Vietnam War: Turning Points

Summary

Vietnam War: Turning Points – Detailed Summary

American History Hit dives deep into the pivotal moments of the Vietnam War in its episode titled "Vietnam War: Turning Points," released on April 7, 2025. Hosted by Don Wildman and featuring historian Mark Atwood Lawrence, the discussion meticulously unpacks the critical events and decisions that defined the United States' involvement in Vietnam, ultimately shaping both the course of the war and its lasting legacy.

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1. Introduction to the Vietnam War’s Complexity

Don Wildman opens the episode by setting the stage for the Vietnam War, emphasizing its significance as a conflict where the United States first extended its military reach into a civil war, drawing parallels with the Korean War. He states:

"If Korea had been Act One, then Vietnam was Act Two. And the Americans intended to be front and center in this drama, carrying it forth to a finale of freedom and democracy." ([04:00])

Wildman underscores the enduring impact of Vietnam on American military strategy and global influence, highlighting the necessity for objective clarity in understanding the war's framework.

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2. Early U.S. Involvement and the Geneva Accords

Mark Atwood Lawrence provides a historical backdrop, tracing the origins of American involvement to the aftermath of the 1954 Geneva Accords, which resulted in the division of Vietnam at the 17th parallel following the French defeat by North Vietnamese forces. He explains:

"Eisenhower makes the fateful decision to attach the United States to this fledgling state of South Vietnam and to try to support it with economic aid and military aid and political assistance." ([14:31])

Lawrence highlights President Dwight D. Eisenhower's cautious approach, avoiding direct military intervention while committing to support the Republic of Vietnam through advisory roles and aid.

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3. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident and Escalation

A significant turning point discussed is the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964. Mark Lawrence recounts the events where US warships were reportedly attacked by North Vietnamese forces, an event later deemed a false flag:

"This episode was exploited by the Johnson administration in order to get permission from Congress... The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that would enable the United States to escalate military action against North Vietnam." ([07:38])

The incident led to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, granting President Johnson the authority to increase U.S. military presence, marking the official escalation of the war with the introduction of combat troops in 1965.

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4. Strategic Hamlets and Diem’s Assassination

Lawrence delves into the Strategic Hamlets Program, an initiative aimed at isolating communist insurgents by relocating Vietnamese villagers into fortified villages. He notes:

"The idea was to concentrate reliable people... into villages that would be surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers." ([27:08])

However, the program faltered due to its unpopularity among the South Vietnamese populace, who resisted the militarization and displacement.

The conversation then shifts to the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963, a watershed moment that destabilized South Vietnam:

"Diem and his administration... establish a pretty impressive degree of control... but by the early 1960s, Americans were becoming very frustrated with Ngo Dinh Diem." ([30:50])

Lawrence explains how Diem's inability to garner genuine legitimacy and suppress insurgencies led to increasing American frustration and eventual support for a coup against him.

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5. The Tet Offensive and Shifting Public Opinion

One of the most crucial turning points discussed is the Tet Offensive of 1968. Lawrence describes it as a strategic military defeat for the North Vietnamese but a psychological victory that eroded American public support:

"The Tet Offensive... led to communist forces occupying cities... but those advances were beaten back within days. However, the political damage was immense." ([39:27])

The offensive shattered the illusion of American invincibility and intensified skepticism about the war’s progress, contributing to President Johnson’s decision not to seek re-election.

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6. Vietnamization and the Path to War’s End

Transitioning to the Nixon era, Lawrence explains the Vietnamization policy, aimed at transferring combat responsibilities to South Vietnamese forces:

"Vietnamization was an idea... to replace American combat forces with Vietnamese combat forces." ([45:45])

Despite increased military aid and training, Lawrence argues that the core issues were political, asserting:

"The ultimate lesson of Vietnam is that there are problems that aren't susceptible to American power and influence." ([53:47])

The discussion touches on the Pentagon Papers and the Paris Peace Accords, which led to the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 1973. However, the war continued until the fall of Saigon in 1975, marking a chaotic and tragic end to American involvement.

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7. Legacy and Ongoing Debates

In concluding, Lawrence reflects on the enduring debates surrounding Vietnam’s outcome:

"Why did the United States lose in Vietnam?" ([53:47])

He posits that Vietnam serves as a foundational case study for the limitations of American power, emphasizing the importance of understanding the political dimensions of conflict resolution. The episode also draws parallels to later U.S. engagements, such as Afghanistan, highlighting the continuing relevance of Vietnam's lessons in contemporary foreign policy.

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Notable Quotes

• Don Wildman ([04:00]):

  "If Korea had been Act One, then Vietnam was Act Two. And the Americans intended to be front and center in this drama, carrying it forth to a finale of freedom and democracy."

• Mark Atwood Lawrence ([14:31]):

  "Eisenhower makes the fateful decision to attach the United States to this fledgling state of South Vietnam and to try to support it with economic aid and military aid and political assistance."

• Mark Atwood Lawrence ([27:08]):

  "The idea was to concentrate reliable people... into villages that would be surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers."

• Mark Atwood Lawrence ([30:50]):

  "Diem and his administration... establish a pretty impressive degree of control... but by the early 1960s, Americans were becoming very frustrated with Ngo Dinh Diem."

• Mark Atwood Lawrence ([39:27]):

  "The Tet Offensive... led to communist forces occupying cities... but those advances were beaten back within days. However, the political damage was immense."

• Mark Atwood Lawrence ([53:47]):

  "Why did the United States lose in Vietnam?"

