why did the vietnam war start essay

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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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Course: US history   >   Unit 8

• John F. Kennedy as president
• Bay of Pigs Invasion
• Cuban Missile Crisis
• The Cuban Missile Crisis
• Lyndon Johnson as president
• Vietnam War

The Vietnam War

• The student movement and the antiwar movement
• Second-wave feminism
• The election of 1968
• 1960s America
• The Vietnam War was a prolonged military conflict that started as an anticolonial war against the French and evolved into a Cold War confrontation between international communism and free-market democracy.
• The Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) in the north was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist countries, while the United States and its anticommunist allies backed the Republic of Vietnam (ROV) in the south.
• President Lyndon Johnson dramatically escalated US involvement in the conflict, authorizing a series of intense bombing campaigns and committing hundreds of thousands of US ground troops to the fight.
• After the United States withdrew from the conflict, North Vietnam invaded the South and united the country under a communist government.

Origins of the war in Vietnam

Lyndon johnson and the war in vietnam, richard nixon and vietnam, what do you think.

• For more on the origins of US involvement, see Mark Atwood Lawrence, Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005) and Mark Atwood Lawrence, The Vietnam War: A Concise International History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
• See William S. Turley, The Second Indochina War: A Concise Political and Military History (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009); Lawrence, The Vietnam War , 71-73.
• The exact circumstances of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and the extent to which US officials may have misrepresented the incident, remain in dispute. Tonkin Gulf Resolution; Public Law 88-408, 88th Congress, August 7, 1964; General Records of the United States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives.
• For more on Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War, see Michael H. Hunt, Lyndon Johnson’s War: America’s Cold War Crusade in Vietnam, 1945-1968 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1997).
• Paul S. Boyer, Promises to Keep: The United States since World War II (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), 283-284.
• Lawrence, The Vietnam War , 143.

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Why Did the US Enter the Vietnam War?

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The Domino Theory

• Anti-Communist Fervor

French Indochina War

Military assistance command vietnam, the gulf of tonkin incident, reasons for escalation, american pride.

The U.S. entered the Vietnam War in an attempt to prevent the spread of communism, but foreign policy, economic interests, national fears, and geopolitical strategies also played major roles. Learn why a country that had been barely known to most Americans came to define an era.

Key Takeaways: U.S. Involvement in Vietnam

• The Domino Theory held that communism would spread if Vietnam became communist.
• Anti-communist sentiment at home influenced foreign policy views.
• The Gulf of Tonkin incident appeared to be a provocation for war.
• As war continued, desire to find an "honorable peace" was motivation to keep troops in Vietnam.

Beginning in the mid-1950s, the American foreign policy establishment tended to view the situation in Southeast Asia in terms of the Domino Theory . The basic principle was that if French Indochina (Vietnam was still a French colony) fell to the communist insurgency, which had been battling the French, the expansion of communism throughout Asia would be likely to continue unchecked.

Taken to its extreme, the Domino Theory suggested that other nations throughout Asia would become satellites of either the Soviet Union or Communist China, much like nations in Eastern Europe had come under Soviet domination.

President Dwight Eisenhower invoked the Domino Theory in a press conference held in Washington on April 7, 1954. His reference to Southeast Asia becoming communist was major news the following day. The New York Times headlined a page one story about his press conference, “President Warns of Chain Disaster if Indo-China Goes.”

Given Eisenhower’s credibility on military matters , his prominent endorsement of the Domino Theory placed it at the forefront of how many Americans for years would view the unfolding situation in Southeast Asia.

Political Reasons: Anti-Communist Fervor

On the home front, beginning in 1949, fear of domestic communists gripped America. The country spent much of the 1950s under the influence of the Red Scare, led by the virulently anti-communist Senator Joseph McCarthy . McCarthy saw communists everywhere in America and encouraged an atmosphere of hysteria and distrust.

Internationally, following World War II, country after country in Eastern Europe had fallen under communist rule, as had China, and the trend was spreading to other nations in  Latin America , Africa, and Asia as well. The U.S. felt that it was losing the ​ Cold War and needed to "contain" communism.

It was against this backdrop that the first U.S. military advisers were sent to help the French battle the communists of Northern Vietnam in 1950. That same year, the  Korean War  began, pitting Communist North Korean and Chinese forces against the U.S. and its UN allies.

The French were fighting in  Vietnam  to maintain their colonial power and to regain their national pride after the humiliation of  World War II . The U.S. government had an interest in the conflict in Indochina from the end of World War II until the mid-1950s when France found itself fighting against a communist insurgency led by Ho Chi Minh .

Throughout the early 1950s, the Viet Minh forces made significant gains. In May 1954, the French suffered a military defeat at Dien Bien Phu and negotiations began to end the conflict.

Following the French withdrawal from Indochina, the solution put in place established a communist government in North Vietnam and a democratic government in South Vietnam. The Americans began supporting the South Vietnamese with political and military advisers in the late 1950s.

The Kennedy foreign policy was rooted, of course, in the Cold War , and the increase of American advisers reflected Kennedy’s rhetoric of standing up to communism wherever it might be found.

On February 8, 1962, the Kennedy administration formed the Military Assistance Command Vietnam, a military operation intended to accelerate the program of giving military aid to the South Vietnamese government.

As 1963 progressed, the issue of Vietnam became more prominent in America. The role of American advisers increased and by late 1963, there were more than 16,000 Americans on the ground advising South Vietnamese troops.  

Following Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, the administration of Lyndon Johnson continued the same general policies of putting American advisers in the field beside South Vietnamese troops. But things changed with an incident in the summer of 1964.

American naval forces in the Gulf of Tonkin , on the coast of Vietnam, reported being fired upon by North Vietnamese gunboats. There was an exchange of gunfire, though disputes about what exactly happened and what was reported to the public have persisted for decades.

Whatever happened in the confrontation, the Johnson administration used the incident to justify a military escalation. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed by both houses of Congress within days of the naval confrontation. It gave the president broad authority to defend American troops in the region.

The Johnson administration began a series of airstrikes against targets in North Vietnam. It was assumed by Johnson’s advisers that air attacks alone would cause the North Vietnamese to negotiate an end to armed conflict. That did not happen.

In March 1965, President Johnson ordered U.S. Marine battalions to defend the American airbase at Da Nang, Vietnam. It marked the first time combat troops were inserted into the war. The escalation continued throughout 1965, and by the end of that year, 184,000 American troops were in Vietnam. In 1966, the troop totals rose again to 385,000. By the end of 1967, American troop totals peaked in Vietnam at 490,000.  

Throughout the late 1960s, the mood in America transformed. The reasons for entering the Vietnam War no longer seemed so vital, especially when weighed against the cost of the war. The anti-war movement mobilized Americans in vast numbers, and public protest demonstrations against the war became commonplace.

During the administration of Richard M. Nixon , the levels of combat troops were reduced from 1969 onward. But there was still considerable support for the war, and Nixon had campaigned in 1968 pledging to bring an "honorable end" to the war.

The sentiment, especially among conservative voices in America, was that the sacrifice of so many killed and wounded in Vietnam would be in vain if America simply withdrew from the war. That attitude was held up to scrutiny in a televised Capitol Hill testimony by a member of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, future Massachusetts senator, presidential candidate, and secretary of state, John Kerry. On April 22, 1971, speaking of losses in Vietnam and the desire to remain in the war, Kerry asked, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

In the 1972 presidential campaign, Democratic nominee George McGovern campaigned on a platform of withdrawing from Vietnam. McGovern lost in a historic landslide, which seemed, in some part, to be a validation of Nixon’s avoidance of a speedy withdrawal from the war.

After Nixon left office as a result of the Watergate scandal , the administration of Gerald Ford continued to support the government of South Vietnam. However, the forces of the South, without American combat support, could not hold off the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong. The fighting in Vietnam finally ended with the collapse of Saigon in 1975.

Few decisions in American foreign policy have been more consequential than the series of events that led the United States to become involved in the Vietnam War. After decades of conflict, more than 2.7 million Americans served in Vietnam and an estimated 47,424 lost their lives; and still, the reasons why the U.S. entered the Vietnam War to begin with remain controversial.  

Kallie Szczepanski contributed to this article.

Additional References

• Leviero, Anthony. "President Warns of Chain Disaster If Indo-China Goes." New York Times, 8 Apr. 1954.
• "Transcript of President Eisenhower's Press Conference, With Comment on Indo-China." New York Times, 8 Apr. 1954.
• "The Indochina War (1946–54)." Vietnam War Reference Library, vol. 3: Almanac, UXL, 2001, pp. 23-35. Gale Virtual Reference Library.

"Military Advisors In Vietnam: 1963." John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. National Archives.

Stewart, Richard W., editor. “The U.S. Army in Vietnam: Background, Buildup, and Operations, 1950–1967.”   American Military History: The United States Army in a Global Era, 1917–2008 , II, Center of Military History, pp. 289–335.

"Military Health History Pocket Card for Health Professions Trainees & Clinicians." Office of Academic Affiliations. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

• Top Essentials to Know About the Vietnam War
• A Short Guide to the Vietnam War
• Vietnam War Timeline 1847-1982
• Vietnam War Terms and Slang
• Vietnam War: Americanization
• An Introduction to the Vietnam War
• Timeline of the Vietnam War (Second Indochina War)
• When Did the U.S. Send the First Troops to Vietnam?
• Causes of the Vietnam War, 1945–1954
• Vietnam War: Gulf of Tonkin Incident
• Tet Offensive
• An Overview of the Vietnam War Protests
• What Was the Domino Theory?
• Who Were the Viet Cong and How Did They Affect the War?
• The History of Containment Policy
• Vietnam War: End of the Conflict

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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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The Origins of the Vietnam War

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Vietnam War: Background, Summary Of Events, and Conclusion

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.

For more articles about the Vietnam War, go to the category archive .

The Vietnam War: Table of Contents

• Summary of The Vietnam War

When was the Vietnam War?

The m-16 and the vietnam war, #70: a vietnam pow’s story of 6 years in the hanoi hilton — amy shively hawk.

• Aircraft: Evolution in Flight

End of the Vietnam War

The vietnam war: background and overview.

(See Main Article: The Vietnam War: Background and Overview )

During the late fifties, Vietnam was divided into a communist North and anti-communist South. Because of the Cold War  anxiety of the time, the general feeling was that, should the North Vietnamese communists win, the remainder of Southeast Asia would also fall to communism. When President John F. Kennedy took office in 1961, he swore that he would not let that happen.

The more conventionally trained army of South Vietnam was clearly no match for the guerrilla tactics of the North, so in February 1965 America decided to get involved with Operation Rolling Thunder. North Vietnam was supported by China, the Soviet Union, and other communist countries, and the Viet Cong, a South Vietnamese communist group.

The struggle for control of Vietnam, which had been a French colony since 1887, lasted for three decades. The first part of the war was between the French and the Vietminh, the Vietnamese nationalists led by the communist Ho Chi Minh, and continued from 1946 until 1954. The second part was between the United States and South Vietnam on one hand and North Vietnam and the National Liberation Front on the other, ending with the victory of the latter in 1975. The communist side, strongly backed by the Soviet Union and mainland China, sought to increase the number of those who lived behind the Bamboo Curtain.

