PROVN, Westmoreland, and
the Historians: A Reappraisal
I
Andrew J. Birtle
Abstract
Historians have often used a 1966 Army report nicknamed PROVN
either to cast aspersions on the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam between 1964 and 1968, General William C. Westmoreland, or to
praise his successor, General Creighton Abrams. This interpretation is
simplistic and inaccurate. Although the report criticized aspects of the
war under Westmoreland, its target was really the U.S. and Vietnamese governments. Moreover, PROVN’s conclusions were less radical
and its remedies less novel than observers have tended to admit. A
fresh look at PROVN reveals significant continuities in thought between Westmoreland, the report, and Abrams.
A
widely accepted image of the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War is of an
institution whose mental and organizational rigidity doomed it to failure.
According to this view, the Army was the prisoner of an institutional culture fixated on waging big battles with potent weapons—a culture that neither understood
nor was capable of adapting to the challenges posed by revolutionary guerrilla
warfare. Historians who adhere to this interpretation have portrayed the commander of the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) from 1964
to 1968, General William C. Westmoreland, as an inflexible conventionalist who
ignored pacification and the political aspects of the conflict in favor of a strategy
of attrition, search and destroy operations, and firepower-heavy tactics that were
Andrew J. Birtle is a historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History in Washington,
D.C.. He is the author of U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine,
1860-1941 (1998) and U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine,
1942-1976 (2006).
The Journal of Military History 72 (October 2008): 1213–1247.
Copyright © 2008 by The Society for Military History, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or
transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing from the Editor, Journal of Military History, George C.
Marshall Library, Virginia Military Institute, P.O. Drawer 1600, Lexington, VA 24450. Authorization to photocopy items for internal
and personal use is granted by the copyright holder for libraries and other users registered with the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC),
121 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923 USA (www.copyright.com), provided the appropriate fee is paid to the CCC.
★ 1213
ANDREW J. BIRTLE
inappropriate for the situation. In contrast, historians have tended to depict Westmoreland’s successor, General Creighton W. Abrams, as one of a relatively small
number of free-thinking soldiers who understood the war and who tried to wage
a true counterinsurgency campaign based on securing the population and winning its hearts and minds. Although many historians believe Abrams ultimately
failed—either because his reforms came too late or because he was unable to break
the conventional mindset of the majority of the officer corps—some writers, such
as Lewis Sorley, have argued that Abrams’s methods actually succeeded but were
undercut by America’s decision to abandon South Vietnam.1
Regardless of whether one believes Abrams succeeded or not, one document
that lies at the heart of this deeply ingrained interpretation of the war is a report
produced by the Army Staff in March 1966 titled “A Program for the Pacification
and Long-Term Development of South Vietnam,” or PROVN for short. The study
indicted the U.S. government for failing to create a unified and well-coordinated
program for eliminating the insurgency in South Vietnam. It argued that pacification-establishing control over and winning the support of the population-was
the essence of the problem, to which all actions had to be subordinated. It criticized certain aspects of the way in which the war was being fought, urged that
military operations focus on securing the population from guerrilla intimidation,
and pressed the United States to play a more direct role in overseeing Vietnamese internal affairs. Finally, PROVN called for the United States to overhaul its
administrative machinery in Vietnam by placing all of its pacification efforts under
a single manager.
The U.S. government never implemented what PROVN called its “Comprehensive Blueprint for National Action.” After a round of briefings to senior officials
in the Department of Defense, it fell into obscurity. Nevertheless, PROVN was an
important document. It accurately cataloged the many problems that had bedeviled the war effort, offered solutions, and influenced several key decision makers.
Many have also noted that PROVN’s publication presaged by a year the creation
of the Office of Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development (CORDS), an
organization that achieved PROVN’s goal of bringing centralized control over
America’s multifaceted pacification effort. Indeed, both General Abrams and Robert W. Komer, the first head of CORDS, expressed their gratitude for the study and
implemented some of its ideas notwithstanding the fact that the government did
not formally embrace the document.
1. For examples of this line of historical thought, see Guenther Lewy, America in Vietnam
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., The Army and Vietnam
(Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986); Larry E. Cable, Conflict of Myths, The
Development of American Counterinsurgency Doctrine and the Vietnam War (New York: New York
University Press, 1986); John A. Nagl, Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002); Lewis Sorley, A Better War, the
Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam (New York: Harcourt
Brace, 1999).
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Scholars too have given PROVN a warm reception. The authors of the Pentagon Papers, who first brought the classified paper to the attention of the public in
1971, termed PROVN “a major step forward in thinking” and devoted about seven
pages to it.2 Subsequent writers likewise praised the report as an example of how at
least a few soldiers broke out of the Army’s mental straightjacket to produce a truly
novel and potentially successful approach for waging the war. Indeed, for many historians PROVN became a smoking gun whose fate proved both Westmoreland’s
incompetence and the inability of the Army at large to embrace change.
Guenther Lewy initiated the assault in 1978. Noting that PROVN had stated
that “present U.S. military actions are inconsistent with that fundamental of counterinsurgency doctrine which establishes winning the popular allegiance as the
ultimate goal,” Lewy charged that “Westmoreland failed to heed these pleas and
the emphasis remained on the big-unit war of attrition.”3 Andrew F. Krepinevich,
Jr. echoed this view in 1986, asserting that the Army had found PROVN so disturbing that it had deliberately suppressed the report.4 Two years later Phillip B.
Davidson claimed that Westmoreland had hated the report and that it had been
Westmoreland who was PROVN's “executioner.”5 More recently, John A. Nagl
characterized PROVN as a remarkable yet rare example of the Army repudiating
itself—an act that Westmoreland and the rest of the service could not stand.6 But
the person who has truly wielded PROVN as a cudgel to bludgeon Westmoreland
has been Lewis Sorley, who highlighted the report in three books and an article
published between 1992 and 1998. Calling PROVN “a study of enormous significance,” Sorley used it to juxtapose villains—conventionally minded soldiers such
as Westmoreland who failed to understand the nature of the war—and heroes,
such as Army Chief of Staff General Harold K. Johnson, who commissioned the
study, and Abrams, who in Sorley's opinion won the war by following PROVN's
precepts.7 This article contends that historians have exaggerated PROVN's significance, glossed over its weaknesses, ignored those elements of the report that do
not support their interpretations, and distorted its relationship to Westmoreland.
PROVN was neither as unique a document nor as critical of Westmoreland as
2. The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of United States Decisionmaking on
Vietnam, Senator Gravel ed. 4 vols. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), 2: 379-80, 500-503, 576, 577
(quotations), 578-80.
3. Lewy, America in Vietnam, 85, 89 (quotations).
4. Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, 181-82.
5. Phillip B. Davidson, Vietnam at War, the History: 1946-1975 (Novato, Calif.: Presidio
Press, 1998), 409, 410 (quoted word), 411.
6. Nagl, Counterinsurgency Lessons, 158-60.
7. Lewis Sorley, Thunderbolt, General Creighton Abrams and the Army of His Times (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1992), 192 (quotation), 233-37; Sorley, A Better War, 6, 17-20, 217; Lewis
Sorley, “To Change a War: General Harold K. Johnson and the PROVN Study,” Parameters 28
(Spring 1998): 93-109; Lewis Sorley, Honorable Warrior, General Harold K. Johnson and the Ethics
of Command (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 227.
MILITARY HISTORY
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ANDREW J. BIRTLE
has often been portrayed. Moreover, the PROVN-inspired strategy that General
Abrams implemented during his tenure as MACV commander (1968-72) was
firmly rooted in policies and procedures of his predecessor. By examining several
aspects of PROVN and its treatment by scholars, this article argues for a more balanced understanding of how this oft-misunderstood document fits into the history
of an oft-misunderstood war.
The Origins of the Study
In April 1965, Army Chief of Staff General Harold K. Johnson had lunch with
Vietnam expert Bernard Fall. To his chagrin, Johnson discovered that many of the
facts that his staff had given him about Vietnam were incorrect. Already concerned
about the worsening situation in Southeast Asia, Johnson returned from the meeting determined not only to get the facts straight but also to formulate proposals
for winning the conflict in Vietnam. In June he formed a small team of talented
midlevel officers and assigned them the task of developing “new sources of action
to be taken in South Vietnam by the United States and its allies, which will, in
conjunction with current actions, lead in due time to successful accomplishment
of US aims and objectives.” After assembling in July, the team went to work and
eventually produced the PROVN report in March 1966.8
Twenty-two years later, Davidson postulated that the chief of staff had formed
the study group with the explicit purpose of putting forward “an alternative concept
to Westmoreland's strategy of attrition.” Similarly, Sorley has claimed that General Johnson was convinced “Westmoreland's approach was not working, indeed
could not work,” and that he “set out to devise, and then to gain acceptance for, an
approach to the war in Vietnam that was radically at variance with what he saw
taking place there.” In this interpretation, PROVN was to play the role of the noble
steed upon which Johnson, the white knight in Sorley’s tale, would ride valiantly
forward in a “brave and lonely effort” to save Westmoreland and the rest of the
Army from themselves.9
There is, however, little evidence to support these assertions. For example, Johnson's official report of a trip he made to Vietnam in March 1965 just prior to his
launch of PROVN does not indicate that he had any fundamental disagreements
8. Study Outline, 1 (quotation), Incl to Memo, Brig Gen Charles A. Corcoran, Secretary of
the General Staff, for Deputy Chiefs of Staff, et al, 21 Jun 65, sub: Study--A Program for the Pacification and Long Term Development of Vietnam, Historians files, U.S. Army Center of Military
History (CMH), Washington, D.C.; Eric M. Bergerud, The Dynamics of Defeat, the Vietnam War
in Hau Nghia Province (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1991), 81. The members of the PROVN
team are listed in Sorley, Honorable Warrior, 229-31, and in the acknowledgments section of Rpt,
Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Military Operations (ODCSOPS), March 1966, sub: A
Program for the Pacification and Long-Term Development of South Vietnam, Pentagon Library,
Arlington, Virginia (hereafter referred to as PROVN).
9. Davidson, Vietnam at War, 409 (first quotation); Sorley, “To Change a War,” 94-95
(remaining quotations).
1216 ★
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with Westmoreland. The only exception
was a suggestion he made that the United
States deploy several divisions across the
Laotian panhandle to cut what he considered the root problem of the war—North
Vietnamese infiltration. Although the situation also concerned Westmoreland, he
regarded a Laotian deployment as politically and militarily impractical, a view that
the Joint Chiefs shared.10 Moreover, at the
time when Johnson authorized PROVN,
U.S. ground troops were only beginning to
filter into Vietnam. The big-unit, high-firepower, search-and-destroy war for which
Westmoreland would be widely criticized
had hardly begun. Since there is little
General Harold K. Johnson, Father of evidence that Johnson was particularly disPROVN (U.S. Army Center of Military
satisfied with Westmoreland's performance
History)
in the spring of 1965, his decision to launch
PROVN can best be seen as an effort to
reappraise the situation, cultivate fresh ideas, and press for solutions at a time when
the United States was entering into a new and far-riskier phase of the conflict. One
can understand such an act without ascribing to it any underlying motivation to
challenge Westmoreland.
