What was the outcome of the Vietnam War from 1965 to 1973?

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Vietnam War, (1954–75), a protracted conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam, known as the Viet Cong, against the government of South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. Called the “American War” in Vietnam (or, in full, the “War Against the Americans to Save the Nation”), the war was also part of a larger regional conflict (see Indochina wars) and a manifestation of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies.

At the heart of the conflict was the desire of North Vietnam, which had defeated the French colonial administration of Vietnam in 1954, to unify the entire country under a single communist regime modeled after those of the Soviet Union and China. The South Vietnamese government, on the other hand, fought to preserve a Vietnam more closely aligned with the West. U.S. military advisers, present in small numbers throughout the 1950s, were introduced on a large scale beginning in 1961, and active combat units were introduced in 1965. By 1969 more than 500,000 U.S. military personnel were stationed in Vietnam. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union and China poured weapons, supplies, and advisers into the North, which in turn provided support, political direction, and regular combat troops for the campaign in the South. The costs and casualties of the growing war proved too much for the United States to bear, and U.S. combat units were withdrawn by 1973. In 1975 South Vietnam fell to a full-scale invasion by the North.

The human costs of the long conflict were harsh for all involved. Not until 1995 did Vietnam release its official estimate of war dead: as many as 2 million civilians on both sides and some 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters. The U.S. military has estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died in the war. In 1982 the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C., inscribed with the names of 57,939 members of U.S. armed forces who had died or were missing as a result of the war. Over the following years, additions to the list have brought the total past 58,200. (At least 100 names on the memorial are those of servicemen who were actually Canadian citizens.) Among other countries that fought for South Vietnam on a smaller scale, South Korea suffered more than 4,000 dead, Thailand about 350, Australia more than 500, and New Zealand some three dozen.

Vietnam emerged from the war as a potent military power within Southeast Asia, but its agriculture, business, and industry were disrupted, large parts of its countryside were scarred by bombs and defoliation and laced with land mines, and its cities and towns were heavily damaged. A mass exodus in 1975 of people loyal to the South Vietnamese cause was followed by another wave in 1978 of “boat people,” refugees fleeing the economic restructuring imposed by the communist regime. Meanwhile, the United States, its military demoralized and its civilian electorate deeply divided, began a process of coming to terms with defeat in what had been its longest and most controversial war. The two countries finally resumed formal diplomatic relations in 1995.

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The Vietnam War Quiz

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• 1. JCS quoted in Max Hastings, The Korean War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), 229. Hastings argued that the “Korean War occupies a unique place in history, as the first superpower essay of the nuclear age in the employment of limited force to achieve limited objectives,” p. 338. On the relationship of Korea to Europe, see Stanley Sandler, The Korean War: No Victors, No Vanquished (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 144.

• 2. Matthew B. Ridgway, The Korean War (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967; reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1986), 145, 232.

• 3. Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959), 311. For a broader context of this period, see Jonathan M. House, A Military History of the Cold War, 1944–1962 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012).

• 4. Robert E. Osgood, Limited War: The Challenge to American Security (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 5, 7.

• 5. Andrew J. Birtle, U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine, 1942–1976 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 2006), 278. See also Douglas Porch, Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2103), 217. For a counterargument on how U.S. Army officers shunned learning and thus lost the war in Vietnam, see John Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).

• 6. Henry A. Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), 139. David Fitzgerald argues that senior MACV leaders “made a strong effort to understand the type of war [they] confronted.” Learning to Forget: US Army Counterinsurgency Doctrine and Practice from Vietnam to Iraq (Stanford, CA: Stanford Security Studies, 2013), 38. On multiple dimensions of strategy, see Colin S. Gray, “Why strategy is difficult,” in Strategic Studies: A Reader, 2d ed., ed. Thomas G. Mahnken and Joseph A. Maiolo (New York: Routledge, 2014), 43.

• 7. Lyndon Baines Johnson, The Vantage Point: Perspectives on the Presidency, 1963–1969 (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971), 241. On larger Cold War issues, see John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 240.

• 8. McNamara quoted in Gerard J. DeGroot, A Noble Cause? America and the Vietnam War (Harlow, UK: Longman, 2000), 135. On enemy escalation and its impact, see David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000), 346. B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy, 2d rev. ed. (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1954), 335–336.

• 9. Neil L. Jamieson argues that “Vietnamese clung to and fought over their own competing and incompatible visions of what Vietnam was and what it might and should become.” In Neil L. Jamieson, Understanding Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), x.

