The Growing U.S. Involvement in Vietnam between the Periods of 1950 to June 1965
Vietnam War was a battle in Southeast Asia, mainly fought in South Vietnam between government forces assisted by the United States and guerrilla forces assisted by North Vietnam. The war started immediately after the Geneva Conference conditionally split Vietnam in 1954 into the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam).[1] The war was strengthened from a Vietnamese political conflict into a regulated international battle whereby the U.S. was deeply involved. The battle did not stop in spite of peace treaties in 1973, until North Vietnam’s successful offensive in 1975 resulted in the collapse of South Vietnam and the unity of Vietnam by the North. This paper discusses the rising U.S. involvement in Vietnam War and shows how the American Ground Troops in June 1965 were foreseeable.
The U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia started after world War 11 when Vietnam was fighting for independence from France. The U.S. military advisers first started engaging in the Vietnam as early as 1950 when they started helping French colonial forces[2]. Although generally favoring Vietnamese independence, The United States backed France because the protestors or Viet Minh were headed by Communists, and during the Cold War, the U.S leaders regarded any or all communists as marionettes of Moscow and Beijing. France’s conquest in 1954, the division of Vietnam into a communist North and non-Communist South, and America’s supposition of the responsibility of training the armed forces of the newly formed non-Communist Republic of Vietnam in 1956 intensified the American involvement in the conflict.
The U.S. president Harry S. Truman permitted a moderate plan of financial and army assistance to the French in May 1950 who engaged in battle to retain the management of their Indo-China colony, Laos and Cambodia including Vietnam. When the Vietnamese Nationalist and Communist-led Vietminh army overpowered French forces at Dienbienphu in 1954, the French were obliged to agree to the formation of a Communist Vietnam North of the 17th parallel while leaving a non-Communist entity South of that line. Nevertheless, the U.S. did not back the idea. [3] President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration decided to create a nation from the false political entity that was South Vietnam by forming a government, taking over governance from the French, posting military advisers to train a South Vietnamese army, and releasing the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to effect psychological warfare against the North.
Stated mainly as a battle to guard democracy against the influences of international communism, the United Sated slowly dedicated more troops and resources to attack Communist-controlled Southern paramilitaries or Viet Cong as well as the normal soldiers posted to South Vietnam by the Politburo in Hanoi. When President Lyndon B. Johnson devoted major combat units in 1965, the United Sates had already invested many men and millions of dollars in the fight to establish a secure and stable South Vietnam. The devotion extended faster until 1969 when the United States had more than 365000 soldiers in each military area of South Vietnam with thousands of other service men and women in the whole pacific region in direct support of operations.
There were many technological innovations, which included the enormous utilization of helicopters, widespread use of computers, refined psychological operations, new concepts of counterinsurgency and great developments in military medicine. The massive military and political determination by the United States was constantly matched by the efforts of North Vietnamese leaders to unite their nation under communism at all cost[4].
By Supporting the French military efforts in Southeast Asia, the United States helped France to maintain its economic recovery and contribute to the collective defense of Western Europe through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Every U.S President considered Vietminh an adversary in Vietnam. The 1960’s heir, the National Liberation Front (NLF), and the leadership of North Vietnam headed by Ho Chi Minh were considered representatives of international communism. U.S. policymakers and many Americans considered communism as an opposition to all they valued. Communists despised democracy, infringed human rights, pursued military violence, and formed closed state economies that hardly traded with capitalist nations.[5] Americans likened communism to a transmittable illness. Whenever it took hold of one nation, the U.S. Policymakers anticipated adjacent countries to be lured to communism. After the Communist Party took over leadership in China in 1949, Washington was afraid of Vietnam becoming the next Asian domino. This was the reason for Truman’s 1950 decision to help the French who attacked Vietminh.
Truman also believed that helping the French in Vietnam would assist in supporting the developed, non-Communist countries whose fates were linked to the preservation of Vietnam and all of Southeast Asia based on the domino theory. Unrestricted world authority over the territory could offer Japan trade opportunities, which would be upgraded through the American assistance after the Pacific War.[6] The U.S involvement in Vietnam reassured the British that with the U.S. assistance, the French could focus on economic recovery at home and could hope to recall their Indochina officer corps to oversee the rearmament of West Germany, a Cold War measure considered significant by the Americans. The British associated their postwar recovery with the revival of the rubber and tin industries in their colony of Malaya, one of the Vietnam’s neighbors. These determinations intensified the United States involvement in Vietnam.
