North Vietnam adopted a brilliant strategy to further compound Saigon’s strategic problems. Communist forces were organized to create two separate threats to the South Vietnamese. Hanoi had irregular units trained to take over villages and hamlets in the countryside through guerrilla tactics, and regular units designed to overrun South Vietnam’s defenses through conventional warfare. Saigon’s leaders thus were caught in a dilemma. If they increased their emphasis on maintaining regular forces to handle the conventional threat, the countryside would be vulnerable to the guerrillas, thereby risking the gains in pacification. If they shifted their resources to handle the guerrilla threat at the expense of their regular forces, South Vietnam would become vulnerable to defeat by installment—that is, the North Vietnamese could mass their strength sufficiently to overwhelm our ally’s positions one by one.
South Vietnam had never had much room for error in this perilous game of balance. It had survived the offensive in 1972 through mobility and air power. We had calculated then that South Vietnamese forces were several battalions short of what was needed to turn back a full-strength attack from North Vietnam. That was why they suffered their early reversals. But two things turned the tide. First, Saigon stabilized the battle by shifting its airborne reserves between fronts as circumstances dictated. Then we stepped in with our air power to destroy North Vietnam’s massed forces. Had South Vietnam not had both mobility and air support, it would have been questionable whether they could have prevailed against the 1972 offensive.
After the cease-fire, I knew that South Vietnam would be secure only as long as North Vietnam was not permitted to recoup its losses. Hanoi would have no difficulty keeping up the guerrilla threat. Saigon had to devote much of its strength to countering this or else lose the countryside. Thus, if Hanoi were allowed to restore its decimated regular forces along the front lines, South Vietnam would face the same shortfall in military strength that it did before the offensive in 1972.
As we had feared, North Vietnam dedicated itself to the task of rebuilding its forces in South Vietnam during 1973. Wisely seeking to create a smoke screen to obscure its violations of the provisions in the peace agreement prohibiting such a buildup, Hanoi launched a political offensive to rally the South Vietnamese people to its cause and a major international propaganda effort to blame Saigon for all cease-fire violations. While the former failed miserably, the latter succeeded in totally hamstringing the South Vietnamese. If Saigon had tried to interrupt or interdict Hanoi’s buildup, the uproar in Congress would have been deafening.
Meanwhile, the Communists undertook an enormous effort to upgrade their system for sending supplies into the South. They built a string of antiaircraft-missile installations to prevent surveillance or attack on their positions by Saigon’s air force; a set of huge oil-storage facilities in South Vietnam’s northern provinces of Quang Tri and Thua Thien; a paved highway and an oil pipeline running from their bases south of the demilitarized zone to their headquarters north of Saigon; and a modern radio network stretching throughout the territories they occupied. Within twelve months, Hanoi had added over 12,000 miles of roads to its logistics network and had reduced by two-thirds the time needed to transport troops in North Vietnam to the front lines over 1,200 miles away in South Vietnam.
Hanoi also engaged in a massive reinforcement of its forces in South Vietnam. Before the cease-fire, when our air force and navy made regular strikes against the Ho Chi Minh Trail, North Vietnam had never attempted a buildup on this scale. Communist forces traveled in small numbers and only at night. Now, unhindered by our bombing, immense convoys—numbering over 300 trucks—rolled along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in broad daylight. Thousands of trucks arrived every week with new stocks of supplies, equipment, and ammunition. New antiaircraft regiments, artillery units, and tank battalions came in as well. North Vietnam’s military strength in the South grew ominously. It sent in over 75,000 combat troops, bringing its ranks up to about 170,000. It increased its tank strength fivefold to over 500 and upped its number of heavy artillery pieces from 170 to over 250.
The fact that Hanoi had never before dared to conduct such a rapid large-scale buildup demonstrated how important and effective our bombing of Laos had been. It also pointed out how disastrous it was that Congress had prohibited us from resuming the bombing.
It was deeply frustrating to watch as Hanoi steadily built up its forces in South Vietnam. Within a year of the cease-fire, Hanoi restored the military position it had held before the spring offensive in 1972. South Vietnam would again face a serious threat of renewed invasion—only now without our air support to back up its forces on the ground.