• 10. Ronald H. Spector, Advice and Support: The Early Years, 1941–1960 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1983), 336. While early MAAG commanders realized the importance of economic development as part of an overall approach to strategy, Lieutenant General Lionel McGarr, who took over MAAG in August 1960, elevated the importance of counterinsurgency training within the ARVN ranks. Spector, Advice and Support, 365. See also Alexander S. Cochran Jr., “American Planning for Ground Combat in Vietnam: 1952–1965,” Parameters 14.2 (Summer 1984): 65.

• 11. Robert Buzzanco, Masters of War: Military Dissent and Politics in the Vietnam Era (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 65, 72–73. While sympathetic to Ngo Dinh Diem, Mark Moyar covers the American participation during the advisory years in Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

• 12. Agrovilles were supposedly secure communities to which rural civilians were relocated in hopes of separating them from NLF insurgents. On Diem, development, and engineering a social revolution, see Edward Miller, Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). For a competing interpretation, see James M. Carter, Inventing Vietnam: The United States and State Building, 1954–1968 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). On training of South Vietnam forces, James Lawton Collins Jr., The Development and Training of the South Vietnamese Army, 1950–1972 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975).

• 13. Graham A. Cosmas, MACV: The Joint Command in the Years of Escalation, 1962–1967 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 2006), 35.

• 14. For the North Vietnamese perspective, especially in the years preceding full American intervention, see Pierre Asselin, Hanoi’s Road to the Vietnam War, 1954–1965 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), and William J. Duiker, The Communist Road to Power, 2d ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview , 1996). For a perspective of Diem somewhat at odds with Miller, and especially Moyar, see Seth Jacobs, Cold War Mandarin: Ngo Dinh Diem and the Origins of America’s War in Vietnam, 1950–1963 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).

• 15. Michael H. Hunt, Lyndon Johnson’s War: America’s Cold War Crusade in Vietnam, 1945–1968 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1996), 94. On the air campaign, see Mark Clodfelter, The Limits of Airpower: The American Bombing of North Vietnam (New York: Free Press, 1989), and Lloyd C. Gardner, “Lyndon Johnson and the Bombing of Vietnam: Politics and Military Choices,” in The Columbia History of the Vietnam War, ed. David L. Anderson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011).

• 16. Westmoreland quoted in Larry Berman, Planning a Tragedy: The Americanization of the War in Vietnam (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), 71. For an example of senior officers blaming civilians for limiting military means to achieve political ends, see U.S. Grant Sharp, Strategy for Defeat: Vietnam in Retrospect (San Rafael, CA: Presidio, 1978).

• 17. On the contentious topic of escalation, see Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), and Lloyd C. Gardner, Pay Any Price: Lyndon Johnson and the Wars for Vietnam (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1995). David L. Di Leo offers a treatment of a key dissenter inside the Johnson White House in George Ball, Vietnam, and the Rethinking of Containment (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991).

• 18. Robert S. McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Times Books, 1995), 188.

• 19. Westmoreland’s assessment in The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of United States Decisionmaking in Vietnam, vol. 4, ed. Mike Gravel. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971–1972), 606. See also chapter 7, “Evolution of Strategy,” in William C. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976).

• 20. Phillip B. Davidson, Vietnam at War: The History: 1946–1975 (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1988), 354. On MACV guidance in implementing this broad strategy, see John M. Carland, “Winning the Vietnam War: Westmoreland’s Approach in Two Documents,” Journal of Military History 68.2 (April 2004): 553–574.

• 21. U. S. Grant Sharp and William C. Westmoreland, Report on the War in Vietnam (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969), 100. The Pentagon Papers, Vol. 4, 296.

• 22. Vo Nguyen Giap, People’s War, People’s Army: The Viet Công Insurrection Manual for Underdeveloped Countries (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1962), 46, 61. On the evolution of Hanoi’s strategic thinking, see David W. P. Elliott, “Hanoi’s Strategy in the Second Indochina War,” in The Vietnam War: Vietnamese and American Perspectives, ed. Jayne S. Werner and Luu Doan Huynh (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1993).