---

Conclusion

This episode of American History Hit offers a comprehensive exploration of the Vietnam War's turning points, providing listeners with a nuanced understanding of the complex interplay between political decisions, military strategies, and their profound impacts on both national and global scales. Through engaging dialogue and expert insights, Don Wildman and Mark Atwood Lawrence illuminate the multifaceted legacy of Vietnam, encouraging ongoing reflection and debate on its lessons for future American foreign policy.

Transcript

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[Historian/News Narrator]

April 30, 197550 years ago this month, despite nearly two decades of war, Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, has remained fairly intact. There have been the occasional rockets fired, and restaurants have been bombed. There was Tet, of course, back in 68, including the attack on the US embassy. For all that, the city hasn't experienced the kind of frontal barrage one might expect in a besieged nation. But that's about to change. Yesterday, US Helicopters circled the American Embassy on Thun Yot Boulevard, landing awkwardly on the tower roof to try and evacuate as many as they could. But so many more were left behind in the chaotic throngs pressing in on the gated compound today. Very soon, North Vietnamese tanks will roll into town, their long barreled guns pointed toward the city center and the presidential palace. By midday, Saigon will fall. The Vietnam War will finally be.

[Don Wildman]

Greetings, friends. This is American history. Hit and I'm Don Wildman, it is often said of the war in Vietnam. This was when the United States first overstepped militarily projecting superpower into what was a civil war. Parallels with Korea a few years earlier. But when the 1954 Geneva Accords set the political division of Vietnam at the 17th parallel and circumstances escalated into guerrilla Warfare waged by communist forces of the north against the Republic of Vietnam. In the south, the United States intervened. First there was Truman, then President Eisenhower, then Kennedy, then Johnson. Committed ever growing numbers of American advisors and increasing military support and then troops to aggressively resist the communist threat across Southeast Asia, all supported by China and the Soviet Union. If Korea had been Act One, then Vietnam was Act Two. And the Americans intended to be front and center in this drama, carrying it forth to a finale of freedom and democracy. Of course, an awful lot has happened in the 60 years since Vietnam, but to a startling degree, it still matters very much. American influence in global events militarily certainly is still rooted in the painful lessons of that conflict, in the choices we made to involve our nation in the unfolding fate of another. You need objective clarity on this. You need to understand the framework. And we have just the man to help. Mark Atwood Lawrence has been a real friend of the podcast, guested on a number of episodes even very recently. He is a professor of history, distinguished fellow at the Robert S. Strauss center for International Security and Law, and a fellow at the Clements center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin, and author of the Vietnam War, A Concise International History, as well as assuming the Europe and the American commitment to war in Vietnam. Professor Lawrence Mark, welcome back.

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Thanks so much, Don. It's great to be with you.

[Don Wildman]

Complicated events lead up to American involvement in Vietnam. We'll talk about them in a moment. French capitulation, the division of north and south, as mentioned. Check out episode 108 on the Origins of the Vietnam War we recorded some time ago. By the 1950s, Americans are operating behind the scenes as the French try to reclaim power they lost to the Japanese. They are foiled in 1954, and that's when we gradually step in for real. Big factor. Korea had not gone so well fighting the anti communist battle on that ground. How did the Americans feel about another foray into Asia?

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Well, there were certainly Americans who, you know, advised against another war on the mainland of Asia. Right. Because Korea had not gone all that well. And so there were astute Americans, I think, who understood the limitations of, of American power when it came to fighting wars in Asia and advised very strongly against getting involved in another one. But there were other Americans who saw that these were two different scenarios and that there were good reasons to believe that the United States could be more successful in Southeast Asia. Or simply that the stakes in Southeast Asia were so high that it was worth taking the risk.

[Don Wildman]

Exactly. This is really officially Cold War now. And that's even articulated by Kennedy and the rest. It's 1964. That's the major first turning point for the American war in Vietnam. The Gulf of Tonkin incident in the early days of the Johnson administration. We're going to skip around a little bit. We'll come back to the French in a moment. But let's sort of stake this ground. First, US Ships were allegedly attacked by the North Vietnamese. Can you describe what happened in the Gulf of Tonkin?

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Yeah. So American warships were operating off the coast of North Vietnam in support of intelligence gathering efforts to kind of eavesdrop on communication signals that would help Americans understand what was going on in North Vietnam. And in early August of 1964, one of those ships was attacked by a North Vietnamese torpedo boat. Two days later, Americans believe that a second American ship also had come under attack. It turned out after a lot of study, that this attack almost certainly did not happen. There were stormy seas in the Gulf of Tonkin, and a nervous sonar operator believed that his ship was. Was coming under attack when it almost certainly was not. So there was. There was an attack, a limited attack that Americans took very seriously. It appeared as though the North Vietnamese had escalated that, that, that threat to American warships, when in fact, they really hadn't done that. But in any case, this episode was exploited by the Johnson administration in order to get permission from Congress. In other words, the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that would enable the United States to escalate military action against North Vietnam.

[Don Wildman]

Yeah, it would be defined later as a false flag situation. But you're saying that it was kind of an event that then became exploited. It was sort of an opportunity exploited instead of sort of planned that way.

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Yeah, I think that's right. I think there is a lot of evidence that the Johnson administration, probably LBJ himself, understood that this was a good opportunity to focus the attention of the American public, and more specifically of Congress on what was happening in Southeast Asia, to get congressional approval for a major escalation of the war. If and when the administration believed that the moment had come for such an escalation.

