Reassessment,” in Lessons from an Unconventional War: Reassessing U.S. Strategies for Future Conflicts, ed. Richard A. Hunt and Richard H. Shultz Jr. (New York: Pergamon, 1982), 55–56 . Loren Baritz argues that the “Nixon administration abandoned counterinsurgency” since it realized the NLF no longer was a significant threat. Backfire: A History of How American Culture Led Us into Vietnam and Made Us Fight the Way We Did (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 279 .

53. Nixon, No More Vietnams , 104–107. Definition of pacification on p. 132.

54. Pacification Priority Area Summary, September 3, 1968, prepared by CORDS, Folder 65, US Marine Corps History Division, Vietnam War Documents Collection, TTUVA. Countryside depopulation in Charles Mohr , “Saigon Tries to Recover from the Blows,” New York Times , May 10, 1968 ; and David W. P. Elliott , The Vietnamese War: Revolution and Social Change in the Mekong Delta, 1930–1975, concise ed. (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2007), 331, 336 . On problems of measuring pacification security, see Gregory A. Daddis , No Sure Victory: Measuring U.S. Army Effectiveness and Progress in the Vietnam War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 118–122 .

55. The Chieu Hoi (“Open Arms”) program, begun in 1963, aimed to “rally” Vietcong defectors to the GVN side as part of a larger national reconciliation effort. The plan sought to give former insurgents “opportunities for defection, an alternative to the hardships and deprivations of guerrilla life, political pardon, and in some measure, though vocational training, a means of earning a livelihood.” Jeanette A. Koch , The Chieu Hoi Program in South Vietnam, 1963–1971 (Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 1973), v .

56. Vietnam Lessons Learned No. 73, “Defeat of VC Infrastructure,” November 20, 1968, MACV Lessons Learned, Box 1, RG 472, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland. See also Dale Andradé , Ashes to Ashes: The Phoenix Program and the Vietnam War (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1990) ; and Mark Moyar , Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism in Vietnam (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, 2007) .

57. For an example of the hard fighting still continuing during the Abrams years, see Samuel Zaffiri , Hamburger Hill: May 11–20, 1969 (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1988). On what U.S. advisers were doing as part of Vietnamization, see Jeffrey J. Clarke , Advice and Support: The Final Years, 1965–1973 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1988), 342–343 .

58. On ARVN increases, see in Larry A. Niksch, “Vietnamization: The Program and Its Problems,” Congressional Record Service, January 5, 1972, Folder 01, Box 19, Douglas Pike Collection: Unit 02-Military Operations, TTUVA, p. CRS-21. The best work on the South Vietnamese Army is Robert K. Brigham , ARVN: Life and Death in the South Vietnamese Army (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006) .

59. “The Laird Plan,” Newsweek , June 2, 1969, 44. On ARVN lacking experience, see James H. Willbanks , Abandoning Vietnam: How America Left and South Vietnam Lost Its War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 51 ; and Samuel Zaffiri , Westmoreland: A Biography of General William C. Westmoreland (New York: William Morrow, 1994), 211 .

60. Vietnamization working in Nixon, RN , 467. On enemy infiltration, see John Prados , The Blood Road: The Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Vietnam War (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1999) . On the incursion, see John M. Shaw , The Cambodian Campaign: The 1970 Offensive and America’s Vietnam War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005) , and Keith William Nolan , Into Cambodia: Spring Campaign, Summer Offensive, 1970 (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1990) .

61. On My Lai, see Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim , Four Hours in My Lai (New York: Viking, 1992) , and William Thomas Allison , My Lai: An American Atrocity in the Vietnam War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012) .

62. Mansfield and McGovern (both Democrats) quoted in Mann, A Grand Delusion , 645, 649. See also Berman, No Peace, No Honor , 76. For an introduction to the antiwar movement and its impact on Nixon, see Melvin Small , Antiwarriors: The Vietnam War and the Battle for America’s Hearts and Minds (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2002).

63. Donald Kirk , “Who Wants to Be the Last American Killed in Vietnam?” New York Times , September 19, 1971 . See also “As Fighting Slows in Vietnam: Breakdown in GI Discipline” U.S. News & World Report , June 7, 1971, and George Lepre , Fragging: Why U.S. Soldiers Assaulted Their Officers in Vietnam (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2011) . “Fragging,” derived from fragmentation grenade, was the act of fratricide, usually against an officer in a soldier’s chain of command. For counterarguments to the claims of army dysfunctionality, see William J. Shkurti , Soldiering on in a Dying War: The True Story of the Firebase Pace Incidents and the Vietnam Drawdown (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011 ), and Jeremy Kuzmarov , The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009) .

64. Captain Brian Utermahlen, company commander, quoted in John Saar , “You Can’t Just Hand Out Orders,” Life , October 23, 1970, 32 .

65. “The Troubled U.S. Army in Vietnam,” Newsweek , January 11, 1971, 30, 34. On avoiding risks in a withdrawing army, see Saar, 31. James E. Westheider , The African American Experience in Vietnam: Brothers in Arms (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008) .

66. Troop strengths in Shelby L. Stanton , Vietnam Order of Battle: A Complete Illustrated Reference to U.S. Army Combat and Support Forces in Vietnam, 1961–1973 (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 2003), 334 . Kissinger’s concerns in The White House Years , 971.

67. Nguyen Duy Hinh , Lam Son 719 (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1979), 8 . On Lam Son 719 being linked to continuing withdrawals, see Andrew Wiest , Vietnam’s Forgotten Army: Heroism and Betrayal in the ARVN (New York: New York University Press, 2008), 199 .

68. Two new works cover the Lam Son 719 operation: James H. Willbanks , A Raid Too Far: Operation Lam Son 719 and Vietnamization in Laos (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2014) , and Robert D. Sander , Invasion of Laos, 1971: Lam Son 719 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014) .

69. Politburo quoted in Victory in Vietnam , 283. On Hanoi’s strategic motives, see Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War , 324; Stephen P. Randolph , Powerful and Brutal Weapons: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Easter Offensive (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 28–29 ; and Ngo Quang Truong , The Easter Offensive of 1972 (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1980), 157–158 .

70. Politburo quoted in Victory in Vietnam , 283. On uncertainty over Hanoi’s intentions, see Berman, No Peace, No Honor , 124; Allan E. Goodman , The Lost Peace: America’s Search for a Negotiated Settlement of the Vietnam War (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1978), 117–118 ; and Anthony T. Bouscaren , ed., All Quiet on the Eastern Front: The Death of South Vietnam (Old Greenwich, CT: Devin-Adair, 1977), 44 . Nixon viewed the invasion “as a sign of desperation.” In RN , 587.

71. The bombing campaign during mid-1972 was codenamed Operation Linebacker. On debates between the White House and MACV over the best use of B-52s, see Randolph, Powerful and Brutal Weapons , 119–120; Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War , 314–315; and H. R. Haldeman , The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House (New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1994), 435 . On the campaign ending with “no culminating battles and mass retreats, just the gradual erosion of NVA strength and the release of pressure against defending ARVN troops,” see Randolph, Powerful and Brutal Weapons , 270.

72. James H. Willbanks argues that “the fact U.S. tactical leadership and firepower were the key ingredients . . . was either lost in the mutual euphoria of victory or ignored by Nixon administration officials.” In The Battle of An Loc (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 166.

73. Thieu’s defiance and Hanoi’s intransigence in Robert Dalleck , Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 443 . Paris agreement in Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War , 366–368. See also Kimball, The Vietnam War Files , 276–277.

74. Linebacker II goals in Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War , 364–365. Press quoted in ibid. , 366 .

75. Ronald B. Frankum Jr. , “‘Swatting Flies with a Sledgehammer’: The Air War,” in Rolling Thunder in a Gentle Land: The Vietnam War Revisited , ed. Andrew Wiest (New York: Osprey, 2006), 221–222.

76. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports , 180–181. MACV staff in Sorley, Vietnam Chronicles , 9.

77. Ridgway, The Korean War , 247.

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Vietnam War

By: History.com Editors

Updated: March 28, 2023 | Original: October 29, 2009

The Vietnam War was a long, costly and divisive conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The conflict was intensified by the ongoing Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. More than 3 million people (including over 58,000 Americans) were killed in the Vietnam War, and more than half of the dead were Vietnamese civilians. 

Opposition to the war in the United States bitterly divided Americans, even after President Richard Nixon signed the  Paris Peace Accords  and ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1973. Communist forces ended the war by seizing control of South Vietnam in 1975, and the country was unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam the following year.

Roots of the Vietnam War

Vietnam, a nation in Southeast Asia on the eastern edge of the Indochinese peninsula, had been under French colonial rule since the 19th century.

During World War II , Japanese forces invaded Vietnam. To fight off both Japanese occupiers and the French colonial administration, political leader Ho Chi Minh —inspired by Chinese and Soviet communism —formed the Viet Minh, or the League for the Independence of Vietnam.

