The failure of the United States in the Vietnam War was not inevitable, but rather a product of initially poor leadership, media misinformation, and strategic blunders. From 1969 to 1973, many of these issues were resolved and the United States began to competently aid the Republic of Vietnam in defending itself against Ho Chi Minh’s communist invaders. Victory would have been attained had the American political leaders not defaulted on their commitments to the South Vietnamese people.

Numerous legitimate reasons led the US to intervene in Vietnam – including the desire to contain the spread of communism to South Vietnam and other parts of Southeast Asia. As noted by historian Mark Moyar, “Ho Chi Minh was a doctrinaire Marxist-Leninist, in thought and in action.” Michael Lind presented evidence of Ho Chi Minh’s history of collaboration with Mao Zedong’s China and the Soviet leadership – which began as early as 1950, when Ho Chi Minh helped plan the invasion of South Korea. The North Vietnamese communists were given extensive support in the form of weapons and financial aid by both China and the Soviet Union – and, according to historian H. R. McMaster – were committed to conquering all of Vietnam at any price.

The orthodox interpretation of the Vietnam War often dismisses the “domino theory,” which alleged that other countries would succumb to communism if Vietnam did. According to the orthodox view, the “domino theory” was discredited when few other countries fell to communism after the North Vietnamese occupied Saigon in 1975. But Moyar argues that the Southeast Asian political situation changed dramatically from 1965 to 1975, and that just by remaining in Vietnam during those ten years, the US was able to mitigate communism’s spread to other countries. Indonesia, for example, was far less receptive to communism in 1975 than it had been ten years earlier. Had Ho Chi Minh conquered all of Vietnam in the mid-1960s, more dominoes might have fallen.

Michael Lind further argues that the Vietnam War was fought primarily to retain American credibility. Lind reveals that 70 percent of Lyndon Johnson’s objectives in escalating the war entailed avoiding a humiliating defeat to America’s reputation as a guarantor. Only 10 percent of the official policy focused on enabling the South Vietnamese to enjoy freedom. However, when viewed through the lens of the Cold War, the former motivation can be recognized as legitimate – given America’s role as a hegemon over a wide-ranging coalition of allies, each of whom needed to be strongly assured that the US would protect it against communist aggression. Had the US been unwilling to defend even one of its allies, the others might have forged economic and political compromises with the communist powers.

But while the reasons for interfering in Vietnam were legitimate, America’s early prosecution of the war was marked by a series of avoidable blunders. On November 1, 1963, the US government – represented by Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge – eliminated one of its most useful allies, South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem, in a coup. According to McMaster, Diem had been called a “miracle worker” as early as 1958 for consolidating South Vietnam and eradicating communist insurgents and infiltrators. But Diem’s reputation was tainted in the minds of US officials by misleading information provided by reporters Neil Sheehan, David Halberstam, and Stanley Karnow, who alleged that Diem had been suppressing Buddhist protesters. The reporters failed to mention that a large North Vietnamese communist element had infiltrated the ranks of these protesters and that Diem’s actions against them might thus have been legitimate. Had the US not helped overthrow Diem, the South Vietnamese might have been in a better initial position to resist communist aggression.

Furthermore, the war’s early phase was marked by massive failures in American leadership. According to McMaster, “lies and deceptions by the Johnson administration contributed to the erosion of public support.” Johnson’s administration was incapable of organizing the kind of “sophisticated, integrated strategy” that combined military and political means to win the war. The President refused to take clear, decisive actions and instead pursued a “consensus”-based approach. For him, Vietnam was primarily a threat to his domestic Great Society agenda rather than a problem to be handled on its own terms. Furthermore, Johnson would not tolerate anybody who criticized his emphasis on consensus. As a result, he failed to formulate clear objectives for fighting the war.

It is unclear whether Johnson was even determined to win the war at all. McMaster notes that some of the President’s advisors thought that America should focus not on winning, but on “getting bloody” and creating the image of a “good doctor” who, despite his best efforts, could not help his patient recover. With such a defeat-oriented approach, it was no surprise that America failed to succeed decisively in Vietnam – but this was by no means inevitable and could have been averted by a leader who emphasized the reality of the situation over “consensus” and who made victory a genuine priority.

The Johnson administration’s war planners furthermore failed to understand the enemy they were fighting. McMaster notes that these planners wrongly held a “reasonable man” view of Ho Chi Minh; hence, the American leadership thought that the North Vietnamese would be deterred from their designs of conquest by a series of surgical strikes and bombings. At the same time, US planners neglected to take actions that could truly have devastated the enemy. According to Moyar, US forces could have easily shut down the Ho Chi Minh trail through Laos – a key avenue by which North Vietnamese men and supplies could enter South Vietnam. But the Johnson administration blundered in prohibiting American forces from interfering with this route.

