The Kennedy administration decided in November 1963 to overthrow the weak South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Ziem, who was not popular with the people and could not organize a proper response to the Communists, by a coalition of generals. President Nixon later described the decision as a disastrous betrayal of an ally, contributing to the eventual collapse of South Vietnam.

There was a lack of consensus among the group of generals who came to power, leading to a series of coups in the months that followed. The country was feverish with political instability, which the Viet Cong immediately took advantage of as they gradually expanded their control over new areas of South Vietnam. For several years, the North Vietnamese shifted military units to the American-controlled areas, and by the beginning of the open confrontation with the United States in 1964 the number of the North Vietnamese troops in the South amounted to about 24 thousand people. The number of U.S. troops by then was just over 23,000.

In August 1964, there was a clash between the US destroyer Maddox and the border torpedo boats off the coast of North Vietnam. A couple of days later there was a second skirmish. The Tonkin incidents (named after the bay where the conflict occurred), were the occasion for the United States to launch a military campaign against North Vietnam. The U.S. Congress passed a resolution authorizing the use of force by President Johnson, who had replaced John F. Kennedy, who had been shot a few months earlier.

Bombing

The National Security Council recommended a three-phase escalating bombing campaign against North Vietnam. The bombings lasted a total of three years and were intended to force the North to stop supporting the Viet Cong by threatening to destroy the country’s air defenses and infrastructure, as well as to provide moral support for South Vietnam.

However, the Americans did not limit themselves to bombing North Vietnam. Bombings were organized to destroy the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos and Cambodia, which had been used to deliver military aid to the Vietcong in South Vietnam.

Despite the fact that more than 1 million tons of bombs were dropped on the territory of North Vietnam and more than 2 million tons on Laos, the Americans were never able to achieve their objectives. On the contrary, these U.S. tactics helped to rally the people of the North, who had to switch to a virtually underground way of life during the long years of bombing.

Chemical attacks

Since the 1950s, U.S. military laboratories have experimented with herbicides, which were developed as chemical weapons during World War II and then used to test their effects on nature for military purposes. Beginning in 1959, these agents were tested in South Vietnam. The tests proved successful, and U.S. President Kennedy made these substances a central component of an innovative counterinsurgency strategy in 1961, personally ordering their use in Vietnam. In doing so, the U.S. government exploited a flaw in the 1925 Geneva Convention, which banned the use of chemicals against humans but not against plants.

In July 1961, the first shipments of chemicals arrived under code names in South Vietnam. In January 1962, Operation Farm Mistress began: The U.S. Air Force systematically sprayed herbicides in Vietnam and the border areas of Laos and Cambodia. In this way they tilled the jungle and destroyed crops to deny the enemy protection, ambush, food, and popular support. Under Johnson, the campaign became the largest chemical warfare program in history. Until 1971, the U.S. had sprayed about 20 million gallons (80 million liters) of dioxin-contaminated herbicides.

Ground War

Since the bombings did not have the expected effect, the decision was made to deploy ground warfare. The U.S. generals chose the tactic of attrition – physically destroying as many enemy troops as possible with the fewest casualties of their own. Americans were supposed to defend their own military bases and control border areas, catching and destroying enemy soldiers.

The purpose of regular American units was not to conquer territory, but to inflict maximum damage on the enemy, to prevent possible attacks. In practice it looked as follows: a small airmobile group would be sent to the area of operation by helicopter. Once the enemy was detected, this peculiar “decoy” immediately recorded its location and called in air support, which carried out a heavy bombardment of the specified area.

This tactic led to numerous civilian deaths in the cleared areas and the mass flight of the survivors, making the subsequent “pacification” much more difficult.

It was impossible to evaluate objectively the effectiveness of the chosen strategy, since the Vietnamese took the bodies of their dead whenever possible, and the Americans were very reluctant to go into the jungle to count the enemy’s corpses. Killing civilians to increase reporting became a common practice among U.S. soldiers.

The main difference of the Vietnam War can be considered a small number of large-scale battles. After suffering several major defeats at the hands of a technologically better-equipped enemy, the Vietcong adopted guerrilla warfare tactics, moving at night or during the rainy season, when U.S. aircraft could not inflict serious damage on them. Using a vast network of tunnels as weapons depots and escape routes, engaging only in close combat, the Vietnamese guerrillas forced the Americans to spread their forces more and more thinly in an attempt to control the situation. By 1968, the number of American soldiers in Vietnam exceeded 500,000.

U.S. soldiers, unfamiliar with the language and culture of the country, could hardly distinguish peasants from guerrillas. By killing both as a precaution, they created a negative image of the aggressor among the civilian population, thus playing into the hands of the guerrillas. Although the U.S. Army and South Vietnamese government forces had a fivefold numerical advantage, their adversaries were able to maintain a steady flow of weapons and well-trained fighters who were also significantly more motivated.

Government forces seldom managed to maintain long-term control of cleared areas, while the Americans were forced to use a large proportion of their troops to guard their own military bases and weapons stored there because they were constantly under attack. In essence, the guerrillas managed to impose their tactics on the enemy: It was they who decided where and when the battle would happen and how long it would last.