[Don Wildman]

The reason this is such an important turning point is it leads directly to the 1965 escalation, the commitment of combat troops as opposed to advisors who'd been there for years, even a decade or more. It is often viewed as the beginning of the war for the U.S. right.

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

1965, I think, indisputably is the turn, the major turning point in the American experience in Vietnam. Exactly. As you say, years of an advisory efforts are working a Little bit behind the scenes to work with the South Vietnamese military to bolster them into a more effective fighting force. That phase comes to an end with the introduction of American combat forces. Americans basically come to the conclusion that what they had been doing up until that point with military advisors, economic aid, political support and so forth, was it was not sufficient. And so the next step needed to be taken, which turned out to be a very large step toward the introduction of American air and ultimately ground forces.

[Don Wildman]

Yeah, it's about a year later, February 13, 1965, from the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Operation Rolling Thunder is authorized, but I want to ask you, it was not by Congress. This is not a declaration of war as we formally define it. Why not? Why was that important?

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

During the Cold War, it became unusual right for Congress to exercise its constitutional prerogative to declare war. The method by which Americans became involved in Korea and Vietnam and so many other conflicts after 1945 was through measures short of an actual outright declaration of war. And I think this speaks to the nature of the Cold War, where the United States was confronted with a lot of lower level conflicts internationally that didn't seem to rise to the level of all out war. And of course, this was also the nuclear age, when the act of declaring war seemed almost too provocative. In some cases it seemed too dangerous to take that step when something short of that would enable the United States to manage risk a little more effectively than if it had been something on the order of the Second World War, you know, where the United States was making a declaration of. Of a major national commitment.

[Don Wildman]

But Korea also was not a declared war, correct?

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Yeah.

[Don Wildman]

I mean, declaration of war is also a legal act, Right? I mean, it covers a lot of territory. Once you're in war, a lot of things are covered by that. So the United States was making a calculated decision to not take that measure in order to sort of stay under the radar. This sounds nefarious, but I don't mean it that way. But it's a distinct difference than we're here, we're at war, everything is going to happen here. But it also talks about the steps that will be taken or not taken to win that war.

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Yeah, no, exactly. So if you look at really any war that the United States engages in after, after the Second World War, you can see different devices that presidential administrations use to justify the introduction of American combat forces. So in the Vietnam case, really the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution became that legal instrument that authorized the executive branch to introduce American combat forces.

[Don Wildman]

Yeah. I remember how interesting and strange it was that when we declared war on terrorism. But that was more important than it sounded at the time. It sounded like a sort of news item, but it was really a thing, a legal declaration that we were taking it to that level. This also unleashes sustained bombing in North Vietnam. There are measures taken March 8, a month after the initial combat troops are sent. Two Marine battalions, 3,500 troops go offshore to protect the airfields. They are still ordered to shoot only if shot at. You know, there are. There's a sort of attitude about this that's different than it becomes. April 3, 1965, two additional battalions, Air squadrons, logistics staff, full scale offensive operations by mid April. Boy, does this happen quick. It's a couple months. They must have had that, you know, bullet in the chamber for a while there.

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Yeah, exactly. You know, people, I think, sometimes forget that the first introduction of American combat force in Vietnam was air power. Right. The idea initially was to use American bombing against North Vietnam to force the North Vietnamese to the bargaining table, where the idea was that there would be some sort of peace agreement, reach very much on American terms, and meanwhile the United States would punish North Vietnamese military forces and prevent the introduction of troops and war material from north to South. But American combat forces were introduced initially to defend those airfields, basically to, to. To make it possible to wage this kind of aerial assault against North Vietnam. But very, very, very quickly, exactly as you say, the role of those ground forces evolved into a much more proactive type of warfare where American forces would not just defend bases, but actually go out into the countryside and engage in major operations against enemy forces.

[Don Wildman]

By April again, there are 200,000 troops stationed in Vietnam. And at that point we're hightailing it towards Hueys and B52s down the road. It is game on at that point, 1965. So let's back up, as I say, to the events prior to, to this point, this major turning point to those which developed towards this. And I'm talking about the French years. And this is what came to pass later on 1971, when the Pentagon Papers came out and it was revealed that the United States had already been deeply involved in Vietnam for the entire decade of the, you know, since Truman, really. Yeah, all part of his Truman Doctrine. It starts, for our purposes, with the Geneva Accords in 1954, which is because of the French defeat at the hands of the North Vietnamese, that famous battle. And they. They're forced to withdraw as a colonizing nation, leaving behind them, according to these accords a divided Vietnam, north and South. That's what's called the 17th parallel. November 1955. Eisenhower deploys military Assistance Advisory Group. What a name. To train the army of the Republic of Vietnam. Eisenhower, now he knows how to wage war. What an interesting tightrope to walk for this guy.

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Yeah, exactly. You know, this whole problem kind of falls into Dwight Eisenhower's lap. He makes a decision in May of 1954 not to intervene in the war that was then, you know, still in its final phases. Some Americans believe that the United States should have intervened on the side of the French to sort of rescue the French position and prevent against a communist victory over France. But I think Eisenhower very reasonably understood that the French were really on the ropes and that it would be very dangerous potentially to introduce American combat forces with no assurances of success. So he made, I think, what most historians would regard as a very wise decision not to do that, to accept a defeat of a sort in Vietnam and then hope for the best in the years to come. And indeed, after the Geneva Accords, Eisenhower makes the fateful decision to attach the United States to this fledgling state of South Vietnam and to try to support it with economic aid and military aid and political assistance and so forth, in order to transform it into a viable state that could survive over the indefinite future to come.

