Vietnam War Internet Project

Hanoi/Viet Cong View of the Vietnam War

by Douglas Pike

Paper prepared for the Fourteenth Military History Symposium, "Vietnam 1964-1973: An American Dilemma." U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado, October 11-19, 1990.

This essay examines the Hanoi leadership's concept of warfare in general, and how it's High Command pursued this concept in South Vietnam during the long period of combat from 1945 to 1975. It is an overview study of the strategic thinking at the highest level leadership in Hanoi, not only the High Command of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) but the ruling Political Bureau (or Politburo) of the Vietnamese Communist Party. It is not a military strategy study as such, although obviously strategic considerations intrude into any such examination. Essentially what is attempted here is to outline the philosophic base for force application which has been held and employed by the rulers in Hanoi for the past 50 years and which will continue to shape Hanoi's national security posture in the years to come.

PAVN.

The People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), formerly the army of North Vietnam, is the world's third largest, outmanned only by the armed forces of China and the USSR. In fact, if not in name, it includes the Lao People's Liberation Army and the State of Cambodia's Armed Forces, such as they are.

The history of PAVN can be described as singular, peculiar, improbable. It was created in the last days of World War II in a mountain hideout near the Vietnam-China border when a 32-year- old Hanoi history teacher named Vo Nguyen Giap and 33 other middle class Vietnamese banded together into what they called an Armed Propaganda Team. At the time it must have seemed the sort of romantic foolishness to be expected in a colonial backwater from a clutch of Confucian academic reformers who had read a bit of Marx and Napoleonic lore. Yet this minuscule band grew to amazing size and prowess, able to confound if not defeat three of the world's major armies and, in the process, revolutionize the conduct of warfare.

PAVN differs institutionally from most other world military organizations. It has the "party within", setting it apart from non-communist armed forces; and it divides itself uniquely into a troika -- regular force, regional force and self defense force - - distinguishing it from most other communist armies.

Estimates on the size of PAVN have varied but generally it was accepted (circa 1988) that PAVN stood at 2.9 million (1.2 million in the regular "main force" and 1.7 million in the militia or "para-military" force). A 1988 demobilization program called for 800,000 to be returned to civilian life, reducing the regular army to 500,000 and the militia (many of whom are full time soldiers) to 1.6 million. As of late 1990 about 500,000 had been demobilized (apparently to about 800,000 regulars and 1.6 million militia). For 40 years until 1988 PAVN grew continually, the greatest buildup coming about a year after the end of the Vietnam War. PAVN infantry divisions were increased from 27 to 61 (48 regular infantry divisions and 13 smaller economic construction divisions), and military corps from six to 14. The Vietnamese Air Force was raised from three to five Air Divisions including one helicopter division. The Vietnamese Navy doubled the number of its combat vessels.

PAVN also consists of an additional complicated military apparat, here termed the Paramilitary Force. It is a force often dismissed by outsiders in writing about Vietnamese military affairs. Yet it is enormously important both in socio- psychological and purely military terms. Hanoi divides this force into two categories. The first is the People's Regional Force of about 500,000, consisting chiefly of infantry companies, lightly armed with limited mobility, organized and operating geographically. Elsewhere it would be called the national guard or the standing guard. The second is the People's Self-Defense Force made up of three major elements: the urban People's Self- Defense Force and the rural People's Militia, together totaling about one million members; and the 1.54 million-person Armed Youth Assault Force in the South. This People's Self-Defense Force is a reserve military force organized by social or economic group, such as commune, factory or work site; elsewhere it would be termed the militia reserve force. The Regional Force operates mostly at the province level, organized on the basis of one regiment per province, although there are some Regional Force divisions in provinces along the China border. Its basic operational unit is the company, which is expected to operate as a self-contained, in-place home-guard, defending its own territory if it can, or with PAVN help if it cannot. Although on full-time duty, Regional Force members also have production responsibilities, chiefly raising food crops. The Self Defense Force/Militia consists of a large variety of "troops" including militia, mobile militia, self-defense troops, village troops and, in the South, Youth Assault and Armed Youth Assault troops. These are part-time military, organized by company, stationed in villages or urban centers (averaging about 2,000 per district), reporting to a district level headquarters commanded by a PAVN senior captain or major with a staff of about 10, usually overaged PAVN supernumeraries. In the early 1980s a new kind of "super paramilitary force" appeared in parts of Vietnam called the People's Guerrilla Force, or in everyday parlance "village troops". These units are better trained, better equipped and are mobile. They are found in villages along the China border, on major islands off the Vietnam coast and in the larger cities of the South. Their mission seems to be to maintain internal security and, in the event of an invasion, to impede advance through static defense measures. Backing up the Paramilitary Force is an element of perhaps 500,000 men (1988) called the Tactical Rear Force, a semi-mobilized reserve composed mainly of veterans or overaged males. In time of emergency this force would be mobilized to replace personnel in the Paramilitary Force, as members of the Paramilitary Force would be used as replacements for the PAVN Regular Force. The military significance of the Paramilitary Force is difficult to ascertain. In an age of warfare conducted with massive firepower and lightening mobility, its utility would seem marginal. Still, it has proved valuable both during the 1979 Chinese attack and in the war in Cambodia. In any event, it is highly important to Hanoi in terms of mobilizing public support.

