A Sense of the Enemy

by Shore, Zachary

  What then would have been the purpose of outlining the reasons America would not escalate if preparations for American escalation were considered necessary? One reason was to bolster morale among communist forces. Much of the resolution reads like a calculated effort by Hanoi to reassure its supporters that victory against the Americans was not only possible but in fact certain. Another explanation for this double-speak is that it reflects the internal contradictions within Party circles. Some may have believed that American expansion was unlikely, while others, Le Duan probably among them, insisted that a wider war was coming. If Le Duan believed any of the anti-American rhetoric he regularly expressed, namely that the United States was intent on expanding the war to impose neocolonial rule over Vietnam, then he would have seen an American escalation as inevitable and probably coming soon. Yet it did not require an ideological conviction to surmise that escalation was a strong possibility. By mid-summer of 1964, President Johnson had announced an increase of military advisors from 16,000 to nearly 22,000.53 That wider war, it turned out, was close at hand. Though it would prove immensely costly to all concerned, it also offered some tangible advantages.

  7

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  Counting Bodies

  The Benefits of Escalation

  ON AUGUST 2, 1964, the USS Maddox snaked its way through North Vietnamese waters. Its presence drew the enemy’s attention. Three North Vietnamese torpedo boats fired on the vessel, most likely in response to U.S. shelling of two North Vietnamese islands a few nights before. What became known as the Gulf of Tonkin incident profoundly altered both American and Vietnamese history.1 A suspected second torpedo attack on August 4 never actually occurred, but the episode enabled President Johnson to obtain Congressional approval for expanded military action. Although Hanoi had hoped to avoid a full-scale American intervention, communist forces continued to attack the Americans. On February 6, 1965, Viet Cong forces bombarded numerous military targets, including an American air base at Pleiku, killing nine servicemen and wounding 128. President Johnson responded with Operation Flaming Dart, a series of air strikes against enemy targets. It was the incident at Pleiku as much as Tonkin that triggered the deployment of U.S. ground troops. The first waves of Marines arrived on March 8, 1965. By the summer there would be roughly 85,000 of them. U.S. forces would ultimately total more than half a million. They would depart only after 58,000 of them had died and nearly 3 million Vietnamese had been killed, with millions more hideously wounded.

  Why did Hanoi sanction attacks against Americans after the Tonkin Gulf incident? Hanoi did not desire an American escalation. Party leaders sought no wider war. Hanoi’s policy had been to avoid an American escalation, to keep the special war from transitioning to a limited war in which American forces would be doing the bulk of the fighting. The last thing Hanoi should have wanted was to provoke a full-scale invasion by the United States, especially at such a precarious time. Nevertheless, communist forces in South Vietnam continued to strike American bases after Tonkin, when the risk of an American escalation was at its peak.

  The reason for the attacks at Tonkin and Pleiku has never been fully clear. Lieutenant General Hoang Nghia Khanh was serving as Chief of Combat Operations Office A on the night of August 2, 1964, when the Maddox sailed into North Vietnamese territorial waters. His memoirs allege that the torpedo attacks were authorized by the high command, but he added that his superior, General Van Tien Dung, thought it a mistake to fire on the destroyer at a time when the North sought to limit the war from expanding in North Vietnam.2 Hanoi’s official history of combat operations states that it was an error for the General Staff command duty officer to have issued the order to attack the Maddox.3 It is possible that the torpedo attacks were not directed from the highest Party officials but were rather a knee-jerk response from the high command to retaliate for both an incursion into territorial waters and the recent covert American shelling of the North’s islands. If this were the case, it would indicate the inadequacy of Hanoi’s command over its military, since the aim up to this time had been to avoid an American escalation. The fog of war could account for Hanoi’s attack on the Maddox. But the situation becomes more curious when viewed in the context of subsequent attacks on Americans culminating at Pleiku.

