Nixon’s faith in military power revealed itself in his “madman theory” and Operation DUCK HOOK. The threat of drastic, almost irrational, action underlay the madman theory. “I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war,” the president told an aide. “We’ll just slip the word to them that ‘for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about Communists. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button’—and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.” To give substance to this theory, Nixon ordered the NSC to plan for savage strikes. Known as DUCK HOOK within the White House (and PRUNING KNIFE by the military), the operation would exert maximum political and military shock. The administration alerted North Vietnam that if no substantive progress toward peace occurred by November 1, the U.S. would resort to “measures of great consequence and force.”
Events undercut DUCK HOOK and the November 1 deadline. Nixon inadvertently weakened his threats by announcing the first troop withdrawals in June and then enunciating the “Nixon Doctrine” the next month, signaling a decreased military presence in Asia. Henceforth the U.S. would supply equipment and economic aid but would not readily provide troops to Asian nations, who must defend themselves. The JSC did not consider DUCK HOOK feasible because the November 1 deadline coincided with dismal weather over North Vietnam, the aerial refueling capacity to support the proposed blitz was insufficient, and additional aircraft carriers could not arrive in time. Both Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird and Secretary of State William P. Rogers feared a dramatic escalation might undercut the war’s limited remaining support. The New Mobilization Committee to End the War initiated monthly national moratoriums on October 15, resulting in a huge antiwar protest; the next one, scheduled for November 15, promised to be even bigger. Finally, although they expected the U.S. to unleash its bombers and perhaps even invade, the North Vietnamese refused to buckle.
With linkage a failure and DUCK HOOK shelved, the administration had little choice but to embrace the policy Johnson outlined in his March 31 speech: Buy time to win the war by quelling dissent and reducing casualties, lessen the U.S. commitment, and prod South Vietnam to greater efforts on its own behalf. To achieve these goals Nixon embraced the dual policies of Vietnamization (accompanied by U.S. troop withdrawals) and pacification, occasionally undertook unexpected military actions to keep Hanoi off balance, and worked assiduously to undermine the antiwar movement.
A new MACV commander confronted the daunting task of managing the war’s de-Americanization while still trying to preserve a viable South Vietnam. After the Tet Offensive, President Johnson replaced Westmoreland, who became chief of staff, with General Creighton W. Abrams. In certain ways the war remained much the same as under Westmoreland. Some large operations, indistinguishable from those under his predecessor, still occurred, and a heavy reliance on firepower remained standard fare with many units. On the other hand, Abrams adopted a “one war” strategy that reduced the overemphasis on the big-unit war; battles, he stressed, were not that important, since the true measure of success was not the body count but population security. Understanding that the Communists made no distinction among the big-unit war, pacification, and territorial security, that they operated on the proposition that “this is just one, repeat one, war,” the MACV commander wanted the U.S. to confront them “simultaneously, in all areas of the conflict.” Protecting the population—which would allow pacification to progress—required small patrols and ambushes rather than big units thrashing around in the jungles, limiting firepower in populated areas, building effective South Vietnamese forces, and neutralizing the VCI. Abrams admitted that most of this was “completely undramatic. It’s just a lot of damn drudgery. . . . But that’s what we’ve got to do.”
The “one war” approach was partly a matter of choice but was also dictated by changed circumstances. One was the enemy’s decreased aggressiveness, which permitted U.S. forces and ARVN to concentrate on population security rather than worrying about major enemy offensives. Another change occurred after the Battle for Dong Ap Bia (called “Hamburger Hill” by troops who fought there). During the ten-day slugfest in mid-May, 1969, three battalions from the 3d Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, and two battalions from ARVN’s 1st Division made repeated assaults against entrenched NVA positions. Despite losing 56 KIA and 420 WIA to capture the hill, the U.S. soon abandoned the hard-won position and the NVA returned, reinforcing the public perception that the war was not just futile, but absurd. To prevent future sanguinary battles, the president insisted that MACV make reducing casualties a primary objective. A new mission statement no longer called for the enemy’s defeat but instead directed MACV to provide maximum assistance to strengthening ARVN and to reducing infiltration down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Abrams’s emphasis had to shift from fighting the war to improving ARVN and to searching out the NVA’s logistical system and destroying it.
A third change involved financially induced austerity measures, which limited Arc Light strikes, artillery fire, tactical air support, and fuel consumption. Between 1968 and 1970 the B-52 sortie rate fell from 1,800 to 1,000 per month, and H&I fire was restricted to reduce munitions consumption. Such reductions, said Abrams, were “entirely a budgetary motivated thing” that had nothing to do with the tactical situation. Finally, the departure of American troops transformed the war, reducing casualties, saving money, and buying more time by appeasing the antiwar movement. After the first increment of 25,000 men departed in the summer of 1969, the withdrawals became irreversible, especially since Secretary of Defense Laird, initially a hawk, soon joined McNamara and Clifford in the dovecote and pressured the president to continue the drawdown. Not only were the withdrawals faster and larger than Abrams advised, but they were also unilateral (North Vietnam rejected mutual withdrawals) and total, even though MACV had assumed the U.S. would leave a residual force, as it had done in Korea. Because of the need to undercut antiwar protests and to revive a flagging economy, Nixon felt that bringing the troops home took precedence over the South’s survival. While the withdrawals scored political points at home, they reduced Hanoi’s incentive to negotiate: Why sign an agreement if the U.S. was disengaging anyway, and withdrawing so quickly that, as Kissinger noted, it placed “a burden of credulity on Vietnamization”?