Following its 1945 defeat in World War II, Japan withdrew its forces from Vietnam, leaving the French-educated Emperor Bao Dai in control. Seeing an opportunity to seize control, Ho’s Viet Minh forces immediately rose up, taking over the northern city of Hanoi and declaring a Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) with Ho as president.

Seeking to regain control of the region, France backed Emperor Bao and set up the state of Vietnam in July 1949, with the city of Saigon as its capital.

Both sides wanted the same thing: a unified Vietnam. But while Ho and his supporters wanted a nation modeled after other communist countries, Bao and many others wanted a Vietnam with close economic and cultural ties to the West.

Did you know? According to a survey by the Veterans Administration, some 500,000 of the 3 million troops who served in Vietnam suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and rates of divorce, suicide, alcoholism and drug addiction were markedly higher among veterans.

HISTORY Vault: Vietnam in HD

See the Vietnam War unfold through the gripping firsthand accounts of 13 brave men and women forever changed by their experiences.

When Did the Vietnam War Start?

The Vietnam War and active U.S. involvement in the war began in 1954, though ongoing conflict in the region had stretched back several decades.

After Ho’s communist forces took power in the north, armed conflict between northern and southern armies continued until the northern Viet Minh’s decisive victory in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in May 1954. The French loss at the battle ended almost a century of French colonial rule in Indochina.

The subsequent treaty signed in July 1954 at a Geneva conference split Vietnam along the latitude known as the 17th Parallel (17 degrees north latitude), with Ho in control in the North and Bao in the South. The treaty also called for nationwide elections for reunification to be held in 1956.

In 1955, however, the strongly anti-communist politician Ngo Dinh Diem pushed Emperor Bao aside to become president of the Government of the Republic of Vietnam (GVN), often referred to during that era as South Vietnam.

The Viet Cong

With the Cold War intensifying worldwide, the United States hardened its policies against any allies of the Soviet Union , and by 1955 President Dwight D. Eisenhower had pledged his firm support to Diem and South Vietnam.

With training and equipment from American military and the CIA , Diem’s security forces cracked down on Viet Minh sympathizers in the south, whom he derisively called Viet Cong (or Vietnamese Communist), arresting some 100,000 people, many of whom were brutally tortured and executed.

By 1957, the Viet Cong and other opponents of Diem’s repressive regime began fighting back with attacks on government officials and other targets, and by 1959 they had begun engaging the South Vietnamese army in firefights.

In December 1960, Diem’s many opponents within South Vietnam—both communist and non-communist—formed the National Liberation Front (NLF) to organize resistance to the regime. Though the NLF claimed to be autonomous and that most of its members were not communists, many in Washington assumed it was a puppet of Hanoi.

Domino Theory

A team sent by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to report on conditions in South Vietnam advised a build-up of American military, economic and technical aid in order to help Diem confront the Viet Cong threat.

Working under the “ domino theory ,” which held that if one Southeast Asian country fell to communism, many other countries would follow, Kennedy increased U.S. aid, though he stopped short of committing to a large-scale military intervention.

By 1962, the U.S. military presence in South Vietnam had reached some 9,000 troops, compared with fewer than 800 during the 1950s.

Gulf of Tonkin

A coup by some of his own generals succeeded in toppling and killing Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, in November 1963, three weeks before Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas .

The ensuing political instability in South Vietnam persuaded Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson , and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to further increase U.S. military and economic support.

In August of 1964, after DRV torpedo boats attacked two U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, Johnson ordered the retaliatory bombing of military targets in North Vietnam. Congress soon passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution , which gave Johnson broad war-making powers, and U.S. planes began regular bombing raids, codenamed Operation Rolling Thunder , the following year.

The bombing was not limited to Vietnam; from 1964-1973, the United States covertly dropped two million tons of bombs on neighboring, neutral Laos during the CIA-led “Secret War” in Laos . The bombing campaign was meant to disrupt the flow of supplies across the Ho Chi Minh trail into Vietnam and to prevent the rise of the Pathet Lao, or Lao communist forces. The U.S. bombings made Laos the most heavily bombed country per capita in the world.

In March 1965, Johnson made the decision—with solid support from the American public—to send U.S. combat forces into battle in Vietnam. By June, 82,000 combat troops were stationed in Vietnam, and military leaders were calling for 175,000 more by the end of 1965 to shore up the struggling South Vietnamese army.

Despite the concerns of some of his advisers about this escalation, and about the entire war effort amid a growing anti-war movement , Johnson authorized the immediate dispatch of 100,000 troops at the end of July 1965 and another 100,000 in 1966. In addition to the United States, South Korea , Thailand, Australia and New Zealand also committed troops to fight in South Vietnam (albeit on a much smaller scale).

William Westmoreland

In contrast to the air attacks on North Vietnam, the U.S.-South Vietnamese war effort in the south was fought primarily on the ground, largely under the command of General William Westmoreland , in coordination with the government of General Nguyen Van Thieu in Saigon.

Westmoreland pursued a policy of attrition, aiming to kill as many enemy troops as possible rather than trying to secure territory. By 1966, large areas of South Vietnam had been designated as “free-fire zones,” from which all innocent civilians were supposed to have evacuated and only enemy remained. Heavy bombing by B-52 aircraft or shelling made these zones uninhabitable, as refugees poured into camps in designated safe areas near Saigon and other cities.

Even as the enemy body count (at times exaggerated by U.S. and South Vietnamese authorities) mounted steadily, DRV and Viet Cong troops refused to stop fighting, encouraged by the fact that they could easily reoccupy lost territory with manpower and supplies delivered via the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Cambodia and Laos. Additionally, supported by aid from China and the Soviet Union, North Vietnam strengthened its air defenses.

Vietnam War Protests

By November 1967, the number of American troops in Vietnam was approaching 500,000, and U.S. casualties had reached 15,058 killed and 109,527 wounded. As the war stretched on, some soldiers came to mistrust the government’s reasons for keeping them there, as well as Washington’s repeated claims that the war was being won.

The later years of the war saw increased physical and psychological deterioration among American soldiers—both volunteers and draftees—including drug use , post-traumatic stress disorder ( PTSD ), mutinies and attacks by soldiers against officers and noncommissioned officers.

Between July 1966 and December 1973, more than 503,000 U.S. military personnel deserted, and a robust anti-war movement among American forces spawned violent protests, killings and mass incarcerations of personnel stationed in Vietnam as well as within the United States.

Bombarded by horrific images of the war on their televisions, Americans on the home front turned against the war as well: In October 1967, some 35,000 demonstrators staged a massive Vietnam War protest outside the Pentagon . Opponents of the war argued that civilians, not enemy combatants, were the primary victims and that the United States was supporting a corrupt dictatorship in Saigon.

Tet Offensive

By the end of 1967, Hanoi’s communist leadership was growing impatient as well, and sought to strike a decisive blow aimed at forcing the better-supplied United States to give up hopes of success.

On January 31, 1968, some 70,000 DRV forces under General Vo Nguyen Giap launched the Tet Offensive (named for the lunar new year), a coordinated series of fierce attacks on more than 100 cities and towns in South Vietnam.

Taken by surprise, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces nonetheless managed to strike back quickly, and the communists were unable to hold any of the targets for more than a day or two.

Reports of the Tet Offensive stunned the U.S. public, however, especially after news broke that Westmoreland had requested an additional 200,000 troops, despite repeated assurances that victory in the Vietnam War was imminent. With his approval ratings dropping in an election year, Johnson called a halt to bombing in much of North Vietnam (though bombings continued in the south) and promised to dedicate the rest of his term to seeking peace rather than reelection.

Johnson’s new tack, laid out in a March 1968 speech, met with a positive response from Hanoi, and peace talks between the U.S. and North Vietnam opened in Paris that May. Despite the later inclusion of the South Vietnamese and the NLF, the dialogue soon reached an impasse, and after a bitter 1968 election season marred by violence, Republican Richard M. Nixon won the presidency.

Vietnamization

Nixon sought to deflate the anti-war movement by appealing to a “silent majority” of Americans who he believed supported the war effort. In an attempt to limit the volume of American casualties, he announced a program called Vietnamization : withdrawing U.S. troops, increasing aerial and artillery bombardment and giving the South Vietnamese the training and weapons needed to effectively control the ground war.

In addition to this Vietnamization policy, Nixon continued public peace talks in Paris, adding higher-level secret talks conducted by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger beginning in the spring of 1968.

The North Vietnamese continued to insist on complete and unconditional U.S. withdrawal—plus the ouster of U.S.-backed General Nguyen Van Thieu—as conditions of peace, however, and as a result the peace talks stalled.

