Military events occurring during this period of political chaos in South Vietnam incited the Johnson administration to make several fateful decisions. On November 1, 1964, at Bien-Hoa Airbase, close to Saigon, a series of guerrilla mortars killed four Americans and destroyed five U.S. B-57 bombers. This was the first strike by the communists against U.S. military personnel and materiel. Although the Pentagon urged President Johnson to order an immediate air strike against air bases near Hanoi, Johnson only ordered an updated bombing scenario against North Vietnam. However, when a communist guerrilla blitz on the U.S. compound at Pleiku on February 7, 1965, killed nine Americans and wounded seventy-six others, President Johnson authorized a new phase of bombing above the 17th parallel that swept out the Dong-Hoi barracks, North Vietnam’s major troop dispersal base. On the same day, the president ordered the countdown to “Rolling Thunder,” the phase two sustained bombing of North Vietnam. At dawn on March 2, 1965, a hundred American fighter-bombers crossed the DMZ and within minutes bridges, rail-lines, port and supply facilities at Vinh were flattened down. Rolling Thunder had begun its first stage.
Many in the U.S. Defense and State Departments, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff and MACV commander General Westmoreland in particular, argued the need for combat troops for South Vietnam. Ambassador Taylor, who opposed a ground war, finally agreed to the first landing of two U.S. Marine battalions in Danang on March 8, 1965. Thus, within the space of a week, President Johnson had decided to wage both an “air war” and a “ground war” in Vietnam. Weeks later, the Pentagon asked the president for forty-four additional Marine battalions. According to Bui Diem, then chief of staff of Premier Phan Huy Quat, U.S. combat troops grew to 82,000 in the first six weeks, 120,000 within four months, 184,000 within that first year (1965), 300,000 by mid–1966 and more than 500,000 by 1967, when he became ambassador to Washington. From the beginning of 1965, General Westmoreland, COMUSMACV, had taken primary steps for a ground war. In addition to the U.S. combat troops in Vietnam, the United States’ allies in the Asia-Pacific region and the SEATO nations, sharing a secret commitment with the United States, sent combat troops or Peace Corps staff units to South Vietnam. Nearly 60,000 allied combat troops from Australia, New-Zealand, and South Korea, and Peace Corps from the Philippines and Thailand were placed under the command of General Westmoreland, plus 500,000 of the ARVN in joint operations with the U.S. combat forces since January 1966.
Westmoreland’s plan consisted of three stages: (1) securing base areas; (2) deep patrolling and an offensive phase; and (3) search and destroy operations. Although this way of conducting the war has been called “Westmoreland War” by many American historians, the label is inappropriate. As field commander, General Westmoreland had to perform his duty in accordance with the real military situations in South Vietnam. His search and destroy strategy was needed for South Vietnam to stand three years after the death of Ngo Dinh Diem and the abandonment of the Strategic Hamlets strategy in the countryside. When more than four NVA regular divisions infiltrated South Vietnam from 1964 to 1965, the number of communist forces, including the Liberation Army, rose to more than 120,000 men who were armed with modern weapons from the communist bloc. They began their second phase, the “war of movement,” in the South and controlled the Central Highlands and the Mekong Delta, except for the province and district urban areas. They created several secret zones (mâ.t-khu) or war zones around Saigon. These included War-Zone D and War-Zone Duong Minh Chau in Bien-Hoa, Binh-Duong and Tay-Ninh Provinces, secret zones Tam-giac-sat and Long-nguyen in Binh-Duong and Binh-Long Provinces, and the Rung-Sat secret zone right at the door of Saigon Naval Port.
General Westmoreland’s first search and destroy operation swept War-Zone D on June 27, 1965. By continuing these operations, in just over one year he pushed all communist regular units to their sanctuaries in Cambodia and Laos. In the meantime, he reorganized the ARVN into the RVNAF (Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces) and doubled its strength to more than 500,000 men in 1965, and to almost one million by the end of 1967. However, the war that Westmoreland really wanted was not in South Vietnam but was in the southern part of Laos and North Vietnam. General Westmoreland’s most significant vision was to urge President Johnson to rally the U.S. public behind the U.S. war in Vietnam. Unfortunately, while he commanded U.S. troops in South Vietnam, the bureaucrats in Washington fought the war in Vietnam. Thus, it became the “Lunch Bunch War” instead of the “Westmoreland War.”
