Shifting Vietcong Strategy
ROGERS, ROBERT F.
BACK TO THE BAMBOO Shifting Vietcong Strategy By Robert F. Rogers Saigon Evidence accumulates that the Vietcong and Hanoi are finding it exceedingly difficult to live with a key military...
...Cuu Long not only exalted the guerrilla role but also returned to the People's War criteria to describe various levels of operations...
...After repeating the official line that guerrilla warfare was a backup for "regular forces to mount large-scale annihilation attacks," the conference placed renewed stress on the guerrilla role as a strategic determinant of victory...
...As the Vietcong fades back into the bamboo and rice paddies, more terrorism can be expected...
...The growing military imperative to prepare for a protracted war under the new conditions imposed by the U.S...
...Additional confirmation that continued escalation in the South was the "correct line" appeared June 4, in the Party newspaper Nhan Dan...
...determination and hoping to exploit the momentum gained by the Vietcong in the post-Diem interregnum, the Communists resolved to break the existing guerrilla pattern by sending regular North Vietnamese Army troops to the South for full-scale conventional operations...
...They also decided to take the best guerrillas out of the rice paddies and bamboo jungles and form them as rapidly as possible into well-equipped mobile units...
...Since extensive guerrilla support still was required throughout 1965 and 1966, efforts to expand liberated areas and guerrilla activities continued...
...This was immediately lauded in Peking...
...It appears, moreover, from the variety of strategies the Communists have publicly adopted????dependence on guerrillas in the early 1960s, frustrated reliance on main-force units in 1965-66 and now a reversion to guerrilla warfare????that they are far from confident that they have found the correct road to victory...
...But the guerrilla role was Robert F. Rogers, a new contributor, is with the political section of the U.S...
...In other words, the guerrillas are no longer supporting the main forces in accordance with the lines laid down by Van Tien Dung, but, quite the contrary, the main forces are now subordinated to an overall guerrilla strategy...
...units...
...By the spring of 1966, however, the obvious inability of the Vietcong and North Vietnamese Army to accomplish their missions set off a debate over the official strategy in Hanoi and the South...
...Though carefully noting that main force actions would continue and should be coordinated with guerrilla operations, Cuu Long asserted that guerrilla forces include "all the armed forces," even "concentrated forces...
...This tactic would avert the dangerous possibility of main-force units being trapped and crushed by U.S...
...Revealing how far Hanoi had departed from the orthodox military concepts of Mao and Giap, he dismissed the three-phase theory of "People's Revolutionary Warfare" as "belonging to history" and advised the Vietcong to be flexible and forget the doctrine of the past...
...The continuing infiltration of North Vietnamese regular troops who have not been trained primarily as guerrillas, though, suggests that the main forces will probably not be disbanded but will be held back in sanctuaries for use when appropriate...
...This position was supported even more authoritatively by Nguyen Chi Thanh in the July issue of Hoc Tap, the Party's theoretical journal...
...troop strength in main force combat...
...There is reason to believe Giap's speech endorsed the Chinese Communist advice that Hanoi should rely primarily on guerrilla warfare and the orthodox application of the People's Wars of Liberation, rather than on attempting to defeat the Americans with main forces...
...Giap himself, though, made no further significant policy statements in public until December 1966...
...BACK TO THE BAMBOO Shifting Vietcong Strategy By Robert F. Rogers Saigon Evidence accumulates that the Vietcong and Hanoi are finding it exceedingly difficult to live with a key military decision they made in late 1964...
...Nor does the controversy represent differences between Hanoi and the Vietcong that may be exploitable...
...The new strategy, in essence, was an attempt to jump into phase three of the classical "People's War of Liberation," and to make 1965 "the year of victory" by destroying the South Vietnamese Army...
...As a principal architect with Mao Tse-tung of the People's War theory, Giap might have been expected to continue opposing departures from this proven military doctrine...
...And the subsequent massive U.S...
...Guerrilla warfare, Cuu Long advised the Vietcong, is now capable not only of harassing and wearing out small units, but of annihilating "battalion-size enemy units," a capability previously ascribed primarily to main force units...
...The prescriptive part of Cuu Long's article reveals that the earlier "vanguard" theory of concentrating main force units has now been abandoned...
