How did North Vietnam gain support in the South

How did the US lose the war in Vietnam?

How did the North mobilise its forces against the US? How were the North able to achieve success in the South?

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Military operations are, as we have seen, were one of the tools used by the Viet Cong to wage insurgency.

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These economic, social, and political actions constituted the vital substructure of the insurgency—difficult to see and even more difficult to destroy.

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Military actions steadily increased in significance as the war continued and the level of violence mounted

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Viet Cong doctrine, however, required that most military operations be justified by definite political or psychological goals. Military operations are undertaken with political objectives in mind. General Giap, played a vital role in both movements, said that political action was the soul of the army. The Viet Cong believed that the army had other missions at least as important as fighting.

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Viet Cong propaganda constantly stressed the unity of the army and the people.

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There were two types of “people’s forces”—the village guerrilla and the combat guerrilla.

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The village guerrillas were usually older men—largely untrained, poorly equipped, and inadequately indoctrinated—who performed the missions of local defence and logistic support.

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The combat guerrillas were younger men who seem to be promising candidates for the regular forces and are better trained, equipped, and indoctrinated. They engaged in small guerrilla operations outside the village confines and are used as support forces for the regular units.

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The roles of the popular forces, especially the combat guerrillas, should not be dismissed lightly.

For one thing, their social role was as important as their military one, for they tended to involve and commit more people to the struggle.

Most Vietnamese families felt responsible for the actions of one of their members; many therefore tolerated or supported the Viet Cong because a brother, husband, father, or even a

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female relative is a member. The idea of the “commune” was very important to Asian communities. 

Guerrillas performed the essential service of spreading the ideas of the movement among their families and in their villages. Service in the guerrilla movement was not only a means of training and indoctrination, but also a period of apprenticeship during which military officials determined whether a man was fit for higher-level duty in the regular military forces.

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Guerrillas performed important logistic functions and assisted in regular battles in a number of ways: They acted as a covering force, helped clear the battlefield of the dead, and stow the booty.

Finally, they engage in limited paramilitary actions such as ambushes, assaults on officials, and attacks on small enemy detachments and outposts in their own area.

The guerrillas were elusive. They were known to and were an integral part of the population.

They were, in fact, still peasants.

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Families and neighbours were more likely to help and protect them than to turn them over to the government. Their needs were few and simple and their logistic support came from their home or village.

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Most men preferred to join the guerrillas because they were told they could stay in their villages and operate on familiar ground, and thus did not face the emotional upheaval of leaving their families to an uncertain fate. They had a superior knowledge of the terrain and people. These were the elements of the Viet Cong that swum safely and easily amongst the villagers and townsfolk.

COMMUNIST REVOLUTIONARY WARFARE

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It was the guerrillas and local forces which launched the guerrilla war in the South in 1960. These forces represented a formidable problem for the unprepared ARVN and its American advisers.

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U.S. Army officers complained in 1961 that, if the elusive Viet Cong would just stand still and fight, or form larger units and stop using the ambush technique, the ARVN could handle them—.

Frustration was appearing as early as 1961.

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These original Viet Cong forces expanded and improved, and many of them developed into the regular forces that in 1964 and early 1965 came close to achieving a military victory in Vietnam.

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The elite of the Viet Cong military organisation was the National Liberation Army, which was organised and trained between 1960 and 1965. These troops were better armed and equipped than the guerrillas or local forces and are well indoctrinated and trained, having usually served as VC members for some time,

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This National Liberation Army, or regular force, though powerful in many ways, was quite different from a Western army. There was a much higher ratio of fighting men to logistic elements in these units because their supply requirements were so small. The regular force had few heavy support weapons and little gasoline-using equipment, and led a spartan existence.

Some units raised some of their own food, while many others got their food from the people in the locality; in both cases, the military logistic support required was very small.

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Some of the arms—mines, booby traps, and even more sophisticated weapons— were homemade, and many weapons of all kinds were captured from the ARVN.

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From 1965 more and more weapons and special equipment were brought in from the North, and this made the NLF Army much more dependent on outside sources and in that sense, like the North Vietnamese regulars, more “modern,” or Western.

