The war termination problems that the United States encountered during the major post-9/11 interventions may not be an aberration. The Vietnam conflict suffered from the same factors, albeit in subtly different ways. Explanations of the poor outcome in Vietnam include three schools of thought. The counterinsurgency school argues that General Westmoreland and the US Army were fixated on conventional war and unable to adapt their tactics to meet the demands of fighting an insurgency.1 An alternative, suggested by Westmoreland in his memoirs, is that the nature of the conflict required the US military to focus on fighting the primary threat from North Vietnamese and Viet Cong main force units, while the South Vietnamese military not committed to the conventional fight would need to take on the guerrillas.2 This school suggests that the campaign design and tactics were right but the war was largely unwinnable due to factors beyond Westmoreland’s control. A third school examines some of these factors from a civil-military lens, including civilian micromanagement of military operations, the failure of military officials to provide candid advice, and how the political decision not to mobilize the country may have undercut public support for the war.3
Examination of war termination challenges enriches these perspectives. An important difference from the Iraq and Afghanistan case studies is that a negotiated outcome—in the form of North Vietnamese capitulation—was discussed from 1964 to 1966 during deliberations over whether to escalate the Vietnam War.4 President Johnson wanted to limit the costs of supporting South Vietnam and had no intention of conducting a large-scale ground invasion of North Vietnam or using nuclear weapons to force them to sue for peace. The successful use of graduated pressure during the Cuban Missile Crisis became an important reference point for a lower-cost alternative in Vietnam.5 Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara and other civilian leaders believed the United States could use a similar model to carefully raise the pressure on the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) to compel them to stop supporting the National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) insurgency against the South Vietnam government.6 This approach, they believed, would limit the costs to the United States and avoid the risk of Chinese or Russian intervention. The uniformed military, however, wanted to either sharply escalate the conflict to compel the DRV to give up its proxies (which meant widespread bombing of North Vietnam and perhaps a ground force invasion) or get out.7
The odds against success in Vietnam may have been greater than in post-9/11 Afghanistan or Iraq. In the latter two, the United States overthrew existing regimes. These were replaced by new governments before the insurgencies fomented (although resistance began immediately in Iraq, and within a year in Afghanistan). In Vietnam, the United States needed to rescue a deeply troubled client.8 By 1964 the NLF had significant internal support as well as external support and sanctuary from North Vietnam, and it controlled roughly 40 percent of the country.9 The South Vietnamese government was deeply kleptocratic and losing popular legitimacy.10 Either situation, unless reversed, normally results in a loss for the government. South Vietnam had both from the start of the US intervention.11
The United States was in a difficult position. As the discussions over strategy continued into 1965, the civilian leadership understood the prospects of success to be low.12 The Johnson administration began to test the graduated pressure concept by escalating the conflict while attempting to start negotiations.13 They discussed unilateral suspension of military actions, which prompted significant resistance from the military.14 Johnson believed he needed to show the American people and the world that he was as serious about peace as he was about fighting.15 “The weakest chink in our armor,” he surmised, “is public opinion.”16 When Johnson said that he was very reluctant to go against the views of the Joint Chiefs, McNamara advised, “We decide what we want and impose it on them. They see this as a total military problem—nothing will change their views.”17
Johnson eventually approved a 37-day bombing pause beginning on December 24 and a 30-hour Christmas cease-fire.18 Washington wanted to make clear that the halt was a serious move toward peace that required a suitable concession from North Vietnam to keep the process moving forward. The United States engaged in efforts with 34 countries to communicate to the North Vietnamese and the world America’s desire for a peaceful resolution.19 As Rusk put it, “We have put everything into the basket of peace except the surrender of South Viet-Nam.”20
The graduated pressure concept overestimated the effects of strategic bombing and underestimated the strength of the DRV’s resolve and the consequences of South Vietnam’s political dysfunction.21 The Americans expected the bombing pause to signal a willingness to bargain. The DRV dangled the faint hope of negotiations to reduce military pressure. By linking bombing to peace talks, the Johnson administration unwittingly fell into this trap. “Hanoi used negotiations as a tactic of warfare to buy time to strengthen its military capabilities in South Vietnam and weaken the will of those on the side of Saigon,” Goodman summarizes. “Rather than serving as an alternative to warfare, consequently, the Vietnam negotiations were an extension of it.”22 This pattern, he argues, protracted the war and played to the DRV’s advantage.23