[Don Wildman]

I've always wondered how at this point he's being influenced by the Dulles brothers, you know, this whole new Cold War mentality, which is about the CIA and these instruments of power that didn't exist during World War II.

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Yeah, I think Eisenhower really stands out for his reluctance really, to use American force in an all out sort of way, which is counterintuitive, perhaps when we think of Dwight Eisenhower, we might think of the great general of the Second World War, someone who was more familiar than probably any American in the 20th century with the use of massive amounts of American military force. But, you know, I think it's pretty clear that one of the things Eisenhower learned from his experience as the commander of Allied forces in Europe during the closing stages of the Second World War was that major war was a very bloody and costly affair and that the United States needed to engage in that kind of behavior only very selectively and very carefully. And so when he looked at Vietnam in 1954, he did not see a place that was appropriate for the introduction of American combat forces. He did not want to see Southeast Asia turn into a major battleground for the United States.

[Don Wildman]

Yeah, he knew you need a very strong position to fight from in any kind of war, and we certainly had that in the Second World War. We didn't by his definition have it in the 50s. You know, in the Cold War it was more about fighting a system rather than a specific enemy. I'll be back with more American history after this short break.

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[Don Wildman]

There's such an interesting factor involved in these accords that I hadn't really been aware of before I did this prep. Throughout this period is a massive Migration north to south, encouraged by what was in the accords of a 300 days of passage to freedom. It was actually in quotations, I believe, where the North Vietnamese are invited to move south or citizens of North Vietnam are invited to move south. The US financially funds this migration to the tune of $93 million, when 93 million could really buy you something.

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Yeah.

[Don Wildman]

The trouble is that in this migration, a lot of insurgents moved with them. It was part of. It became part of a plan by the North Vietnamese. They kind of planted sleeper cells all around the South.

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Yeah, that's true. The exodus from north to south is a really fascinating episode that's easy to miss, exactly as you suggest, given the really dramatic events that played out in earlier and later years. But this was a complicated episode that was driven in part, I think, by genuine anxiety, genuine fear on the part of some Vietnamese, particularly Catholics, who lived in the northern parts of Vietnam and suddenly found themselves under communist control. And certainly the exodus was encouraged as well by American money and American propaganda that encouraged northerners to believe that their livelihoods or maybe their lives would be threatened if they. If they stayed where they were. So here was a good opportunity to sort of embarrass the North Vietnamese by provoking this mass exodus that would show that, look, no one, at the end of the day wanted to live in this, you know, Communist. Communist society that was about to become extremely repressive and kind of folded into the communist bloc.

[Don Wildman]

There was like 100,000 people moving, as I understand it. Something like that. Right?

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Yeah.

[Don Wildman]

Meanwhile, the leadership of north and south, of course, couldn't have been more different. You mentioned the Catholics. It's a fascinating angle on this whole thing. You had French colonization, which of course, was the Catholic. You know, they brought Catholicism to Asia. And many people who were operating under those that imperial rule of Vietnam had adopted Catholicism as their religion. And that was also controversial in Vietnam, which was such a Buddhist country.

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

You're absolutely right. The role of Catholicism in Vietnam became particularly important during the 1950s, when lots of Catholics living in the north found reason to move to the south, whether out of genuine fear of oppression from the communist regime or because they were encouraged to expect repression by American propaganda. But I don't think we should go too far with that latter consideration. There were genuine, legitimate reasons for people who practice Catholicism to fear that they would not be able to continue practicing Catholicism in the future. So a lot of disproportionately Catholics move from north to South.

[Don Wildman]

Right up north, you have Ho Chi Minh, Uncle Ho, beloved by his people leads the north for decades until he dies in 1969. Fascinating man. In the south, there are leftovers of that old imperial rule which had accommodated French colonialism. Ngo Dinh Diem becomes Prime Minister, then the President of South Vietnam. Very shaky politically, this brand new nation. People lack an understanding of what's at stake. That's part of the problem, isn't it?

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Yeah, absolutely. When South Vietnam was established in 1954, it was a very, very, very shaky political entity, lacking in all the things that you would ideally want to see in a viable state. Right. A legitimate government that commanded the respect of its own people, with a leadership that, you know, enjoyed the support of a critical mass of the population. South Vietnam had none of that. Americans pinned their hopes on Ngo Dinh Diem. And it worked, which is pretty remarkable given how tenuous it seemed to be in 1954 and 1955. But through some luck, through some rather brutal use of force, through political manipulation, through authoritarian techniques, without question, Diem and his administration do by the early 1960s, really establish a pretty impressive degree, I would say, of control over South Vietnam, given how shaky it was at the outset.

[Don Wildman]

Yeah, we mentioned where you fight from. I mean, an anti communist stance can be strong because people are living in fear. But you deal in too many negatives and that starts to become, you know, eroded by its own, by its own self, that kind of position. 1961, we begin to shift from a pure advisory role to a more direct military coordination with, with South Vietnam. Why did we have to take a stronger, larger role at that point? Were they losing ground?

