Later that year, Congress crafted a joint resolution to limit the authority of any president to make war. Called the War Powers Resolution, it required the commander-in-chief to report to the legislative branch within 48 hours of committing American troops to combat. Unless approved by Congress within 60 days, military action must end immediately. Without a declaration of war or another authorization, the executive branch must withdraw all troops in a 30-day period. The resolution was vetoed by Nixon, but Congress overrode the veto.
The “imperial presidency” of Nixon unraveled during the Watergate scandal. Under great stress throughout 1974, he evinced the symptoms of a nervous breakdown. At the Pentagon, Secretary Schlesinger issued instructions to military commanders around the world to disregard orders from the commander-in-chief without his countersignature. On August 9, Nixon resigned from office to avoid impeachment. His successor, Gerald R. Ford, calmed Washington D.C. while refusing to resume military actions in Southeast Asia.
Even though Hanoi repeatedly violated the Paris Peace Accords, communist leaders postponed a final offensive to defeat Saigon until Ford succeeded Nixon. The NVA launched artillery attacks in South Vietnam that December, and their divisions captured the Phuoc Long Province near the Cambodian border on January 5, 1975. They waited for a military blow from the U.S., but none came. Because Congress previously terminated funding for bombing campaigns in Southeast Asia, all war plans remained on the shelf. No additional military aid for Saigon was forthcoming. Thieu began to abandon the Central Highlands and redeployed ARVN to defend the cities near the coast. From the vantage point of Hanoi, the situation seemed ideal for renewing the war for national unification.
War raged across Southeast Asia. The Khmer Rouge guerrillas in Cambodia seized power, while the Pathet Lao forces achieved dominance in Laos. By March, the North Vietnamese launched a full-scale invasion across South Vietnam and quickly captured Hue, Da Nang, and Cam Ranh Bay. Within days, they controlled the northern half of South Vietnam. Civilians fled in panic, but not until communist forces had massacred thousands. ARVN hastily established a defensive perimeter around Saigon. Thieu soon resigned from office, and Duong Van Minh became the last president of South Vietnam. As the closing campaign to overrun the capital began, ARVN units disintegrated. The end was near.
In Washington D.C., the Ford administration authorized Operation Frequent Wind to evacuate Saigon. Helicopters transported 7,100 Americans and South Vietnamese to Navy vessels waiting off shore. At least 70,000 South Vietnamese reached the safety of U.S. warships in the South China Sea. Television cameras recorded the last airlift out of the capital, which departed from the roof of the U.S. embassy. On April 30, 1975, Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese, who soon renamed it Ho Chi Minh City.
Conclusion
While winning the international race to the moon, the U.S. stumbled badly in the Third World. Following the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, the Johnson administration counted on graduated pressure to secure South Vietnam. North Vietnam survived the attrition, because the Soviet Union and China replaced many of the assets that U.S. firepower destroyed. Hanoi paid a high price in lives for the Tet Offensive, but Washington D.C. decided to pursue a settlement thereafter. The war in Vietnam divided the American people and demoralized the armed forces. As the troops exited Indochina, the Nixon administration ended the draft. Instead of “peace with honor,” the fall of Saigon seemed indicative of American decline. “You know you never defeated us on the battlefield,” said Colonel Harry Summers to a North Vietnamese officer after the war. “That may be so,” replied his former adversary, “but it is also irrelevant.”
The American experience in Vietnam left citizens with a sense of frustration, shame, and disillusionment about the war. The majority associated the policies of national security with the bleakness of an impossible mission, thereby denying responsibility for what happened. Many expressed outrage about governmental authorities, who refused to allow U.S. forces to achieve victory in a decisive way. Others assigned blame to the national media for delivering a constant barrage of bad news. Some acknowledged the illegitimacy of the Saigon regime as well as the futility of nation-building. A few heaped scorn on the returning veterans by spewing curses or expectorate. Millions continued to visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial known simply as “the wall,” which rendered the dead into an abstraction of polished black granite. In almost every post-mortem on the tragedy, Americans fixated upon the myth of an unwinnable war.