• • •
While North Vietnam rushed troops and supplies to the front lines, Congress slashed the amount of military aid budgeted for South Vietnam. In a period of two years—from the eve of the cease-fire in January 1973 to the eve of the final Communist offensive in January 1975—we witnessed a complete reversal of military superiority from Saigon to Hanoi.
We had promised in the Paris peace accords to replace all arms, munitions, and war matériel destroyed or expended by South Vietnamese forces after the cease-fire. That was a pledge the antiwar majority in Congress refused to fulfill. They cut the level of every aid package for South Vietnam proposed by the administration and reduced aid from $2,270 million in fiscal year 1973 to $1,010 million in fiscal 1974 and $700 million in fiscal 1975.
Antiwar senators and congressmen argued that our military assistance was “fueling” the war and that reducing aid to Saigon would bring it to an end—as if South Vietnamese troops were in the North and not the other way around. It was reminiscent of an incident that occurred during the Constitutional Convention: It was proposed that there be a constitutional limit on United States armed forces of 3,000 troops, whereupon George Washington was overheard to whisper that the Constitution perhaps should also deny hostile foreign powers the right to invade the country with more than 3,000 men. When Congress cut American aid to South Vietnam, it neglected to slow the flow of Soviet aid to North Vietnam.
Inflation compounded the effect of our aid reductions. Estimates of South Vietnam’s military requirements—and thus financial needs—were worked into our program budget months before equipment and supplies were actually bought. Prices often skyrocketed in the meantime. South Vietnam, where inflation ran at 65 percent in 1974, needed more money to pay its troops. Prices for military supplies increased an average of 27 percent. Oil cost 400 percent more because of OPEC’s 1973 embargo. Budget figures were never adjusted to compensate for these price increases. Therefore, there was a lot more bang for the buck in our budget estimate than on the battlefield.
Our estimates also did not take into account the intensity of the continuing Communist attacks after the cease-fire was to have taken effect. Military planners had expected the ceasefire to result in a 70 percent drop in ammunition usage, but this turned out to be overoptimistic. Based on the expectation of diminished fighting, a budget ceiling of $1,126 million was set for assistance to Vietnam and Laos in fiscal 1974. In December 1973, after increased fighting seriously depleted South Vietnam’s stocks of ammunition, our defense planners sought a $494 million increase in the budget.
In January and February 1974, when this request began running into trouble on Capitol Hill, South Vietnam’s army was forced to impose severe restrictions on the use of ammunition for the rest of the year. Patrolling soldiers accustomed to receiving ten grenades now were given only one. Isolated outposts were restricted to firing to two or three mortar or artillery rounds when challenged. Artillery units were permitted to fire only after targets had been clearly identified. Harassing and interdiction fire were prohibited. Morale and combat effectiveness plunged. But this rationing was necessary to slow a dangerous trend that had developed: South Vietnam was using up ammunition faster than it was being shipped in.
When Congress rejected our appeal for additional funding in April 1974—only three months before the beginning
of the fiscal year—South Vietnam’s supply situation turned critical. Our defeat in the budget battle meant that for months the supplies flowing through the pipeline to South Vietnam would slow to a trickle.
Stocks of ammunition totaling 177,000 tons in January 1973 had plummeted to 121,000 tons in May 1974 despite significant savings achieved through the strict restrictions on its use. In April, supplies of shells for the army’s most critical weapon, the 105mm howitzer, were sufficient for only fifty-two days of fighting—less if the war intensified. About 35 percent of its tanks and 50 percent of its armored personnel carriers and its aircraft stood idle for lack of spare parts. During the summer, stocks of many critical items—such as tires, radio batteries, and M-16 rifle barrels—dipped below safety levels. Because of strict fuel-conservation rules, only 55 percent of the army’s vehicles could be operated. The South Vietnamese Army’s mobility—the key to its victories against the 1972 offensive—had vanished.