General Maxwell D. Taylor left Vietnam in July 1965, after reluctantly receiving the 101st Airborne Division’s landing at Cam-Ranh Bay. General William C. Westmoreland, as MACV commander, had to greet Henry Cabot Lodge, who returned to Saigon as ambassador. The general had to endure the effects of the “Rolling Thunder” air campaign that pushed Hanoi not to retreat from the war but to advance into the South by developing the Ho Chi Minh Trail and deploying more NVA divisions to South Vietnam. In 1966 this escalation of North Vietnam’s strength in the South through the trail forced the United States to establish the “McNamara Line.” Thus, Westmoreland had to accept a complicated defensive war in South Vietnam while his initiatives to cut the trail were rejected by the “Lunch Powers” in Washington. This resulted in the communist Tet Offensive that completely extinguished President Johnson’s morale.
The Rolling Thunder air campaign widened the war to North Vietnam while maintaining Johnson’s “limitation” notion. Retired U.S. Army lt. general Philip B. Davidson, former chief of staff of J2-MACV, and retired U.S. Air Force colonel Jacksel Broughton (author of Going Downtown: The War Against Hanoi and Washington) named this Johnson notion “gradualism.” General Davidson writes: “This strategy was one of ‘gradualism’ … [intended] not to apply maximum force toward the military to defeat the adversary; rather it must be to employ force skillfully along a continuous spectrum … in order to exert the desired effect on the adversary’s will. In plain English, it meant that you start operations against an enemy by a limited attack, gradually increasing the pressure until the adversary does what you want him to do. It is, in essence, the use of limited means to attain a limited end.”1 In the August 1994 issue of Vietnam Magazine Colonel Broughton elaborated on the reasons for the failure of the Rolling Thunder air campaign against North Vietnam in an article entitled “Wasted Air Power.” According to Broughton, Rolling Thunder’s first phase, which lasted from March of 1965 through March of 1968, was theoretically launched to interdict North Vietnam’s capability to wage war in South Vietnam. Its efforts would concentrate on North Vietnam’s potential means of waging war without restriction of targets. But the bureaucrats in Washington neglected this important issue. The recommendations of military commanders were ignored. Admiral Grant Sharp, commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, who was in charge of the Rolling Thunder air campaign, proposed a list of 94 targets related to the “six primary systems” in North Vietnam that should be promptly and decisively destroyed to prevent the North Vietnamese from supporting their forces and continuing the war in South Vietnam. These systems included the electrical networks, the limited industries with warmaking capabilities, the transportation network, the air bases and training centers, the petroleum, oil and lubricant facilities, and the constantly improving Soviet- and China-sponsored air defense network. After his proposal list was processed through the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) it was rejected by the “Lunch Bunch,” or delayed until the end of 1968. The Lunch Powers themselves chose the targets to be struck by air. Colonel Broughton estimated that if in the early stages of the Rolling Thunder air campaign, the United States had concentrated its effort to eliminate these systems, when the North air defense network was weak or nonexistent, the course of the war would have drastically changed.
In addition to these “six primary systems,” two more arterial strategic networks in North Vietnam should have been considered: the railroad network from China to Hanoi and the sea transport that conveyed war goods from the Soviet Union to Hai-Phong Harbor in North Vietnam. Hanoi was almost totally dependent on these communist nations for economic and military aid to sustain the war, so these supply routes were crucial for a prolonged war.
In the beginning of the 1960s, the Sino-Soviet rift threatened problems for Hanoi’s receipt of economic and military aid from China and the Soviet Union. Ho Chi Minh formulated a strategy to ensure the continual support from both Beijing and Moscow. War goods from China went to Vietnam via the Nanning-Hanoi and Kunming-Hanoi railway lines and by eight major roads to North Vietnam, with 80 percent of goods coming through railways and 20 percent by truck or bicycle. Roughly 80 percent of war goods from the Soviet Union in 1965 went by sea transport to Hai-Phong Harbor.