Remembering Vietnam as unwinnable obscured the ways in which Americans actually failed to win. No commander-in-chief wanted to lose, yet the application of military power in the “Land of the Blue Dragon” revealed arrogance, dishonesty, and recklessness. The decision to not mobilize the reserve component left important elements of the military establishment disengaged from the protracted struggle. The helicopters, fighters, bombers, tanks, and howitzers failed to make the war any more bearable for conscripts of the Selective Service system. The Pentagon conflated the tactics for killing the enemy with a plan for countering an insurgency. Nothing was gained by the gradual withdrawal of U.S. forces that could not have been achieved by declaring victory and going home in 1969. Even though MACV gave South Vietnam the capacity to defend the country, ARVN gave up the fight against existential threats. A better war was possible, but the American strategy remained a losing one.
The losing strategy forced a new generation of military professionals to rethink the doctrines of the Cold War. Informed by the diversity of their experiences in uniform, they came of age while serving tours of duty in Southeast Asia and elsewhere around the globe. Given the variance in where and when they served, soldiering through the uncertainty imparted the vision necessary to imagine a different kind of war – one that appreciated the human and psychological dimensions of a prolonged conflict. They learned valuable lessons about the efficacy of counterinsurgency operations. While devising ways to improve the readiness and the capabilities of the armed forces, they also gained insight into the relationship between the civilians and the military in Washington D.C. After the bombings stopped, they began to rebuild the Army, Navy, and Air Force and eventually helped the nation to move beyond the tragedy of Vietnam.
Essential Questions
1 What sustained the communist insurgency within South Vietnam?
2 How did the Tet Offensive impact U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War?
3 Was ending the draft a mistake? Why, or why not?
Suggested Readings
Appy, Christian G. Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.
Beattie, Keith. The Scar that Binds: American Culture and the Vietnam War. New York: New York University Press, 1998.
Clodfelter, Mark. The Limits of American Air Power: The American Bombing of North Vietnam. New York: Free Press, 1989.
Heardon, Patrick J. The Tragedy of Vietnam. 3rd edition. New York: Pearson Longman, 2008.
Herring, George C. America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975. 4th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002.
Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam: A History. New York: Viking Press, 1983.
Kindsvatter, Peter S. American Soldiers: Ground Combat in the World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003.
McMaster, H. R. Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam. New York: HarperCollins, 1997.
Moise, Edwin E. Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
Olson, James S., and Randy Roberts. Where the Domino Fell: America and Vietnam, 1945–1995. 5th edition. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008.
Prados, John. Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War, 1945–1975. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009.
Santoli, Al, ed. Everything We Had: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Thirty-Three American Soldiers Who Fought It. New York: Random H
ouse, 1981.
Schulzinger, Robert D. A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941–1975. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Sorley, Lewis. A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam. New York: Harcourt, 1999.
Sorley, Lewis. Thunderbolt: General Creighton Abrams and the Army of his Times. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.
Spector, Ronald H. After Tet: The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam. New York: Free Press, 1993.
Vuic, Kara D. Officer, Nurse, Woman: The U.S. Army Nurse Corps in the Vietnam War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.
15
A New Military (1975–2001)
Introduction
A sandstorm blew across southern Iraq, which reduced the visibility of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment to less than 220 yards. Captain H. R. McMaster, commander of Eagle Troop in the 2nd Squadron, navigated using a Global Positioning System, or GPS. While crossing the longitudinal reading of 70 Easting, his M-1 Abrams tank operated in the center of a wedge formation with nine tanks. “As a platoon leader or company commander,” the West Point graduate observed, “you must be forward to have a clear picture of the situation.”
At exactly 4:19 p.m. on February 26, 1991, McMaster saw eight T-72 tanks of the Iraqi Republican Guard ahead. He barked a command to Eagle Troop: “Fire, Fire Sabot.” In less than a minute, his men and machines destroyed everything in their range.