  On August 7, just days after the Tonkin episode, Ho Chi Minh presided over a ceremony to commend the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) forces on their fighting spirit in the Tonkin Gulf and subsequent air battle. The military had set about a “scientific analysis” of the strengths and weaknesses of the enemy’s air force. As with any serious modern military, they scrutinized errors made during the battles in order to draw lessons and improve combat performance. At that time they mistakenly believed that they had shot down one American plane. Despite this erroneous belief, the DRV Navy had fought an American destroyer and fighter jets, yet all three of the DRV’s torpedo boats survived. The tiny DRV Navy had acquitted itself well, but Ho cautioned his soldiers not to become complacent. He told the troops:

  You have won a glorious victory, but don’t become self-satisfied. Don’t underestimate the enemy because of this victory. We must realize that, with regard to the American imperialists and their puppets, ‘even in the face of death these leopards will not change their spots.’ They still harbor many evil plots.4

  That same day the Politburo issued a directive in which it assessed America’s likely next steps. The Politburo concluded that America, despite having alternatives, would continue to escalate the war, particularly by increasing its attacks against the North.

  Tonkin marked a break in the pattern of American involvement. Rather than advising and fighting alongside soldiers of South Vietnam, and rather than conducting intelligence or sabotage operations within the DRV, three American actions combined to heightenen Hanoi’s fears of escalation. One was the shelling of islands on the night of July 30–31. The second was two bombing raids on August 1 and 2 over Laos and North Vietnam.5 The third was the Maddox mission. Taken together, these suggested a sudden spike in American aggression. They appeared to Hanoi as serious, provocative acts. Following the attack, the Maddox was ordered back into the area. The ship’s commander, John J. Herrick, suspected that he was being used in a game of cat and mouse, in which his ship was the mouse. Captain Herrick requested permission to withdraw, but Washington refused.6 President Johnson’s intentions aside, the question is whether Hanoi interpreted the Maddox and its attendant incidents as a provocation. Based on the Politburo’s directive of August 7, it clearly did.

  The post-Tonkin Politburo directive, titled “Increasing Combat Readiness to Counter All Enemy Schemes to Commit Provocations and to Attack North Vietnam,” repeatedly spoke of the need to crush the enemy’s expected provocations. The directive outlined America’s three principal options for future action. First, it could intensify the war in the South and continue to provoke and sabotage the North in order to block the flow of supplies southward. Second, it could expand the war into the North. Third, it could seek a diplomatic solution. The directive concluded that the United States would choose the first option.7

  According to the directive, the Politburo anticipated the Americans would engage in a variety of new and intensified provocations. These included the possibility of naval blockades, amphibious landings to destroy coastal areas and then withdraw, larger commando raids inside the DRV than those previously conducted, and inciting ethnic minorities and regime opponents to create disorder. The Politburo assumed that such actions could either be coordinated and launched simultaneously, or be taken in a gradual, step-by-step fashion for the purpose of testing the socialist camp’s reactions.8

  In light of the August 7 directive, it appears that Hanoi’s leadership had by this point come to see a full-scale war with America as unavoidable, if it had not already reached this conclusion well before. In fact, by March 1964, Hanoi’s military leadership already suspected that the covert American raids into North Vietnamese territory served as the precursor to a wider U
.S. assault upon the North.9 It is possible that Le Duan’s adherence to Marxist-Leninist ideology convinced him that an American expansion was historically inevitable, deeply rooted in the nature of capitalist nations. More likely, his estimation was based on a careful observation of America’s steadily growing involvement. By the time of Tonkin, there was little evidence to suggest that America planned to back down, regardless of prior Party insistence that it would surely be deterred.