In 1963, Admiral Thomas Moorer, commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, proposed mining Hai-Phong Harbor. But his proposal was passed over in favor of the air campaign to interdict the supply railways from China only. The Rolling Thunder campaign was later taken in this sense, and Hai-Phong Harbor remained intact until May of 1972. Allan B. Calhamer, a military historian, remarked in an April 1998 magazine article that “the United States feared that if, in response to closing of Hai-Phong Harbor, China permitted the Soviet Union to ship to North Vietnam by rail, China and the Soviet Union might simply draw closer together diplomatically.”2 A more accurate explanation was that the Lunch Bunch feared that a U.S. blockade of Hai-Phong Harbor would provoke a U.S.–U.S.S.R. confrontation. Thus, the two railroad lines from China to Hanoi became the main targets of the Rolling Thunder air campaign while the main purpose was more to scare North Vietnam into submission than to destroy targets. Colonel Broughton summed up the strategy of the Lunch Bunch: “They stuck with the ‘gradualism,’ which simply means don’t hurt the enemy too much, then back off and see if they’re ready to quit.”3
To pursue their initial goals, Washington bureaucrats placed a number of restrictions on all air force and navy bomber and fighter pilots who participated the air campaign. First, they were forbidden to enter the restricted zones composed of a ten-mile circle around Hanoi and five-mile circle around Hai-Phong. Second, all American pilots were not allowed to strike MIG fighter facilities or to shoot MIGs on the ground if these Soviet-built fighter aircraft were not in action. Third, the American pilots were not permitted to attack a Surface to Air Missile (SAM) site in North Vietnam unless it was operational, which meant that it was firing missiles at U.S. fighters and bomber aircraft. During the first days of the Rolling Thunder bombings some wrong hits on friendly foreign embassies and hospitals in Hanoi resulted in civilian casualties. Hanoi immediately launched a diplomatic propaganda campaign against the United States. Secretary of Defense McNamara responded by increasing the restricted zone around Hanoi to a 30-mile circle. In addition, to prevent U.S. pilots from offending the Chinese population to the north of the China-Vietnam border, McNamara created a 30-mile-deep restricted buffer zone across the Vietnam-China border. These increasingly queer restrictions gave advantage to Hanoi in its anti-air actions and induced more casualties and losses for U.S. pilots and aircraft. American strategic bombers and tactical fighters had then only a ten-mile active portion in the middle of the 70-mile railroad from the Chinese border to Hanoi. On this ten-mile stretch between the northern restricted buffer zone and the southern restricted circle around Hanoi, there was an average of one anti-aircraft gun every 48 feet.
To organize the air-defense network against the Rolling Thunder campaign, the leaders in Hanoi ordered their armed forces to move military equipment and supplies into populated areas and set up anti-aircraft guns in the center of villages and on the roofs of hospitals. Relying on aid from China and the Soviet Union, they increased their air-defense web with an enormous number of SAMs, anti-aircraft artillery such as 37mm and 57mm guns, 80mm to 100-plus-mm radar-controlled guns, and a number of MIGs. Broughton remarked that after 1966 North Vietnam had the most formidable anti-air defense in the history of aerial warfare.4 The dispersion of war equipment, materiel, and supplies permitted Hanoi to conserve enough potential to support its forces in South Vietnam for a prolonged war.
To sum up, the first phase of the Rolling Thunder campaign failed after 72 pauses and 17 cease-fires. North Vietnam was not forced to the negotiating table. On the contrary, the bombing strengthened popular support for the VWP leaders by rousing nationalist and patriotic enthusiasm to resist the American air attack on their motherland. The CIA reported on March 16, 1966, that “although the movement and supplies has been hampered and made somewhat more difficult [by our bombing], the communists have been able to increase the flow of supplies and manpower to South Vietnam. Air attacks almost certainly cannot bring about a meaningful reduction in the current level at which essential supplies and men flow into South Vietnam.”5 The Rolling Thunder air campaign ended on November 1, 1968. A special report from the DIA revealed that from 1965 to 1968 about 643,000 tons of bombs were dropped on North Vietnam targets, caused nearly 80,000 North Vietnamese casualties, including 80 percent civilians, but the United States lost 922 aircraft. The number of pilots dead and arrested was undisclosed. The Johnson Administration never achieved its intended objective with the Rolling Thunder air campaign due to a lack of focus on the politically accurate purposes and strategically crucial targets.