Pacification as a Priority
One fact that is not in dispute is PROVN's strong emphasis on pacification,
or rural construction/revolutionary development, as it was sometimes called. The
report argued that “the Vietnamese people are, and must remain, the true and
paramount objective of all U.S.-Government of Vietnam efforts.”11 Corollaries to
this argument were “that people and ideas are more effective weapons than military
hardware in battling for men's minds,” and that the military battle, especially the
battle against enemy military forces, was secondary to the political struggle.12
10. Rpt, Gen Harold K. Johnson, 14 Mar 65, sub: Report on Survey of the Military Situation in Vietnam, Box 5A, H. K. Johnson Papers, U.S. Army Military History Institute (MHI),
Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania; William C. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports (Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday, 1976), 147-48.
11. PROVN, 65, 66 (quotation). PROVN is laden with acronyms. In the quoted passage the
actual wording includes the acronym “GVN” instead of “Government of Vietnam.” To enhance
readability I have spelled out most of the acronyms found in quoted documents.
12. Ibid., 13.
MILITARY HISTORY
★ 1217
ANDREW J. BIRTLE
The authors of the study lamented that these principles had been neglected in
the past. They were likewise concerned that the ongoing U.S. troop buildup would
further obscure the importance of pacification and cautioned that “today, our eagerness to do the killing for the Government of Vietnam must at least be matched
by U.S. determination to force Government of Vietnam action on critical ‘peopleoriented programs.’”13 “At no time,” they continued, “should U.S.-Free World
operations shift the American focus of support from the true point of decision in
Vietnam—the villages. Victories over extraneous Peoples’ Army of Vietnam or Viet
Cong Main Force battalions . . . must not be allowed to generate false optimism.
Such battle wins are not indicative that this enemy is ready to quit or that he has
been touched in his prime operating dimension.”14
PROVN’s authors were right to worry that the troop buildup might overshadow pacification, but they did not denigrate the role of force. They repeatedly
stressed that providing security to the population through military, paramilitary,
police, and intelligence operations was the sine qua non of pacification. They likewise asserted that
Socio-economic programs must be closely tied to the pace of the
security effort. Attempts to win allegiance from the population . . . by
the distribution of commodities or services without reasonable assurance of continued physical security are invitations to failure. An early
U.S. assistance concept espoused socio-economic good works which,
by themselves and preceding security, were expected to galvanize the
peasant into making a military commitment against the Viet Cong.
Programs executed under this concept were dramatically unsuccessful:
bags of bulgur wheat have never been known to kill an insurgent.15
Thus, while the PROVN authors believed that “‘victory’ can only be achieved
through bringing the individual Vietnamese . . . to support willingly the Government of South Vietnam,” they fully acknowledged that force was integral to obtaining that goal. Military and security actions might only be means to the ultimate
political end, but without them the end was unobtainable.16 Commentators have
sometimes given the impression that PROVN was unusual in that it represented
a rare recognition by at least some officers-in contrast to Westmoreland and the
majority of the officer corps-that politics and pacification were of cardinal importance.17 Such an impression is misleading. Army doctrine had long acknowledged
the primacy of politics in war, the need to tailor military actions to political circumstances, and the importance of pacifying the countryside by both protecting
13. Ibid., 2-8 to 2-9 (quotation), 5-23.
14. Ibid., 70-71.
15. Ibid., 4-14.
16. Ibid., 1 (quotation), 2-10, 2-11.
17. Lewy, America in Vietnam, 63; Nagl, Counterinsurgency Lessons, 159-60.
1218 ★
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PROVN, Westmoreland, and the Historians
the population and winning its support. By the time PROVN was written, these
principles could be found in a variety of manuals and training texts and were well
integrated into most Army education programs.18 Moreover, they had formed the
basis of U.S. advice to South Vietnam since the beginning of the insurgency. As
early as 1955, the senior U.S. military representative in South Vietnam, Lieutenant
General Samuel T. Williams, had informed South Vietnam’s leadership that “military operations alone are not sufficient for success” and that military actions must be
conducted “in harmony with . . . political, psychological, and economic policies.”19
Every chief of U.S. forces in Vietnam thereafter reiterated that advice, including
General Westmoreland. Indeed, as John M. Carland has pointed out, six months
before the Army Staff produced the PROVN report, Westmoreland informed his
subordinates that
The war in Vietnam is a political as well as a military war. It is political
because the ultimate goal is to regain the loyalty and cooperation of the
people, and to create conditions which permit the people to go about
their normal lives in peace and security. . . . Thus, the ultimate aim is
to pacify the Republic of Vietnam by destroying the Viet Cong—his
forces, organization, terrorists, agents, and propagandists—while at
the same time reestablishing the government apparatus, strengthening
Government of Vietnam military forces, rebuilding the administrative
machinery, and re-instituting the services of the Government. During
this process security must be provided to all of the people on a progressive basis.20
If the importance of security was well understood by the Army, so, too, was the
notion that political and socioeconomic reforms were also necessary. The U.S. Army
had a long tradition of making institutional reform a part of its counterinsurgency,
nation-building, and constabulary activities, and it had readily accepted Walt W.
Rostow's thesis that socioeconomic change was a key weapon in the fight against
the spread of communism in the third world.21 What civilians and soldiers often
18. See, for example, the following U.S. Army Field Manuals (FM): FM 31-20, Operations
Against Guerrilla Forces, 1951, 63-65, 71, 126; FM 100-5, Field Service Regulations, Operations,
1954, 7, 133; FM 31-15, Operations Against Irregular Forces, 1961, 4-5, 14; FM 100-5, Field Service
Regulations, Operations, 1962, 5-6, 137, 139, 152-54.
19. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, vol. 1, Vietnam (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1985), 608.
20. MACV Directive 525-4, 17 Sep 65, sub: Tactics and Techniques for Employment of US
Forces in the Republic of Vietnam, 1-2 (quotation), History Files no. 1, William C. Westmoreland
Papers, CMH; John M. Carland, “Winning the Vietnam War: Westmoreland’s Approach in Two
Documents,” Journal of Military History 68 (April 2004): 553-54, 558.
21. For background, see Andrew J. Birtle, U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency
Operations Doctrine, 1860-1941 (Washington: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1998); and
Andrew J. Birtle, U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine, 1942-1976
(Washington: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 2006).
MILITARY HISTORY
★ 1219
ANDREW J. BIRTLE
disagreed about was not the utility of socioeconomic reform, but more practical
questions about the nature, timing, and extent of those reforms and who should be
responsible for implementing them. PROVN took the extreme position that nothing short of a social revolution would do, and that U.S. Army personnel should play
an active role in imposing change. Such an approach raised a host of philosophical, political, bureaucratic, and diplomatic questions, some of which the study’s
authors had answers for and some of which they did not, for as the Pentagon Papers
observed, many of the report's 140 recommendations were “vague and hortatory.”22
Nonetheless, the authors were steadfast in their opinion that radical reforms were
necessary and that Army officers should act as “agents of social change.”23
If PROVN's authors hoped for radical changes in Vietnamese politics and society, the remedies they proposed—for instance, to institute land and fiscal reforms
and to encourage political parties—had long been advocated by the United States.
Moreover, the authors realized that major reforms would take years, if not decades,
to achieve, and they postulated a phased approach in which military and security
measures backed by limited civic actions would occur first, with more-meaningful
structural reforms coming after the security situation had stabilized. They believed,
for example, that national elections were unrealistic and should not occur until
the country was relatively secure—a situation that they postulated would not exist
before 1971. They likewise took a hard-nosed approach toward matters of aid, recommending that the allies deny assistance to people living in either contested or
Viet Cong-controlled areas so as not to reward “fence sitting.”24 Thus while political matters were paramount for ultimate victory, PROVN’s authors realized that for
the immediate future, military and security measures would have to hold sway.
Strategy, Roles, and Missions
PROVN's assertion that pacification should receive the highest priority has
been the basis for many of the criticisms authors have made against Westmoreland.
Davidson concluded that “PROVN forthrightly attacked his [Westmoreland's]
search and destroy concept,” and others have agreed.25 A careful examination of
both Westmoreland's actions and the PROVN report reveals, however, that there
was much less disagreement between Westmoreland and the study’s authors than
many commentators have implied.
PROVN recommended that the allies prosecute the war by following a strategy
of progressive area clearance, the so-called “oil spot” method. Under this scheme,
security forces guided by a well-integrated politico-military plan would gradually
22. The Pentagon Papers, 2: 577.
23. PROVN, 103-4, 2-30, 2-44 thru 2-51, 2-56 (quotation), I-38, I-44.
24. Ibid., 73, 83-85, 93, 4-14, 4-15 (quotation).
25. Davidson, Vietnam at War, 410 (quotation); Sorley, A Better War, 6; Marc J. Gilbert, ed.,
Why the North Won the Vietnam War (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 172; Nagl, Counterinsurgency
Lessons, 159; Lewy, America in Vietnam, 85, 89.
1220 ★
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PROVN, Westmoreland, and the Historians
assert control over an ever-widening
area, beginning with the most strategically important portions of the
country. The strategy was not new.
Advisory chief Lieutenant General
Lionel C. McGarr had first outlined
such an approach in 1960, and every
counterinsurgency plan thereafter
had followed suit. That these plans
had not succeeded was, in the opinion of PROVN, the result of poor
implementation rather than conceptual inadequacy.26
Like his predecessors, Westmoreland understood both the
importance of pacification and the
necessity of securing the population. Not surprisingly, therefore, his
General William C. Westmoreland (National campaign plan for 1966, which he
developed before PROVN's release,
Archives)
called for an integrated politicalmilitary program of phased area
clearance. He reinforced these plans by instructing his subordinates “to conduct
clearing operations on a systematic basis to purge specific areas of Viet Cong elements as a prelude to pacification” and “to provide permanent security for areas earmarked for pacification.” Since “the most lucrative operations in the long run will
be prolonged campaigns in a single province or district,” he urged commanders to
undertake a robust combination of search-and-destroy, strike, and clear-and-secure
operations in close cooperation with Vietnamese civil, military, and paramilitary
officials. “The end product of this sequence of operations,” Westmoreland concluded, was security, not only from the enemy's military forces, but also from his
“political and subversive infrastructure and clandestine agents,” for “an area cannot
be considered pacified until these Viet Cong activities have been identified and
either destroyed or removed, and until the services and activities of the Government of Vietnam have been fully reinstated.”27
26. PROVN, 2-28, 5-23, 5-24 (quotation), 5-25; Msg, Saigon 226 to State, 14 Aug 61, in
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, vol. 1, Vietnam, 1961 (Washington: Government
Printing Office, 1988), 274-79; Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG), Vietnam, Implementing Actions for Anti-Guerrilla Operations, 15 Nov 60; MAAG, Vietnam, Geographically
Phased National Level Operation Plan for Counterinsurgency, 15 Sep 61. The last two items in
Historians files, CMH.
27. MACV Directive 525-4, 17 Sep 65, sub: Tactics and Techniques for Employment of US
Forces in the Republic of Vietnam, 3, 6, 7-9, 13.
