final essay for NSC finals
includes
-background of vietnam
-villlagisation
-escalation
- US Tactics
-vietcong Tactics
-tet offensive
=my lai massaccre
- role of the media
addtional infomation and facts included
“All the military power of the USA’s army could not defeat a small nation of Vietnamese
peasants.”
Critically discuss this statement in the context of the military strategies that both the USA
and the Vietcong used in the Vietnam war between 1963 and 1973
The USA failed in the expected easy task of defeating the small, undeveloped Vietnam army
despite being a strong, technologically advanced army. The failure of the USA’s army was a
result of the lack of knowledge of the densely vegetated Vietnamese forest; an
underestimation of the military ability of the Vietcong and the exposure of the war in the
media. While the USA struggled in the Vietnamese terrain, the Vietcong were knowledgeable
of the landscape and gained the support of the peasants and other communist countries
such as the USSR and China who aided them in providing financial support and weaponry.
The USA’s failure resulted in Vietnam becoming a communist state in 1975.
Before the second world war, Vietnam was a French colony. After the war, France entered
into the first Indochina war to reestablish control. Initially, Vietnam had sympathy from the
capitalist USA, however, after accepting help from communist China and USSR, the USA
quickly switched allies to France. In May 1954, France suffered a humiliating defeat to the
Vietminh forces at Dien Bien Phu. In the Geneva Peace Accord. Vietnam was divided into
communist North, led by Ho Chi Minh, and capitalist South, led by the dictator Ngo Din
Diem, at the 17th parallel with the promise of elections in 1956, two years later. Diem
refused to have an election as he feared a communist victory, this angered the south
Vietnamese. The Vietcong developed during the 1950s and they were a group of mainly
peasants who supported North Vietnam (NV). Soon a civil war began between the Vietcong
and NV versus the SV government. America supported the SV government through finance
and advisors to prevent the communist rule of Vietnam and surrounding countries ( Policy of
Containment). However, the USA did not yet have a reason to physically join the war. In Aug
1964 North Vietnam allegedly launched an attack on the American ship, USS Maddox, in
the Gulf of Tonkin. The US bombed North Vietnam in retaliation after the US Congress
passed the Tonkin Resolution. The US used the Tonkin Resolution, backed by the domino
theory to enter the war more fully to counter the spread of Communism.
An important US military policy in the initial stages of the war was the Strategic Hamlet
Program(1962-1963) or ‘villagisation’ policy whereby people in the countryside were forced
into fortified villages in hopes of keeping the Vietcong outside and preventing them from
assisting the VC in any way. Many villages were destroyed and burnt in the process. This
marked the beginning of the US’s fall into unpopularity and their eventual loss.
President Johnson believed that the war could be won easily through a massive increase in
American involvement. He slowly increased the number of troops on the ground in Vietnam.
In 1965, two battalions of US marines were deployed to protect military bases in Da Nung.
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