Another air campaign, code-named Igloo-White began at the same time as the Rolling Thunder air campaign. Targeting Laos, the operation was designed to cut the NVA supply line to South Vietnam. By early 1966, however, the CIA and DIA concluded that these air campaigns could not deter the flow of manpower and supplies along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
In South Vietnam, General Westmoreland argued with Washington that a ground blockade of the Ho Chi Minh Trail would produce better results than bombing either North Vietnam or the trail. He proposed that American ground troops would enter Laotian territory deep enough to cut this NVA arterial route to South Vietnam and, in early 1966, prepared plans to make this happen. His master plan was to repair and develop the international Highway 9 from Quang-Tri in Central Vietnam through the central part of the Laotian panhandle to Savannakhet, on the east bank of the Mekong River. Westmoreland estimated he needed at least a corps-size force of three divisions to maintain the trail block. His proposed east-west line ran perpendicular to the projection of the Harriman Line (see Map #3) to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the southern part of Laos. The war then would be a front-line battle along route number 9 and the Communists of North Vietnam could not deny their “invasion of Laos.” Also, the war would not be prolonged in South Vietnam. Westmoreland’s plan was supported by ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, who had recently replaced Henry Cabot Lodge in Saigon. Later, Bunker disclosed: “Shortly after I arrived, I sent a message to the President urging that we go into Laos. If we cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the Viet-cong—I thought—would wither on the vine. What kept them going were supplies, weapons, and ammunition from Hanoi.”6
Another American general who had a strategically analogous vision was General Lewis W. Walt, commander of the 73,000 U.S. Marines in the critical I Corps & Region comprising the five northernmost provinces of South Vietnam. Indeed, from mid–1965 to mid–1967 General Walt had proposed the Pentagon permit the Marines enter Laos and cross the DMZ. This proposition reinforced Westmoreland’s view on the battlegrounds of the Indochina-theater. These two generals were the right men on the battlefield but were apparently not the right men to decide how to wage the war. Other military leaders in the Pentagon and in the U.S. Pacific Command also urged President Johnson to consider invading Laos, Cambodia, or even North Vietnam, but Johnson and McNamara felt that such a widening war would intensify the situation in Southeast Asia and worsen the present stalemate in Indochina. Washington, hamstrung by Harriman’s false neutrality ploy and Ambassador Sullivan’s opposition, that invading Laos would violate its supposed neutrality, and fearing an escalation leading to Chinese intervention, rejected these proposals. Thus, while the United States tried to limit the ground war to the boundaries of South Vietnam, the North Vietnamese strategy encompassed all of Indochina as their battleground. And since Westmoreland’s plan to invade Laos was rejected by Washington, the commander of the MACV had to fight a defensive war in South Vietnam.
Responding to the U.S. airstrikes on North Vietnam, in the first half of 1966, Hanoi increased its infiltration of supplies, equipment, and troops to South Vietnam by 120 to 150 percent compared to the previous year. To divert official U.S. attention away from the NVA flow of infiltration along the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the South’s Corps & Regions II, III, and IV, Vo Nguyen Giap sent the 324B NVA Division to the DMZ and began massing forces in the northern provinces of the South Vietnam’s I Corps & Region. The 324B Division infiltrated deeply into the area southeast of the DMZ while other NVA heavy artillery units deployed at least 130 pieces of Soviet 152mm and 130mm guns along the northern bank of the Ben-Hai River. The NVA artillery had played a major role in Giap’s strategic and tactic operations at Dien-Bien-Phu, and that battle had given the VWP one half of Vietnam in 1954. Now, the fact that Giap put his best artillery units at the DMZ made the American leaders to think that Giap might do something new, or the war would change into a new phase. But sticking to the defensive concept, the Johnson administration had few options to choose to deal with the new military situation in South Vietnam. From July of 1966, General Westmoreland was ordered to send the U.S. 3rd Marine Division to the DMZ to open search and destroy operations and establish a series of base-camps and fire-bases along Highway 9, stretching from the coastal lowlands to the west highlands around Khe-Sanh, on the Vietnamese and Laotian frontiers. McNamara thought that the most important measure to prevent NVA infiltration into Quang-Tri, the northernmost province of the I Region, was to clear out NVA base camps along the DMZ by deploying the Marines to the region.
The myopic vision of the civilian leaders positioned the best Marine infantry “maneuver” battalions in base-camps from Dong-Ha, located about 12 miles from the coast, to Khe-Sanh in the west highlands, tying them down rather than harnessing their ability in the battlefield. The main mission of these implant battalions was to defend their base-camps and patrol their respective portions of Highway 9 to secure the supply from the forward headquarters of the 3rd Marine Division at Dong-Ha to their bases. In the meantime, General Giap was maintaining intensive artillery fire on Marine fixed positions and infantry ambushes against the Marine supply-convoys along Highway 9. From mid–1966 through the summer of 1967, Giap never launched a direct assault on the Marine bases. Some military writers implied that the Marines were posted in Con-Thien or Khe-Sanh conforming to the “set-piece strategy” of General Westmoreland. From the summer of 1967, the Marine force increased to 21 infantry battalions and nine artillery battalions and was coupled with two Vietnamese Marine battle groups at Gio-Linh, on the front-line DMZ.