Socio-Cultural Heritage.

The Vietnamese are, as are all of us, the product of their past, recent and ancient. Their thinking, including their thinking about war and peace, is conditioned by their historical experiences. For the Vietnamese, history teaches that warfare is an unavoidable, ever-present thing usually involving combat against a vastly superior force. History imposed on the Vietnamese certain martial qualities which have become social values. As it has been noted, the Vietnamese have always lived in an armed camp. And from this they take great pride. One major historical force at work has been the centuries long effort to resist Chinese hegemony. Another was the struggle, finally successful, against French colonialism. Major contemporary historical influences have been the intra-Vietnamese struggle that was the Vietnam War and subsequent difficulties with neighbors, chiefly China in 1979 and Cambodia.

This socio-cultural heritage has created a praetorian state rooted in Leninist principles of government. It is one with a high caste of militarism about it, not in outward jingoistic manifestations, but internally, in the mind set of the leadership. That this should be the case, that the Vietnamese should take such a martial approach to affairs, could hardly be otherwise in light of history. The men who ran North Vietnam became more experienced in warfare, were at it longer, than any other ruling group in the world. They might appear in mufti, their official photo captions might omit their military titles, but they came from a world of military affairs. They might not be stereotype militarists, but they were praetorian. They thought in terms of campaigns, combat, victories. All that they were, all that they achieved, was the fruit of war.

The residual influence of all this has been the idea of war permeating Vietnam's social and governmental institutions. History has dictated that PAVN's relationship with the rest of the society, in institutional terms, be vastly different from or far more integrated than other social systems. Indeed, it is a seamless web, this interweaving of PAVN and the rest of the society. At no point in Hanoi does "military" end and "civilian" begin, nor would it be possible for a "military-industrial complex" ever to develop. There is no such thing as a "military mind" in the PAVN officer corps. The fundamental view here is that revolutionary war must have deliberate leadership else the proletarians will never rise above trade-union mentality, to quote Lenin. The Party must impregnate the proletarian with revolutionary spirit. The Party must act as the vanguard. The Party is central to all. Since classes not nations make history (to quote Marx), the armed forces in revolutionary war must be proletarian-based and class-structured. This class nature of an armed force is an overriding characteristic of PAVN, dominating all of its personnel practices.

An indication of PAVN's unique quality is found in its military recruitment policy. Among the sons of the two former elements in pre-Marxist North Vietnam society -- exploiter and exploited -- only the sons of the exploited class can join PAVN. Of these, only those in the lowest rank (what is called ban co or "poor for many generations") are eligible to become officers. Others of the exploited class can become noncommissioned officers or serve in the ranks. Sons from exploiter class families (i.e., middle and upper class) normally can not serve in PAVN at all. This is class consciousness carried to its ultimate point. While this policy may have deprived PAVN of talented manpower, it also greatly strengthened it by putting the powerful class-conscious dynamic to work for it.

In Asia, the sense of class distinction is somewhat different from the West historically. There was traditionally strong prejudice against fighting men, partly because of Buddhist influence (opposition to the taking of life) and partly because of the influence of Chinese class structure, which placed the soldier at the bottom of the social ladder. Another historical force at work was a general prejudice against men of arms, who were seen chiefly as motivated by a desire to plunder whomever was at hand. In fact the calligraphic root word in Vietnamese for soldier is the same as the word for bandit; just as general and warlord stem from the same root.

The kind of soldier produced by PAVN/PLAF is quite different in many ways from soldiers of other Asian armies, partly because of their background, and partly because of their training and indoctrination. The Vietnamese Revolutionary Cadre (officer) or Fighter (enlisted man) has these distinguishing characteristics:

* He assumes as one of his foremost responsibilities the "winning of the people," that is a public relations function.

* He has production responsibilities. Soldiering is not necessarily a full-time job. Throughout much of the Vietnam war, particularly in PLAF ranks, the "Nine-Three System" was practiced (i.e., PLAF would feed a military unit for nine months of the year, the remaining three months it fed itself, usually through its own gardening efforts). Beyond this was the notion that a soldier properly is productive, i.e., engages in other than military activity.

* He has political ties which reach outside of his unit, beyond of the armed forces. First loyalty is to the Party. The mechanism for this is the political commissar who physically controls much of his day. Therefore a dual allegiance exists, to his military commander and to his political officer.

* The institution of kiem thao (self-criticism) is an important activity in his life. It also is the most important aspect of the indoctrination program to which he was subjected constantly (an average of an hour a day, even in combat units). Kiem thao, as with the rest of the indoctrination program, is no simple lecture as with the passive Information and Education program in the U.S. Army. It is an active, dynamic effort not so much to inculcate a set of ideas or doctrinal truths, but to engage the individual. The great foe is not counterrevolutionary thought, as one might assume. It is indifference, vagueness of thought, misinformation, and unwitting deviationism.

