Anatomy of a War - Kolko

[don]

Kolko's Anatomy of a War remains the best single volume account of the political history of the Vietnam War. Military actions are included only to the extent that they play a part in the realpolitiks unfolding.

An excerpt of interest to 'tulipers:


Tetʼs Impact on Washington

Only during crisis does the real locus of power and interest expose the decisive
constraints on political decision makers.

The presidency itself is brought to heel before what may roughly be designated as the
larger interests of the American system and of those who have the capacity to define it.
Men whose ideas has earlier led the nation in different directions … now cease to prove
influential.

The war itself dramatically exacerbated older economic difficulties, but there were yet
other dilemmas confronting the administration. These ranged from such intractable
problems as the mounting racial tension in American cities and the warʼs debilitating
impact on US military power to the decline of strategic manpower reserves for other
world or even domestic crisis.

Yet it was the gold and dollar crisis that created the most sustained and irresistible
pressures on Washington.

McNamaraʼs parting advice to the President was not allow another troop escalation in
Vietnam to ruin the dollar abroad and the economy at home.

The gold and dollar crisis colored all of Washingtonʼs thoughts on responses to the
precarious military situation in SV. At the end of February Sen. Jacob Javits of NY called
for an end to the gold pool, triggering a panic, and $118 million was withdrawn from the
pool in two days. For two weeks, as the US reached an impasse in the war in Vietnam,
the highly complex and technical dollar-gold problem traumatized Washington and the
Western capitals, consuming vast amount of time of the President and his advisers.

ʻThe specter of 1929 haunted him daily,ʼ Doris Kearns reports of her intimate later
interviews with him;ʼhe worried that if the economy collapsed, history would subject
Lyndon Johnson to endless abuse.ʼ

On March 4, Treasury Secretary Fowler warned the President that the gold rush and the
flight from the dollar were serious and could worsen rapidly, with a gold embargo
leading to ʻexchange rate wars and trading blocs with harmful political as well as
economic effects.ʼ

While Europeʼs gold-pool members agreed in early March to sustain the dollar,on March
11 banks rushed the pool, which lost nearly a billion dollars in gold before it suspended
operations four days later.

on March 14 … several European nations began to redeem dollars for US Treasury gold
to recoup the bullion they had lost in support of the dollar. That afternoon, having lost
$372 million that day, and fearing a loss of a billion dollars the following day, the
Treasury arranged immediately to close the gold market.

At first the White House wanted its allies to accept unlimited amounts of dollars without
gold backing, but Fowler and Martin opposed this as both unrealistic and a license to
continue fiscal irresponsibility. Instead, European central bankers were called to
Washington for an emergency meeting on March 16.

Abolishing the pool altogether, Europeʼs bankers refused to use their gold to save the
dollar.

They offered restraint only if the administration acted more responsibly in managing its
economy.

After Tet the administration finally acknowledged that any increase of troops in Vietnam
threatened not just the country's economy but all of its domestic and international
priorities.

With America stretched thin globally and with a crisis brewing in Korea, the Joint Chiefs
of Staff immediately revived its earlier request for a call-up of reserves ….

In a virtuoso performance (chairman of the JCS General Wheeler) flew to Saigon and
after 4 days was back … with a demand, allegedly from Westmoreland himself, for
206,000 men. (pp.312-315)

On March 31 President Johnson announced he would not run for a second term of office.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Anatomy of a War - Kolko

I might have to pick up a copy.

While the Tet Offensive was a clear military defeat for North Vietnam, and effectively destroyed the Viet Cong as a military force(as well as a major political player which could have been intentional on the part of Ho Chi Minh and Giap), it was a significant mass media defeat for the US.

It sounds like it might offer an interesting 30,000 foot perspective, taking into account the VERY serious conflict risk in the Korean Peninsula.

Less than 10 days prior to the start of the Tet Offensive a North Korean commando unit attempted to assassinate the South Korean President, making it within 100 metres of penetrating the Blue House.

Two days later the North Koreans siezed the USS Pueblo SIGINT ship in international waters.