• 23. The strategic debate is best outlined in Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 71. See also Nguyen Vu Tung, “Coping with the United States: Hanoi’s Search for an Effective Strategy,” in The Vietnam War, ed. Peter Lowe (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 46–48; and Hanoi Assessment of Guerrilla War in South, November 1966, Folder 17, Box 06, Douglas Pike Collection: Unit 01-Assessment and Strategy, The Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas (hereafter cited as TTUVA). Resolution 12 in Communist Strategy as Reflected in Lao Dong Party and COSVN Resolutions, Folder 26, Box 07, Douglas Pike Collection: Unit 06-Democratic Republic of Vietnam, TTUVA, p. 3.

• 24. For a useful historiographical sketch on the debates over intervention and American strategy, see Gary R. Hess, Vietnam: Explaining America’s Lost War (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2009), chapters 3 and 4.

• 25. Westmoreland quoted in Davidson, Vietnam at War, 313. On early U.S. Army actions in Vietnam, see John M. Carland, Stemming the Tide: May 1965 to October 1966 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 2000), and Shelby L. Stanton, The Rise and Fall of an American Army: U.S. Ground Forces in Vietnam, 1965–1973 (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1985).

• 26. Westmoreland explained his rationale for focusing on main force units in A Soldier Reports, 180. For a counterargument against this approach, see Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986).

• 27. The best monograph on the Ia Drang battles remains Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young (New York: HarperCollins, 1993). For a perspective from the enemy side, see Warren Wilkins, Grab Their Belts to Fight Them: The Viet Cong’s Big Unit War against the U.S., 1965–1966 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2011), especially chapter 6.

• 28. COMUSMACV memorandum, “Increased Emphasis on Rural Construction,” 8 December 1965, Correspondence, 1965–1966, Box 35, Jonathan O. Seaman Papers, U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania (hereafter cited as MHI).

• 29. Westmoreland highlighted Hanoi’s continuing infiltration of forces into South Vietnam at the end of 1965. An evaluation of U.S. operations in early December underscored his concerns that “our attrition of their forces in South Vietnam is insufficient to offset this buildup.” In Carland, “Winning the Vietnam War,” 570. On the media’s take on these early battles, see “G.I.’s Found Rising to Vietnam Test,” New York Times, December 26, 1965.

• 30. Memorandum to President Lyndon B. Johnson from Robert S. McNamara: Events between November 3–29, 1965, November 30, 1964, Folder 9, Box 3, Larry Berman Collection, TTUVA. On McNamara being “shaken” by the meeting, see Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (New York: Random House, 1988), 579–580. McNamara, In Retrospect, 221–222.

• 31. “Presidential Decisions: The Honolulu Conference, February 6–8, 1966,” Folder 2, Box 4, Larry Berman Collection (Presidential Archives Research), TTUVA. John T. Wheeler, “Only a Fourth of South Viet Nam Is Under Control of Saigon Regime,” Washington Star, January 25, 1966.

• 32. “1966 Program to Increase the Effectiveness of Military Operations and Anticipated Results Thereof,” February 8, 1966, in The War in Vietnam: The Papers of William C. Westmoreland, ed. Robert E. Lester (Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America, 1993), Incl. 6, Folder 4, Reel 6. See also U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, vol. 5, Vietnam, 1967 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2002), 216–219 (hereafter cited as FRUS). Westmoreland took to heart the importance of rural construction. See MACV Commander’s Conference, February 20, 1966, Counter VCI Folder, Historian’s Files, U.S. Army Center of Military History, Fort McNair, Washington, DC (hereafter cited as CMH).

• 33. Pacification defined in “Handbook for Military Support of Pacification,” February 1968, Folder 14, Box 5, United States Armed Forces Manual Collection, TTUVA. Seymour Topping, “Crisis in Saigon Snags U.S. Effort,” New York Times, April 5, 1966. Martin G. Clemis, “Competing and Incompatible Visions: Revolution, Pacification, and the Political Organization of Space during the Second Indochina War,” paper presented at the 81st Annual Meeting of the Society for Military History, April 2014, Kansas City, MO.

• 34. On Westmoreland’s approach to pacification, see Gregory A. Daddis, Westmoreland’s War: Reassessing American Strategy in Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), chapter 5. For a counterargument that dismisses allied pacification efforts, see Nick Turse, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2013).

• 35. Sir Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency: The Lessons of Malaya and Vietnam (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1966), 55. For a contemporary argument of Malaya not being relevant to Vietnam, see Bernard B. Fall, Viet-Nam Witness: 1953–66 (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1966), 272.

• 36. Thomas L. Ahern Jr., Vietnam Declassified: The CIA and Counterinsurgency (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010), 171–175.

