0 - The Black Vault

THE BDM CORPORA FION
US national strategy was, in many r.spects, inappropriate to the
conWlict in Vietnam because US
leaders were unwilling to wage a prctracted
war of indeterminate length. Short-cuts to victory were preferred.
Largely as a result of this, stra.egy took a "back seat to physical
strength and tactics ..... "27/ Previous Americpi succeszz• with conventional
warfare reinforced the United States' impatience with counterinsurgency
methods necessary for fighting a p"otracted war.,
More fundamentally,
as North Vietnamese strategists r-cogrized, American society was
psychologically averse to protracted w~r. As Major General Than Do, one of
eight commanders of communist forrc• in the South, explained,
We can c-.aure the hardships of a lengthy war, but they
= unable to endure the hardships of such a war
because they are well-to-do people. 28/
This intolerance of protracted war prompted American
leaders to seek a
clear and early resolution of the conflict. "There was always a sense of
1American urgency - the typical American proclivity to solve present problems
quickly, then get on with others."29/
Sinvolvement
Most important, the U0 :nad other global interest3 to promote, and its
in Vietnam was therefore, neuessarily, limited. North
Vietnamese leaders, on the other hand, had no other global interests to
I
rival their goal of reunifyinq Vietnam, the conflict in Vietnam was thus,
from their perspective, a total war. Because the DRV had no significant
competing interests (or what Hanoi called "contradictions"), its leaders
believed the DRV could out;ist the US in the strucigle for sovereignty in
Vietnam. Therefore, it did not matter that the US won nearly every oattlefield
confrontation. From the DRV perspective, as American manpower and
,materiel were thrown into the struggle and as American losses accumulated
over time, the endurance of the American people would reach a breaking
point. The mounting contradictions between the American pecple and their
national leadership would, therefore, eventually be resolved by an American
witi.drawal froi Vietnam.
The problem for the North Vietnamese strategists
was to determine how best to expedite this withdrawal, all the while insuiing
that their own staying power in Vietnam went unimpaired..
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