My Lai Massacre

The next few years would bring even more carnage, including the horrifying revelation that U.S. soldiers had mercilessly slaughtered more than 400 unarmed civilians in the village of My Lai in March 1968.

After the My Lai Massacre , anti-war protests continued to build as the conflict wore on. In 1968 and 1969, there were hundreds of protest marches and gatherings throughout the country.

On November 15, 1969, the largest anti-war demonstration in American history took place in Washington, D.C. , as over 250,000 Americans gathered peacefully, calling for withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam.

The anti-war movement, which was particularly strong on college campuses, divided Americans bitterly. For some young people, the war symbolized a form of unchecked authority they had come to resent. For other Americans, opposing the government was considered unpatriotic and treasonous.

As the first U.S. troops were withdrawn, those who remained became increasingly angry and frustrated, exacerbating problems with morale and leadership. Tens of thousands of soldiers received dishonorable discharges for desertion, and about 500,000 American men from 1965-73 became “draft dodgers,” with many fleeing to Canada to evade conscription . Nixon ended draft calls in 1972, and instituted an all-volunteer army the following year.

Kent State Shooting

In 1970, a joint U.S-South Vietnamese operation invaded Cambodia, hoping to wipe out DRV supply bases there. The South Vietnamese then led their own invasion of Laos, which was pushed back by North Vietnam.

The invasion of these countries, in violation of international law, sparked a new wave of protests on college campuses across America. During one, on May 4, 1970, at Kent State University in Ohio , National Guardsmen shot and killed four students. At another protest 10 days later, two students at Jackson State University in Mississippi were killed by police.

By the end of June 1972, however, after a failed offensive into South Vietnam, Hanoi was finally willing to compromise. Kissinger and North Vietnamese representatives drafted a peace agreement by early fall, but leaders in Saigon rejected it, and in December Nixon authorized a number of bombing raids against targets in Hanoi and Haiphong. Known as the Christmas Bombings, the raids drew international condemnation.

The Pentagon Papers

A top-secret Department of Defense study of U.S. political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967 was published in the New York Times in 1971—shedding light on how the Nixon administration ramped up conflict in Vietnam. The report, leaked to the Times by military analyst Daniel Ellsberg, further eroded support for keeping U.S. forces in Vietnam. 

When Did the Vietnam War End?

In January 1973, the United States and North Vietnam concluded a final peace agreement, ending open hostilities between the two nations. War between North and South Vietnam continued, however, until April 30, 1975, when DRV forces captured Saigon, renaming it Ho Chi Minh City (Ho himself died in 1969).

More than two decades of violent conflict had inflicted a devastating toll on Vietnam’s population: After years of warfare, an estimated 2 million Vietnamese were killed, while 3 million were wounded and another 12 million became refugees. Warfare had demolished the country’s infrastructure and economy, and reconstruction proceeded slowly.

In 1976, Vietnam was unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, though sporadic violence continued over the next 15 years, including conflicts with neighboring China and Cambodia. Under a broad free market policy put in place in 1986, the economy began to improve, boosted by oil export revenues and an influx of foreign capital. Trade and diplomatic relations between Vietnam and the U.S. resumed in the 1990s.

In the United States, the effects of the Vietnam War would linger long after the last troops returned home in 1973. The nation spent more than $120 billion on the conflict in Vietnam from 1965-73; this massive spending led to widespread inflation, exacerbated by a worldwide oil crisis in 1973 and skyrocketing fuel prices.

Psychologically, the effects ran even deeper. The war had pierced the myth of American invincibility and had bitterly divided the nation. Many returning veterans faced negative reactions from both opponents of the war (who viewed them as having killed innocent civilians) and its supporters (who saw them as having lost the war), along with physical damage including the effects of exposure to the toxic herbicide Agent Orange , millions of gallons of which had been dumped by U.S. planes on the dense forests of Vietnam.

In 1982, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was unveiled in Washington, D.C. On it were inscribed the names of 57,939 American men and women killed or missing in the war; later additions brought that total to 58,200.

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The Vietnam War: 50 Years (and More) Later

The fiftieth anniversary of the Vietnam War is somewhat misleading: The US had been involved in Vietnam for well over a decade already by 1965

On March 8, 1965, US combat troops landed in South Vietnam, marking a formal beginning to ten years of war that would ultimately cost more than 58,000 American lives and over 2,000,000 Vietnamese lives. But this 50th anniversary is somewhat misleading; The US had been involved in Vietnam for well over a decade already by 1965.

The United States provided much of the funding for the French in their failed attempt to regain their Indochinese colony in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The US then assisted the government of South Vietnam against North Vietnam when the former colony was partitioned at the Geneva Conference in 1954. There were 900 US military advisors in South Vietnam in the late 1950s, and 16,000 by the end of 1963.

Writing on the twentieth-fifth anniversary of the “fall of Saigon,” George Hopkins said “that we are no closer to a consensus on the causes, phases, strategy and tactics, or consequences of that war than we were in 1975.” One could easily say the same thing in 2015. Hopkins outlines the “radical, liberal, and conservative” interpretive perspectives “which reflected the main divergent viewpoints during the war and after the war” and largely still do.

How did popular culture respond? In terms of movies and television, usually cautiously, and often not until the war was over. H. Bruce Franklin argues that the original Star Trek television series (broadcast September 1966 to June 1969) was right in the middle of the cultural war over Vietnam, displacing “the Vietnam War in time and space.”Franklin dissects four episodes that speak directly to the ongoing conflict at home and abroad (“Bones, do you remember the twentieth-century brush wars on the Asian continent? Two giant powers involved, much like the Klingons and ourselves.”) as the show’s makers evolved from support of the government and distrust of the anti-war movement to signing statements against the war after the Tet Offensive of 1968.

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What has long been missing in many American representations and discussions of the war are the Vietnamese people. Ang Chen Guan analyses the North Vietnamese perspective in the crucial years before US combat troops arrived. The wider context of the Indochinese peninsula, including Laos and Cambodia, gets its due here as well. What a one-time enemy was thinking and doing may be one of the most beneficial contributions to historical debate.

Editor’s Note: This story was amended to capitalize “Vietnam War” in the subheading.

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How The Pentagon Papers Changed Public Perception Of The War In Vietnam

Terry Gross

Fifty years ago, Daniel Ellsberg leaked classified information about U.S. policy in Vietnam to the press. We listen back to archival interviews with Ellsberg and Ben Bradlee of The Washington Post.

DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, sitting in for Terry Gross. Fifty years ago this week, The New York Times published the first in a series of articles based on a classified Defense Department study that was leaked to the paper by Daniel Ellsberg. The study came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. It chronicled decades of failed U.S. policy in Vietnam and ways the American public was misled about how the war was conducted. The first article by Times journalist Neil Sheehan was published on June 13, 1971, when President Nixon was in office. He learned about it in a phone call with Al Haig, who was then an assistant to national security adviser Henry Kissinger.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: OK. Nothing else of interest in the world?

AL HAIG: Very significant, this goddamn New York Times expose of the most highly classified documents of the war.

NIXON: Oh, that. I see. I didn't read the story, but do you mean that was leaked out of the Pentagon?

HAIG: Sir, the whole study that was done for McNamara and then carried on after McNamara left by Clifford and the peaceniks over there. This is a devastating security breach of the greatest magnitude of anything I've ever seen.

NIXON: Well, what's being done about it then? I mean, I didn't - did we know this was coming out?

HAIG: No, we did not, sir.

NIXON: Yeah.

HAIG: There are just a few copies of this.

NIXON: So what about the report? What about the - let me ask you this, though. What about the - what about Laird? What's he going to do about it? Now, I just start right at the top and fire some people. I mean, whoever - whatever department it came out of, fire the top guy.

HAIG: Yes. Well, I'm sure it came from Defense. And I'm sure it was stolen at the time of the turnover of the administration.

NIXON: Oh, it's two years old, then.

HAIG: Sure it is. And they've been holding it for a juicy time. And I think they...

DAVIES: After several articles appeared, the Nixon administration secured a court injunction preventing the Times from publishing further stories. Ellsberg then gave a copy of the classified report to The Washington Post, which started publishing its own series five days after the first article had appeared in the Times. In a landmark First Amendment ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court eventually found the government had not met the burden required to restrain the papers from publishing the stories.

The meetings between Ellsberg and The Washington Post were dramatized in the Steven Spielberg film "The Post." In this scene, Ellsberg is hiding out in a motel room with piles of paper strewn about, meeting with Post editor Ben Bagdikian. Matthew Reese plays Ellsberg. Bob Odenkirk plays Bagdikian

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE POST")

MATTHEW RHYS: (As Daniel Ellsberg) The study had 47 volumes. I slipped out a couple at a time. Took me months to copy it all.

BOB ODENKIRK: (As Ben Bagdikian) What the hell?