...That such a shift was actually under consideration was hinted at in a report by the Vietcong radio on October 24 summarizing the results of the Third All-South Guerrilla Warfare Conference...
...The Communists' reappraisal of military strategy, as far as can be determined, is not related to the question of possible negotiations or a peaceful settlement of the war, but only to the issue of how better to conduct the war to attain victory...
...North Vietnamese Army officers who have defected to the Saigon government say Giap may have been the leader of the group which in the early 1960s opposed large-scale infiltration by regular North Vietnamese Army units on the grounds that this might give the U.S...
...An article by Truong Son, a pseudonym for an official source, angrily berated those who were still awed by the "temporary [U.S.] strength...
...They must readjust the current deployment of North Vietnamese troops and cadres in the South, and also must explain the strategic regression to world opinion and to the war-weary Vietnamese people without irreparable loss of face and revolutionary momentum...
...Then, on November 13, 1966, an article in the North Vietnamese Army paper under the cover name Cuu Long strikingly confirmed the reversal...
...Embassy in Saigon...
...As commanding general and political commissar of the Vietcong military forces (a role never acknowledged, of course, by Hanoi or the National Liberation Front), Thanh implicitly defended the decision to commit regular North Vietnamese troops in the South and, without using names, attacked those members of the North Vietnamese leadership who expressed doubts about the "correct political line" and the "vanguard theory" calling for concentration of main forces to spearhead destruction of large enemy units...
...an excuse for stepped-up intervention...
...He called instead for flexibility in military and political doctrine, thus leaving the way open for a transition back to emphasis on guerrilla warfare...
...He concluded by noting that the problem of the "study of the military line of our people" (presumably the Vietcong as well as the North Vietnamese) is still open for discussion...
...While acknowledging that the Vietcong had entered an undefined "higher state" of warfare, unlike Van Tien Dung he did not believe a vast increase in main force units was necessary to meet the Allied buildup...
...would fail because, "It is up against the strategy and the tactics of people's War...
...In an article published May 21 by the North Vietnamese Army paper, Quan Doi Nhan Dan, General Van Tien Dung, Chief of Staff and influential alternate member of the Politburo, forcefully spelled out Hanoi's determination to meet any new U.S...
...Meanwhile, the prevailing view still favored an accelerated war...
...The policy debate appears to have been conducted largely within the confines of the leadership, which, through the channel of Nguyen Chi Thanh and other North Vietnamese Army officers placed in key command and staff positions in the Southern apparatus, is organically the same for both Hanoi and the Vietcong...
...apparently now outweighs the problems of changing course...
...steadily subordinated to that of the main forces...
...intervention did not immediately affect the 1964 decisions...
...The shift to guerrilla emphasis once more raises serious problems for the Communists...
...To implement it General Nguyen Chi Thanh, eighth ranking member of North Vietnam's Politburo, was sent to the South to assume direct command of the Vietcong...
...The first inkling of controversy was North Vietnam's failure to publish the speech made by General Vo Nguyen Giap at the Third Session of the North Vietnamese National Assembly, held April 16-22...
...Shortly after Cuu Long's reaffirmation of orthodox guerrilla warfare, in December, Giap broke his long silence...
...At that time, underestimating U.S...
...In an interview granted to the French newspaper Le Monde, he confidently predicted that the U.S...
...Thanh, however, modulated the official view in a subtle but significant way...
...This new-found strength, he stated, has "important bearing on the political aspect of the war," where "the potential of guerrilla warfare is unlimited...
...The "present phase" of the war requires that the people be "reorganized scientifically into bodies in order to insure that guerrilla ranks are strong . . ." for protracted resistance...
...Although all other major Assembly speeches were fully publicized, Radio Hanoi merely noted on April 25 that Defense Minister Giap had spoken on military affairs...
...It is evident that a protracted war of 10-15 years would be easier for the Vietcong to conduct primarily as guerrillas rather than as main-force units attempting to destroy regimental or brigade-size U.S...
...All cadres must appreciate the potentialities of guerrilla warfare, Cuu Long stated, in order "to avoid erroneous concepts such as the idea of depending on concentrated troops...
...forces...
Vol. 50 • January 1967 • No. 3
