Evaluate the success of the Tet Offensive in the success of communism in Indochina between 1968 and 1979.
The Tet Offensive played a crucial role in ensuring the success of communism between 1968 and 1979. It went a long war towards persuading the American public that the war could not be won – at least not in the time frame promised by the US government.
By the end of 1967, the US military believed it was achieving success against the VC. The number of enemy soldier being killed was high, prompting the US commander, General Westmoreland, to predict that victory was in sight.
From the communist perspective, this prediction offered the opportunity to score an important political victory. If the VC staged a spectacular attack in South Vietnam, it would prove the lie in Westmoreland’s words, and might turn public opinion in America against the war. Such an attack might also provoke an uprising in the towns and cities, destroying the South Vietnamese regime and forcing the US to withdraw. North Vietnamese thinking was also tempered by the losses their forces were suffering at the hands of the US air force. By 1967, the American generals had discovered that the VC’s tunnels and bunkers could be destroyed via concentrated bombing strikes – even if the entrances could not be found. The tunnels had been easy to dig because the soil in Vietnam was deep and soft. This made them equally easy to destroy. B52 bombers began pounding VC strongholds like the ‘Iron Triangle’, where the region was honeycombed with tunnels. When US forces entered the region, the VC would retreat into their hideouts. These would then be pounded with bunker-shattering bombs.
The communist leadership now realised that it would be better to sacrifice these men in a risky military campaign than have them die underground. With this in mind, General Giap and his commanders began planning a major offensive. Tet involved a two pronged attack on the US and its South Vietnamese ally. While units of the NVA pinned down the US forces in their bases in the north of the country, the VC attacked the towns and cities. Once in control of these urban areas, the communist leaders expected the US military and the ARVN to fight it out in hand-to-hand combat – something which would advantage the VC and inflict heavy casualties on their enemies. American public opinion would turn against the war, if the kill ratio was significantly altered in the VC’s favour. The VC would also capture key buildings such as the US Embassy – giving the American public unambiguous evidence of its government’s failure to win the war.
However, the campaign did not go to plan. Firstly, people in the cities did not rise up against the South Vietnamese regime, either because they did not support the VC or because they did not believe the VC would win. Secondly, the VC did not reckon with the US military’s willingness to destroy South Vietnam’s cities in order to avoid an unacceptably high number of American casualties. Thirdly, the US commander in the Saigon region, General Weyand, had got wind of the offensive and moved troops and tanks into the capital in the days before the attack. As a result, the US enjoyed massive superiority over the VC in the battle that ensued. Finally, the GIs had just been issued with a new anti-personnel weapons, such as the 106 recoilless rifle, which vastly increased their firepower. For all these reasons, the VC suffered terrible casualties during the offensive, and were driven from their positions after several weeks of fighting.
Tet turned out to be a significant military victory for the United States and its allies. 45,000 VC soldiers were killed, and another 5,000 captured – fully a third of the VC’s force. Many of these were experienced cadres that could not be replaced. This broke the back of the VC’s infrastructure in many parts of the country, and gave the US forces the opportunity to penetrate regions that had been closed to them to this point.
However, Tet was also a serious political victory for the North Vietnamese and VC. The offensive demonstrated that the war was far from over, contrary to what General Westmoreland had alleged only a couple of months before. The TV images sent back to the United States convinced an increasing number of Americans that the nation’s efforts were futile, and that the price of pursuing the war was too high – both in financial and human terms. More and more Americans began losing faith in their leaders, who they believed were deceiving them. They wanted out. Even the veteran newsreader Walter Cronkite – the man who announced to the world that President Kennedy had been assassinated – declared that the war was unwinnable and therefore senseless. President Johnson was so demoralised that he elected not to stand for re-election, and when Richard Nixon became president, he too found it politically impossible to maintain American forces in Vietnam, despite an initial attempt to win. By the second half of 1969, Nixon had decided withdrawal America’s only viable option.
Nixon attempted to compensate for this withdrawal by dragging Cambodia and Laos into the war. The plan was to attack the VC’s sanctuaries in those two nations, dealing the guerrillas another Tet-like blow. However, the strategy met with failure. The communists went to war with the Cambodian and Laotian armies, delivering them crushing defeats. They then trained local communist forces – the Khmer Rouge and Pathet Lao – to take over the fighting, leaving the NVA and VC to concentrate on Vietnam. Nixon sought to defend Cambodia and Laos by launching the most intense aerial bombardment in human history, but the tide of public opinion was against him. Congress cut the funds for the bombing campaign, and by the end of 1973 the US had withdrawn from Indochina almost completely. America’s three client regimes – in South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos – were now at the mercy of their foes.
Hence, it can be seen that the Tet Offensive was a catalyst for the communist victory in Indochina. Although its direct consequence was a strengthening of the US military position in South Vietnam, in the long term, it shook the American public’s faith in the war and sparked a protest movement that would eventually bring the conflict to an end.