At a meeting of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff in early March of 1966, McNamara divulged his plan to construct a high-tech barrier across the DMZ to stop the flow of NVA infiltrations of troops and war equipment into I Corps & Region of South Vietnam and to reinforce the Marine defensive system at the DMZ front-line. The “barrier” had initially been proposed by Roger Fisher, a Harvard Law School professor, submitted to the U.S. Department of Defense, as a measure to deal with the NVA infiltration down to the Ho Chi Minh Trail and across the DMZ. But with the appearance of the 324B NVA Division in the southern part of the DMZ, and Giap’s artillery units on the northern bank of the Ben-Hai River in April 1966, McNamara turned the proposal over to the Jason Group, composed of more than forty academic scientists, with his view concentrated on the construction of a barrier only at the DMZ. Thus, General Giap’s diversion was effective in drawing the attention of American civilian leaders’ to the DMZ instead of the Ho Chi Minh Trail; North Vietnam would send more troops, war equipment, and supplies to other South Vietnamese military regions for a new offensive phase. The future McNamara Line was theoretically ineffective before construct even began.
After a short period of study, the Jason Group proposed an infiltration barrier consisting of two components: (1) an anti-personnel barrier manned by troops across the southern side of the DMZ from the South China Sea to Laos; and (2) an anti-vehicular barrier, primarily an aerial operation, imposed in and over the Laotian panhandle to interdict traffic on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.7 The features common to both barriers were remote acoustic and chemical sensors, button bomblets, and gravel mines. These new technologic sensors were to help identify NVA personnel and truck movements for U.S. airstrikes or for artillery fires. However, the final plan of the barrier approved by McNamara in the end of 1966, the III MAF Operation Plan 11-67, which was known as “Dye Maker” or the “McNamara Line,” consisted of only an anti-infiltration barrier below the DMZ.
General Westmoreland ordered the Marines to implement the construction of the supposed linear barrier, which “consisted of a 600–1,000-meter-wide stretch of clear ground [or “trace”] containing barbed wire, minefields, sensors and watchtowers backed by a series of manned strong points. Behind the points would be a series of fire support bases to provide an interlocking pattern of artillery fire. This part of the system would begin at the coast of South Vietnam below the DMZ and continue westward across the coastal plain for about 30- kilometers to the beginning of a more mountainous area. From that point to the Laotian border, the barrier would be less comprehensive,” reported military writer Peter W. Brush in describing the McNamara Line.8 The McNamara Line was anchored in the east of Gio-Linh, manned by ARVN units supported by U.S. Marine artillery, and in the west by the U.S. Marine base-camp Con-Thien.
The construction of the McNamara Line was divided into two phases. The first phase was to extend from April to November of 1967. The second phase would begin after the monsoon season of 1967 to be completed in July of 1968. However, monsoon rains and General Giap’s large unit attacks on Marine base-camps along the DMZ during the summer of 1967 hampered construction efforts by the Marines.
Senior Marine commanders opposed the concept of a linear barrier and a system of marine strong points to block the NVA, believing these defensive systems would waste resources, tie down the Marines in the line of their vulnerable base-camps along the DMZ, and result in unnecessary U.S. casualties. However, facing serious difficulties, the Marines implemented their orders, continuing the construction of the McNamara Line and fighting to defend their base camps under the fierce attacks of the NVA.
Immediately after the Marine 11th Engineer Battalion and the Navy Seabees (engineers) began to construct the McNamara Line, General Giap launched a series of attacks on important U.S. Marine base camps and fired on prominent fire support bases along Highway 9, such as base-camp Con-Thien, outpost Khe-Sanh, fire-bases Calu, Rockpile and Carroll. These three firebases positioned a number of artillery 175mm self-propelled guns that would effectively support the farthest Marine base camp, Khe-Sanh on the west highlands. To prepare a careful diversion, Giap ordered his large units to attack Khe-Sanh in April and Con-Thien in May. Con-Thien was saved by a joint operation between the U.S. Marines and ARVN units, called “Operation Hickory,” from May 18 to 25. In early August, Giap’s infantry units ambushed a large U.S. Marine supply convoy of 85 trucks on Highway 9, west of fire base Calu, placing U.S. Marine base camps at Khe-Sanh under siege. Marine supply convoys to Khe-Sanh ended for some nine months. The Marines at the Khe-Sanh “set-piece” garrison were isolated, except for air support and supply. However, Con-Thien and Khe-Sanh were not the crucial targets of General Giap in this phase of attack.