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

So from 1954 to about 1958, 1959, Vietnam, remarkably, is a relatively peaceful place in both north and South. There was this period of consolidation when lots and lots of people, I think, were simply exhausted by years and years of war. Let's remember from really the beginning of the Second World War down through 1954, Vietnam had been war torn. Lots of bloodshed, lots of people on the move or, you know, wounded or killed, lots of families affected. So there was this period of respite that lasted for a time, but by 1959, the insurgency in South Vietnam is starting to build against the South Vietnamese government of, of Ngo Dinh Diem. And you can see the very earliest traces of support, both in terms of personnel and military supplies coming from, from north into the south to try to sustain that, that, that insurgency against the South Vietnamese government. So in short, violence returns in 1959 or so. I think 1959 is really the crucial year by 1961, though Americans are increasingly attentive to the fact that most of the important trends are going against South Vietnam and therefore against American interests. So the time was coming to do more to help the South Vietnamese. It's also the moment when John F. Kennedy comes into office pledging to pay any price, bear any burden, to defend liberty, and so forth. So there's a different political attitude in the United States as well. You put these two factors together, and you have the recipe for a much increased American effort in South Vietnam. So it's really at this point where the number of American advisors increases pretty dramatically and where, as you say, American advisors start to take a somewhat more active role, a somewhat more assertive role in. Though they're still advisors, they're engaging in a little bit more risky behavior. They're starting to get killed in small numbers. And so, you know, it starts to look a little bit more like a serious combat role.

[Don Wildman]

It's important to keep in mind the context. There's been a revolution in Cuba right off our shores. All of that is going on. Communism is on the march, it seems. So Kennedy comes in. There's an oft quoted press conference of his in March 61, I believe it is, where he basically declares his selection. You know, we're selecting Vietnam as an important place to prove that we will stand up to this. It's a very conscious political statement of his. When he becomes president, he sends, as you say, 4,000 U.S. army Special Forces to train South Vietnamese soldiers. So that's the next step. They adopt what's called a strategic hamlet program to relocate Vietnamese villagers into fortified villages. I want you to please explain that to me. And thus isolate them from the Viet Cong. It's a whole big program. It fails.

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Yeah. Well, one of the problems that Americans had in the early 1960s, as they would have really, throughout the war, was distinguishing the communist enemy from the everyday population of South Vietnam. Right. And so it was understood as early as the late 1950, there had to be some effort to separate, you know, your enemies from the innocent stand, you know.

[Don Wildman]

Yeah. Meanwhile, there'd been this migration anyway, so there were a lot of people from North Vietnam not even on their home territory.

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Exactly. So one of the methods that was chosen to deal with this problem was the Strategic Hamlets program, as you suggest. And the idea here was to concentrate reliable people who could potentially be supporters, if they were not actually active supporters of the South Vietnamese government into villages that would be surrounded by barbed wire that, you know, and guard towers that could be police to Sort of keep the bad guys out and keep the good guys, or at least potentially good guys in. And through this method, you could sort of separate, you know, friend from foe and enable military forces operating outside of those hamlets to understand that anyone they encounter out in the boondocks is more likely than not, you know, an adversary of the regime.

[Don Wildman]

Yeah. Oh, that's a scary picture, isn't it?

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Yeah. And I think we can see with the benefit of hindsight why this might not have gone over particularly well with the South Vietnamese population. And indeed, that turned out to be the major problem with strategic hamlets. You know, it was simply not, not a winner with even apolitical, ordinary South Vietnamese peasants who simply wanted, I think it's fair to say, to go about their daily lives without this militarization and this uprootedness that the strategic hamlets involved.

[Don Wildman]

The south, remember, is bucolic, gorgeous countryside, you know, beautiful winding rivers and agrarian based economy at the time, for sure. Whereas the north is where the French colonial capital was and all that stuff was happening up there. So suddenly you're having this, this outside force come in and sort of reshape the countryside in a. In a kind of bizarre fashion. That's a very interesting world. Then comes the assassination of Diem and his brother just three weeks before Kennedy is killed in November. Here are the Americans projecting power, and their own president is assassinated at home. Had to be earth shaking for them.

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Yeah, the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem is one of those real watershed moments in the story of American involvement in Vietnam. I do think it's important to recognize that Americans for a time in the late 1950s and very early 1960s, had good reason to be pretty impressed with what they had accomplished in South Vietnam. And they really built a legitimate, well, a somewhat legitimate, certainly an effective state way beyond what seemed likely going back in 1954, 1955, when there was just chaos in South Vietnam. But by the early 1960s, Americans nevertheless were becoming very frustrated with Ngo Dinh Diem because he wasn't doing what Americans believed he needed to be doing to establish his popularity, his legitimacy in the eyes of his own people. He wasn't taking the next steps, in other words, to create a really politically legitimate state that would command so much support as to eat into the support for the North Vietnamese and for the communist insurgency. So that frustration grows and grows and grows, especially across the all important year of 1963. And at the very end of 1963, the United States supports a coup that was carried out by dissident elements within the South Vietnamese military against Ngo Dinh Diem.

[Don Wildman]

Boy, this is the time of the Buddhist monks self immolating these, these famous images that everyone sees, which is also important to point out. We are seeing the images. I mean, this is a new time for American journalism. And Americans are seeing all this unfold on television for the first time. And this becomes an ever escalating factor in American life right into the later 60s.

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Yeah. One of Ngo Dinziem's real problems was that he himself was Catholic. And, you know, a good number of his people were also Catholic, but the vast majority were not. So he was in a difficult place, I think, ideologically and in terms of the. The image that he projected within his country. And Americans in some ways, I think liked him because he was Catholic. They sort of understood him better because he had this connection to the West. In fact, Ngo Dinh Diem had spent some time in the United States. He was a familiar character who seemed. Seemed reliable. But at the end of the day, I think most historians and biographers would agree that there were limits on how far Ngo Dinh Diem was going to be able to go in establishing genuine legitimacy in the eyes of his own people. And I think Americans at some level recognized that by 1963, amid all of the outcry among the Buddhist population against his leadership.