Both the United States and the Soviet Union regarded the conflict not as a civil war between North and South Vietnam but as a consequential engagement of the Cold War in a strategic region. American leaders endorsed the domino theory, first enunciated by President Eisenhower, that if South Vietnam fell to the communists, other nations in the region such as Laos and Cambodia would also fall.

Vietnam War Summary—Overview of the Conflict

(See Main Article: Vietnam War Summary—Overview of the Conflict )

Five American presidents sought to prevent a communist Vietnam and possibly a communist Southeast Asia. Truman and Eisenhower provided mostly funds and equipment. When Kennedy became president there were fewer than one thousand U.S. advisers in Vietnam. By the time of his death in November 1963, there were sixteen thousand American troops in Vietnam. The Americanization of the war had begun.

Kennedy chose not to listen to the French president, Charles de Gaulle, who in May 1961 urged him to disengage from Vietnam, warning, “I predict you will sink step by step into a bottomless military and political quagmire.”

A debate continues as to what Kennedy would have done in Vietnam if he had served two terms—widen America’s role or begin a slow but steady withdrawal. We do know that throughout his presidency, Kennedy talked passionately about the need to defend “frontiers of freedom” everywhere. In September 1963, he said “what happens in Europe or Latin America or Africa directly affects the security of the people who live in this city.” Speaking in Fort Worth, Texas, on the morning of November 22, the day he was assassinated, Kennedy said bluntly that “without the United States, South Viet-Nam would collapse overnight. . . . We are still the keystone in the arch of freedom.”

Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, was an ambitious, experienced politician who had served in both the House and the Senate as a Democrat from Texas, and his persona was as large as his home state. He idolized FDR for winning World War II and initiating the New Deal and sought to emulate him as president. Like the three presidents who had preceded him, he saw action in time of war, serving as a naval aide in the Pacific during World War II, and like them he was a Christian, joining the Disciples of Christ Church in part for its focus on good works. Drawing on his political experience, Johnson thought that Ho Chi Minh was just another politician with whom he could bargain—offering a carrot or wielding a stick—just as he had done as the Senate majority leader. Ho Chi Minh, however, was not a backroom pol from Chicago or Austin but a communist revolutionary prepared to fight a protracted conflict and to accept enormous losses until he achieved victory.

(See Main Article: When was the Vietnam War? )

Although the history of Vietnam has been dominated by war for 30 years of the 20th century, the conflict escalated during the sixties. When we talk about the “ Vietnam War ” (which the Vietnamese refer to as the “American War”), we talk about the military intervention by the U.S. that happened between 1965 and 1973.

For the first time, Americans saw a war playing out on their TV screens and witnessed a lot of the horrors that it brought and the citizens started to turn against the war. Throughout America, people started to hold large anti-war protests against the U.S. involvement in the war of Vietnam.

In January, 1973, peace talks finally seemed to have been successful and the Paris Peace Accords finally ended direct military involvement of the U.S. in Vietnam. Unfortunately the treaty did not stop the fighting, as both sides of Vietnam kept fighting to gain as much territory as possible. The communists managed to seize Saigon in 1975 and gained control over the whole country.

According to U.S. estimates, between 200 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers were killed during this period and 58,200 U.S. soldiers were dead or missing in action.

(See Main Article: The M-16 And The Vietnam War )

In 1959, America chose the M-14 to be our main battle rifle.  It would prove to be the shortest-lived rifle to ever serve in that role.  Heavy and uncontrollable when fired on full auto, compared to the Soviet’s AK-47, the M-14 was obsolete at birth.  America needed a rifle to match her Space Age dreams.  Not surprisingly it was a subsidiary of an aerospace company that delivered that dream.  Armalite’s business was developing small arms that could then be sold to manufacturers.  Armalite employee,  Eugene Stoner  was given the canvas to create a masterpiece, and from his fertile mind came the rifle of the future.

The advantages of the M-16 over every other rifle on paper were stunning.  The magnitude of the change encompassed by Stoner’s design was the perfect complement to “Space Age” technology.  This gun was light, accurate, and had virtually no recoil.  Any soldier with a little training could put every round into a suitcase at 100 yards in under 2 seconds.   The ammo was lighter, cheaper, and deadly.   Early reports of wounds on enemy soldiers were so gruesome that they remained classified until the 80s.  Bullets would enter the body and pinball around inside doing horrific damage.  So impressed by the M-16s issued to the ARVN troops, Green Berets demanded to be issued the weapons in 1962.  The jump from the M-14 to the M-16 was equivalent to switching from prop planes to jets.  The design was sold to Colt and adopted by the US Military in 1964.  Optimism surrounding the gun was very high.  That should have been the first warning sign.

(See Main Article: #70: A Vietnam POW’s Story of 6 Years in the Hanoi Hilton — Amy Shively Hawk )

When consider major historical events that involved millions of people— World War 2, the Great Depression, the Cold War—it’s easy to forget that real people with their own stories were part of those events.

Today we’re zeroing in on one story. And that’s the story of James Shively, an Air Force Pilot who was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967 and spent six years in the infamous Hanoi Hilton POW camp. To talk with us is Amy Shively Hawk, Jim’s stepdaughter and author of the new book Six Years in the Hanoi Hilton: An Extraordinary Story of Courage and Survival in Vietnam.

After being shot down, Shively endured brutal treatment at the hands of the enemy in Hanoi prison camps. But despite unimaginable horrors in prison, the contemplation of suicide, and his beloved girlfriend moving on back home, he somehow found hope escaping prison and eventually reuniting with his long-lost love – proving, in his words, that “Life is only what you make of it.”

In this interview we discuss:

• How Capt. Shively was shot down, what happened when he was captured, and his fate at the hands of Vietnamese villagers
• What kept Captain Shively hopeful during his six years as a prisoner of war
• What happened to the whole prison when two fellow inmates escaped but were captured the next day
• How prisoners built a full prison communications system using Morse code, toilet paper, and hidden messages even though cell blocks were forbidden from speaking to each other under threat of torture

 Aircraft: Evolution in Flight

(See Main Article: Vietnam War Aircraft: Evolution in Flight )

“The Many Ways To Die While Building an Aircraft Carrier”

For the full  “History Unplugged” podcast, click  here !

At the start of 1962, the U.S. had 16,000 military advisors training the South Vietnamese army in its fight against the Viet Cong and the Communist government based in Hanoi. In early February, the Pentagon set up a permanent U.S. military presence in Saigon—the Military Assistance Command in Vietnam (MACV). The U.S. military presence in a country that most Americans knew very little about would only grow from that point on.

In April, Air Force Chief Curtis LeMay went to Vietnam for an inspection tour and met with the head of MACV, General Paul Harkins, as well as the President of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem. While MACV was concentrating its efforts in the South, LeMay saw that the real problem was clearly coming from the North. LeMay made the same recommendation he made twelve years earlier, for Korea—if the U.S. intended to stop this infiltration, a massive bombing campaign of the North would do the trick. LeMay zeroed in on the port facility in Haiphong, where the weapons and supplies were coming in from the Soviet Union, and proposed bombing it. He believed this would put a halt to the guerrilla war in the South, but the plan was much too bold for the tentative steps that the Kennedy Administration was making in Vietnam in 1962.

 Aircraft: A Focus on Bombers

Ten years and 59,000 American lives later, the U.S. did exactly what LeMay had suggested. From December 19 to 29, 1972, the Air Force and Navy conducted Linebacker II, the largest concentrated bombing since World War II. The bombing of the North Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, and the port of Haiphong was conducted by such Vietnam War aircraft as tactical fighters, along with 741 B-52 sorties. Ten B-52s were shot down, five crash-landed in Laos and Thailand, thirty-three B-52 crewmen were killed, thirty-three were captured, and twenty-six were rescued. After years of stops and starts, the massive bombing of Vietnam War aircraft finally pushed the North Vietnamese to hammer out a negotiated settlement that gave the U.S. a way to extricate itself from its tortured involvement.

Decades later, the political debate over this conflict remains unresolved. Kennedy aide Ted Sorensen strongly disagreed with the suggestion that the conflict may have ended sooner had LeMay’s plan been followed ten years earlier, “I don’t know how you can say this so many years after the fact, especially when you consider that the Vietnamese had been fighting for their independence since forever and the idea that some bombs in Hanoi or Haiphong would have brought them to the table is ludicrous.”

But former Secretary of Defense, James Schlesinger, countered Sorensen’s view. “That’s ridiculous, the myth that it was a civil war. What destroyed Vietnam was that 18 divisions came down from the North in 1975. There was nationalism in Hanoi but not in the South and it was the North imposing its view on the South.”   Schlesinger also points out that had the strikes taken place earlier when LeMay suggested them, the Soviet surface-to-air missiles would not have been in place, saving the U.S. planes and crews that were shot down a decade later.

Vietnam highlighted the greatest difference between LeMay’s philosophy of war and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s. The Defense Secretary pushed for what he called flexible response from the very start of the U.S. involvement in the conflict: namely, offering the enemy a way out; however, if they show aggression, match the aggression, but only proportionately. Consequently, the full weight of the growing American military was never brought to bear on the North. Ground would be fought over in the South and then abandoned only to be fought over again and again, always with more casualties. The North would be bombed and then the bombing would be halted. It was a completely different strategy than the one the U.S. used in World War II.

LeMay thought flexible response was counterintuitive; it ran completely against his doctrine of war. If a war is not worth winning, LeMay’s answer was simple: do not get involved in the first place. Consequently, as LeMay watched the troop levels expand along with U.S. casualties, he grew more and more angry. The focal point of that anger was McNamara. As the conflict dragged on, he also grew furious with Lyndon Johnson because he believed McNamara and LBJ lied to the American people about the war. While the Vietnam War deeply divided the country, it would create major fissures within the government as well.

(See Main Article: End of the Vietnam War )

Beset at home and abroad, in 1968 Lyndon Johnson decided against running for re-election. In March he banned bombing north of the twentieth parallel, leaving most of North Vietnam a sanctuary. He was succeeded by Republican Richard M. Nixon, who largely limited offensive air operations over the North for nearly four years. One example will suffice: from 1965 through 1968 Navy aircrews downed thirty-three enemy aircraft, but over the next three years, tailhookers splashed only one. Meanwhile, “peace talks” trickled out in Paris. The end of the Vietnam War was in sight.

“After Watergate, Richard Nixon Created the Career Path for All Ex-Presidents”

Then, on March 30, 1972, Hanoi launched a full-scale conventional attack against South Vietnam, shattering the dead-end Paris “peace talks.” American airpower responded massively.

Leading  Constellation ’s   Air Wing Nine was Commander Lowell “Gus” Eggert, a cheerful aviator who enjoyed partying with his aircrews. Eggert’s keen intuition told him the 1971–72 cruise might be different from the previous three years. He began training his squadrons for large “Alpha” strikes in addition to the usual close air support in South Vietnam and Laos.

