The North Vietnamese Communist leadership's ability to reassess and adapt during the Vietnam War was reflected in how well they combined guerilla and conventional operations to achieve their strategic goal of unifying Vietnam under communist rule. Throughout the conflict, the Viet Cong (VC) were employed to conduct guerilla operations while North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and VC "main force" units were used to transition to conventional operations. Guerilla operations enabled Hanoi to inflict a steady flow of casualties on US forces which increased anti-war sentiment in America. NVA and VC main force conventional operations reinforced the US Army's conventional approach to the fight which caused the Americans to alienate the people of South Vietnam. By alienating the South Vietnamese people, the Americans enhanced the VC's ability to conduct guerilla operations and control rural population centers which weakened the credibility of the Government of South Vietnam (GVN). The combined effects of guerilla and conventional operations supported the North Vietnamese strategy of a protracted conflict that was sure to weaken the resolve of the United States and eventually defeat the GVN.
The relationship between conventional and guerilla operations was a key element of the Vietnamese communists’ “Dau Tranh” strategy to fight and win the Vietnam War. A brief description of the Dua Tranh (meaning struggle) strategy is appropriate since it was the basis for North Vietnam’s success. The strategy consisted of an armed struggle and a political struggle. The armed struggle began with Stage One hit and run guerilla tactics to “decimate the enemy piecemeal and weaken then eliminate the government’s administrative control of the countryside...
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...oldiers were sent to replenish the VC, Washington’s Continental troops “were sent into the field to work with the militia.” (Fischer, 348) As experienced by the US in South Vietnam, British overreaction to the American attacks served to alienate the locals and discredit the British. Casualties inflicted on the British in 1777 “caused shock in London” and diminished their support for the war effort. (Fischer, 359-360) Like the North Vietnamese leadership nearly 200 years later, Washington recognized the importance of combining both types of warfare.
In retrospect, it’s clear that the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese ability to combine both methods of warfare played a major role their victory. Their strategy provided them the tools they needed to win. In the end, they recognized that each type of warfare complimented the other to achieve their strategic goals.
The Vietnam War: A Concise International History is a strong book that portrays a vivid picture of both sides of the war. By getting access to new information and using valid sources, Lawrence’s study deserves credibility. After reading this book, a new light and understanding of the Vietnam war exists.
In the early 1960s the U.S. began sending military advisors to South Vietnam beginning the Vietnam War, arguably the most controversial war in United States history. This incident followed Vietnam gaining its independence from the French Empire’s Indochina in 1954. The nation soon split, creating a communist North Vietnam, and a noncommunist South Vietnam. In fear of communism spreading the U.S. supported South Vietnam and sent troops. As the incident dragged on it caused a huge anti-war movement and a lot of political turmoil.The troops were withdrawn in 1973, the whole country fell to communism, and the U.S. failed. How did a superpower such as the U.S. take defeat from a small country like Vietnam? Many have wondered and continue to wonder
The world’s history is majorly shaped by mega wars that happen both inside and outside the boundaries of individual nations. Almost every sovereign state in the world had to forcefully liberate itself from its colonizers and oppressors mainly through warfare. For instance, America had to fight a long and exhausting revolutionary war against the British before it could attain its independence in 1783, likewise is the fate of many other nations. It is important to understand the two distinct types of wars that exist and their implications. Guerrilla warfare and the conventional military warfare are two types of war that are very different in their execution and military approach. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the similarities and differences existing between the American war in Vietnam and the American Revolution (Vetter, 1997).
The Vietnam War, a counter-insurgency conflict waged between North Vietnamese Communist forces and their South Vietnamese opposition, was one that many of its participants are not like to forget.
The Vietnam War was one of the most prolonged wars in US history. Although there were no exact dates, it is believed that US involvement lasted for around 20 years. The US went into this war hoping they could stop the spread of communism and defeat the northern Vietnamese. The battles were like nothing they had seen before and it was very difficult for the soldiers to differentiate between the enemies and civilians. To make it even more difficult for the soldiers, their “information was based on faulty intelligence”. Võ Nguyên Giáp, a northern Vietnamese general, believed that the US and the southern Vietnamese had an unstable relationship. He hoped that through the Tet Offensive the US would believe they were no longer worth defending. Fighting was done using guerrilla warfare which blurred the lines of legitimate and illegitimate killings and this had effect of bringing peoples morales down. Support for the war had always been split but this battle caused even the government to reconsider their involvement. The Tet offensive changed the US's attitude towards the Vietnam war by leading to further anti-war protests, a credibility gap in America, and for President Johnson to negotiate peace and not seek reelection.
advance for the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong, but also gave the United States a
... This is because their tactics, such as bombings, and the spraying of deadly chemicals are harmful, and destructing the environment of local citizens of Vietnam, whereas America came all the way, to persuade North Vietnam to be a capitalist instead of communist. By damaging the people’s food, and lives, America had lost the support of Vietnam people, and they changed, to support the Vietcong, communism, which might have affected the way the Vietcong fought again the US. Popular support is the second, and confidence the third, because the tactics affects them, by having poor tactics, you lose hope in your army, and therefore, soldiers become demoralised and less confident. Weapons are the least important, because they have better equipments than Vietnam, but it was the tactics, which made poor uses of them, and wasted the money, and time spent to be sent to Vietnam.
