Was the Vietnam War Winnable?

Key Points: This analysis argues the US failed in Vietnam primarily because it misunderstood the conflict’s political nature, treating it as a military problem while backing a weak, corrupt South Vietnamese government lacking legitimacy.

-Strategies like counterinsurgency against the Viet Cong ignored the conventional threat from North Vietnam’s army. “Americanization” propped up the South but didn’t solve its core issues, while “Vietnamization” failed due to ARVN weaknesses.

-Despite tactical successes, the political war was lost, culminating in the Tet Offensive shattering US public support. Invading North Vietnam was deemed unviable. The ultimate US failure stemmed from backing a non-viable regime.  

The Unwinnable War? Rethinking America’s Strategy in Vietnam

Those of us who were alive in the Vietnam era will remember the sight of Soviet-built tanks rolling into the presidential palace in Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City. The US had failed to keep South Vietnam free from the communist North. 

The last American to die was a young Marine, Charles McMahon, from Woburn, Massachusetts, who, just a few years before, had taught me how to swim at the Boys Club. That brought the war home to our hometown again in the last days.

Why wasn’t the US, with the strongest military in the world, able to win against North Vietnam, Russia, and China? Could the United States have won?

First, one question to ask: What was the US’s definition of victory in Vietnam? Because the US didn’t fully understand that this was a political war, it lost the political war decisively, despite all the battles won. 

The US initially pursued a Limited War strategy in Vietnam, a theory that completely failed to recognize the true Clausewitzian nature of the conflict. Our aim was to keep the people of South Vietnam free from communism. But as the war wore on, the Johnson and Nixon administrations decided to prosecute it so as not to lose in a humiliating fashion as the French had done at Dien Bien Phu.

The US Treated The War As an Insurgency, Not a Conventional War

The United States entered the war and attempted to wage a counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign against the Viet Cong or National Liberation Front (NLF). US advisors trained South Vietnamese troops, while Army Green Berets built A-Camps in the outlying areas by partnering with the Montagnard mountain tribespeople, a group hated by the lowland Vietnamese and treated poorly. 

However, North Vietnamese troops always bolstered the insurgency. The North had indeed won the war, not by guerrilla tactics, but by conventionally invading the South in 1975. 

When the US signed the Paris Peace Accords in 1973, there were between 140,000 and 160,000 North Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. It was, in fact, both an insurgency and a conventional war conducted by the North. 

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara recognized the war as unwinnable as early as 1965, perhaps sooner. A year later, he wrote, “We … have in Vietnam the ingredients of an enormous miscalculation. . . The reasons we went into Vietnam to the present depth are varied but largely academic.”

Americanization Begins in 1965

It was then that the US made a decision. It could withdraw its troops and leave the South Vietnamese to their fate or turn it into an American war by sending hundreds of thousands of troops into the fight (Americanization).

However, the US tried to bludgeon their way to victory in a poorly planned war of attrition instead of trying to win the political by winning support for the government, which was virtually non-existent.

Despite all of the US training, South Vietnam’s military (ARVN) was weak. Much of this stemmed from the political situation. Senior officers were chosen not by their military acumen but by their loyalty. 

A U.S. Air Force B-52 Stratofortress assigned to Barksdale Air Force Base, La., is prepared for a Mark-82 munitions load, in support of a Bomber Task Force deployment, Feb. 1, 2020, at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. The bomber deployment underscores the U.S. military’s commitment to regional security and demonstrates a unique ability to rapidly deploy on short notice. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Jacob M. Thompson)

Both the military and the government were inundated with rampant corruption. The corruption only served to perpetuate the lack of popular support among the South Vietnamese people, who were well aware of the state of corruption.  

Americanization was a double-edged sword. While big American units would slug it out with Viet Cong or NVA troops, it was only through the US involvement that the South didn’t fold in 1965, not 1975. This showed how fragile the South was and that it had virtually no legitimacy. The Diem government was considered nothing more than a puppet regime of the United States.

Richard Nixon observed that in the 1960s, “we failed to understand that we could not win the war for the South Vietnaese; that, in the final analysis, the South Vietnamese would have to win it for themselves. The United States bullied its way into Vietnam and tried to run the war our way instead of recognizing that our mission should have been to help the South Vietnamese build up theirforces so they could win the war.”

The Only Way To Win The Vietnam War Was Also A Losing Strategy

The Nixon administration tried a “Vietnamization” policy of turning the war over to them while maintaining American air support. It wasn’t going to work. Too many ARVN officers were poor combat leaders, and the training in too many units was poor. 

The COIN strategy could have worked if the South Vietnamese government had been actively involved and had had South Vietnamese officials actively present to interact and engage with the South Vietnamese population.

The war was unwinnable, given the way the US was conducting it. The only strategy that could have worked was an invasion of the North—taking the major cities and decapitating the Communist government’s leadership. But then what?

Three decades later, we learned the folly of that strategy when we invaded Afghanistan with a handful of Green Berets with Air Force and Navy air support crushing the Taliban. But then we brought hundreds of thousands of troops in to prop up a corrupt, shaky government that couldn’t stand on its own without massive US support. The government had very little support from the people.

Had the US invaded and captured Hanoi, then they would have been engaged in an even bigger insurgent campaign, and the South’s government would have been unable to govern its area. It would have been completely unable to function in the North. And just like Korea, the proxy war would have gotten China involved. 

The turning point of the war, politically and militarily, was the Tet Offensive. The NLF and North Vietnamese leadership vastly overrated the desire of the South Vietnamese people to rise up and overthrow the government. The offensive got off to a roaring start. Viet Cong units slaughtered civilians and government officials. Many objectives were taken. And US and ARVN troops were caught off-guard in many places. 

But after the shock wore off, American and South Vietnamese units began clearing the major cities where the Viet Cong cadres had moved in. In often bloody close-quarters fighting, the Viet Cong were routed, and air strikes ravaged large concentrations of NVA troops. 

The Viet Cong, after Tet, was never again a considerable force, and while this turned out even better for North Vietnam, never again a political power. However, the images captured live on television shocked the American public, who were told that the US was “winning.” This looked like a disaster.

To be sure, anti-war sentiment had been growing steadily since 1965, but after Tet, things got much, much worse. The American people looked upon Tet as an ugly defeat. General Giap, the architect of the NVA strategy, was considered a brilliant strategist. At the same time, if he had ever lost that many American troops in a failed offensive, he would have been court-martialed. 

The NVA then turned to conventional war and learned the hard lessons of massing troop concentrations, with the American Air Force pounding them. In April 1972, the famed Easter Offensive saw masses of NVA troops attacking across the border. South Vietnamese forces were bent badly but not beaten because US airpower saved the day, and NVA troops were savaged. 

The US and the North signed the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973. The North had to rebuild the Army and ensure that the US had finally washed its hands of South Vietnam and wouldn’t return. In early 1975, they launched a conventional attack in the South. And this time, with no US airpower, the South folded with little to no resistance. 

Billions of dollars of US equipment were abandoned to the North, which rolled into Saigon in April 1975.

Could the US have won the war in Vietnam? Yes, by not getting involved with a weak, corrupt government and having 58,000 Americans lose their lives. 

About the Author:

Steve Balestrieri is a 19FortyFive National Security Columnist. He served as a US Army Special Forces NCO and Warrant Officer. In addition to writing for 19FortyFive, he covers the NFL for PatsFans.com and is a member of the Pro Football Writers of America (PFWA). His work was regularly featured in many military publications.