“Connie” completed her six-month deployment, and on April 1 she was in Japan preparing to return to California when the North Vietnamese spring offensive rolled south. Sailors and aircrews hastily offloaded their new purchases—notably motorcycles—and began loading ordnance. The ship was back in the Tonkin Gulf five days later, joining Hancock ,  Coral Sea , and  Kitty Hawk . By then the communists had beefed up their air defenses, and on one mission over South Vietnam, an Intruder pilot had to abort his attack because a cloud of tracers obscured the reticle of his bombsight.

After further delay, Nixon finally loosed the airmen in order to quicken the end of the Vietnam War. A Phantom pilot recalled, “We had reports of 168 SAMs on the first night after Nixon got serious in May. But that was coordinated with massive B-52 raids supported by three carrier air wings.”

On May 9 a handful of aircraft demonstrated the carrier’s potential for strategic effects with extreme economy of force. While  Kitty Hawk  provided a diversionary strike,  Coral Sea launched nine jets that turned the Vietnam war around in two minutes: six Navy A-7Es and three Marine A-6As laid three dozen mines in Haiphong Harbor. The weapons were time-delayed to allow ships to leave North Vietnam’s major port. During the next three days, thousands more mines were sown in Hanoi’s coastal waters, effectively blockading the communists from seaborne replenishment. Commander Roger Sheets’s Air Wing Fifteen, on its seventh Vietnam deployment, shut down Haiphong for almost a year—well beyond the impending “peace” treaty.

The mines were frequently replenished, eventually totaling more than eleven thousand weapons. Sometimes the “reseeding” involved unconventional tactics, as when  Saratoga ’s   Air Wing Three employed Phantoms flying formation on Intruders and Corsairs in what one F-4 pilot called “a one-potato, two-potato” drop sequence, based on when the attack jets released.

Finally, Phantom crews could ply their trade again. From January 1972 through January 1973, carrier-based F-4s claimed twenty-five aerial kills—nearly as many as the Navy total in the first six years of the Vietnam war. The tailhookers’ best day was May 10. That morning a two-plane VF-92 section off Constellation  trolled Kep Airfield and caught two MiG-21s taking off. The high-speed, low-level chase ended with one MiG destroyed which, with the Air Force bombing the Paul Doumer Bridge in Hanoi, sparked an exceptional response.

That afternoon “Connie” launched thirty-two planes against Hai Duong logistics, producing one of the biggest combats of the war with Phantoms, Corsairs, and MiGs embroiled in a “furball” of maneuvering jets. When it was over, two F-4s fell to flak and SAMs while VF-96 claimed six kills, producing the Navy’s only ace crew of the Vietnam war. In all, the Navy and Air Force downed a dozen MiGs, which remains an unsurpassed one-day total more than forty years later.

During Operation Linebacker—the final air campaign over North Vietnam, signally the end of the Vietnam War—American aircrews claimed seventy-two aerial kills versus twenty-eight known losses to MiGs, an overall exchange ratio of 2.5–1. However, the Navy’s intensive fighter training program from 1969 onward produced exceptional results. “Topgun” graduates and doctrine yielded twenty-four MiGs against four carrier planes lost, including a lone Vigilante escorted by fighters. In contrast to the Navy’s 6–1 kill ratio, the Air Force figure was closer to 2–1, approaching parity in some months.

The disparity between the two services was dramatically illustrated in August 1972, when four F-8E Crusaders from  Hancock  deployed to Udorn, Thailand, to update Air Force Phantom crews on air combat maneuvering. The senior Navy pilot was already a MiG killer, Commander John Nichols, who noted, “My biggest challenge was keeping my guys from lording it over the blue suiters.”

Throughout the war and up to the end of the Vietnam War, naval aviators shot down sixty enemy aircraft—all by carrier pilots. It was a stark contrast to Korea when barely a dozen communist planes were credited to tailhookers among fifty-four total by Navy and Marine pilots.

In fact, the reason for carrier-based fighters was to establish air superiority so the attack planes could perform their vital mission. Skyraiders, Skyhawks, Intruders, and Corsairs seldom worried about enemy aircraft while placing ordnance on target the length and breadth of Indochina. Few aircrews and probably few admirals realized how far carrier aviation had come since the start of World War II. Long gone was the era when airpower theorists insisted that sea-based aircraft could not compete with land-based planes. If nothing else, Vietnam confirmed that naval aviation was a world-class organization.

On two days in October 1972, Commander Donald Sumner led USS  America  (CVA-66) A-7 Corsairs against Thanh Hoa Bridge, a vital communist transportation target. One of his pilots, Lieutenant Commander Leighton Smith, had first bombed the bridge as a  Coral Sea  A-4 pilot in 1966. The Air Force had badly damaged “The Dragon’s Jaw,” but spans remained intact. With a combination of two thousand-pound TV-guided weapons and conventional one-ton bombs, the naval aviators finally slew the long-lived dragon, more than seven years after the first U.S. efforts.

During the eleven-day “Christmas War” of 1972, carrier aircraft again supported B-52s in bombing an intransigent Hanoi back to the bargaining table. By then Hanoi was nearly out of SA-2 missiles.

The Paris accords among Washington, Saigon, and Hanoi took effect on January 27, 1973. They were the diplomatic efforts that signaled the end of the Vietnam War. On that day Commander Harley Hall, a former Blue Angel leader and the commander of an Enterprise  F-4 squadron, became the last naval aviator shot down in the long war. His Phantom fell north of the Demilitarized Zone, and though his back-seater survived captivity, Hall did not. Long thereafter his widow learned that he had probably lived two or more years in captivity, abandoned by his government with unknown numbers of other men.

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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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• Why Did the Vietnam War Start?

The Vietnam War is also known as the Second Indochina War. It was fought in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia between North and South Vietnam. The North was supported by China and the Soviet Union while the South was supported by the United States, Thailand, Australia, and South Korea. The National Liberation Front, also known as the Viet Cong, was a South Korean armed resistance that aided the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). The resistance and the NVA fought to unify the country while the South sought to establish independence from the North. Today, the Vietnamese people refer the war as the Resistance War Against America. Unlike other wars, there was no declaration of the Vietnam War. However, it is believed and accepted by many that the war began on November 1, 1955, and ended on April 30, 1975. The U.S involvement in Vietnam had started as early as 1950 when Harry Truman sent military advisors to aid the French. However, the US started direct military action in Vietnam in 1964 until 1973.

Causes of the Vietnam war

Since the 19 th century, Vietnam had been under colonial rule. During the Second World War, Japan invaded the country. Vietnamese political leader Ho Chi Minh inspired by Chinese and Soviet communism formed the League for the Independence of Vietnam (Viet Minh) with the aim of driving out both the Japanese invaders and the French colonialists. After the United States forced Japan to surrender during the Second World War, it withdrew its troops from Vietnam leaving the Emperor Bao Dai in power. Ho Chi Minh saw an opportunity to seize control and immediately rose up in arms. He took control of Hanoi and declared the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) and himself the president. Backed by the French, Emperor Bao set up the state of Vietnam in July 1949 choosing Saigon as the capital city. Although both parties wanted a united country, Ho and his supporters favored communism while Bao and many others wanted to establish a country based on western culture. The difference in ideology resulted in one of the world’s longest and brutal wars. The North won the battle at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954 and ended the French rule in the South. In July 1954, a treaty to split the county along the 17th parallel was reached. However, the treated also called for an election two years later to unify the country. A year later, anti-communist leader Ngo Dinh Diem ousted emperor Bao from power and became the president of South Vietnam.

The Domino Theory

In 1961 President John F. Kennedy sent out a team of experts to report on the conditions in South Vietnam. The team advised the president to increase the presence of American soldiers, and technical and economic aid to help the south fight the Viet Cong resistance. Kennedy believed that if communism thrived in one Southeast Asian country, the rest would be compromised and communism would spread uncontrollably. Kennedy increased economic aid to the south Vietnam and deployed thousands of U.S troops to the country. By 1962, about 9,000 American troops were stationed in the country, a huge increase from 800 in the 1950s.

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Why the United States Went to War in Vietnam

• Heather Stur
• April 28, 2017
• Asia Program

This essay is based on a presentation at the Butcher History Institute for Teachers on Why Does America Go To War? , March 25-26, 2017, sponsored by the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the First Division Museum at Cantigny, and Carthage College.

Why did the U.S. go to war in Vietnam? This is a question historians continue to debate. One of the main reasons it remains a source of argument is that it is difficult to say when the U.S. war actually began. Should we trace it back to the 1940s when President Harry Truman authorized U.S. financial support of the French war in Indochina? Did it begin in the 1950s when the Geneva Accords divided Vietnam in two and President Dwight Eisenhower offered U.S. aid to help establish a non-communist nation in the southern half to counter the communist north? Eisenhower’s “domino theory,” the idea that if one country in Southeast Asia fell to the communists, the entire region would fall, and the ripple effects would be felt throughout the Asia-Pacific world, informed not only his thinking about U.S. relations with the region but the policymaking of his successors, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Kennedy asserted that Americans would “pay any price, bear any burden” to support democratic nation building as a way to counter communist advances in Asia. During Johnson’s presidency, the U.S. escalated its war in Vietnam, starting with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in which Congress authorized Johnson to use military force without declaring war. In March 1965, U.S. Marines landed at Danang.

Rather than identifying one starting point, it is more accurate to understand U.S. intervention in Vietnam as a gradual process. It involved economic aid, political and military advisors, and boots on the ground. All of the key moments in the process emerged from different contexts and the thinking of various players, but there were three threads that unified them: communism, the Cold War, and credibility. Understanding the role of communism requires placing Vietnam in a regional context and examining Southeast Asian concerns about communism. A regional approach to the Vietnam War is important because U.S.-Vietnam relations and the Vietnam War did not occur in a vacuum. The global context is also important because Cold War tensions between the U.S., the Soviet Union, and China also shaped events related to the Vietnam War. At the same time that we must investigate Vietnamese and Southeast Asian agency regarding the conflict, we also must acknowledge the significance of Cold War superpower rivalries and decision making to how the war played out. Concerns about credibility motivated U.S. policymakers to commit advisors, money, materiel, and troops to Vietnam, lest allies lose faith in American resolve to build a global democratic bulwark against communism and adversaries hear threats ring hollow.

The context of decolonization helps explain regional Southeast Asian perspectives on communism. As local activists and political leaders established newly independent countries out of Europe’s former colonial empires, the U.S., the Soviet Union, and China saw these new nations as potential allies and hoped to draw as many as possible into their respective orbits. It mattered whether the new countries established communist or non-communist governments. Vietnam’s history offers a case study of decolonization in action. A colony of France since the mid-nineteenth century, Vietnam fell under Japanese control in 1940 after France surrendered to Germany during World War II. In September 1945, Ho Chi Minh, a nationalist who was also an internationally connected communist who helped establish the French Communist Party and spent time in China and Russia in the 1920s, declared the country’s independence in the wake of Japan’s defeat and the war’s end. France soon sought to reclaim its former colony and went to war with Ho and the Viet Minh, Vietnam’s independence movement. After the Viet Minh won a decisive victory at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954, France surrendered, and the Geneva Accords that summer called for dividing Vietnam in half at the seventeenth parallel.