Hanoi's Revolutionary War.

Hanoi military schools commonly classify warfare into three general types: general war (which includes nuclear war); limited war (the difference between the two is one of magnitude); and wars of national liberation. This third type frequently is also described as a category-three war, anti-imperialist war, special war (the 1962-65 period in Vietnam), and most popular of all, perhaps, the Maoist People's War. All of these terms, with the exception of special war, have been used in Vietnamese communist literature more or less interchangeably. The doctrine is encapsulated by the term People's War which in its proper usage is a technical not a propaganda term. It does not mean all good people against the landlords and other exploiters; rather it means the people as an instrument of war. The mystique is organization, mobilization, motivation. First control the people. Then forge them into a weapon. Then hurl them into battle in military action and/or political activity.

Mao's People's War, as viewed by Hanoi, resembles Revolutionary War in that both types seek to shape the people into a weapon to accomplish destruction of the existing society; both emphasize the importance of exploiting contradictions in the enemy camp; both make full use of the united front; and both employ the national salvation propaganda theme. But Revolutionary War does not root the struggle more or less exclusively in the rural area. Nor does it endorse the principal of self-reliance; that is, it requires assistance by allies.

Revolutionary War is political as any revolution is political. Violence is mandatory, but not the essence. The mission is to seize political power by disabling the society using both military and political techniques. Organization counts for as much if not more than political ideology or battlefield tactics. The united front, attributed to Lenin and certainly the greatest political invention of the twentieth century, permits a web of organizations to be thrown over the people enmeshing them. These front groups become channels of communication. Their rational appeals to self-interest are shored up by various instruments of coercion. From the organization comes mobilization of the people. Through mobilization, and only then, comes motivation. The trinity is forged--organization, mobilization, and motivation. Now organized, mobilized, and motivated, the people are set against their own society to drain it of its organized strength. The struggle thus becomes a war of competing systems of organization.

Revolutionary War unlike earlier, narrower forms of warfare is no simple insurgency of limited objective, such as national independence or change of government or redress of grievance. Neither is it the usual revolutionary stirrings which reflect inadequate living standards, oppressive government, or some major inequity. Action comes from the central planner, not from the heart. Revolutionary War seeks a totally new social order, and it levies on the participant the demand of total involvement, total immersion. It touches all persons of the society at all points of their existence.

The Hanoi leadership, either because it was exceptionally sensitive to the direction or history or because necessity is the mother of invention, perceived early the potentiality of Revolutionary War and moved to develop the concept fully, becoming in fact preeminent.

Dau Tranh Strategy.

One of the difficulties in understanding the strategy field by the PAVN High Command in the Vietnam War was semantic, that is the terms of Vietnamese did not translate well into English and efforts to find meaningful English terms led to less rather than greater understanding. It is best therefore to introduce the reader to the terms in their original language which can be referred to until the basic concept is clear. The major doctrinal terms are these.

Dau tranh (struggle) which in Vietnamese must be understood as a powerful, highly emotional term,
Dau tranh vu trang (armed struggle), one of the two kinds of dau tranh, which can also be thought of as "violence program"
Dau tranh chinh tri (political struggle), the second kind of dau tranh which might be termed "politics with guns", it consists of three van (action) programs:
-- Dich van (action among the enemy) program -- non-military activities among the population controlled by the enemy, that is, in South Vietnam or in the United States.
-- Dan van (action among the people) program -- meaning administration and other activities in the "liberated area."
-- Binh van (action among the military) program -- meaning nonmilitary actions among the enemy's troops, originally Binh Van-Chinh Van (B and C program), chinh meaning "civil servant."

Khoi Nghia (uprising, insurrection, to revolt). In Hanoi terminology there are various types, including khoi nghia tung phan (limited uprising) and the all important Tong Khoi Nghia (General Uprising).
Chien Tranh (protracted conflict), informally known as the "fifty year war" thesis.

Strategic Thinking.

In its first decade of life, the 1930's, the Indochina Communist Party, as it was then called, had no army, only an internal security element. However Party theoreticians during this time did a great deal of thinking about military doctrine, the use of force in general and the kind of army that eventually would be needed. Out of this examination emerged the basic notion of dau tranh out of which Ho Chi Minh and General Vo Nguyen Giap created a military strategy. Their strategic concept envisioned the two forms of dau tranh as twin pincers closing on the enemy. Another metaphor used is hammer and anvil.

As developed by Giap, even in those early years Vietnamese military doctrine had these tenets: it places great emphasis on co-ordinating military action to international developments; it attempts to harness the force of nationalism; it links nationalism to the appeals of socialism and communism; and it holds that passivity is the great enemy meaning that true believers must constantly demonstrate an aggressive mentality.