“Know the enemy, know yourself; your victory will never be endangered. Know the ground, know the weather; your victory will then be total.”(Sun Tzu) War is like any other game, it takes great strategy and is always is affected by outside factor. The Vietnam War was no exception; in fact, the result was especially influenced by the environment in which this death game was played out. Terrain, weather, and vegetation were all essential elements in the conflict. The United States got involved in Vietnam primarily due to the Geneva Accord in 1954 that split Vietnam into two territories at the 17th parallel. Although in 1956 both North and South Vietnam had agreed to create a single standing Vietnamese government, the South Vietnamese leader refused
Both the British in the American Revolution and the Americans in the Vietnam War were faced with a guerilla war within the early periods of conflict. The British who accepted after the initial stages of the war that the American regular army was the key to defeating the rebellion, the Americans never deducted that more than limited offensive operations against the Hanoi regime was needed in order to bring the conflict to a successful close. Unlike the British, the Americans in Vietnam never had a significant defeat in the field.
The Vietnam war has been referred to by many names, one of the longer ones was 'the cornerstone of the free world southeast Asia'. It was called that by John F. Kennedy. He was talking about Vietnam being and essential country in a non-communist world. He believed that if Vietnam became a communist country, all of the surrounding countries would also become communists. This is the main reason America was involved in the Vietnam war. Another reason was that America wanted to spread their “political ideas around the globe”. They wanted to do this so that their anti-communism stance was clear. The public also wanted to keep communism from spreading. To soldiers, the war was like a crusade, a great journey to purge the communists from Vietnam. Sadly, this is not what happened. The Viet Cong (VC) had far better tactics than the US. The VC was told to 'nibble at the enemy' so that he could 'neither eat or sleep'. This worked very well. Another demoralizing tactic the VC used was their landmines; they were designed to blow the limbs off the soldiers without killing them. This tied up hospital beds and meant the soldiers had to carry the wounded back to the base.
Appy’s book is valuable to its readers in showing how Vietnam became the template for every American war since, from novelties like the invasion of Grenada to the seemingly never-ending conflicts post-9/11. But before all that, there was Vietnam, and, larger lessons aside, Appy’s book is a fascinating, insightful, infuriating and thought-provoking study of that conflict, from its earliest days
The Northern Vietnamese Army, NVA, used many war tactics that helped them with the war but the most notable was the use of guerrilla warfare. “By 1961, guerrilla warfare was widespread in South Vietnam” (Anderson). This made
After Vietnam erupted into civil war, both sides started employing clever tactics and new t...
In the Vietnam War, an uncounted number of soldiers were young and unexperienced add this to an unknown environment and the inability to distinguish the Vietnamese to the Vietcong. The Vietnam War was a significantly difficult war to fight in. Soldiers had to fight in a dense, bug infested, booby trap ridden forest with dangerous animals and because of this harsh environment soldiers were exposed to the elements and a copious number of soldiers went M.I.A. The Vietcong were resilient and well supplied this proved to be a problem to the American soldiers as the U.S government viewed the Vietcong as inferior. Continuing, another problem that Americans faced were that they had trouble telling who the enemy was whenever they would enter a village.
On the other hand, big forces like U.S in Vietnam, and British in the U.S during the Revolutionary War were fighting to gain more control and gain resources from the land they were fighting in, which is not a strong reason to motivate soldiers to sacrifice as much as their enemies did. In the Vietnamese war, and the American Revolutionary war, we see a lot of similarities. First, in the American Revolutionary war, British were the invaders who were far more powerful than the Americans. Americans had the motivation to fight for their freedom and independence. Since Americans were weaker then British, they used guerrilla warfare, which was new to British and cost them a lot of casualties. On the other hand, in the Vietnamese War, the Americans were the invading force, and the Vietnamese were fighting on their own soil. They were fighting to kick out the invader and gain freedom and independence of their country. The Vietnamese used exactly what the Americans used in their fight in the revolutionary war against the British, guerrilla warfare. These tactics lead to the defeat and withdrawal of U.S from