According to several American historians, the massing of large NVA units and their attacks on Khe-Sanh and Con-Thien in I Region, on Dak-To in II Region, or on Loc-Ninh in III Region of South Vietnam, were only measures designed to test the ability of American large units and the response of the United States toward North Vietnam before the VWP would prepare a decisive strategy in South Vietnam and launch its winter-spring offensive campaign of 1967-1968. When the first phase of this winter-spring campaign began with the fierce attack again on Khe-Sanh, General Westmoreland put the construction of the McNamara Line on hold. He ordered all the sensors and related equipment that was supposed to be installed along the DMZ transferred to the Marines at Khe-Sanh to use in the defense systems around the base-camps. As a result, the construction of the McNamara Line at the DMZ lagged far behind schedule. But even had this linear barrier been constructed on time, it would have been misplaced.
In early 1966, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff estimated that more American combat troops would be needed for the planned construction of the McNamara Line, to block the DMZ and the Vietnam-Laos border, and for Westmoreland’s search and destroy operations. Westmoreland himself requested more than 420,000 American troops by the end of 1966. Westmoreland was determined not to turn over the tactical initiative to the enemy by digging in the U.S. troops on the defense. That was seen as a measure that would result in defeat. Instead, he turned the mission of safeguarding the military bases, cities, towns, provinces and districts over to the ARVN and put his combat units into hitting the enemy in tactical offensive operations. By the end of 1966, Westmoreland had completed about 300 sweep operations throughout the four military regions of South Vietnam, which drove back the NVA and the Liberation Front Army, or Viet-Cong units, to their secret sanctuaries along the borders of Vietnam and Cambodia, and Vietnam and Laos.
The ARVN became the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces (RVNAF). On June 19, 1965, the Armed Forces Council, led by General Nguyen van Thieu, assigned Thieu as president of the National Leadership Committee (Chủ-tịch Uỷ-ban Lãnh-đạo Quốc-gia) acting as chief of state; Air Force commander Major General Nguyen Cao Ky, was made president of the Central Executive Committee (Chủ-tịch Uỷ-ban Hānh-pháp Trung-ủỏng) acting as prime minister of the War Cabinet. Chief of state Phan Khac Suu and prime minister Phan Huy Quat had resigned after having political disagreements between them lasting many months. Many members, or ministers, of the War Cabinet were RVNAF generals. General Ky had a shrewd view of the United States “escalation” of combat troops in South Vietnam. He said: “When South Vietnam, as part of the free-world, was attacked by the communists with China and the Soviet Union behind them, I think it was the duty of America to come to the rescue.”9 In reality, it is unlikely that the United States involved prime minister Nguyen Cao Ky in the decision to escalate combat troops in South Vietnam. He was really just trying to cope with the United States’ strategy and cooperating with American ambassador Lodge or General Westmoreland in the role of “leading the war” against the communists. He did not decide the strategy but he could facilitate logistical problems. General Westmoreland regarded Prime Minister Ky as highly intelligent, aggressive, and willing to fight the war against the communists, even in North Vietnam. He failed to understand Ky’s arrogance.
On the Republic of Vietnam side at that time, many Ky supporters in the RVNAF regarded Ky as a dynamic, clever, and exquisite, but unpredictable, leader. They believed Ky had made timely decisions that would resolve the political and economical difficulties facing the South Vietnamese government during the two years of turmoil following the collapse of the First Republic.
The event that clearly proved Ky’s ability was his hazardous handling of the “Buddhist Struggle Movement” in Central Vietnam in the summer of 1965. That summer, during Ky’s inspection tour in Danang and Hue, he noticed that Lt. General Nguyen Chanh Thi, commander of I Corps & Region, intended to split from the coalition of generals in Saigon. He gave orders relieving Lt. General Thi from command on March 10 and appointing Brigadier General Nguyen Van Chuan in Thi’s place. Immediately, Venerable Thich Tri Quang and other Buddhist leaders in Central Vietnam organized a fierce and coordinated reaction in Hue and Danang. They assembled a series of demonstrations and demanded General Ky resign and General Thi be reinstated. Thich Tri Quang also influenced Brigadier General Phan Xuan Nhuan, the 1st Infantry Division commander in Hue and Quang Tri, a number of other unit commanders in Danang, and its Mayor, Dr. Nguyen Van Mau. The protesters occupied many parts of the city and took over the city’s broadcasting station, using it to deliver anti-government propaganda. Many were armed with military weapons and were prepared to resist the pacifying force of the government.
