History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam, 1971-1973
Abstract
The series of five volumes titled "The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam" covers the activities of the Joint Chiefs of Staff with regard to Vietnam from 1945 to the final withdrawal of U.S. military forces in early 1973. This volume, the 5th, describes the formulation of policies and decisions that completed the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam and shifted the burden of combat to the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces (RVNAF). Using the sources to which he had access, Willard J. Webb completed a manuscript soon after the war ended. Since that time, a critical source has become available. Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during 1970-1974, kept a dally diary describing his conversations, meetings he attended, and from April 1972 onward, verbatim transcripts of many of his telephone conversations. With this new material, Walter S. Poole substantially revised the chapters that covered the Laotian incursion of 1971, the Easter offensive of 1972, the Christmas bombings of Hanoi and Haiphong, and the Paris peace accords of January 1973. It has been argued that a new U.S. strategy, initiated during 1968-1969, reached a successful culmination in 1972 by showing that the South Vietnamese could stand on their own. The weight of evidence in JCS records--particularly the material in Admiral Moorer's diary--does not support that argument. For President Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Admiral Moorer, the outcome of the 1971 Laotian incursion raised grave doubts about whether American efforts to "Vietnamize" the war would succeed. In May 1972, the collapse at Quang Tri convinced them that the RVNAF could not cope with the North Vietnamese attack and that American air power had become indispensable to the Saigon government's survival. Thereafter, the administration's actions can be characterized as attempts to insure that there would be at least a "decent interval" between the signing of peace accords and the dissolution of South Vietnam.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2007
- Accession Number
- ADA473119
Entities
People
- Walter S. Poole
- Willard J. Webb
Organizations
- Joint Chiefs of Staff