World War II became the great moment of opportunity for army building by the Vietnamese Communists. They formed a united front organization called the Viet Minh and helped organize a collection of guerrilla bands which eventually became the Viet Minh Army. During World War Two these guerrilla bands, many led by Vietnamese communist cadres, harassed the Japanese occupying Indochina, spied for the Allies, rescued downed American airmen, and generally served the Allied cause. Also during the war, the Vietnamese communists developed their own separate parallel military establishment. General Giap and a handful of cadres worked out the structure for a new type of military unit: from 1942 to 1944, they perfected, tested, and finally revealed their new military institution, the Armed Propaganda Team. Date of its formation, December 22, 1944, which PAVN now observes as its formal birth date.

The armed propaganda team concept should be more widely understood and appreciated than is the case, for it is a remarkable device. It is well named if one accepts the term "propaganda" in its proper Leninist meaning, and not as used in the West to mean dissemination of repetitious, hackneyed ideas. Teams were armed, but only for defensive purposes or for some occasional spectacular military gesture to advertise their cause, not to intimidate villagers, for this would have been self- defeating. The teams went into the villages of Vietnam to organize and mobilize the people. This was no easy task, since villagers generally were suspicious and distrustful. Only skilled cadres could break the communicational ice. The armed propaganda team served the Vietnamese Communist Party cause well in the Viet Minh war. It was the initial institutional weapon in South Vietnam much later with the formation of the People's Liberation Armed Force (PLAF) of the National Liberation Front, or Viet Cong.

When the Viet Minh War ended, PAVN was still a united front military force. For instance, Catholic battalions were operating in the South under the Viet Minh banner. But the basic structure of PAVN as a national armed force for North Vietnam had been established and, gradually over the next few years, it became less and less of a united front army and more of a Party- controlled army.

With the Vietnam Communist Party's 1959 decision to begin armed dau tranh in South Vietnam, the National LIberation Front was created along with its People Liberation Army (PLA), later the People's Liberation Armed Force (PLAF). In the early years of the Vietnam War, the burden of combat was on PLAF, not on PAVN. Because of attrition, buildup of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), and arriving American and other Allied troops, the balance of forces swung away from PLAF, at which point Hanoi began to dispatch PAVN units south, first as "filler packets" into the PLAF units, then as small PAVN units, finally whole divisions. By the 1972 Easter Offensive, about 90 percent of the day-to-day combat in the South was by PAVN, that is, North Vietnamese regulars in uniform operating in the South.

PAVN's mission today is seen as threefold: to defend Vietnam, the basic duty of every army in every society; to insure continuation of Vietnam's present sociopolitical system; and to contribute to the restructuring of society. In the North this third task means the never-ending effort to create a classless society. In the South, it means helping to "break the machine" of the southern social structure. PAVN also has purely economic duties: the production of goods and generally helping solve the country's many economic problems. To some extent the nation building task was shunted aside in the last few years because PAVN was preoccupied with its war in Cambodia and preparing to defend the country against China. Presumably it will return to this economic duty when it is able.

External Dich Van. There is one sub-form or variant of the dich van (action among the enemy) program which requires special note in a paper written for Americans. It is the external dich van program, those activities, and military and political policies designed for use outside of Vietnam. In communicational terms this program sought to shape outside perception of the Vietnam struggle and persuade outsiders that the Vietnamese communists would be successful in their war and deserved to be. Strategically it sought to undercut the American war effort at home and American diplomacy world wide. Tactically it attempted to delimit American response in Vietnam and inhibit full use of American military capability there.

A consistent effort was made to present the world with a single, unified image of North Vietnam as a tough, perhaps sometimes ruthless, but essentially attractive society, whose people were highly motivated incorruptible nationalists, dedicated to a cause of justice, peace, democracy, and perhaps unification; a cause thus exclusively domestic and defensive, threatening no one, certainly no one outside of Vietnam's borders. Inherent to this image was assertion that the Vietnamese struggle was political; that use of massed military might was illegitimate (excluding necessary "defensive" measures taken by The People); that all military force, by definition, was terror, repression, or war crime.

The doctrinal framework operating here involves the psychological dimension of war which--reduced to its crudest element--consists of two basic assertions: a) the certainty of victory for the just side (or the righteous, the deserving; previously, God's side); and b) a monopolization of virtue (and the corresponding vilification of the enemy). In every war in history each side has employed, fully or half-heartedly, with or without success, these two notions. Each has done so both in its own ranks and against the enemy. Until the rise of Revolutionary War, this psychological dimension was regarded as an adjunct. Earlier, something of a common understanding existed between warring powers that victory would be decided on the field of combat. The Vietnamese communists were the first, really, to break with the belief that the chief and primary test must be military. They realized, dimly at first and then with increased clarity, that it might be possible to achieve an entire change of venue and make the primary test take place away from the battlefield. This employs what might be called the judo principle in that it turns the weight of an enemy's philosophic system against himself. It agrees victory will go to the just because justice must triumph. But it does not claim that all of the enemy is unjust. Rather, the enemy is portrayed as an abstraction, the unjust and misled leadership, perhaps a few selected other individuals such as generals and landlords. Normal wartime polarization is denied. The struggle then becomes a test of virtue. The outsider, looking on, is presented on the other hand, with communism's own idealized picture of itself (but denied objective inspection of the communist camp). And on the other hand, he sees the errors, shortcomings, and follies of his own, very human side. Reality seldom stands a chance against image.