MILITARY HISTORY
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ANDREW J. BIRTLE
When it came time to draft a new campaign plan in the summer of 1966, Westmoreland continued to adhere to the views he had expressed the previous year:
There is a general acceptance of the fact that the war in Vietnam cannot be won by offensive military operations alone. In the final analysis
the Revolutionary Development program, designed to restore local
government, provide and maintain public security and win the support
of the people to the Government of Vietnam, offers the only real hope
for bringing this conflict to a successful conclusion. Accordingly, the
resources and efforts of all U.S. mission agencies, and also those of the
Government of Vietnam, must be organized and directed so as to provide maximum support to the Revolutionary Development effort.28
He went on to state that “the first step in gaining this support is to provide adequate
security” based on a four-fold program of military operations against major Communist forces, clearing operations around areas scheduled for pacification, security
operations to protect hamlets and villages, and police actions against Communist
agents. He reinforced the importance of the village war by concluding that “one
guerrilla killed is equal to two main force killed.”29
Pacification and local security were thus central to Westmoreland’s thinking, but
the general also had to deal with the realities he faced on the ground-an ineffective
government, lackluster indigenous security forces, and, most important of all, a powerful opponent who by the time the PROVN report appeared, fielded over 225,000
soldiers and guerrillas. Up against so adverse a situation, Westmoreland believed that
his first priority in the fall of 1965 was to engage in a series raids, thrusts, and limited
offensive operations “to stem the tide.” Once the situation had stabilized and sufficient reinforcements had arrived, he planned to take the offensive in 1966 with the
purpose of destroying the Communists' main forces, driving them away from populated areas, and pacifying selected high-priority areas as a prelude to the progressive
pacification of all of South Vietnam over the ensuing years.30
This was a tall order. To accomplish it, Westmoreland had to determine the
best allocation of his resources. Until he was able to contain the enemy's sizeable
military forces, he decided that U.S. troops should focus their efforts on fighting
the enemy's larger military formations while the South Vietnamese concentrated
28. Briefing, MACV, c. Aug 66, sub: Briefing to Mission Council, 1, Historians files,
CMH.
29. Ibid., 1 (first quotation), 15 (second quotation).
30. Rpt, Department of Defense (DOD), Office of Assistant Secretary of Defense (OASD),
Comptroller, 10 Jan 73, sub: Southeast Asia Statistical Summary, Table 105, Estimated NVA/VC
Strength and Battalions in South Vietnam; MACV Directive 525-4, 17 Sep 65, sub: Tactics and
Techniques for Employment of US Forces in the Republic of Vietnam, 2 (quotation); Memo,
MACV for Distribution, 30 Aug 65, sub: MACV Concept of Operations in the Republic of Vietnam, 1-2; Msg, COMUSMACV to CINCPAC, 26 Aug 66, sub: Concept of Military Operations
in SVN; Msg, Westmoreland to Admiral Sharp, Jan 67, sub: Strategy and Concept of Operations
for 1967. All of the above in Historians files, CMH.
1222 ★
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on securing the population and pacifying the countryside. U.S. forces would assist
the pacification campaign both directly and indirectly, and if the war went well
they would be able to turn an ever-greater amount of their attention to pacification
support. Their first priority, however, would be to provide the shield behind which
the South Vietnamese could get their house in order. This approach made sense.
The Americans had the tactical capabilities and firepower to deal with Communist
main force units, but the South Vietnamese forces had the language and cultural
skills to interact with the population. The U.S. government had always maintained,
moreover, that internal political and security matters were the responsibility of the
indigenous government rather than the United States. Westmoreland's strategy fit
well with this policy. It was also in sync with much counterinsurgency and nationbuilding theory, which held that ultimately only indigenous authorities could
resolve a nation’s internal problems.
PROVN's authors wanted the United States to become more involved in
South Vietnamese internal affairs than either Westmoreland or the majority of
Washington officials were willing to countenance, but they did not fundamentally
disagree with the general's overall strategy. First on the list of PROVN's five most
important objectives was “the defeat of Peoples' Army of Vietnam and Main Force
Viet Cong units and the reduction of Viet Cong guerrillas and political infrastructure among the population.” To achieve this end, the study’s authors called
for “the deployment of U.S. and Free World Military Assistance Forces to destroy
Peoples’ Army of Vietnam and Main Force Viet Cong units and base areas and to
reduce external support below the sustaining level.” This was necessary because, as
PROVN conceded, “Rural Construction can progress significantly only in conjunction with the effective neutralization of major enemy forces.” Consequently,
the report concluded, “the bulk of U.S.-Free World Military Assistance Forces and
designated Army of the Republic of Vietnam units must be directed against the
base areas and against lines of communication in South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia; the remainder of these forces must ensure adequate momentum to priority
Rural Construction areas.”31 (Emphasis added.) Indeed, PROVN stressed that “the
primary role” of U.S. forces and select South Vietnamese Army units was to “‘isolate
the battlefield’ by curtailing significant infiltration, demolishing the key war zones,
and fully engaging Peoples’ Army of Vietnam-Main Force Viet Cong units wherever and whenever they are located.”32 This was necessary because unless the allies
were able to curtail Communist reinforcement from the North “to less than the
attrition rate to which the Peoples’ Army of Vietnam-Main Force Viet Cong are
being subjected within South Vietnam,” they would be unable to achieve the level
of security needed for pacification to succeed.33 Faced with this reality, PROVN
reiterated that only “as U.S.-Free World units can be spared from the conduct of
31. PROVN, 4 (first quotation), 5 (remaining quotations), 49.
32. Ibid., 70.
33. Ibid., 5-9 (quotation), 5-10 thru 5-12, 5-18, 5-24, 5-25.
MILITARY HISTORY
★ 1223
ANDREW J. BIRTLE
search and destroy missions” should “some U.S.-Free World Military Forces units be
committed to energize [the] Rural Construction effort in priority areas” as “a secondary mission.”34 (Emphasis added.) The village war—the most important feature
of the conflict as a whole in PROVN's estimation—would thus remain primarily a
Vietnamese concern, with American ground forces assisting only when and where
they could be spared, presumably in increasing numbers if and when the overall
military situation improved. How long this division of labor would last remained to
be seen, but since PROVN forecast that the allies would probably need until 1971
to defeat the enemy's military forces, it was clear that for the foreseeable future U.S.
Army units would focus their energies on the big-unit war.35
That PROVN's authors supported Westmoreland's approach was further
evidenced by their treatment of the U.S. Marine Corps's enclave strategy. In 1965
and 1966 the Marines argued that U.S. forces should support pacification directly
by taking up positions amongst the population. They asserted that the creation of
secure enclaves along Vietnam's heavily populated coast would be the best use for
American forces, and they criticized Westmoreland's strategy of using U.S. troops
to attack enemy units and bases in the interior. PROVN came down firmly on
Westmoreland's side of the argument. It doubted that the Marines had enough
men both to secure their present enclaves and to expand them into other populated
areas, and it asserted that the Army's method of launching “large-scale offensive
operations against the Peoples’ Army of Vietnam-Main Force Viet Cong and
their base areas” with “maximum emphasis on firepower, air power and mechanical mobility superiority” had “registered the greater military success.”36 The study's
authors further noted that the Army's approach had the virtue of keeping U.S.
forces “out of competition with the Vietnamese in pacification activities,” a view
that fit perfectly with Westmoreland's and their own vision of how the two allies
should divide their responsibilities. After concluding that “no enclave or static
defense posture will suffice in the realization of pacification and nation building
in South Vietnam,” PROVN recommended forcefully that the allies “discontinue
[the] U.S. Marine Corps enclave concept in favor of more aggressive action.”37
Historians who have depicted PROVN as an insightful critique of Westmoreland's strategy have dealt with these statements in several ways. Andrew
Krepinevich dryly remarked that PROVN's troop allocation was “less than a ringing endorsement for a traditional counterinsurgency strategy,” while Davidson and
Marc J. Gilbert reluctantly admitted that Westmoreland's approach made sense
given the situation as it existed at the time.38 Others, however, including Lewy,
34. Ibid., 70 (first quotation), 112 (second and third quotations), 2-6, 5-3.
35. Ibid., 6, 20, 111-12, 5-3, 5-22, 5-33, 5-46.
36. Ibid., 5-18.
37. Ibid., 112 (first quotation), 24 (second quotation), 70.
38. Krepinevich, Army and Vietnam, 182 (quotation); Davidson, Vietnam at War, 409-10;
Gilbert, Why the North Won, 172-73.
1224 ★
THE JOURNAL OF
PROVN, Westmoreland, and the Historians
Sorley, and Nagl, completely ignored PROVN's emphasis on the U.S. role in the
main force war, thereby fostering an inaccurate understanding of the report and its
place in history.
Unlike so many commentators on the Vietnam War, Chief of Staff Johnson
shared PROVN's view that Westmoreland had no choice but to concentrate U.S.
forces against the enemy's main formations. Indeed, as late as April 1968, three
years after he commissioned the PROVN study, Johnson continued to defend
Westmoreland's approach. In a remark that is as true today as it was then, Johnson
noted that many commentators misunderstood U.S. strategy because they focused
their attention on the Army's large operations, which were “more spectacular and
newsworthy” from the perspective of an American audience than “equally essential, small scale operations.” This myopic view, he wrote, “has led to a widely-held
misconception that our present strategy is limited to large-scale search-and-destroy
operations having exclusively military objectives. Critics of this strategy apparently
consider that pacification and nation building are neglected. This is simply not
true.” Instead, Johnson argued that Westmoreland was indeed pursuing a “wellconceived and balanced approach” of military, population security, and pacification
programs. While each of these measures was vital to achieving ultimate success, the
Chief of Staff asserted that operations against the Communists' large units were
essential: “If we were to adopt a strategy which emphasizes only clear and hold
operations, enemy base areas would become reasonably secure again. Any change
in emphasis away from search-and-destroy operations would free the enemy to
operate with relative impunity around and between the peripheries of our enclaves.
In short, a withdrawal to an enclave strategy would simply give enemy Main Force
units a license to hunt when and where they choose.”39
Three months after making these comments, General Johnson retired, General
Westmoreland became Chief of Staff of the Army, and General Creighton Abrams
assumed the mantle of MACV commander. As noted earlier, some people have portrayed Abrams’s ascension as a turning point in which Westmoreland's misguided
military-oriented strategy gave way to a more enlightened approach that emphasized pacification and population security over fighting big battles. Davidson, Sorley, and others especially credit Abrams with resurrecting PROVN and taking to
heart its pacification-centered focus. Although it is true that Abrams stressed U.S.
military support of pacification and population security, the differences between
him and Westmoreland have been exaggerated.40 For if Westmoreland understood
and supported pacification more than many writers have been willing to acknowledge, many of Abrams’s actions were firmly rooted in the policies and actions of his
39. Harold K. Johnson, “The Army Chief of Staff on Military Strategy in Vietnam,” Army
Digest 23 (April 1968): 7-9.
40. Davidson, Vietnam at War, 613-14; Sorley, Thunderbolt, 233-35; W. Scott Thompson and
Donaldson Frizzell, eds., The Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Crane, Russak and Company, 1977),
79, 81, 83.
MILITARY HISTORY
★ 1225
ANDREW J. BIRTLE
predecessor. Moreover, Abrams’s
ability to lend greater support to
pacification was based primarily
on the altered circumstances of
the conflict. More than any other
development, the Communist
1968 Tet Offensive made possible
the change in American focus.
The offensive spurred the South
Vietnamese to implement many
long-resisted reform measures and
shocked U.S. politicians into seeking a way out of the conflict. The
latter decision led in turn to greater
efforts to build up Vietnam’s secuGeneral Creighton W. Abrams (National Archives)
rity forces, to limit U.S. casualties,
and to gradually withdraw U.S.
forces, moves that eventually made it difficult for Abrams to launch operations.
