As I go about my day-to-day business I come across a constant stream of statements and assertions that recite “common knowledge” of events. Sometimes “common knowledge” is a little inaccurate, sometimes it is dead wrong. This does not always matter, unless the area people are talking bout is your specialty and you can’t let it go. But sometimes these inaccuracies or misrepresentations, to put a slightly darker tone on things, do matter. This is especially true when inaccurate “common knowledge” is used to shape policies and attitudes in the here-and-now.
A classic example is the position that the Imperial German Army was not defeated by the Allied and Associated Powers in World War One but instead went down because of a “stab in the back” organized by socialists, jews and other assorted traitors. It was a satisfying and useful position for those who promoted, believed or used it, but it was absolutely and totally wrong.
However, today’s entry is not about the defeat of Germany in 1918 it s about an event a little closer to home, specifically the end of the Vietnam War in 1974/75.
Common understandings of this event / process in the United States generally seem to be that the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) was not a state with a valid claim to independent existence and that ultimately the United States was defeated by a southern insurgency; the Viet Cong.
There are numerous problems with this understanding.
1) The idea that South Vietnam was not a valid state with a legitimate right to exist, which underpins many discussions of the post 1955 Vietnam War, is not a fact. It is a political position that was adopted by those opposed to the war or in support of North Vietnam. It involves many assumptions, including the idea that decolonization should not involve the alteration of colonial boundaries, which is certainly a topic worthy of lengthy discussion in its own right, and the idea that peoples that speak the same language should automatically be part of the same state (c.f. China / Taiwan) and that any process which prevents this is wrong. Additional factors seem to be a sense that US supported states in the developing world are automatically illegitimate; hostility to authoritarian regimes; and the idea that an insurgency demonstrates that the legitimacy of the state has been rejected by its people.
However it is difficult to determine why any of his made the existence of South Vietnam less legitimate than that of South Korea which was ruled by a succession of brutal civilian and military authoritarians over the same period.
2) The USA completed its withdrawal from involvement in the war in 1973. A variety of military advisors remained in the country under the guise of civilian contractors etc along with an intelligence collection presence but these elements were not involved in military operations by the RVN. The US Air Force also ended its operations, most importantly those involving the provision of close air support (CAS) to the RVN army (ARVN). As such the events of 1975 were not a US military defeat as the US was no longer present. That is not to say that the end of the war was not a political defeat.
3) The idea that the US and ARVN were defeated by the Viet Cong is the most damaging misconception of all. Partly it arises from the tendency of US discussions of the war to essentially stop with the Tet Offensive of early 1968. After Tet the only events that really exist in the US popular mind, and by extension public discourse, are the Christmas bombing of December 1972, and the 1975 evacuation of the US Embassy in Saigon.
The problem is that this conception is utterly and totally wrong. There is plenty of evidence that the Viet Cong insurgency had been contained or even defeated. A change in the military / political strategy of the US and RVN after Tet produced dramatic results rapidly weakening the VC insurgency. After the end of Tet cycle of offensives there were no further nationwide uprisings led by VC insurgents.
What developed in the place of the defeated insurgency was essentially a conventional interstate conflict between the US and RVN on one side and North Vietnam on the other. Unlike the insurgency this war ultimately ended in a defeat for ARVN and the elimination of South Vietnam. Although North Vietnamese conventional forces were involved in the Tet offensive cycle of 1968 their role was somewhat obscured by the perception that Tet was a Viet Cong operation. This was not possible in the case of the 1972 “Easter Offensive” which was a unvarnished invasion by the conventional forces of the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) across the demilitarized zone separating North and South Vietnam. This invasion was heavily defeated but ARVN was not able to fully expel the PAVN from South Vietnam.
The Paris peace accords, which the RVN was rightly VERY reluctant to accept was essentially a ceasefire with forces left in place meaning South Vietnam had to accept the presence of significant PAVN forces on its territory. Shortly after US forces completed their withdrawal in 1973 the PAVN began to undertake operations to expand the areas under their control. These operations concluded with a massive invasion in 1975 after it became clear that the US was not going to provide the military support that it had promised the RVN when it withdrew. Although the invasion was initially resisted ARVN lacked adequate ammunition, manpower and air-support, and after a series of hard-fought battles ARVN lost the ability to effectively conduct defensive operations. Soon after the RVN was completely conquered.
The idea that South Vietnam was conquered rather than liberated by a nationalist insurgency is unlikely to be a popular view at present. Contemporary antiwar tropes are reinforced by regular assertions that the US is not capable of conducting successful counter-insurgency campaigns, or even that insurgencies cannot be defeated. They are further strengthened by efforts to associate operations in Afghanistan and Iraq with the “illegitimate” war in Vietnam (e.g.: The US should never have been in Vietnam and so should not be in Iraq). All of these positions are flat wrong, based on a politically driven interpretation of the Vietnam War’s conclusion that ignores the course of events in favor of repeating the stale antiwar slogans and stances of the 1960s.
This is unfortunate because the effect has been to hamstring public debate on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq making it very difficult to judge those wars and their place in national strategy, in so far as it can be said to exist, on their own merits or demerits.