Hanoi used dich van tactics intensively to vilify American air power, during the 1965-68 air war period and again during the so-called Christmas bombing of 1972. Major dich van campaigns were mounted to force cessation of air attack. Hanoi historians today generally believe, perhaps incorrectly, that the initial March 1968 halt in air strikes was the result of this communicational effort. Such activity was quite legitimate of course--if Hanoi could achieve a strategic goal with dich van techniques, who could say nay? Nor was the effort mere pretense or sham. The North Vietnamese worked diligently to build a favorable image. They altered policy in the name of dich van. They shot looters, purged cadres, refused alliances, ordered military offensives and lulls, all for the sake of the perception.

Pursuit of the War.

The Vietnam War extended over a long time period and was constantly being wrenched and turned by the unexpected. As a result the Hanoi High Command's perception of events, and in turn what was required, changed vastly over the course of the years. From the Hanoi viewpoint, at least five separate periods of war can be identified. These are:

Early 1958-late 1960		Revolutionary War Preparation
1961-late 1964		Revolutionary Guerrilla War
Early 1965-mid-1968		Regular Force Strategy
Late 1968-Easter 1972		Neo-Revolutionary Guerrilla War
Summer 1972-end of war		High-Technology Regular Force Strategy

The distinguishing or characteristic factors among these periods were, on the one hand, battlefield events, including the actions and strategies of the enemy; and on the other doctrinal disputes in Hanoi. This second factor existed throughout the war as a great debate between those, such as General Vo Nguyen Giap, who stood for big unit war or "regular force strategy" against theoretician Truong Chinh and others who advocated revolutionary warfare either in its original or amended form. In official terminology the debate was over the kind of armed dau tranh that should be pursued and over the balance of armed to political dau tranh. It was a doctrinal dispute which ran from the rank and file to the Politburo itself. Its basic components were these:

* In the allocation of resources, particularly manpower, what should be the guideline for the division between armed and political struggle? How many sappers and how many agitprop cadres should be trained? Send organizers into Saigon or a rocket barrage? Agreed, resources should be divided, but what division?

* On whose side is time? Does protracted conflict serve us better than the enemy? What are the unintended effects of drawing the war out in time?

* Considering enemy strategy which is the best strategic approach: incremental increase in the tempo of war-making or the linear application of force. Should warfare build, as they say in the theater, or should maximum military prowess be applied as a steady erosive force, a wall of pressure?

These questions and others were the stuff of which Hanoi's great doctrinal debate was composed. Each side had at least two opportunities to prove its case: the protracted conflict advocates in 1960-65 and again in 1968-72; and the Regular Force or big unit war strategists from 1965-68 and again from 1972 until the end of the war.

We now examine briefly each of the four periods which followed the preparatory period (1958-1960).

Early Period: Orthodoxy.

This was the original revolutionary guerrilla war stage, the initial period lasting until late 1964. Tactics were developmental, based on Viet Minh and Chinese Communist experience.

One important characteristic of the period was the use of deception. In fact, some military experts maintain deception was the only noteworthy aspect. Vietnam's early history is rampant with institutionalized deception. For example, the three components of the 11th century Vietnamese army were: the "real army" (Chinh binh) which was the overt military force; the "hidden army" (Ky binh) which was covert, invisible, guerrilla- like; and "phantom army" (Nghi binh) which didn't exist at all but which a good Vietnamese general could make his enemy believe did exist as a means of disheartening and intimidating him. From this stemmed the conviction that victory often would go to the side best able to hide its internal difficulties, best able to maintain the appearance of equanimity for the benefit of the outside world.

Against the Americans.

The kind of revolutionary war practiced by the Vietnamese communists against the Americans beginning in early 1965 is called Regular Force Strategy.

The basic problem, as PAVN Command General Vo Nguyen Giap saw it, was to bypass the admitted advantage which the Americans enjoyed in terms of mass (mass of men, massive fire power) and movement (particularly the mobility provided by the helicopter). Briefly the Giap answer was to develop two kinds of military "actions" or techniques:

a) The gnat-swarm technique, which General Giap calls the "independent fighting method" (doc lap cach danh), that is, mounting dozens of daily small-scale actions, no single one being important, but cumulatively raising the enemy's anxiety level and destroying his self-confidence. High casualties can be taken, and attacks need not be entirely successful, if they pin down the enemy and reduce his initiatives.

b) The occasional small block-buster, which General Giap terms "coordinated fighting method" (hop dong cach danh) which is specific medium-sized attacks against relatively important targets. This attack must be perfectly planned and flawlessly executed. The enemy not only is defeated, he is chagrined, and comes to regard his enemy as superhuman.

Then, and this is a matter of intuitive sense of timing, combining these two "fighting methods" are combined into a campaign of several months during which military activity escalates and intensifies. Finally comes the psychological capper to end this "comprehensive offensive" -- which might be called the Dien Bien Phu gambit, that is, a massive assault on some psychologically important target which, when captured, breaks the enemy's will to continue the struggle.