Last but not least, the enemy reacted to the severe losses he suffered in 1968 by
withdrawing many of his main forces to the relative safety of the hinterlands and
cross-border sanctuaries where they nursed their wounds and waited for America’s
withdrawal to create more favorable circumstances. This decision gave the allies the
opportunity to focus more of their energies on pacification security—a situation
that Westmoreland had never enjoyed, but which both he and the PROVN writers
had envisioned as part of their overall strategy.41
Many individuals who emphasized the importance of pacification acknowledged the role that offensive operations played in achieving it. Robert Komer,
who Sorley rightly says admired PROVN, informed President Lyndon B. Johnson
that large military offensives were indispensable for creating the screen behind
which pacification could move forward. Another presidential adviser, Richard C.
Holbrooke, likewise reported that “the most valuable use of troops in support of
pacification is effective anti-main force action in Viet Cong areas near the area to
be pacified.” The Joint Chiefs of Staff shared these observations, noting in 1966
that “revolutionary development in South Vietnam progressed at a more rapid rate
in those corps tactical zones where sustained offensive pressure was applied against
the North Vietnamese/Viet Cong main forces.”42
41. Bergerud, Dynamics of Defeat, 241, 249, 254; Lewy, America in Vietnam, 134-37, 146.
42. Memo, Richard C. Holbrooke for Ambassador Leonhart, 9 Jun 67, sub: Some Observations about the Success and Importance of Pacification in Vietnam, 2 (first quotation); Rpt,
JCS, Analysis of Revolutionary Development Program SVN, CY 66, 1967, 5 (second quotation);
Memo, Komer for the President, 28 Feb 67, sub: Change for the Better--Latest Impressions from
Vietnam, 7, 12. All in Historians files, CMH.
1226 ★
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PROVN, Westmoreland, and the Historians
The Office of Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development also understood the importance of security, so much so that by May 1970 it had assigned
5,553 of its 7,824 personnel to security and military duties. Similarly, between fiscal
years 1968 and 1971 the agency spent nearly 80 percent of its budget on military,
security, and counter-infrastructure programs rather than political, social, and economic improvements. Although CORDS focused its security efforts at the local
level working with the police, paramilitaries, and Regional Forces, it acknowledged
the importance of the main force war by stating in 1970 that “the regular forces'
primary mission, which is perfectly consistent with the principles of area security,
is to seek out, engage, and repel enemy main force units in the clearing zone and
border surveillance zone.”43
Finding the right balance of offensive and security measures, large-unit and
small-unit operations, and U.S. and South Vietnamese responsibilities, was never
easy. As Westmoreland recognized, it required constant adjustment depending
on circumstances. But ultimately, as the PROVN authors, Komer, and Generals Westmoreland, Johnson, and Abrams all recognized, victory in the “one war”
required success in both the main force and the village wars, with progress in the
former being a prerequisite for success in the latter. This was the conclusion of a
special study group which the National Security Council formed in late 1969 to
examine the state of pacification. The group noted that significant gains in pacification had not occurred until after “the allies were able clearly to gain the upper
hand in the main force war, destroying, dispersing, or pushing back the enemy main
force units.” Programs of persuasion, development, and political mobilization had
contributed to the allies’ growing success, but these paled in significance compared
with the contributions made by military and security programs, for as the report
acknowledged, public “support tends to follow rather than lead control. Most rural
people have no strong commitment to either side, and they accept the governance
of whichever side appears to be winning.”44 (Emphasis added.)
Tactics and Conduct of the War
If most commentators have been wrong in thinking that PROVN rejected
Westmoreland's strategy, they were on somewhat firmer ground when it came to
43. Rpt, Pacification Studies Group, CORDS, c. 1970, sub: The Area Security Concept, 5, 6
(quotation); CORDS, Analysis of CORDS Programs by Pacification Objectives, 1971; CORDS,
CORDS Functional Manpower Authorization, 12 May 1970. All in Historians files, CMH.
44. Rpt, Vietnam Special Studies Group, 10 Jan 70, sub: The Situation in the Countryside,
2 (first quotation), 3, 7, 89-90, 92-93; Rpt, Vietnam Special Studies Group, 13 May 70, sub:
The Situation in the Countryside, 10, 27 (second quotation), 28-30; Memo, Office of Assistant
Secretary of Defense, Systems Analysis (OASD (SA)), 4 Feb 70, sub: Pacification Progress in
1969; Rpt, MACV History Branch, 25 May 68, sub: Lessons in Strategy, 4-5. All in Historians
files, CMH.
MILITARY HISTORY
★ 1227
ANDREW J. BIRTLE
tactics. PROVN's authors found some serious shortcomings in the way the war was
being fought. They believed that the South Vietnamese Army was too tied down performing static security responsibilities better suited for the police and Popular Forces
and recommended that it be used to conduct “continuous and decentralized mobile
operations in or near the populated areas.” They condemned the South Vietnamese
military's lack of aggressiveness, its weak leadership, and its habit of breaking off
operations before nightfall. The PROVN authors also considered “certain of the more
common counterguerrilla tactics, such as encirclements, sweeps . . . and massive heliborne and armored operations” ineffective against the elusive guerrillas and urged that
“selective warfare must be adopted as a cardinal principle in order to avoid alienation of
the population through unwise application of military force and troop misconduct.”45
Examples of other counterproductive practices included “misconduct in the form of
brutality, theft, confiscation, rape and dangerous driving; unobserved artillery fire in
contested populated areas; and, air strikes in contested populated areas that are not
performed in support of units in contact with the enemy.” Finally, PROVN suggested
that the allies confine “scorched earth” tactics to Viet Cong war zones.46
In contrast to fruitless sweeps and static garrisons, PROVN believed that “the
key to achieving . . . security lies in the conduct of effective area saturation tactics, in
and around the populated areas, which deny Viet Cong encroachment opportunities.
This calls for vigorous, decentralized, small unit, day and night operations—generally
conducted in the form of raids, patrols and ambushes.” When performed by troops
who remained in an area long enough to learn the dynamics of the local situation,
these tactics would demonstrate the government's resolve, provide the people with
the opportunity to safely help the counterinsurgents, and create an environment
conducive to the enactment of socioeconomic reforms designed to win civilian support. Although the study's authors acknowledged that the “village war” would be “the
most difficult, continuous and dirty imaginable,” they firmly held that the allies had
to focus attention on this struggle, since “the Viet Cong can and must be challenged
and defeated in the same dimension as he maintains his principal effort.”47
There was merit in PROVN's critique, but commentators have reached too
far when they conclude, as Sorley did, that PROVN “thoroughly repudiated Westmoreland's concept, strategy, and tactics for conducting the war.” Westmoreland
actually agreed with many of PROVN's criticisms, while PROVN moderated its
critique by acknowledging that “few changes in U.S. doctrine are needed.” As for
the Vietnamese, U.S. advisers had been harping on the exact same shortcomings for
years with only marginal results, a fact that PROVN itself acknowledged.48 Some
45. PROVN, 5-19 (third quotation), 5-20, 5-37 (first quotation), 5-39 (second quotation),
5-40 thru 5-42, 5-54, G-8.
46. Ibid., 21 (second quotation), 71 (first quotation), 5-23.
47. Ibid., 69 (first quotation), 70 (remaining quotations), 5-40 through 5-44.
48. Sorley, A Better War, 6 (first quotation); PROVN, 2-11 (second quotation), 5-37.
1228 ★
THE JOURNAL OF
PROVN, Westmoreland, and the Historians
of these flaws—poor leadership, tactical conservativeness, questionable morale and
commitment, lack of initiative, brutality, and corruption—were so entrenched that
they never really improved despite the best efforts of Westmoreland, Abrams, and
thousands of other U.S. personnel during the twenty years in which the United
States provided military assistance to Vietnam.
Historians have also missed the mark when they have used PROVN to justify
their portrayal of Westmoreland as an inflexible, conventionally minded commander who was wedded to fighting big battles with extensive firepower while
shunning saturation patrols, small-unit operations, and other area control techniques. Westmoreland used big units and high firepower because these were often
necessary to counter the enemy's substantial combat strength, but he was well aware
of the shortcomings of large-unit sweeps. In a widely disseminated September
1965 report, MACV conceded that large-unit operations were difficult to execute
and advised all commanders to conduct independent company- and platoon-level
operations and squad-size saturation patrols whenever the situation permitted. This
advice was consistent with what the United States had been telling the Vietnamese for years, and in March 1966, as PROVN neared completion, Westmoreland
praised an operation conducted by the 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, that
had made extensive use of continuous small-unit patrolling.49
In fact, Westmoreland’s interest in small-unit counterguerrilla actions was
long-standing. As the commander of the 101st Airborne Division in the early
1960s, he had started one of the first small-unit counterguerrilla training courses
in the Army, and in 1966 he established a similar course in Vietnam that gave rise
to the widespread use of long-range reconnaissance and ranger patrols. During
his tenure as MACV chief, small-unit actions (defined as employing less than a
battalion) always outnumbered large-unit operations. Thus during the last quarter
of 1965 the 173d Airborne Brigade conducted 193 operations involving less than
a company and only 14 operations employing one or more companies. Similarly,
during the same time period the 1st Infantry Division conducted 2,919 operations
using less than a battalion versus only 59 actions employing a battalion or more.
This statistical trend held true for most other American units.50
49. A Summary of Lessons Learned, Section I, Lessons in Combat, Incl to Memo, Brig Gen
John Norton, Deputy Commander, U.S. Army in Vietnam, for Distribution, 22 Sep 65, I-3, I-4,
I-13; Memo for Record (MFR), MACV Combat Operations Center, 10 Mar 66, sub: MACV
Commanders' Conference, 20 Feb 66. Both in Historians files, CMH. Westmoreland, A Soldier
Reports, 145, 147, 149; Carland, “Winning the Vietnam War,” 561-64, 570-72.
50. OASD (SA), Southeast Asia Analysis Report (SEAR), Sep 67, 10-12; OASD (SA), SEAR,
Nov 67, 54-56. Both in Thomas C. Thayer Papers, CMH. John M. Carland, Combat Operations: Stemming, the Tide, May 1965 to October 1966, The United States Army in Vietnam (Washington: U.S. Army
Center of Military History, 2000), 198; Quarterly Command Rpt, 1st Inf Div, 31 Dec 65, Incl 10,
Historians files, CMH; MFR, MACV Combat Operations Center, 10 Mar 66, sub: MACV Commanders' Conference, 20 Feb 66; Msg, COMUSMACV to CINCPAC, 26 Aug 66, 3.
MILITARY HISTORY
★ 1229
ANDREW J. BIRTLE
Saturation patrols could be used in conducting many missions, but they were
most appropriate for units performing village and area security functions rather
than those fighting North Vietnamese battalions and regiments, and a careful reading of PROVN shows that the report largely confined its advocacy of such patrols
to the village war, for which the Vietnamese bore the prime responsibility. When
it came to fighting the enemy's main force units, PROVN endorsed the Army's
traditional “find, fix, destroy formula.” Much like Westmoreland, and in accordance
with Army doctrine, PROVN's authors cautioned that soldiers had to adapt traditional tactics to the conditions in Vietnam, but they did not fundamentally disagree
with the way in which operations were being conducted. They recommended using
heliborne troops to help surround the enemy, overwhelming fire support to destroy
him, and aggressive follow-up to hound him.51
In his critique of Westmoreland, Sorely has claimed that tactics changed
dramatically-and for the better-the moment Abrams became MACV commander.
