tv [untitled] March 11, 2012 1:00pm-1:30pm EDT
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the class is part of a course called "strategy and war" which examines the relationship between political goals and the use of military force. this is about 50 minutes. a couple of pieces of background first to think about this to set up for this. always think about what is this war about for the north vietnamese? what are their objectives? now the north vietnamese communists' objectives are pretty clear. perhaps not as clear from your reading as they should be. we know from captured documents, they wanted to take all of southeast asia. the french end of china. that is what their objective is. their objective for our purpose is the conquest of south vietnam. that's what they want. what is important, they tell us the first thing we need to do is figure out the nature of the war. for our purposes for this, when you start your study of this case study, you start investigating this case study, think about that.
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what is the nature of this war? one of my colleagues back in newport, he talks about this being a war within a war within a war. it's an interesting perspective to think of. you have a multi-layer series of events and activities that are going on here and different ways of finding it. for the communists it's a revolutionary war. they want to expand communism. south vietnam is only the next stop on the road for that. guerrilla warfare is a big part of the how that they're going to do this but not all of it. you have a regional war that develops between north vietnam and the united states and this of course spills over to laos, the fighting in north vietnam, particularly on the arab side. a lot of this is conventional. that's not the whole thing. it's only part of the picture. you also have to keep in mind that the cold war context of what is going on here because when we think about vietnam, we don't automatically think about this being a coalitional war.
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we sometimes even overlook the south vietnamese role in it. some of the literature, for example, you almost think there's no south vietnamese army there when you're reading the book. there's pretty substantial south vietnamese forces. on the communist side in particular, the coalitional aspect is very, very important for their success. ho chi minh says that himself so you've got the support from communist china and the soviet union. keep that in mind when we look at this war. you have these various different aspects of it. you have to deal with the various different aspects and various different wars in some respects in a different manner. now also what is important to point out here before we go into this lecture, you can see from the time line that it covers an enormous amount of time, 30 years. obviously we're going to leave a couple of things out and hit the high points. what is important to think about is the primary means, pry timar
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elements of strategy to prosecute the war against us when the united states comes into the war, these have been developed before our entry into the war in a significant fashion. the tenants of what they're going to do are there. they modify them to address us. that's one of the reasons i'm going to spend a lot of time on the development of their ideas and the developments of the methods of prosecuting this war before our presence is really a significant factor or a dramatic factor in it. now start of course with a little bit of background, a little bit of theoretical and historical background. we always give you some theory. one of the important additions that we've been doing is the addition of what becomes modern guerrilla war theory. the chinese communist leader, famous for uniting china. mao from fighting the japanese and fighting the nationalists in the chinese civil war he derived his own particular theory of
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guerrilla struggle. he takes his ideas from other theorists as well. he's also very good at developing his own in the process. he famously writes a small book called "on guerrilla war." in 1938 he writes on on protracted war." this was basically his scheme, his outline for how the chinese communists could take control of china having defeated the nationalists and defeating the japanese as well. his model of these three stajts here that we'll talk about in just a moment, it becomes the model for a lot of other insurge against sis, particularly communist insurge again si. it becomes for good or ill becomes the way we often evaluate that to see how far they've developed. you can say that's good or bad, you can argue that. it becomes that and it becomes a tool. what was mao thinking here. what does he mean? first of all, would he have phase 1, strategic defensive.
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sometimes it's called the organization or consolidation phase. during this phase the communists being weak, they would act primarily on the defensive. they would build up their party organizations. they would build the basic structures they needed later on. they would try to adopt popular measures to win over different people, the peasants, the farmers by giving them land. they would use terror against their opponents. they would do this to undermine the authority of their government and create an atmosphere of fear and instability. you build your base there. you recruit, indoctrinate. as you get stronger you move to phase 2, sometimes called the strategic stalemate phase. equilibrium phase. at this point once the communists thought themselves strong enough to start fighting the state with rough equality, they would begin to do so. political action would still be used but guerrilla warfare, guerrilla fighting that was
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attritional in nature took on an increasingly larger role. they would build more bases, increase their recruiting and as they got starter they would begin to convert the guerrilla forces into a regular army. also at the same time they would start building their own governmental structures to kind of supplant themselves, the role of the formal government. so you wage guerrilla warfare, expand the base area and begin building a regular army. then you move to stage three, the strategic phase, destruction of the enemy phase as sometimes it's called. in this phase the guerrilla's determine that they're strong enough to fight the government her' trying to overthrow toe to toe. your guerrilla forces are being trans 230r78d into a conventional army. you'll still carry on guerrilla warfare. if it's necessary and if you need to, certainly part of it, and also ideally this preparation in mao's mind, if you do everything right, you might get lucky and phase 3