The U.S. determination to form an anti-communist government in Vietnam begun at least five years before the 1954 Geneva Conference in Indochina and the French cooperated and supported the efforts. Truman’s administration supported France in her determination to re-impose military control by canceling Roosevelt’s post-war goals of repudiating Vietnam to France and making it a United Nation trusteeship.[7] Truman’s counsellors anticipated that either simultaneously or after the reestablishment of such control, France would allow a considerable amount of independence to a communist Vietnamese government. The U.S. controlled the creation of a local defense deal, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, showing its devotion to curb Communism intrusion in the region. The U.S. major issue was the hazard of North Vietnamese and Chinese hostility against South Vietnam and non-Communist states.
By 1954, the U.S. aid to the French war attempt in Indochina was substantially greater than the amount France was spending on these undertakings. In September 1953, the French Prime Minister proclaimed that the extra assistance that was accorded by the U.S. would cover 70% of France’s spending on the battle.
South Vietnam formed a military and monetary assistance agreement with the Unites States in 1961, which led to the influx of the U.S. support troops and the creation of the U.S. Military Assistance Command in 1962. Changes in the U.S command preparations demonstrated the growing commitment. In February 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff created the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) in Saigon as the senior American military headquarters in South Vietnam and appointed General Paul D. Harkins as commander (COMUSMACV)[8]. Rising dissatisfaction with the incompetence and exploitation of Diem’s government ended November 1963 in a military revolution organized by Duong Van Ming. Diem was murdered later on. It was not possible to control South Vietnam until June 1965 when Nguyen Cao Ky became premier. However, the U.S. military assistance in South Vietnam escalated, particularly after the U.S. senate passed the Tonkin Gulf declaration in August 1964 at the appeal of President Lyndon B. Johnson. The murder of South Vietnam’s autocrat, Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963 created disorder and increased the U.S. involvement beginning with advisers under President Kennedy, then turning to bombing, and eventually large-scale ground forces under Johnson. The number of the U.S. militaries climaxed in 1968 when over half a million U.S. troops fought South Vietnam and bombed North Vietnam. They also participated in intrusions in Laos and Cambodia.
In early 1965, the Unites States started air attacks on North Vietnam and the regions that were managed by Communist in the South. South Vietnam had 190, 000 U.S. troops by 1966. Several Communist nations and the Soviet Union offered North Vietnam arms and mechanical assistance. Despite the massive U.S. military assistance, heavy bombing, the increasing U.S. troop devotion, which was about 55,000 in 1969 and political stability in South Vietnam after the 1967 election of Nguyen Van Tieu A president, the Unites States and South Vietnam were not able to defeat the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces.[9] Positive U.S. military reports were disgraced in February 1968 by the expensive and overwhelming offensive of the North Vietnamese army and the Viet Cong, comprising attacks on over 100 towns and cities and a one-month battle for Hue in South Vietnam.
The final stage in U.S. involvement in South Vietnam was conducted under a wide policy known as Vietnamization. The policy was aimed at establishing strong, highly self –reliant South Vietnamese forces, which were consistent with the objective adopted by the U.S. advisers in 1950s. [10] Nevertheless, Vietnamization also implied removal of a half-million U.S. militaries. Initial determination to strengthen and modernize South Vietnam’s army had continued at a controlled pace, without the pressure of lessening American support, large scale combat, or the existence of formidable North Vietnamese forces in the South. Vietnamization involved three overlying phases: redeployment of American forces and the assumption of their combat function by the South Vietnamese; development of ARVN’s combat and support capabilities, particularly fire power and mobility; and replacement of the Military assistance by an American Advisory group.
How and in What Ways is the Commitment of American Ground Troops in June 1965 Inevitable in View of the Preceding Fifteen Years?