Negotiating and Fighting
Ideally, America’s withdrawal would have marched in lockstep with the peace negotiations, a reduced level of enemy activity, and success in Vietnamization and pacification so that South Vietnam could defend itself. Then even if the Communists refused to negotiate a settlement, a reinvigorated South could confront them with the prospect of perpetual war. Virtually everyone understood that, at best, Vietnamization would be a difficult, long-term process. Kissinger believed it would never work, Laird thought it was a farce, and Abrams considered it a “slow surrender,” nothing but a fig leaf to cover America’s retreat. Unless the NVA returned to North Vietnam, MACV concluded in 1969, “there is little chance that any improvement in the Republic of Vietnam’s Armed Forces or any degree of progress in pacification, no matter how significant, could justify significant reductions in U.S. forces from their present level.”
Building an army even in peacetime is difficult. Doing it in wartime compounds the difficulty. ARVN began with systemic problems, foremost among them being leadership. Abrams correctly asserted that ARVN was “not going to be any better, no matter what we do, no matter what we give them in the way of equipment, and no matter what we do with them in the way of training, unless they’ve got the kind of leadership that’ll take a hold of it and carry it.” But solid, aggressive leadership was scarce because President Thieu, always fearing a coup, selected commanders based on political loyalty, not combat ability. Most of his officers had not joined the struggle for independence against France, or if they had, they served with the French. Because the commissioning system relied on formal education and few men received sec
ondary schooling, the majority of the population was excluded from becoming officers. Many of the educated, urban elite who did serve as officers had trouble relating to their peasant soldiers, and they engaged in corrupt activities, including using their units to protect criminals, hiring soldiers out as laborers, selling promotions, misusing American supplies, and trading with the enemy. MACV urged the South to commission qualified men from the enlisted ranks and replace incompetent officers, but Thieu rarely took action. As of late 1970 a senior American official rated only one South Vietnamese general as “fully competent.”
Even if South Vietnam had competent officers, they served in a dysfunctional system. As in the U.S., the draft system contained many exemptions and deferments. Bribery to avoid being conscripted was so widespread that large numbers of men avoided service. Among those who did serve, 65 percent were conscripts pressed into service. Few believed Saigon could defeat the VC/NVA, and desertion was a chronic problem. ARVN lost about one-third of its strength annually through desertion, though this figure is somewhat misleading because many “deserters” joined RF or PF units closer to their homes, and some men left during the planting and harvesting seasons to help out on the farm and then voluntarily returned. Still, desertion was a disruption at best, a serious manpower drain at worst. Soldiers endured poor food and housing, low pay, medical malpractice, and inadequate training, all of which led them to resent their government. Another problem was that the government recruited, trained, and based almost all ARVN units territorially. Specific units occupied permanent installations where their families joined them, which tied those units to those locales. Soldiers stationed in a particular location fought valiantly to defend their families. But if the government ordered those troops outside their region, the unit could disintegrate as men deserted to stay close to their wives, children, and parents. Keeping their families safe trumped national survival.
With U.S. troop departures underway, the effort to expand and improve South Vietnam’s military and security forces began. ARVN’s expansion was impressive, increasing from 380,000 in 1968 to 416,000 two years later, primarily through tightening deferments, expanding the draft age, and mandating that soldiers serve for the duration. Both the South Vietnamese navy and air force approximately doubled in size between 1968 and 1970. The Territorials also expanded, going from 393,000 in 1968 to 453,000 in 1970. The regular forces and the RF/PF received upgraded equipment, including M-16 rifles and M-79 grenade launchers, and the regulars benefited from infusions of artillery, tanks, helicopters, aircraft, and ships. By 1971 the National Police numbered 114,000, while a newly created People’s Self Defense Force (PSDF), which was an unpaid, lightly armed militia that included men, women, elders, and children, supposedly contained 4,429,000 members. These disparate forces did not work together easily. “The regular forces look down on the Territorial Forces,” noted Abrams, “and the Territorial Forces look down on the Popular Self Defense Forces, and everybody looks down on the police.”
Captured documents revealed that Vietnamization worried the VC/NVA, especially the upgrading of the Territorials and the PSDF, both of which provided local security. The crucial question, however, was whether quantitative growth equaled qualitative improvements, and that could not be answered until ARVN and the Territorials faced a test in major combat. As Abrams asked CORDS director William Colby, if ARVN could not meet the challenges that lay ahead, “Then where are we?” “Then,” responded Colby, “we’re in a hell of a state.”