Misinformation-riddled and biased media reporting contributed to undermining American political support for the war. According to Victor Davis Hanson, at the same time as the infamous My Lai massacre occurred, the North Vietnamese killed two to four thousand people, but this remained unreported. While the few American atrocities of the war were extensively mentioned, the massive, systematic murders committed by the communists were largely omitted from media coverage. The media further misrepresented the stunning American victory in repelling the Tet Offensive as a defeat and a tragedy, comparing Tet to the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.

But despite initial poor leadership, strategic errors, and anti-war media coverage, the US recovered from the early problems of the Vietnam War and, by 1969, was firmly on a course toward victory. Moyar reveals that after Tet, US forces improved South Vietnamese leadership such that by 1971, the South Vietnamese army had virtually wiped out the Viet Cong insurgents.  In the meantime, notes historian Lewis Sorley, American objectives changed from sheer destruction and focusing on body counts to controlling the population, bringing about stability, and training South Vietnamese forces. The new American commander, Creighton Abrams, recognized that “body count does not have much to do with the war” and instead focused on enabling South Vietnam’s army to hold its own against the communist invaders. During this period, South Vietnam organized a determined “people’s self-defense force” of 4 million men, while a program for amnesty for enemy combatants brought over 47,000 communist troops to the South Vietnamese side without a shot being fired.

         Because of the refinement in American objectives and military strategy, Sorley argues that there came a point when the war was actually won, because the South Vietnamese achieved the capability to resist the enemy so long as the Americans kept their commitments. Sorley contends that South Vietnam would have remained free had the United States government kept its word on three integral points: that “the U. S. would reintroduce combat power if the North Vietnamese renewed the fighting,” that “if fighting were renewed, the US would replace South Vietnam’s losses of major combat systems” and that “the US would continue to provide a robust level of financial support for the foreseeable future.”  But none of these promises were ultimately honored. In 1973, the US Congress denied funding for American operations in Indochina and cut all aid to South Vietnam. With this disastrous decision, America’s political leaders snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Without American support, according to Moyar, the South Vietnamese were outnumbered in every battle; their artillery only had enough shells to fire once per day, and each soldier was only given one grenade per day. It is no surprise that they failed in resisting the massive North Vietnamese invasion of 1975.

Some significant parallels exist between the Vietnam War and America’s war in Iraq. McMaster notes that currently “America is engaged in a protracted counter-insurgency like Vietnam” and that “porous Iraqi borders give insurgents today the kind of access that communists had in Vietnam.” Even more importantly, the enemies in this conflict, as in Vietnam, believe that their most important task is to erode Americans’ will to fight. Ho Chi Minh’s communists – with the help of anti-war US media coverage – succeeded at convincing US congressmen that the Vietnam War was a lost cause, thus turning a near-victory into a disastrous defeat. Effective propaganda against the Iraq War by both the Islamist insurgents in Iraq and by elements of the media might sap current politicans’ will to continue the Iraq War just when it might be on the verge of being won.

In a psychological war like Vietnam or Iraq, America’s most important priority must be to retain the determination to fight until the victory is complete. There was nothing inevitable about America’s defeat in Vietnam; indeed, the war would have been won had American political leaders maintained their commitments to the end.

Sources Used

Hanson, Victor Davis. “Lessons from the Tet Offensive.” The Vietnam War: History and Enduring Significance. Center for Constructive Alternatives. Hillsdale, MI. 10 Sept. 2007.

Lind, Michael. “Vietnam: A Disaster From the Outset?” The Vietnam War: History and Enduring Significance. Center for Constructive Alternatives. Hillsdale, MI. 12 Sept. 2007.

McMaster, H.R. “Engagement and Escalation: Vietnam Under Kennedy and Johnson.” The Vietnam War: History and Enduring Significance. Center for Constructive Alternatives. Hillsdale, MI. 10 Sept. 2007.

Moyar, Mark. “Vietnam: An Overview.” The Vietnam War: History and Enduring Significance. Center for Constructive Alternatives. Hillsdale, MI. 9 Sept. 2007.

Sorley, Lewis. “Vietnam: The End Game.” The Vietnam War: History and Enduring Significance. Center for Constructive Alternatives. Hillsdale, MI. 11 Sept. 2007.

G. Stolyarov II is a science fiction novelist, independent philosophical essayist, poet, amateur mathematician, composer, contributor to Enter Stage Right, Le Quebecois Libre,  Rebirth of Reason, and the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Senior Writer for The Liberal Institute, weekly columnist for GrasstopsUSA.com, and Editor-in-Chief of The Rational Argumentator, a magazine championing the principles of reason, rights, and progress. Mr. Stolyarov also publishes his articles on Helium.com and Associated Content to assist the spread of rational ideas. His newest science fiction novel is Eden against the Colossus. His latest non-fiction treatise is A Rational Cosmology. His most recent play is Implied Consent. Mr. Stolyarov can be contacted at gennadystolyarovii@yahoo.com.

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