phipps@solitary (Geoff Phipps) (12/18/89)
From: Geoff Phipps <phipps@solitary> Brian Ross (bxr307@coombs.anu.oz) has been writing about the differing strategies pursued by US and Australian Forces in Vietnam. I can't claim to be an expert, I wasn't there and I have only read a few books on the subject, but I do see things a little differently from him. While I would agree that a hi-tech solution to such a war is impossible (unless you have the political support for genocide), I don't think the Australian strategy would have worked either. As usual comparisons have been made to the Malayan Emergency. If you look at the two wars I think you will see that the strategies available to the Commonwealth in Malaya were simply not available to the US in Vietnam. For example: In 1948 Malaya was still part of the Empire, hence Britain had COMPLETE CONTROL over the government. There had never been much indigenous support for independence, so anti-European feelings weren't high. The first (and subsequent) Malaysian governments were also pro-British (they owed their existence to the British, anti-colonial elements were supporting the communists in the jungle). vs. South Vietnam was an independent country, the US could only influence its government. It had recently emerged from a battle of liberation against foreign domination, so foreigners weren't well received. The Malaysian Government and Civil Service and Police were fairly free of corruption. vs The RVN civil service had been filled by the French with collaborators, who were drawn to their administrative positions by the promise of wealth. Things hadn't changed much, the ruling cliques and many middle officials were incredibly corrupt. The Malayan government gave land titles to previously unlanded Chinese farmers (although this was done as part of a population relocation). vs The RVN government was unwilling to implement reforms that would have swayed the peasants (e.g. land reform). The Malaysian Communists were almost all Chinese. Ethnic Chinese were about a third of the population, so the Communist's population base was limited. vs. The Vietcong were Vietnamese. Malaysia had been part of the Empire, so the people of the Commonwealth had some attachment to the place. vs Few Americans knew where Vietnam was before the US became involved. ***************** So much for Hearts and Minds. As for more traditional military matters: (West) Malaya has a very short land border, and with only foreign country (I'm ignoring the parts of Malaysia in Borneo because no fighting in the Emergency took place there. Of course during the confrontation with Indonesia things got a bit hot). The Various Royal Navies could stop most seaborne supplies. vs South Vietnam had very long land borders. The USN probably stopped much of the seaborne supply (here I'm guessing). The Malaysian Communists were lucky to have automatic weapons. vs the Vietcong always had AK-47's and mortars, progressing to rockets etc. ********** I agree that the only (known) way to win a civil war like Vietnam or Malaya is to pursue the political front and the military front in parallel. In Malaya the Commonwealth was able to do that, the US could not do that in Vietnam because it had to act through the corrupt RVN administration. Militarily you have to use lots of infantry on the ground to close with the enemy and either kill him or drive him away from the population. You also have to avoid killing neutral civilians (or they become enemy). Artillery can't do this. The only way to stop the North from supporting subversion in the South and/or crossing the border would have been to invade the North. This was not politically possible. Hence victory was impossible on either front in Vietnam. ************ I am also an Australian, and have engaged in my share of "yank-bashing", but I don't think we would have done much better in Vietnam. Geoff Phipps, phipps@solitary.stanford.edu Stanford University, Computer Science Department
wdstarr@athena.mit.edu (William December Starr) (12/20/89)
From: wdstarr@athena.mit.edu (William December Starr) In article <12399@cbnews.ATT.COM>, Geoff Phipps said: > The Malayan government gave land titles to previously unlanded Chinese > farmers (although this was done as part of a population relocation). > vs > The RVN government was unwilling to implement reforms that would have > swayed the peasants (e.g. land reform). It was worse than that: the South Vietnamese government was foricbly resettling lots of peasants as part of its "Strategic Hamlet Program." The primary result of this program was that the Viet Cong never suffered from any shortage of willing recruits in the South. > The Malaysian Communists were lucky to have automatic weapons. > vs > the Vietcong always had AK-47's and mortars, progressing to rockets > etc. Mmm, not "always," and your mention of AK-47's implies that most of their weapons were of