• 37. The best monograph on pacification remains Richard A. Hunt, Pacification: The American Struggle for Vietnam’s Hearts and Minds (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995). For a balanced treatment of Komer, see Frank L. Jones, Blowtorch: Robert Komer, Vietnam, and American Cold War Strategy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2013). See also Robert W. Komer, Bureaucracy at War: U.S. Performance in the Vietnam Conflict (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1986). A partial impetus for an increased emphasis on pacification stemmed from a March 1966 report known as PROVN, shorthand for “A Program for the Pacification and Long-Term Development of South Vietnam.” PROVN stressed nonmilitary means and argued that “victory” could be achieved only by “bringing the individual Vietnamese, typically a rural peasant, to support willingly the Government of South Vietnam (GVN).” Deputy Chief of Staff for Military Operations, “A Program for the Pacification and Long-Term Development of South Vietnam (Department of the Army, March 1966), 1, 3. The best review of this still hotly debated document is Andrew J. Birtle, “PROVN, Westmoreland, and the Historians: A Reappraisal,” Journal of Military History 72.4 (October 2008): 1213–1247.

• 38. Robert W. Komer, “Clear, Hold and Rebuild,” Army 20.5 5 (May 1970): 19. On CORDS establishment, see National Security Action Memorandum No. 362, FRUS, 1964–1968, vol. 5, 398–399. Though revolutionary development remained, at least nominally, a South Vietnamese program, many observers believed the inability of the ARVN to take over pacification in the countryside helped spur the establishment of CORDS. Robert Shaplen, The Road from War: Vietnam, 1965–1970 (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 122. As of March 31, 1967, 53 ARVN infantry battalions were performing missions in direct support of pacification. MACV Monthly Evaluation Report, March 1967, MHI, 13.

• 39. For a contemporary discussion on the cultural divide between Americans and Vietnamese and how this impacted both military operations and the pacification program, see Frances FitzGerald, Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972). Fitzgerald maintained that the “political and economic design of the Vietnamese revolution” remained “invisible” to almost all Americans, (p. 143).

• 40. For competing tasks within CORDS, see Chester L. Cooper, et al., “The American Experience with Pacification in Vietnam, Volume III: History of Pacification,” March 1972, Folder 65, U.S. Marine Corps History Division, Vietnam War Documents Collection, TTUVA, 271. Journalist Ward Just reported that the real yardsticks of pacification’s progress were “the Vietnamese view of events, the Vietnamese mood, the Vietnamese will and the Vietnamese capability.” See “Another Measure of Vietnam’s War,” Washington Post, October 15, 1967. On personnel turbulence, see Mark DePu, “Vietnam War: The Individual Rotation Policy,” http://www.historynet.com/vietnam-war-the-individual-rotation-policy.htm.

• 41. As a sampling of contemporary journalist critiques of the war in 1967, see: Joseph Kraft, “The True Failure in Saigon—South Vietnam’s Fighting Force,” Los Angeles Times, May 3, 1967; Ward Just, “This War May Be Unwinnable,” Washington Post, June 4, 1967; and R. W. Apple, “Vietnam: The Signs of Stalemate,” New York Times, August 7, 1967. On the war in 1967 being perceived as a stalemate, see Sir Robert Thompson, No Exit from Vietnam (New York: David McKay, 1969), 67; and Anthony James Joes, The War for South Viet Nam, 1954–1975, rev. ed. (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001), 96. On military operations early in 1967, see Bernard W. Rogers, Cedar Falls–Junction City: A Turning Point (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974, 2004).

• 42. On Johnson’s salesmanship campaign, see Larry Berman, Lyndon Johnson’s War: The Road to Stalemate in Vietnam (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), especially chapters 5–7. On the MACV-CIA debate, see James J. Wirtz, “Intelligence to Please? The Order of Battle Controversy during the Vietnam War,” Political Science Quarterly 106.2 (Summer 1991): 239–263.

• 43. On Hanoi’s views and its policy for a decisive victory, see Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People’s Army of Vietnam, 1954–1975, trans. Merle L. Pribbenow (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 206–207. On overriding political goals of Tet, see: Ang Cheng Guan, The Vietnam War from the Other Side: The Vietnamese Communists’ Perspective (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002),116–126; James J. Wirtz, The Tet Offensive: Intelligence Failure in War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 10, 20–21; Ronnie E. Ford, Tet 1968: Understanding the Surprise (London: Frank Cass, 1995), 70–71; and Gabriel Kolko, Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the United States, and the Modern Historical Experience (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 303.