The threat of open conflict on the Korean Peninsula was REAL, as at the time North Korea's economy and military strongly overmatched South Korea's(it wasn't until South Korea hit it's stride in the later 70's/80's that it started it's long and unbroken climb to decisively pull away from North Korea economically and militarily.

One week later Tet cooked off.

It was a HUGE Communist/Socialist victory:

*Viet Cong destroyed as a potential rival to North Vietnam's centre of gravity(Ho Chi Minh/Giap)
*First Media War, with the US on the losing side
*US seriously distracted by coordinated conflict risk escalation in Korea, preventing the US from capitalizing on military defeat of North Vietnam and destruction of Viet Cong
*Seizure of USS Pueblo provided the Soviets with priceless crypto hardware needed to match up with intelligence provided by traitor John Walker...giving the Soviets unprecedented ability to decrypt secure US communications that would have had a tremendous advantage for the Soviets in open conflict.

Adding the global economic dimension, and the machinations behind it, to Vietnam/Korea conflict would surely make for interesting reading.

I would be particularly interested in learning if the Soviets played a concurrent role in undermining the western global financial system, which wouldn't surprise me as they(and others such as the North Vietnamese) fought the Cold War "full spectrum", often playing a considerable support role in the anti-war, anti-nuclear weapons causes in the West.

What worries me about this book after having a look at it's original publication date(1985) is the following:

John Walker wasn't arrested until the same year, 1985.....so public knowledge of his spying and the impact it had on Soviet actions in 1968 were not yet known...so not available to Kolko at time of original publication.

Vasili Mitrokhin didn't defect with KGB archives until 1992 providing a huge amount of information on the depth and breadth of Soviet and satellite active measures (such as an estimated $1 billion spent on supporting anti Vietnam War efforts) against the west across the spectrum, so also not available to Kolko at time of original publication.

I haven't read anything about Soviet efforts to undermine western financial systems, but considering the substantial evidence that exists on many other fronts, it would not be the least bit surprising.

[don]

Re: Anatomy of a War - Kolko

There is no such thing as the definitive book on any large, complex historical event. Kolko provides some broad shoulders to build on.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Anatomy of a War - Kolko

There is no such thing as the definitive book on any large, complex historical event. Kolko provides some broad shoulders to build on.

If his original body of work is leading up to that which was available in 1985, with the huge supply and availability of source material from the Soviet side on such a significant Cold War era since, I wonder if his conclusions still ring true, or need to be adjusted to take into account previously unknown contributing factors?

[don]

Re: Anatomy of a War - Kolko

If his original body of work is leading up to that which was available in 1985, with the huge supply and availability of source material from the Soviet side on such a significant Cold War era since, I wonder if his conclusions still ring true, or need to be adjusted to take into account previously unknown contributing factors?

Then adjust. I look forward to your comments. Nobody in the historian game is the final answer.

[c1ue]

Re: Anatomy of a War - Kolko

I haven't read anything about Soviet efforts to undermine western financial systems, but considering the substantial evidence that exists on many other fronts, it would not be the least bit surprising.

Certainly evidence of US efforts to undermine the Soviet economy is quite easy to find.

Equally it is debatable just who the 'good' guy is when 23 US aircraft were shot down by the Soviet Union while engaged in the activity of spotlighting radar defenses. This doesn't include attacks(defenses) against US aircraft in Soviet space for other purposes - here's a list:
http://sw.propwashgang.org/shootdown_list.html

How many Soviet aircraft were shot down while engaged in a similar activity?

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Anatomy of a War - Kolko

Certainly evidence of US efforts to undermine the Soviet economy is quite easy to find.

Of course it is, and I've posted on that before myself HERE regarding Soviet efforts to run a pipeline into western Europe/NATO that was caboshed by the US/Reagan Administration.

That alone probably put the SU in an early grave by a few years than if left unimpeded

Equally it is debatable just who the 'good' guy is when 23 US aircraft were shot down by the Soviet Union while engaged in the activity of spotlighting radar defenses. This doesn't include attacks(defenses) against US aircraft in Soviet space for other purposes - here's a list:
http://sw.propwashgang.org/shootdown_list.html

When did this become a thread about recce/SIGINT/accidental air-to-air interceptions during the Cold War?