RHYS: (As Daniel Ellsberg) Well, we were all former government guys, top clearance, all that, McNamara wanted academics to have the chance to examine what had happened. He would say to us, let the chips fall where they may.

ODENKIRK: (As Ben Bagdikian) Brave men.

RHYS: (As Daniel Ellsberg) I think guilt was a bigger motivator than courage. McNamara didn't lie as well as the rest, but I don't think he saw what was coming, what we'd find. But it didn't take him long to figure out - well, for us all to figure out. If the public ever saw these papers, they would turn against the war - covert ops, guaranteed debt, rigged elections. It's all in there. Ike, Kennedy, Johnson - they violated the Geneva Convention. They lied to Congress. And they lied to the public. They knew we couldn't win and still sent boys to die.

DAVIES: Ellsberg, then a national security analyst with top secret clearances, was arrested and tried under the Espionage Act. A judge dismissed the charges when it emerged that officials in the Nixon administration had directed covert actions to discredit or silence Ellsberg, including tapping his phone and breaking into his psychiatrist's office to obtain compromising information. I interviewed Daniel Ellsberg in 2017 about his book, "The Doomsday Machine." It's about his days before the Vietnam War, when he worked on American nuclear war strategies in the '50s and early '60s.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

DAVIES: Well, Daniel Ellsberg, welcome to FRESH AIR. You became famous for leaking the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times and other publications. And you tell us at the beginning of this book that you copied not just the Vietnam study, but a lot of other material from your staff at the RAND Corporation about U.S. nuclear war plans. What were you going to do with that material?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: I planned to release that as soon as the Pentagon Papers, as they came to be known, had had whatever effect they could have on the Vietnam War. The nuclear information, I thought then and now, was actually more important. But the bombs were falling in Vietnam at that time, and I wanted to shorten that war as much as I could.

DAVIES: You went to work for the RAND Corporation, where you worked on high-level military strategy. Explain what the RAND Corporation was and what kind of work you did.

ELLSBERG: RAND, which stands for R&D - research and development - was really essence on research for the Air Force, set up as a nonprofit corporation to do long-range research. And, in particular, when I came there in 1958 for the summer and then later permanently in 1959, our obsession really was trying to plan our strategic forces in such a way that they couldn't be destroyed in a first strike by the Soviet Union. Those were the years that we all believed in RAND and in the Air Force that there was a missile gap in favor of the Russians and that a Russian surprise attack was a real possibility. And the idea was to assure retaliation for that. So it was to deter it so that no war would occur.

DAVIES: You know, this wasn't just a job for you, was it? I mean, it was kind of a special place to be. And it wasn't just a nine-to-five paycheck thing for you, was it?

ELLSBERG: Not at all. I was working in the summer, especially when I arrived to get up to speed, probably 70-hour weeks there reading top secret or secret material. Most of it was secret, actually, in RAND. And working on trying to avoid a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union, so nothing in the world seemed as important. In effect, we felt we were trying to save the world, although weren't very confident we'd be able to do it.

DAVIES: So you focused in your research and in your work at RAND on decision-making in circumstances where information is incomplete or ambiguous. And you wanted to study how commanders in the military at all levels, right down to pilots, would make decisions on whether to attack Soviet targets in certain circumstances. And the research is fascinating, as you describe it. What kind of access did you, as the civilian, have to military personnel?

ELLSBERG: Well, and a civilian consultant to the commander in chief Pacific - Admiral Harry D. Felt at that time - I was doing a study for the Office of Naval Research and looking at the actual reaction that could be expected at various levels to various execute messages, messages to go or - there weren't messages to not go, actually. There was no stop message. A little footnote here, but once a go message was received at any level, there was no provision whatever for stopping that or rescinding it or bringing it back.

DAVIES: This is one of the jaw-dropping things as we read the book. If there was a launch, there was literally no way to recall a bomber. You can't recall missiles. But, you know, things that had pilots - jet fighters and bombers - there was no way to send them - to bring them back?

ELLSBERG: Once they'd gotten an authenticated message that they would execute the war plans. But the startling thing that I discovered at every level was that the general image that people had then and to this day, that a message with the right code could only come from the president himself, was never true. That was always a myth, at least it was from the late '50s, when President Eisenhower had delegated authority - his authority - to launch nuclear weapons to theater commanders in case there was an outage of communication or Washington had been destroyed or even the president had been incapacitated, as President Eisenhower was a couple of times. That's almost essential, that there be a delegation like that in a nuclear era. Otherwise, a decapitating attack, as they called it, an attack on the command and control system, would paralyze us. A single bomb on Washington would paralyze our retaliation. Well, that could never be allowed, and it never has been allowed.

DAVIES: So not just the president, but theater commanders have the authority under some circumstances to launch a nuclear attack. And these are experienced, high-level commanders. But what you found - I know that when you looked in the Pacific - is that these theater commanders had to be in communication with dozens and dozens of bases throughout the Pacific. And the question arises then, what about a base commander who has a number of fighter pilots or some aircraft? Under what circumstances might they proceed on their own to launch an attack? What did you find?

ELLSBERG: Well, again, if they were out of communication with their superiors, a lot of them had authorization in the Pacific, I found, in the early '60s. As far as I know, that continued. I don't know if it's true today, and we ought to find out. But actually, there were people even at a lower, as at a single base - you probably read an anecdote I had about Kunsan in Korea, in South Korea, the base possibly closer to communist territory of any of our bases in the world. And the commander there clearly believed that he had the authority simply as a base commander to send his planes off if he thought they were endangered. So at that point, had there been what he thought was an attack - for example, an accident on some other base that he heard about or a crisis that was going on - he felt - he told me that he would send his planes off.

DAVIES: There is a remarkable chapter in your book called "Questions For The Joint Chiefs," when you write that President Kennedy coming into the White House - he did not have, nor did anyone on his team, have a copy of, essentially, our plan for nuclear war, the Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan and that when they asked for it, they were - you know, that the military was sort of reluctant. And then they gave a briefing, but not the actual plan itself. You had a copy. You examined it. And you wrote some questions. You - what troubled you about the plan that you saw?

ELLSBERG: Well, many things. It was a very strange plan. I'm not the only one who's called it the worst plan in human history. This was the plan for general war. It was an all-out attack on every city in the Soviet Union and China and attacks, in effect, in most of the Eastern Bloc because of air defenses and command and control that kept for no reserves, created fallout that would kill perhaps 100 million people in West Europe for our own weapons if the wind were in the right direction for that and many - and a hundred million in other contiguous areas of the Soviet Union, like neutrals like Austria and Finland and Afghanistan actually, but also several hundred million in the USSR and China, several hundred million killed. That added up to an intention in a U.S. first strike, if we preempted or if we escalated a war in Europe, to 600 million dead that they were calculating.

DAVIES: We're listening to my interview with Daniel Ellsberg. He'll tell us more about how he leaked the Pentagon Papers after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF JOHN WILLIAMS' "THE PAPERS")

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my conversation from 2017 with Daniel Ellsberg. Fifty years ago this week, the first in a set of stories which came to be known as the Pentagon Papers was published in The New York Times.

DAVIES: You're best known, of course, for leaking the Pentagon Papers, the secret Defense Department study of the Vietnam War. And you had spent many years for the government in Vietnam examining the war, concluding that it was futile, that there was no way to win it. And, you know, you had spent many years as a young man as a real patriot. I mean, you truly believed in the country. You believed in the security clearances, right?

ELLSBERG: Pardon me. I think - I'm going to make it clear, but I wouldn't even want the question - to raise that question in a way. I am a patriot.

DAVIES: I understand.

ELLSBERG: I have never changed in that.

DAVIES: And forgive me for putting it that way. I mean, you...

ELLSBERG: Yeah.

DAVIES: ...You are devoted to doing the right thing for your country. But at that time, you were - you respected all of the high-level security clearances that you had. And it must have been hard for you to take the step of taking this top secret document and making it public. What did it take to get you to make that step?

ELLSBERG: Without young men going to prison for nonviolent protest against the draft, men that I met on their way to prison, no Pentagon Papers. It wouldn't have occurred to me, simply, to do something that would put myself in prison for the rest of my life, as I assumed that would do. So obviously, that was not an obvious decision to make, except once I'd seen the example of people like Randy Kehler (ph), and Bob Eaton and others and David Harris, who did go to prison to say that this war was wrong, the Vietnam War was wrong, and that they refused to participate in it.

DAVIES: How hard was it to actually copy the material?

ELLSBERG: Well, in those days, it was one page at a time. We didn't have these zip zip multipage collators and what not, machines that they have now or the - of course, the digital capability. So it took me a long time, months actually.

DAVIES: So you would stay at night in the office copying and then come back to work during the day?

ELLSBERG: Yes.

DAVIES: Did night watchmen ever come upon you or anything?