• 44. If successful, Hanoi’s leaders also would be in a more advantageous position if forced into a “fighting while negotiating” phase of the war. Ford, Tet 1968, 93. See also Merle L. Pribbenow II, “General Võ Nguyên Giáp and the Mysterious Evolution of the Plan for the 1968 Tết Offensive,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 3 (Summer 2008): 1–33.

• 45. Carver quoted in Robert J. McMahon, “Turning Point: The Vietnam War’s Pivotal Year, November 1967–November 1968,” in Anderson, The Columbia History of the Vietnam War, 198. For a journalist’s account, see Don Oberdorfer, Tet! (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971). For an accessible reference book, see William T. Allison, The Tet Offensive: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Routledge, 2008).

• 46. Gallup poll results in the aftermath of Tet in Berman, Lyndon Johnson’s War, 185. Background on LBJ’s March 31 speech in Robert Mann, A Grand Delusion: America’s Descent into Vietnam (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 600–602; A. J. Langguth, Our Vietnam: The War, 1954–1975 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 492–493; and Kolko, Anatomy of a War, 320–321. Decision on troop levels in Mann, A Grand Delusion, 576.

• 47. Zeb B. Bradford, “With Creighton Abrams during Tet,” Vietnam (February 1998): 45. Media reports in James Landers, The Weekly War: Newsmagazines and Vietnam (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004), 145–146. As examples arguing for a change in strategy, see A. J. Langguth, “General Abrams Listens to a Different Drum,” New York Times, May 5, 1968, and “A ‘Different’ War Now, With Abrams in Command,” U.S. News & World Report, August 26, 1968, 12. On Abrams’s “one-war” concept, see Lewis Sorley, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999), 18. The Westmoreland-Abrams strategy debate remains contentious. In his admiration of Abrams, Lewis Sorley is most vocal in supporting a change in strategic concept. See as an example, Vietnam Chronicles: The Abrams Tapes, 1968–1972 (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2004), xix. Others are less certain. Phillip Davidson served under both commanders, as did Robert W. Komer—neither subscribed to a change in strategy under Abrams. Davidson, Vietnam at War, 512, and Komer in The Lessons of Vietnam, ed. W. Scott Thompson and Donaldson D. Frizzell (New York: Crane, Russak, 1977), 79. Andrew Birtle’s argument on the change being “more in emphasis than in substance” seems most compelling. “As MACV admitted in 1970, ‘the basic concept and objectives of pacification, to defeat the VC/NVA and to provide the people with economic and social benefits, have changed little since the first comprehensive GVN plan was published in 1964.’” In U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine, 367.

• 48. Andrew J. Goodpaster, Senior Officers Debriefing Program, May 1976, MHI, p. 40. On peace replacing military victory, see Daniel C. Hallin, The “Uncensored War”: The Media and Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 178.

• 49. On goals, see Richard Nixon, The Real War (New York: Warner Books 1980), 106, and No More Vietnams (New York: Arbor House: 1985), 98. Henry Kissinger, The White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), 298. See also Larry Berman, No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger, and Betrayal in Vietnam (New York: Free Press, 2001), 50. Jeffrey Kimball argues that de-Americanization “was a course made politically necessary by the American public’s desire to wind down the war and doubts among key segments of the foreign-policy establishment about the possibility of winning the war.” The Vietnam War Files: Uncovering the Secret History of Nixon-Era Strategy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 12.

• 50. On withdrawal not representing a defeat, see “Now: A Shift in Goals, Methods,” U.S. News & World Report, January 6, 1969, 16. On global perspective, see Jeffrey Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 62. Michael Lind argues that Nixon had to withdraw “in a manner that preserved domestic support for the Cold War in other theaters.” Vietnam: The Necessary War (New York: Free Press, 1999), 106.

• 51. Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), 349. On realizing limits to U.S. power, see Lawrence W. Serewicz, America at the Brink of Empire: Rusk, Kissinger, and the Vietnam War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007), 10. On containing communism, see U.S. Embassy Statement, “Objectives and Courses of Action of the United States in South Viet-Nam,” FRUS, 1964–1968, vol. 7, 719. See also Lloyd Gardner, “The Last Casualty? Richard Nixon and the End of the Vietnam War, 1969–75,” in A Companion to the Vietnam War, ed. Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buzzanco (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002), 230.