As mentioned earlier, Abrams increased U.S. troop support for pacification largely
because changed circumstances permitted such a shift. But as Lewy, Richard A. Hunt,
and others have pointed out, the tactics and techniques used by U.S. units under
Abrams did not differ materially from those used by Westmoreland.52 As shown in
Table 1, Abrams made extensive use of large-unit operations, with the average number of days spent on such activities per month rising steadily during his tenure. Not
until the third year of his command did troop withdrawals lead him to reduce U.S.
large-unit operations to a level below Westmoreland’s last year in Vietnam.
Table 1
Average Number of Battalion Days Spent on Large-Unit Operations per Month53
(Shaded area represents Westmoreland’s tenure; non-shaded reflects Abrams’s tenure.)
Time Period
U.S. Alone
Total U.S., South Vietnam, 3d Country
mid-1968 - mid 1969
4,557
7,345
mid-1967 - mid 1968
mid-1969 - mid 1970
mid-1970 - mid 1971
mid-1971 - mid 1972
3,328
3,648
2,225
2,215
4,407
8,108
8,790
34,263
51. PROVN, 5-17.
52. Sorley, Thunderbolt, 232, 237; Lewy, America in Vietnam, 136-53; Richard A. Hunt,
Pacification, the American Struggle for Vietnam’s Hearts and Minds (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press,
1995), 212-13, 222, 233; Krepinevich, Army and Vietnam, 254-57; Thompson and Frizzell, Lessons
of Vietnam, 79, 81, 83.
53. Rpt, Bendix Aerospace Systems Division, Jul 73, Analysis of Vietnamization: Data
Abstract, Final Report, III-14 thru III-17, Historians files, CMH.
1230 ★
THE JOURNAL OF
PROVN, Westmoreland, and the Historians
Major operations under Abrams, such as the 7,000-man sweep he conducted
near Da Nang in late 1968, the 4,000-man push in Quang Ngai Province that forcibly
removed 11,000 civilians from their homes in January 1969, and the famous battle
of Hamburger Hill in May 1969 differed little from campaigns waged by Westmoreland. According to Lewy and Davidson, it was only after the enemy decided to
avoid battle that Abrams made a significant shift from large operations to small-unit
patrols, a decision that received further impetus from the progressive withdrawal of
U.S. forces and growing political pressure to keep U.S. casualties down.54
While Abrams did promote smaller operations, the results should not be overestimated. As Table 2 indicates, the average number of small-unit operations that
generated contact with the enemy per month during Abrams’s tenure never exceeded
the levels achieved during Westmoreland’s last year and one-half in Vietnam.
Table 2
Average Number of Small-Unit Operations that Contacted the Enemy per Month55
(Shaded area represents Westmoreland’s tenure; non-shaded reflects Abrams’s tenure.)
Year
U.S. Alone
1st half 1968
811
1,102
1969
621
1,020
1971
19
908
1967
2d half 1968
1970
1972
866
564
372
0
Total U.S., South Vietnam, 3d Country
1,409
807
894
806
One reason for the declining contacts may have been the allies’ success in
killing the enemy and driving him away from populated areas. In the case of U.S.
forces, the declining contact rate also reflected the tendency of U.S. units to hunker down as troop strength dwindled and morale plummeted in the later years of
the conflict. Nevertheless, by the time Abrams left Vietnam, the Communists still
maintained over 218,000 troops in and around South Vietnam—32,000 fewer
than when he had assumed command but only 7,000 fewer than when PROVN
54. Davidson, Vietnam at War, 612-15; Lewy, America in Vietnam, 136-53; Edgar O’Ballance,
The Wars in Vietnam, 1954-1980 (New York: Hippocrene, 1981), 139, 145.
55. Rpt, Bendix Aerospace Systems Division, Jul 73, Analysis of Vietnamization: Data
Abstract, Final Report, III-18 thru III-21.
MILITARY HISTORY
★ 1231
ANDREW J. BIRTLE
appeared.56 These troops were just as determined to conquer South Vietnam in
1972 as they had been in 1965 and enjoyed a much greater ability to do so thanks to
the influx from the Communist Bloc of tanks, munitions, and heavy artillery. This
situation compelled Abrams, as it had compelled Westmoreland, to spend much of
his time attacking the enemy’s major military units, lines of communication, and
bases. As Table 3 indicates, U.S. large-unit operations focused squarely on combat
regardless of who was the MACV commander.
Table 3
Percentage of U.S. Battalion Days of Operation by Type57
(Shaded area represents Westmoreland’s tenure; non-shaded reflects Abrams’s tenure.)
Type of
August
Operation 1967
First Six
January Months August January August December
1969
of 1969 1969
1970
1970
1970
Security
7.4
Combat
Training
Reserve
Pacification
Other
Total
80.0
19.7
0.3
100.0
92.1
89.0
7.0
1.0
89.0
4.0
0.5
3.0
6.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
1.0
73.3
90.0
73.1
1.2
1.0
3.6
13.5
0.3
3.0
6.0
6.0
100.0
100.0
5.7
9.0
1.7
9.0
3.6
100.0
Other data compiled by the Defense Department confirm that there was little
difference between the type of operations executed during Westmoreland’s last six
months in command and the first nine months of Abram’s tenure.58
Of course, many combat and security operations, while not “pacification operations” per se, did further pacification. This was equally true during the tenures of
both commanders. Thus by the fall of 1966, Westmoreland had assigned 22 percent
of U.S. combat units to support Revolutionary Development. One year later the
number of U.S. combat units performing area security missions had nearly doubled,
to 40 percent, with all U.S. units reporting that they spent about 52 percent of their
56. Rpt, OASD (Comptroller), 10 Jan 73, sub: Southeast Asia Statistical Summary, Table
105, Estimated NVA/VC Strength and Battalions in South Vietnam, CMH.
57. MACV Command History, 1970, 1: VII-105, Historians files, CMH; Memo, ODASD
(SA), 2 Sep 69, sub: U.S. Operations by Type of Mission in Vietnam, Thayer Papers.
58. Memo, ODASD (SA), 4 Apr 69, sub: Operations Data Requested by Senator Hatfield,
Thayer Papers.
1232 ★
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PROVN, Westmoreland, and the Historians
time engaged in activities meant to improve local security. Similarly, 33 percent of
the large-unit operations reported in Table 3 during August 1967 were performed
in and around areas undergoing pacification for the express purpose of eliminating
local Viet Cong personnel and enhancing population security. Abrams maintained
similar policies, but at no time did either commander assume the pacification burden from the Vietnamese or shift the U.S. role away from one that was overwhelmingly combat- and main force-oriented.59
During Abrams’s tenure the United States accelerated previous efforts to
strengthen Vietnam’s paramilitary forces and to bolster civil programs. Nevertheless,
as Table 4 demonstrates, spending priorities changed little from fiscal year 1968,
Westmoreland’s last year, and fiscal year 1971, Abrams’s third year in command.
Table 4
Approximate Allocation of Allied Expenditures60
Program
Main Force War
(offensive operations, interdiction, air defense)
Security
(base, line of communication, and population security)
Civil
(internal development, nation building, economic
stabilization)
Other
(administrative overhead, miscellaneous programs)
FY 1968
FY 1971
58%
68%
13%
12%
2%
5%
27%
15%
Similarly, while the allies made undeniable progress in rooting out the Viet
Cong infrastructure, Viet Cong agents remained, abducting and assassinating
twice as many civilians during Abrams’s tenure as they had during Westmoreland’s.
Progress in improving the training and efficiency of Vietnamese forces was likewise
uneven, with real gains in numbers, equipment, and proficiency being offset by continued problems of questionable motivation, indifferent leadership, and, of course,
59. OASD (SA), SEAR, Sep 67, 10-12, and SEAR, Nov 67, 54-56. Both in Thayer Papers.
Bergerud, The Dynamics of Defeat, 5, 332-33; Jack Shulimson, U.S. Marines in Vietnam, An Expanding
War, 1966 (Washington: U.S. Marine Corps History and Museums Division, 1982), 256.
60. Southeast Asia Program Budget, FY 68, Incl to Memo, Paul H. Nitze, Office of the
Secretary of Defense, for Lt Gen Andrew J. Goodpaster, Commandant, National War College,
26 Apr 68; OASD (SA), SEAR, August–October 1971, 26-34. Both in Thayer papers. Thomas C.
Thayer, “How to Analyze a War Without Fronts, Vietnam 1965-72,” Journal of Defense Research,
Series B: Tactical Warfare, vol. 7 B, no. 3 (Fall 1975): 780-84.
MILITARY HISTORY
★ 1233
ANDREW J. BIRTLE
the enemy’s growing material strength. Even the initiation of more combined
U.S.-Vietnamese operations—an idea that both PROVN and Abrams heartily
endorsed—yielded mixed results.61
Perhaps the most notable example of an operational change implemented
by Abrams was his reduction of unobserved harassment and interdiction fire. In
harassment and interdiction fire, artillery bombarded locations that allied officers
suspected the enemy frequented. It was unobserved, and its effects were often
unknown. PROVN had called for the reduction of such fire, particularly in populated areas, because it caused civilian casualties and undermined the government's
efforts to establish stable communities. Westmoreland too had acknowledged that
harassment and interdiction, along with the rest of allied air and artillery fire, could
cause undesirable collateral damage. The plethora of air and artillery power had also
contributed to the development of what Westmoreland called a “firebase psychosis,” in which U.S. troops demonstrated an excessive dependence on fire support.
Although he tried to limit the adverse effects of air and artillery fire on the civilian
population throughout his tenure, harassment and interdiction fire accounted for
roughly 50 percent of U.S. artillery ammunition expended in 1966, and it was not
until late 1967, in response to Pentagon pressure to reduce ammunition consumption and a MACV study that estimated that the United States was expending six
tons of munitions for every enemy casualty, that Westmoreland began to reduce
harassment and interdiction fire. Abrams greatly amplified this effort, reducing
harassment and interdiction fire to roughly 10 percent of U.S. artillery ammunition
expenditures in 1969 and almost eliminating the practice in 1970. This achievement
was noteworthy, but as with so much else, its importance should not be exaggerated.62
To begin with, a bureaucratic sleight of hand seems to account for some of the
change, for as soon as Army statistics stopped reporting harassment and interdiction fire, there was a dramatic growth in the amount of fire listed under the catchall phrase “other,” as demonstrated in Table 5.
61. Rpt, OASD (Comptroller), 10 Jan 73, sub: Southeast Asia Statistical Summary, Tables 2
and 50; OASD (SA), SEAR, January 1970, 13-17, Thayer Papers; Lewy, America in Vietnam, 454;
Jeffrey J. Clarke, Advice and Support: The Final Years, 1965–1973, United States Army in Vietnam
(Washington: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1988), 391-92.
62. Robert A. Doughty, The Evolution of U.S. Army Tactical Doctrine, 1946-76 (Ft. Leavenworth, Kans.: U.S. Army Combat Studies Institute, 1979), 37 (quotation); John M. Hawkins,
“The Costs of Artillery: Eliminating Harassment and Interdiction Fire during the Vietnam War,”
Journal of Military History 70 ( January 2006): 92-93, 98-110; PROVN, 71, 2-58.