I included only incidents directly related, and relevant to, the thread topic of Vietnam, and more specifically the Tet Offensive and short scrape from Kolko's book.

The attack on the Blue House and Pueblo incident are directly related to Tet and this thread.

As is the duel purpose of the Pueblo incident in the form of the very recent Walker spy recruitment.

The joint actions of North Vietnam and North Korea coordinated by their Soviet sponsor as well as the considerable evidence(previously mentioned and post Kolko publication date Mitrokhin Archives) of coordinated and full spectrum global Soviet sphere attack on the US is relevant to this thread.......same for inquiring about economic/financial efforts deployed against the US during this period.

How many Soviet aircraft were shot down while engaged in a similar activity?

How Cold War aviation intercepts is relevant to this particular topic is a gigantic stretch.

It certainly seems like yet another attempt to bait me.

Although attempts to portray the Soviets(and others) as victims can be easily defused by trolling for a website that lists vry aggressive Soviet(and satellite) naval activity in the form of "fishing trawlers" with SIGINT antennae arrays almost big enough to tip them over.

You could always ask a Rhodesian and/or South Africa what they think of the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, East Germany, North Korea, etc...etc.

[c1ue]

Re: Anatomy of a War - Kolko

How Cold War aviation intercepts is relevant to this particular topic is a gigantic stretch.

Interesting - you shoot off into a tangent about possible Soviet attempts to undermine the US financial system, and then complain when I point out that the US equally had it own ways of undermining any possibility of normalization of relations via aggressive probing of defenses.

Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander.

[don]

more from Kolko

Just as one must see Americaʼs intervention in Vietnam as contextually motivated - with
its desire for credibility, regional domination, the propping up of dominoes, and the
devising of a successful local-war strategy all evoking greater involvement - so one
must comprehend the global events which compelled the infinitely slow process of
American disengagement and defeat in the Vietnam War.

Even before Tet, increasing institutional and political constraints began casting their
shadows on American efforts in Vietnam.

Yet it was the gold and dollar crisis that created the most sustained and irresistible
pressures on Washington. (pp.312-315)




By early December all of official Washington was fully aware of an impending ʻall-out
attackʼ which was to be the warʼs turning point ….


The US military saw the offensive coming in three phases: first, US troops would be
enticed away from population centers into mountain and border areas; next, attacks
throughout the country would attempt to wrest control from those segments of the
RVNAF left to guard the populated regions; and, finally, these two phases would be
followed by a major ground battle in a northern province, as the Communists would
possibly attempt to capture one or two provinces.

a massive buildup of forces by both sides around the remote Khe Sanh base … locked
US and PAVN soldiers into the most intense battle of the war.

Westmoreland … thirsting for a classic military battle despite the better judgement of
many US officers, in his turn sought to engage up to 20,000 PAVN soldiers with his own
6,000 men, using nearly 100,000 tons of munitions against them.

By the end of February, with half of the American maneuver battalions concentrated in I
Corps, Westmoreland had fallen into the obvious trap.



While the administration expected an offensive, it nevertheless came as a shock.
ʻit was more massive than we had anticipated … we did not expect them to attack as
many (cities) as they did … we did not believe they would be able to carry out the level
of coordination they demonstrated … it (the attack force) was larger than we had
estimatedʼ President Johnson

The successes of such small numbers of largely NLF and some PAVN fighters was
surely one of the hardest lessons of combat for the US. A mere 1,000 armed personnel
in Saigon, with the aid of local political units, managed for three weeks to hold off over
11,000 US and ARVN troops and police. In Hue 1,000 PAVN regulars captured the
Citadel … and held it until February 24 while American firepower reduced 80% of the
city to rubble. Artillery and air strikes leveled half of My Tho, a city of 80,000, and the
provincial capital of Ben Te, with 140,000 inhabitants, was decimated with the
justification, as an American colonel put it in one of the most quoted statements of the
war, ʻWe had to destroy the town to save itʼ.