For three years General Giap pursued this strategy against a force vastly superior in both mass and movement. The results were ghastly, at least 600,000 of his men dead (equivalent loss for the United States would have been 25 million dead) at the end of which (the conclusion of the 1967-68 Winter-Spring campaign) he was further from victory than when he started. His pursuit of armed struggle, Regular-Force-Strategy style, was a disaster. The fact was, the American and Allied forces in this period never lost a single significant battle.

If the Vietnam War had been decided the way wars once were decided -- the side which wins the most battles wins the war -- the Vietnam War would have been over and the communists defeated by mid-1968. Thus, had the Americans lost their battles, they would have lost the war. But having won their battles, they did not win the war.

Neo-Revolutionary Warfare: The Super Guerrilla.

The failure of the 1967-68 Winter-Spring Campaign of which the 1968 Tet Offensive loomed so prominently, ruined for a period the doctrine of Regular Force Strategy. After a hiatus of several months, marked by a good deal of doctrinal experimentation, there emerged a new doctrine, here termed Neo-Revolutionary warfare and sometimes encountered in the press as the "super-guerrilla concept." This doctrine diverged from the earlier Three Stage Guerrilla War in a number of ways, the key one being the assertion that victory can be achieved at Stage Two and need never go on to Stage Three.

This revised form of war, which appeared in Vietnam after 1968 and lasted until 1972, did have much to recommend it. Seeking victory at the gnat-swarm stage shunts aside much of the enemy's vaunted advantage of mass and movement. Top priority was assigned to the previously ignored, often despised paramilitary, seeking to raise the fighting prowess of these men through increased training and indoctrination, better logistic support and improved weapons. PAVN and PLAF Full Military (Main Force) troops were converted into a new kind of military unit, the wide- ranging, well-trained sapper or commando units. The Western press labeled them super guerrilla, a term which although hyperbolic was not inaccurate. Gone was the image of the guerrilla in ragged black pajama fighting with homemade shotgun out of his home village. In its place came a new image: highly skilled units, as well knit as a professional football team, proficient in the best weapons and explosive devices the communist world could produce, linked with sophisticated communication equipment, striking sudden deadly blows which would surgically take out medium-sized enemy installations. These attacks bypassed the enemy's advantage in fire power (he often had nothing to fire at) and his mobility (even a quick heliborne reinforcement arrived too late). The purpose was not to decimate the enemy's military force but to occupy it, wear it out, limit its initiative. Regular Force strategist influence was not eliminated entirely however, hence there were what were called "military high-points," that is, multi-battalion activity.

The professional generals in PAVN saw this new form of Revolutionary War as a no-win strategy. Agreed, it would cut losses and permit survival, but because of its very design it never would generate the momentum to victory. It was, however, a useful interim strategy. The tempo of the war dropped--to only a fraction of the daily military activity of the previous period-- and this provided precious time. The Regular Force strategists were busy at their drafting boards.

High-Technology Regular Force Strategy.

The 1972 Easter Offensive of PAVN, the final strategic form, represents the Regular Force strategist's answer to earlier failures. It sought:

* To match or exceed the enemy in military technology, which in fact was done: PAVN tanks outnumbered ARVN tanks; PAVN had more long-ranged artillery than the South Vietnamese; extensive new anti-aircraft capability was introduced.

* A full-scale massing of troops in three sectors (outside Hue; the Kontum-Bong Son axis; and at An Loc, north of Saigon). All PAVN infantry divisions except one was outside of North Vietnam at the height of the campaign.

* To shunt aside once again the guerrilla forces (PLAF paramilitary units, for example virtually sat out the entire campaign). All pretense of the war as a local insurgency by southern dissidents was dropped.

It was a well organized campaign, well calculated in terms of risk, but it failed. Terrible punishment was visited on North Vietnam, especially its transportation and communication matrix. PAVN forces could not mass sufficiently in front of Hue because of devastating air strikes. The line from Kontum to the sea, cutting the country in half, could not be held. And, most importantly, ARVN troops as well as even local forces, stood and fought as never before. An Loc -- probably the single most important battle in the war -- held and with its holding went hope for the campaign's success.

The Paris Agreements were signed and the Hanoi military theoreticians returned to their drafting boards to revise and amend their high technology strategy. Two years later PAVN returned, essentially with the same strategy, but with reequipped and retrained forces. A limited objective campaign was launched in early 1975. For reasons not yet clear--but which are more psychological than military--it triggered the sudden disintegration of ARVN. The army that had fought so well against such a strong force in 1972 hardly fought at all against a lesser force in 1975. What started out to be a local communist offensive against Ban Me Thuot, a relatively unimportant military target in the Highlands, began a chain reaction largely characterized not by a series of battles but by PAVN units moving successively into a series of military vacuums. The South collapsed, much as did France in 1940 and the Vietnam War was over.

Re-thinking Strategy.

The history of Vietnam since 1975 has been the history of monumental failure, one traceable to an overconfidence born of victory in war.

