The Vietnam War 1965-1973
US Military Strategy: Search and Destroy
General William Westmoreland commanded US forces and adopted a “search and destroy” strategy, using superior firepower and mobility to kill enemy fighters rather than hold territory. US forces used helicopters to insert troops into enemy areas, then withdrew, measuring progress through body counts. The strategy reflected a belief that the USA’s technological advantage would ultimately overwhelm the Vietcong.
The USA also deployed Agent Orange, a chemical defoliant, to strip jungle cover from Vietcong supply routes, and dropped napalm on villages suspected of sheltering enemy fighters. Free-fire zones were designated areas where US troops could shoot at anyone, on the assumption that all residents were hostile. These tactics caused significant civilian casualties.
Operation Rolling Thunder (1965–1968) dropped more bombs on Vietnam than US forces had dropped in the entire Pacific theatre of the Second World War. Despite this firepower, the Vietcong continued to recruit and resupply through the Ho Chi Minh Trail, demonstrating the limits of aerial bombardment against a guerrilla enemy.
Vietcong Tactics
North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap and the Vietcong relied on guerrilla tactics: ambushes, booby traps, hit-and-run raids and a network of underground tunnels at Cu Chi near Saigon. Vietcong fighters were indistinguishable from civilians, making the identification of the enemy extremely difficult for US forces.
The Vietcong also used political terror against village headmen loyal to the South Vietnamese government, and drew on a deep well of nationalist sentiment that resented both the Saigon government and the presence of foreign troops. Giap understood that the USA could not sustain indefinite casualties politically, even if it could militarily: the strategy was to make the war too costly for America to continue.
On 31 January 1968, at the start of the Vietnamese lunar new year (Tet), North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces launched coordinated surprise attacks on more than 100 South Vietnamese towns and cities, including Saigon. The Tet Offensive was militarily repulsed; the attackers suffered massive casualties. But it shattered American public confidence. General Westmoreland had been assuring the public the war was being won; the Tet Offensive proved the enemy was far from defeated. President Johnson’s approval rating collapsed and on 31 March 1968 he announced he would not seek re-election.
On 16 March 1968, US soldiers killed hundreds of unarmed civilians — including women, children and elderly people — in the village of My Lai. The My Lai massacre was covered up initially and not reported publicly until November 1969. When it became known, it intensified domestic and international opposition to the war. It raised fundamental moral questions about the conduct of US forces and the effect of free-fire zone policies on military behaviour.
Vietnamisation and Withdrawal
President Richard Nixon took office in January 1969 and introduced the Vietnamisation policy: gradually withdrawing US troops while training South Vietnamese forces to take over the fighting. US troop numbers fell from 543,000 in 1969 to under 50,000 by 1972. At the same time Nixon secretly bombed and then invaded Cambodia to destroy supply routes.
In May 1970, National Guard troops shot four students dead at Kent State University during an anti-war protest. The killings provoked mass demonstrations across American campuses. In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press, revealing that successive administrations had deliberately misled Congress and the public about the war’s conduct and origins.
The Paris Peace Accords were signed in January 1973, and the last US combat troops left Vietnam in March 1973. US forces had not been defeated on the battlefield, but domestic political pressure, the Tet Offensive’s psychological impact, and the credibility damage of My Lai and the Pentagon Papers made continued involvement untenable.
Opposition to the Vietnam War built steadily from the mid-1960s. College campuses became centres of anti-war activity; draft card burning and sit-ins spread across the country. Television coverage brought the war’s violence directly into American homes in a way no previous conflict had allowed. When Eddie Adams’s photograph of the execution of a Vietcong prisoner on the streets of Saigon was published in February 1968, it became an iconic image of the war’s moral complexity.
The anti-war movement was diverse: it included students, civil rights activists (Martin Luther King Jr. opposed the war from 1967, arguing it diverted resources from domestic poverty), veterans who had served in Vietnam, and mainstream Democrats disillusioned with Johnson’s credibility gap. The movement did not end the war directly, but it constrained the options available to Nixon, who knew that any significant re-escalation would trigger massive domestic unrest. It demonstrated that in a democratic society, public opinion ultimately sets the boundaries of military action.