• 52. On problems of different types of threats, see Viet-Nam Info Series 20: “The Armed Forces of the Republic of Viet Nam,” from Vietnam Bulletin, 1969, Folder 09, Box 13, Douglas Pike Collection: Unit 02-Military Operations, TTUVA, ps. 8, 25. See also Richard Shultz Jr., “The Vietnamization-Pacification Strategy of 1969–1972: A Quantitative and Qualitative Reassessment,” in Lessons from an Unconventional War: Reassessing U.S. Strategies for Future Conflicts, ed. Richard A. Hunt and Richard H. Shultz Jr. (New York: Pergamon, 1982), 55–56. Loren Baritz argues that the “Nixon administration abandoned counterinsurgency” since it realized the NLF no longer was a significant threat. Backfire: A History of How American Culture Led Us into Vietnam and Made Us Fight the Way We Did (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 279.

• 53. Nixon, No More Vietnams, 104–107. Definition of pacification on p. 132.

• 54. Pacification Priority Area Summary, September 3, 1968, prepared by CORDS, Folder 65, US Marine Corps History Division, Vietnam War Documents Collection, TTUVA. Countryside depopulation in Charles Mohr, “Saigon Tries to Recover from the Blows,” New York Times, May 10, 1968; and David W. P. Elliott, The Vietnamese War: Revolution and Social Change in the Mekong Delta, 1930–1975, concise ed. (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2007), 331, 336. On problems of measuring pacification security, see Gregory A. Daddis, No Sure Victory: Measuring U.S. Army Effectiveness and Progress in the Vietnam War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 118–122.

• 55. The Chieu Hoi (“Open Arms”) program, begun in 1963, aimed to “rally” Vietcong defectors to the GVN side as part of a larger national reconciliation effort. The plan sought to give former insurgents “opportunities for defection, an alternative to the hardships and deprivations of guerrilla life, political pardon, and in some measure, though vocational training, a means of earning a livelihood.” Jeanette A. Koch, The Chieu Hoi Program in South Vietnam, 1963–1971(Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 1973), v.

• 56. Vietnam Lessons Learned No. 73, “Defeat of VC Infrastructure,” November 20, 1968, MACV Lessons Learned, Box 1, RG 472, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland. See also Dale Andradé, Ashes to Ashes: The Phoenix Program and the Vietnam War (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1990); and Mark Moyar, Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism in Vietnam (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, 2007).

• 57. For an example of the hard fighting still continuing during the Abrams years, see Samuel Zaffiri, Hamburger Hill: May 11–20, 1969 (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1988). On what U.S. advisers were doing as part of Vietnamization, see Jeffrey J. Clarke, Advice and Support: The Final Years, 1965–1973 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1988), 342–343.

• 58. On ARVN increases, see in Larry A. Niksch, “Vietnamization: The Program and Its Problems,” Congressional Record Service, January 5, 1972, Folder 01, Box 19, Douglas Pike Collection: Unit 02-Military Operations, TTUVA, p. CRS-21. The best work on the South Vietnamese Army is Robert K. Brigham, ARVN: Life and Death in the South Vietnamese Army (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006).

• 59. “The Laird Plan,” Newsweek, June 2, 1969, 44. On ARVN lacking experience, see James H. Willbanks, Abandoning Vietnam: How America Left and South Vietnam Lost Its War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 51; and Samuel Zaffiri, Westmoreland: A Biography of General William C. Westmoreland (New York: William Morrow, 1994), 211.

• 60. Vietnamization working in Nixon, RN, 467. On enemy infiltration, see John Prados, The Blood Road: The Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Vietnam War (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1999). On the incursion, see John M. Shaw, The Cambodian Campaign: The 1970 Offensive and America’s Vietnam War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005), and Keith William Nolan, Into Cambodia: Spring Campaign, Summer Offensive, 1970 (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1990).

• 61. On My Lai, see Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim, Four Hours in My Lai (New York: Viking, 1992), and William Thomas Allison, My Lai: An American Atrocity in the Vietnam War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012).

• 62. Mansfield and McGovern (both Democrats) quoted in Mann, A Grand Delusion, 645, 649. See also Berman, No Peace, No Honor, 76. For an introduction to the antiwar movement and its impact on Nixon, see Melvin Small, Antiwarriors: The Vietnam War and the Battle for America’s Hearts and Minds (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2002).