ELLSBERG: Well, twice in that office, which was a small advertising office owned by a friend of a friend, really. Twice during that period, police came to the door because she had turned the key the wrong way and set off the burglar alarm. And on one of those occasions, my children were there. That was the one time police came in and found my son running the Xerox machine. No, I think I was running the Xerox machine. And he was collating or might have been the other way around. He was then 13. And my daughter, who was 10, was cutting off top secret from the tops and bottoms of the pages with the scissors.

The reason they were there was that I expected to be in prison very shortly. I'd hoped to get the papers out quickly, and that didn't happen in the Senate. But I wanted them to know that their father was doing something in a businesslike way, a calm, sober way that I thought had to be done. And I did let my older son know in particular that it might, in fact, would probably result in my going to prison. And that was an example that I was - actually wanted to pass on to my children, that they might be in such a situation.

DAVIES: So it was very clear that Nixon regarded you as a really dangerous man because, you know, he had information - you leaked these secrets, and there was information about his own internal thinking about Vietnam. And it was the actions of, you know, operatives of the Nixon administration that led to the dismissal of charges at your trial, because we learned that they, in fact, they planned a break-in at your psychoanalyst's office and some other things too. What else did they do?

ELLSBERG: Well, Bernard Barker - Macho Bernard Barker of the Bay of Pigs, a CIA asset - said that his mission was to break both my legs. But I don't think that would have shut me up totally in the hospital bed. I think they probably wanted something to happen to my jaw. But they were going to attack me in the course of a rally that I was speaking to on the steps of the Capitol on May 3, 1972 And they brought 12 of these CIA assets, mostly Bay of Pigs veterans, up and was shown my picture and said I was to be incapacitated totally.

And when their prosecutor told me this later, I said, well, what does that mean? Kill me? He said, the words were to incapacitate you totally. But you have to understand these guys never use the word kill - use neutralize - all right? - terminate with extreme prejudice. They use a lot of euphemisms, CIA people, for assassination.

DAVIES: You know, you - your trial ended when the government actions taken against you were exposed, and there was a - the charges were dropped. You took action to disclose government secrets then that you felt the American public needed to know. And I'm wondering what your attitude is today towards classified information and how you regard the actions of, you know, Chelsea Manning, say, and Edward Snowden.

ELLSBERG: You know, I said earlier, without draft resisters like Randy Kehler or Bob Eaton, no Pentagon Papers. Well, I was very gratified to have Edward Snowden say on a Skype meeting - a couple of times, actually - say that without Daniel Ellsberg, no Ed Snowden. That was very nice to hear because I'd never gotten feedback like that. I'd been urging people to use their judgment and their conscience for decades at that point, and it just hadn't happened - to put out information that the public needed to know, and it just hadn't happened.

For example, in the Iraq War, I think that if there had been an Edward Snowden or - and now that I've met him - at a higher level with greater access than he had - or a Chelsea Manning with greater access than she had in the - 2002, there would have been no Iraq War, no ISIS, no - nothing that we've seen later. That was a mad venture based on terribly unreal - totally unrealistic beliefs.

And I think that if the information had been put out, Congress would not have gone along with that war as they did - just as I'm very sorry to say if I'd put out the information in my safe in the Pentagon about our widening war that was projected in 1964, Senator Wayne Morse, one of the two senators who voted against that widening - the Tonkin Gulf Resolution - told me, if you'd put that out, there would have been no vote in the committee. It would have not passed the committee. And if they bypassed that to go to the floor of Congress, it would not have passed.

So he's telling me that I had had the power to avert the Vietnam War. I think that's true not only of me. That's a heavy burden to bear. I share it with a thousand others who had that kind of access. You know, when I said that Roger Morris had - did have the access to the nuclear target folders in 1969, and Nixon feared that I had those from Morris, I didn't because he didn't put them out. And later, Roger told me that was the failure of which he is most ashamed and that he most regrets in his life. He said, we should've thrown open the safes and screamed bloody murder because that's exactly what it was.

DAVIES: My interview with Daniel Ellsberg was recorded in 2017. Coming up, we'll hear about how the Nixon administration attempted to stop The Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers with an interview from our archives with Ben Bradlee. Also, we'll remember actor Ned Beatty, known for his roles in the films "Network," "Deliverance" and "Superman." And our TV critic David Bianculli will review the new show "Physical." I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. We're talking about the Pentagon Papers, the top-secret history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam based on classified documents exposed by Daniel Ellsberg. The documents were first revealed in a series of articles by The New York Times 50 years ago this week. But the Nixon administration tried to prevent further revelations from coming out. To pick up the story, let's listen to an excerpt of an interview Terry did with Ben Bradlee, who, with Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, made the decision to publish the Pentagon Papers. Terry spoke with Ben Bradlee in 1995. He died in 2014 at the age of 93. Here's Terry.

TERRY GROSS: Bradlee was the executive editor of The Washington Post from 1968 to 1991. The biggest story covered under Bradlee's watch was Watergate, which forced the resignation of President Nixon. The first big risk Bradlee took was publishing the Pentagon Papers, the top-secret documents that revealed the history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The New York Times had already published several installments. But the Justice Department got an injunction against the paper, preventing it from publishing further excerpts. Then the Pentagon Papers were leaked to the Post. I asked Bradlee why it was important for the Post to publish the Pentagon Papers.

BEN BRADLEE: Failure to publish after The New York Times had published would have relegated The Post to a status of a kind of a pro-government establishment organization which didn't want to take on the government, didn't want to fight for its constitutional rights. And it seems to me, it would have forever relegated us to a sort of second-class citizenship. It wasn't my decision. But, I mean, I wanted to publish from day one, moment one. It was Katharine Graham's decision. And she was - it was a great decision. And it made all future decisions of an editorial nature at The Washington Post kind of automatic and easy.

GROSS: What were the risks?

BRADLEE: Well, there were some interesting risks because if we had been - this was a civil suit. If we had been enjoined - mind you, no newspaper in the history of the country, which was then 190-some years old, had ever been stopped from publishing something it wanted to publish beforehand, prior restraint. So that was a wonderful principle to fight for.

The other thing is that if we had been convicted of that, if the judge had stopped us from publishing something, the Nixon administration was - it was quite obvious - was going to go after us on criminal violations - violating the code against publishing confidential and national security matters. If had we been convicted of that - you cannot own television stations if you are a convicted felon, and that would have been a felony. And we had about a $100 billion of television stations that we would have lost.

The Post had just gone public in the New York Stock Exchange. Shares in The Post were offered for sale for the first time to the public. And that was seriously threatened. So it was no casual decision that was involved.

GROSS: There's a great story you tell about a phone call that I think really took a lot of chutzpah (laughter) to get...

BRADLEE: Who, me?

GROSS: ...(Laughter) To get a friend of yours, who is a judge, on the phone so you could get his advice. But, of course, he was arguing a case in court at the time. Tell us what you did.

BRADLEE: Well, he wasn't a judge. He was a lawyer.

GROSS: I mean a lawyer. I meant a lawyer.

BRADLEE: It was Edward Bennett Williams who was the famous defense attorney and a friend of mine for already 20 years. And he was - he would have defended us had he been in Washington, but he was trying a case in Chicago. I called up the editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, Jim Hoge, and said, I need to get a message to Edward Williams - Edward Bennett Williams in such and such a courthouse immediately. And the message was, please, call me, urgent. And in a matter of minutes, Williams called me back.

And I talked for about 12 minutes and said, this is what we've got. This is what we want to do. These are the documents. This is what The New York Times has done. This is what the court with First Circuit New York had enjoined them from. And we want to publish. And I want you to tell me whether you think we should and why.

And he sort of was silent for a split second - a split minute and finally said, you got to publish it. You've just got to do it because it wasn't in a sense of Plessy v. Ferguson that we had the right to blah, blah, blah. But he just sensed in his guts that to become an important player in the American scene, we had to do it

GROSS: So how much of the decision to publish was so that The Post could become a more respected player and how much of it was all the lofty principles about freedom of the press?

BRADLEE: That's a good question, too, because, you know, in the last - it was 7,000 pages, although we only had 4,000 of them. We got them at 10:30 in the morning, and we published at 10:30 that night the - our first story. No one ever read the Pentagon Papers. They really didn't, you know? We could only read - each of us read sections of it. Then we - for about eight hours we read and then had a news conference and decided what we could publish.

The - what mystified us all was that the Pentagon Papers ended with matters - with the decision-making process in Vietnam before President Nixon took office, and, therefore, he was talking about the Johnson administration and the Kennedy administration and the Eisenhower administration. That's what the Pentagon makers - Pentagon Papers were about.

So I think, you know, it was - it dealt with the origins of the most important event in the middle of the 20th century, and, therefore, it had an intrinsic importance to it. But we also - it was a principle that is really fundamental to a free press. We've got to be able to publish what we want then get punished if we did wrong then get pursued by - privately by people that we may have libeled or publicly for violating the law.