Vietnamization’s concomitant was pacification, which assumed heightened significance, as indicated by a three-month Accelerated Pacification Campaign (APC) that began on November 1, 1968. Since it seemed to be reasonably effective, it continued for three years. Because the VC endured heavy casualties during Tet and the South Vietnamese abandoned hamlets and villages to defend the cities, a vacuum existed in rural areas. Under the APC the government returned to the countryside and the surviving VC apparatus suffered, particularly since MACV shifted much of its military effort to support pacification directly. A combined U.S.–South Vietnamese Phoenix Program targeted the VCI. Although assassinations did occur, many of the targeted individuals died when they fought back rather than surrender, and even more were captured. Others “rallied”—that is, changed sides via a Chieu Hoi (Open Arms) program that offered defectors a monetary reward and lenient treatment. For the most part these two programs neutralized low-level operatives. Large numbers of hard-core VCI remained unidentified and thus the infrastructure survived intact. In some places the VC cadre conducted a “Phoenix in reverse,” assassinating or abducting more than 50,000 village and hamlet officials and PF leaders between 1969 and 1972. MACV complained about the “continued inability to develop a detailed understanding of the Viet Cong capacity to evade, withdraw, and escape at will” after terrorist incidents or following attacks. Nonetheless, Abrams thought it was “far more significant that we neutralize one thousand of these guerrillas and infrastructure than kill 10,000 North Vietnamese soldiers.”
While hunting down the VCI and welcoming defectors, the U.S. and South Vietnam initiated civic action campaigns to enhance the government’s image and to improve rural living conditions, which officials assumed would alleviate the insurgency’s underlying causes. The U.S. tallied an impressive number of roads, bridges, schools, playgrounds, and dispensaries built or rebuilt, of wells dug, of food distributed, and of health services rendered. Then in 1970 Thieu’s administration finally addressed the contentious land reform issue, passing a Land-to-the-Tiller Law that distributed several million acres to hundreds of thousands of tenant farmers. The perception of the government as exclusively the protector of the rich and powerful blurred, as at least some previously landless farmers now had a stake in Theiu’s regime.
Very much wanting pacification to succeed, many officials discerned progress, and to some extent enemy observers and HES evaluations supported that optimism. “Our side,” wrote an NVA colonel, “suffered seriously from the subsequent pacification plans dreamed up by the Americans, such as Operation Phoenix and the Chieu Hoi campaign.” A postwar Communist study confessed that South Vietnam’s expanding regular and security forces and the new pacification programs “created immeasurable difficulties and complications for our armed forces and civilian population.” HES scores indicated that South Vietnam controlled some 90 percent of the countryside by 1972. But many people living in “secure” villages were there only to find shelter from American firepower; ARVN’s mistreatment of the population continued; many government officials remained incompetent and corrupt; and HES data was still subjective, falsified, or inflated because of command pressure for positive results. Perhaps most important, physical control did not necessarily equate with heartfelt allegiance.
Perhaps nothing demonstrated pacification’s limitations more than the 1971 election, when Thieu’s government was unwilling to risk an honest plebiscite. Assisted by the American ambassador and the CIA, Thieu rigged it so that he ran unopposed. The U.S., which wanted at least the appearance of a genuine election, offered a candidate a $3 million bribe to remain in the race. The police threatened to arrest citizens who tried to vote for anyone but Thieu, opposition newspapers were shut down, and province chiefs received orders to do whatever was necessary to ensure victory. “It was a ridiculous election,” as Thieu’s vice president admitted, “just like a Communist one.”
In short, a weakened NLF did not automatically translate into a stronger, more popular South Vietnamese government. Until the South stood alone against its foes, no one knew whether pacification gains were permanent or fragile and reversible.
Fighting for a Decent Interval
To buy time for Vietnamization and pacification, to prevent any large-scale VC/NVA action that might impede America’s retreat, and to put pressure on Hanoi to negotiate an “honorable” settlement, the president ordered a number of unexpected actions: The secret bombing of Cambodia, a ground incursion into that country in 1970, a raid into Laos
in 1971, and a ferocious aerial response to the enemy’s Easter Offensive of 1972.
Both the Communists and the U.S. had routinely violated Cambodian neutrality, the former by maintaining sanctuaries there and the latter by cross-border raiding under a program called DANIEL BOONE (later renamed SALEM HOUSE). When the JCS assured Nixon that the U.S. could destroy COSVN and degrade Communist capabilities throughout III and IV Corps by striking Cambodia, he went further, ordering secret B-52 strikes against enemy positions. He hoped the raids would also send a madman message to Hanoi that this president was not bound by the self-imposed restraints that limited his predecessor. Under what became Operation MENU, the bombing began on March 18, 1969, unknown to the public, Congress, the Secretary of the Air Force, and the Air Force chief of staff. Even the military’s normally classified reports contained false data indicating the raids struck targets inside South Vietnam. Despite Nixon’s zeal to conceal MENU, a New York Times report exposed it a few months after it began.
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