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Table 5
Percentage of U.S. Army Artillery Ammunition Expended on Various Missions,
by Quarter63
(Shaded area represents Westmoreland’s tenure; non-shaded reflects Abrams’s tenure.)
Mission
3d Qtr 4th Qtr 1st Qtr 2d Qtr 3d Qtr 4th Qtr 1st Qtr 2d Qtr
1967 1967 1968 1968 1968 1968
1969 1969
Security
15
Offensive
Base Defense
44
47
51
53
56
49
54
45
2
3
4
5
7
8
7
7
Harassment &
Interdiction
37
Other
2
9
39
2
7
36
2
8
31
3
12
25
10
33
8
31
11
37
Moreover, as John M. Hawkins has pointed out, Abrams’s effort to reduce unobserved artillery fire was motivated as much by a desire to reduce ammunition costs
as by any humanitarian concern for the Vietnamese people. Finally, Abrams relied
on artillery just as heavily as Westmoreland, with ammunition consumption rates
remaining virtually unchanged from 1968 through 1970. Considering that allied
artillery fired two to three times the weight of shells during 1969 and 1970 than
it had delivered during 1966 when PROVN complained about excessive fire,
PROVN's authors would probably not have been impressed by Abrams’s accomplishment.64
In fact, while Abrams reduced harassment and interdiction expenditures, 70
percent of U.S. artillery fire continued to be employed in situations of light or
minimal contact. Abrams’s reduction of U.S. harassment and interdiction fire also
did not affect the South Vietnamese, who assumed a progressively larger share of
the artillery role during the later stages of the war. In 1969, for example, they fired
roughly one-third of their artillery ammunition on harassment and interdiction
missions. Over 40 percent of the artillery support provided for the Regional and
Popular Forces—whose primary mission was to provide immediate security to the
population—was this type of unobserved fire. By 1970 conditions had improved for
those living in secure areas (where, by definition, little firepower should have been
necessary in any case), with just 9 percent of the most secure communities (villages
63. OASD (SA), SEAR, August 1970, 11 (note 1), 12, Thayer Papers.
64. Hawkins, “Costs of Artillery,” 122; Fact Sheet, OASD (SA), 3 Aug 70, sub: Artillery Fire
in Vietnam, Thayer Papers.
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rated A and B by the
Hamlet Evaluation System) experiencing air or
artillery strikes. On the
other hand, 52 percent
of semi-secure (C-rated)
villages still experienced
strikes, and it is not difficult to imagine that people living in contested or
Communist-controlled
areas saw little if any
letup in the hail of bomb
and shell. This conclusion
is reinforced by the fact
Westmoreland and Abrams Both Relied Heavily on Firethat Abrams dropped
power. (National Archives)
more tons of bombs on
South Vietnam than
Westmoreland and flew more than twice as many B-52 sorties over that country as
his predecessor. A heavy reliance on firepower thus characterized Abrams’s methods just as it had Westmoreland’s.65
The artillery and air programs are important for what they tell us not just about
the continuity between the tactical methods of Abrams and Westmoreland, but also
about the conduct of the war more generally. PROVN's authors believed that the
conflict was a political struggle to win the support of the people, and it was largely
on this basis that they spoke out against brutality and destruction. Implications that
Abrams was either more concerned than his predecessor about the use of excessive
force or more effective in stopping unsavory practices are, however, hard to sustain.
To begin with, PROVN placed most of the blame for deleterious conduct on the
South Vietnamese, and there is scant evidence that Vietnamese troop behavior significantly improved over the course of the war. As for American soldiers, PROVN
stated that they “generally acted in an exemplary fashion.” Westmoreland's writings
indicate, moreover, that he understood the political and moral issues involved in
fighting an insurgency. In July 1965 he informed his subordinates that “it is imperative that all our officers and men understand the importance of minimizing noncombatant casualties whenever possible.” Several months later he formed a special
board to study how to reduce civilian casualties, and by year's end he had ordered
65. Army Activities Report: SE Asia, 17 Dec 69, 17-18; OASD (SA) SEAR, April- May
1970, 17-22, and SEAR, August 1970, 9-20. All in Thayer Papers. Thayer, “How to Analyze,”
827; Louis A. Wiesner, Victims and Survivors, Displaced Persons and Other War Victims, 1954-1975
(New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), 304.
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that all U.S. servicemen in Vietnam receive a one-hour lecture on the importance
of winning popular support.66
The lecture reminded soldiers that “this struggle is in many ways a new kind of
war for Americans, a struggle in which the decisive battles must be won not only in
the field, but ultimately and finally in the hearts and in the minds of the people of
South Vietnam.” While civilian casualties were inevitable, the lecture urged soldiers
to avoid the “needless” destruction of civilian life and property, stating that “wild
and indiscriminate firing against populated places, or vengeful burning of houses
and hamlets as blind and wholesale reprisal for Viet Cong sniper fire, is not only
wrong in and of itself, but if there is anything that could cause us to lose this new
kind of struggle we're in, this kind of thing is it.” The lecture also invoked the soldier's sense of honor and heritage, claiming that “throughout our history, American
fighting men have fought clean. American fighting men don't kill noncombatants,
if they can possibly help it. American fighting men don't kill women and children,
either in the heat of battle or in cold-blooded reprisal against enemy sniper fire.
American fighting men don't molest or insult the women. American fighting men
don't deliberately destroy the houses and private property of innocent civilians,
unless it's absolutely necessary to the accomplishment of their tactical mission.”67
General Westmoreland reinforced this training by issuing cards to all soldiers in
Vietnam to remind them of the importance of proper conduct towards civilians and
captives. Meanwhile, between 1964 and 1968 MACV and subordinate commands
issued over forty directives regarding rules of engagement and other measures to
minimize civilian casualties and promote good relations with the populace. The
Army backed these efforts with a dizzying array of civic action, refugee relief, and
community relations activities to win friends and to ameliorate the harsh hand of
war.68
Abrams did not materially alter Westmoreland's policies, nor was he any
more successful in achieving PROVN’s goals of winning support and minimizing
civilian suffering. There is little evidence that the Vietnamese peasant’s heart and
mind were significantly more pro-government in 1972 than in 1965, while records
66. Memo, Westmoreland for Distribution, 7 Jul 65, sub: Minimizing Non-Combatant
Casualties (second quotation); MFR, MACV, 15 Sep 65, sub: Joint Board to Study Tactical Air
Firepower—Briefing by Westmoreland. Both in Historians files, CMH. Carland, “Winning the
Vietnam War,” 569; PROVN, 5-19, 5-20, G-7 (first quotation); Sorley, Thunderbolt, 235-37.
67. Lesson Outline, Avoidance of Noncombatant Casualties and Property Damage (Suggested title, “Kill Your Enemies–Not Your Friends,”), 1 (first quotation), 11 (second quotation), 4
(third quotation), 5 (fourth quotation), Incl to Headquarters Department of the Army (HQDA),
Final Report of the Research Project: Conduct of the Vietnam War, May 71, CMH.
68. Memo, I Field Force Vietnam for Distribution, 13 May 66, sub: Fact Sheet--The Nine
Rules; Rpt, ODCSOPS, Dec 70, sub: An Analysis of the Evolution of MACV Rules of Engagement Pertaining to Ground Operations, 1965-69; MACV, “Guidance for Commanders in Vietnam,” May 66. All in Historians files, CMH.
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of troop misconduct indicate that the behavior of U.S. soldiers did not change
much over the years. On the other hand, civilian casualties, as measured by hospital
admissions, were nearly three times greater during Abrams’s tenure than they had
been under Westmoreland. The best that can be said, therefore, is that both men
endeavored to prevent misconduct and to achieve a balance between political goals
and military means, but that neither had been more successful than the other in
achieving those ends.69
Organizing the War Effort
While military affairs were of great interest to PROVN's authors, they devoted
much of their attention to political and administrative matters. They argued persuasively that the allies had failed to develop a coherent pacification effort. They urged
that the Vietnamese enact a host of political, economic, and bureaucratic reforms,
most of which U.S. authorities had suggested before but which had been implemented poorly or not at all. Included among these suggestions was a recommendation to give the province chief control over all Vietnamese political and military
programs in his province. On the American side, PROVN recommended that the
United States appoint a single manager (preferably the U.S. ambassador) to plan
and direct U.S. agencies in waging a unified politico-military campaign. Assisting
the ambassador would be a new super staff that would plan this campaign and two
co-equal deputies who would manage the war effort. The first deputy, the chief of
MACV, would supervise the military campaign and have operational control over
South Vietnamese forces, a power he did not then enjoy. The second deputy would
be a deputy for rural construction, a new post that would provide central direction
over the entire pacification effort, civil as well as military. The single manager concept would extend down to the province level, where a single adviser (labeled the
senior U.S. representative) would control all U.S. civil and military programs in the
province. Although PROVN believed that senior representatives should initially be
soldiers, the arrangement actually shifted power and resources away from MACV,
as the plan placed all U.S. and Vietnamese military personnel and units assigned to
support pacification under the deputy for pacification.70
Some writers have suggested that Westmoreland objected to PROVN because
it recommended that the ambassador receive more authority over the military and
that it called for soldiers to play a greater role in pacification. These authors leave
the impression that Westmoreland opposed a greater integration of civil-military
affairs.71 Westmoreland did have reservations about the specifics contained in
69. Lewy, America in Vietnam, 443, 457; Rpt, Vietnam Special Studies Group, 13 May 70,
sub: The Situation in the Countryside, 27-30; George S. Prugh, Law At War: Vietnam, 1964-1978
(Washington: Department of the Army, 1975), 72-74, 83-84, 154; Thayer, “How to Analyze,” 862;
Hawkins, “Costs of Artillery,” 112-14, 122.
70. PROVN, 1, 15, 53, 58-65.
71. Krepinevich, Army in Vietnam, 182; Davidson, Vietnam at War, 411.
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PROVN's organizational scheme. He recognized the advantages of having operational control over the South Vietnamese but doubted that they would ever agree
to such an arrangement. He opposed proposals to abolish the mission council and
to make all province senior representatives soldiers rather using a mix of civilian
and military personnel. He likewise did not like suggestions to shift control of U.S.
military units operating in support of pacification to the province advisers and to
transfer much of the military advisory system from MACV to the new civilian
deputy. His concern over these recommendations did not mean, however, that he
rejected PROVN's goal of bringing order to the command structure and bolstering
pacification support. Just the opposite was true.
As early as 1964 Westmoreland had suggested to Ambassador Henry Cabot
Lodge that MACV become the executive agent for pacification, but nothing came
of his proposal. He reiterated this suggestion to Lodge's replacement, Maxwell D.