GROSS: Now give me a sense of what your style was like when you were making your case to Katharine Graham and to the lawyers. Did you make speeches about freedom of the press? Did you insult your opponents in the newsroom? What was your style?

BRADLEE: No, I had no opponents in the newsroom. I had the lawyers to worry about.

GROSS: The lawyers - yeah, OK.

BRADLEE: We were - we had - it was - all of this was taking place in my house in Georgetown. We had two fairly large rooms. And one of them was sort of a temporary city room where a bunch of reporters and a couple of news aides and a copy editor or two were actually reading the documents, making up their mind what story to run, what story could they get into shape to run that night. And in the other room, we had the lawyers and the representatives of the owners and a couple of editors from the editorial page. And I shuttled between the two trying to make up my mind and learn the content and then trying to steer the conversation to the verdict I wanted.

There was no point in trying to say we've got to do it and threaten to quit because then if you - even if you won that, you'd win it leaving a - great scars and wounds in personal relationships. So we had to do it sort of gently and listen to everybody and listen to their arguments, try to understand them and then try to counter them.

GROSS: Do you thrive on making these complicated decisions or were these, like, Maalox moments for you?

BRADLEE: (Laughter).

GROSS: You'd be reaching for the medicine?

BRADLEE: Well, there's a wonderful quality of journalism. If you make a mistake, it's out there for everybody to see.

GROSS: Yeah.

BRADLEE: And it stays there and, you know, it goes right - bang - into the history books. And it's - there are no known device that you can erase a daily newspaper (ph). I love it.

GROSS: (Laughter).

BRADLEE: Yeah. I do love the - that sense that you're dealing with important issues and that you're going to be fair and you're going honest (ph), but you're not going to back down.

DAVIES: Ben Bradlee was the executive editor of The Washington Post at the time The Post published the Pentagon Papers. Terry Gross interviewed him in 1995. He died at age 93 in 2014.

Coming up, we remember the great character actor Ned Beatty. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF SOLANGE'S "WEARY")

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The Vietnam War

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The editors of this collection have assembled eleven essays that take a fresh look at the legacy of the Vietnam War. Since the 1990s, one can observe a renewed scholarly interest in the Vietnam War. This interest, as both editors claim, has been caused partly by the availability of new archival materials and partly by critical questions about the continuing influence of the war on later U.S. foreign politics and U.S. military operations during the 1990s and the twenty-first century. Hailing from a variety of academic fields such as film studies, anthropology, literary criticism, cultural studies, and critical refugee studies, the authors revisit earlier ideas and refresh established discourses by looking through their twenty-first-century lenses, thus illustrating how the legacy of the war continues to affect a variety of communities. The collection also makes a fine contribution by looking not only at the United States and its different communities still affected by the afterlife of the war but also at communities in Australia, Cambodia, Hong Kong, and Vietnam. This intertwined transnational observation is a truly strong feature of the collection.

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The Pentagon Papers

The Secrets and Lies of the Vietnam War, Exposed in One Epic Document

With the Pentagon Papers revelations, the U.S. public’s trust in the government was forever diminished.

By Elizabeth Becker

This article is part of a special report on the 50th anniversary of the Pentagon Papers.

Brandishing a captured Chinese machine gun, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara appeared at a televised news conference in the spring of 1965. The United States had just sent its first combat troops to South Vietnam, and the new push, he boasted, was further wearing down the beleaguered Vietcong.

“In the past four and one-half years, the Vietcong, the Communists, have lost 89,000 men,” he said. “You can see the heavy drain.”

That was a lie. From confidential reports, McNamara knew the situation was “bad and deteriorating” in the South. “The VC have the initiative,” the information said. “Defeatism is gaining among the rural population, somewhat in the cities, and even among the soldiers.”

Lies like McNamara’s were the rule, not the exception, throughout America’s involvement in Vietnam . The lies were repeated to the public, to Congress, in closed-door hearings, in speeches and to the press. The real story might have remained unknown if, in 1967, McNamara had not commissioned a secret history based on classified documents — which came to be known as the Pentagon Papers .

By then, he knew that even with nearly 500,000 U.S. troops in theater, the war was at a stalemate. He created a research team to assemble and analyze Defense Department decision-making dating back to 1945. This was either quixotic or arrogant. As secretary of defense under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, McNamara was an architect of the war and implicated in the lies that were the bedrock of U.S. policy.

Daniel Ellsberg, an analyst on the study, eventually leaked portions of the report to The New York Times , which published excerpts in 1971. The revelations in the Pentagon Papers infuriated a country sick of the war, the body bags of young Americans, the photographs of Vietnamese civilians fleeing U.S. air attacks and the endless protests and counterprotests that were dividing the country as nothing had since the Civil War.

The lies revealed in the papers were of a generational scale, and, for much of the American public, this grand deception seeded a suspicion of government that is even more widespread today.

Officially titled “Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force,” the papers filled 47 volumes, covering the administrations of President Franklin D. Roosevelt to President Lyndon B. Johnson. Their 7,000 pages chronicled, in cold, bureaucratic language, how the United States got itself mired in a long, costly war in a small Southeast Asian country of questionable strategic importance.

They are an essential record of the first war the United States lost. For modern historians, they foreshadow the mind-set and miscalculations that led the United States to fight the “forever wars” of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The original sin was the decision to support the French rulers in Vietnam. President Harry S. Truman subsidized their effort to take back their Indochina colonies. The Vietnamese nationalists were winning their fight for independence under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh, a Communist. Ho had worked with the United States against Japan in World War II, but, in the Cold War, Washington recast him as the stalking horse for Soviet expansionism.

American intelligence officers in the field said that was not the case, that they had found no evidence of a Soviet plot to take over Vietnam, much less Southeast Asia. As one State Department memo put it, “If there is a Moscow-directed conspiracy in Southeast Asia, Indochina is an anomaly.”

But with an eye on China, where the Communist Mao Zedong had won the civil war, President Dwight D. Eisenhower said defeating Vietnam’s Communists was essential “to block further Communist expansion in Asia.” If Vietnam became Communist, then the countries of Southeast Asia would fall like dominoes.

This belief in this domino theory was so strong that the United States broke with its European allies and refused to sign the 1954 Geneva Accords ending the French war. Instead, the United States continued the fight, giving full backing to Ngo Dinh Diem, the autocratic, anti-Communist leader of South Vietnam. Gen. J. Lawton Collins wrote from Vietnam, warning Eisenhower that Diem was an unpopular and incapable leader and should be replaced. If he was not, Gen. Collins wrote, “I recommend re-evaluation of our plans for assisting Southeast Asia.”

Secretary of State John Foster Dulles disagreed, writing in a cable included in the Pentagon Papers, “We have no other choice but continue our aid to Vietnam and support of Diem.”

Nine years and billions of American dollars later, Diem was still in power, and it fell to President Kennedy to solve the long-predicted problem.

After facing down the Soviet Union in the Berlin crisis, Kennedy wanted to avoid any sign of Cold War fatigue and easily accepted McNamara’s counsel to deepen the U.S. commitment to Saigon. The secretary of defense wrote in one report, “The loss of South Vietnam would make pointless any further discussion about the importance of Southeast Asia to the Free World.”

The president increased U.S. military advisers tenfold and introduced helicopter missions. In return for the support, Kennedy wanted Diem to make democratic reforms. Diem refused.

A popular uprising in South Vietnam, led by Buddhist clerics, followed. Fearful of losing power as well, South Vietnamese generals secretly received American approval to overthrow Diem. Despite official denials, U.S. officials were deeply involved.

“Beginning in August of 1963, we variously authorized, sanctioned and encouraged the coup efforts …,” the Pentagon Papers revealed. “We maintained clandestine contact with them throughout the planning and execution of the coup and sought to review their operational plans.”

The coup ended with Diem’s killing and a deepening of American involvement in the war. As the authors of the papers concluded, “Our complicity in his overthrow heightened our responsibilities and our commitment.”

Three weeks later, President Kennedy was assassinated, and the Vietnam issue fell to President Johnson.

He had officials secretly draft a resolution for Congress to grant him the authority to fight in Vietnam without officially declaring war.

Missing was a pretext, a small-bore “Pearl Harbor” moment. That came on Aug. 4, 1964, when the White House announced that the North Vietnamese had attacked the U.S.S. Maddox in international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. This “attack,” though, was anything but unprovoked aggression. Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the head of U.S. forces in Vietnam, had commanded the South Vietnamese military while they staged clandestine raids on North Vietnamese islands. North Vietnamese PT boats fought back and had “mistaken Maddox for a South Vietnamese escort vessel,” according to a report. (Later investigations showed the attack never happened.)