Amid the deafening noise, multiple fireballs, and thick smoke, McMaster pressed forward without hesitating. With M-2 Bradley fighting vehicles to the rear, the American tankers sped through minefields. Machine gunners mauled Iraqi infantry running for trenches or shouldering rocket-propelled grenades. As an enemy tanker traversed to fire on Eagle Troop, a round stuck in the chamber of an Abrams in McMaster's wedge. The loader grabbed hold of the hatch and kicked the round, which allowed the breech to close and the gunner to fire. Another Soviet-built T-72 exploded in flames.
While McMaster cleared the western defensive position, he received a radio message from an executive officer voicing caution. The line of 70 Easting marked his limit, but the commander of Eagle Troop rolled onward. “Tell them I'm sorry,” he radioed back.
McMaster reached 73 Easting, where the enemy's reserve included more tanks as well as the brigade commander's bunker. After capturing the commander, Eagle Troop took the entire position in 23 minutes. The firing ceased, reported McMaster, once “we had nothing left to shoot.” In the Battle of 73 Easting, Americans destroyed 50 T-72s, 25 armored personnel carriers, 40 trucks, and other equipment without suffering a single casualty.
Figure 15.1 M-1A1 Abrams main battle tanks of Co. A, 3rd Battalion, 32nd Armored Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, December 9, 1990. Photo DA-ST-92-07289, Department of Defense, http://www.defenseimagery.mil/
Americans in the desert displayed awesome military prowess, which helped the U.S. to leave behind the unpleasant memories of the previous war. Before the war in Iraq, widespread opposition to fighting “another Vietnam” made the commander-in-chief less likely to use force overseas. President Jimmy Carter, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, offered pardons to Vietnam-era draft resisters and expressed support for international human rights after taking office. While the Pentagon attempted to restore the fighting capabilities lost in the jungles of Southeast Asia, military professionals vowed to discourage armed conflict without the backing of the American people. Economic weakness further undermined national confidence, as ambivalence toward foreign adventures continued to raise doubts about American power.
Owing to the buildup of American power in the 1980s, U.S. forces regained the respect of the nation. Force modernization not only reinvented the battlefield but also revised strategies, tactics, and logistics. Faith in nuclear deterrence and collective security flagged, but the Army, Navy, and Air Force tested new doctrines and concepts. With a rising tide of patriotism, conservatives such as President Ronald Reagan promised to secure peace through strength. “Freedom is for everyone around the world,” wrote a service member deployed to Saudi Arabia, “not just Americans.” American troops stood strong at the end of the Cold War, when the world no longer seemed divided by the narrowness of ideology.
Watching the world turn in the blink of an eye, a generation raised in the shadow of the Cold War remained anxious about national defense. In the absence of conscription to replenish the armed forces, it seemed imperative to devise ways to win future wars without heavy casualties. It also became clear to many that downsizing the force structure posed a serious problem for a nation preoccupied with all-or-nothing wars. Equipped with high-speed networks for communication and high-tech weapons of precision, men and women in uniform found themselves conducting peace operations in faraway lands such as Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo.
Revival
The cultural fallout from the social movements of the 1960s left young Americans prone to question authority. In the absence of a draft, replenishing the military required savvy appeals attuned to the marketplace. Competing with civilian occupations for labor, each of the branches struggled initially to attract qualified recruits. The all-volunteer forces eventually became smaller, leaner, and better, which revived the nation's defense posture in the wake of Vietnam.
By 1976, potential volunteers were required to complete the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Test, or ASVAB. Given to all high-school seniors for free, the pencil-and-paper test helped to determine an appropriate Military Occupation Specialty, or MOS, for a prospective recruit. Generally, recruiters earned incentives for those scoring in the superior categories and holding high-school diplomas. Because fewer males with the highest aptitudes appeared willing to volunteer, officials in Washington D.C. worried about fielding “hollow” forces.