The uprising began to spread to Qui Nhon, Nha Trang, Da Lat, and even to Saigon. If this movement spread, it might lead to the total collapse of the government. Some speculated that this uprising was the result of the General Ky’s decision to relieve General Thi; actually, it was rooted in another cause. A few Buddhist leaders wanted important decisions made by the government to be overseen by the United Buddhist Church. Previously, this issue had been posed to General Khanh by Thich Tri Quang and Thich Tam Chau in exchange for their support. Thus, Khanh’s departure might have been also a reason for this Buddhist uprising.
On April 5, two Marine battalions were sent to Danang, but General Chuan could not control the violence. Saigon then successively sent General Huynh Van Cao and General Ton That Dinh to I Corps. Like Chuan, they both were born in Hue, but both of them were ineffective in improving the situation. In the meantime, from early April to mid–May, General Ky had many meetings with Thich Thien Minh and Thich Tam Chau, leaders of the United Buddhist Church, that did not lead to any satisfactory solution. Each time they arrived at a compromise, the United Buddhist Church’s leaders added new demands, asking for several unfeasible social and political reforms. Finally, General Ky decided to take a hard course of action. On the night of May 14, General Ky called in General Cao Van Vien, chairman of the Joint General Staff, and Colonel Nguyen Ngoc Loan, chief of the Security Directorate and commander of the National Police. General Ky gave them orders to subdue the uprising. In the early morning of the following day, General Vien and Colonel Loan arrived at Danang with two other Marine battalions and some armored units dispatched from Saigon. Within three days, they had successfully put down the uprising. A number of Buddhist leaders, together with most of the unit commanders of the ARVN who took part in the uprising, were arrested. General Vien then went on to Hue and was reinforced with two additional Airborne battalions. He ordered day and night curfew and isolated Hue by cutting all supply and transportation routes to the city. Three days later, on May 22, Thich Tri Quang and Brigadier General Phan Xuan Nhuan surrendered. Venerable Thich Tri Quang was taken to Saigon and put under the care of Dr. Nguyen Duy Tai, head of the Duy Tan Hospital. The generals were put under Military Disciplinary Council and were retired. They included Generals Thi, Chuan, Cao, Dinh, and Nhuan. General Nguyen Chanh Thi left the country and went into exile in Washington, DC, under the sponsorship of the U.S. government. The other unit commanders and officers were disciplined but not many were discharged from military duties. By then, Brigadier General Hoang Xuan Lam, commander of the 2nd Infantry Division was promoted commander of the I Corps. From then until April 30, 1975, the United Buddhist Church leaders were more conciliatory toward the government of RVN and did not stage any more uprisings. As the result, the political situation was stable for several following years.
Although from the middle of 1965, before the election, General Thieu and General Ky were both considered to be the leaders of South Vietnam, in reality national power was in the hands of General Ky. Not long after the Council of Generals delegated national power to General Ky, as prime minister, he persuaded other generals to establish a supreme power organization. Called the “Directorate,” this organization was composed of ten senior generals who shared power equally. These were the chief of the National Leadership Committee, chief of the National Executive Central Committee, minister of defense, chairman of the Joint General Staff, four corps commanders, and two other generals. The “Directorate” replaced the “Council of Generals” and was the new name of the National Leadership Committee. The majority of Directorate members consisted of the “Young Turks,” who solidly supported General Ky. Consequently, General Ky held more power than General Thieu by influencing the Directorate, and by holding the War Cabinet. In the meantime, the Armed Forces Council was growing with 1600 generals, colonels, and lieutenant colonels of all branches of the armed forces who were commanding units from regiment—or equivalents and above. These three national organizations, the Directorate, the Armed Forces Council, and the War Cabinet, worked together under the leadership of the Directorate from 1965 until the formation of the Second Republic.
Neither General Ky nor General Thieu were involved in the strategic level of decision making about the war. The United States supported them with only limited military and economic aid. They were expected only to stabilize the political situation in South Viet Nam while the U.S. escalated its involvement in the war by sending more U.S. and Allied troops into Vietnamese battlefields. By then, the Johnson administration began to realize that a civilian government could not stabilize the volatile political situation in South Vietnam; however, keeping the War Cabinet would show contempt for democratic principles. It was a major obstacle to the Johnson administration’s efforts to win popular support in both the U.S. and South Vietnam and to convince allied nations to take part in the war.