Testifying before the Senate, McNamara lied, denying any American involvement in the Tonkin Gulf attacks: “Our Navy played absolutely no part in, was not associated with, was not aware of any South Vietnamese actions, if there were any.”

Three days after the announcement of the “incident,” the administration persuaded Congress to pass the Tonkin Gulf Resolution to approve and support “the determination of the president, as commander in chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression” — an expansion of the presidential power to wage war that is still used regularly. Johnson won the 1964 election in a landslide.

Seven months later, he sent combat troops to Vietnam without declaring war, a decision clad in lies. The initial deployment of 20,000 troops was described as “military support forces” under a “change of mission” to “permit their more active use” in Vietnam. Nothing new.

As the Pentagon Papers later showed, the Defense Department also revised its war aims: “70 percent to avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat … 20 percent to keep South Vietnam (and then adjacent) territory from Chinese hands, 10 percent to permit the people of South Vietnam to enjoy a better, freer way of life.”

Westmoreland considered the initial troop deployment a stopgap measure and requested 100,000 more. McNamara agreed. On July 20, 1965, he wrote in a memo that even though “the U.S. killed-in-action might be in the vicinity of 500 a month by the end of the year,” the general’s overall strategy was “likely to bring about a success in Vietnam.”

As the Pentagon Papers later put it, “Never again while he was secretary of defense would McNamara make so optimistic a statement about Vietnam — except in public.”

Fully disillusioned at last, McNamara argued in a 1967 memo to the president that more of the same — more troops, more bombing — would not win the war. In an about-face, he suggested that the United States declare victory and slowly withdraw.

And in a rare acknowledgment of the suffering of the Vietnamese people, he wrote, “The picture of the world’s greatest superpower killing or seriously injuring 1,000 noncombatants a week, while trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a pretty one.”

Johnson was furious and soon approved increasing the U.S. troop commitment to nearly 550,000. By year’s end, he had forced McNamara to resign, but the defense secretary had already commissioned the Pentagon Papers.

In 1968, Johnson announced that he would not run for re-election; Vietnam had become his Waterloo. Nixon won the White House on the promise to bring peace to Vietnam. Instead, he expanded the war by invading Cambodia, which convinced Daniel Ellsberg that he had to leak the secret history.

After The New York Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers on Sunday, June 13, 1971, the nation was stunned. The response ranged from horror to anger to disbelief. There was furor over the betrayal of national secrets. Opponents of the war felt vindicated. Veterans, especially those who had served multiple tours in Vietnam, were pained to discover that Americans officials knew the war had been a failed proposition nearly from the beginning.

Convinced that Ellsberg posed a threat to Nixon’s re-election campaign, the White House approved an illegal break-in at the Beverly Hills, Calif., office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, hoping to find embarrassing confessions on file. The burglars — known as the Plumbers — found nothing, and got away undetected. The following June, when another such crew broke into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, they were caught.

The North Vietnamese mounted a final offensive, captured Saigon and won the war in April 1975. Three years later, Vietnam invaded Cambodia — another Communist country — and overthrew the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime. That was the sole country Communist Vietnam ever invaded, forever undercutting the domino theory — the war’s foundational lie.

Elizabeth Becker is a former New York Times correspondent who began her career covering the Cambodia campaign of the Vietnam War. She is the author, most recently, of “You Don’t Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War.”

Vietnam War

May 11, 1961 to April 30, 1975

Four years after President John F.  Kennedy  sent the first American troops into Vietnam, Martin Luther King, Jr., issued his first public statement on the war. Answering press questions after addressing a Howard University audience on 2 March 1965, King asserted that the war in Vietnam was “accomplishing nothing” and called for a negotiated settlement (Schuette, “King Preaches on Non-Violence”).

While King was personally opposed to the war, he was concerned that publicly criticizing U.S. foreign policy would damage his relationship with President Lyndon B.  Johnson , who had been instrumental in passing civil rights legislation and who had declared in April 1965 that he was willing to negotiate a diplomatic end to the war in Vietnam. Though he avoided condemning the war outright, at the August 1965 annual  Southern Christian Leadership Conference  (SCLC) convention King called for a halt to bombing in North Vietnam, urged that the United Nations be empowered to mediate the conflict, and told the crowd that “what is required is a small first step that may establish a new spirit of mutual confidence … a step capable of breaking the cycle of mistrust, violence and war” (King, 12 August 1965). He supported Johnson’s calls for diplomatic negotiations and economic development as the beginnings of such a step. Later that year King framed the issue of war in Vietnam as a moral issue: “As a minister of the gospel,” he said, “I consider war an evil. I must cry out when I see war escalated at any point” (“Opposes Vietnam War”).

King’s opposition to the war provoked criticism from members of Congress, the press, and from his civil rights colleagues who argued that expanding his civil rights message to include foreign affairs would harm the black freedom struggle in America. Fearful of being labeled a Communist, which would diminish the impact of his civil rights work, King tempered his criticism of U.S. policy in Vietnam through late 1965 and 1966. His wife, Coretta Scott  King , took a more active role in opposing the war, speaking at a rally at the Washington Monument on 27 November 1965 with Benjamin  Spock , the renowned pediatrician and anti-war activist, and joined in other demonstrations.

In December 1966, testifying before a congressional subcommittee on budget priorities, King argued for a “rebalancing” of fiscal priorities away from America’s “obsession” with Vietnam and toward greater support for anti-poverty programs at home (Semple, “Dr. King Scores Poverty”). King led his first anti-war march in Chicago on 25 March 1967, and reinforced the connection between war abroad and injustice at home: “The bombs in Vietnam explode at home—they destroy the dream and possibility for a decent America” (“Dr. King Leads Chicago”). A few days later, King made it clear that his peace work was not undertaken as the leader of the SCLC, but “as an individual, as a clergyman, as one who is greatly concerned about peace” (“Dr. King to Weigh Civil Disobedience”).

Less than two weeks after leading his first Vietnam demonstration, on 4 April 1967, King made his best known and most comprehensive statement against the war. Seeking to reduce the potential backlash by framing his speech within the context of religious objection to war, King addressed a crowd of 3,000 people at Riverside Church in New York City. King delivered a speech entitled “ Beyond Vietnam ,” pointing out that the war effort was “taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem” (King, “ Beyond Vietnam ,” 143).

Although the peace community lauded King’s willingness to take a public stand against the war in Vietnam, many within the civil rights movement further distanced themselves from his stance. The  National Association for the Advancement of Colored People , for example, issued a statement against merging the civil rights and peace movements. Undeterred, King, Spock, and Harry  Belafonte  led 10,000 demonstrators on an anti-war march to the United Nations on 15 April 1967.

During the last year of his life, King worked with Spock to develop “Vietnam Summer,” a volunteer project to increase grassroots peace activism in time for the 1968 elections. King linked his anti-war and civil rights work in speeches throughout the country, where he described the three problems he saw plaguing the nation: racism, poverty, and the war in Vietnam. In his last Sunday sermon, delivered at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on 31 March 1968, King said that he was “convinced that [Vietnam] is one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world” (King, “Remaining Awake,” 219). Nearly five years after King’s  assassination , American troops withdrew from Vietnam and a peace treaty declared South and North Vietnam independent of each other.

Branch,  At Canaan’s Edge , 2006.

“Dr. King Leads Chicago Peace Rally,”  New York Times , 26 March 1967.

“Dr. King to Weigh Civil Disobedience If War Intensifies,”  New York Times , 2 April 1967.

“Dr. Martin Luther King: Beyond Vietnam and Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,” 90th Cong., 2d sess.,  Congressional Record  114 (9 April 1968): 9391–9397.

Garrow,  Bearing the Cross , 1986.

King, “ Beyond Vietnam ,” in  A Call to Conscience , ed. Carson and Shepard, 2001.

King, Excerpts, Address at mass rally on 12 August 1965, 13 August 1965,  MLKJP-GAMK .

King, “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,” in  A Knock at Midnight , ed. Carson and Holloran, 1998.

(Scott) King,  My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr. , 1969.

“Opposes Vietnam War,”  New York Times , 11 November 1965.

Paul A. Schuette, “King Preaches on Non-Violence at Police-Guarded Howard Hall,”  Washington Post , 3 March 1965.

Robert B. Semple, Jr., “Dr. King Scores Poverty Budget,”  New York Times , 16 December 1966.

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Pentagon Papers

The Pentagon Papers, officially titled "Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force", was commissioned by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in 1967. In June of 1971, small portions of the report were leaked to the press and widely distributed. However, the publications of the report that resulted from these leaks were incomplete and suffered from many quality issues.

On the 40th anniversary of the leak to the press, the National Archives, along with the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon Presidential Libraries, has released the complete report. There are 48 boxes and approximately 7,000 declassified pages. Approximately 34% of the report is available for the first time.