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might not be necessary but it's probably going to be. this is his model again, something important. he's not putting this model forward for every gur ril ler insurgency. when he writes the on protracted war, this is something that's taken up by the vietnamese, communists. it becomes a model or a foundational element for what they tried to do. historical background, before we get into the vietnamese strategy, a little bit of historical background about french indoe china. the french had colonized the region in 1858. they left the vietnamese emperor in place to control internal affairs. in 1919 the paris peace conference, ho chi minh, the famous communist leader of vietnam, he tried to get vietnamese independence here. he turns to communism. 1920 he becomes one of the founding members of the french communist party. in 1930 he establishes the
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vietnamese party. in may of 1941 ho and the communist party set up an organization known as the viet minh. it's anticolonial groups. they build their first guerrilla bases. they build a movement based upon mao and in some respects supported by mao and the chinese communists. their first base is on the chinese/north vietnamese border. during the second world war ho is one of the more effective antijapanese leaders. he develops very good credentials and credibility in vietnam as an anti-french factor, as an anti-japanese national list. he downplays his communist side even though that remains very, very important to ho. at the potsdam conference in july of 1945, vietnam like a lot of other countries at the end of the second world war, is divided
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into two occupational zones. the vietnamese emperor ab did you cates in favor of ho chi minh. this is important because it gives ho some credibility, particularly in the eyes of the vietnamese people. in september of 1945 ho chi minh declares vietnamese independence. there is a problem with that. the leaders of the communist movement important for our purposes. obviously a lot here, ho chi minh who we talked about you can see on the slide. these other three men here, particularly for our lecture and your class, they're critical for us. you have general giopp on the far left there. he much of the war minister of defense, he has the military committee. he is the commander of the army. on the other side you have leg dewan who is the second in command to ho chi minh in the political round.
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then you have general tan who is the commander of the vietnamese forces fighting in south vietnam. you have a rivalry between jan on one hand and the other two on the other hand as this develops and how you should be prosecuting the war in the south against south vietnam and against the united states. we'll see that here in a few minutes. sometimes the north vietnamese communists in the literature are depicted as being super men and doing everything right. they do a lot of things wrong. they're not all on the same page about what should be done to fight the war. the first thing is the war. they declared independence in 1945. declaring independence is one thing. getting it is different. in february of 1946, the french return. they want to re-assert control over their former colonies. in december of 1946 the vi viet mihn, they start their first attacks. they're driven out of hannoi.
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in october of 1947 the french launched an extremely large operation called operation lea. they're trying to clean the communists out of this area. they hammer the communists really hard. they have sanctuaries as well in china to draw support from. in february of 1950 the head of the vietnamese communist military force begins converting the guerrilla army that they had built into a regular army. they begin mounting a series of successful attacks against various french border posts along the china/vietnam border. there's a french offensive in '51 and '52. the french effort will culminate in the battle of denbianfu. what's interesting to think about here to remember, the north vietnamese here during this war they fight with the french, they move from being a
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guerrilla army, a light, small guerrilla force, to being a conventional force that's able to defeat a great power on the field. it's in many ways a stunning achievement. the geneva accords of 1954 will partition or divide, depends on your point of view, vietnam. this will end the french involvement. here the communist powers actually pressure the north vietnamese in taking this deal. this err' not as interested in having it as the others. they convinced them, take it. south vietnam is weak. it's going to fall very, very quickly anyway. so the north buys on it. they take the deal. you see a massive transfer of populations from the north and the south in this group, particularly catholics leaving north vietnam and going to south vietnam. the north vietnamese regime at this point will enter a period of stabilization and consolidation in some respects. now from 1954 to 1959 the north
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concentrated on building its structures and building the regime of north vietnam. ho does some very typical way the communists did this when they first took over a place. you suppress all the groups in the country that aren't aligned with you. you begin the traditional communist practice of murdering any real opponents and also any someone's that you imagine to be opponents. they killed 100,000 people all in the name of land reform. that's mild numbers. now the communists at the same time they're doing this, they never abandoned the struggle against south vietnam. again, this is the first step. you've got north vietnam, yes, but the communists have not gotten what they really want. one of the primary ways they carry out their war during this period against south vietnam is something that becomes a primary tenant of the way they fight south vietnam all through the course of this is through something they called
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extermination of traders campaign. this is basically you kill any official or anybody that's against your regime or anybody that's useful to the south vietnamese regime or you abduct them as well. it's basically this is a campaign. this is designed to destabilize the government, discredit the government of south vietnam. if you can't protect your officials, the government has no credibility. well, the communists can protect you if you come to us. it's certainly a way to intimidate anyone that opposes you. you can see the numbers here. fairly significant numbers. now also, again, preparation. this is the way of prepping the south for them to take it over. another way this they do this, in may of 1959 they begin building what is known as the ho chi minh trail. this general jopp, this is his idea. he begins building the supply root through the weak country of laos and expands into cambodia.
