By Patrick N. Allitt, Emory University
South Vietnam’s inability to defend itself led to steady increases in American aid under presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Among Kennedy’s difficulties was the deep unpopularity of General Diem’s regime. They were parts of the Catholic minority, tainted by French imperialism because of that and were ruling very heavy-handedly.
Who Was General Diem?
General Diem was the autocratic ruer of South Vietnam. The most unpopular member of the regime was his sister-in-law, the hated Madam Nhu, who tried to impose Catholic principles as the civil law, even though the vast majority of the Vietnamese people were not themselves Catholics.
One of the groups who led opposition to Diem’s regime was the Buddhist monks. In a series of very dramatic presentations, some of the monks poured gasoline over themselves, and set fire to themselves in the streets of Saigon. They took their own lives as a way of underlining their hatred and abhorrence of Diem’s regime.
The Assassination of General Diem
The American military advisers in Vietnam and the American ambassador understood the unpopularity of Diem, and they also got wind of the fact that some of his generals were planning to assassinate him. They notified President Kennedy that this assassination was planned. After consultation with the ambassador and with his foreign policy advisers, Kennedy said, “We should let the assassination go forward,” and so they did. A few weeks before Kennedy was assassinated, Diem was killed.
The Americans had hoped that Diem would be replaced by someone who could gain some measure of popular legitimacy, but they were never able to find such a ruler. As a result, South Vietnam, always remained heavily dependent on American aid. The region was ruled by usually military strongmen (one after the other) who did not enjoy popular support.
This is a transcript from the video series A History of the United States, 2nd Edition. Watch it now, on Wondrium.
President Johnson’s Actions in Vietnam
An incident in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964 provided the justification for direct American military build-up. Two American ships, the Maddox and the Turner Joy were monitoring a South Vietnamese attack on some island held by the north, in the Gulf of Tonkin. A North Vietnamese gunboat attacked them. President Johnson alleged, wrongly, that it was an unprovoked attack. In fact, it had been the American advisers who had mounted this whole campaign right from the beginning.
The attack of the Maddox and the Turner Joy prompted a resolution in the United States Senate authorizing President Johnson to use force to secure American interests in the area. All but two of the members of the United States Senate voted to give the president this discretionary power over the fighting, and President Johnson used it as authorization for the war.
Johnson wanted to project strength and anti-Communist resolve, even though the place to do it was an unexpected one. With his active approval, the American military force in Vietnam from that point on rapidly ratcheted upwards, until by 1967, more than half a million Americans were fighting in Vietnam, whereas at the time of Kennedy’s death, the number had been just 16,000.
The American Expectation of Success in Vietnam
The American military had learned a lot about long-range amphibious warfare in World War II fighting all over the Pacific, and the island campaigns there had also introduced them to the jungle warfare techniques in which American troops trained. The North Vietnamese army and the Viet Cong guerillas in the south were mainly poorly armed. They were a very low-tech fighting force.
Right from the beginning, though, the Americans faced all kinds of difficulties there. They were reluctant to use too much force, for fear of prompting a Chinese or Russian intervention. The Korean War had gone horribly wrong when MacArthur’s aggressive pursuit of the retreating North Koreans had prompted a Chinese intervention, and so the Johnson administration was very eager to make sure that that didn’t happen again.
The U.S. Army in Vietnam
The U.S. Army, therefore, wasn’t given authorization to bring the war to an end through the conquering or pacification of North Vietnam. Instead, it was a holding action, which the military itself didn’t like having to do, because it was potentially so inconclusive, and there was no clear end to the Americans’ role there.
They hoped to be able to wear down the North Vietnamese army’s will, but actually it was American resolve that wore down much more quickly, because there was a far less vital interest at stake on the American side. Often what happened is that during the daytime, and especially when the American military actually showed up in one of the localities, they could control it, but at night, when the soldiers had drawn back to their bases and to the cities, the Viet Cong could take over as well.
That put the ordinary peasants of Vietnam in an extremely vulnerable situation. They had to appear to be on the side of whomever was dominant, and sometimes, literally in the space of 24 hours, that would change back and forth, depending on who was there.
The Difficulties for the U.S. Army in Vietnam
The terrain and the enemy’s fighting style made most of the American high-tech weapons unsuitable. It was impossible to use tanks in this kind of jungle warfare. The Americans relied very heavily on helicopters, and that gave them an extremely high degree of mobility and temporary advantage in particular places. They inflicted far heavier casualties than they suffered because of their superiority in weapons.
What they couldn’t do, however, was permanently win the allegiance and security of larger areas of the Vietnamese countryside. The American army was trained to fight battlefield wars as it had done against Hitler. It was much more difficult, in this case, when it was not at all clear who was a friend and who was an enemy.
Common Questions about the Increasing American Clout in Vietnam
Madam Nhu was the sister-in-law of General Diem, the autocratic ruler of South Vietnam. She tried to impose Catholic principles as the civil law, even though the vast majority of the Vietnamese people were not themselves Catholics.
Two American ships, the Maddox and the Turner Joy were monitoring a South Vietnamese attack on some island held by the north, in the Gulf of Tonkin. A North Vietnamese gunboat attacked them. President Johnson decided to use force in Vietnam after this incident.
The terrain and the enemy’s fighting style made most of the American high-tech weapons unsuitable.