• 63. Donald Kirk, “Who Wants to Be the Last American Killed in Vietnam?” New York Times, September 19, 1971. See also “As Fighting Slows in Vietnam: Breakdown in GI Discipline” U.S. News & World Report, June 7, 1971, and George Lepre, Fragging: Why U.S. Soldiers Assaulted Their Officers in Vietnam (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2011). “Fragging,” derived from fragmentation grenade, was the act of fratricide, usually against an officer in a soldier’s chain of command. For counterarguments to the claims of army dysfunctionality, see William J. Shkurti, Soldiering on in a Dying War: The True Story of the Firebase Pace Incidents and the Vietnam Drawdown (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011), and Jeremy Kuzmarov, The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009).

• 64. Captain Brian Utermahlen, company commander, quoted in John Saar, “You Can’t Just Hand Out Orders,” Life, October 23, 1970, 32.

• 65. “The Troubled U.S. Army in Vietnam,” Newsweek, January 11, 1971, 30, 34. On avoiding risks in a withdrawing army, see Saar, 31. James E. Westheider, The African American Experience in Vietnam: Brothers in Arms (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008).

• 66. Troop strengths in Shelby L. Stanton, Vietnam Order of Battle: A Complete Illustrated Reference to U.S. Army Combat and Support Forces in Vietnam, 1961–1973 (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 2003), 334. Kissinger’s concerns in The White House Years, 971.

• 67. Nguyen Duy Hinh, Lam Son 719 (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1979), 8. On Lam Son 719 being linked to continuing withdrawals, see Andrew Wiest, Vietnam’s Forgotten Army: Heroism and Betrayal in the ARVN (New York: New York University Press, 2008), 199.

• 68. Two new works cover the Lam Son 719 operation: James H. Willbanks, A Raid Too Far: Operation Lam Son 719 and Vietnamization in Laos (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2014), and Robert D. Sander, Invasion of Laos, 1971: Lam Son 719 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014).

• 69. Politburo quoted in Victory in Vietnam, 283. On Hanoi’s strategic motives, see Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War, 324; Stephen P. Randolph, Powerful and Brutal Weapons: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Easter Offensive (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 28–29; and Ngo Quang Truong, The Easter Offensive of 1972 (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1980), 157–158.

• 70. Politburo quoted in Victory in Vietnam, 283. On uncertainty over Hanoi’s intentions, see Berman, No Peace, No Honor, 124; Allan E. Goodman, The Lost Peace: America’s Search for a Negotiated Settlement of the Vietnam War (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1978), 117–118; and Anthony T. Bouscaren, ed., All Quiet on the Eastern Front: The Death of South Vietnam (Old Greenwich, CT: Devin-Adair, 1977), 44. Nixon viewed the invasion “as a sign of desperation.” In RN, 587.

• 71. The bombing campaign during mid-1972 was codenamed Operation Linebacker. On debates between the White House and MACV over the best use of B-52s, see Randolph, Powerful and Brutal Weapons, 119–120; Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War, 314–315; and H. R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House (New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1994), 435. On the campaign ending with “no culminating battles and mass retreats, just the gradual erosion of NVA strength and the release of pressure against defending ARVN troops,” see Randolph, Powerful and Brutal Weapons, 270.

• 72. James H. Willbanks argues that “the fact U.S. tactical leadership and firepower were the key ingredients . . . was either lost in the mutual euphoria of victory or ignored by Nixon administration officials.” In The Battle of An Loc (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 166.

• 73. Thieu’s defiance and Hanoi’s intransigence in Robert Dalleck, Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 443. Paris agreement in Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War, 366–368. See also Kimball, The Vietnam War Files, 276–277.

• 74. Linebacker II goals in Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War, 364–365. Press quoted in ibid., 366.

• 75. Ronald B. Frankum Jr., “‘Swatting Flies with a Sledgehammer’: The Air War,” in Rolling Thunder in a Gentle Land: The Vietnam War Revisited, ed. Andrew Wiest (New York: Osprey, 2006), 221–222.

• 76. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, 180–181. MACV staff in Sorley, Vietnam Chronicles, 9.

• 77. Ridgway, The Korean War, 247.

What were some outcomes of the Vietnam War?

What happened in 1973 in the Vietnam War?

What was the outcome of the Vietnam War after the United States withdrew in 1975?

What happened in the Vietnam War in 1965?