Other Southeast Asian nations also transitioned from colonial to independent status in the years after World War II, and tensions and conflicts between communist and non-communist movements existed not just in Vietnam but also in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Regional non-communist governments supported the Republic of Vietnam, the southern half of the divided country, believing its existence was a crucial bulwark against the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. In 1954, Chiang Kai-shek of Taiwan and South Korea’s Syngman Rhee founded the Asian People’s Anticommunist League (APACL) as part of their efforts to resist communist insurgencies. Beginning in 1964, the central subject of the organization’s annual meetings was South Vietnam and how members of the APACL could offer political and military assistance. At the 1964 annual meeting in Taipei, delegates decided to open a special APACL office in Saigon to demonstrate support for the Saigon government. Newspapers in Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, and Manila published editorials supporting South Vietnam. An APACL youth conference featured attendees from the U.S., including Tom Charles Huston and David Keene representing Young Americans for Freedom. [1]

President Marcos of the Philippines presiding over a SEATO meeting in 1966

Southeast Asia was so important in the minds of America policymakers and their allies that the U.S., along with Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Thailand, established the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) in September 1954. SEATO’s purpose was to prevent communism from gaining ground in the region, and although South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos couldn’t join because the Geneva Accords prevented them from joining international military alliances, they were included as SEATO protectorates. This designation provided a justification for U.S. involvement in Vietnam because SEATO members pledged to act to prevent the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. [2]

Just as regional concerns about communism influenced support for South Vietnam, the Vietnam conflict also played into Cold War superpower rivalries, which, in turn, shaped superpower decision making. As the U.S., the Soviet Union, and China vied for alliances with newly independent countries, Vietnam became one of the proving grounds on which all three countries tried to make their mark. The U.S. gave economic and military aid to South Vietnam, while the Soviet Union and China offered similar assistance to North Vietnam. Hanoi leaders understood that they walked a tightrope between their two contentious benefactors, as North Vietnam received significant support from both countries. North Vietnam also benefitted from trade with Eastern Europe through its inclusion in the Soviet sphere. Although authorities in both Vietnams tried to assert themselves and resist superpower control, the Cold War power struggle between the U.S., the Soviet Union, and China was key in shaping the Vietnam War. [3]

In the context of the Cold War power struggle, and in the context of U.S. efforts to court allies in the decolonizing world, Americans had to prove that their pronouncements about containing communism, supporting non-communist governments, and aiding democracy building were credible. Presidents from Truman through Johnson worried about American credibility. During the Truman administration, the State Department issued NSC-68, a paper arguing that the Soviet Union was “animated by a new fanatic faith” and determined “to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world.” [4] To combat the Soviet threat, the U.S. must embark on a massive buildup of conventional and nuclear weapons, NSC-68 contended. President Eisenhower had considered authorizing a U.S. military action, including a possible nuclear strike, to help the French at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954, but Congress refused to approve the use of military force unless it was part of an international coalition. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles failed to convince any major U.S. ally to help. After the Geneva Accords created South Vietnam, Eisenhower offered U.S. support to the new government of Ngo Dinh Diem. Eisenhower considered the partition of Vietnam a victory for the U.S. in the context of the Cold War. Like Korea, Vietnam was now only half communist, and the division of the country maintained the balance of power between the two spheres. [5]

President Kennedy’s concern about American credibility dated back to his time as a Congressman from Massachusetts. Kennedy argued that if the U.S. did not act aggressively to protect free nations, especially in Asia, China would come in and dominate the region. Yet, he believed the old ways of European imperialism like France’s attempt to recolonize Vietnam were wrong. That type of approach would just play into the hands of the communists, and in any case, Kennedy believed that the U.S. had an obligation to help build and support strong non-communist native governments. His model was the Philippines, where Colonel Edward Lansdale had groomed Ramon Magsaysay to be president. In 1956, Kennedy announced: “Vietnam represents the cornerstone of the Free World in Southeast Asia.” [6] This ideology informed his foreign policy worldview as president, beginning with his inaugural address, in which he declared: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” [7]

Kennedy employed the rhetoric of idealism to try to convince the American public that the U.S. had a moral responsibility to help governments and political movements that were trying to resist communist insurgencies. Historians still debate what Kennedy would have done regarding Vietnam had he lived beyond November 1963. While publicly he seemed staunchly committed to containing communism in Asia, he expressed doubt privately about South Vietnam’s chances for survival and whether it was worth a U.S. investment. Some close to Kennedy and members of his administration believe he would have escalated as Johnson did. Others have maintained that he would not have escalated. Rhetoric scholars who have studied Kennedy’s speeches have argued that what Kennedy actually thought about Vietnam was almost irrelevant because his ideological public language would have made it very difficult for him to make a policy reversal on Vietnam. [8]

President Lyndon B. Johnson signs “Gulf of Tonkin” Resolution

When Johnson took the oath of office in the wake of Kennedy’s shocking death, he brought his own concerns about American credibility. Johnson ascribed to the domino theory, and he believed that South Vietnam was the victim of communist aggression from and directed by North Vietnam. If the U.S. failed to step in and help South Vietnam, it would send a message to the rest of Southeast Asia and the world that the U.S. was not truly committed to containing communism. The problem for Johnson was that deep down he didn’t necessarily want to commit U.S. troops to the fight. He believed the South Vietnamese should fight for themselves with American aid and advice. Publicly, though, he and members of his administration, especially Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, emphasized the strategic importance of South Vietnam. McNamara pointed to Southeast Asia’s central location between India and Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines as evidence of the region’s significance. A Hanoi victory in the war, McNamara argued, would place Vietnam that much closer to Chinese control, and then all of Southeast Asia would be in danger. “To defend Southeast Asia,” McNamara argued, “we must meet the challenge in South Vietnam.” The region mattered to the U.S. because “(i)n communist hands, this area would pose a most serious threat to the security of the United States and to the family of free-world nations.” Vietnam was America’s test case to prove that it could meet the global challenge of communist wars of liberation. [9]

Johnson’s anxieties about U.S. credibility, combined with political instability in Saigon, China’s resistance to negotiations, and Hanoi’s refusal to remove troops from South Vietnam and stop aiding the National Liberation Front led him to escalate the U.S. military presence in Vietnam from 1964 through 1967. The election of Nguyen Van Thieu to South Vietnam’s presidency in 1967 brought hope for stability, but 1968 opened with the Tet Offensive, which turned Americans against the war and influenced Johnson’s decision to not seek reelection. His successor, Richard Nixon, entered the presidency in a world that looked much different than it had in 1964. Americans across the political spectrum opposed the Vietnam War, the U.S. and the Soviet Union entered a period of détente, and Nixon’s visit to China opened a new era in Sino-American relations. The changing conditions of the context surrounding Vietnam made what happened there seem less strategically important to the U.S. than it had appeared in 1954 or 1965. Additionally, Nixon was more pragmatic than idealistic in his foreign policy worldview. He believed that the U.S. should cast aside ideological differences in order to build alliances—as long as they were in America’s best interests.

America’s decision to go to war in Vietnam did not involve a Pearl Harbor or Franz Ferdinand moment. U.S. intervention was a gradual process that included economic aid, diplomacy, politics, presidential personalities, and military force. Regional alliances in Southeast Asia and superpower tensions between the U.S., China, and the Soviet Union set the international context for the war. American policymakers’ desires to prove that the U.S. was actually committed to stopping the spread of communism formed the ideological foundation of America’s approach to Vietnam over the course of four presidencies. Historians may never agree about when the war actually started, but all of these factors informed U.S. policymakers’ decisions to intervene.

Suggested Additional Readings

Asselin, Pierre. Hanoi’s Road to the Vietnam War, 1954-1965 . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2015.

Chapman, Jessica. Cauldron of Resistance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and 1950s Southern Vietnam . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013.

Goscha, Christopher. Vietnam: A New History . New York: Basic Books, 2016.

Herring, George. America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1965-1975 . New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001.

Lawrence, Mark Atwood. Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007.

Lind, Michael. Vietnam, The Necessary War: A Reinterpretation of America’s Most Disastrous Military Conflict . New York: Free Press, 2002.

Logevall, Fredrik. Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001.

Miller, Edward. Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.

Nguyen, Lien-Hang T. Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam . Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2013.

Wiest, Andrew. Triumph Revisited: Historians Battle for the Vietnam War. London: Routledge, 2010.

[1] Tu Hoang Nam Hung, Hoi Khong Hoc Viet Nam, Kinh goi: Thu Tuong Chanh-Phu Viet Nam Cong Hoa, 7-12-1964; Hoi-Nghi Lien Minh A – Chau Chong Cong; Hoat-Dong Thanh-Nien. Ho so so: 29878, Cac ky hoi nghi cua Lien Minh A Chau chong cong tai Dai Bac, Dai Han, Philippin nam 1964-67. Vietnam National Archives II.

[2] “Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), 1954,” Milestones: 1953-1960, Office of the Historian, Bureau of Public Affairs, United States Department of State. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1953-1960/seato . Accessed March 20, 2017.

[3] Pierre Asselin, Hanoi’s Road to the Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013) 228-229.

[4] “NSC-68, 1950,” Milestones: 1945-1952, Office of the Historian, Bureau of Public Affairs, United States Department of State. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/NSC68. Accessed March 20, 2017.

[5] “Dwight D. Eisenhower: Foreign Affairs,” Miller Center, University of Virginia. https://millercenter.org/president/eisenhower/foreign-affairs . Accessed March 20, 2017.

[6] “Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy at the Conference on Vietnam Luncheon in the Hotel Willard, Washington, D.C., June 1, 1956,” John F. Kennedy Speeches, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. https://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/JFK-Speeches/Vietnam-Conference-Washington-DC_19560601.aspx . Accessed March 20, 2017.

[7] “Inaugural Address of President John F. Kennedy Washington, D.C., January 20, 1961,” John F. Kennedy Quotations, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, https://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations/Inaugural-Address.aspx . Accessed March 20, 2017.

[8] Denise Bostdorff and Steven Goldzwig, “Idealism and Pragmatism in American Foreign Policy Rhetoric: The Case of John F. Kennedy and Vietnam,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, Summer 1994, Vol. 24, No. 3, pp. 515-530.

[9] Pat Proctor, Containment and Credibility: The Ideology and Deception that Plunged America into the Vietnam War (New York: Carrel Books, 2016) pp. 221-305.

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American Carnage

Alex Garland’s spectacular new film ‘Civil War’ is a warning of what can happen to democracies when civil society collapses.

In Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 classic Apocalypse Now , a US patrol boat heads upriver during the Vietnam War to assassinate Colonel Kurtz, a rogue commander whose followers worship him as a god. In writer-director Alex Garland’s new film Civil War , four journalists take a road trip from New York to Washington DC to interview a rogue president before the collapse of his illegitimate regime. The White House is no less the heart of darkness than Kurtz’s lawless outpost in the Cambodian jungle.

Civil War is Garland’s third collaboration with A24 , an indie production and distribution outfit primarily known for producing “ elevated horror ” and small, popular award-winners. With its $50 million budget, Civil War is the company’s first swing at a blockbuster. It arrives three years after the January 6 insurrection as America prepares for what promises to be another bitterly contested presidential election. Americans own more guns per 100 people than citizens of any other nation; the number of armed militia groups in the US has metastasized , primarily on the Right but also on the Left ; and 20 percent of the US public (28 percent of Republicans and 12 percent of Democrats) believe that violence may be necessary to solve their country’s dysfunction. So, it’s no surprise that America’s armed, angry, and deeply polarized society lends itself to a speculative take on a near-future civil war.

Garland refuses to assign responsibility for this war or to map his story to current political realities. That said, the film’s US president (Nick Offerman) is clearly coded as Trump. He looks like Trump’s Rasputin, Steve Bannon , after a shower; he has abolished the FBI ; he has grabbed an unconstitutional third term in office; and he uses the former president’s tell-tale phrasing to lie about his upcoming defeat: “Some are already calling it the greatest victory in the history of mankind.” In the real world, a third-term power grab would require a constitutional change with the support of 38 states: Republicans only control 27, not all of them MAGA. Further, Garland posits that 19 states have seceded and formed three separate military alliances, which would be impossible given the brief time frame for multiple referenda and certain judicial delay. And the most prominent of the insurrectionist groups, the Western Forces, is an extremely unlikely (though never say never , I suppose) combination of deep red Texas and deep blue California.

Although Garland’s film has been widely praised for its convincing depiction of near-future America as a war-torn hellscape, he has taken considerable flak from progressive critics for the political ambiguity and “ bothsidesism ” of this fantasy dystopia. In an essay for Wired , David Gilbert even described the film as “akin to a far-right fantasy recruiting tool.” This misses the point. Garland isn’t interested in the backstory or politics of his civil war any more than Coppola was interested in the details of the war in Vietnam. Rather, like Coppola, he has created a heart-pounding allegory about the consequences to a society that loses trust in its institutions and the moral guardrails that support them.

Fear of social implosion isn’t confined to the United States or its upcoming election. Populist distrust of civic institutions has made us feel vulnerable to urban warfare and/or guerilla tactics launched by militant gangs; an authoritarian response to mass protests that could spiral out of control; and international wars that are radicalizing domestic communities. Garland has set his story in America because its size and power raise the dramatic stakes. But by scrambling its politics beyond recognition, he makes clear that the warning is universal. This is typical of Garland, whose films deal in allegory and metaphor: He plunges us directly into the action and expects us to accept his situations as givens. In his biggest screenwriting hit, 28 Days Later (2002), the protagonist wakes up from a coma to discover that a so-called “rage virus” has devastated the UK, now overrun by infected legions of highly-mobile zombies. In Civil War , political polarization is the rage virus destroying everyone, no matter their side. The question isn’t, “How did we get here?” Rather, it’s “What do we do now?”

The journalists’ trip to Washington is a series of set pieces that range from chilling to depraved. People take advantage of the anarchy around them to avenge personal grievances; for instance, hanging their high school classmates in a car wash. Unaligned militias use it as cover for racial cleansing. Some communities play ostrich as sharpshooters patrol their rooftops. And the general paranoia leads others to kill anyone who steps on their properties. Nor is there any apparent way out now that the Furies have been unleashed. The president has engaged in war crimes by bombing his citizens and shooting journalists on the White House lawn. But the Western Forces out to depose him are far from heroes. They kill their prisoners of war, shoot surrendering civilians, and pose with their trophy kills. Further, we’re told that once they dispatch the president, they’ll start fighting each other.

Instead of siding with any of the combatants, Garland sides with his journalists. It’s not surprising: He grew up around reporters ; his godfather was a foreign correspondent; and as a youth, he wanted to follow in his footsteps, going so far as to fake press credentials to access foreign hotspots. If polarization is the force driving us to ruin, Garland believes that trust in unbiased journalists is the way back to common ground. This may seem naïve in an age of media silos, but it’s also the hope of his protagonist, Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst). A hardened, award-winning photojournalist, she confesses, “Every time I survived a war zone and got the photo, I thought I was sending a warning home: Don’t do this.” Lee has always compartmentalized her feelings from the horrors she records: Her job is not to intervene, but to witness, leaving moral judgments to her viewers. But as civil war consumes her country, she finds it increasingly difficult to detach herself. 

Lee’s struggle is intensified by her relationship with Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), a wet-behind-the-ears wannabe who shoots in arty black and white. Jessie idolizes Lee who, in turn, sees her younger self in the rookie. Their deeply moving relationship is the emotional heart of the story and the crux of the climax. Both actors are magnificent. Dunst’s eyes betray bitter experience, her cheeks are drawn with distress, yet Jessie’s presence can make her smile, laugh, and glow. As growing maternal instincts make Lee’s professional detachment impossible, Dunst provides an acting masterclass as she navigates the road to nervous breakdown. Spaeny is her equal, her young face rippling terror and excitement in an electrifying transformation from nervous rookie to heedless risk-taker. 

Wagner Moura has fun in the role of Lee’s colleague Joel, an adrenaline junkie who thrives on near-death experiences and post-combat camaraderie. And Stephen McKinley Henderson as Lee’s mentor, Sammy, is solid and avuncular as an old, out-of-shape newshound, out for one last rodeo. Kirsten Dunst’s real-life husband Jesse Plemons deserves a special mention for his chilling cameo as the scariest good ole boy since Bill McKinney told Ned Beatty to “ squeal like a pig ” in Deliverance . His performance, highlighted in every trailer , is the result of pure serendipity. Plemons was offered the role at the last minute when the actor originally cast dropped out a week before production. 

Garland is just as strong behind the camera as he is with his actors. He has the confidence to take his time during the subdued scenes that punctuate the carnage; lingering closeups reveal a wealth of nuanced emotion and deepen our concern for his characters. But when it’s time for action, his choreography is swift and clean. Garland understands the power of silence, too, and how to use it to contrast with the wild scoring of his longtime collaborators Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow . Everything builds to the finale, an assault on Washington that ends in a bullet-charged race through the White House. Instead of the bewildering breakneck cuts typical of most battle scenes, Garland’s military maneuvers are easy to follow. At times, he zigzags with the soldiers, as if embedded with the troops. Alternately, he swoops over the action to provide a bird’s eye view. It is bravura, heart-stopping work. 

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Is This Israel’s Forever War?

By Keith Gessen

Natasha Hall grew up in Arlington, Virginia, in the nineteen-eighties. Her mother, who was originally from Jordan, was an accountant at the World Bank; her father, who was a Vietnam War vet and marine biologist, worked at the Environmental Protection Agency. During the summers, they would sometimes visit her mother’s family in Jordan; in 1996, in the wake of the Oslo Accords, they were able to visit the West Bank. Hall, then thirteen, had heard about the territory’s occupation, but she was surprised by the obvious and quotidian restrictions on Palestinians’ lives. She remembers seeing people lined up at checkpoints with their hands on their heads, facing a wall. When the 9/11 attacks took place, she was in her first week of college. From what Hall already knew of the world, she immediately feared what the U.S. would do in response. She decided to study foreign policy. Shortly after graduating, she went to the Middle East and stayed there, on and off, for the next twenty years.

The foreign-policy world in Washington, D.C., is filled with people who have gone abroad and had a formative experience. Hall’s was the long American “war on terror.” In the late two-thousands, she worked for the RAND Corporation on evaluating reconstruction efforts in Iraq. (They were not going well.) In 2012, she took a job in government, travelling all over the world and interviewing refugees who wished to resettle in the U.S. But the process was slow, and, when it came to the conflict that had by then become her greatest area of focus, the Syrian civil war, the United States took so few people. She moved to Istanbul to work with Syria Civil Defence, also known as the White Helmets, a volunteer organization that helped civilians caught up in Bashar al-Assad’s brutal counter-insurgency campaign. Hall saw people surviving in conditions in which survival seemed impossible. She saw what Western resources and preparation could and could not do. “Every time we would find a way to protect people, they”—the Syrian regime and its Russian backers—“would up the ante,” she told me. Russian fighter jets “were wiping out whole neighborhoods. Even if people had a basement to shelter in, the Syrian government might hit them with chlorine gas, smoking them out.” (Despite multiple reports from the United Nations and other organizations that Assad’s forces repeatedly used chemical weapons in Syria, the regime has denied these accusations.) Humanitarian aid and civilian protection were useless, she concluded, if they were not backed up with other forms of support. “If you drop a bunch of people that just want to save lives into a context where people are trying to do the opposite, structurally speaking, they will manipulate you in every way possible,” she said.

In 2017, in the wake of Donald Trump’s “Muslim ban,” Hall, a year and a half out of her government job interviewing refugees, published an editorial in the Washington Post arguing that whoever wrote the ban didn’t know about the intense vetting process that refugee applicants already had to endure. That month, a declaration signed by Hall, recapping her editorial, was filed as part of a lawsuit brought by refugee groups and individuals of Middle Eastern descent against the Trump Administration. The lawsuit led to a pause on the ban, later lifted by the Supreme Court, which eventually upheld a reworded version.

Hall moved back to D.C. a few years ago, in part because she had had a child and wanted to be closer to her parents, and in part because she wanted to be closer to the policymaking apparatus. She became a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a high-minded security-oriented think tank. She testified before Congress, briefed senior government officials, and wrote papers on Syria, civilian protection, and how to maximize the impact of humanitarian aid.

Hall was on a research trip in Jordan on October 7th of last year, when Hamas militants breached the fence that surrounded Gaza, murdered twelve hundred people, and took more than two hundred back to Gaza as hostages. Hall’s first reaction was horror. Next came bewilderment: How was it possible that Israel was so unprepared? After that, fear. She watched Joe Biden travel to Israel and urge the Israelis to learn from America’s errors after September 11th. “While we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes,” he said. Hall worried that Israel would make those same mistakes. “That’s why some of the survivors of the October 7th attack came out to say that they didn’t want Israel to lash out at civilians,” Hall wrote to me. “Because they knew what would happen.”

The 9/11 attacks and the wars that followed fundamentally rearranged the American national-security apparatus, destabilized the Middle East, and left lasting scars on the American body politic. They also showed a generation of policy analysts and regional specialists what the quest for total security could look like. Among them was Annelle Sheline, who, in the fall of 2001, had just started her sophomore year in high school, in North Carolina. Even before anyone knew who had hijacked the planes and crashed two of them into the World Trade Center, one of her classmates announced, in fifth period: “We are going to kill those God damn Muslims.” At the time, Sheline later recalled in an essay about that day, she kept quiet. In retrospect, her classmate was right. “We were indeed going to kill a lot of Muslims,” she wrote.

