A Sense of the Enemy: The High Stakes History of Reading Your Rival's Mind (24 page)

The Party leader had read his own people well. By the spring of 1965, as American attacks against the North increased, the People’s Army doubled its ranks.
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For the time being, at least, Le Duan, the strategic empath, had bolstered support for his policies among northern and southern communists alike. Now the task ahead required even finer appreciation of America’s constraints.

The Escalation Paradox

Le Duan argued repeatedly that America faced a dilemma. The more troops it deployed, the weaker it became. He articulated this and other assessments of American constraints at the close of 1965, as the escalation was fully underway. In December 1965, when Le Duan addressed the Twelfth Plenum of the Party’s Central Committee, he explained more fully the policy of protracted war. His address began by observing that the war had developed precisely along the lines that the Party had laid out in the Ninth and Eleventh Plenums. (Those comments, however, were highly hedged, offering possibilities, not definitive futures.) He then noted that the situation had developed more rapidly than expected. In mid-1965, he alleged that the puppet army of the South had been on the verge of disintegration but that the Party did not have the necessary means at that time to force its collapse. Had the DRV been able to push the ARVN to the breaking point, he maintained, then the Americans might not have deployed massive ground troops. The lessons from this episode, he said, bore directly on the policy of protracted war.

The policy of protracted war, Le Duan explained, was to use weakness against strength. Even if the enemy deployed 400,000 troops to Vietnam (the United States ultimately sent more than a half million), the Vietnamese would defeat them by bogging them down in a stalemate. That policy, however, did not entail an orderly, step-by-step advance. Instead, it required massing forces against the enemy under specific conditions. The Americans are warmongers by their nature, Le Duan frequently declared. That was why they continued to escalate and expand the war. These appear to be Le Duan’s true beliefs: that the Americans would continue to expand the war if the resistance was insufficient to deter them: and a protracted war would grind them down because it would increase American casualties, which in turn would bolster opposition to the war both within the United States and abroad.

The Politburo was not in complete agreement on these matters. In a rare admission of internal Party disagreement, Le Duan commented that differences of opinion on these matters still remained despite their lengthy, ongoing discussion. The First Secretary stressed that the Politburo was unanimous in its view that no matter how many troops the United States should send, the Vietnamese would defeat them. Further, they all agreed that the Politburo “must firmly maintain and study and digest even further our formula of fighting the enemy using both military and political means.”
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Le Duan insisted that unanimous agreement was essential, crucial to the success of the movement. And then the hint of dissent emerged:

However, in a limited period of time we have not been able to carefully and thoroughly discuss every aspect of each individual issue, and therefore we may have some slight difference on one aspect or another, such as on our assessment of the American imperialists, on the nature and the form of the war, on the formula of a protracted war and striving to defeat the enemy within a relatively short period of time, about the effort to win the sympathy and help of our camp and of the international community, etc.
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Though couched in understated tones, the “slight disagreements” he described involved rather major issues. We can surmise that at this critical juncture in the war, the Politburo did not share a consensus
view on either America’s position or Hanoi’s strategy. Le Duan, however, seems to have had strong opinions of his own, and he sought to push them through the Party bureaucracy to translate them into policy.

Following his admission of internal disputes, Le Duan launched into a new section titled, “Assessment of the American Imperialists.” He asserted that, in devising Hanoi’s war strategies, the most important question was to determine the balance of forces between the United States and Vietnam. It was a question, he stated, “of knowing the enemy and knowing ourselves.” The lessons of Sun Tzu would not be lost on Le Duan.

A customary segment of many Party speeches included a historical analysis, which, heavily shaped by Marxism-Leninism, invariably illustrated both the enemy’s waning fortunes and the Party’s inevitable ascent. Le Duan thus laid out America’s global position at the close of World War II, when its strength was unmatched by any rival. Under these conditions, the Americans, he claimed, “hatched their plot to take over and dominate the world.”
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Since its zenith of global power at the war’s close, he continued, America’s position had steadily eroded. Its loss of a monopoly on nuclear weapons; the recovery of the Soviet Union; China’s rise; America’s defeats in Korea, Cuba, Laos, and beyond; and its declining economy all combined to shift the balance of forces to the revolutionary camps around the world. He then cautioned that the American successes in “snuffing out” revolutionary movements in Greece and the Philippines could not be ignored. After recounting America’s failures, from backing the French and paying 80 percent of their war costs only to be defeated at Dien Bien Phu, to now being bogged down in South Vietnam, Le Duan concluded that the Americans could not escape a crucial strategic contradiction. Although they possessed economic and military resources far greater than the DRV could muster, “the deeper they involve themselves in this war of aggression in the southern half of our country, the deeper they sink into a quagmire.”
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He observed that America’s greatest problem was that it was waging an offensive modern war against guerillas. Using large units to fight guerrillas in South Vietnam, he said, was “just like punching water—when you pull your fist out, the water just flows right back in.”
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The Secretary described America’s military constraints as hinging on the asymmetric nature of the conflict, noting that this required the
Americans to disperse their forces. He devoted roughly equal attention to America’s political weaknesses, as it faced growing internal and global opposition. He also added mention of American economic decline. So was this all pure propaganda aimed at rallying the Party to the cause? Not quite. Though his speeches and directives certainly contained heavy doses of propaganda, his assessments reflect some sober analysis of America’s strategic situation. That knowledge no doubt contributed to Hanoi’s willingness to prosecute its protracted war strategy despite the enormous toll it was taking on the Vietnamese people.