[Don Wildman]

Horrifying images.

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Yeah.

[Don Wildman]

I remind you we are building a framework here of the major turning points of Vietnam. And what we've just done is flashed back to what came before, leading up to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. When we come back, we will take events from that point onward. I'll be back with more American history after this short break.

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[Don Wildman]

So at that point, we're back where we started in this show, 1964. Johnson has taken over because of Kennedy's assassination, obviously. And at that point, how is Johnson going to produce results? I imagine because of his personality. A lot faster than he's seen before.

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Exactly. Yeah. I think LBJ comes into office, you know, determines to succeed in Vietnam. He's not someone who thought a great deal or had a very sophisticated outlook. I think when it came to foreign policy, particularly when it came to very complicated places like South Vietnam that were undergoing a kind of social revolution and sort of trying to find their way in the. In the aftermath of decolonization, as so many societies around the world were. You know, LBJ understood American politics. He wasn't very sophisticated when it came to understanding places like Vietnam. So his attitude, I think, was a very. I think I could say a very blunt one. He simply wanted to achieve results in Vietnam. And he put a lot of pressure on his advisors and on the American military to deliver results. He said something to the effect very early on, you know, let's none of us go to bed at night without thinking, you know, first and foremost about what we're doing to achieve victory in Vietnam. So whereas Kennedy, I think, had a more sophisticated understanding of what was happening in Vietnam and a greater sense of the limitations on the ability of the United States to achieve its objectives there. LBJ just wanted to achieve the results, and he believed that the United States could achieve those results, though he was not unaware of the difficulties that lay in the. In the American path.

[Don Wildman]

It brings to mind that Neil Sheehan book.

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Yeah, Bright Shining Lie.

[Don Wildman]

Yeah, Bright Shining Lie. Amazing portrayal of that early, early 60s period through the eyes of one particular advisor who saw a kind of way of fighting this war that we were not going to fight. And that's the tipping point that we're on. Johnson sort of takes that whole thing over and between 65 and 67 turns it into essentially a full scale war. In Those years of 65, 67 pre Tet offensive, it was going fairly as predicted. Is that fair to say?

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

What I always say is that the introduction of American combat forces at ever higher levels across 65, 66, 67 definitely had the effect of stabilizing the military situation. I think it's fair to say that LBJ understood accurately in 1965 that if the United States didn't cross that red line and introduce combat forces, it was very likely that South Vietnam would fall, that there would be a military defeat. The introduction of American combat forces Definitely changed that situation. It stabilized the battlefield situation. But it really resulted in a new stalemate, I would say at a higher level of violence rather than real progress toward an American victory. And this became the unfortunate fact for Americans in Vietnam over those three years as they introduced 10,000 more and 10,000 more and 50,000 more Americans in search of that elusive breaking point where the United States would start to make rapid gains toward victory. But the North Vietnamese and the Southern insurgency were able to meet those escalations and to assure that Americans never achieved anything better than a stalemate. And indeed, that stalemate dragged on at ever higher levels of violence right across year after year after year.

[Don Wildman]

Mark, correct me if I'm wrong. I mean, you basically have military leadership who sort of carry over from a lot of them, the higher generals, anyway, carryover from World War II, that mindset of fighting a war of invincible strength in the face of your enemy, coupled with this new idea of how to fight a war epitomized by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, this data driven whole approach to the war as micromanaged and so forth, this sort of inner conflict is at hand that Johnson is looking at, which is all carried over from the Kennedy administration.

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Yeah, there's been a lot of criticism over the years of William Westmoreland, the top American commander in Vietnam, and the US Military apparatus more generally for the way that they chose to fight the war. And I would suggest that, sure, there are good reasons perhaps to be critical of lots of decisions that were made by military commanders, but I also think it's very important to recognize what an impossible position those commanders were in as a result of decisions made by political leaders. They really had to fight a major war against regular units of the North Vietnamese army, but also to fight a counter guerrilla war against insurgent forces in the South. And, oh, by the way, they also had to find ways to bolster the South Vietnamese government at the same time. So there were at least three different wars. You could probably say there were more than that going on at the same time. So the burden on Westmoreland and his advisors, it was really extraordinary. And I don't think it's terribly surprising that they weren't able to master the incredible complexity of this conflict.

[Don Wildman]

This will play through, of course, to Colin Powell's famous declaration, we don't go in without knowing how we get out. That was the, you know, the wars later on which succeeded and did not. The big change. The next major turning point, of course, is the Tet Offensive. We did an episode of this as well, Mark this is months long offensive by the north against targets across the South. They attacked the capital, the National Palace. Victory is not secured, but the effect is palpable. American invincibility has been shaken and our public support is profoundly weakened. How does the leadership we mentioned react to this over time? As we say, it wasn't enough a win for the Viet Cong or the North Vietnamese. It was just, you know, a psychological sort of destruction.

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Yeah.

[Don Wildman]

And as such, tell me about the events following Tet. Of course, Johnson's decision not to run again.