Communist-bloc manufacture. In fact, it was only after the battle of Ap Bac (2 Jan. 1963), in which the Viet Cong scored a victory so huge that it amazed even them (and which the American brass claimed, and apparently believed, was a victory for the South) that the VC leadership in the North decided that the time was right to begin shipping arms wholesale into the South. Prior to that, the average Viet Cong guerrilla in the South had three possible sources of weapons: (1) Old weapons leftover from the war with the French. Usually pretty clunky, especially compared with what the enemy (US/ARVN had). (2) Homemade weapons, mostly shotguns made out of galvanized pipe. Often more dangerous to the shooter than to the target. (3) Weapons captured from the enemy. This was where they got their good stuff from. From Neil Sheehan's "A Bright Shining Lie," pp. 99-101, referring to the situation in September of 1962 [my apologies for the wall-to-wall text; Sheehan's paragraph breaks are few and far between]: "His [John Paul Vann's] gravest immediate worry was that although the Viet Cong were being killed in unprecedented numbers, the United States was at the same time removing the basic limit on the expansion of the guerrillas -- the availability of captured weapons. The advisory mission was inadvertently supplying the Viet Cong with U.S. arms. Since the spring of 1962 the 28,000 Saigon territorials in the division zone had been turning in their bolt-action French rifles for fast-firing American weaponry as fast as they could be trained to shoot the U.S. arms. The 10,000 Civil Guardsmen were being equipped with a full bristle of infantry weapons from M-1 rifles to machine guns and mortars. The 18,000 Self-Defense Corps militiamen were being armed more selectively but still handsomely with semi-automatic .30 caliber carbines, Thompson submachine guns, and the BAR, the clip-fed light machine gun. What Harkins [Westmoreland's predecessor as head of the American military in Vietnam] and his staff had failed to forsee prior to ordering the program full speed ahead was that no weapons should be handed out until the little outposts garrisoned by the territorials had been dismantled and consolidated. Otherwise the Saigon territorials would serve as a conduit to channel this American arms largess to the Communists, which was exactly what was happening. "The Civil Guards and the SDC were the troops most frequently ambushed, and they manned the 776 outposts in the northern [Mekong River] Delta which were the prime targets of the guerrillas. The great majority of these outposts inherited from the French... were easy marks, because the masonary watchtowers, which Vann called "brick coffins," were garrisoned by half a dozen SDC and the little triangular-shaped forts of mud walls surrounded by a moat were held by no more than a reinforced squad. The elimination of most of these "VC supply points," as Vann and his advisors referred to the outposts in general, had been another of the priorities that Vann and Porter [Vann's immediate superior officer] had agreed on." Unfortunately, Vann and Porter got nowhere. When he recommended to Col. Cao (his opposite number in the ARVN) and the various South Vietnamese province chiefs that the outposts be eliminated through consolidation, "Cao and the villiage chiefs had all replied that it was impossible to eliminate the outposts, that they were symbols of the government's authority and [President] Diem would never permit their removal.... The only posts dismantled were those the guerrillas overrran and had the peasants tear down before they withdrew, and the province chiefs rebuilt those as fast as they could. "...Substituting newly captured automatic and semi-automatic American weapons for the previously captured French bolt-action rifles that were still the standard weapon of the regular and provincial guerrillas would... mean a manifold improvement in Viet Cong firepower. That the guerrillas were attempting such a quantum upgrading was evident in the M-1's, carbines and Thompson submachine guns which were starting to show up in arms seized from Main Force and regional units. If nothing was done to stop this drain of American arms through the outposts -- and Harkins and his representatives were always prodding the training advisors to hand out weapons faster despite the warnings from Vann and other division senior advisors -- then Vann would encounter increasingly better-armed Viet Cong in his shakily led campaign to destroy the Main Force and provincial guerrilla units. If his campaign was ever interrupted or lost momentum for some reason and the Communists were able to fully reconstitute their striking force and go on the offensive with impunity, the guerrillas would capture many more American weapons, build their strength far beyond current numbers, and become a foe more formidable than Vann cared to imagine."