It was then time for the Party’s First Secretary to speak about predictions. The underlying aim of developing strategic empathy, of knowing one’s enemy, is of course to anticipate an opponent’s actions. Le Duan proclaimed that the war would intensify, becoming more vicious in both the North and South. The scale of fighting would increase as the Americans stepped up their artillery and air strikes. The Americans would use chemical warfare and poison gas on liberated zones, even those adjacent to urban centers. The enemy would increase its bombing of North Vietnam, but it would focus on disrupting the transportation and supply lines from north to south. The Americans would attack key economic zones, the dike system, and residential areas. Finally, they would use psychological warfare and espionage to shake the will of the Vietnamese people.
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Though none of this may have been difficult to predict (especially as much of it was already occurring), it was at least essentially accurate.

In order to counter the anticipated American intensification of the war, Le Duan spelled out the nature of Hanoi’s protracted war strategy while also seeking a quick victory: two ostensibly contradictory positions. This policy, as suggested above, may have emerged as a compromise between divergent Party factions. Le Duan tried to square the circle this way:

We have also clearly explained that these two things are not in contradiction to one another, because the basic condition for fighting a protracted war as well as for seeking victory within a relatively short period of time is to quickly develop our power and forces in all areas, and especially military forces, in order to change the balance of forces in our favor.
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The protracted war strategy was not, he explained, a policy of annihilating all American forces down to the last man. Instead, as is well known, it was a plan to sap the enemy’s will to fight. It was also, he added, to force the enemy to accept defeat with certain conditions. This caveat indicates that Hanoi’s “talking while fighting” tactic allowed for the possibility that at least a faction within Hanoi’s leadership was willing to make certain concessions. Such a statement suggests that the more compromising members of the Politburo who were open to negotiation with the Americans still held some sway over Party pronouncements. Le Duan would later silence this faction through intimidation and arrest.

The tension between waging a protracted struggle and seeking a rapid victory is perhaps best played out in this section of the speech. Le Duan explained that Party leaders had a responsibility to understand the psychological state of Southern Vietnamese. Although they had been fighting the Americans officially since 1960, the revolution had actually been fought for the past twenty years under savage conditions. The Party leaders therefore had to make the greatest effort to shorten the fighting as much as possible. And then he struck this compromising note: “Naturally, our goal must be to win total, 100 percent victory, but if in a certain situation we are able to achieve a 90 percent victory, we can then bring the war to an end under conditions that are favorable to us.”
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Le Duan distinguished Vietnam’s past struggles against the French from the current war with the Americans. Though he had frequently drawn comparisons between the two conflicts, he now identified the significant differences. First, the strength of communist forces in both the North and the South was far greater in 1965 than it had been in the 1940s and 1950s. Second, the communists in the North now possessed a solid rear area backed by the socialist bloc. Third, the war against the Americans and puppet government began with offensive, rather than defensive, operations. He asserted that this time the Party held the offensive initiative in its hands. Through the use of protracted war, Le Duan believed that Hanoi would eventually win. The Party leader’s ability to recognize what was new in the current conflict enabled him to adjust Hanoi’s strategy to the enemy at hand, rather than applying a one-sized approach to waging war. He was not fighting the last war with
yesterday’s methods. Instead, he had the mental agility to see what was unique about his enemy and adapt accordingly.

Shortly after Le Duan’s address, the Party convened a meeting of high-level cadres on January 16, 1966, for the purpose of studying the Twelfth Plenum’s resolution. Although his folksy style stood in sharp contrast to Le Duan’s more formal speeches, Ho Chi Minh showed himself in agreement with Le Duan’s assessment of America. Addressing the assembled cadres, Ho confronted the challenges of fighting American soldiers. He observed that the Americans were well-fed and well-financed, receiving meat, cake, cigarettes, and chewing gum as typical rations. He claimed that supporting an American soldier cost fifteen times that of a South Vietnamese soldier. In addition, the Americans had just introduced a mobile division transported by helicopter. But then Ho outlined the enemy’s weak points. First among these was their lack of mobility on the ground. Calling the Americans “big, heavy-set people,” weighted down with all imaginable equipment, he observed that once they were on the ground, they could not move as quickly as the Vietnamese. Ho argued that although Vietnamese soldiers were smaller, they were faster, more agile, and therefore not at a disadvantage in hand-to-hand combat. Beyond these tactical appraisals, Ho underscored the view that body counts mattered for political reasons.

America’s fundamental weaknesses, Ho asserted, centered on the growing domestic and global opposition to its intervention. He cited American youths setting themselves on fire in protest. He pointed to the violent uprisings by black Americans. Underscoring the same theme that Le Duan had stressed many times before, Ho assured the cadres that increased American casualties would only augment domestic opposition. He even cited U.S. Senator Morse as saying: “The more American troops we sent to South Vietnam, the more caskets that will be sent back home to the United States.” Because victory hinged on what happened in South Vietnam, Ho concluded that “we must do whatever it takes in South Vietnam to destroy and shatter the puppet army and to kill large numbers of American troops. . . .”
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These same notions of America’s vulnerability continued for years, even after the general offensive. Following the multiple attacks that together comprised the 1968 Tet Offensive, the Party’s resolution of August revisited the current strategic balance, paying closest attention
to the contradictions inherent in America’s position. First, the resolution asserted that America’s greatest contradiction was that it needed to confront the enemy directly, yet its current posture was defensive. It could not win without substantially increasing its troop strength, but deploying more troops would guarantee an even greater defeat. The next contradiction, as Hanoi saw it, involved de-Americanization, or what the Nixon administration would later dub “Vietnamization” of the war: transferring primary fighting responsibility to the ARVN. Hanoi maintained that ARVN’s forces were becoming less effective as their morale deteriorated, but the Americans needed to place them in the principal fighting role. In addition, the Americans needed to mass their forces, though they were compelled to disperse them because they needed to defend the cities while simultaneously controlling the countryside.
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In short, all of the weaknesses Hanoi had recognized years before were now exacerbated.