Congressional budget cuts cost South Vietnamese lives because our ally’s ability to get medical help to casualties on the battlefield deteriorated. In 1974, stocks of critical supplies—such as blood-collection bags, intravenous fluids, antibiotics, and surgical dressings—dwindled to dangerous levels. There were no supplies at all for about 50 percent of the medical items on the army’s stockage lists. No insect repellent was available for soldiers as the monsoons arrived in the malariaridden zones of the northern provinces. Shipments into medical supply depots had fallen from 24,000 metric tons in March to 8,000 in May.
However painful the hardships South Vietnam endured during fiscal year 1974, those of fiscal 1975 were certain to be several times worse if the United States did not send adequate economic and military assistance. In September 1973, a $l,450-million proposal had been drawn up by our Defense Attaché Office in Saigon. In May 1974, we won the initial round of the budget battle in the House, but our prospects looked grim in the Senate.
As Congress debated the fiscal 1975 budget, Major General John E. Murray, the head of the United States Defense Attaché Office in Saigon, sent a prophetic cable. “In the final analysis,” he wrote, “you can roughly equate cuts in support to loss of real estate.” He then set out what was the best our ally could do with various levels of aid:
(a) $1.126 billion level—gradual degradation of equipment base with greatest impact in out-years. Little reserve or flexibility to meet a major enemy offensive in FY 75.
(b) $900 million level—degradation of equipment base that will have significant impact by third or fourth quarter of FY 75. No reserve or flexibility to meet offensive in FY 75.
(c) $750 million level—equipment losses not supportable, operations (“O”) funds would not support hard-core self-defense requirements. Any chance of having Hanoi see the light and come to conference table would be sharply diminished. If enemy continues current level of military activity, RVNAF [South Vietnam’s armed forces] could only defend selected areas of country.
(d) $600 million level—write off RVN [South Vietnam] as a bad investment and a broken promise. GVN [Government of Vietnam] would do well to hang on to Saigon and Delta area.
On September 23 and 24, 1974, the House and the Senate approved only $500 million in actual military assistance for South Vietnam. Antiwar congressmen and senators had written off our ally.
• • •
When I resigned from the presidency on August 9, 1974, I was profoundly frustrated with the situation in Vietnam. In concluding the Paris peace agreement, I had considered two conditions absolutely necessary to make it work: We had to maintain a credible threat of American retaliation against an invasion from North Vietnam and provide a continuing flow of military aid to South Vietnam sufficient to maintain the balance of power. Both were undermined in Congress.
It had been Thieu’s nightmare, and mine, that North Vietnam would succeed in exploiting the peace in order to prepare for war. Our greatest fear was that Hanoi would rearm its forces while holding on to its positions in Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnam. As I left office, I knew that Congress already had let this happen and would not let President Ford reverse it.
I was shocked by the irresponsibility of the antiwar majority in Congress. South Vietnam was a small country that depended on the United States for help in order to survive against a brutal onslaught from a totalitarian power. Senators and congressmen who demanded that our South Vietnamese allies stand alone were being totally unfair. None would expect South Korea to be able to deter an attack from North Korea without the presence of 50,000 American troops. None would expect the countries of Western Europe to hold off the Soviet Union without the help of 300,000 of our troops and a threat of American nuclear retaliation to back them up. None would expect Israel to be able to survive attacks from its enemies without massive military assistance from the United States. Yet they were unwilling to allow us to retaliate against a North Vietnamese invasion or even to provide the South Vietnamese with enough ammunition for their guns.
I could understand their desire to put the Vietnam War behind us. But I could not understand why they seemed so determined to see South Vietnam conquered by North Vietnam. Whatever their intentions, that was the effect of their actions.
• • •
“By limiting our military assistance,” argued one senator during the budget debate over aid for South Vietnam, “we do signal ally and adversary alike that it is time to negotiate.” Hanoi did not share this interpretation of the meaning of Congress’s action. Instead, when the North Vietnamese politburo and general staff conferred in October 1974, they interpreted Congress’s actions as a green light for their next invasion.
