The Vietnam War: Perception vs. Reality
While there is a common belief that the Vietnam War has been critiqued, analyzed and researched in a meticulous manner, the truth is that the theoretical premise behind the assessment of America’s role in this war has not been based on divergent viewpoints and a comparative analysis concerning the same. Regrettably, scholarly research has taken a back seat to public opinion polls. These factors have left the American strategist “stuck in the matrix” so to speak concerning what is perception and what is reality in regards to strategic thought related issues that are relevant to the Vietnam War. In regards to this particular conflict, our intention is to clearly articulate how perception is different than reality. The Vietnam War provides perfect examples of the dangers of operating under the assumption that perception is equivalent to reality.The following is an “algorithm precise” template for assessing some of the most relevant variables of the Vietnam War:
Priority of US Agenda (Theatre Interests vs. Regional or Global Specific Interests)
The American public’s perception of their nation’s agenda concerning the Vietnam War has a lot to do with their belief that it was a failure.
Example:
Perception- America’s agenda concerning Vietnam was “theatre specific” in nature (simply tied to Vietnam).
Reality- America’s strategic interests in Vietnam were region and global specific.
These assertions are validated by a comparative analysis of what America accomplished on a theatre, regional and global specific level:
Theatre Specific Interests (TSI)
America’s strategic intentions were to prevent Vietnam from becoming a catalyst for Communist expansion in Southeast Asia and to prevent Vietnam from falling into the hands of the Communist contingent from the north. After over 10 years of a highly exertive combat environment (1965-1975), America withdrew its forces from Vietnam and the country fell into the hands of the Communist forces from the north soon after. The American public perceives this as a failure. However, one must consider the following:
After losing well over 500,000 soldiers to combat related fatalities in the Vietnam War over a 10 year period, the Communist contingent in Vietnam lost all of its motivation to spread the Communist doctrine to other nations in Southeast Asia through “implied” military support in addition to losing its ability to do so financially due to the cost of the Vietnam War. America’s ability to facilitate this occurrence while staring down Russia and China in addition to addressing division and civil unrest within its own borders is nothing short of amazing. This is clearly a strategic “victory” for America in every sense of the word.
Region Specific Interests (RSI)
As stated in the previous section, America’s strategic goals in Vietnam were tied to region specific concerns, as there was a strong likelihood that an undeterred Vietnam would lead to Communist expansion in Southeast Asia. The highly exertive combat environment that America created and sustained in Vietnam for over 10 years was geared towards sending the message that a Communist expansionist agenda would prove to be costly for like minded nations in Southeast Asia militarily, economically and diplomatically. It is imperative that we note that a successful RSI initiative does not require a conventional theatre related victory as much as it requires sustained combat exertion in a given theatre. In the case of the Vietnam War, this exertion allowed America to contain Communism to within the borders of Vietnam while decisively removing the enemy’s ability to exacerbate their Communist ideology to other nations in the region militarily and economically.
Global Specific Interests (GSI)
The success or failures of Region Specific Interests initiatives clearly have global implications and necessitate the need for America’s Vietnam War plan to have a Global Specific Interests (GSI) aspect to it. The global aspects of the Vietnam War strategy was geared towards preventing a possible “domino” effect from occurring where Vietnam acted as the catalyst for the regional expansion of Communism in Southeast Asia, therefore making a multi regional and ultimately global expansion of Communism highly probable due to a scenario where America would have failed to decisively deter the theory and practice of such an agenda. America’s long term commitment to the Vietnam War provided the kind of precision based exertion that was necessary to prevent this worst case scenario from happening.
Casualty Aversion
While it is a seemingly hard sell to suggest that the Vietnam War was part of a larger casualty aversion initiative that was region specific and global in nature, the facts clearly validate this assertion:
- The decisive manner in which America implemented its military operations in Vietnam (500,000 enemy casualties) sent a clear message to rogue and enemy nations that America was inclined to use fatality related exertions to show them the errors of their ways.
- The American trend of “sustained” attacks in Vietnam left no doubt that future adversaries were in for a highly exertive combat environment that would have devastating effects on their economic viability should they do anything to provoke an American invasion.
- The cumulative effect of A and B is that nations were hesitant to overtly entertain the thought of facilitating Communist expansion in their nation or region of the world.
As you can see, these factors prevented a substantial amount of potential armed conflicts, therefore, saving the lives of an exponential amount of American soldiers. Due to flashpoint variables for military intervention by China or the Soviet Union on behalf of one of their proxy war subordinates, it is not a stretch to suggest that a nuclear war that could have led to the death of scores of American civilians was prevented by factors A through C as well.
Deterrence Logic (Conventional, Irregular, Nuclear Warfare)
During the Vietnam War, America’s deterrence logic was on three objectives:
- Establish the fact that the American military was a world class contingent and, therefore, globally viable in regards to conventional warfare.
- Establish the fact that America’s military forces had the type of adaptive capabilities that were necessary to successfully engage in irregular warfare.
3. Maximize the potential for the successful deterrence of America’s adversaries based on clear or near parity with the Soviet Union in regards to the proliferation of nuclear weapons in addition to the benefits of talking points 1 and 2, as strategic and tactical proficiencies in conventional and irregular warfare will deter non nuclear nations overt provocations that will lead to armed conflict. Additionally this will lead to nuclear deterrence as well, as the Soviet Union will not be inclined to engage in limited nuclear engagements against American forces that are geared towards “softening” them up for the conventional forces of the Soviet Union and their allies who are inclined towards irregular warfare.
Note:
There are many simple truths to armed conflict. One of them is that when an invading military force is implementing a globally viable military strategy, a highly exertive combat environment will be created. The obvious intentions of the commanders of this military force will be to make this environment more exertive on enemy forces; however, this can not be done without exposing a significant amount of the invading force contingent to the same exertions. So force augmentation of a physical and more importantly in this instance, a psychological nature will be critical to any success that is to be realized in a given theatre of combat.