In college, Sheline decided to study media, conflict resolution, and Arabic. She went on to get a Ph.D. in political science with a focus on religious authority in the Middle East, receiving a language fellowship for study in Egypt along the way. The experience, to some extent, was surreal: she was being paid to study the region, year after year, because the U.S. Air Force kept dropping bombs on it. After receiving her Ph.D., she settled in D.C. and worked at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, which tries to present a foreign-policy alternative to American militarism. In early 2023, Sheline was hired by the State Department to work in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (D.R.L.).

Sheline said that she found the department still demoralized from the Trump Administration, and understaffed. Biden’s nominee to lead D.R.L., a longtime human-rights advocate named Sarah Margon, had just withdrawn her nomination; at a confirmation hearing, Margon had been confronted with a tweet she’d written in support of an announcement from Airbnb, in 2018, that it was not going to allow Israeli settlers in the West Bank to list their homes. (Airbnb backed off the policy in the face of several lawsuits. You can now book a stay in the settlement of your choice.) Those who remained in the department were dedicated to their mission. They believed that the United States could play a positive role in the world. Sheline felt, at first, a little “weird”—she was a lot less certain about American beneficence than some of her colleagues—but also inspired. After the Trump years, the country again had a President who seemed to believe that human rights should be a priority.

Sheline had been in government for just six months when the Hamas attacks took place. The killings shocked and dismayed her. With colleagues, she discussed what Israel’s response would likely be. She was encouraged that President Biden had warned Benjamin Netanyahu not to repeat America’s post-9/11 mistakes.

She did not have to wait long to see that Netanyahu had not listened. In the first week of Israel’s Operation Swords of Iron, its Air Force dropped more bombs on Gaza than had been dropped by the U.S. in the most high-intensity month of the campaign against ISIS , back in 2017. Civilians were being killed at an astonishing pace—more than three hundred Gaza residents died a day in the first month of the war, many of them children. In mid-October, a State Department official, Josh Paul , resigned. He had worked in the bureau that oversaw weapons transfers to Israel. In the past, he said, citing the example of arms sales to Saudi Arabia, the attention paid to how weapons would be used had been “microscopic.” In this case, however, “there was none of that. It was, ‘Open doors. Go.’ ”

Sheline was impressed by Paul’s resignation, but she had no intention of following suit. For one thing, she was far more junior. For another, she had just arrived in government after a long period of trying to do so. She and her husband had a mortgage and a toddler—a little girl.

Sheline has trouble pinpointing the moment she changed her mind. During the next several months, she watched the State Department work on negotiations for a substantial ceasefire, which never seemed to come to fruition. She watched U.S. planes airdrop food packages into Gaza, Berlin Airlift-style, while its ally Israel endlessly inspected trucks that could have delivered far more food at the crossings into Gaza. She watched the Administration leak, over and over, that the President was very frustrated with Netanyahu. “It’s, like, Well, clearly he’s not,” Sheline said, “because he has a lot of power here.” If Biden were genuinely frustrated, she thought, he could demand that the ceasefire happen and that civilians be granted more access to humanitarian aid. “They’re building this stupid pier instead of just insisting on the trucks getting across the border,” she told me last month.

“Often, inside the State Department, there’s this belief in the process,” Sheline continued. “You know, ‘It’s a slow process. You have to just go through the steps.’ But, really, from what I’ve observed, the only thing that seems to be causing any shift is public pressure. I had done what I could. I had tried to do what small things are available for someone in my position on the inside.” In mid-February, citing the Israeli campaign in Gaza, she told her superiors that she was going to leave, though only after she finished a yearlong commitment to the job, and completed her work on the bureau’s annual human-rights reports. Once that was done, she shut down her personal Web site and wrote an editorial for CNN. “Unable to serve an administration that enables such atrocities,” she wrote, “I have decided to resign from my position at the Department of State.”

The experience was still very raw when we spoke over Zoom a few days later. “I know that I won’t ever probably get to work for the government again, which in D.C. may be tricky,” she said. “It’s hard to even say what a professional impact this may end up having. But, you know, I think about my daughter. I assume that she will learn about this in school. And I just want to be able to let her know that I did what I could on the inside. But then it became clear that that just wasn’t having any impact.”

The U.S. government is a very large bureaucracy. You go there to have some effect on what the government is doing. Your chances of having such an effect are inversely proportional to how much the issue matters at that moment. “I mean, not that I expected one person to shift the U.S.-Israel relationship,” Sheline said, “but I hoped that maybe by being on the inside, and working with others—there are many people inside State who are really trying, working very hard on this issue. But, you know, until the President decides that he wants the U.S. policy to change, it’s not going to change.”

For many people, in Washington and beyond, the American response to the 9/11 attacks settled an old question about the U.S. and its commitment to human rights. Clearly, it seemed to them, the U.S. had no such commitment. It was happy to preach to other people—to Serbs, Russians, Chinese—about human rights. But, when it came under attack, it would do just about anything to wipe out the threat.

Paradoxically, though, it could be argued that the American war on terror redeemed or even reconstituted the human-rights community in the U.S. In the context of that war, American human-rights advocates were no longer primarily criticizing other countries’ human-rights abuses; they were criticizing and trying to mitigate their own. In the past six months of war in Gaza, that community has been very vocal in its criticism of a longtime U.S. ally. Analysts and former government officials, many of them shaped by the American forever wars, have written eloquently about the principles of proportionality and the potential for war-crimes prosecutions not just of Israelis but of their American counterparts. They have demanded that the Biden Administration enforce American legal requirements for weapons provided by the U.S.

When I spoke to Hall last month, she said that she had never seen a war like this one. In Syria or Iraq or Ukraine, civilians could usually flee. In this conflict, Gazans are trapped. Neither Israel nor Egypt will let them in, and they know, from bitter experience, that if they leave, they may not be able to return. Another difference is the state of Gaza before the war. It was already ground down from multiple rounds of destruction and rebuilding, poor governance, and the Israeli-Egyptian economic blockade; some of the buildings that were bombed had been constructed out of concrete from previous buildings that had been bombed. (It does not help matters that, for years, Hamas put scarce resources toward its extensive underground tunnel network.) Then, there is Gaza’s water. In Eastern Ghouta, a rebel-held area east of Damascus that was besieged by the Assad regime for more than five years—one of the longest sieges in modern history—Hall saw people digging wells in their back yards. In Gaza, this is hazardous. The coastal aquifer is depleted; the water underground is brackish without treatment. This greatly cuts down on the ability of Gazans to survive.

Above all, Hall was seeing an army prosecute a war using indiscriminate means. “Urban warfare is notoriously difficult, but we still have rules,” she said. “There is no military reason to withhold medicine, water, and food to a civilian-populated area—and some of the weapons being used don’t make sense.” Israel was dropping two-thousand-pound bombs (supplied by the U.S.), which have the capacity to kill within a quarter-mile radius; in Gaza, which is just five miles wide in certain places, this was a very large radius. “You don’t use weapons like that in densely populated urban areas, or, rather, shouldn’t,” Hall said. More than thirty thousand Gazans had been killed—more than a third of them reported to be children—and epidemiologists had begun to warn of famine .

For Hall and many other observers, Biden’s failure to intervene was the key factor. Hall thought Biden had made a simple political calculation: that the progressives in his party had nowhere to go. He also had a well-known soft spot for Israel, and believed deeply in its role as an American ally in the Middle East. He may also have been trying to keep Netanyahu close to prevent him from escalating with Hezbollah and Iran. Still, at some level, it was a mystery. “If you ask me what I am puzzled by, it’s not the barbarity of either Hamas or the Israeli government,” Ian Lustick, a political scientist and longtime student of Israeli affairs, told me in late March. “It’s why Biden is so slow on the uptake here.”

On April 1st, two events that had the capacity to alter the war took place. One was an Israeli strike on the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, which killed two senior Iranian commanders. The other was the Israeli strike on three World Central Kitchen vehicles that were moving along the coastal road in Gaza, which killed seven aid workers who had just delivered food to a nearby warehouse.

The World Central Kitchen attack seemed to shock the President into action. In a thirty-minute phone call three days later, Biden demanded that Netanyahu start fighting with more deliberate care; that he let significantly more aid into Gaza; and that he agree to a ceasefire that will create conditions for the remaining hostages held by Hamas to be released. A readout of the call was delivered to the media by the National Security Council’s spokesman, John Kirby, who couched Biden’s warning in stern terms. “What we want to see are some real changes on the Israeli side,” Kirby said. “If we don’t see changes from their side, there will have to be changes from our side.”

But the Biden-Netanyahu phone call also had another topic: the Iranian threat of retaliation for the Israeli strike in Damascus. In the face of this threat, Biden said, the U.S. stood side by side with Israel, and would continue to support it. In more recent days, Biden’s tone has become more forceful. He has said that American intelligence indicates an attack from Iran against Israel could be imminent, and he has urged Iran to change course.

For Lustick, the call signalled a turning point in the conflict in Gaza. Israeli Prime Ministers, he said, almost never ended wars because they wanted to; instead, they did so when their allies, and in particular the United States, forced them to. This had happened in 1982, when Ronald Reagan called Menachem Begin to stop attacks on Lebanon; it happened in 2002, when George W. Bush leaned on Ariel Sharon to end his incursion into the West Bank. “Not a single war has ended because Israel’s war aims were achieved,” Lustick told me. “They always end when the United States says, ‘O.K., now you gotta stop,’—and they do. We say that in different ways, but we always have to say it, and it’s partly because the Israeli government needs it to be said, because otherwise they’d have to admit that they didn’t achieve their war aims.”

In the days after the Biden-Netanyahu phone call, this prediction seemed to be correct: Israel announced that it would soon open the Erez Crossing, in north Gaza, to allow in more humanitarian aid, and that it was pulling troops out of Khan Younis, in the south, signalling a halt, at least for now, of major military ground operations. Netanyahu said that his promised invasion of Rafah—the last city in Gaza more or less left standing, where much of the civilian population, and, the Israeli government claims, many Hamas militants, have taken refuge—would still go forward, and that a date had even been set. But his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, quickly contradicted him, telling his American counterpart that there was as yet no date for the proposed invasion.

Sheline was skeptical of the Israeli response. The bombs were still falling; the long-awaited ceasefire still hadn’t happened. And the humanitarian aid was inadequate. “They say they will open one more crossing, and they let in a hundred more trucks,” she said a few days after the Biden-Netanyahu call. “But at this point, after the World Central Kitchen attack, we have a lot of organizations pulling out because it’s a suicide mission for them. We need so much more now—there’s still nowhere near enough aid.”