There are four intertwined themes to the planned rationale followed by Johnson and his administration: fear of retreat, pre-established objectives, the instability of South Vietnam, and the legacy of the red scare. The political utterances by Johnson and his government from 1964 and 1965 highlighted the reasons the United States was responsible for Vietnam. In his speech at John Hopkins in April 1965, Johnson stated that they were there because they had a promise to keep. [11]This referred to the history of the aid of Vietnam since 1954 through the creation and support of Diem’s government and underlined the broader theme of the Truman Doctrine, the Defense Perimeter Speech and the policy of containment as a whole.
The second theme is about Johnson’s actions in Vietnam, which although contentious were in continuity with earlier American foreign objectives. President Kennedy was the first one to strengthen the American commitment in Vietnam by sending army advisers and supporting Diem’s government. Nevertheless, Kennedy’s policies were mistakable because he refused to effect the plans set before him in 1961 by the Joint Chief of Staff for more aggressive responses, which included sending battle troops.[12] Going to Vietnam was a logical continuation of American foreign policy and failure to do so would have questioned the U.S foreign policy since 1947.
Strategic considerations were also created on the real events that took place in Vietnam, which became worse after the death of Diem in 1663. In addition, as the U.S. pledged more commitment, Vietnam became more of a threat. The reason Johnson was compelled to deal with anything related to communism originates from the Red Scare of the early 1950s. Ever since Joe McCarthy, the American Presidents were worried of losing territory to communism because of the domestic political backlash it would create. The only person who could end the war without worrying about backlash in Vietnam was Richard Nixon because his earlier involvement in Alger Hiss Case in 1949 made him impermeable to charges of ‘being soft to communism’. [13]Therefore, by going to Vietnam, Johnson understood all possible future charges on his management of communism and could concentrate on his domestic program. The basic of the military preparation had already been conducted by the 1961 Taylor-Rostow plan, thereby encouraging Johnson to deepen involvement.
From the early days of World War 11, the U.S leaders had real choices concerning their decisions in the fight against Ho Chi Minh and his revolution. President Franklin D. Roosevelt strongly objected permitting France to regain colonial control and believed that the error of colonialism was over.
Nothing was inevitable about the U.S. military dedication that started in earnest in early 1960s. Neither international nor domestic discussions compelled American leaders to intensify the war. They did not challenge an all-powerful ‘’Cold War Consensus” wholly devoted to frustrating Communist designs in Southeast Asia, but a distinct fluidity in unofficial thinking about the conflict, with resistance to an extended war among prominent sectors of the media and in Congress.[14] Only after the air war started and the combat troops were devoted did a consensus in support of the war take hold in elite and popular opinion.
Internationally, the main U.S. allies: Great Britain, France, Canada, and Japan, did not support the growth and resisted strong American pressure to participate in it because they doubted Vietnam’s significance to Western security and lacked confidence that any form of significant victory in Southeast Asia was possible. The Chinese and Soviet governments backed North Vietnam, but they were all nervous to avert a direct military confrontation with the United Sates.[15] They were cautious in this period to avoid making direct pledges of support Hanoi in the event of large -scale American military intervention.
In South Vietnam, the political condition was miserable, particularly after the beginning of 1963. Ineffectiveness, corruption, and infighting characterized the political leadership in Saigon, while the army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) suffered high rates of abandonment among soldiers and a general unwillingness among officers to involve the enemy. In the larger South Vietnamese population, war exhaustion caused by twenty years of fighting was prevalent and permeated dormant but possibly strong anti-Americanism.
The Hanoi government did not properly play a strong negotiating hand because its leaders feared losing out in the dialogues the way they had been deceived on a fair deal at the Geneva Conference in 1954. However, North Vietnamese officials in 1964-65 did not stop negotiating an end to the conflict that would permit the United States a face-saving means of disconnection from the struggle.
It is important to consider that senior American leaders were aware of the domestic and international mood. They understood the persistent frailties of the Saigon regime and the reluctance of the ARVN to take the fight to the enemy. The majority of them were positive about the predictions in the war effort, even with enormous U.S. fighting armies.[16] They knew that influential parties inside and outside America probed the logic behind looking for a military resolution.