The Hanoi Politburo thought the problem with Cambodia could be solved with a quick military fix. They believed a militant "high" posture toward China would properly realign postwar Sino- Vietnamese relations. They thought the best way to handle Thailand/ASEAN was with intimidating ultimata. Each judgement proved wrong. All have extracted a high price in suffering from the Vietnamese people.

The men of the Politburo are warriors all. And all they have ever achieved has been by way of the fruit of battle. They know only one approach in problem solving, the sustained maximum application of force. For them power is the barrel of a gun and their faith in this is undiminished. As long as they remain in control there is little prospect of new policies of altered approach by Hanoi.

The strategic thinking of the Politburo and its High Command, as well as the military capability of PAVN itself, have been tested twice since the end of the Vietnam War -- in Cambodia beginning in 1978 and against China in the brief 1979 border war. In both instances the strategic thinking of the Hanoi leadership proved less than adequate, the performance by PAVN barely adequate.

The doctrinal challenge with respect to Cambodia was how to solve the "Pol Pot problem" as it was expressed by the Hanoi press when it emerged in 1975. Various solutions were tried -- diplomacy, psychological warfare, attempting to assassinate Pol Pot. In 1977 it appeared the High Command had settled on the old slow but sure dau tranh strategy. Then, at the end of 1978, came Soviet (or western) style strategy, high-visibility invasion: tank-led infantry plunging across the border, fanning out and occupying the country in a matter of days. Pol Pot and his followers fled to the Cardomom Mountains and began a resistance movement, soon joined by non-communists, and supported logistically by China with its strategic doctrine of "bleeding" Vietnam until it withdraws.

For the first time PAVN generals were employing Western/Soviet military strategy rather than their more familiar traditional strategy. It became apparent early they lacked skill in conducting this kind of warfare. Their initial thinking apparently was that victory under six months was possible. This was based on the calculation that Pol Pot had neither military staying power nor political depth, and on the assumption that once a traumatic military assault has shattered his capability to resist, the Khmer people would flock to the newly formed People's Republic of Kampuchea under Heng Samrin. But Pol Pot proved to be something of a guerrilla war genius. He was able to convert the blitzreig war into a protracted conflict, chiefly by embracing PAVN's dau tranh strategy and turning it back on the invaders. And he was able to seize the banner of Khmer nationalism.

For the first four or five years of the Cambodia operation the Hanoi High Command pressed on with remarkable determination, unaffected by the slowly rising discontent on the home front and among company and field grade officers. What changed during this period were tactics designed to reduce the cost and strain, to "Khmerize" the war by passing more of the combat burden over to the Phnom Penh government troops, and generally to find a cheaper kind of counter-insurgency that would reduce the casualty rate. There was greater use of long range artillery and air strikes. Mechanized warfare replaced costly ground sweeps and combat in difficult terrain. These tactics however tended to be self- defeating for they permitted continued insurgent existence, gave the guerrillas time and space. There is a rule at work in insurgencies: if guerrillas don't lose they win. Most importantly perhaps, Hanoi's approach handed over the banner of Khmer nationalism to the guerrilla forces; the government in Phnom Penh was seen throughout Cambodia as lackeys of the hated Vietnamese.

Finally in mid-1989 -- we believe we can fix the date as early June -- the Politburo in Hanoi decided to cut its losses and extricate itself from the Cambodian morass. Probably it was the vote of the three generals in the Politburo -- Le Duc Anh, Doan Khue and Dong Sy Nguyen -- which tipped the balance. There is reason to believe that they argued that PAVN was fighting in Cambodia with one arm tied, that the Khmer guerrillas were permitted sanctuary in Thailand, that under such circumstances it was impossible to win and therefore it was best to bit the bullet and get out. In any event that is what happened. PAVN combat troops were withdrawn with great ceremony in September of 1989. Later, as the threat of the Khmer Rouge appeared to increase, a small contingent -- 3,000 to 6,000 -- was sent back in, at least half of whom had again been withdrawn by late 1990. Regardless of numbers PAVN was "psychologically" out of Cambodia.

Postwar relations with China proved to be, for Vietnam's generals as well as for its diplomats, a case of few and narrow options. Hanoi's policies here, of necessity, have largely turned on Chinese behavior: China acts, Vietnam reacts. The PAVN High Command appears to believe that the Chinese army will not again attack as it did in 1979 -- in part because Hanoi will avoid provoking Beijing and in part because Hanoi thinks rightly or wrongly the Chinese have no stomach for another war.

China's February 1979 attack caught the Hanoi High Command off-guard -- apparently the Vietnamese simply couldn't believe it would ever come to Chinese invasion. Later the High Command assessed the 17-day war as being inconclusive in strategic terms; it was over before PAVN could invent and implement a full counter strategy. The Chinese objective was limited; its armies moved through the mountains stopping just short of the plain leading to Hanoi, then withdrew. No air power was used, by either side. Vietnam's response was improvisation, using Economic Construction divisions who happened to be in the area, greatly aided by favorable mountain terrain. The Chinese assault did not go well, chiefly because of logistics and transportation problems. It is probably safe to conclude that this brief war was for China a military failure but a political victory.