Taylor, in 1965, but Taylor rejected the idea. Taylor also quashed the Army's proposal that it deploy civil affairs personnel to Vietnam to help with pacification. An
Army recommendation that the embassy place all U.S. civilian and military agencies operating at the province level under a single MACV manager similarly fell on
fallow ground. Opposition to all of these proposals stemmed from two factors. The
first was a sense of consternation among the civilian bureaucracies (particularly the
State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development) over the
prospect of losing their autonomy to a single manager, especially if that person was
a soldier. The second was a widespread philosophical belief that the United States
should not intrude too deeply into Vietnamese civil affairs.72
Westmoreland nevertheless continued to support proposals for improving the
execution of the pacification program. When a meeting was called in Washington
in January 1966 to discuss the floundering pacification effort, he told his representative for the meeting, Brigadier General James L. Collins, Jr.:
Probably the fundamental issue is the question of the coordination
of mission activities in Saigon. It is abundantly clear that all political,
military, economic and security (police) programs must be completely
integrated in order to attain any kind of success . . . It is not possible
nor desirable, indeed it would be disastrous, if we were to attempt some
artificial division of our effort into a military hemisphere on the one
side and a civilian hemisphere on the other. The fact is that no civilian
activity of any consequence can go forward without military security
against large Viet Cong/Peoples’ Army of Vietnam units, against local
provincial Viet Cong units, and against the guerrilla. It is erroneous to
72. Westmoreland, Soldier Reports, 68-70; Rpt, Brig Gen John Finn, Mar 64, sub: Report to
the Chief of Staff United States Army on the U.S.-GVN Effort, I-F-6, 68-3306, Record Group
(RG) 319, National Archives and Record Administration (NARA), College Park, Maryland;
Study, ODCSOPS, 1 Apr 65, sub: Analysis of the Military Effort in South Vietnam, 59-60, 65,
68A2344, RG 319, NARA; Robert W. Komer, Bureaucracy at War, U.S. Performance in the Vietnam
Conflict (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1986), 89-92, 119.
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ANDREW J. BIRTLE
equate the military effort only with the main Viet Cong and People’s
Army of Vietnam forces . . . In furtherance of this fundamental point,
you should emphasize the complete dependence of a provincial pacification plan upon the integration of the military and civilian effort . . .
A second basic misconception is that pacification or rural construction
is a function which can be set aside and handled by some single mission element or agency. Almost every aspect of U.S. activity in South
Vietnam bears directly on pacification. For all these reasons, both the
Government of Vietnam and the U.S. Mission require a central coordinating mechanism.73
Westmoreland favored a committee approach and proposed that deputy
ambassador William Porter assume the role of pacification coordinator. As it
turned out, civilian agencies in Saigon opposed this proposal, preferring to keep
things as they were. A suggestion by the Joint Chiefs’ representative to the conference, Major General William R. Peers, that MACV assume the pacification role
received even less support from the civilian bureaucracies. In the end, the conferees
departed agreeing that something needed to be done to give pacification management more focus but unsure of the method by which this could be achieved.74 The
matter did not rest there, however. After a major conference in Honolulu the following month, President Johnson forced a reluctant ambassador Lodge to assign
the job of pulling together the civilian side of pacification within the embassy to
deputy ambassador Porter.
This was the state of affairs when the PROVN study appeared in March, and
Westmoreland's reaction to its recommendations reflected the situation. Over and
above his qualms about some of the paper's specifics, Westmoreland knew that
moves were already afoot to improve pacification management. It made sense to
allow these to unfold rather than to introduce an even more radical proposal. The
real source of opposition to greater coordination, moreover, was not the military
but the civilian bureaucracies. Given the vehemence with which the civilian agencies had resisted suggestions for a greater integration of effort and a greater role
for soldiers, a cautious approach seemed best. As a result, Westmoreland chose not
to push a “military” solution, opting instead to stay in the background and to quietly support those civilians who shared his goals.75 Porter's attempt to rein in the
civilian bureaucracies failed and was followed by the creation of the Office of Civil
Operations in 1966. Westmoreland supported this new coordinative effort, but it
too failed. Finally, in 1967, President Johnson directed that Westmoreland receive
responsibility for pacification and that a civilian, Robert Komer, serve as his deputy
in that area as chief of CORDS. The creation of CORDS achieved PROVN's
goals of improving management and bringing more attention and resources to
73. Msg, Westmoreland to Collins, 7 Jan 66, CMH.
74. Thomas W. Scoville, Reorganizing for Pacification Support (Washington: U.S Army Center of Military History, 1991), 19.
75. Ibid., 32-42, 47-55; Hunt, Pacification, 77.
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pacification but by a different solution than put forward by the report. Ultimately
the successful march towards greater politico-military integration owed much to
Westmoreland, a fact that Komer acknowledged, and little to PROVN, which at
most provided further grist for those who already recognized the need for pacification management reform. That it took years to finally achieve this goal had nothing
to do with Westmoreland's opinion of PROVN and everything to do with the
difficulty of getting the civilian bureaucracies to abandon their parochial interests,
a task that even President Johnson approached gingerly.
The Question of Leverage
As important as it was to get America's bureaucratic house in order, little
progress could be expected unless the Vietnamese took similar action. Long experience, however, had demonstrated that Vietnamese officials had an uncanny ability
to ignore, sabotage, or muddle American initiatives. Deep frustration and a belief
that the United States could not afford to fail led PROVN's authors to urge that
the United States overcome its reluctance to interfere in Vietnamese internal affairs
and its fear of being labeled an imperialist. To this end, they proposed that MACV
assume operational control over the South Vietnamese military, that the United
States insert Americans into the indigenous bureaucracy, and that the Vietnamese
acquiesce to a system that would give the United States greater control over many
plans and programs. PROVN recommended that a formal “binding” agreement
enshrine these practices, but, in recognition of Vietnamese sensitivities, still hoped
that most issues could be resolved quietly through personal influence. If persuasion did not work—as had often been the case in the past—PROVN’s authors
suggested that the United States employ pressure, to include suspending aid and
cooperation, until it got its way. Should these measures still prove inadequate,
then PROVN called for the United States to impose its will on South Vietnam
unilaterally.76 PROVN may well have been right that Americanizing pacification
was the only way to get it to work, just as Americanizing the war effort seemed
to be the only way to win on the battlefield. The suggestion, however, contravened
a long-standing U.S. policy that held nations responsible for their own internal
affairs. American presidents, ambassadors, and soldiers had all adhered to this line,
partly because they were reluctant to assume ultimate responsibility should things
go poorly, and partly because they genuinely believed in the sovereignty of nations.
Neither was there much reason to believe the Vietnamese would accept additional
intrusions into their affairs, as they had resisted nearly every impingement on their
sovereignty—real or imagined—over the previous ten years. Finally, U.S. and Vietnamese leaders alike understood that the conflict was partly a struggle for legitimacy and that, as such, it was critical for the proud and nationalistic Vietnamese
people to perceive their government as being in charge of its own destiny.77 This
76. PROVN, 1, 6, 54-57, 64 (quotation), 74-75, 109, 2-22 through 2-26, 5-52, 5-53.
77. Davidson, Vietnam at War, 410.
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ANDREW J. BIRTLE
view was fully in consonance with much counterinsurgency theory, which held that
only an indigenous government could truly resolve an internal conflict.
Whether correct or not, Westmoreland's position—that the United States
needed to remain within the confines of an advisory relationship—was well within
reason. Indeed, it is interesting to note that even the PROVN report supported his
point of view, for the study's own authors were far from united on the degree to
which the United States should impose itself on Vietnam. Thus the report spoke in
terms of enhancing U.S. “influence” and “involvement” in Vietnam despite the protest of study member Lieutenant Colonel Volney Warner that anything short of an
outright intervention would fail. Likewise, the nation-building annex to the report,
which was written by the faculty at West Point rather than the main PROVN team
in the Pentagon, warned that America should not assert itself too deeply in indigenous affairs lest it alienate the Vietnamese government and people.78
PROVN sent a similarly mixed message with regard to nation building itself. In
the main body of the report, the core study group on the Army Staff argued strongly
that the United States should not allow concerns about its unfamiliarity with the
intricacies of Vietnamese society to deter it from pushing forward with vital nation
building and reform programs. While the PROVN authors understood the obstacles,
they expressed confidence that properly trained experts could guide Vietnam down
the path of social revolution. The faculty members at West Point, however, were not
so sure. While they shared the report's goal of fostering a socio-political revolution
to cure Vietnam's ills, they warned that “there is little the U.S. can do” to get the
Vietnamese to embrace such reforms. Rather, “the people of South Vietnam must
themselves provide the antibodies to cure the infection. The U.S. can help with local
surgery or intravenous feeding; it can perhaps be introduced in crisis situations as a
sort of antibiotic, but the side effects on the organism as a whole of such intervention
are likely to be deleterious unless the infection has been diagnosed accurately and
the appropriate kind and amount of dosage calculated very carefully.”79 The annex
further argued that “the U.S. should carefully limit its forces and mission to fighting
and dispersing Communist forces and resist all temptations to enter into the military
government business. It should not only avoid taking over the war in its current conventional fighting phase, but should also be careful not to dominate or monopolize
the civic action field.” The annex concluded with the warning that “as we go beyond
the task of fighting conventional forces or guerrillas, we risk discouraging local initiative, subverting the Government of Vietnam’s nationalist image and leading both
ourselves and Army of the Republic of Vietnam into mishandling what will become
an increasingly difficult internal problem of nation building.” This conclusion fell
well short of being a ringing endorsement of PROVN's proposed activism. In fact, it
mirrored Westmoreland's beliefs.80
78. PROVN, 2-58 (quotations), E-22 through E-24.
79. Ibid., 56, E-20 (first quotation), E-23 (second quotation).
80. Ibid., E-24 (quotations); Msg, COMUSMACV to CINCPAC, 27 May 66, sub:
PROVN Study, 3, Historians files, CMH.
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In the end, the United States, through CORDS, would erect a more elaborate
scaffold than had existed prior to 1967 to help the Vietnamese manage local security, pacification, and nation-building programs. It would do so, however, by using
CORDS personnel as advisers. Even during the post-Westmoreland years, the U.S.
government avoided forcing the Vietnamese to take actions they did not want to
take. Abrams never gained control over the South Vietnamese Army, nor did the
United States insert personnel into the Vietnamese bureaucracy. Persuasion, not
pressure, remained America's creed, and while this approach generally worked, it
failed to transform the South Vietnamese political, military, or social systems in
the way PROVN's authors had hoped. Even PROVN team member and primary
author of Abrams’s 1969 campaign plan, Lieutenant Colonel Donald S. Marshall,
admitted in 1972 that South Vietnam remained a country wracked by corruption,
incompetent leadership, social injustice, economic dependence, and political chicanery.81 Ultimately, revolutionary change would come at the hands of North Vietnamese soldiers, not South Vietnamese politicians or American social engineers.
PROVN’S Demise
Ever since the Pentagon Papers brought PROVN to the public eye, historians
have lamented that the report did not receive greater attention when it was written.
Some have claimed that the course of the war might have been dramatically different had only policymakers taken the study to heart. Historians have also blamed
Westmoreland for PROVN's demise. Over the years, commentators have advanced
a number of reasons why the MACV chief allegedly wished to kill the report, to
include the arrogance with which the study's author's briefed him, Westmoreland's
disinclination to accept anything not produced by his own staff, his opposition to
involving the Army in civil affairs, his lack of understanding of the importance of
pacification, and his unwillingness to admit that his search-and-destroy strategy
and firepower-intensive tactics were wrong. So convinced have some of these writers become that they have cited Westmoreland’s failure to mention PROVN in his
memoirs as proof of his disdain for the report.82
As already mentioned, Westmoreland had reservations about aspects of the
report. But he also told the Joint Chiefs of Staff that PROVN offered an “excellent overall approach in developing organization, concepts, and policies to defeat
Communist insurgency in South Vietnam.” He acknowledged the desirability of
greater unity of effort as well as of having more influence over the Vietnamese, and
he praised some of PROVN's proposed reforms. He cautioned, however, that the
devil was in the details and that the United States had to live within the realm of
the possible. Interestingly, he took no exception to any of PROVN's criticisms with
regard to strategy, tactics, or the conduct of the war, the areas for which he was most
81. Komer, Bureaucracy at War, 127; Clarke, Final Years, 489.
82. Sorley, “To Change a War,” 102, 107; Lewy, America in Vietnam, 89; Davidson, Vietnam
at War, 410-11; Gilbert, Why the North Won, 172.