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this is very, very significant to the communist war effort in south vietnam. pivotal for all of their work once they really launch the military struggle. now the importance is critical here for supplies, logistics, manpower, so on. the north devotes a lot of effort to this. at one point they had 50,000 transport workers running it. they have 50,000 north vietnamese people that maintain it. infantry that guard it. it became what was a trail eventually became 12,500 miles of highway with 5,000 kilometers of pipeline for fuel. very significant investment. 2 million people used the trail during the course of the war. traffic on it was about 20,000 tons a month. they moved supplies on every possible thing you can imagine. the primary means of actually moving the supplies, the bulk of them come 100 pound packs on somebody's back on the trail. most of it is moved that way.
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by 1975 you have 25 trails from the main trunk road that lead into south vietnam. it gives the north a way to get around and get into south vietnam in ways that normally they wouldn't have had the ability to do so. it also gives them sanctuary areas in laos and cambodia which is important for prosecuting the war. they're trying to destabilize the south but the president of south vietnam is ziem. he knows -- they obviously know what the north is trying to do and he actually begins to mount a fairly effective campaign of suppression of the communist insurge against in south vietnam. this is worrying the north vietnamese because they saw their cadres being decimated in south vietnam. so in january of 1959 they escalate the war and you have here -- this sets the stage for what becomes known as the second indoe china war.
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a key piece will be infiltration of units from north vietnam into the south. the north is not just wagging a guerrilla war. you can see the nva, north vietnamese army numbers here, there are tens of thousands of these men, sometimes only 100,000 troops. yes, you have the guerrilla forces in south vietnam, but you also have extremely large numbers of north vietnamese troops as the war escalates. there are multiple pieces to this puzzle here. the north vietnamese, their grand strategy for prosecuting this war is what they call revolutionary warfare. what do they mean? the core of it comes from mao's basic tenants of prosecuting a guerrilla war. you can see from the graphic here some of the things i'll mention here in a moment. again, the guerrilla warfare elnlts are the core. political action elements are the core of it. mao would agree with this as
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well. you have to win the idea war. you've got to motivate the people politically. you do this through indoctrination, terrorism if it takes that. you also have the conventional and unconventional military means you're going to use. very broad based approach. the north also comes to the point where they believe it's very early that you have to mobilize the entire population to do it. everyone is a soldier and is involved in the struggle to conquer south vietnam. now to prosecute this revolutionary warfare the north, they have a multi-pronged approach. political as well as military el. . on the political side they have several different things that in their mind fall under political struggle. one of these is deception and deception and political action. they link these thins together. deception is a big part of how the north vietnamese are going to mask what they're doing in south vietnam. they do a very good job of this.
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we fall for it. in december of 1960 they set up the national liberation front. this was an effort to bring together various antidiem groups under a communist umbrella. during the war the north denies these are puppet groups or that they're being united under communism. later they said, yeah, we did t. we fooled you. again, both the military and political moves that they're making in the south, they try to make it look like a lot is coming from the south and they try to make it look like the military resistance in south vietnam, the insurgency, is something that comes just from the south though it's not. it's something that the wholly owned subsidiary of north vietnam. they're very successful. they're so successful in that a lot of the conventional wisdom of the vietnam war, this insurge against si in south vietnam, this is all in resistance to the
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oppressive dm government. while they're doing this in the early 60s, they're expanding their shadow government in the south trying to bring as much under their control as they can. by 1962 the vc in the south, they had 300 million members and probably a million supporters. certainly the movement is growing. now, again, terror continued as a primary weapon while they're doing this. you can see from the quote here how important this is to the way that they prosecute the war. and also what is important, while they're doing these things against the south, the political and military, they're also negotiating with the south and later with the united states as well. at the same time, negotiation is a political tool? the in their arsenal. this is important in thinking about the north vietnamese. they have a particular philosophy. a quote from a north vietnamese general named vin in 1966.