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The fact that the regular forces had so few logistical needs gave them great mobility around and near bases and friendly populations, but the simple logistic system restricts their longer-range mobility.

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The limited kinds and numbers of weapons and ammunition reduced the capability of the regulars to engage in sustained or pitched battles.

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However, their operational concepts are somewhat like those of the guerrillas and different from those of Western armies, which are prepared for prolonged combat and use a wide variety of weapons including airpower, armour, and artillery.

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These differences in operational techniques and the frequent differences in the objectives of an engagement made it difficult to compare the performances of the Viet Cong regulars and the allied forces—or, indeed, to determine who has won.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------To summarise, military victory was determined as something very different to both sides. Whilst the US forces remained obsessed with body count, and a costly war of attrition, the war of hearts and minds was a primary objective in the eyes of Hanoi. The more successful military operations were perceived to be by US forces, the more guerrilla units could harvest support from the local populace in the south. The destructive nature of US intervention, bound by a reliance on firepower only sought to distance them from a populace who only wished to be left alone. Hanoi’s military war machine was supported by a complex logistical engine room, involving underground supply routes through Cambodia and Laos, with support from southern peasants who either knew guerrilla members, were related to them, or lived in fear of their ruthless nature; they would in return store weapons and food for these fighters, and whilst they might not support their communist ideology, were attracted to their nationalistic fervour. A hundred years of colonial rule had put paid to any American hope of support from a peasant people who desired land reform, but were never given it by the Saigon government, but were promised it by the VC, who were ideologically trained to win over them. The corrupt nature of the Saigon government , whilst seemingly far away from the concerns of the southern Vietnamese villager, was only too visible in the actions of corrupt ARVN units who could be easily bribed by wealthy landowners who didn’t wish to work in the strategic hamlets policy. Contrary to the ARVN, the logistical ability of the VC, who actually required little logistical support, was able to wage war much more effectively. When support was required, they were able to fall back into Cambodia or Laos (where US forces could not go) or melt back into the tunnel systems, jungles and even villages, where it became very difficult to identify them from the villager. The idea of farmer by day, VC by night, was in fact a very real, but very unfunny situation into which US forces were thrown. According to Maoist doctrine, revolutionary wars require the active assistance of a small percentage of the population and the passive support of most of it, especially its agrarian component. In the Vietnamese case agrarian support was even more important, given that the Viet Cong was a selfproclaimed agrarian movement, reliant on the land and its people. However, being a political, ideological, and secular revolutionary movement, the Viet Cong had to adapt its methods for the benefit of the peasants. The need to do so grew from the understanding that the guerrilla fighter is totally dependent on the agrarian environment in which he endeavours to wage war and must therefore earn the favour of the peasantry. ‘Peasants are to the Guerilla’, Mao stated, ‘as water is to fish’.

Support of the Viet Cong was based on familial loyalty: it alone can explain why peasants whose world revolved around the family and the rice paddy would risk all and join the movement. These trends must be explained through traditional concepts and the importance accorded to the family in Vietnamese society. Few peasants joined the movement out of ideology, i.e. belief in the Communist way. The guerrilla forces offered economic opportunities for peasants and were therefore perceived as leaders of a social revolution. Success of the revolution would improve the peasants’ economic standing and turn them into landowners. Betts argues that peasants join revolutionary movements in order to preserve their traditional way of life, which includes protection of land and family from social, cultural, and economic changes. One may maintain that the peasantry joined an organization36 that was strong at the time (in both political and military terms) in the hopes of preserving its way of life. This theory may explain the changes in peasantry

orientation, its lack of allegiance to one side, and the transference of its allegiance in accordance with political and military developments in its immediate sphere. The preservation of traditional institutions (family, village, land) may also entail an attempt to improve the standard of living. Douglas Pike holds that the Vietnamese have no tradition of allegiance to any one political power but rather confer it according to changes that occur in its immediate sphere. Many peasants joined the Viet Cong after suffering at the hands of government officials and military forces. It should be noted that these harsh sentiments directed against the government and its allies (especially the United States) were further inflamed

by Viet Cong propaganda, prevalent in notable strength after events such at My Lai. Kriegel and Pike argue that peasants also joined the Viet Cong out of nationalist reasons. The Vietnamese sought a unification of the north and the south.