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ANDREW J. BIRTLE
responsible and from which historians have claimed his opposition to PROVN
stemmed. Rather, the MACV commander concluded that the study had merit. If
certain issues required further consideration, that fact, he added, “should not detract
from the overall value of PROVN.”83
Historians have scoffed at Westmoreland's response, claiming that it was an
insincere bureaucratic ploy to damn the document with faint praise. As proof they
have quoted Westmoreland's recommendation that “PROVN, reduced primarily to
a conceptual document, carrying forward the main thrusts and goals of the study, be
presented to [the] National Security Council for use in developing concepts, policies, and actions to improve [the] effectiveness of the American effort in Vietnam.”
(Emphasis added.) Recommending that PROVN be brought to the attention of
the National Security Council seems like an odd way to kill it, however. As Westmoreland pointed out, PROVN's most controversial aspects—those pertaining to
the relative priority of political and military efforts, the reorganization of the U.S.
Mission in Saigon, and U.S. policy vis-à-vis the exercise of leverage over South
Vietnam—could only be settled in Washington.84 His suggestion that PROVN
be forwarded to the National Security Council for review was exactly the thing to
do, for as events would show with the creation of CORDS, only direct action by
President Johnson could compel the various agencies involved in pacification to
work together.
Some commentators have also misattributed to Westmoreland the gag order
that initially prohibited discussion of the report outside the Defense Department.
The order stemmed not from Westmoreland, but from the father of PROVN,
Chief of Staff Johnson. There is also no evidence that the close hold order had
anything to do with the report's criticism of either the Army or Westmoreland's
conduct of the war. Rather than representing a nefarious effort by the Army to
bury a report that it found distasteful, Johnson's order was a matter of prudence,
given the sensitive political, diplomatic, and interagency implications of some of
PROVN's comments. The restriction, moreover, did not prevent the Army from
briefing PROVN throughout the defense community during the spring and summer of 1966, and Johnson himself secretly violated the order by passing a copy of
the study to presidential pacification adviser Robert Komer. A decision to make a
fuller distribution was, of course, not even the Army's to make. It depended upon
approval of the Joint Chiefs and ultimately Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, who in September 1966 authorized its release to interested government
agencies.85 PROVN thus reached the hands of influential decision makers, just as
Westmoreland had recommended.
83. Msg, COMUSMACV to CINCPAC, 27 May 66, sub: PROVN Study, 1 (quotations).
84. Ibid., 2, 4, 6 (quotation); Davidson, Vietnam at War, 410; Scoville, Reorganizing for Pacification Support, 29, note 28.
85. Krepinevich, Army and Vietnam, 182; Sorley, Honorable Warrior, 235-36; Sorley, “To Change
a War,” 101-4; Nagl, Counterinsurgency Lessons, 160; Gilbert, Why the North Won, 172-73.
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Since many of PROVN’s recommendations had already been suggested or
tried, had proved impractical, or had been superseded by events, the study’s influence was modest. Nevertheless, while it never became the blueprint its authors
hoped it would, its rehash of long-standing arguments in favor of bolstering
pacification and of achieving a greater integration of effort did have their effect on
policymakers. Once the creation of CORDS and the defeat of Communist forces
during the 1968 Tet Offensive had cleared the way, General Abrams was able to
develop a more pacification-oriented campaign plan in 1969 dubbed the “Son of
PROVN.” This shift was far less radical than some have claimed and differed from
prior plans more in style and degree than in substance, a fact that plan author Colonel Marshall conceded.86 That this was so should not be surprising, for in reality
PROVN was a fairly conventional document. If it pressed the United States to go
farther than it had heretofore been willing to go in terms of managing pacification
support or controlling the Vietnamese, few of the shortcomings it identified, the
principles it formulated, or the solutions it proposed were genuinely new. Many if
not most could be found in national policy statements, in U.S. Army doctrine, and
in Westmoreland's own words and actions over the preceding years.87 The report
neither rejected large-unit operations nor criticized Westmoreland's decision to
focus most of the Army's energies against the enemy's main forces. It likewise
continued to relegate primary responsibility for securing villages and rooting out
the enemy's clandestine networks to the South Vietnamese. What it did do was
to remind policymakers that they should not allow the U.S. Army's counterforce
operations to obscure the importance of population security and political control.
These points were well taken, although ultimately events would prove that success
in securing the population could not outweigh devastating defeat in the main force
war.
PROVN and the Historians
How has it been that so many commentators have misconstrued the PROVN
report? One reason may be that few have taken the time to study the full 900-page
document, relying instead on the short synopses provided by the Pentagon Papers
and earlier writers. Another is that people have tended to look at the report in
isolation without regard to the many writings and statements by U.S. military and
civilian leaders that preceded its publication. Indeed, historians have tended to
accept at face value the claims made by PROVN’s authors that they were Young
Turks who were pressing new ideas on a stodgy establishment and who, according
86. Sorley, Honorable Warrior, 236, 241; Hunt, Pacification, 75; Bergerud, Dynamics of Defeat,
241 (quotation); Lewis Sorley, ed., Vietnam Chronicles, The Abrams Tapes, 1968-1972 (Lubbock:
Texas Tech University Press, 2004), 208; Rpt, MACV, c. 1969, The Principles and Application of
Area Security, 4, 7-10, Historians files, CMH.
87. For a detailed description of U.S. counterinsurgency policy and doctrine both before
and during the Vietnam war, see Birtle, U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations
Doctrine, 1942-1976.
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to one PROVN participant, considered MACV to be “our second enemy” after the
Viet Cong.88 People who champion their own initiatives frequently claim that their
ideas represent a sharp break from the past. Historians, however, must approach
such claims with skepticism, for all too often they are exaggerated. Robert Komer
made this point when he recalled, “I was there when General Abrams took over and
remained his deputy. There was no change in strategy whatsoever. . . . The myth of
a change in strategy is a figment of media imagination; it didn’t really change until
we began withdrawing.”89
Another cause of misunderstanding has been confusion on the part of some
writers as to what PROVN was really all about. Davidson exhibited this confusion
when, after praising PROVN as an insightful critique of Westmoreland’s strategy,
he stated that “the major fault in the study lay in its emphasis on pacification and
counterinsurgency.” Davidson may have been right, for as the Pentagon Papers
pointed out, PROVN failed to consider whether a village-centered security strategy could succeed at a time when the enemy wielded so much military power. His
comment undermines his own argument; for if a pacification-centered strategy was
not appropriate, on what does his critique of Westmoreland rest? The reality was
that PROVN, Westmoreland, and Abrams all sought to execute broad-based strategies that used combinations of military operations, security measures, and social,
economic, and administrative improvements to defeat the enemy and pacify the
countryside. The problem was not in conceptualizing this approach, for it had been
a staple of U.S. Army doctrine and U.S. government policy for years. Rather, the
problem had been in executing the concept given the difficult political and military
circumstances that existed in Vietnam and the U.S. government.90
Finally, some historians have simply ignored those aspects of PROVN that do
not fit their preferred interpretations of the document and the war. This approach,
while producing a neat picture of the past, has clouded rather than clarified our
understanding of it. Stock caricatures of Westmoreland as a dunderheaded conventionalist and Abrams as an insightful innovator likewise do not comport with reality. It is not that Abrams’s “one war” campaign did not differ from his predecessor’s
in certain respects, but the differences have been grossly exaggerated by propaganda
and sloganeering. Ultimately the strategies, tactics, and methods used by these two
men were much more alike than some writers have been willing to admit.
By putting PROVN in its proper historical context, we can better understand
not just the document itself but the war more generally. As we have seen, the assertion that there was a fundamental difference between Westmoreland’s strategy and
that advocated by PROVN and implemented by Abrams is incorrect. Rather than
88. Brig. Gen. Donald V. Bennett, as quoted in Sorley, “To Change a War,” 102. Davidson,
Vietnam at War, 410-11.
89. Komer, as quoted in Krepinevich, Army and Vietnam, 257.
90. Davidson, Vietnam at War, 410 (quotation); Pentagon Papers, 2: 578; Msg, COMUSMACV to CINCPAC, 26 Aug 66, sub: Concept of Military Operations in SVN.
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THE JOURNAL OF
PROVN, Westmoreland, and the Historians
representing antithetical concepts, Westmoreland’s and Abrams’s approaches to the
conflict were cut of the same cloth, and we should not allow minor differences to
mask this fundamental truth. The basic principles that guided U.S. policy remained
fairly constant throughout the war. Changes were evolutionary rather than revolutionary and usually represented either an attempt to execute old concepts more
efficiently (as with CORDS) or to react to new circumstances (such as those created by the enemy’s failed Tet Offensive).
If Sorley is incorrect in asserting that PROVN and the “Son of PROVN”
represented a revolutionary change in strategy, does the continuity in American
thought and action support Krepinevich’s and Nagl’s view of the U.S. Army as
an institution incapable of change?91 I think not. By understanding that most of
the ideas in PROVN that commentators have praised were not new, but rather
reflected policies and doctrines long espoused by Westmoreland and the rest of
the Army, one realizes that the Army as a whole was more in tune with counterinsurgency than has often been portrayed. There were, of course, failures and
shortcomings, just as there are in any war, but the Army’s conventional orientation
was not a straightjacket that predetermined its actions in Southeast Asia. All too
often historians have turned a blind eye to the many ways in which the Army did
in fact adapt doctrinally, organizationally, and tactically to the insurgency challenge
during the 1960s.
Too many have also erred in judging the Vietnam War from the standpoint
of theoretical models of insurgency and counterinsurgency. In the 1960s most
counterinsurgency theory focused on the early and mid stages of a rebellion that
was being waged to right some perceived social wrong. The point that is often
missed is that the war in Vietnam was not just a “classic” insurgency of the type
posited by theoreticians. It was a kaleidoscopic conflict against an enemy who
consisted not just of “farmers by day and guerrillas by night,” but of large, professional military forces directed and reinforced by an external power that was intent
not on redressing grievances or reforming South Vietnam, but on destroying it.
Many of the actions that have drawn criticism, such as the use of large operations
and heavy firepower, stemmed less from a lack of understanding of counterinsurgency theory than from the fact that the realities on the ground and the enemy’s
sheer military strength often demanded a “conventional” response. Similarly, using
the comparatively limited and straightforward “emergency” in Malaya as a lens to
interpret Vietnam, as Nagl has done, ignores the vast differences between the two
conflicts and produces a distorted view. Models and theoretical principles are useful,
but ultimately every conflict is unique and must be fought and judged accordingly.
Westmoreland and Abrams understood this. We should as well.
91. Sorley, Vietnam Chronicles, xix.
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