Tet introduced Washington to the central fact that the US lacked a basic grasp of the
nature of the war to which it had already committed over half a million men.




The Revolutionʼs plan, with the exception of Hue, had been to assault the cities with
local forces and sappers for up to 5 days while regular troops waited nearby. If there
had been popular uprisings or a total collapse of ARVN, then the main forces would
have entered the cities and the fighting would have been far greater in scope.
The uprisings did not occur even though most of the ARVN remained on leave or
deserted.

The overwhelming majority of the terrified urban dwellers remained passive to both the
NLF and the RVN.

… the visibility of the cadresʼ efforts … led to the death or arrest of a large portion of the
urban infrastructure almost from the inception, hobbling the entire effort ….

The CIA on February 10 estimated that the Communists had already accomplished their
main psychological, political, and military objectives, gaining control over vast new rural
areas, smashing the RVNʼs military, economic, and political system, and at least relating
to the urban sector in a more direct, influential fashion.

… there was a consensus both in Washington and Saigon that though the NLF failed in
the cities, it made great advances in the countryside, from which it could now replenish
its manpower losses. (pp.303-310)



LBJ and the Wise Men

ʻI felt,ʼ he later confided, ʻthat I was being chased on all sides by a giant stampede
coming at me from all directions.ʼ

ʻAnd then the final straw. The thing I feared from the first day of my Presidency was
actually coming true. Robert Kennedy had openly announced his intention to reclaim the
throne.ʼ

Politics and economics now merged to affect the future of the war.



The world of big industry and finance, so amorphous to those outside it but so real to
those in it, had been for the war because its members believed in the objectives of
American foreign policy which had led to the intervention. Yet key individuals were often
called on, both formally and informally, to comment on economic affairs that the war
strongly affected, such as budget deficits and inflation.

While they had never assumed a critical position on the war before 1968, they
consistently favored efforts to eliminate these economic challenges. Such expediency
meant that should the nationʼs financial difficulties become sufficiently serious, they
would oppose escalation and might even favor a reduction of the war to economically
manageable proportions.

Such a stance was strictly pragmatic and graphically revealed the contradictions which
led to the American involvement in the first place, for its ideal would have been for the
US to have won the war both quickly and cheaply.

The Wise Men - who included men with close links to the world of finance, corporate
law, and big business like George Ball, Douglas Dillon, Cyrus Vance, John J McCloy,
McGeorge Bundy, Arthur Dean, Robert Murphy, and Henry Cabot lodge - understood
such nuances.

It was virtually certain that impersonal calculations of this kind would influence their
recommendations. As men used to confronting the facts and their implications, they
were better able to internalize the larger material balance of forces in the war than
most, particularly because it was not their personal reputations that were at stake but
their class interests.


the emergence of a larger and more militant antiwar movement on campuses,
especially among the children of the elite, struck key defenders of the war personally.

By the end of March 198, it was quite clear that even ignoring the military and economic
constraints, the administration was confronting an unprecedented postwar situation in
the virtually total collapse of the crucial foreign policy consensus between the executive,
the traditional establishment, and the public.



The American presence in Vietnam was directly related to the RVNʼs chronic military
and political weaknesses, and interpreting its performance during the weeks after Tet
was central to Washingtonʼs definitions of its own role and alternatives. The first, careful
reports were highly pessimistic, and the persistent internecine political struggles
between Thieu and Ky in the midst of a life-and-death struggle particularly discouraged
officials.

The CIA believed that the political dimension was critical, but it also confessed that if
there were no chance for reform, a US role, regardless of its size, would prove
hopeless.

the Wise Men focused on the linkage of reconstituting the ARVN and American
disengagement, fully aware that it was unlikely to succeed. Yet the notion of a decent
interval to conceal the failure of American forces was clearly articulated. Publicly
committed to the myth of the ARVNʼs growing successes and strength, the
administration saw the claim as the pretense which would justify eventual troop
reductions.

