General
Giap and the Vietnamese Wars (1948-1975)
"As
soon as logistics and tactics were fully working we triumphed in everything
put to us. The army was even able to move almost a million soldiers,
within and outside of Vietnam, feed them, dress them, accomodate them,
provide weapons for them and generally look after them better than
any other army has been able to do previously. In the battle field
we were invincible. Fight after fight, the Vietcong forces and the
north Vietnamese army were faced with numberous losses. However, in
the end it was North Vietnam, not the United States of America who
were victorious. How could we have been so successful and then later
failed so badly?
In spite
of having the greatest army in South East Asia, North Vietnam was
not an enemy to South Vietnam. South Vietnam was supported by the
the most potent military and industrial nation in the world. South
Vietnam and their alliance USA were not defeated by their opponents
greater resources but by a greater strategy. North Vietnam managed
what Suz Tzu considered one of the best victories: the escape of the
enermy.
The main
person in charge of the North Vietnamese strategy was General Vo Nguyen
Giap. In 1994, Giap became the leader of the Vietnamese guerrilla
forces and remained the leader of the North Vietnamese army until
1974 and as Minister of Defence until 1980. Giap's strategy was based
on the revolutionary theory of Mao Tse Tung's war, that had three
phases: first, passive resistence, during which he created and mobilized
political support; second, guerrilla warfare, directed at weakening
the enermy and creating his own military forces; and finally, general
counteroffensive. In 1954, Giap felt strong enough to start the final
stage of the war against France and the brilliant victory in Dien
Bien Phu corroborated his strategy. Against South Vietnam and their
alliance USA, the approach was similar. Giap explained his strategy
as the following <Our strategy was to maintain a long tiring battle,
only a long war period could allow us to use our strong political
cards, superimpose our disadvantage of lack of material and transform
our weakness into a strength. To maintain and increase our strengths
was the principle that we adhered to, attacking only when success
was guaranteed and avoiding battles which could cause us great dammage>.
The strategy
was built on the only resource the communists had: the will to fight.
As Clausewitz, the military theory of the XIX century observed that
war requires help from the government, the military and the state.
This unity was never achieved by the USA. The North Vietnamese, on
the contrary, were united by a <popular war>. To capitalize
on these strength meant a long war. As the Prime Minister Pham Van
Dong explained: «The USA is the most powerful nation in the
world. However, they do not like long draw out issues, nor wars. Therefore,
if we make this war long we can beat them in the end».
Measured
military confrontment and the charade of peace in Paris helped the
North Vietnamese to prolong the conflict, whilst the diplomatic efforts
to isolate the Americans from thier western alliances and promote
the American pacifist movement accelerated the destruction of the
American's desire to win.
The efficiency
of the American military response was limited by two doubts: What
were the objectives and who were the enermies? Was the American's
role to support the South Vietnamese regime, combat Vietcong's terrorism,
defeat North Vietnam and communism in South East Asia, or was the
war of military or political importance. The diversity of opinions
and the changes of public and political opinion was fatal for the
establishment of a long term strategy.
The coherence
and strength of the North Vietnamese strategy allowed them to overcome
initial errors. To be more specific, Giap, without a doubt, plunged
into his general offensive. Not only Tet's offensive in 1968, but
also the East front in 1972 experienced important losses in the Vietnamese
army and in Vietcong. General Giap was substituted as commanding chief
by General Van Tien Dung, who recognised that the Watergate scandle
had weakened the presidency of the USA and that a Northamerican response
or new communist attack was improbable. On 29th April with the operation
Constant Wind, the USA started to evacuate all of the Americans out
of South Vietnam and the next morning the North Vietnamese troops
entered into Saigon's presidential palace.
SOURCES:
1 Col.
Harry G. SUMMERS Jr., On Strategy (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1982).
2 G.
K. TANHAM, Communist Revolutionary Warfare (Nueva York: Praeger,
1961.)
3 Vo
NGUYEN GIAP, Selected Writings (Hanoi: Foreign Language Publishing
House, 1977)
4 J.
CAMERON, Here is your enemy (Nueva York, Halt, Rinehart, Winston,
1966).
The solutions
are proposed in the book "Strategic Management. Concepts, techniques
and applications" by Robert M. Grant. Ed. Thomson-CIVITAS. 4th
Edition.