Hall was worried about the so-called “day after.” “So you wipe out every Hamas soldier—then what?” she asked. “You just created a whole bunch of orphans and people who are forever traumatized by this without really anything on the other side of it.” Israel would not be able to simply leave the Strip, as it has after previous episodes of what it called “mowing the grass.” “This is very different,” Hall continued. “And I fear that if there isn’t a bigger reconstruction plan on the other end, this will be a festering wound, even more so than it has been, for decades to come.” Hall recently wrote a white paper for the Center for Strategic and International Studies about what she called “the new forever wars”—local conflicts that went on and on because they had become internationalized, as some had during the Cold War, but with more actors. Russia or China or Iran might support one side, the U.S. and Europe the other. Each side kept the other in the fight, while the root causes of the conflict remained unaddressed. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict was a very long-running example of such a conflict, but now more “kinetic,” more destructive, and more dangerous. And there was no end in sight.

For now, to Hall, the most immediate fear was famine. She had seen starvation in Syria. Once people started dying of hunger, as some have in Gaza, it was already too late. “In my experience, mothers will soon become so malnourished they can’t produce breast milk, they can’t get formula, and then things get really ugly,” she told me. “Society can break down from the inside. People will do anything to feed their kids.” ♦

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Opinion Nicholas Kristof

How Joe Biden Lost His Way in Gaza

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By Nicholas Kristof

Opinion Columnist

• April 19, 2024

During the Darfur genocide and humanitarian crisis two decades ago, then-Senator Joe Biden passionately denounced then-President George W. Bush for failing to act decisively to ease suffering. Biden expressed outrage at China for selling weapons used to kill and maim civilians, and he urged me to write columns demanding the White House end needless wretchedness.

Darfur and Gaza are very different, of course, but I recall the senator’s compassion and urgency — and I wonder, where has that Joe Biden gone?

Gaza has become the albatross around Biden’s neck. It is his war, not just Benjamin Netanyahu’s. It will be part of his legacy, an element of his obituary, a blot on his campaign — and it could get worse if Gaza cascades into a full-blown famine or violent anarchy, or if a wider war breaks out involving Iran or Lebanon. An apparent Israeli strike on a military base in central Iran early Friday underscored the danger of a bigger and more damaging conflict that could draw in the United States.

Consider just one example of America’s fingerprints on this war under Biden’s leadership. In January, the Israeli military dropped a bomb on a compound in Gaza used by the International Rescue Committee, a much-respected American aid organization that is supported in part by American tax dollars. The International Rescue Committee says that the near-fatal strike was caused by a 1,000-pound American-made bomb, dropped from an American-made F-16 fighter jet. And when an American-made aircraft drops an American-made bomb on an American aid group in an American-supported war, how can that not come back to Biden?

“Biden owns that,” said Jeremy Konyndyk , a former Biden and Obama administration official who now runs Refugees International, another aid group. “They’ve provided the matériel that sustains the war. They provided political support that sustains the war. They provided the diplomatic cover at the U.N. that sustains the war.”

This is not Biden’s war in the way that Vietnam was Lyndon Johnson’s war or that Iraq was Bush’s war. Biden has not sent American troops, and he has not directed this war. He is clearly uncomfortable with the civilian toll of this war and wishes Israel was conducting it with more restraint — yet he continues to underwrite it. His rhetoric has become more critical, but his actions so far have not changed significantly.

“Is this the war Biden would want?” Konyndyk asked. “No. But is this the war Biden is materially supporting? Yes. And so in that sense, it’s his war.”

It was Ukraine that Biden wanted as his war. Not that he wanted any war at all, but Ukraine was his opportunity to stand up and uphold the “rules-based international order” against an enemy that violated international law, bombed infrastructure and sought to make all Ukrainians pay. But it is the war in Gaza that Biden has saddled himself with, with its “indiscriminate” bombing — as he himself described it in December — leaving him and America looking to much of the world like hypocrites.

Yet Biden will not easily extricate himself from this mess.

“Six months in, the Biden administration is in a strategic cul-de-sac with no easy way out — weakened both morally and politically, dependent on two combatants who see no urgency in ending the war and facing the real possibility of a serious escalation between Israel and Iran,” Aaron David Miller, a veteran American diplomat and Middle East peace negotiator, told me.

One of Biden’s reasons for standing close by Netanyahu and keeping up the flow of weapons has been to ensure that Israel is prepared if war breaks out with Iran or with Hezbollah in Lebanon. That’s a legitimate concern. But unconditionally arming Israel also enables Netanyahu to take provocative steps that increase the risk of expanded war — and everyone knows that peace may not be in Netanyahu’s personal interest, for it would bring new elections that he is expected to lose. That’s worth remembering as one considers Israel’s deadly bombing of an Iranian consulate in Syria early this month, the move that prompted Iran’s retaliatory strike on Israel.

“It was clearly an escalatory move,” Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat and foreign policy expert, said of the Israeli strike. He noted of Netanyahu: “Widening the war is something that could keep him in office longer.”

For decades I’ve known and admired Biden. He’s wise and decent, a committed public servant who tries to do the right thing. He’s the most experienced foreign policy hand in the Oval Office in decades, surrounded by excellent advisers and known for his warmth and empathy. He would be a hard man to dislike.

Yet I believe Biden’s ongoing support for the Israeli military campaign reflects miscalculations that grew out of his outrage at the savagery of the Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7, coupled with his conviction — quite right — that Israel not only had a right to strike back at Hamas but also had a duty to do so, to re-establish deterrence. Biden’s initial unwavering support for the military campaign also reflects his generation, growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust, and his deeply felt admiration for Israel. He has regularly said that “if Israel didn’t exist, we would have to invent it.”

Daniel Kurtzer, a former American ambassador to Israel, put it this way: “President Biden is preternaturally supportive of Israel. It’s in his DNA.”

Martin Indyk, who was twice ambassador to Israel, agrees. “You know the line about him being an old-style Zionist?” Indyk asked. “That’s the heart of it.”

Biden had many crucial decisions to make in the weeks after the Oct. 7 attack, but perhaps none were more consequential than this: how to manage his relationship with Netanyahu as the war in Gaza got underway. How much should he defer to Netanyahu, how much should he embrace him, how much should he impose consequences when Netanyahu ignored his suggestions of restraint? Biden had choices, and as Indyk correctly observed, Biden thought that the best way to move Netanyahu was with an arm on his shoulder.

That was, I believe, the first of Biden’s miscalculations. Netanyahu has always been a renegade out only for himself. After Netanyahu lectured President Bill Clinton in 1996, Clinton reportedly said , adding a couple of expletives: Who does he think he is? Who’s the superpower here?

Perhaps Biden overestimates his ability to win over Netanyahu, as he sometimes seems to put too much faith in his ability to charm Republican members of Congress. Biden deeply believes in the power of personal relationships, and this faith is both endearing and partly justified. But I’ve also seen his overconfidence in these relationships run aground on the hard reality that foreign leaders have different worldviews and inhabit different political worlds. Netanyahu reportedly keeps on his desk a photo of Biden on which Biden long ago scrawled : “Bibi, I love you, but I don’t agree with a damn thing you have to say.”

Diplomacy is a mix of carrots and sticks, but until recently Biden seemed to offer Netanyahu nothing but armloads of carrots. And Netanyahu kept on taking the gifts while ignoring Biden’s warnings. “Netanyahu seemed to take enormous pleasure in sticking his finger in Biden’s eye at every opportunity,” noted Menachem Rosensaft, a Cornell law professor and general counsel emeritus of the World Jewish Congress.

Biden’s efforts to persuade Netanyahu to allow more aid trucks into Gaza were, at least until recently, so ineffectual that the White House had to drop food from planes. In 1948, the United States organized the Berlin Airlift to overcome Soviet obstructionism; that meant confronting our adversary and constituted a show of strength. In 2024, the United States was reduced to organizing the Gaza airlift to get around the intransigence of our longtime aid recipient; that reflected Biden’s failure to confront our ally and amounted to a show of weakness.

Instead of organizing an airdrop (which has killed some people when aid fell on them), Biden had an opportunity to do something much more substantial to avert starvation. In December the United Nations Security Council tried to set up a U.N. system to inspect trucks entering Gaza rather than letting them get stuck in the Israeli inspection bottleneck. Reports were already coming in of catastrophic starvation in Gaza, yet the Biden administration effectively blocked this alternative by watering it down to nothing, according to people close to the negotiations. The upshot: Children starved to death.

The administration also tolerated a ferocious crackdown and land grab by Israeli West Bank settlers who operate with the backing of Netanyahu’s extremist cabinet. The United Nations reports that almost 5,000 Palestinians in the West Bank have been injured since Oct. 7 in confrontations with Israeli troops and settlers, who periodically steal Palestinians’ sheep or drive them from their homes. By the U.N.’s count, 451 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank in this period, including 112 children (nine Israelis were killed in the West Bank during this time). Then last month, Israel announced the largest seizure of West Bank land since the Oslo peace accords in 1993. It was a slap in the face of Biden, who has mostly turned the other cheek.

Biden also didn’t seem to anticipate how brutal the bombing of Gaza would be, how Israel would throttle aid flows and in effect starve Gazans, and how long the war would last. The administration signaled that it expected the war to conclude by the end of 2023.

These miscalculations are hard to understand, for Israel was so traumatized by the horror of the Oct. 7 attack that the harshness of what was to come was quite predictable. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said early on that Israel was fighting “human animals” and he promised “a complete siege,” adding, “There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel.” By one count , there were 18,000 Hebrew-language references to Gaza being “erased,” “destroyed” and “flattened” on X, formerly known as Twitter, in about the first six weeks after Oct. 7.

For me, watching as I reported from Israel and the West Bank, it felt ineffably sad, like a rerun of the invasion of Iraq: the delusions about a quick victory, the disregard for civilian lives, the lack of a local partner to establish order, the excessive optimism about outcomes. Another parallel with Iraq was the support for this war from Biden, who had similarly supported the Iraq war . “ I do not believe this is a rush to war,” he had said in 2002, underscoring how history rhymes. “I believe it is a march to peace and security.”

As time went on and Israel leveled entire neighborhoods and killed large numbers of women, children and aid workers, Biden became more critical of Israel. But while his rhetoric changed, his policies didn’t — and he repeatedly allowed his calls for restraint to be ignored. Indeed, in the first months of the war, Biden’s first serious move to impose accountability wasn’t aimed at Netanyahu but at UNRWA, the United Nations agency working desperately to prevent famine in Gaza.

After allegations in January that a dozen (later 14 ) of the agency’s 30,000 employees may have joined the Hamas terrorist attack and that many others were Hamas members, Biden suspended funding for UNRWA without waiting for confirmation. Investigations are now underway, and a small number of UNRWA staff members may have been involved in the Hamas attack, but there are growing doubts about the larger Israeli allegation of fundamental UNRWA complicity.

“They’ve been saying UNRWA is an arm of Hamas,” Senator Van Hollen told me. “There’s nothing — nothing! — in the intelligence to support that claim. That’s a flat-out lie.”

It now appears that while Biden was too slow to confront Netanyahu for killing Gazan children, he acted too hastily against the U.N. agency trying to save Gazan children. “We contributed,” Van Hollen noted, “to punishing over two million civilians who relied on UNRWA.”