It was this new American readiness to limit its commitments and later partially to
disengage, however amorphously stated and defined at this time, that was the major
outcome of the Tet offensive. (pp. 317-322)

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Anatomy of a War - Kolko

Interesting - you shoot off into a tangent about possible Soviet attempts to undermine the US financial system, and then complain when I point out that the US equally had it own ways of undermining any possibility of normalization of relations via aggressive probing of defenses.

Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander.

Tangent?

The original post is about a book on the Vietnam conflict where the cut/paste includes directly related US economic vulnerability and security/conflict vulnerability(which I expanded upon on the two major coordinated Korean incidents less than 10 days prior to Tet Offensive) is it not?

And I posted my interest on learning about Soviet efforts to undermine the US/western financial system around that time based on the substantial evidence available regarding Soviet and satellite active measures to undermine the west. Quite a safe and reasonable assumption based on current knowledge on Soviet era doctrine, practices, and now(since publication) evidence.

All directly related to the original post........FAR from a "tangent" as you allege.

----

You posted about how easy it is to find evidence of the US undermining the Soviet economy, to which I responded that not only am I aware of that but have posted about it here on iTulip myself in the past.

I'm sorry if that makes it harder for you to pigeon hole me as some hard right wing Jack D Ripper character for you to toy with.

I'm trying to learn about the opposite side of the coin during that period.....or do I not have your permission?

You accuse me of going off on a tangent while yourself posting a completely tangental list of cold war era aviation intercepts which I presume when combined with the former is some attempt to bait me and/or portray me as some rabid cold war anti-communist fossil.

If your goal was not to bait me, then you would have actually included some balance with activities such as Soviet cold war era SIGINT/ELINT "fishing fleets" to go along with your tangental post.

But I'm sure you already knew that right?

As I have the pleasure of heading back to Afghanistan in a few days, it's safe to say I have a solid understanding of the words "good", "bad", and especially the word "grey" without your condescending lectures.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: more from Kolko

It was this new American readiness to limit its commitments and later partially to
disengage, however amorphously stated and defined at this time, that was the major
outcome of the Tet offensive. (pp. 317-322)

Tet was the end of the Viet Cong....they never recovered. It destroyed them as an organization. Not many know that.

Tet cost the North Vietnamese military dearly as well. Militarily Tet was a catastrophe for them. It took them quite some time to recover from an operational and morale standpoint.

Tet cost the US the media and political war. All wars are political. This was arguably the first media war to be lost(Remember the Maine, might have been the first media war won).

While the US/South Vietnam/South Korea/Aussie/NZ won Tet militarily...since they lost the media and then the political war......winning militarily is irrelevant if the enemy's leadership is willing to sacrifice to the last person to win.

It's sad really.......considering the US, in the form of the WWII era OSS 101, had such strong and close relationships with Ho Chi Minh and Giap.

It didn't have to go that way. US foreign policy choices regarding France/Indochina/Ho Chi Minh post WWII were major contributing factors towards the shift from allies to enemies.

Maybe future history will indicate how the US may have been able to achieve it's goals in Afghanistan/Iraq thru less overtly invasive means without a need for conventional military invasion....particularly in regards to Afghanistan and the parallel relationships developed between the US and key stakeholders from a prior war that partially mirror Vietnam.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: more from Kolko

Hi Don,

I cut/paste the following from a Kolko article you posted a year ago:

A largely CIA National Intelligence Estimate last December reported that the U.S.’s war in Afghanistan, after 10 years, is stalemated, in large part because the alternative~the Karzai regime–is corrupt and has no effective national administration to challenge the Taliban. But the Pentagon and American ambassador in Kabul think the war is close to being won. The same problem and fundamental difference, I should add, confronted the United States in South Vietnam from January 1973 to May 1975, when the Nguyen Van Thieu regime simply capsized and abandoned the nation as quickly as possible.

Do you think the above is really fair?

Along with the Tet Offensive part many have a hard time grasping(that the US won militarily, but the North Vietnamese won politically and in the media), I think many seem to gloss over the end of Vietnam.