For these reasons, President Johnson’s invitation to Generals Thieu and Ky to meet him and his aides in Honolulu on March 7, 1966, was not so surprising. Many issues were put on the table during the summit to define the nature of U.S. help and support for South Vietnam. Plans of rural construction, economic stabilization, and medical and educational development were drawn. However, the prime issue of this highest summit, though unknown to public, may have been the problem of establishing a lawful regime in South Vietnam.
Indeed, right after resolving the Buddhist Crisis, General Ky began laying the groundwork for the election of the National Constitutional Assembly. On September 1966, 85 percent of voters went to the ballot boxes and voted to elect 118 representatives for the new Assembly. By the end of 1966, the Assembly began to draft a new constitution. In order to improve the Directorate’s effectiveness in coordinating with the Assembly, General Ky suggested the generals add to the Directorate several civilian experts and politicians. By March 15, 1967, the new constitution was approved by the Directorate. The new constitution prescribed a democratic government consisted of the Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch, and the Judicial Branch. The Executive Branch was to be led by the elected president and vice president, who would direct the government activities of the prime minister and the Cabinet, composed of many ministers. The Legislative Branch was composed of the Senate and the House of Representatives and held the ultimate national power. The Judicial Branch was led by a Supreme Court composed of nine judges. In theory, the Directorate and the Constitutional Assembly would be dissolved after the September 1967 national election when the new government became active.
Only a few days after the proclamation of the constitution for South Viet Nam, another summit took place between President Johnson and Generals Thieu and Ky in Guam. President Johnson complimented the generals for passing the new constitution for South Viet Nam. However, when asked about the conduct of the war, including General Ky’s proposal to attack communist North Vietnam, President Johnson either avoided giving a direct answer or changed the subject. The Johnson administration only wanted the military leaders of South Vietnam to establish a constitutional government to stabilize the political situation and had no intention of letting them take charge of the fight against the communist North Vietnam. This policy of the President Johnson would lead to the loss of the war. If U.S. leaders had understood the importance of involving South Vietnam’s leaders in the conduct of the war efforts, the outcome would have been different. And if the U.S. had let the leaders of South Vietnam develop their own strategy and only had provided them with support in modernizing their armed forces, providing abundant supplies and adequate air power, they would probably have been able to fight the communists in any front; because no one knew how to win over the North Vietnam communists better than the South Vietnam leaders at the time.
After returning from the summit in Guam, both General Thieu and General Ky were busy in the campaign for the presidency. A schism began to develop in the relationship between Thieu and Ky. General Thieu knew that if he let the Armed Forces Council or the Directorate decide, General Ky would certainly be nominated for the top spot on the ticket. General Thieu then decided to campaign as an independent candidate with Trinh Khanh Vang as vice president. General Ky reacted by forming his own ticket with Nguyen Van Loc. Both Vang and Loc were politicians. The generals then tried to bridge the difference by convening a meeting for the Armed Forces Council and the Directorate. The reasonable result of the meeting was a single military ticket with General Ky as the presidential nominee and General Thieu as vice presidential nominee. But before the generals could declare the results of the meeting, General Ky, moved by General Thieu’s speech and tears, declared he would give the presidential nomination to General Thieu. This may have been Ky’s greatest mistake, and it was one of the moments that significantly contributed to his political downfall.
The election was held on September 3, 1967, and the result was as expected. The military ticket of General Thieu and General Ky won the election among the ten different tickets. In the Senate race, there were six tickets with 60 senators declared winners among 62 tickets that had been listed in the ballot. After the certification of the results, the Constitutional Assembly dissolved and was replaced by the newly elected Congress. Nguyen Van Loc was appointed prime minister and was to form a new cabinet. Thus, the Second Republic of South Vietnam was born with General Thieu as the president, General Ky as vice president, a civilian cabinet, a Congress, and an armed forces of 650,000 strong. The political situation gradually improved, but the social problems started mounting as the U.S. government started pouring in “green dollars” and American GIs. The rising star of the South Vietnam political stage, General Nguyen Cao Ky, began to fade. President Thieu slowly built up a network of support for himself. A number of generals such as General Tran Thien Khiem, General Do Cao Tri, and General Nguyen Huu Co were recalled to Saigon to hold important positions. A number of generals became politicians and became senators like General Tran Van Don, General Ton That Dinh, and General Huynh Van Cao. By then the struggle for power in South Vietnam became more subtle and conciliatory. Later, General Duong Van Minh also returned and decided the fate of South Vietnam.