Basic PAVN strategy, should there be another Chinese invasion, can be inferred from Hanoi's ongoing research and development work and from PAVN reorganization activities since 1979. It is clear the Hanoi High Command's basic intent will be to hold the mountains and make the Chinese advance so costly as to become impractical. Refined and concentrated mobilization programs have been implemented in the districts of the region so as to present the incoming Chinese with tier after tier of self- contained, paramilitary-manned districts, themselves part of the "iron fortress" provinces that face China. This is a revised reapplication of the dau tranh strategy. The Chinese are to be met with a combination of high technology modern warfare (particularly with heavy artillery) and old-fashioned guerrilla war.

The central military fact of life for the Vietnamese, with respect to external relations in general is the Sino-Soviet dispute. It colors all thinking, influences all of Vietnam's foreign policies. The close present relationship between Hanoi and Moscow should be viewed through this prism. China represents a threat to Vietnam. The USSR represents valuable assistance in meeting this threat, requiring an intimate relationship. However, the China threat persists, in no small measure because of the close Hanoi-Moscow association.

The Hanoi-Moscow relation by 1979 became a military alliance in all but name, although such was never intended by either. It resulted, on Vietnam's part, as response to earlier failed policies which threw it into Soviet dependency for food and military hardware; and, on the USSR's part, as a result of Kremlin penchant for opportunism, the perceived advantage of Soviet naval and air presence on the Indochinese peninsula. China's attack and the subsequent quagmire in Cambodia forced the PAVN logistic system to depend almost entirely on the USSR. There are no arms factories in Vietnam all military hardware must be imported. Vietnam is also dependent now on the Soviet Union for various vital commodities such as oil, spare parts for the transportation system, and chemical fertilizer. These the USSR has supplied rather generously. Serving the national objective of maintaining close relations with the USSR quite obviously is endorsed by PAVN's generals. They, even more than the rest of the leadership probably recognized the importance of Moscow as a sure source of military hardware.

Profound but subtle influence has been effected by the USSR on PAVN. It stems from the basic fact that with any modern army, he who controls the kind of weapons supplied, the logistics made available (or denied) and the sort of training provided, can largely dictate what the army becomes, its strategic thinking and the kind of wars it can fight and cannot fight. An analysis of the military aid shipments by Moscow to PAVN over the past ten years offers clues to what has been the Soviet plan for PAVN development.

In the first year or so after the end of the Vietnam War, Soviet military aid was the nominal palace-guard type, designed to help keep the regime in power and its generals happy. The Cambodia invasion, which Moscow either helped plan or knew of in advance, levied the demand for guerrilla bashing hardware such as helicopters, armored vehicles and field communications systems. After the Chinese attack there was a shift to the kind of military hardware needed to fight a conventional, limited war, such as complex air missile defense systems, advanced aircraft, modern naval vessels and technical installations at Cam Ranh Bay and Da Nang airbase. In the early 1980's the relation reached the level of integrated or combined military planning, indicating Vietnamese commitment to some sort of coordinated military planning, obviously directed at China. The presumption is a division of labor between Vietnam and the USSR in the event of war with China. Arms shipments therefore have been designed to complement, not duplicate, this military preparedness. That in turn implies an over-arching Moscow-Hanoi defense plan.

Dissatisfaction in the Kremlin about the cost-benefit ratio of the Soviet-Vietnamese relationship. Arguments developed as to how much actual value was Cam Ranh Bay to the USSR. Increasingly Soviet leaders came to believe the USSR has gotten the worst of its bargain with Hanoi. Moscow did not scrap the relationship, but sought to rationalize it, and make it more equitable for the USSR. Several far reaching measures were taken, such as passing certain defense burdens over to PAVN. This trend is continuing. Vietnam in 1990 was told publicly it can expect less future economic aid from the USSR. Moscow was silent however on how much military assistance Hanoi could expect. Probably it will be enough to meet PAVN's minimal needs.

Exactly how important strategically Vietnam is to the USSR, can be, and is, a matter for debate. But clearly there is advantage here for Moscow and no good reason why it should abandon its present alliance, especially if it can be made more cost effective. The USSR has a vested interest in seeing that PAVN's present preeminence does not change. Indeed the basis of its presence in Indochina and its foothold in Southeast Asia which this provides, rest on the continued need by PAVN for Soviet assistance and alliance.

Final Note:

In retrospect this much seems clear: Vietnam represented a new kind of war in history. Indeed, the fact was it was not a war in the old-fashioned usage of that word. Rather it was a struggle, it was dau tranh exactly as the communists said it was. This struggle was partly military and hence war as we have always known war. But also it was nonmilitary--an ultra- hostile blood-letting type of militancy, to be sure--but still nonmilitary. The counterstrategy against armed dau tranh proved successful and met the challenge through the long years of warfare. Even at the end the South Vietnamese military force was basically intact. But the political dau tranh gauntlet was never actually picked up, no comprehensive counterstrategy was ever developed here, and what effort was made did not succeed.

Berkeley, December 1990