To field forces with better test scores, the American military became increasingly interested in the untapped pool of females. Once male conscription ended, the number of women in uniform grew rapidly. In 1971, women comprised only 1.3 percent of the enlisted ranks. By the end of the decade, the number had risen to 7.6 percent. Furthermore, Congress opened the service academies to women in 1975. Although the Coast Guard Academy admitted women first, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point admitted 119 female cadets for the fall of 1976. By 1978, the Army had eliminated the separate Women's Army Corps and mixed women into non-combat units with males. Reflecting the impact of “women's lib” on civil society, the military establishment took charges of sexual harassment and gender inequity more seriously. The Carter administration requested that Congress require females to register for the Selective Service system in 1980, but his request died in committee.
Carter selected the nation's first African American Secretary of the Army, Clifford Alexander. He feared that the quantitative measures of quality veiled patterns of racial discrimination, although the percentages of racial and ethnic minorities in uniform actually grew. Despite the close relationship in aggregate data between indicators of quality and the completion of enlistment, he intended to keep the Army from discounting the unrecognized potential of those lacking high-school diplomas or hailing from inner-city ghettos. Consequently, the Army instituted policies that ensured equal opportunity across the ranks.
Consistent with the Total Force policy, the National Guard provided key personnel to complete or to “round out” the Army's reduced divisions. By 1979, the Capstone program had identified all units necessary to fulfill wartime missions and aligned them with appropriate Army headquarters for active duty. For most inactive personnel, it allowed detailed preparations for combat in Europe. By design, the Pentagon relied more heavily than ever on the reserve component.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon attempted to revitalize the training of all service members. The Army's Training and Doctrinal Command, or TRADOC, developed a comprehensive and interconnected program to assess not only individual competence but also unit proficiency. Each soldier mastered the skills appropriate to his or her grade, which included ongoing me
asurements of readiness through a series of tests. Authoritarian forms of discipline and punishment gave way to positive reinforcement, as commanders eased regulations around the barracks. For commissioned and non-commissioned officers, training instilled the Zen-like concept of “Be-Know-Do.”
The AirLand Battle Doctrine influenced the most significant concepts for training. General William E. DePuy, the commander of TRADOC, crafted a new edition of FM 100-5 Operations in 1976. Based upon the lessons learned from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, the revised Army field manual underscored maneuver warfare in addition to air power. It touted “active defense,” though subsequent revisions accentuated offensive tactics, sophisticated technology, and indirect movements in the theaters of operations. Simply stated, the AirLand Battle Doctrine stressed preparing to win the first battle of the next war.
When General Donn A. Starry assumed command of TRADOC the following year, he improved the AirLand Battle Doctrine with language about the “extended battlefield.” He worked intently with Lieutenant Colonel Huba Wass de Czege, an officer at the Command and General Staff College, on field manual updates that categorized operations as close, deep, and rear. In close operations, large tactical formations fought an enemy using maneuver, direct engagement, and indirect fire support. Moreover, deep operations helped to win the battle by engaging enemy formations through deception, surveillance, and interdiction. Likewise, rear operations assembled and moved reserves into secure areas while continuing the logistical efforts to sustain momentum in campaigns. Victory hinged upon the initiative, agility, and synchronization of all combat arms, which kept the enemy off balance with an edge in lethal weaponry.
Irrespective of the new concepts, the Carter administration made few improvements to U.S. forces. The president canceled the B-1 bomber program, slashed the Navy's shipbuilding plans, and reduced DOD outlays for operations, technology, and maintenance. However, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 indicated that détente had failed to deter communist aggression in the Third World. Light infantry divisions comprised elements of a new Rapid Deployment Force for the Middle East, but critics complained that the “deployability” of 200,000 troops failed to offset their lack of heavy armor. Congress wanted only modest increases in defense spending. While Americans experienced a crisis of confidence, the White House grew more belligerent toward the Kremlin.
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