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Yeah. General Westmoreland and other senior American leaders in Vietnam said correctly, I think, in the aftermath of the Tet offensive that this was actually a pretty big defeat for the communists. Yes, the attacks themselves led to communist forces occupying cities and towns up and down the expanse of South Vietnam. But those advances were beaten back everywhere within a matter of days or at the outside weeks. And the losses on the Communist side were spectacular. So American leaders, some of them were saying in the aftermath the offensive, hey, this is what we've been looking for. Now we have a stronger position on the battlefield. But what they weren't seeing was the incredible political damage that had been done to the American war effort as a consequence of this extraordinary offensive across the whole extent of South Vietnam. Let's remember that In December of 1967, LBJ and Westmoreland and other Americans had been trying to drive home the message that the United States was making great progress in Vietnam and that the end was starting to come into view. The language that they used was pretty strong in encouraging Congress and the American people to believe that, okay, we finally found out, we finally figured out how to achieve success in Vietnam. And then comes this huge display of communist power. And this is really the big story of Tet, the demoralization, the sense that, oh my God, we've been trying for years with hundreds of thousands of Americans in the field and hundreds and hundreds of Americans coming back month after month in body bags. And our leaders don't know what they're doing. The war is not going well. We can't trust what our leaders are telling us. And so the politics around the war, which had been deteriorating certainly before Tet, really collapsed I think in February and March of 1968. And it's in that context that LBJ decides not to run again for another term.

[Don Wildman]

There's so much psychology involved. We're only 20 years out of the victory in World War II, arguably the proudest moment for the United States of America in world affairs, certainly. And yet here we are with this same generation and a half dealing with a war that we ought to be supporting according to the American government, and yet so much is not happening. I say the psychology because you have the draft, which is a different situation. You have the media covering this very closely and importantly. Rarely talked about a really good economy going on at home. Life is good in America. So the last thing political leadership want to do is throw a grenade into that, so to speak. That would mean sacrifices at home like they did in World War II. All these kinds of we're all in this together mode. And that was not chosen to be the case in Vietnam, which is a huge difference.

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Yeah. And later on, there would be critics who would say that the biggest mistake on the part of Lyndon Johnson or other American leaders was to downplay the commitment that was going to be necessary in order to achieve American objectives. And there would be people who would say there should have been a declaration of war or a declaration of a national emergency or a calling up of the reserves. In other words, there could have been steps that would have signaled to the American people that, look, this is a big war and this is a. This needs to be a major commitment of our country and we need to see it through no matter the cost. LBJ did not take those steps. And I think there's a whole set of explanations for his decision making, but he did not make those efforts. And I think that it wound up costing him in the sense that public opinion was soft on the war. I think it was bound to be soft, probably no matter what he had to say, because ordinary people simply didn't understand the stakes in Vietnam. But I think his problem was worse because of his efforts to downplay the commitment that would be necessary and even to keep from the American public some of what he knew about what was happening in Vietnam, the likelihoods of success, and the amount of resources that would need to be pumped in to have any chance of victory.

[Don Wildman]

I think it's also about how much the public could stomach of the violence involved. You know, we'd been through Hiroshima, we've been through Nagasaki. We. We saw. We've seen the effects of our. Of our punishing of a country, you know, for whatever reason. That kind of Curtis LeMay approach to winning a war which had been, you know, on the table back in World War II, is off the table now.

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

I agree. And I think one factor that's important to bear in mind is what's going on in the American home front in. In this period. Right. This is not only the period of a anti war movement in connection with Vietnam, but also, of course, the civil rights movement, also other social movements that are increasingly inclined to be critical of the American elite, of the American government, of the status quo in the United States. And so the critique of the American conduct of the war was just one part. It was an important part, for sure, but just one part of a broader tendency toward criticism of the way in which, you know, the government managed national affairs in all sorts of arenas. So I think Americans, by and large, were primed to be suspicious and critical of the conduct of the war. Even if Lyndon Johnson had said somewhat different things or declared a state of emergency or done some of the other things he might have done.

[Don Wildman]

So we enter into the last chapter of this story, which takes a while, but it's the last chapter, generally speaking, after Johnson leaves the scene amidst these huge protests that occur in 68 after Tet, the draft card burnings. Nixon is elected with the campaign promise of bringing an honorable end to the war in Vietnam, becomes peace with honor. In his second election in 72, he starts a process at this point called Vietnamization. Can you explain that term?

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Yeah. Vietnamization was an idea that also had some appeal in the late stages of the Johnson presidency to essentially replace American combat forces with Vietnamese combat forces. So the idea was that instead of sending more and more Americans to Vietnam to do the fighting, you could gradually transition the burden of combat from Americans to a better trained, better equipped South Vietnamese force. So, you know, you start to see after the Tet offensive, Americans sending more and more American military aid and equipment into South Vietnam to try to bolster the South Vietnamese forces.

[Don Wildman]

It's at this point that the, you know, the Pentagon papers are leaked in 1971, in this era anyway, and they reveal the amount of obfuscation that had gone on for several administrations as the US Attempted to find this purchase in the Cold War here in Vietnam. The Paris peace talks reach the accord signed in January 1973, and the U.S. troops begin to leave Vietnam that March 1973. But the war, of course, continues on. We keep funding and supplying it. Was there ever a chance the South Vietnamese would have won this war without us?

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

That's a question that reasonable people continue to debate, I think, to this day. I think that the best answer is not no, not at any reasonable cost to the United States. I mean, I think you could imagine a world theoretically, in which the United States, after the Paris Peace Agreements, began bombing again, resumed bombing of North Vietnam, even reintroduced American combat forces. But politically, that was simply not in the cards. And some historians would say, well, it was really because of Watergate and the declining trust in the American government and then Richard Nixon's resignation that killed any chance that the United States would continue to do what was necessary to defend South Vietnam. But I don't know. I mean, it's a counterfactual exercise. We can never know for certain. But it seems to me, if you take Watergate out of the story, it's still very politically difficult for a Nixon administration to resume bombing at a time when Americans, by and large, had the feeling, look, we've tried for decades to defend this country, and it's failed. Why should we believe that more of the same is going to accomplish the goal?