General Van Tien Dung, commander of North Vietnam’s forces in South Vietnam, described the conference in his memoirs. Hanoi’s top brass opened the meeting with an evaluation of the military situation. They observed that Saigon’s troops were “growing weaker militarily, politically, and economically every day” and that Hanoi’s forces were now “stronger than the enemy in the South.” They noted that they had “set up strategic positions linking North and South, had increased our forces and stockpiles of matériel, and had completed the system of strategic and tactical roads.” And given the decline in American assistance to Saigon, they concluded that the United States was “meeting difficulties at home and abroad” and that “its ability to give political and military aid to its protégés was declining every day.”
Dung wrote that there was a heated discussion of one key question: “Did the Americans have the ability to send troops back into the South when our large attacks led to the danger of the Saigon army’s collapse?” He noted that all “paid special attention to the fact that since they had signed the Paris Agreement on Vietnam and had been forced to withdraw from South Vietnam, the Americans had grown more confused and were in greater difficulty than before.” Inflation, recession, energy shortages, and Watergate all handicapped the United States. Communist party First Secretary Le Duan concluded, “Now that the United States has pulled out of the South, it will be hard for them to jump back in.” Congress, in his view, was abandoning Saigon and would never intervene to save Thieu’s government.
Hanoi’s war council decided to launch a major offensive in 1975. In November it sent a directive giving the word to its military commanders in the South. “Enemy air and artillery capability [is] now limited as a result of reductions in U.S. aid. In short, the enemy is declining militarily and has no chance of regaining the position they held in 1973. On the other hand, our position is improving. We are now stronger than we were during the Tet Offensive in 1968 and the summer of 1972. We now have ample amounts of money, weapons, and equipment which makes it possible for us to initiate a sustained attack on a wide front.”
North Vietnam, now armed to the teeth, was poised to strike. Its readiness was a result of a massive resupply effort by the Soviet Union and China. In 1973, while Congress was cutting aid to South Vietnam, North Vietnam received 2.8 million metric tons of imports from its Communist al
lies, an amount 50 percent larger than that of 1972 and 10 percent higher than the record set in 1971. And in 1974, Hanoi imported over 3.5 million metric tons. In November 1974, when President Ford met with the Soviets in Vladivostok and the Chinese in Peking, he asked for greater restraint on their part. But neither slowed the flow of arms.
Hanoi’s rearmament had not been inevitable. Initially, its Communist allies had not been eager to give more aid, because we had made it clear to them that doing so would damage their new relationships with the United States. When Hanoi’s leaders complained about the level of resupply, the Soviets and the Chinese dragged their feet, offering some new aid but with strings attached. Moscow and Peking demurred, saying that it was a hopeless and wasteful effort to keep sending arms that would later be destroyed through American bombing. But after Congress cut off the possibility of future bombing in June 1973, there was no longer any reason for restraint. Moscow and Peking had been willing to help us contain Hanoi—but only if we were determined to do so as well.
During 1974, with the benefit of its new supplies, North Vietnam prepared to renew its offensive. It built up its forces and logistics system in South Vietnam while conducting a series of strategic raids designed to make marginal improvements in its positions. By December, Hanoi had arrayed a heavily armed, 185,000-man expeditionary force against South Vietnam’s thin lines of defense. Once again Saigon’s shortfall of regular combat battalions was sharply evident. But unlike the situation in 1972, our ally did not have the mobility to redeploy its forces quickly, because of budget cuts in Congress, and did not have the air cover of American bombers, because of the bombing cutoff legislated by Congress.
As the dry season began in December 1974, South Vietnam faced the looming danger of being overrun after a North Vietnamese breakthrough. On December 13, after initiating several diversionary strikes, the North Vietnamese began the assault on Phouc Long Province about fifty miles north of Saigon. It moved in two divisions, a tank battalion, an artillery and an antiaircraft regiment, and several local sapper and infantry units. South Vietnam’s forces were comprised of two battalions of the Regional Forces and two platoons of the Popular Forces. Although these units were putting up a heroic resistance, the weight of superior numbers took its toll. Saigon deployed some reinforcements, but outposts had to be abandoned one by one under barrages of artillery fire sometimes as heavy as 3,000 rounds per day. Soon, South Vietnamese forces were unable to return fire. By January 6, 1975, Phouc Long Province had fallen—the first Communist conquest of a provincial capital since 1972 and of a full province since 1954.
No More Vietnams Page 21