South Vietnam didn't just capsize as Kolko states, and surely he knows this.

South Vietnam didn't fall due to domestic and/or foreign supported insurgency. The South Vietnamese government didn't fall like Batista to Castro. It fell to a conventional military invasion by North Vietnam. Which goes against the popular/common meme about the fall of Vietnam.

To be clear, I'm not posting this as some sort of justification or explanation of the US loss in Vietnam and/or troll fodder for C1ue.

The point I'm trying to make is in Kolko's writings on Vietnam and rough comparisons with Afghanistan.

I haven't found anything by Kolko(or anyone in open source mass media) who has compared Vietnam and Afghanistan where it may be most relevant from this point forward.

And that is in the US Congress.

Congress can be notoriously fickle. Did the Thieu regime abandon South Vietnam or did Congress abandon South Vietnam?

I'm not going to argue whether South Vietnam would have survived with continued US support/funding(much like North Vietnam's continued funding from the Soviets/China).

But I would argue that without US financial support, South Vietnam was doomed.

Has Kolko gone into that? I haven't seen anything on that yet.

Back to Afghanistan. The Soviet Afghan satellite survived 3 years after the withdraw of Soviet forces. But collapsed only 3 months after the money tap was turned off with the Soviet collapse.

In the next 1-2 years it's going to be interesting to see Kolko and others compare/contrast the post Soviet Afghan experience and the post US South Vietnamese experience with the situation facing Afghanistan in the period ahead.

Kabul is a completely different city from 11.5 years ago......but then Saigon was probably light years ahead of anything else in IndoChina as well.

[c1ue]

Re: more from Kolko

Tangent?

The original post is about a book on the Vietnam conflict where the cut/paste includes directly related US economic vulnerability and security/conflict vulnerability(which I expanded upon on the two major coordinated Korean incidents less than 10 days prior to Tet Offensive) is it not?

The book isn't about the US' economic vulnerability itself, it is about the US' economic vulnerability with relationship to the Vietnam war.

If the book were in fact about the US' economic vulnerability, then there would be much discussion over the LBJ Great Society as well as the cost of the Vietnam war - which I do not believe is there.

Thus your insertion of the idea that the Soviet Union had some impact on said vulnerability - quite irrelevant and tangential.

The US' economic vulnerability was there and was not purely a function of Vietnam. It then follows that any Soviet attempts to increase said economic vulnerability - successful, failed, or nonexistent - is quite irrelevant.

Tet was the end of the Viet Cong....they never recovered. It destroyed them as an organization. Not many know that.

Tet cost the North Vietnamese military dearly as well. Militarily Tet was a catastrophe for them. It took them quite some time to recover from an operational and morale standpoint.

Tet cost the US the media and political war. All wars are political. This was arguably the first media war to be lost(Remember the Maine, might have been the first media war won).

While the US/South Vietnam/South Korea/Aussie/NZ won Tet militarily...since they lost the media and then the political war......winning militarily is irrelevant if the enemy's leadership is willing to sacrifice to the last person to win.

This is thoroughly amusing - it is a reprise of the present US military hagiographical view of Vietnam: that it was in fact 'won' but the wimpy politicians stole defeat from the jaws of victory.

Yes, the VietCong suffered catastrophic losses in executing the Tet offensive.

So what? In a military environment where your opponent is better armed, better financed, and fighting on his home turf, this happens.

The implicit assumption being made by this statement is that the Viet Cong could never have recovered. Why is this true?

If Russia can suffer 20 million casualties in World War II and win, why can't the Vietnamese suffer proportionately less casualties and continue to fight on?

Equally, as you alluded to, it might well have been expedient for some entity in North Vietnam to not expend the effort to reconstitute the Viet Cong for internal political reasons.

Whatever, the reality is simple: the US didn't win.

Hagiography aside, you would be hard pressed to find any examples where any outside country was able to truly take over a country the size of Vietnam with Vietnam's fractiousness and hold it - much as the US is discovering in Afghanistan.