American public opinion has moved rapidly on the war, with a majority of people now opposing Israel’s actions in Gaza. If the bloodshed and starvation continue, one can imagine a further shift — carrying increased political risks for Biden. While few of those disenchanted by Biden’s policies in Gaza seem likely to vote for Donald Trump, they could simply stay home on Election Day in crucial swing states like Michigan.

The anger among young progressives is particularly strong. I see it on college campuses. I’ve spoken to several Democratic members of Congress who say they can’t do public events for fear they will be shouted down. (I disapprove of disrupting events; I tell young people that if you want to change minds, shouting is less effective than asking pointed questions.) It’s worth remembering that Trump and a Republican Congress would almost certainly be less likely to restrain Israeli actions toward Palestinians, yet that’s not an effective argument for Democratic incumbents to make when they’re on the defensive.

Some of this anger, both in America and abroad, stems from what critics of the war perceive as a lack of urgency and even empathy on Biden’s part for Palestinian suffering. When he speaks of the victims of the Oct. 7 attack, I can feel his horror and disgust at the inhumanity of Hamas, but I don’t hear the same emotion about the deaths of Palestinian children in Gaza.

“There has just been a profound and visible empathy gap in how Biden talks about the two sets of victims in this conflict,” Konyndyk said. Shibley Telhami, a Middle East expert at the University of Maryland who has known Biden for many years, made the same point and argued that what seemed to finally move Biden (and much of the world) was the killing of World Central Kitchen’s foreign aid workers — even after about 190 Palestinian aid workers had already died.

We all have empathy gaps based on our backgrounds and loyalties, and supporters of Israel sometimes argue that critics of the Gaza war don’t seem to show the same compassion for starving Sudanese or Ethiopians that they do for Gazans. In Biden’s case, this isn’t the first time the issue has been discussed.

In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon and caused so many civilian casualties that everyone from President Ronald Reagan to Democratic senators expressed outrage. One exception: the young senator from Delaware.

Then-Senator Biden clashed with Israel’s hard-line prime minister, Menachem Begin, over West Bank settlements, and he deserves credit for being prescient in his opposition to land grabs for settlements. But Biden reportedly also told Begin that he favored an even harsher attack on Lebanon, even if this meant killing women and children, according to Israeli press reports .

In fairness, Biden has offered a strong moral voice in other humanitarian crises, including when he spoke up strongly for Muslims in Bosnia in 1995 and in Darfur in the 2000s. In both cases, he was impatient with talk and demanded action to ease suffering.

“We are still making threats instead of taking action,” Biden complained about Darfur in 2007, when George W. Bush was president.

Those of Biden’s generation sometimes complain that younger critics of Israel lack historical perspective and don’t appreciate the threats that Jews have faced, the unremitting determination of Israel’s enemies to destroy it and the difficulty of prosecuting a war where Hamas hides among civilians. Fair enough. All true.

But parallel arguments of naïveté were lodged against young critics of the Iraq and Vietnam wars. Supporters of the Vietnam War were shaped by memories of appeasement in the run-up to World War II and argued that it was imperative to stand up to the global tide of Communism. They were frustrated — correctly in many cases — that young leftists were soft on Communism and especially Maoism and didn’t understand the brutishness of the enemy. The war’s backers in the White House and the Pentagon acknowledged the suffering in Vietnam but argued that it was important to be tough-minded and keep perspective: With a little more effort it would be possible to uproot the enemy and score a decisive victory that would lay the groundwork for a better future. Listening to doves and showing restraint, they argued, would merely signal weakness and allow national dominoes to fall, resulting in a huge setback for freedom and democracy.

In retrospect, the backers of the Vietnam War didn’t understand the power of nationalism and vastly exaggerated the ability of even a powerful army to eradicate a homegrown enemy with nationalist credentials, while they were myopic about the human cost of their strategy and didn’t ask essential questions about its morality. Today it is the critics of the Vietnam and Iraq wars who have been largely validated. They may have known less history, but they possessed keener empathy.

Another parallel with the Vietnam War that worries some Democrats: The 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago was the site of chaotic antiwar protests that were mishandled and damaged the entire party at a time it needed to signal unity. That fall the presidential election went, by less than one percentage point, to the Republican Richard Nixon.

Oh, and where will the Democratic convention be held this year? Chicago, again.

The Biden administration called for moral clarity after the atrocities of Oct. 7, and that was appropriate. But moral clarity cannot be like a pair of glasses we put on and take off. Our shared humanity means recognizing that all children’s lives have equal value. If your heart breaks for victims on only one side of the Israel-Gaza border, then your failure is not of geopolitics but of humanity. If you care about the human rights of only Israelis or only Palestinians, then you don’t actually care about human rights.

Another way of putting it: The more than 1,000 children in Gaza who are now amputees, their suffering is partly on us.

Aside from the human toll, the war has also undermined America’s broader interests.

“Biden himself, but also America, now appears weak, thus less credible as a security partner, because Netanyahu has been completely and publicly unresponsive to tepid American requests, without there being any consequences,” Nabil Fahmy, a former Egyptian foreign minister, told me.

Jan Egeland, a former senior U.N. official who is now secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, told me that American moral authority has been greatly eroded by its nonstop transfer of weapons to prosecute the war in Gaza.

“When I now travel anywhere in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia or Latin America to urge humanitarian access or protection of civilians, I get a half-hour lecture on U.S.-led Western hypocrisy,” he said. He added that the question he always gets is: “If Russian occupation and attacks on civilians and infrastructure is so bad in Ukraine, how come you accept exactly the same when done against the Palestinians by Israel?”

Ukraine and Gaza represent very different kinds of conflicts, certainly. Russia invaded Ukraine, while Israel was the victim of a particularly barbaric attack by Hamas targeting civilians. Yet it’s also true that as many foreigners see it, America hails the “rules-based international order” in Ukraine while in the Middle East it arms a combatant that is ignoring a U.N. Security Council call for a cease-fire and that the International Court of Justice has said is plausibly committing genocide.

Chris Patten, the former European commissioner for external relations who is now formally Lord Patten of Barnes, is an admirer of Biden. But he told me that he believes on Gaza, “he’s been making a terrible, terrible error.”

“The knock-on effects are awful,” he said, benefiting Chinese and Russian narratives that the West employs double standards and doesn’t really care about principles.

Ukraine had seemed something of a triumph for Biden, who rallied Europe and led the international effort that stalled Russia’s invasion. But Biden’s war in Gaza undermines his war in Ukraine.

“There is ammunition that is badly needed in Ukraine but is being delivered to Israel,” Ben Hodges, a retired lieutenant general and commander of Army forces in Europe, told me.

The big winner of the Hamas attack and its aftermath, Hodges said, is the Kremlin.

This month, Biden belatedly showed a willingness to press Netanyahu and leverage the aid America provides. In a tense 30-minute call, he threatened to condition American weapons transfers on Israel’s actions to address humanitarian concerns in Gaza.

Tentative results were immediate. Israel said it would open the Erez crossing to northern Gaza to provide aid, and more aid has been allowed to enter Gaza.

Previously, Israel insisted that it was not blocking trucks, but as soon as Biden did get serious with Netanyahu, the number of trucks entering Gaza increased. I can’t help wondering: Why didn’t Biden demand this months earlier?

As Van Hollen told me: “When he did exercise some leverage, he got more results in one hour than he’s gotten in six months.”

Still, it remains unclear how much has changed. Israel seems more cooperative about getting aid across the border into Gaza, but the United Nations emphasizes that what matters is aid being delivered over those last few miles to people who are starving. Disputes about aid are likely to continue, in part because more than two-thirds of Jewish Israelis oppose allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza, according to an opinion poll in February.

In the past, Biden repeatedly resisted meaningful limits on arms transfers. Under pressure from Democratic senators, he issued National Security Memorandum 20 , which restated American law that puts humanitarian conditions on military transfers — but then the administration announced that Israel was meeting the requirements, which many outsiders doubted.

The administration must issue another report by May 8 about whether Israel is meeting its humanitarian obligations, but many critics of the war expect a whitewash.

Many Biden supporters are exasperated. “The current approach is not working,” Senator Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, said in a statement calling on Biden to withhold bombs from Israel. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was among 40 House members who sent a similar letter to Biden.

“There’s a growing group of House and Senate members who are frustrated with the failure of the Biden administration to apply leverage,” noted Senator Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat who was among the first senators to call for a cease-fire.

Biden’s hope for months has been a temporary halt in fighting that the administration could then use to frantically negotiate a landmark Saudi-Israeli-American deal that would normalize relations and lay the groundwork for a two-state solution. This would be the diplomatic equivalent of pulling an elephant out of a hat.

But it hasn’t happened and it’s not clear what Biden’s backup plan is. “The message I and others have carried is you can’t count on such a deal being worked out,” Merkley said. “And meanwhile the humanitarian disaster is getting worse every single day.”

The most dire scenario ahead may be a multifront war involving Gaza and Hezbollah or Iran. One of my scarier discussions with an Israeli official recently was his advocacy of a first strike on Hezbollah, and a poll found that 53 percent of Israeli Jews favor such an all-out attack on Hezbollah. That would, I believe, be a catastrophe for the region.

There’s also the possibility of an Israeli invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza without any serious effort to move civilians out of the way. We may see a full-blown famine in Gaza, or, with no authority in place, Gaza might linger (even if Hamas is a spent force) as a shattered, anarchic territory dominated by militant extremists and criminal gangs. Netanyahu seems to have no long-term plan for Gaza (or the West Bank) that would be acceptable to the outside world.

So far the war in Gaza has, according to authorities there, killed roughly 34,000 people , including about 13,800 children. The toll includes some 484 health workers, 100 journalists and 200 aid workers. The war has also damaged or destroyed up to 57 percent of the territory’s buildings. There is no end in sight, and I don’t see a path for Biden out of the mire in which he has placed himself that does not entail pursuing a fundamentally tougher and more independent path.

That means insisting that Netanyahu show far more restraint in warfare and both allow more aid into Gaza and ensure it is actually delivered to starving people. And if there are no immediate results, Biden must stop the flows of offensive weapons, for that is the step that will finally get the attention of the Israel Defense Forces and of all the country’s leaders.

This is a sad column to have to write. Biden has generally been an impressive foreign policy president, I believe, particularly astute in building connections in Asia to meet the challenge of China. I think he’s personally a good man with a compassionate heart.

That makes his complicity in the cataclysm of Gaza all the more tragic. As a young man, Biden watched Lyndon Johnson’s dream of being remembered for his “Great Society” collapse in the face of youthful opposition to an unpopular and cruel foreign war, with Johnson’s failures leading to the election of a corrupt president from the other party. I hope Biden takes action to avoid a repeat.

Biden might listen in particular to one close adviser who is apparently in anguish over Gaza — for she is right.

“Stop it,” Jill Biden reportedly told her husband. “Stop it now, Joe.”

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Nicholas Kristof became a columnist for The Times Opinion desk in 2001 and has won two Pulitzer Prizes. His new memoir is “ Chasing Hope: A Reporter's Life .” @ NickKristof

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