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quote, in fighting while negotiating the side which fights more strongly will compel the adversary to accept conditions. in other words, during this war they're constantly negotiations or negotiations for negotiations. in the north vietnamese mind, the more you're negotiating the harder you fight. for this this indicated serious any ns. when you're negotiating you fight harder to put pressure and maybe you get more of a deal. now the military struggle element of this is of course very, very critical. you have the conventional as well as unconventional efforts. when vietnam is divided in 1954 the north vietnamese leave behind probably 10 or 15,000 supporters that become the cadre, the leadership for the vc. you have different numbers from different books. they rarely agree, unfortunately. now they prepared for the new war in 1959 by infiltrating into the south tens of thousands of
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other south vietnamese who come north in 1954 to get training. again, all of these guys become the leadership for the insurge begins si in the south. they expand the plaf, people's liberation armed forces which is what we call the vc. they build this vc. the communists are very good at organizing things. they organize the vc as a three-tiered force. you have the main force vc units. these are guerrillas that have become stage 3. they're basically designed. they're conventional units designed to fight the south vietnamese army. you have regional forces, guerrilla's who work full time in assigned regions in the south and you have this local vc militia in the areas that they control can -- excuse me, that the communists control in south
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vietnam. hanoi makes sure he has tight control. in 1961 they establish something called the central office of south vietnam, the cosvic. this is set up in cambodia. they do this to run the war in the south. it's basically their command to run the war in south vietnam. while they're doing this they divide the south into various districts to organize throughout the country, even down to the village level. in 1961 the north intensifies the military as well as the political struggle against the south. what they're hoping when they get into this, they think they can politicize the situation enough and make it violent enough where they can provoke a general uprising against the south vietnamese regime. one of the strands that runs through the north vietnamese military is they can create a situation of instability and terror in the south that is strong enough and indoctrinate enough people to get the
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spontaneous or provoked uprising, they never get it but they hope it will be part of it. other communist movements have the same type of view and they generally are as unsuccessful. critically at the same time they have another issue that's starting to bother them. the u.s. has a pretty extensive advisory group in south vietnam and the north is worried that if they have too much success in the south too quickly, that this will provoke the u.s. escalation and they say how much pressure do we put on the south vietnamese to make them collapse. if it becomes clear that they'll collapse maybe it will provoke the americans from becoming bigger and stronger. at the same time we have to put pressure on it. eventually it will be their military efforts and pressure
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that will help convince us that we need to support south vietnam more strongly. now importantly, the north also in 1961 decided that this would probably be a long war, that it would be a protracted struggle and they need to keep that in mind and they would have to, at the same time, be patient and worry about the american intervention too. in 1962 after a failed attempt to negotiate a coalition government with the u.s. and the south, the communists decide that they had to intensify military action. that was the primary route for doing this. they began concentrating in the central highlands of south vietnam building base areas for fighting the war in the south. now this action certainly what they're doing, it provokes the response from the kennedy administration. the kennedy administration replied with some fairly -- in some respects a fairly successful method. again, there's some arguing about this.
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they replied primarily with a strategic hamlet program. this was an effort to consolidate populations in rural areas of vietnam and in some areas it's successful, some it isn't. it's not managed as well as it could. this is important for our purposes, that this frightens the north vietnamese. they see this is becoming successful at separating the population from the guerrillas and they disliked this a lot. the other counter insurgency things that the ken dri administration and the other administration's are doing, these are things that worry the north vietnamese immensely. now they also worry that as american involvement is increasing, that they're going to get a war with the u.s. just like they got with the french. but the kennedy administration in 1962, they decided to basically neutralize laos and negotiate about it. this gave the north vietnamese hope that they could withdraw their support for south vietnam. in december of 1963 -- excuse
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me, in late 1963, this gentleman here, diem, would be killed in a coupe. when this happens this is helpful to the north vietnamese. this is a great opportunity because there's a power vacuum that emerges in south vietnam. the north now decides that military effort will probably be their primary tool now to take over south vietnam. to fight this war, of course, they can't do it on their own, particularly the military resources they need to do it. the north vietnamese do not have the ability to produce them. we talked about in the beginning how there was a coalitional aspect of the struggle. here's where the big problem comes in in the way of aid from china and the soviet union. they're particularly helpful. ho made a very great effort to cultivate a special effort with
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mao. he usually consulted the chinese about every major decision having to do with the war. now the chinese, they didn't want to see the u.s. established in south vietnam either. they looked at vietnam in many respects like they did korea. to them, south korea was a place for american bases. south vietnam was in their mind as well. it's a place where the americans, maybe they could build bases. now mao should help the north vietnamese as much as they kompt china became heavily involved in doing so. they helped build the north vietnamese army. during rolling thunder, the american bombing campaign of north vietnam in the 1960s, the chee niece gave a great amount of help. this was pivotal because the north, the chinese help is pivotal. the north has little hope of
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convincing the u.s. to negotiate or leave just with its own resources. by the mid 196 0z the chinese leaders are worried that there's going to be another war with the americans just like in korea. after 1964 during the gulf of tokin, we'll talk about that in a moment, we have the shooting between the north vietnam and the american navy, this convince bes the chinese that they had to commit troops to north vietnam as well. they have to do this because they're afraid maybe the americans might come into north vietnam. there's chinese troops there, probably they won't. the chinese made preparations to fight the americans if they had to. when the u.s. sent major combat units into havevietnam in 1965,y feared they might get an intervention. the ghost of korea hangs over both sides here in thinking about what to do. so in april of
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