The leaders averred on the significance of sustaining an autonomous, non-communist South Vietnam in the public and showed their assurance that they would accomplish success; however, they had internal fear. The overall image that manifests in the immense internal data for the years 1961- 65, particularly for the latter half of the period, is one of depressing realism at the middle and highest level, with extensive agreement that the state of affairs was hopeless. Although the planners said that a stepped-up war effort would make a major difference to the situation on the ground, deep down they suspected otherwise.
President Kennedy’s doubts about Vietnam started in 1951 when he visited Indochina as a young congressman and saw the Franco-Viet Minh War up close. He had already proven through the French statements of audacity and hopefulness and understood that the enemies were ready to fight back.[17] President Kennedy asked probing questions about whether France or any Western power could ever defeat Ho Chi Minh’ revolutionary course.
In the late 1950’s, Kennedy moved closer to Cold War orthodoxy in foreign policy and Indochina to prepare for the White House campaigns in 1960. He frequently showed doubts about the capability of the West to utilize military means to resolve Asian and African problems that were political in nature. In the fall of 1961, Kennedy resisted pressures from aides to commit U.S combat forces to Vietnam. After becoming the president in late 1963, Johnson started questioning the lasting forecasts in the struggle, even with major American intensification and speculated about the war’s final importance to U.S. national security.[18] To gain assurance, Johnson was able to express can-do optimism and argued for the geopolitical importance of the fight. He modified his Vietnam analysis to his present needs perfectly. It is evident that a president who in the lead-up to major war was suspicious and cynical, and worried about Vietnam becoming his downfall.
The presidents intensified U.S involvement in Vietnam vividly during their reign. In 1962 under JFK, massive amounts of the best American weapons, aircraft, helicopters, and armed personnel carriers arrived in South Vietnam together with thousands of extra military advisers, some of whom were allowed to participate in combat. Towards the end of 1962, the U.S military advisers in Vietnam were above 11,000 and at the time of Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas in November 1963, the figure had risen to 16,000. In 1964, under Johnson, the number increased to 23,000 and the Congress voted to permit the president to utilize military forces as he saw appropriate in Southeast Asia.
In March 1965, the same week Johnson avowed to see no daylight in Vietnam, LBJ started Operation Rolling Thunder, the advanced, persistent aerial bombardment against the North. Johnson posted the first ground troops to the fight after few days. The earlier deployment of 3,500 Marines increased to 33, 500 and later to a force of 82,000. In June 1965, the commanding general in Vietnam, William Westmoreland, pursued an increase of 41,000 combat troops to be followed by another 52,000. General Westmoreland fruitfully petitioned for a dual command of 175,000 soldiers, equal to 44 battalions. By the end of the year, this force was ready in South Vietnam. After 1965, the numbers continued to increase to over half a million).
On 9 September 1950, President Harry Truman pronounced that the United States would provisionally strengthen its troop presence in Europe. He emphasized that the basis of his decision was his anticipation that the West European administrations would meet the U.S devotion. Despite the anxious climate of the early Cold War, the decision to move many U.S troops back to Europe immediately after the World War 11 was not a simple matter.[19]
The strong debate in Congress that occurred after Truman’s statement exposed congressional anxieties that military deployments in Europe might result in a major shift in foreign policy and allow the administration to use U.S. forces overseas. Regardless of these doubts, the Congress accepted the obligation after the Great Debate in 1951. The main reasons, apart from the repression argument, were the reassurances of the administration that the commitment would be limited, the Congress would participate in future decisions regarding troop levels, and Europe would defend itself in the near future.
The administration of John F. Kennedy acceded the debate about the U.S troops in Europe and concluded that for planned reasons, a strong conventional force in Europe was necessary. Kennedy’s reservations were linked to his fear concerning the dollar problem. According to him, the strength of the dollar was a significant element of American power. One approach of trying to reunite military imperatives with economic necessities was by requesting the Europeans to consider increasing their won conventional defenses.[20] However, these efforts proved fruitless and the Kennedy administration decided to negotiate financial compensation for foreign exchange losses, capitalizing on West Germany’s insistence on an unchanged force commitment. After firm deliberations, the U.S. and the Federal republic of Germany (FRG) organized the FRG weapons acquisitions in the U.S that would reuse the dollars flowing in.