  Several months earlier, on May 20, 1964, President Johnson had tasked an executive committee to develop plans for graduated bombing against the North. Following the presentation of the committee’s recommendations, Johnson cabled Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge in Saigon with a synthesis of the group’s conclusions: Southeast Asia could not be lost, time was on the communists’ side, and Congress should authorize the administration to take all necessary measures before it was too late.10

  Hanoi’s assessment of U.S. options after Tonkin closely resembled the options being considered in Washington at the highest levels, suggesting that either its strategic empathy was especially strong at this time or Hanoi had penetrated the American Embassy in Saigon and was literally reading the enemy’s thoughts. Unfortunately, DRV intelligence records from this period are still tightly guarded secrets. We therefore know little about how deeply Hanoi’s espionage penetrated American sources. Nonetheless, the August 7 Politburo directive did accurately gauge the mood within Washington’s innermost circle. President Johnson’s executive committee, which included the various departmental principals, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, had all but excluded negotiation as an option, just as Hanoi recognized. Their idea of negotiation amounted to Hanoi’s capitulation to America’s main demands and therefore would not have been taken seriously by Hanoi. Instead, by the fall and early winter of 1964, the group was increasingly coming to press for attacks against the North, just as Hanoi anticipated, though no action would be taken before the Presidential election in November.11

  If Hanoi believed that a U.S. escalation, which was already underway with respect to the number of military advisors, was soon to intensify, then what did it see as the purpose of continued attacks against American targets? If the attacks were intended to deter an American escalation, Hanoi would have had to have believed that the United States was in fact deterrable. Based on the Van Kien Dang records, it appears that opinion on this point was divided by the end of 1963. By August 7, 1964, following Tonkin, Politburo opinion clearly seems to have shifted to the view that the Americans intended to escalate. Deterrence, therefore, could hardly be effective if the decision to escalate had already been made. Nevertheless, Viet Cong attacks continued after Tonkin. On November 1, Viet Cong forces attacked the Bein Hoa airbase, killing four American airmen, wounding 72 others, and destroying five B-57 bombers. On December 24, Viet Cong units attacked the Brinks Hotel in Saigon where U.S. military personnel were housed. The assault resulted in the deaths of two Americans and 100 wounded. The February 6, 1965 attack on the Pleiku airbase at last produced a robust American response. All of these attacks occurred after Le Duan’s carefully-selected General, Nguyen Chi Thanh, arrived in the south to take command of the Central Office of South Vietnam (COSVN).

  If Hanoi had hoped to avoid provoking the Americans after Tonkin, it should have tried to restrict attacks on American bases. As head of the Party and having deep, intimate ties to the southern communist movement, and having installed his colleague General Nguyen Chi Thanh to oversee COSVN, Le Duan was exceedingly well-positioned to curb southern communist attacks. To do this, however, he would have needed to halt a common practice. Americans had long been considered legitimate targets by COSVN units. On July 20, 1956, a three-member commando team threw hand grenades into the U.S. Information Agency’s office in Saigon. On July 7, 1959, as U.S. servicemen were enjoying an evening film, a six-member team brazenly fired their way into the U.S. Military Assistance and Advisory Group headquarters in Bien Hoa, killing two American soldiers and wounding one officer.12 Viet Cong units employed terrorist methods as well. In March 1963, a covert Viet Cong operative working as an air controller at the Tan Son Nhat airfield met with his Vietnamese lover, chatting in the boarding area while roughly 100 U.S. military personnel waited for their flight. The woman, however, was not his lover but in fact another operative who had brought with her a bomb in a tourist bag. The “couple” switched their own bag with that of an American, who unsuspectingly carried it aboard. The bomb’s timing mechanism malfunctioned, exploding only after the plane had safely landed in San Francisco, injuring two mail distribution clerks.13 The most provocative act of all was the failed assassination attempt on Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on May 2, 1964, when Nguyen Van Troi planted a mine below a bridge over which the Defense Secretary would travel. The mine was discovered in time, and Nguyen Van Troi was captured and executed by a firing squad at the hands of Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) forces. In commemoration of this assassination attempt, roads in Saigon and most major Vietnamese cities still bear Nguyen Van Troi’s name. For COSVN forces to attack Americans or their bases was not unique. The question is what Hanoi hoped to gain by continuing those attacks after Tonkin, given that provoking the Americans risked expanding the war. The most provocative of those attacks culminated at Pleiku and provided President Johnson with the pretext he needed to begin the American escalation.