[Don Wildman]

And nearly 60,000 not at that point. But it was up there in the tens of thousands of Deaths in Vietnam, 1975, 50 years ago. We have the drama of the fall of Saigon. The North Vietnamese launched their final offensive, and the south finally collapses. There's the scenes of mayhem at the American Embassy, the helicopters leaving from the roof. It was all so incredible to us watching on television. And then everything chaotic that happens across Southeast Asia. Cambodia, Khmer Rouge, the killing fields. Not the ending. The honorable ending Nixon promised. Nothing honorable about it.

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Yeah, it was clearly a really tragic spectacle of the collapse of South Vietnam and then almost simultaneously, the collapse of Laos in Cambodia. And the human consequences in Cambodia, of course, were exponentially more horrifying than in those other places. And that should, of course, never be minimized. This was one of the great human tragedies of the whole 20th century. If you think about the consequences of that final defeat in April of 1975, through strictly a geopolitical lens, you can, I think, argue that the consequences for the United States, the consequences for the American role in the world, were not as severe as some Americans feared they might be. There was a lot of anxiety that defeat in Southeast Asia would sort of ripple American credibility around the world. It would unravel American alliances, and none of that really came to pass. There was a period, it seems to me, when the Soviet Union was kind of energized. There was a sense that the United States was reeling from this lost war, but it would only be a matter of years right before we're Talking about the 1980s and the sort of revival of American power and this reassertion of American leadership in the world under Ronald Reagan's presidency. So it's certainly the case that there was a period of doubt about what the United States could accomplish in the world. But that period really comes to an End, I think by the turn of the decade into the 1980s. And by that point, you're talking about a very different American role in the world, which in some ways resembled, you know, what the United States had been doing before Vietnam.

[Don Wildman]

Sure. Well, there are those, and I in my own family who believe that Vietnam was a worthy cause and well fought in so much as they stymied the march of communism. You know, what Kennedy had laid out actually came true in some regards, you know, that they weren't able just to march right down to take over and then move on to, say, the Philippines. Like, it could have just gone on to Malaysia and all the rest of it, and it did not. And that's a really important thing to consider when you look at the whole thing. The sacrifice was dire, but it took care of that business.

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Yeah, I think that's right. Probably the strongest argument you can make in favor of the American war in Vietnam is that it bought time, in a way, for the consolidation of pro Western governments in other parts of Southeast Asia. So, as you say, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand. Right. These countries did not fall like a row of dominoes to the communists after the collapse of South Vietnam. Therefore, some say the American commitment over so many years in Vietnam had a positive impact. Of course, you can never know. Right. That's a very counterfactual proposition.

[Don Wildman]

It's also very callous when you consider the horrible events you've already talked about with Cambodia and so forth.

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Exactly. And the nature of those pro Western regimes, which were largely, profoundly authoritarian governments, hardly bastions of democracy.

[Don Wildman]

You're still writing about it. I mean, do you think that this will ever be absorbed and understood in a kind of organic fashion?

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

You know, I think people are going to keep debating Vietnam for a very long time to come. There are some uncertainties that continue to fire up, not just historians, but journalists and ordinary people in connection with the war. And I think the biggest one of those questions is a really basic one. Why did the United States lose in Vietnam? There are people who argue that the United States failed in Vietnam because of bad decisions, insufficient political will, the use of insufficient force, or too much force or the wrong kinds of force. Maybe it was, you know, young people who encouraged too much negativity about the war or the media. Right. So you could imagine if these people are right, that a different set of decisions, a different pattern of behavior might have resulted in victory. And then on the other side, and I think I would put myself in this camp, there are people who say that, look, at the end of the day, the problems in Vietnam were political. They had to be resolved by the Vietnamese themselves. The United States actually had limited ability to shape South Vietnam to its liking. And so the ultimate lesson of Vietnam is that there are problems that aren't susceptible to American power and influence. I think this debate is really foundational to how we think about the potential uses of American power internationally. Do we have the power, the solutions to every problem, or do we need to be very careful about getting ourselves involved in places where, you know, the sources of conflict are not really susceptible to American solutions? This debate will continue to go on and on and on in Vietnam.

[Don Wildman]

Yeah. 25 year engagement in Afghanistan.

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Yeah.

[Don Wildman]

Is evidence that it's still very difficult to figure it out.

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Exactly.

[Don Wildman]

Depending on your enemy. I think the key element to Vietnam, especially for present generations, is to understand the framework of what happened. Otherwise you lose the steps that were taken. There's an intimacy that Americans have with Vietnam that they don't have with other wars necessarily, as far as the public's concerned, through the media, through the movies, and at the time, through television. Thank you so much, Mark. It's a pleasure to talk to you. Mark Atwood Lawrence is the author of an important book called the Vietnam War, A Concise International History, released back in 2008. I guess more recently Assuming the Burden, Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam. If you like the way he clearly explains things here, try his books. He professes history at the University of Texas in Austin. And you're working on a new book, I understand, about the 1976American election, right?

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

That's right. Yeah. I'm writing a book about the cast of characters that competed for the presidential nominations of their parties back in the bicentennial election.

[Don Wildman]

Thanks again, Mark. Nice to see you.

[Mark Atwood Lawrence]

Thanks so much, Don. Appreciate it.

[Don Wildman]

Hey, thanks for listening to American History hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays. All kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode by hitting like and follow. You help us out, which is great, but you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share it with a friend. American History hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support.

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