|
Between 1965 and 1967 the United States massively extended the air war raising the number of sorties and bombs to a multiple. In the beginning Rolling Thunder was mainly targeted on military bases, supply depots and infiltration routes in the south but from 1966 on the air raids steadily moved northward up to the Chinese border being directed against North Vietnamese industrial and transportation systems. The bombing inflicted great damage on the developing nation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) and demanded a thousand civilian casualties per month. Despite high expenditures and the devastation caused by the B-52s, the bombing campaign did not reach its goals. Although areas leading to the Ho Chi Minh Trail were continuously attacked, infiltration into the south amounted to 90,000 in 1967. North Vietnam was remarkably skilful in evacuating the urban population, rebuilding traffic routes and in digging a vast tunnel system. In addition, the DRV was able to compensate for its material losses with increased aid from China and the Soviet Union. The two Communist powers did not settle their differences in view of the escalation of the U.S. but they were played off against each other by Hanoi. The new Soviet leaders Brezhnev and Kossygin who succeeded Khrushchev in 1964 paid more attention to the Vietnam conflict and provided North Vietnam with sophisticated military equipment. Soviet surface-to-air missiles and MIG fighters generated an effective air defense system around the cities of Hanoi and Haiphong. Beijing agreed to detail 320,000 engineering and artillery troops and additionally to provide equipment for the North Vietnamese Army (NVA).
General Westmoreland who bore the responsibility for American ground war operations relied on a strategy of attrition, which aimed at locating and eliminating NLF and NVA units and would be called "search and destroy". Initial optimism was based on the belief that the application of America's technological superiority would automatically lead to its victory. But Westmoreland's aggressive strategy neglected to adjust to the enemy's guerrilla warfare (such as ambushes and hit-and-run operations) and constantly required the deployment of additional troops which is why the U.S. requested its Pacific allies to commit forces (and thus give the war international respectability). Except for South Korea which provided 60,000 troops, the allies made only limited commitments whereas American troops increased to 485,000 by the end of 1967. Increasingly American combat forces took it upon to wage the actual war whereas the ARVN was assigned defensive operations and population control. At the beginning American tactics in fact proved to be successful when NLF forces sustained considerable losses during heavy fighting in the province of Quang Ngai and at Ia Drang Valley in late 1965. The bombs dropped on South Vietnam exceeded double the tonnage of bombs of the air war in the north and the use of herbicides such as "Agent Orange" destroyed half of South Vietnam's forests. Entire areas in the south were designated "Fire Free Zones" as for instance when in 1967 during the operation "Cedar Falls" a NLF stronghold north of Saigon named the Iron Triangle was virtually levelled with the ground. As there were no front lines excepting the demilitarised zone, where North Vietnamese and American forces faced in static warfare, the "body count" and the "kill ratio" became the index of success. The figures of enemy casualties were distorted by a great number of dead civilians and it is known that statistics often based on the attitude "If it's dead and it's Vietnamese, it's Vietcong".
After the Buddhists anew initiated demonstrations in Hue and Saigon against the Ky regime and American domination, the U.S. arranged a Revolutionary Development Program to pacify the villages. The program, in which RD teams that were trained in social services and propaganda should undermine NLF guerrillas and make the villagers support the government, eventually proved to be a failure as well as American efforts for a new constitution and elections in South Vietnam. When in September of 1967 elections were held, the ticket of Thieu and Ky, who ran for the vice presidency, won 35 per cent of the vote.
|
