Policy towards Vietnam fell within the general framework of doctrine that had been established for the post-World War II global order, and faced little challenge until the general framework was modified in the early 1970s. The US quickly threw in its lot with France, fully aware from the start that it was opposing the forces of Indochinese nationalism and that its own clients could not withstand political competition. Accordingly, resort to peaceful means was never an option; rather, a dire threat to be avoided. It was also understood, throughout, that domestic support for the US wars and subversion was thin. It was therefore necessary to wind the operation up as quickly as possible, leaving Indochina under the control of client regimes, to the extent feasible.

Basic policies held firm in planning circles (and among elites generally) from 1950 into the early 1970s, though by the end questions of feasibility and cost were seriously raised. The Geneva agreements of 1954 were at once subverted. The US imposed a fragile client regime in what came to be called "South Vietnam." Lacking popular support, the regime resorted to large-scale terror to control the population, finally eliciting resistance, which it could not control. As Kennedy took office, collapse of the US position seemed imminent. Kennedy therefore escalated the war to direct US aggression in 1961-1962. The military command was exuberant over the success of the enhanced violence, and thought that the war could soon be wound up, leading to US withdrawal after victory. Kennedy went along with these predictions though with reservations, never willing to commit himself to the withdrawal proposals. By mid-1963, coercive measures appeared to be successful in the countryside, but internal repression had evoked large-scale urban protest. Furthermore, the client regime was calling for a reduction of the US role or even US withdrawal, and was making overtures for a peaceful settlement with the North. The Kennedy Administration therefore resolved to overthrow its client in favor of a military regime that would be fully committed to military victory. This result was achieved with the military coup of November 1, 1963.

As the US command had predicted, the coup simply led to further disintegration, and as the bureaucratic structure of the former regime dissolved, to a belated recognition that reports of military progress were built on sand. Tactics were then modified in the light of two new factors: (1) the hope that at last a stable basis had been established for expanded military action, and (2) recognition that the military situation in the countryside was a shambles. The first factor made escalation possible, the second made it necessary, even more so as the former hopes were seen to be a mirage. The plans to withdraw, always predicated on victory, had to be abandoned as the precondition collapsed. By early 1965, only large-scale US aggression could prevent a political settlement. The unchallenged policy assumptions allowed few options: the attack against South Vietnam was sharply escalated in early 1965, and the war was extended to the North.

The January 1968 Tet offensive revealed that the war could not be quickly won. By that time, internal protest and deterioration of the US economy vis-à-vis its industrial rivals convinced domestic elites that the US should move towards disengagement.

These decisions set in motion the withdrawal of US ground forces, combined with another sharp escalation of the military assault against South Vietnam and by now all of Indochina in the hope that the basic policies could still somehow be salvaged. Negotiations continued to be deferred as long as possible, and when the US was finally compelled to sign a "peace treaty" in January 1973, Washington announced at once, in the clearest and most explicit terms, that it would subvert the treaty in every crucial respect. That it proceeded to do, in particular, by increasing the violence in the South in violation of the treaty, to much domestic acclaim as the tactic appeared to be successful. The dissident press could tell the story, but the mainstream was entirely closed to such heretical truths, and still is, a ban maintained with impressive rigor.⁶⁴ These actions of the US and its client again elicited a reaction, and the client regime again collapsed. This time the US could not enter to rescue it. By 1975, the war ended.

The US had achieved only a partial victory. On the negative side, the client regimes had fallen. On the positive side, the entire region was in ruins, and there was no fear that the "virus" of successful independent development might "infect" others. Improving the picture further, the region was now insulated from any residual danger by murderous military regimes that the US helped install and strongly supported. Another consequence, predictable years earlier, was that the indigenous forces in South Vietnam and Laos, unable to resist the US onslaught, had been decimated, leaving North Vietnam as the dominant force in Indochina.⁶⁵ As to what would have happened had these forces survived and the countries allowed to develop in their own ways, one can only speculate. The press and journals of opinion are happy to serve up the desired formulas, but these, as usual, reflect doctrinal requirements, nothing more.

Basic policy remained constant in essentials: disentanglement from an unpopular and costly venture as soon as possible, but after the virus was destroyed and victory assured (by the 1970s, with increasing doubt that US client regimes could be sustained). Tactics were modified with changing circumstances and perceptions. Changes of Administration, including the Kennedy assassination, had no large-scale effect on policy, and not even any great effect on tactics, when account is taken of the objective situation and how it was perceived.

The scale of these colonial wars and their destructiveness was extraordinary, and the long-term import for international and domestic society correspondingly great. But in their essentials, the Indochina wars fall well within the history of the 500-year conquest, and more specifically, within the framework of the period of US hegemony.

⁶⁴ On the remarkable complicity of the intellectual community in suppressing the readily-available facts about US subversion of diplomacy, see TNCW, ch. 3; MC, ch. 5.5.3. The full story of this suppression -- in some cases, deliberate -- has yet to be told.

⁶⁵ On this prospect, see AWWA, 286.