The result of the civil-military frictions over strategy was a thinly camouflaged bureaucratic struggle. Unable to convince the uniformed military of their logic, the Johnson administration micromanaged military operations and authorities in the hope of using graduated pressure to bring about peace talks. The uniformed military, on other hand, played bureaucratic games to prod McNamara and Johnson into escalating the war toward the troop levels and authorities they believed were necessary to force DRV capitulation.24 US troop levels surged from approximately 200,000 in 1965 to over 500,000 by 1968.25 The United States adopted several different operational approaches to defeating the insurgency, to include taking over the war effort in 1965, but it was never able to reduce the insurgency’s sustainable support or pressure the South Vietnamese government to govern effectively enough to win the battle of legitimacy in the insurgent heartlands.26 As a South Vietnamese official explained to journalist Stanley Karnow in late 1964, “Our big advantage over the Americans is that they want to win the war more than we do.”27
This losing strategy became intractable. Assessments were made within bureaucratic silos and then aggregated to convey an overall picture. Doing so painted a misleading image. Officials remained upbeat despite the worsening security situation.28 Such assurances impeded strategic adaptation, as debates between advocates and skeptics grew poisonous.29 The Johnson administration and the military command began losing credibility. Even though Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in May 1967 counseled President Johnson to “negotiate an unfavorable peace,” he could not overcome the status quo bias.30 The 1968 Tet Offensive was a psychological shock to the United States, irrevocably damaged public support for the war, and was a key factor in Johnson’s declining to run for reelection.31 Although the insurgency suffered heavy losses and never fully recovered, their residual strength combined with that of the North Vietnamese Regular Army sustained the conflict. The Soviet Union reportedly agreed in 1968 to facilitate talks between the Johnson administration and Hanoi. Biographer John A. Farrell argues that Nixon sabotaged the effort by convincing South Vietnam’s President Thieu to object.32
A change in the administration was necessary to alter the strategy. Richard Nixon won the 1968 election in part by promising to end the Vietnam War. By 1969 he began troop withdrawals and the process of “Vietnamization” to turn the war back over to the South Vietnamese.33 Transition efforts, however, were undermined by severe patron-client problems. The South Vietnamese government remained unable to win the battle of legitimacy in insurgent-controlled areas. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger began secret talks with North Vietnam in August 1969.34 The clear US intention to withdraw from the war limited American bargaining leverage.35 The United States and the DRV concluded an initial agreement in October 1972, but South Vietnam rejected the accord and talks deadlocked.36 To break the impasse, Nixon authorized Operation Linebacker II, which unleashed a massive bombing campaign against the DRV from December 18 to December 29, while pressuring South Vietnam’s President Thieu to accept the agreement. The Paris Peace Accords were signed a month later, on January 27, 1973.37 The accords called for national elections and allowed the North Vietnamese Army to remain in the South, but they were only to receive reinforcements sufficient to replace losses. The United States had 60 days to withdraw all forces from South Vietnam. That last article, explained historian Peter Church, “proved . . . to be the only one of the Paris Agreements which was fully carried out.”38
This short examination of the Vietnam conflict suggests that the war termination problems the United States has experienced in post-9/11 interventions are probably not a new phenomenon. The Johnson administration assumed a decisive victory outcome was possible at low-cost by using graduated pressure to compel North Vietnam to cut off support to the NLF. The costs, however, were insufficiently compelling to force the DRV to capitulate to American demands. The Joint Chiefs were never persuaded of the logic. Instead of recommending the exploration of alternative strategies that met Johnson’s intentions to limit the costs of the war, the uniformed military went all-in for decisive victory. They manipulated McNamara and Johnson into escalating troop levels to the amount they felt was necessary to win, even though they were unable to gain approval for greater actions against North Vietnam. American public opinion turned against the war. The Nixon administration attempted negotiations while withdrawing American forces. Predictably, the North Vietnamese were willing to agree to some concessions to ease the US withdrawal, but not to end the conflict. By 1975, the US Congress slashed funding on military aid to South Vietnam from $2.8 billion in 1973 to $300 million. North Vietnamese and NLF forces took Saigon on April 30, 1975.