What is unique about this, compared to other versions, is that:

• The complete Report is now available with no redactions compared to previous releases
• The Report is presented as Leslie Gelb presented it to then Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford on January 15, 1969
• All the supplemental back-documentation is included. In the Gravel Edition, 80% of the documents in Part V.B. were not included
• This release includes the complete account of peace negotiations, significant portions of which were not previously available either in the House Armed Services Committee redacted copy of the Report or in the Gravel Edition

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Agent Orange During the Vietnam War: The Lingering Issue of Its Civilian and Military Health Impact

Both authors contributed equally to this editorial.

Between 1961 and 1971, US and Republic of Vietnam forces sprayed more than 20.2 million gallons of military herbicides to defoliate forests and mangroves in what was then South Vietnam to deny cover to enemy troops and make bombing targets more visible. Relatively small quantities (2%) were used for defoliation of military base perimeters; 9% of the total was used to destroy “unfriendly” crops as a means of reducing enemy food supplies. The herbicides were also used in the United States, but at application rates at least an order of magnitude lower and with somewhat differing formulations.

The military herbicides were nicknamed in accordance with the colored stripes on their 55-gallon drums. Agent Orange was a mixture of butoxyethanol esters of 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) and 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T). Agent Blue, which consisted of dimethylarsinic acid (salt of cacodylic acid), was used primarily for crop destruction. Agent White was a mixture of 2,4-D and picloram. The herbicides that contained 2,4,5-T were contaminated with dioxin (2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo- p -dioxin [TCDD]). The extent and implications of the TCDD content were not widely known or appreciated until well into the 1970s, when 2,4,5-T was banned from most US domestic uses owing to evidence of its teratogenicity. 1

“ECOCIDE”: THE FIRST DEBATE

Public health debate originally focused on “ecocide” from the massive defoliation. In 1970, the US Congress commissioned a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) study with Department of Defense (DOD) cooperation. The DOD created the HERBS file, an electronic record of the flight path coordinates of more than 9000 missions flown by C-123 aircraft used in the Air Force’s Operation Ranch Hand, the code name given to Air Force military herbicide operations carried out in the Republic of Vietnam between 1962 and 1971. NAS developed a primitive geographic information system using computer programs and line-printer graphics to document spraying and defoliation. The DOD added spray records in 1985, primarily records of Army helicopter spraying of basecamp perimeters. 2

We later developed a modernized geographic information system, also under an NAS contract. Using primary sources (in close collaboration with DOD experts), we expanded the original HERBS file in two ways. First, we were able to correct about 10% of the records that had previously been discarded by NAS because they were clearly erroneous; we corrected the records through examination of primary source materials. Second, we discovered archival data on approximately 200 missions in which more than two million liters of Agent Purple had been sprayed prior to 1965. Agent Purple was an early form of Agent Orange that was almost certainly more heavily TCDD contaminated. The HERBS file remains a core resource for studying the herbicides used in Vietnam. Figure 1 illustrates many of the nearly 500 spray targets that we digitized from military records.

Illustration of Vietnamese Spray Targets Digitized From Military Records

Note . Spraying operations were directed at specific targets, 487 of which are shown; we digitized some of the images from original hand-drawn maps (colored areas at upper left) in files rediscovered in the National Archives. Some areas were targeted in multiple projects at different times, resulting in mission overlaps. Red and green outlines are for 1965 and 1966; blue lines are waterways.

MILLIONS OF VIETNAMESE DIRECTLY SPRAYED

We estimated that at least 366 kg of TCDD were sprayed on South Vietnam. We used a conservative estimate of three parts per million of dioxin contamination and did not include poorly documented herbicides sprayed by Vietnamese, US Army, and US Navy trucks, boats, hand sprayers, and helicopters. Data on more than 100 000 gallons of highly contaminated Agent Pink shown in procurement records but not found in any recorded missions are also missing from our estimate. Agent Pink consisted only of 2,4,5-T as a 60:40 mixture of its n-butyl and isobutyl esters. Forty-two missions intended to spray 30 000 gallons of herbicide are known to have ended with emergency dumps in which the herbicide was jettisoned in about 30 seconds, as compared with the usual four to five minutes. At least five herbicide-loaded aircraft crashed. Hundreds of thousands of drums contaminated with residual herbicides made their way through the impoverished countryside for a variety of uses. 1

At least 3851 of the 5958 known fixed-wing missions had targeted flight paths directly over South Vietnamese hamlets. We calculated that at least 2.1 million but perhaps as many as 4.8 million people in 3181 hamlets were sprayed. 1 Population estimates for an additional 1430 sprayed hamlets are unavailable. Few systematic data exist on population exposures through residual contamination of soils or consumption of herbicidal chemicals taken up in the food chain, although “hot spots” are known. 3

MANY PROBLEMS, LITTLE CORROBORATION

Despite reports in the press of possible health problems of exposed US military personnel emerging in the late 1970s, few peer-reviewed studies involving credible herbicide exposure measures have been carried out. Data on relationships between herbicide exposures and diseases for which veterans can receive medical attention and benefits are largely derived from environmental and toxicological studies not associated with Vietnam; rather, this information is based on systematic studies conducted by the Institute of Medicine biennially since 1994 ( Box 1 ). 4 Many studies of veterans are compromised by severe misclassification: some have defined veterans’ mere presence in Vietnam as “exposure,” whereas others have focused on service in the four military combat tactical zones despite the fact that spraying varied dramatically within each zone (e.g., one zone contained unsprayed Saigon and the heavily sprayed Iron Triangle).

Diseases for Which Military Service in Vietnam May Be Considered Presumptive of Exposure by the Department of Veterans Affairs for the Purpose of Treatment and Compensation

Note . Data were derived from the US Department of Veterans Affairs ( https://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/agentorange/conditions/index.asp ).

A 20-year Air Force study of Ranch Hand air and ground crews gathered massive amounts of survey and medical data and reported herbicide-related diabetes; however, because of its small size (the study involved approximately 2800 men), it has low power with respect to many of the health endpoints of interest, and numerous TCDD assays relied on blood drawn decades after exposures occurred. Army Chemical Corps personnel are a source of many health reports, but they handled very small amounts of herbicides and large quantities of other chemicals. (Ranch Hand was an Air Force as opposed to an Army operation.) These and other studies are often based on unreliable self-reports of handling of herbicides. 4

EXPOSURE OPPORTUNITY MEASURES REFINED

Beginning in the 1980s, we refined the NAS HERBS-file methodology to derive “exposure opportunity” scores in cross-sectional studies of a random sample of 12 000 American Legionnaires. We demonstrated that a sizeable number of troops served in sprayed areas and were at elevated risk of selected health outcomes. 5 In 1983, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) initiated a large Agent Orange cohort study of combat battalions whose daily locations were meticulously assembled by the DOD and employed an exposure algorithm almost identical to ours; the agency abruptly abandoned the study in 1987, however, declaring it impossible to use troop location data for estimating exposures because scores were inconsistent with serum dioxin levels. The CDC also asserted that ground troops who did not directly handle the herbicides were not “heavily” exposed.

Two separate Institute of Medicine panels rejected these assertions. NAS issued a request for application to further develop a methodology based on military records for estimating exposures to military herbicides in Vietnam. 4 We responded to that request and were awarded a contract under which we developed our updated geographic information system. 6 Our data sets related to spraying, troop locations, and exposure opportunity scores are available on a Web site funded by the National Library of Medicine ( http://www.workerveteranhealth.org/milherbs/new/ ).

CONCLUSIONS

The Agent Orange story is one of massive exposure of civilian and military populations to toxic chemicals once thought safe. Few studies exist of the long-range health effects of the Vietnam War on soldiers, civilians, or the general environment. There is a strong suspicion that elevated rates of birth defects may be attributable to herbicides, but scientific corroboration is limited. Studies of South Korean troops who served in Vietnam have revealed increased risks of diabetes and other disorders. 7 Much of the existing literature on US veterans relies on exposure methodologies with severe misclassification limitations or on populations too small to allow questions regarding cancer and other chronic diseases to be addressed.

Faced with this dilemma, the Institute of Medicine oversaw development of a peer-reviewed, military records–based exposure methodology, similar to early NAS and CDC studies, for estimating exposures; sufficient funding to carry out epidemiological studies has not been forthcoming despite strong congressional mandates. The at-risk veteran population is now at an age at which chronic diseases become manifest, so the time is optimal for conducting such studies, crafting health programs for veterans to better meet their needs, and truly assessing, addressing, and ameliorating health conditions and continuing exposures to lingering traces of Agent Orange in Vietnam.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was supported by National Academy of Sciences subcontract NAS-VA-5124-98 and National Library of Medicine grant 1G13LM009137.

See also Morabia, p. 714 ; Freudenberg, p. 724 ; Wodka, p. 728 ; Laurell, p. 730 ; and Phillips, p. 731 .

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