The counterbalance pact of 1961 and other pacts that followed played an important function in stabilizing the existence of American troop, especially when the ancient justifications lost their rationality. As the worries of direct Soviet aggression in Europe diminished, the United States acknowledged the status quo and started striving for some form of détente, making the deterrent value of the troops to reduce.[21] The threat of invigorated German aggression also appeared highly unbelievable considering the FRG’s close economic, political, and military links to the West. The U.S. troops were not expected to undermine the Germans any longer.
Kissinger and Nixon perceived NATO as the main support of the U.S influence in Europe and feared that any one-sided withdrawal would incapacitate the American position. The availability of the troop was essential for discouraging the Soviet Union and stabilizing Europe. The troop could also serve as an advantage in relation to Western Europe on economic issues. Quick troop decrease could have diminished the U.S. influence on the Europeans and the Soviet Union.
Conclusion
The war between South Vietnamese and Communists persisted regardless of the peace agreement until North Vietnam presented an attack in early 1975. The U.S. was involved in Vietnam because of several reasons. Communists despised democracy, infringed human rights, pursued military violence, and formed closed state economies that hardly traded with capitalist nations. The Americans believed that helping the French in Vietnam would assist in supporting the developed, non-Communist countries whose fates were linked to the preservation of Vietnam and all of Southeast Asia. The U.S. Congress denied South Vietnam’s requests for aid, and after Thieu deserted the northern half of the nation to the progressing Communists, a panic arose. South Vietnamese opposition failed, and North Vietnamese troops moved to Saigon on 30 April 1975. The unification of Vietnam happened in July 1976, and Saigon was retitled Ho Chi Minh City. U.S. victims in Vietnam during the period of direct U.S. involvement were over 50,000; South Vietnamese deaths were approximately over 400,000, and Viet Cong and North Vietnamese were more than 90,000.
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[1]. Birtle Andrew, U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine, 1942–1976 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 2006).
[2]. William Gibbons, The US Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and Legislative Roles and Relationships, Part IV: July 1965-January 1968. Vol. 4 (Princeton University Press, 2014).
[3]. Leslie, Richard, and Fareed, The Irony of Vietnam: the System Worked (New York: Brookings Institution Press, 2016).
[4]. Marc Gilbert J, Why the north won the Vietnam War (Macmillan, 2002).
[5]. Birtle Andrew, U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine, 1942–1976 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 2006).
[6]. Daddis Gregory A, Westmoreland’s War: Reassessing American Strategy in the Vietnam War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
[7]. Seth Jacobs, America’s miracle man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, religion, race, and U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia, 1950-1957 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004).
[8]. Willbanks James H, Abandoning Vietnam: How America Left and South Vietnam Lost Its War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004).
[9]. George Herring, America’s longest war: the United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975 (McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2013).
[10]. Kissinger Henry, Ending the Vietnam War: A History of America’s Involvement in and Extrication from the Vietnam War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003).
[11]. Bradley’s Mark P, Vietnam at War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
[12]. Robert Miller H, Vietnam and beyond: a diplomat’s Cold War education (Lubbock, Tex: Texas Tech Univ. Press, 2002).
[13]. Asselin Pierre, Hanoi’s’ Road to the Vietnam War, 1954–1965 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013)
[14]. Spencer Tucker, The encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: a political, social, and military history. (Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO, 2011).
[15]. Ronald Young and David Shipler K, Crossing boundaries in the Americas, Vietnam, and the Middle East: a memoir (Eugene, Or: Resource Publications, 2014).
[16]. Kissinger Henry, Ending the Vietnam War: A History of America’s Involvement in and Extrication from the Vietnam War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003).
[17]. William Gibbons, The US Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and Legislative Roles and Relationships, Part IV: July 1965-January 1968. Vol. 4. (Princeton University Press, 2014).
[18]. Birtle Andrew, U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine, 1942–1976 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 2006).
[19]. Bradley’s Mark P, Vietnam at War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
[20]. Ronald Young and David Shipler K, Crossing boundaries in the Americas, Vietnam, and the Middle East: a memoir (Eugene, Or: Resource Publications, 2014).
[21]. Robert Miller H, Vietnam and beyond: a diplomat’s Cold War education (Lubbock, Tex: Texas Tech Univ. Press, 2002).