  When, decades later, Robert McNamara convened a conference of former adversaries in June 1997 to reflect on the war, General Dang Vu Hiep claimed that the attacks at Pleiku had occurred solely at the local commanders’ initiative. They were not, the elderly General asserted, directed by Hanoi, nor were they connected to Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin’s visit.14 Subsequent to the McNamara meetings, General Hiep published his reaction to those discussions. He viewed Pleiku as an utterly ordinary attack, of lesser significance than others his side had struck against American targets. He could only understand the robust American reaction to Pleiku as intentionally blown out of proportion to serve as an excuse for expanding the war. He noted that the American air strikes, supposedly in response to Pleiku and which occurred on the following day, had to have been planned months in advance.15

  But then the General added a curious note. The historian George Herring asked him who had planned the attacks. As mentioned above, the General affirmed that they had not been directed from Hanoi. Professor Herring asked if anyone had been criticized for launching the attacks. General Hiep replied that not only was no one criticized, his superiors commended them for the attack.16 Commendations can help foster a fighting spirit, but if the goal had been to avoid American escalation, then such measures were ill-timed at best. Of course, the comments of Vietnamese officials must still be taken with great skepticism. We cannot conclude beyond doubt that Hanoi did not in fact direct the attacks at Pleiku or elsewhere. Nonetheless, the more important question is not whether Hanoi directed the attacks but rather why it did not seek to prevent them at such a crucial juncture.

  The historian Frederick Logevall has advanced the standard interpretation that whether the attacks were directed by Hanoi or not, they were intended to destabilize the South Vietnamese government and not to engender an American retaliation.17 In Logevall’s view, Pleiku offered Washington the pretext for escalation it had been seeking. The Johnson administration immediately responded with air attacks against the North. Operation Flaming Dart deployed 132 U.S. and 22 South Vietnamese aircraft to strike four targets in the southern part of North Vietnam. America’s direct combat against North Vietnam had begun.

  Le Duan’s writings to COSVN in February 1965 partly support Logevall’s conclusion, but they do not tell the whole story. They show that the First Secretary hoped to weaken the Saigon regime before a full-scale American escalation could develop. In February 1965, Le Duan wrote to the southern communists to elaborate on points from the most recent Party resolution that year. It is unclear wheth
er he wrote this letter before or after the Pleiku attacks. As he saw it, the aim was to fight in such a way that would “virtually eliminate” the possibility of an American escalation.18 It had become a race against time to totally destroy the ARVN forces so that the United States could not rely on them any longer. “[The Americans] will only accept defeat when that source of support no longer exists.”19 And yet, based on the August 7 Politburo directive following Tonkin, it seems that Le Duan had already concluded that an American escalation could not be deterred. Why then would he have instructed southern communists that weakening ARVN forces could deter America?

  Le Duan’s next points bear close scrutiny. He argued that the United States would not be willing to expand because it understood that it could not afford to become bogged down in a protracted war, especially in light of its other global commitments. Destruction of the puppet army would lead the Americans into a quagmire in Vietnam, forced to deploy ever more troops. Since the United States was the world’s leading imperialist power, it had interests and commitments around the globe, and becoming overcommitted and bogged down in Vietnam would limit its ability to act elsewhere.20 This had been Le Duan’s consistent line of reasoning for years. He possessed a firm grasp of geostrategic realities, always cognizant of his enemies’ global advantages as well as their constraints. Yet we cannot rely solely on Le Duan’s letters south as a Rosetta Stone for decrypting his beliefs. He was very likely convinced that America would be defeated in a protracted war, but, in contrast to what he told the southern communists, he probably did not think that the United States would soon back down.